To support electric vehicles like the Leaf, which will be available in Houston toward year's end, the city and Reliant are working to create an infrastructure that places charging stations in convenient locations. Reliant will also be developing a system of support, including home assessments, for people installing home charging stations. The stations will be compatible with other plug-in vehicles as well.

Hulu is gaining traction, and the big boys behind the online video network have actually done their part to ensure that its content is available across multiple video platforms. Online distribution at its finest, right? Hulu is making sure the consumers are still happy with its efforts by making the Super Bowl commercials available in HD immediately following the game (find them here). Isn't that nice? The commercials.

What about the game? Why can't that be available directly after the Super Bowl ends? Better yet, streamed during the game? According to NBC's release about the commercials that will be available on Hulu, these clips will also be embedded on the Hulu blog so you can check out a collection of the ads at once. As with all Hulu content, it's shareable and embeddable, so you can rev up for all those debates and jokes about the best Super Bowl commercials for 2008. Even better, all those high school and marketing students will be pleased to have such ready access to all the Super Bowl ads. You won't even have to watch the game.

As much as people are beginning to like Hulu, I can't wait for the day when platforms such as this can be used as a complete alternative for the television. They could even lend themselves to interactive adsand that would be something to make any marketing student watch the game in its entirety. One ad campaign we're all particularly looking forward to is Pepsi's, which involves giving away millions of free, unprotected mp3s through Amazon. The potential for further shifting the direction of the music industry is somewhat reliant on the success of ad-supplemented initiatives such as this, which appeals to both mainstream and newer concepts in regards to digital music and sales.

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So far this year I have probably come up with at least 4 multi-million dollar ideas. But I am uncertain if the market timing is right and I have the business acumen and finances to make them soar, but I will try. And, to be honest, some of the ideas were not even mine. They were simply extensions of other's ideas and/or flaws to current market leading models...just like what Google was founded upon (though my ideas are far less ambitious than their idea is).

If you are entering a saturated marketplace and do not have a strong USP read rants or research from long time industry purists that are angry with the current marketplace. You don't have to buy everything they say, just take one of their best ideas, give it a touch of framing, make it relevant to your business, and base your marketing and public relations campaign on it.

If they are viewed as a nutcase and written off by the market then competitors will not realize the brilliance of your brand and the strength of the purist angle until you start cutting into the market in a big way. By then it will be too late for them to react, and if they do copy you, then you can use that to further affirm your market leading position. Google said "don't be evil" and everyone thought they were cute and cuddly until they were too reliant on Google to say otherwise. See the goog. Be the goog. :)