I drive around in my car. I listen to Sirius, NPR and my iPod. I am but one, but I must assume that I am not alone. Looks like I am right according to the New York Times.

Microsoft has launched Windows Live, its new search engine. I don’t have the time or inclination to figure out if this search engine is any better than Goggle and the others. But, I did do a quick image search on “Peter Levitan” in each engine. Here are the results:

Live = 2 (one is from www.podcasting360.com)

Google = 6

Yahoo = 0

Ask = 2

I guess that Google is still my favorite!

He, 17 years old says, “Hey, I just marked 6 tee shirts to buy on this new site.” She, mom says, “Are you kidding me, I bought two shirts for you on Threadless last year.”

Web 2.0 meets fashion meets social marketing meets designer community meets personal expression. That’s the elevator pitch for Threadless. Their words:

“Threadless was created to give designers and artists an opportunity to unleash a little creativity and display it to the masses. Anyone can visit the site, download our templates and submit a design. Then, the designs are voted on. The winning designers receive $1,000 in cash and prizes, huge amounts of notoriety and their design printed and sold on a tee.”

With tee shirts as ultimate fashion statement (just watch one episode of Entourage), it is easy to see that a mass clearing house for tees has to work. So much more interesting plus a business model. Hey VC’s, please, no more MySpace rip-offs.

I have made many trips to Japan for both business and pleasure. Japan never fails to provide an eye-opening-mind-blowing perspective on the future. I often see things going on that eventually find there way to the U.S. A simple one is cell phones where the Japanese seem to be two years ahead of us. On my last trip two things dazzled. First, the ubiquity of teenagers watching movies on their phones. The second, and I don’t expect to see this one here, was a corner store in Akihabara, the electronics neighborhood, dedicated to smokers. You walk in and light up next to a vent that sucks your smoke out of the building. Drinks and snacks are sold. Imagine a larger corner space with 20 cigarette smoking men all standing in silence doing deep inhaling.

For more Japanese trends check out Trends in Japan. This comprehensive site covers trends in business, fashion, home, arts and entertainment and more.

One of my favorites is talking paper.

Marktd is a site where users rate marketing articles. They did good by us when we launched Podcasting360 so not only do I like them for their generally good list, they did good by us.

Here is their spiel:

“Marktd is a reference system that highlights marketing articles considered valuable by the marketing community. Marketers submit articles they either write or just find on the web and other marketers vote on the value of those articles. The most popular articles reach the front page.”

Marktd is a product of PFSK, a – hmmm, I’m not sure. A Trends publisher I think. Much more on them and their other sites right here. Botom line. They make me a bit smarter when I visit their sites. My favorite is IF.