Says dictionary.com

Your cut out and keep guide to marketing hype

Stuff your face, don't bulge an inch, and get chicks, temporarily.

Wolfgang Gruener, the founder of TG Daily, has a pretty good track record when it comes to building sites that are interesting, informative, and professional. Now, he is taking off on a new venture, one that takes him out of the realm of the tech world for the very first time. Today, Wolfgang is launching Single Parent Gossip, a new site for single parents, and it’s pretty damned good.

It was a pretty ordinary day in Ann Arbor. Sure, the city known as A2 to its friends had just lost its last daily paper after 174 years, but the folks from Time Magazine had an ace up their sleeves - they were reporting on the story from the future.

Who said romance was dead? Well, the British if a new poll is to be believed. Once red-blooded males soon cool down and spend more time with their games consoles than their girlfriends or wives.

Slideshow – The IAA is one of the trend-setting automobile tradeshows in Europe and we are expecting an impressive lineup of new cars. Here is our Top 10.

Bill Gates was a on a good pace to win the Facebook popularity contest with friend requests that clearly outpaced the numbers of Facebook’s favorite tech journalist Leo Laporte. But accepting friend requests from people Gates has never heard of apparently did not make sense for the Microsoft co-founder. Will his marketing advisor agree?

As more and more counties are replacing power hungry incandescent traffic lights with LEDs, the northern states are discovering a potentially serious problem that is believed to have already caused at least one death in a car accident.

Analyst Opinion - It can be entertaining to watch companies that have learned to manage expectations. They set low bars, generally fail at what they attempt, and yet the folks in charge of the programs often get bonuses and rewards as if they had successfully executed. I believe the Windows Vista mess was mainly caused by Microsoft’s behavior. Similar behavior effectively killed a long line of companies starting with DEC and running all the way to Sun. Google’s new Chrome OS looks to be another example of people more interested in pretending to be doing something, rather than actually doing it well.  

Is it just a blip or the beginning of a trend? NPD’s U.S. game console shipment numbers for June showed a slight uptick in sales over the catastrophic results for the preceding two months, but it seems that both Microsoft and Sony are gaining much faster than Nintendo. The Wii dropped to its weakest competitive position since January 2008.

Market researchers continue to believe that the netbook category will be posting significant shipment growth. iSuppli said that 3G netbooks shipments alone will top 17 million this year. Good news for Google and its Chrome OS, cloud applications and its investment in WiMax company Clearwire?

Mozilla can celebrate a decent launch of its latest browser, Firefox 3.5. The software has cleared the 2% barrier over the weekend, topping Google’s Chrome browser for the very first time. However, even if Mozilla’s version transitions seems to be on track, Firefox has lost steam and is not gaining market share as quickly anymore as in previous months.

Opinion – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday gave a casual speech in front of more than 1500 members and guests of the Executives Club of Chicago, explaining the importance of innovation during a “reset” of the economy. The pitch for Microsoft products was careful, and, not surprisingly, focused on the next Xbox and Bing. What about Windows 7?

Access to fast Internet connection has jumped over the past year. A new study released by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that 63% of Americans now use broadband Internet at home. But while increasing broadband penetration may not be that surprising, pricing is. Consumers are confronted with rising cost for their broadband connections – and cost is now the main barrier for continued broadband connection, indicating another imminent digital divide.

Analyst Opinion - This is an interesting idea.  Do a reality TV program on the web using Jack Welch, who is arguably a more famous success than Donald Trump and focus on a real problem. In this initial segment. Hertz Connect is the target for their efforts. There is no Microsoft product placement in the show, but ads show up on the side making general statements about Microsoft's technology. The layout is creative, the talent is world class with Jack Welch, but the question is: Does it work?

Opinion – I just hate saying “told you so”. But it seems that even Apple’s patience with AT&Ts willingness to keep pace with mobile devices innovation is coming to an end, if I take the liberty to interpret the dramatic omission of the carrier from yesterday’s keynote in this way. AT&T and Apple have been in a love and hate relationship from the very beginning, but as the pain factor climbs, Apple may be weighing its options and simply ditch Apple. It may be time to start looking elsewhere.

I still doubt that Bing will be enough for Microsoft to attack Google’s dominating role in the search market, but if we believe data published by Comscore then it seems that Bing has increased Microsoft search market share and, more importantly, it was able to hold on to those gains in the first week after launch.

At 11:00 a.m. EDT Sam Palmisano, Chairman, President and CEO of IBM along with Dr. Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, columnist and CNN host will host "The Business Partner Leadership Agenda: Building a Smarter Planet" webcast. Join TG Daily’s live blog to follow the event.