Take the best of social web and mix it with ecommerce you get social commerce, a new(ish) trend that is changing the face of online brands and retail. Over the last year, this e-mashup has been on the rise and presents online stores a new way to engage customers and increase sales.

A few months ago while attending the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I found myself a fish out of water. You see, I’m not really a gamer. Sure, I had a short love affair with Guitar Hero. (Didn’t we all?) I was attending the GDC merely to support one of our clients in the industry. None-the-less, as I walked up and down the conference streets I became hooked, almost drawn to one place over and over again — the Xbox compound.

Need plan out your day? There’s an app for that. Want help raising your children? There’s an app for that. Wanna improve your golf swing? You guessed it…there’s an app for that too.

With smartphones commonplace in today’s society, mobile applications are beginning to rule our lives. There is literally an app for almost anything you think you might need or didn’t know you wanted.  “There’s an app for that” has become such a well know phrase, Apple trademarked in the fall of 2010.

They are popping up all over the place — you’ve probably seen more than a few times and wonder what they are. Alien code? Bad graphic design?  Those wacky black and white squares found on billboards, postcards and other forms of print collateral are QR codes and they are taking the marketing world by storm.

When you make your living working with the social web, expect the unexpected. Even for the most focused digital marketer or (dare I say) social media expert, a simple click-of-a-link and your day’s trajectory can be completely changed.  All it takes is one wacky Tweet, interesting Stumble, shiny object or in this case, Google autocomplete and you find yourself on tangents you never imagined.  This is what happened yesterday as I was innocently researching for a blog on Lady Gaga.