James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine

When you run your own business, some days are sooooo much better than others.

Most of us business owners seem to spend such an inordinate amount of time putting out spot fires, resolving unforeseen dilemmas and chasing forever imminent deadlines that it’s sometimes hard to remember the reasons we went into business in the first place.

That’s why, when something good and unexpected happens, life’s all the sweeter for it.

Today is one of those ’sweet’ days.

I am pleased to announce two developments that make me smile; firstly, at the ingenuity of a company that epitomises innovation and, secondly, at the growing reputation and influence of our own Anthill (and you, our proverbial tenants).

Development number one… Google ingenuity taps Australia.

Google understands that Australian business owners think differently from their friends over the pond.

We are tech-savvy but cynical. We are ambitious but largely risk averse (sadly). We rely perhaps too heavily on personal connections and because of that we build most our businesses using word-of-mouth as our primary marketing channel.

Whether this is good news or not, it nevertheless places Australian business owners in an unusual position. A unique position, in fact.

We offer the perfect commercial landscape for a ‘road test’. As Frank Sinatra once declared, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”

Could this mean that Australia is the new New York?

Either way, Google has developed a new e-learning tool, specifically for the Australian market, called ‘10 Steps to Promote your Business Online’.

And guess what? Anthill readers are getting the chance to road test it before anywhere else!

Development number two… Anthill’s readers are spreadin’ the news.

If Australia is the new New York, I can only assume that Anthill readers must be the new ‘Mad Men’, Madison Avenue’s famous (and infamous) marketing elite, known to ignite a global inferno of jibber-jabber at the drop of a designer cigarette.

Why? Because Anthill readers are erudite, articulate, educated, genuinely curious and driven by the process of creation (and hopefully not immune to flattery).

Seriously, you guys and gals represent Australia’s forward-thinking elite.

As such, we invite you to click here and test this new tool before anyone else.

The really good news is that this new tool was designed to help SMEs wrap their heads around online marketing and get started with a marketing plan, which first and foremost starts with search marketing.

It was developed by Google with an educational aim of helping SMEs understand the online space, whomever they might use to manage their online marketing and wherever they decide to implement their pay-per-click strategy.

By testing this tool, we also hope that you might just learn a thing or two about your business and its online marketing strategy in the process.

If, like ol’ blue eyes, you ‘want to be a part of it’ and shape a new business tool that has been missing in the Australian SME population for years (including the option to provide comments and constructive feedback to Google), click here.

First chance to trial. A new tool from Google for Australian businesses. And the opportunity to reward our loyal readers.

Now that’s what I call a good day in business.

Once you’ve ‘road-tested’ this new online learning tool, you can provide your feedback by completing our three-question survey (click here).

James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine

To celebrate the Atlantic’s current issue with the thought provoking cover story, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”, the publishers of Australian current affairs periodical The Monthly are sending their friends from across the pond an online gift subscription.

This ‘gift’ includes access to the Monthly archive and Gideon Haigh’s award-winning essay published in February 2006, “How Google is Making Us Stupid.”

Yes, it’s another fracas between magazine publishers.

At Anthill, we haven’t been so outraged since SmartCompany.com.au decided to run an article titled ‘30 hot entrepreneurs aged 30 and under’ just 10 days before the long-publicised release of Anthill’s inaugural 30under30 awards.

Or since Dynamic Business ran its ‘Disaster Strikes’ cover two months after Anthill’s highly successful and trend-breaking ‘Disaster Edition.’

Or since Fast Thinking decided to launch in Australia because Australia didn’t have a magazine dedicated to innovation (What the!?).

Actually, I’m not outraged at all. I’m not outraged about the Atlantic article or my spurious accusations above (although I did gain personal pleasure from airing them).

No. Personally, I’m just proud that an Australian organisation is creating debate around the world. And I’m flattered that our ideas are entering the ‘zeitgeist’ and finding traction elsewhere.

Fortunately, the list of examples and controversial claims above also serve my purpose, by not-so serendipitously leading me back to the opening question.

If new technologies are making it easier for anyone to uncover and apply the ideas of others from around the globe, if Google is providing us with the answer to almost any question we can ask, if technology is overcoming the need to think cognitively or make personal deductions… is Google making us dumb?

The debate is obviously more complex than that.

Atlantic contributor Nicholas Carr makes the observation that, because media are not just passive channels of information, because they supply the stuff of thought, they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at our capacity for concentration and contemplation.

“My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski,” he says.

At least, I think that was his main bone. I was too busy checking out a link on sea-turtles.

The Monthly’s Haig seems to be more upset at the effectiveness of Google as a tool for plagiarism and its ability to effectively convey misinformation.

Ultimately, a good angle is a memorable angle, just as surely as a good idea is infectious. And it’s impossible to prevent a good angle/idea from turning viral.

Personally, I doubt that any concept, cover story or angle that has appeared in any magazine, including Anthill, has ever been truly original, untouched by outside forces, and Google is not to blame. Quite simply, an idea can’t percolate in a vacuum (and all publishers rely on cultural mores, means and schemas to connect with our readers).

This statement includes the examples given above (from Google’s effect to business disasters and apple motifs). Yes, it might shock and amaze, but Anthill was not the first to focus on disasters, use apples on our cover or write about innovation.

The challenge is making sure that new thinkers understand the distinction between plagiarism and the proper means of sharing ideas - giving credit where credit’s due.

Is Google making us dumb? I suspect that Carr is right in one sense. It is changing the way we think and analyse information, but possibly it’s doing so in a way that’s no different to the effect the mass production of books had on the way we reason and communicate.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.”

Fortunately, I don’t need to be scholar in Greek history to know this tid bit of information. I just applied an example provided by Carr, verbatim (I plagiarised with credit, or is that an oxymoron?).

Like writing, books and libraries, Google and other search engines (and the web) are opening us up to perspectives and experiences, many of which were previously inaccessible and impossible to share cheaply .

So, to mashup an old quote with a new setting (searched and found using Google, edited and manipulated using my wee, human brain)…

If we can all see further from the shoulders of giants, I’m just grateful for the comfy perch, steering system and dashboard that search engines have provided.

And I, for one, feel smarter for it.

*UPDATE: It seems that the battle of “similar” ideas is not confined to print publications, with Channel Seven now being accused of ripping off an Apple iPod TVC with its new TiVo promotions. Seven’s riposte? “There’s no copyright in an idea.”