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Speaking of the Nexus One.. Someone got their hands on one and made a 10 minute video of the phone in action.  It’s been leaked to YouTube.

The video shows off many of the capabilities of this iPhone Killer.  It appears to play very clean video streams, connect almost seamlessly with Google Apps, Android apps and impressive user interface.  This video comes from TheNextWeb (there is no sound):

At the same time, Engadget is showing off high-res photos of the phone which were taken as part of a demonstration to test the 3D benchmark using Qualcomm’s Neocore.

Now with all of that, and the phone still almost a week away from release (January 5 is the official release), hackers are already hard at work on the phone.  According to Gizmodo, an anonymous forum poster named Paul has successfully “rooted” the phone (this means gained superuser access or “root” access).

This may not sound like much, but to the geek, it’s the Holy Grail of any system.  With root access, you can change nearly everything about the device’s software, including the operating system.  Or nearly anything else about the device, so long as it’s rooted in software.  With most devices, it takes weeks for this to be discovered, but since much of the Nexus One is based on open source from Google, it was far easier.

Definitely more cool news about this new Google phone.

Google has said they’ll be rolling out their new Nexus One smart phone, the “iPhone Killer,” in January.  A date and carrier have been established: January 5 and the carrier will be T-Mobile.  Now, a leak shows the pending Google page for selling the phone and another leak of an internal memo at T-Mobile shows something else. Google will sell the phone, not T-Mobile.

That’s an interesting twist.

The Google leak is based on the graphic here, which is a screen capture first published by Gizmodo when an anonymous tipster sent it in.  The graphic shows the Nexus One home page.  More screen shots show the sales page.  With pricing.  The phone can be purchased in two ways: unlocked through Google, without subsidies or a carrier plan, and locked into T-Mobile with subsidies and a carrier plan.

For the former, the direct purchase price is $530, which is on par with the comparable iPhone models when purchased alone.  The name Google Phone has been dumped for Nexus One officially, it appears, and the T-Mobile subsidy price is $180.  Other contract details were also spelled out on the pages, including the oddity that the customer acknowledges that HTC is the phone manufacturer and not Google.  Probably some legaleze their law department dreamt up to avoid lawsuits from people claiming they get brain tumors from the phone or something.

An internal memo at T-Mobile confirms that Google will be selling the phone from http://www.google.com/phone and that T-Mobile will not be selling the phone from their website.  This was posted on Engaget and confirms the Google screen shots.  This plan may backfire on Google, though, as most people I know do their phone shopping on their network’s site.  Perhaps T-Mobile will have a link to Google for purchase.

I think the reasoning behind Google’s decision to be Type A about the phone’s sales is because they are selling a completely unlocked phone at $530.  That phone is compatible with all of the GSM network carriers.  Which means it will run on AT&T, directly in competition with the iPhone. This is pointed out by TechCrunch.

All of those things are what I pointed out earlier this month when talking about the iPhone vs. Nexus One here.

So the drama rolls on, though it will probably die down within a few days of the Nexus One hitting the streets and the mystique finally getting worn off.

Google now has a new rival for first place in the Most Visited Site Contest.  On both Christmas Eve and Christmas day, Facebook surpassed Google for the number one most visited site for the first time.  In a funny twist, “facebook” is the most-searched term on Google and other search engines this year while Yahoo! Mail was the third place site.  All of this according to Hitwise.

Websites reporting this phenomenon had different takes on how it was playing out.  ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick was amazed that Facebook’s new (some say privacy-removing) new policies didn’t dissuade users from going to the site.  With a completely different tack, Nick O’Neill on AllFacebook congratulated the site and marked it as part of Facebook’s “rise to the top.”

Facebook boasts 350 million users and growing.  While Google dominates with 6.7% of all U.S. traffic, putting two and two together makes the Facebook King for a Day (or two) phenomenon a little more obvious.  If “facebook” was the number one search term on Google and other search engines for 2009 and if Christmas is when most people traditionally put out extra effort to interact with friends and family, then obviously Facebook, being the largest social network, is in a position to benefit from all of this.

Still, it’s pretty amazing and shows the growth of the ‘Net and the power of social networking as a phenomenon today.

The latest numbers from Flurry are in and Mobilecrunch is reporting them as being huge.. for the iPod, anyway.  The iPhone saw its usual small spike on Christmas day, as new phones were activated and apps were downloaded.  The iPod, however, saw a 172% hockey-stick spike on the same day as new units hit the iTunes app store to download music and software.

Apple, who has to see some real goodness coming from this huge jump in sales, is then left scratching its head as the proprietary carrier for the iPhone (AT&T) removes all iPhones from its New York City online sales store.

Consumer complaints in recent months have reported numerous bouts of data congestion in the area of NYC for iPhone users.  AT&T, in an apparent bid to combat the problem, has quietly removed iPhones from its website as a purchase option for those buying a new phone in the New York metro area.  The Consumerist reports that this is true of all Big Apple-area ZIP codes.

According to AT&T’s customer service rep, New York isn’t ready for the iPhone.

Officially, of course, AT&T tells CNET that this is a “routine strategic decision.”  Given the problems that the carrier has had with the 3G network in the past year and the huge growth of iPhone sales, however, it seems more likely that it’s AT&T who’s not really ready for the iPhone.

Given that the exclusivity contract they have with Apple as sole carrier of the phone’s network is coming up for negotiations soon, this also doesn’t bode well for their future.  Especially with major industry magazines like PC World listing top reasons for iPhone customers hating AT&T.

With the pending release of the Google Nexus One, set to directly compete with the iPhone, and with the possibility that Apple could open up the iPhone to other networks, AT&T should be worried.  Very worried.

Online marketing company ReachLocal just filed a $100 million initial public offering (IPO).  For the first three quarters of 2009, ReachLocal made a reported $143 million in revenue compared to $100 million in 2008 for that period.  Profits were $11.66 million of that.

ReachLocal’s venture funding sources, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Rho Ventures, and Galleon Group, have put in about $68 million into the company, so cashing out at $100 million is actually a small return by comparison.

ReachLocal is one of the most well-known Internet marketing firms in the business.  They work by empowering small, local businesses to reach out to the world at large via the Web.  Businesses large and small use ReachLocal and the company was one of the first to use localized relationship marketing as well.

The company is headquartered in Woodland Hills, California and headed by CEO and co-founder Zorik Gordon.  It is entry number 39 in the current Inc. 500 list.  The company has impressive comScore and other rankings as well.  They reach over 195 million search engine users, 170 million surfers, have had 20 billion total local search impressions, manage over 55 million keywords, and have generated over 33 million inquiries to clients through phone and online.

Not too shabby having been around only since 2004.

ReachLocal operates in several geographic areas world-wide and targets potential customers for their clients based on their location and strategies geared towards that area’s best uses.  One area might see better return from Twitter while another might be more useful with localized banner ads or Facebook ads.  Through a network of sites, the company advertises for businesses large and small.

Pricing depends on what you’ll use when using ReachLocal. For businesses with a good advertising budget who want to aim locally and are tired of the fruitless Yellow Page game, ReachLocal is probably a good bet.

In a stunning move, Pepsi has announced that they will not be running ads in the Super Bowl this year.  Instead, they will be focusing on social media.

Yes, you heard right.  They’re dumping the Super Bowl, televisions largest event of the year, for social media.  This marks a serious turning point for not just social media, but media in general.  In fact, another ABC article, this one written by Larry D. Woodard, CEO of Vigilante (a Manhattan ad agency), points this out:

As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased. The 2009 Super Bowl attracted an impressive 95.4 million viewers (approximately 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes) and many of those watch the commercials as attentively as the football game. By contrast, in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company. This holiday season, Toys “R” Us developed a Facebook page that grew at the astounding rate of between 40,000 and 95,000 fans per day after its late November launch.

I would call that compelling evidence that early adopters like Pepsi may be the ones who reap the most rewards for this switch.

So who’s the hot new number that Pepsi is dumping their 23-year relationship with the Super Bowl for?  It’s The Pepsi Refresh Project, which begins January 13th.  They’re putting a $20 million bet on that social networking project being a Bowl replacer.

Starting January 13, people will be able to visit the Refresh Project through a variety of social media and give ideas on how Pepsi could “refresh” their community.  Then, on February 1st, those ideas will be put up for a vote by the Internet at large.  Then, the $20 million Pepsi didn’t spend on the Super Bowl this year will instead go towards funding the winning projects.

What Pepsi appears to be doing, and what Mashable seems to agree with me on, is moving the Pepsi brand from soft drinks and sexiness (aka Britney Spears and Cindy Crawford) towards social outreach and philanthropy.  In other words, the Pepsi Generation is over and the new Pepsi Community Action Generation is in.

If it works, it will be the greatest coupe in media history.  If not, there’s always next year’s Super Bowl, I guess.  Maybe by then, Britney will have made her comeback.