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Ace Hotel New York and Google have teamed up to put the brand new Chromebook in the hands of guests and lobby visitors at Ace Hotel New York.

“For the savvy travelers who stay at the Ace, the speed, simplicity and security of Chromebooks are an ideal tool to keep you always connected no matter where you are,” said Caesar Sengupta, Director of Chrome OS at Google.

Between July 1 and September 30, 2011, Ace Hotel New York is putting an Ace Chromebook in every guest room and behind the front desk for lobby visitors.

In related news, Virgin America passengers who are flying on Virgin America between the airline’s home airport in San Francisco and either Boston, Chicago O’Hare or Dallas airports between July 1 and September 30 will be able to check out a Chromebook at the gate. During flights, passengers can test the Chromebook using a free in-air WiFi pass.

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Direct marketers are directing people to their online stores, as more and more consumers forgo dialing a toll-free number and instead log on to complete their purchase.

Sonia Makurdsik, a marketing consultant for Hampton Direct, which owns PajamaJeans, told The New York Times that 70 percent of nonstore sales came from online purchases as opposed to over the phone. “Flipping through the channel is not enough,” she said. “Your brand message needs to be present wherever the consumer is.”

Data from Nielsen shows that direct response marketers spent $2.1 billion on television, radio outdoor and print advertising in 2010, and $550 million in the first quarter of 2011.

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News Corp. was able to rid itself of MySpace just before the end of its fiscal year. The new buyer for the ailing social network is Irvine, California-based Specific Media, an online ad network.

For Specific Media, MySpace’s 34.9 million monthly visitors provide an audience for its network of online ads.

You’ll likely recall that News Corp. paid $580 million for MySpace in 2005. Today’s sale price was $35 million, plus a 5% stake in Specific Media. That’s a whopping 94% drop in price.

“This shows how fast things change on the Web and how quickly $580 million in value can vanish,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner Inc.

One note of interest here is the fact that recording artist and Hollywood actor Justin Timberlake will take an unspecified stake in Specific Media and help develop a new Myspace strategy. That’s promising and interesting, especially since Timberlake recently portrayed the Napster dude, Sean Parker, in The Social Network. Now he’s going to play a version of him in real life. I like it.

Source: Bloomberg

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