No one has cracked the impossibly difficult local nut yet but big name advertisers have made their way to this new frontier. And in some cases in surprising and interesting ways. Check out Clickz’s excellent write up on a campaigns from Olay on Booyah, Gap on Loopt, Starbucks on Brightkite, USA Today on Gowalla and Pepsi on Sticybits.

Newsweek has an interview with Jeff Bezos that covers how Amazon decides which markets to enter and the future of the Kindle among other things.

“It is [our] No. 1 bestselling product. It’s the No. 1 most-wished-for product as measured by people putting it on their wish list. It’s the No. 1 most-gifted item on Amazon. And I’m not just talking in electronics—that’s true across all product categories.”

Best Buy is not standing down after inciting the “War on Christmas” crowd by wishing Muslims a “Happy Eid al-Adha” as pictured in the ad above.

The American Family Association, your favoritie anti-Semeitic, homophobic Christian advocacy group, has singled out the retailer for banning the use of “Merry Christmas” in advertising in the past.

Best Buy contends that they have and will continue to use the message “Merry Christmas” in their advertising.

Middle class American men were, in Packer’s words, little kings. And in Mad Men we get to watch these little kings at the end of their reign.

So this ridiculous Cocoa Krispies Box implies that eating sugary cereal will protect your kids from H1N1 aka Swine Flu. Obviously this is a dubious claim but the fact is, of course, that H1N1, while scary, is a only a minor threat to the well-being of America’s youths.

This fact did not deter USA Today from publishing an article resulting in Kellogg’s removing the claim from their box. Perhaps a compelling argument for self-regulation?

I’m reminded of this cartoon by xkcd which serves as proof that marketers will always find a way to irritate me via cereal boxes.

Check out this humorous and interesting talk about perceived value and its growing importance in the future.

Advertising Age has a 3 minute video summary of his talk.

Conventional wisdom, if there can be said to be any, in the still-new mobile news market is that you slash your readership by a factor of 10 or more when you charge for mobile content. There are simply too many free options and readers are accustomed to getting their news online for free.

It seems that Murdoch’s goal with this strategy is not to make money from the app but create added value for subscribing to the print and online editions. It’s an interesting approach and consistent with his assertion that news has a real, and very high value.