Brands should look to what's hot and new in the start-up community to identify patterns. More often than not, these patterns reflect trends in the consumer mindset so brands should be mindful of them when creating their own products and marketing efforts.

What am I seeing when I gaze into my silicon ball these days?

Better experiences are winning.

Many brands are confused about their mobile strategy. They ought to be. The landscape is confusing, rapidly changing and obscured by the promises of scores of vendors trying to sell you magic bullets.

There's no denying, however, that at the core of your mobile strategy is your presence. So, let's tackle that.

Adobe has just introduced a new service called Adthenticate which could become an essential tool in the online marketing toolkit of top interactive agencies across the land. 

How does it work?

LinkedIn has recently added Status Updates to Company profile pages. For brands mulling how to improve their social media strategy on the LinkedIn platform, this little feature is a big deal. 

Over the last two years, the world has been reinvented yet again. The proliferation of devices and the advances in the interfaces that run on them have raced forward like an avalanche. Nielsen is predicting that 50 percent of the U.S. market will have smartphones by the end of 2011. Apple introduced the iPad and has since sold more than 15 million of them.

Two newspaper publications have recently evolved their mobile strategies. One is an example of what not to do. The other represents an evolution in the thinking around mobile and a case study model for a thoughtful and effective mobile strategy for a content publication. 

Let's take a look at the San Francisco Chronicle and the Financial Times.

There's a lot of debate in the halls at Traction  (and every other interactive advertising agency I'd presume) about the hot trend of the moment: responsive design.

Weigh in on the debate. Would love to hear what you think...

A few months ago, I spoke on a panel about brand APIs put on by Mashery with the heads of Open API programs at PayPal, NetFlix and Best Buy. I learned a hell of a lot. 

Kumar Kandaswamy is the API chief at Best Buy. He's also a friend. As I've written quite a bit about brand APIs on this blog and on Mashable, Kumar has been generous enough to answer some questions I had about the realities of brands and APIs.

Targeting is getting pretty advanced these days. Where you used to just target people by buying sites (or groups of sites through ad networks), now you can just target people by their IP address—and all the associated data that has been gathered in relation to that IP address. 

Site-side personalization is an opportunity to harness the power of targeting on your own website.

I just wrote an article on Mashable called "HOW TO: Gamify your marketing" that outlines what "gamification" is and some case studies and best practices for effectively applying it to your marketing programs.