Decided to drop the ‘Friday’ tag as I keep missing the Friday deadline, it would seem! Here are the picks for this week.

1.    Will It Blend? – iPad – Blendtec

It would have been easy to go blind with all the iPad reviews over the past week so I thought it would be nice to kick things off this week with a video of one of them getting the blendtec treatment! Happy viewing!

2.    ESPN nabs Premier League mobile highlights rights – Stuart Dredge

Not that exciting for anyone not interested in digital developments in sport, but this one could have some big implications down the line. ESPN have been buying up all kinds of sports broadcast realestate and this week nabbed the rights to show Premier League football and rugby highlights via mobile. This is potentially a big market and an area the clubs should be seriously looking at in the future as devices and connectivity get better…there will be money to be made!

3.    Social Networks are Touchpoints for Customer Acquisition and Retention – Brian Solis

Some good stats here showing how online shoppers are active on social networks and looking to connect with brands if they are going to get some value in terms of interaction and probably a few offers here and there. There is a gap between the consumer activity on the social web and the number of brands providing a meaningful connection with them.

4.  The Problem With Conversational Marketing – Jason Falls

A good one from Jason Falls looking at the challenges of marketing ‘correctly’ through social media – its tough to try and sell someone something on a community platform where the audience doesn’t like salesmen…but does like interaction and buying! As he says, “its fun to explore”.

5.    Report: Corporate Fan Pages Increase Purchase Intent More Than Banners And Widgets – Neil Vidyarthi

Similar to #3 , This one looks at a recent study which indicates that brands allowing fans or customers to connect with them on a social platform, create more purchase intent than common ad formats. Anything that can exercise your customers brains a bit more than passively consuming a banner ad is going to have a positive effect!

6.  6 Ways Brands are Using Social Media For Real-World Action- Daniel Stein

Social media is still being used, by a number of brands and organizations, as a marketing and advertising delivery mechanism. However, there are more and more examples of it being deployed as a means to mobilize a community to take action…in the real world. This post has a look at some of those who are doing it well.

Written yesterday but posted today, here are six posts from the past week that stood (and there is only one post about the ipad!). Let us know what you think of any of them in the comments or, even better, post your favourite from the last seven days.

1. 5 Ways Non-Profits Can Increase Engagement With YouTube – Geoff Livingston

Facebook is the obvious choice for non-profit organsiations, and with good reason as it is the top channel for engagement and Causes provides a contextual match. However, don’t ignore YouTube. Any non profit should consider a video strategy and this post looks what can be done.

2. Social Media ROI and Obliquity - Charlie Osmond

What’s ‘Obliquity’? Pursuing your goals indirectly. Organisations and people who achieve the most success seem to focus on value ahead of revenue and this is exactly the approach you need to be successful in social media. Good post – check it out.

3. University to Provide iPads for All New Students – Lauren Indvik

This was posted a few days prior to the ipad launch so isn’t one of the millions of app reviews! The iPad could have a revolutionary role to play in education in terms of knowledge transfer (and in saving students from carrying heavy books!), so it was interesting to see this University giving them out to new students.

4. Goodbye, e-commerce, hello f-commerce? – Jake Hird

Jeremiah Owyang wrote about the 5 eras of the social web last year. And it looks like we might be getting to the era of social commerce quicker than expected. You can now embed ecommerce into Facebook using the paypal API. Big possibilities for any consumer products and for Facebooks company valuation.

5. Should You Outsource Social Media? – Valeria Maltoni

Should you outsource your digital strategy? Can a social media expert help you? In this post, Valeria Maltoni reaches out to some industry experts and gets their thoughts on the questions. Interesting reading.

6. Redefining Viral Marketing – Brain Solis

Everybody loves to talk about viral marketing or how they will create viral videos etc. In this lengthy but very insightful post, Brain Solis breaks down what is needed to create content , strategy and ideas that will spread a message through the social web.

What should have been included but wasn’t? Would love to hear any thoughts below.

Entertainment, news and education. Yes, it has some of the capabilities of a laptop and a giant iPhone… and there may be some that want to use it like that but what it is absolutely going to dominate at, is watching movies, sports games, music events and providing a new, rich reading experience.

Erik Qualman writes an excellent post here about the possibilities for enhanced knowledge transfer for educational books through the iPad. Imagine no more scribbling in text books or getting a second hand Economics book with the notes of a D- student masquerading as useful insights (I am still bitter about that one!). Instead, you will get the best notes from the smartest brains, even the authors themselves and be able to search for complimentary information all in the same place – very cool.

The latest industries to be disrupted by emerging technology, music and print, can start to tip toe their way back in by utilizing these platforms. Will people (micro) pay to have their chosen sections of the Times, Sun, NYT, FT downloaded to their tablet each day so they can read it on the train without attacking the person sitting next to them with a load of paper – yeah I reckon they might. How about the latest blockbuster while they are on a 4 hour train or plane journey? Definitely. The highlights from their team’s win in the Cup the day before as they lie in bed on Sunday morning…yes please!

Don’t expect it to do something that already exists. If Apple are good at one thing then its leading innovation and I think the entertainment industry as a whole is the most obvious application for the ipad and it should present a wealth of opportunities for the producers and gatekeepers of the content.

The iPhone or HTC (in my case) are too small to watch anything longer than 15-20mins worth of footage and people don’t want to hump their heavy laptops around everywhere they go. The iPad (I should point out that I am yet to touch one!) looks the perfect size to consume entertainment and that means new business models can start to appear – micro payments, freemium, sponsorship, content marketing etc.

What say you?