Early in the year, Race-Dezert.com was approached for the purpose of initiating an advertising campaign. A fraction of the initiative was unconventional and something I had yet to see upon the web. I wanted to park a brand's Facebook and Twitter widget in the direct line of site and embed it above the fold of editorial and community-created forum content. The conventional banner ad was a no-brainer. But the direct engagement social widget advertising was a request that seemingly fell upon death ears.

Here's a brief snap shot of the news, reviews and analysis read throughout the week. Everything from business strategy, sponsorship, motorsports, television, advertising, marketing, retail, ecommerce and branding are referenced and well worth a look.

It's great when the clock strikes 9 am, and you've already put in a several hours worth of work, allowing for more time to work or play throughout the rest of the day. In checking some quick web analytics (Google Analytics / Woopra / AWstats) on several websites that I am actively performing modifications upon, I was directed to Google Labs and its Browser Size graphical analytics report, which is a graphical visualization of browser window sizes of people who visit Google. Such information as this is critical in assessing website usability and web design effectiveness at conveying your brand's marketing message. As you can see by the visualization, you can see, that unless the average website visitor scrolls on many larger format websites, much of your page is useless. So, be sure to have the important elements of your web page, such as critical call to actions, within the window of opportunity.

I've been slammed with the demand for skills that span the gamut. I love it. Not so much on the web end or social media end, since that's unfortunately taken a back seat to developing media and marketing infrastructure but also extended into business strategy and implementing practices and associated business software applications.

Found this skateboarding video on Vimeo, which happens to be one of my favorite video hosting websites for its HD video file size capabilities. Vimeo's general reach isn't as great as YouTube. But its branding capabilities through its pro accounts is fashionable for marketers looking for a professional social video platform. This skateboarding video features a testicular torture test that takes place on the ski slopes. Skateboarders negotiate rail slides and grinds during during half time of a Canadian snowboard competition.

Today's links focus primarily upon promotion of your business through social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook but also include business link building by way of calls to action. The favorite amid the day's links I've read is the Facebook Fan Page app for those looking to boost their brand page's functionality. There is also a link for those interested in youth marketing, which focuses on Generation Y, specifically the convergence of email marketing and social media. And lastly, for those looking for last week's news today, check out the sneak peak on Twitter's redesign.

Photoshop Product Manager Bryan ONeil Hughes performs a quick sneak peak overview of the Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5. The tedious task of cloning is virtually solved. Photoshop Content-Aware delivers a near-miracle feature by adding content that didn't exist or simply covering up items that you don't want within your photograph. Retouching and completely reimagining a photo is within reach and can be executed with the great speed of a cloud computer but the masterful manner of a well-trained artist.

Shred or die. Skate or die. I remember the days roaming the San Gabriel Valley in the back of Chris Sanchez' pickup truck and hunting down the sweetest skate spots of the SoCal skate scene. It was grungy. It was on the fly. And it was no big time action sports marketing venue in the making. The average day of the SGV skater was not web casted onto YouTube. And it wasn't promoted by the X-Games might. It was raw and in the flesh. Wounds ran deep. Broken bones snapped to attention like the hard core scene that it was.

I had mentioned I squeezed the trigger on a Gallery2 open source photo gallery install. Installing Gallery2 was quite simple. Though, integrating Gallery2 into the Joomla CMS was a bit more difficult but not like pulling teeth on a angry bear. I used the JFusion bridge component.

This isn't a post aimed to be a comprehensive review. I work for a living. But since I haven't been in the photo printing business lately, I had forgotten which photography printers I had accounts setup with. Therefore, I had to perform a search and dug up the handful I have previously used for digital printing, a few others photographer friends continue to use exclusively for print and digital purposes, and a few we none of us have bothered with.