While the folks at Facebook haven't confirmed how Facebook Places might eventually integrate with Facebook's business pages, this is in the works and once it happens companies will have an easy opportunity to market and promote their services on the social media platform.

The rollout of Facebook Places follows the launch of Google Places in April. Building on prior Google business listings, Google's solution offers up Web pages dedicated to individual businesses, showing where they are located, street-level images, and customer reviews of services or products. Businesses can also advertise through their Google Place pages.

The implications are enormous for business marketing. Expect huge growth in location based promotions and services. In the areas of the fitness industry, among other industries, very targeted applications will quickly emerge.

Watch the video on facebook pages to learn more and get your business ready for the coming merger of the physical and digital worlds ! This time with location based b2c engagement.

Getting on a treadmill does not an outcome make and therefore the theory of how fitness makes people healthier has to date undermined the huge opportunity. Realize that for-profit fitness is $20 Billion a year compared to over $2 Billion a year for traditional medicine, with over 75% of that cost being related to lifestyle oriented diseases. Our health care system cannot afford it and costs must be driven out. Watch the video about how unsustainable our sick care system is.

When the extant fitness industry realizes the motherload of all business opportunities is emerging, value added proven prevention, the shift from membership models will be approaching - but we need the funds shifted from sick care to prevention. . A recent announcement that Medicare will reimburse for the Ornish and Pritikin programs is a step in the right direction. As a recent Blog post by Health Quack of the Healthcare Industry and Policy Community Reported:

David Olive's

They dominated their industries until they didn’t. General Motors, Massey-Ferguson, IBM, Sears, Roebuck – in their heyday, it was unimaginable that they could be dislodged as kings of their castles by rival firms and new technology and business methods.

Apple is increasingly a smartphone company, and that sector is coming under intense attack from competitors. The maker of iPods, iPads and Mac computers now looks to iPhones for 34 per cent of total sales, or $5.3 billion (U.S.) in Apple’s most recent quarter.

Competing smartphones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system have claimed 27 per cent of the U.S. market, to the iPhone’s 23 per cent. And the Android rivals are able to play most videos and games on the Web, a capability lacking in the iPhone.

Google’s core business, Internet search, is slowing. The search business has been growing at a clip of 30 per cent to 40 per cent a year. But projections have it slowing to growth in the range of 15 per cent to 17 per cent.

Google still depends on search for 91 per cent of its $24 billion (U.S.) in sales, and 91 per cent of its profits. That’s troubling given the trend in which surfers are bypassing Google and Microsoft Corp. rival Bing and instead using the likes of Facebook and Twitter to canvass friends for information, and responding to alerts from shopping services like Groupon.

Certainly Google has tried to bolster its core franchise, with acquisitions of YouTube, ad network DoubleClick and mobile ad platform AdMob. Its Android smartphone software has become an iPhone killer for upward of a dozen Apple rivals.

Yet those businesses haven’t made a dent in Google’s reliance on old-fashioned search. With its core business facing erosion, it’s no wonder Google’s share price has dropped 21 per cent this year, underperforming a 1 per cent gain in the Nasdaq.

More consumer centric tecnhologies will emerge in the fitness industry. However, that they might rely on Apple as a central component is a question. That they will rely on Apple's mobile technology alone would really be unwise. Unfortunately many vendors seeking to deliver innovation will rely on tApple's mobile technology and that will be a mistake in my view.

Watch this video on the emergence of Android in the mobile market to illustrate my point. If you see vendors in fitness relying largely on Apple's solutions - that is a bad sign for them. Android will become the clear victor in the next two years.

Information technology is going through a tremendous shift in organizations. I'm not just talking about the technology per se; I am referring to a more challenging issue - that of the traditional role of the "IT" and its leadership That role in many organizations needs to change and how.

Used to be that the application of technologies in organizations required high levels of understanding around the technical aspects of it all. Think of the days when hobbyists would construct their own personal computers, ala Apple, in a garage. Like the Wright Brothers, IT required at its core inventors with detailed oriented personalities who had to focus on great minutia to get something to do what needed to be done. The benefits of automating manual tasks utilizing RPG or other code was low hanging fruit and a different paradigm than today. To realize the benefits of technology today in organizations requires a deeper understanding of its deployment. There exists a wide range of methods to achieve results more easily and more inexpensively - thanks to the Cloud. Hence this post and video.

I can tell you that the TRUE adoption of the Cloud is not what many in IT claim or represent it to be,. Cloud adoption is being stifled by IT leadership in many instances mostly out of fear. Fear of losing jobs; fear of being irrelevant; fear of the unknown. Business leaders need to GET THEIR HANDS around what the Cloud really is and start evaluating their options because in most cases the options are much more worthy of pursuit then they might know or are being told.  My partner Clint Lee brought the video below to my atention. It is an actual discussion in an organization between an internal customer and an IT leader. It is not an exaggeration.Watch it (pardon the expletives) and believe me when I tell you - YOU NEED TO EVALUATE THE REAL CLOUD. Feel free to contact me if you need any assistance.