Will system on chip design revolutionize the smart phone industry? Today the journey begins with Xolo. More handsets, including a premium handset from Motorola, coming later this year.

AnandTech published the first review (very positive) today.

Owen Media has launched and promoted Pentium, Itanium and Xeon processors since 1995. We’re all holding our breath about whether Intel can cross the chasm into mobile. Here we go.

NYT published an electric car obituary Mar 25, the same day Wendy and I took the kids to pizza and saw an electric car parked outside.

Disruptive change comes with hiccups. GM rushed the Volt and didn’t vet the gasoline backup concept. The battery fires aren’t helpful. But there are more EVs on the road than ever before and 100% annual growth will continue for the next few years. Every major automotive manufacturer has or will launch an EV in the next two years.

The EVs are here for good. Over the next 10 years the battery manufacturers will race against the natural gas industry. One building more efficient batteries, the other building out gas infrastructure to fuel up CNG cars. Either way, the automotive industry will never go back to gas.

We completed a site for BroadPoint Group this week. We used WordPress and the Classica theme ($35) with royalty free images from Corbis ($135) and my super smooth writing to get it done. Twitter feed is embedded. Time consuming though. I’ll stick to my day job and make sure I refer future assignments to Owen Media’s resident creative Jeff Callison.

We placed a story on Tech Crunch today on behalf of CBT Nuggets, an enterprise IT training service. With 5 million uniques, Tech Crunch placements are rocket fuel for IT marketing. Within an hour the placement was driving hundreds of inbound leads to the training start up.

There’s no great secret to media relations. Develop compelling story leads and bull dog a few highly qualified editors to secure placements. Repeat.

Dollar Shave Club released a viral video in March and was overwhelmed by the response. I loved the unapologetic writing. All brands should be this strong, right out of the gate.  No fear in this approach. Brand and funnel are one.

Social media offers direct relationships with customers and potential customers. So the question for global brands is what are you going to do with that?

It seems like we’re still in the sales funnel stage with most social media. Given analytics and CRM the temptation to move a prospect down the funnel and convert to a sale overrides branding goals. But are companies diminishing their brand in pursuit of an immediate sale?

Owen Media is getting more social marketing requests this year. Our challenge is to counsel our clients to foster customer involvement that extends the brand 100% of the time and converting sales most of the time.

We spent the last few months helping Bay Area startup Ucan launch its composting bins and bags. While we focus on enterprise IT, we also work with new energy and sustainability-minded clients, such as Intel’s smart grid initiative, Aerovironment’s electric car charging technology and now Ucan.

Ucan is the hot new entry in a rapidly expanding market. Curbside food waste recycling is growing by more than 50% per year. This is probably the fastest transformation in the history of solid waste. Economics and sustainability are prompting the change. Composting is two-thirds less expensive than landfilling (depending on where you live), produces a valuable agricultural product and produces clean electricity as a byproduct.

What’s not to like? Ucan figured out that plenty of consumers don’t like the act of putting scraps in a bin and made the job substantially easier. Owen Media helped Ucan by getting placements with dozens of publications including the LA Times.

If lowering your garbage bill and saving the planet resonate with you, get your can at www.ucanproducts.com

Google announced its cloud music service last week. Normally we don’t care about frothy consumer stories, but we are knee-deep in Android market validation this month and have to chime in on the iTunes v Google Music debate.

iTunes has its fans, but don’t underestimate the newcomer. Android handsets and personal computers can download and purchase music easily. According to Larry Magid at HuffPo:

“In a direct challenge to Apple’s iTunes Store, Google now lets you purchase music from the Android Market from an Android device or a personal computer.”

Why does this mattert? Android represents 53% of the smartphone OS market and growing rapidly. Apple is about 25% and shrinking. In China, the smartphone market is just taking off and it favors Android substantially. Smartphone app downloads have increased 870% in China between January and October 2011.

Maybe you’ve had your iPhone for a few years. Billions of people are getting their first smartphone in the next few years and it will almost certainly be an Android phone.

Not that iPhone isn’t a better device, it’s just economics. You can get a premium Android smartphone in India for $160 (USD) without a contract. That will sell a lot of phones. And maybe music, too.

AWS landed on the Top 500 list today. There are 8+ Seattle area companies exhibiting at Supercomputing this week. The move to commodity clusters and more recently cloud services for HPC favors Seattle companies. You can read more at my post today at GeekWire, the leading Seattle tech site.

I’m sure I’ll get some blowback from semanticists who parse Supercomputing from HPC. IDC recently said SC is a $1.1 billion subset of the $5 billion HPC market, so I guess SC needs HPC and vice versa.

To all my friends at SC’11 in Seattle this week, enjoy the unusually sunny weather here (at least today). If you need something to do while you’re here, check out my previous “Welcome” post.

Supercomputing 2011 returns to Seattle November 12-18. Owen Media has sent clients to SC every fall since 1997 (Cray, CAPS Entreprise, ClearSpeed, IBM, InfiniBand, Intel, HP and others). For the 250 exhibitors coming to the conference, here are local resources to pull off a successful event. Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include a few shameless promotions.

Messaging and strategy: Do you have your cloud story locked down? Owen Media works with global HPC brands on marketing strategy and messaging. We help our clients demonstrate thought leadership. We believe people are more loyal when they are inspired, not incented to act.

PR: This is what we do best. We know the editors and analysts at SC and can schedule interviews. Do you have a good story to tell? See bullet one, above.

Collateral:  We integrate design with subject matter experts to speed delivery of high production value collateral on complex subjects.

Hospitality:  There are still great venues available adjacent to the convention center if you know who to call. We’ve secured a discount from one of Seattle’s leading sushi restaurants for our SC’11 clients. We can coordinate private, VIP or all conference events to elevate your brand or engage your target audience.

Booth property:  The two leading booth property vendors in Seattle are Exhibits Northwest and Exhibit Design. If you’ve made it this far without booth property you need to hurry. There’s still time to order a pop up booth with graphics for the event. Exhibit Design offers Owen Media clients a discount if you order early.

Signage:  Supergraphics is the largest signage vendor in Seattle. Banners, booth signage, even street light banners are available. In fact, there are 500 street light poles near the Convention Center available for your banners during the month of Nov. Owen Media clients receive a discounts from Supergraphics. Ask for Zac Thorpe.

Printing: Alpha Graphics is one of the city’s largest commercial printers and has a location adjacent to the Convention Center. Ask for Timmy Brewer, the convention sales lead. No discounts but free delivery to the Convention Center.

Photocopies:  There is an on-premise FedEx Kinkos at the Convention Center. Sonya Tracey is the FedEx Kinkos contact for convention related print jobs. You will probably get better, more responsive service from Brenda Galang, owner of Golem Copies, 3 blocks from the Convention Center. She’ll provide a discount to Owen Media clients who submit their print orders three days prior to deadline.