NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Declaring his company's intent to "democratize print publishing," Hewlett-Packard's CMO heavily hyped the new MagCloud.com site to the Interactive Advertising Bureau conference in Orlando. In a keynote that promoted several of HP's recently-launched offerings, Michael Mendenhall appeared to put special emphasis on the game-changing potential of MagCloud. The site enables anyone to produce a full-color, ad-supported print magazine and make it available -- via on-demand printing and an e-commerce system -- to anyone else.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The widgets and other applications that were little more than digital window dressing a few years ago have exploded into a vast new advertising venue. Many apps now draw millions of users each day at the same time they've become a broadly networked social medium in their own right. And, that, in turn, has given rise to a new sort of apps-only media-buying agency.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Could Kindle-like devices put the KABOOM! on the comic book business? That's the fear of some publishers who see the hand-held digital book readers as a DIRECT THREAT to their viability. Sales of paper-based graphic novels are actually up 5% but at the recent Comic Con New York, industry analysts cast a wary eye at electronic reading devices. They agreed that comic book fans would be early adopters of the new technology but they explained why that could be devastating for the industry.

NEW YORK (AdAge) -- A panel of seasoned Ad Age newsroom coffee junkies surprised themselves Wednesday when they were unable to tell the difference between Starbucks' new instant coffee and the chain's in-store brew. The blind comparison taste test was conducted with some of the first samples of Via, the "soluble" powdered coffee Starbucks is launching this month. Watch the four-minute video of the test in progress.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- We may be suffering through what is possibly the worst economic crisis in the modern history of the magazine industry, but Greg Sullivan is not deterred. He is plowing $10 million of his own money into the Fall launch of a new ad-supported travel magazine called "Afar." Making his project all the more interesting is the fact that he has no experience in publishing. He previously made a lot of money in the arcade game and car rental businesses.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Despite economic troubles that hobble other media companies, Wildbrain, the producer of Nickelodeon's "Yo Gabba Gabba," is going gangbusters. A combination entertainment marketer, animation shop and toy company, Wildbrain strutted its stuff at last week's Comic Con. CMO Michael Polis detailed a slew of new projects, including a "Yo Gabba Gabba" film and a Paramount deal to produce a full-length feature based on the company's toy line.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although looking somewhat gawky and uncomfortable, NBC's Katie Couric still showed a lot of heart as she clumped up and down the runway at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week kick off. But then, heart was the whole point. Ms. Couric led a list of celebrities who all did red dress struts as part of the Diet Coke-sponsored "Heart Truth" campaign in Bryant Park. The federal government program is designed to make women more aware of the danger of heart disease.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Speedo CMO Craig Brommers personally gave a ROUSING endorsement of Michael Phelps at Ad Age's Marketing 50 Awards ceremony this week. Speedo was honored at the event for the wild sales success of its LZR Racer suit that Phelps endorsed and wore in the Olympics as he swam to eight gold medals. Speedo has since sold more than 15,000 of those garments at $550 dollar apiece.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Using special filter systems, search engines and a crew of dogged digital gumshoes, Viacom has succeeded in having hundreds of thousands of infringing online videos removed from the Internet. Appearing at Gotham Media Ventures' recent legal seminar, the media giant's general counsel Michael Fricklas discussed that massive in-house operation. He also detailed how Viacom, which operates a slew of user-generated video sites across its many properties, systematically polices that content for copyright violations.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- There's a great deal of money at stake in the war over digital advertising and personal privacy. That contentious issue, which is heating up as TV moves ever closer toward being a fully interactive medium, was the subject of debate at the New York Advertising Club's recent meeting. Panel members included the CMO of Microsoft's interactive TV company Navic, AT&T's Global CMO and JWT North America's CEO.