So I’m back from Norway in what I consider one of my many whirlwind, highly concentrated business trips. If you’ve never tried one of them before, you should. They’re absolutely perfect for the working professional… creating limited or no jetlag whatsoever, and allowing you the time to vegetate while you sit on a plane for over 10 hours (each way)…

Here are some pictures of the sights that I saw, even though my camera was back in Brooklyn.

The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Synagogue

The Nidaros Cathedral

The amazing thing about the trip was not necessarily the sights, but rather the way the world has condensed in such a short period of time. Zedge was started by a few guys from Norway and it’s now viewed and shared by close to 2mm people a month from over 200 countries.

Or, from one world…

I’m off to Norway for a couple of days. That means you guys will see limited postings (likely none at all).

This is how I picture the country.

I’m sure Kenneth will tell me that I’m way off base, but I guess we’ll see…

Does anyone else find the new iPhone commercials as boring as I do? They’re almost as interesting as the trailers for Transformers…

Evidently, Conan had this great piece where he uses satire to mock the general public’s ridiculous enthusiasm about a product that will earn billions of dollars, break sales records, and may or may not be useful to the average joe. In any case, the last line is the best. I’ll let you watch it for yourself…

…and the truth is that I like the Transformers trailer. Here it is…

Ok, it’s a little tacky…

Trying to build a billion dollar business?

Don’t call it the YouTube of pictures that have an orange dot in the upper left hand corner, or the MySpace for dimple faced diaper wearing sixteen and a half year olds. That means one of two things: You weren’t creative enough to come up with a really original idea and your business is going to fail, or you’re short-changing your business and speaking down to your audience (by taking the easy route and lumping it in with some easily recognizable entity).

Now why would you do that? It’s not just bad business, it’s bad karma.

Karma notwithstanding (whether you like it or not), sometimes business is about being in the right place at the right time and capitalizing on the opportunity.

Let’s take the NBA finals. A Spurs-Pistons rematch would have excited me like another lump of coal excites a miner. While the National Basketball Association can’t decide who gets into the NBA Finals, it still put itself in the right place by creating a scenario where that can happen. Lebron James made it happen and the NBA will capitalize. In a big way.

Put your business in the right spot and really hope that you can see and take advantage of that opportunity. It’ll come.

Tim Duncan continues to hope for that opportunity, or is it Lebron? Damn media…

Your marketing dollars are only going to take you so far. Sure, you can spend millions and hope for a good return on that investment, but why not take the easy route? If you can do it correctly, there’s no better marketing strategy in the world. Make your customer your evangelist. I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard a dissatisfied Apple user (not that I’ve bought a Mac yet, but you get the hint!).

Here are some strategies:

1. Engage your customer. Solicit feedback, and act on that feedback.

2. Give your customer a reason to come back. Sure they came once, or passed by your store, but why should they come back?

3. Make them famous, if you can. Give and you will get. Why should someone use your site if there’s nothing in it for them?

4. Always update, never stagnate. There should be something new and exciting each time they touch your product. Don’t worry about confusing them. If the user interface is intuitive and you’re offering something of value, your customer will enjoy the change.

5. Last but not least, have some fun! If you’re not having fun creating the product, your customer won’t have any fun using it. After all, they also want a good time…

… and whatever you do, don’t use animated pictures. They’re really annoying!

A few newsworthy items:

1. Facebook continues its march towards portal status: There’s now a Facebook widget that allows you to view stock ticker information. Very neat and somewhat useful.

2. T-Shirts have now gone interactive. You can use Textmarks and Reactee in tandem to create an interactive environment based on your tshirt. It sounds really complex, but its insanely simple. Just create a Textmark and print it on a t-shirt at Reactee. People will text and they won’t necessarily have anything nice to say. Enjoy!

3. The Chinese stock fell by something like 8.3% yesterday and has continued its freefall from last week. I wouldn’t worry too much, as global capital flows are not really affected by this. After all, the government doesn’t really allow foreign investment in its stock market. Moreover, the market was up a whopping 50% from the beginning of the year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 75% correction. Did I say that?

Weather Weenies Unite!

It never hurts to put yourself in the middle of a storm, especially when it comes to attracting business attention. The Weather Channel is taking this advice to heart and has decided to champion the need for all meterologists to have the ability to speak to the fundamental science of climate change.

The Weather Channel really has done an amazing job in moving forward technologically, going as far back as the mid-90’s. It modernized its offices, went full steam ahead when it came to web development, and will now be moving towards an all-HD-programming broadcast. Its Weather.com site attracts 39 million monthly uniques, ranking it in the top 10 to 15 sites on the web.

While it’s a pretty impressive business feat, you’ll have to convince this conservative that The Weather Channel is worth watching…!

For those that don’t like the concept of browsing, here’s a summary of some of the more interesting posts that focus on the power of business strategy and the business ideas that travel alongside.

1. If you want to escape media attention, break news before a slow weekend. Google uses this strategy all the time, with the latest manifestation showing up in its purchase of Feedburner.

2. Video continues to be a huge traffic driver on the Internet. Use viral video distribution as part of your strategy to differentiate and break into the marketplace. The rich and famous (Barack Obama, Coke,) to the not-so-famous (It’s Like Spiders) have used it. Shouldn’t you?

3. To continue the video theme, Funnyordie has seen huge success with its initial video by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. They’ve done something interesting when distributing their video? They don’t. Most probably because the star power keeps on “pulling them in.” My comments on Funnyordie here…

Bon Appetite!