On April 7, I left for Milan full of ideas about my trip to Italy and ready for some rest and relaxation before attending the International Furniture Fair.

The trip did not go as planned. Though I enjoyed our pre-show outings to Varenna and Bellagio, and a fantastic day in Torino, what changed the nature of the trip was a volcano in Iceland that no one can even pronounce. I did, however, get to enjoy the fabulous meal pictured here — a Costaletta di Milan veal cutlet, with delicious wine, arugula salad and a fantastic dessert. But it’s all a distant memory now.

I first heard about the eruption on Thursday, April 15. There were a few rumblings about how it might change airline departures. By Friday, pretty much all flights out of Milan were either about to be canceled or had already been canceled — so much for my return to the States on Saturday.

There were a few things that surprised me about the whole situation. First, I realized how utterly dependent I am on having things that work (like my cell phone, the Internet and CNN), and that I take for granted. I was staying in a hotel that didn’t have proper internet access and or CNN or the BBC, so I felt very much in the dark. You never realize how much you miss those things until you don’t have them, and I missed them dearly. Since I don’t speak Italian, it was especially difficult. Of course, since there really wasn’t any good information about the eruption anyway, maybe it didn’t matter that much, but it was crazy frustrating.

Next, it was definitely old-school about getting in touch with United. The was simply no getting hold of them for days. The European reservation line was jammed, and the US line was too expensive to call. I resorted to checking my United account online via my iPhone (which was great, if microscopic) to find out if and when my flight was to be rescheduled. It was, three times. But did United ever call me to say when? No, that was up to me to find out. An email would have been nice, and probably not that hard to do.

I finally got home on Wednesday on Air France, after scooping up the last ticket I could find on Travelocity late Tuesday. Shopping for flights on an iPhone is not a great experience on Travelocity; it’s not easy to see your options and it’s dead slow. But thank God I could at least do that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be home even now, as United has rescheduled my flight for tomorrow.

Everyone at work has asked me if I enjoyed my extended stay in Italy. They’ve all commented that there are many worse places to be stranded. But the truth is, when you’re stranded and have no idea how you’re going to get home, it doesn’t matter where you are. It’s still just a giant pain in the butt.

Imagine what the search environment would be like if you could just use your finger to define a search area. Forget trying to remember which neighborhood is which, or knowing street names, or even recalling a particular restaurant name. Now Yahoo has developed an iPhone app that allows you to draw a search radius — using just your finger — to return results within the area. So you could draw a circle around your location, find all the restaurants near you, and pick one to go to with ease.

For now, the app returns restaurants and cafes only, but Yahoo says soon it will return local service businesses too. Can’t wait to see where this goes next.

Last weekend, I happened to notice this fantastic flyer at Valencia and 23rd St. in San Francisco. I think I’m just about ready to pony up $25 to get a beautiful, personalized and hand-painted depiction of my very own under-bed beasty. If anyone wants to contact him, you can email him.

Apple naysayers have to be reveling in the fact that the iPad’s share of voice on the Internet is falling. Some attribute it to the iPad’s feature set (lack of camera, inability to multitask, lack of Flash), but I think it’s a natural that after such a hype-fueled launch that coverage would naturally fall off. There are some interesting stats, though, on Position 2′s site.

Frankly, if I could do a product launch and generate 2,900,000 twitter mentions, 106,816 blog mentions, 87,513 forum mentions and 83,513 news mentions, I’d call it a huge success.

And of course, I still want one …

What a brilliant idea — as my friend Clif said, you couldn’t do better for a happier or more productive product placement.

I don’t think I could say it better than Fast Company — “The people in the video and people spreading the video will forever share a memory that cements the association of happiness with Coca-Cola.”

Who doesn’t love the Apple ads?

As a dedicated Apple user (in a very PC environment) I appreciate everything about them. Now AdFreak has kindly assembled the complete Apple ad collection, featuring John Hodgman and Justin Long. It’s a fantastic testament to creativity.

My favorite ad is the “accident” — wherein PC dies. Maybe it’s because my PC died last weekend that I appreciate it so much. Check it out:

Don’t you love Netflix? Thanks to a new tool posted on the New York Times web site, you can see what your neighbors are renting. Seems that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the most rented movie in San Francisco, while Cadillac Records appeals only to folks out in San Leandro.

You can check out other cities too, including New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta and Denver. I was amazed that our friend Benjamin is the most popular rental no matter where you go, while poor old Cadillac Records bombs out everywhere as the least rented. Hmmmm….are we a nation of lemmings? I actually liked Cadillac Records a lot.

You can also zoom into particular zip codes, which is how I found out that Slumdog Millionaire is the most popular rental in my neighborhood. What does that say about where I live?

Yay! I always find that I need help choosing which resolutions to make, then break, every New Year’s. Thankfully, Monina Velarde has helped me out by developing a simple resolution generator.

Monina, I don’t know you, but thank you.

Visit today: http://moninavelarde.com/newyears/

Ok, it’s cool. I love the Pixies soundtrack. The design is lovely. The type is microscopic. And I can’t understand how Poliform thinks that this will help them sell furniture and storage systems — but maybe I’m just too old-school. Proof positive I’m a bore, because I just don’t get it.

One of the hardest parts of my job these days is figuring out where magazines are headed. I run a brand that was built on traditional magazine advertising. When I say who I work for, nine times out of ten the response I receive is, “I’ve seen your magazine ads!”

My brand’s addiction to magazine advertising is powerful. There’s heavy sentiment that magazines have built the brand, and not to advertise in them is a crying shame. But then the recession hit us hard, and we were left with an important choice: Advertise in national magazines with a tiny schedule (not so measurable) or reallocate the spend into search engine marketing (measurable). We we pulled out of magazines in 2009, much to the consternation of folks in our company that felt we were hurting the brand. But the results speak for themselves. Thanks to an effective SEM program, combined with a hard working web site, leads from the web are up, and we’re going to beat our projections.

Nonetheless, now that it’s 2010, we’re going back into magazines because history and culture make it a must. Given that more than 560 titles folded this year, the selection of mags that fit our brand is smaller than before. And more expensive. So we get to spend more to reach fewer targets, which is never a great choice. My prediction is that within two years, we just won’t advertise in magazines at all, with the possible exception of regional magazines.

So that makes me wonder where magazines are headed. Not too long ago, I saw that Martha Stewart was using Twitter to survey her followers about whether they would consider using a tablet device to read Martha Stewart Living. I’ve also been a long-time subscriber to VIVMag, a digital mag that I can never, ever get to open on my Mac. There’s also a full digital version of Wired that Conde Nast has been working on, although they say they haven’t been talking with Apple (who’s rumored to be getting the Apple Tablet ready for debut at MacWorld in a couple of weeks).

Then I came across this demo video from Sports Illustrated, which shows off how a tablet-based version of the mag might work. Funny, it looks a lot like the Apple Tablet no one is supposed to know about.

Seems like the future to me. I like the interactivity, with seamless incorporation of video elements and different types of browsing (all very Appley, with page flips, zooms and pinches). As an advertiser, I’ll be interested to see how it all comes together, because when the device integrates content with the Internet, I’ll at last have a measurable platform. As a consumer, I can hardly wait.