Google Chrome has teamed up once again with the travel industry to provide Gogo Inflight Internet to passengers from November 20, 2010 to January 2, 2011. This partnership expects to bring Wi-Fi to more than 700 planes, and 15 million passengers.

You may remember last year, Google partnered up with Virgin America and offered Wi-Fi to over 50 airports nationwide. This year they are focusing solely on flights. Here is Google’s statement “For last year’s promotion we experimented with providing a combination of free Wi-Fi in both airports and in-flight. This year we decided to focus on the in-flight experience and we are pleased to be working with three of the nation’s leading carriers to bring free in-flight Wi-Fi to holiday travelers.”

The cost of accessing Wi-Fi in flight is now $11 for a 24 hour period. This could save travelers at least $20 for round trip access.

Thanks to our project manager and our creative director, that now includes our office here at Interactivity Marketing. No, we’re not all driving hybrid cars or using solar power, but we are making one tiny—yet important—change: recycling. Water and soda bottles, plastic cups (including fast food products), plastic silverware, paper, and boxes/cardboard are all placed into a separate container and sent over to a local recycling center. It might not seem like much to some, but hey—it all contributes to the big picture.

Here are some other ways that you can “go green”:

• Cut down your energy costs: set that thermostat a few degrees lower in the winter and a few degrees higher in the summer. Save yourself a few bucks by bundling up with a blanket in January and using those ceiling fans in August.
• The same concept applies to your clothes: use cold water whenever possible (as 85 percent of the energy used to machine-wash clothes goes to heating the water) and use a drying rack instead of your dryer.
• There are three major reasons to walk or bike instead of drive: exercise (which everyone could use more of!), gas costs (use that $30 per week toward groceries or bills), and less air pollution. If you have to drive, carpool. If you have the time to walk, do.
• Buy locally raised, humane, and organic meat, eggs and dairy whenever you get the chance. In addition to the health benefits, purchasing from local farmers keeps money in the local economy. Your body and your wallet will thank you.
• Avoid bottled water. I repeat: avoid bottled water! Purchase a re-usable water bottle (preferably aluminum rather than plastic) and fill it up with tap water whenever you need it. Your teeth will get the fluoride they need and you’ll avoid contributing to the large amounts of container waste from bottle water.
• Instead of tossing your old cell phone or computer, recycle it. E-waste contains mercury and other toxics, and is a growing environmental problem.
• Make your own non-toxic cleaning products; it’s simple to do! Baking soda, vinegar, lemon and soap will do the trick and you will save yourself money.

Similar to services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, Places is available immediately through Facebook’s iPhone app and other advanced mobile devices. Users looking to announce their location simply tap “check in” and are able to view a list of nearby places; they then choose the place that matches where they are. They have the ability to write down what they are doing at that location (as well as what they think about it) and a story appears on friends’ new feeds as well as Recent Activity section on the page for that place.

Facebook’s overall goal with this feature is to not only inform friends of where they are, but to also learn if their friends are nearby at the same time. By writing down details of the place, others are able to view where the writer was days or even years ago. In addition to a single user checking in, the “tag” feature is available for linking others to that location as well (people can tag friends only if the taggers themselves check in to the location too).

The con side to this exciting new feature, however, is safety concerns; how is it safe to inform everyone on your friends list of your location? Facebook’s solution: check-ins will appear only to users’ Facebook friends as a default, and users have the ability to trim the recipients list to specific friends only.

And so there you have it: the innovative world of Facebook expanding yet again.

To get the most out of your social media measurements, follow these seven steps:

1) You need a goal. Know why you are engaging in social media in the first place to help you dictate not only what you do, but how you measure what you do.
• If your goal is to drive awareness, you will be looking at metrics like share of voice, reach, readership and engagement with content (measured in action vs. views)
• If your goal is to create better products and conduct market research, you will need to focus on top market trends and satisfaction with various competitive products

2) Your departments need to be on the same page. Necessary departments need to work as units toward a common goal to ensure success; this means communicating and sharing the right metrics with the right people on demand (for example, creating a dashboard that’s easily visible by every department).

3) Context must be considered. Always make sure to look at metrics over time and inside of a competitive landscape (if you know your share of social media conversation is 35, what does that mean compared to your competitors’ shares or their change over time?).

4) Choose the correct platform. Consider aspects such as data (determine which channels you are going to measure?), reports (identify how you want to share and present information), budget (figure out whether you have a budget or can only afford free tools), and ease of use (consider productivity-boosting alerts and workflow modules, automation and advanced analytics).

5) Audit social media. Note where you and your competitors are today and use this as a baseline against which you will measure at least once per month.

6) Research your channels. To get the most out of your social media analysis, you must dig deeper: evaluate performance by channel, for yourself and for your competitors, to find which selections are performing well and to help give your numbers specific context.

7) A/B testing. If you have several campaigns out there and are curious about what content is getting the best response, social media measurement can help you to conduct the right analysis to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. You can measure the public’s opinion of things you try.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing features of Vitrue Publisher 2.0—in addition to managing multiple Facebook pages—is the support for Facebook’s Open Graph API. As the new ‘Like’ button is driving a considerable amount of traffic to publishers’ sites and click-through rates are three to five times higher, Facebook has announced that publishers are now able to do even more with it: publish to connected users directly from the Open Graph API. Simply put, if a user ‘likes’ a particular product or company, that company can send the user news on discounts or updates to that product in their News Feed. In addition, when an update is pushed out to a publisher, certain groups are now able to be selected instead of just one mass News Feed.

While comment moderation may have been a problem in the past, it is now much easier: certain phrases, URLS or hashtags can be flagged, and any comment that contains profanity, certain words or URL patterns (associated with spam) can be automatically deleted.

Social management space is really beginning to take off. The more brands invest in Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, the more tools are required to maintain proficient functioning.