I love my Moleskine. I use it daily to keep track of lots of randomness that I seldom refer to again, but are nonetheless things I want to pluck from my brain and save.

If you don’t know what Moleskine notebooks are, they’re those little black books (now available in multiple styles and sizes, because Americans like choices) that you’ll see artists, writers, tech geeks and other crafty folk carrying around to coffee shops. Or, more likely, you’ll see folks like me using them – not so famous or interesting artists, writers or tech geeks. Dare I say, wannabes.

As hailed in the brochure included with the thing when you buy it – tucked away in the neat little pocket in back (a pocket that’s perfect for storing your used Europass ticket stubs or other proofs of your worldly travels) – Hemingway and other artsy types sat scribbling in them at every cafe in post-WWI Europe, recording the great works of our generation while still unknown and untouched by fame. Exactly what modern-day Moleskiners want to do – when they have time between trips to Target and Starbucks.

I thought that my treasured Moleskine and my chosen profession of interwebs interlocutor were relatively unconnectable, exactly the way I liked it. Our world is so filled with technology advancing every pursuit at breakneck speed that a bit of real-world interaction keeps you grounded (old cars, bikes, fly-fishing, Moleskines are the ying to my techno-yang).

But alas, Moleskine (the company, not my notebook) is asking me to go beyond paper. It’s clear that Moleskine is no longer a tiny, niche product; but rather, it’s a big brand with venture capital behind them and a “circle R” behind every usage of the name. Those marketers have recruited a social media posse to reach out and take its community online, creating all kinds of “synergies” and “positive brand experiences” for Moleskine lovers.

I usually dig these efforts – because that’s what I do. But this one seems at odds with the brand, ironically asking users to you join the community so that they can upload and share scans of cool things recorded in their private Moleskines. It’s also a bit narcissistic to take all this time to journal away in your book, with the intention of posting it publicly. That may just tap into the dirty little truth that the unstated intention of the modern Moleskinista is to create something that just might give them fame when their scribblings are found years from now – whereas current readers might just see them as…well, doodles.

Would Hemingway do this? Of course not. But then again, he probably wouldn’t have a Facebook or a computer for that matter.

In any case, give it a shot. Share your Moleskine scribbles by creating a “MyMoleskine” account.

TechCrunch is reporting that sites registered with Google’s Friend Connect will soon be able to include AdSense-like advertising onto their sites and in Open Social widgets. Apparently Friend Connect is referred to as FriendSense within the Google mothership.

The question for me is whether this means there will be an integration of Adsense into the Open Social/Friend Connect platforms, not just making it possible. Our Gadget on iGoogle has been ad enabled (AdSense or any third party ad) since launch a couple of months ago and the Open Social version will be as well. The real advantage I see will be the segmentation opportunities that the integration may bring based upon that user’s specific data. This would give AdSense the edge over other ad networks delivered within the same gadget. At the moment, Casale outperforms Adsense on our gadgets, but the eCPM’s are very close.

The GoComics Gadget on iGoogle passed the 500,000 subscriber mark today, passing CNET.com and entering the elite 25 most-subscribed to Gadgets on Google. Next in our sights? Google Reader (528k) and FOXNews.com (541k)

Get it for yourself (requires iGoogle account).

On GoComics, we have our own registration system and budding niche social network. We also have a growing userbase on our Open Social gadget. It seems that we should connect them, and remove some of the barriers for registration and start churning those users around in our comics network mixer. But wait, what about all of those users on Facebook? Do they only play on Facebook or do they have Friend Connect/ Open Social accounts too?

This recent article in AdAge presents a nice outline to kick off some discussion for 2009.

I’ll post other links as I find them.

The GoComics Gadgets placed on my iGoogle home page.

I’m very proud of this new distributed version of the GoComics.com web site. I set a goal in 2007 that we would build our “off site” audience by actually giving users a content-rich experience that can still build our on-site traffic and revenue. By working with the team at iGoogle, we were able to make a public release that has received an awesome welcome by the iGoogle community (as you can see by the subscriber totals).

The Gadget takes advantage of the new “canvas” view (similar to a Facebook app view) to show a large content window.  We let users customize the gadget with their choice of comics that can be viewed at full size within the canvas view. Peppered within the gadget are windows into the community on GoComics.com – comments, tags and favorite rankings. A major change in Google’s approach is that they’ve opened the canvas view to allow publishers to insert their own third-party ads, creating direct revenue opportunities that had never existed on iGoogle.

Here's the GoComics Gadget in iGoogle's canvas view.

The folks at Google have been very excited about using our gadget as a showcase for their new canvas view and they’ve delivered some great promotion. Our new gadget for iGoogle was announced on google’s official blog yesterday as part of the new igoogle relaunch (see http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/whats-new-with-igoogle.html) – you’ll even see a screenshot of our gadget. We have top billing on iGoogle and its editor’s picks section. Since launch we have subscribed about 200,000 users on igoogle. I’m hoping for 500k subscribers by the end of the month.