Log In to Google's Fantastic Future

When the company truly grows up, maybe 10 years from now, purely online sales will play but a small part in Big G's business plan.

Armed with a big sack full of information about logged-in users and their browsing habits, Google is positioning itself to become the MOAMP (mother of all marketing platforms). Many digital set-top boxes already have an Internet connection -- Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) FiOS, for example, runs its entire television signal over high-speed 'net connections. Second-generation Blu-ray players can do the same, so thanks for those network-friendly specs, Sony (NYSE: SNE). TV sets from Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and others are starting to show up with similar features.

The end result See what all of this adds up to? In the very near future, fully networked televisions will likely become the standard.

Alternative Places to Network

Rosalind Resnick, founder ofAxxess Business Consulting(and a contributor to Entrepreneur magazine) may not have scaled mountains, but the working mom, who works and lives in New YorkCity, is on the John Hopkins University undergraduate advisory board, and owns asecond home in Long Island, is a globetrotter on a weekly basis. 

"A lot of the best contacts I meet have been with the person sitting in the seat next to me," Resnick says. "Think about it--if you're on a business trip, flying from New York to Chicago or to LA, chances are that most of the other people on the plane are probably going to be business travelers as well."

In fact, Resnick doesn't let a moment go by when she's not scanning her surroundings and the potential peers around her.

"You might think you're getting on that plane to fly to a conference in San Francisco," she says.

Marking network

Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) today announced details of the 2009 Humana Preferred network, available exclusively to the Business Health Care Group (BHCG) member companies. The Humana Preferred network includes many of the area's most efficient physicians and well-known hospitals. This is the first renewal in the three-year history of the BHCG - Humana relationship, marking the first network change since 2005. The Humana Preferred network offers lower costs by including participating physicians who have shown the ability to guide members through treatment using resources most efficiently. "We have expanded the presence of our 2009 Humana Preferred network, giving consumers more choices in more areas for a better overall health care experience. As a result of this process we are confident that this will help BHCG continue making progress of bringing health care costs closer to the Midwest average," said Kristine Seymour, president of Humana's Wisconsin commercial market operations.