As Motorola’s Droid smartphone readies for launch, the mobile industry is rife with geeky-yet-endearing Star Wars references. Most seem to fall into the camp that this is the droid we’re looking for (check out PC World for a good round-up), but it begs the question of which droid? Will Motorola’s smartest smartphone be the multilingual (and often long-winded) C-3PO, the chirpy R2-D2 or perhaps a battle droid from the less-than-endearing second series of Star Wars prequels?

In some ways, the latter reference might be the most appropriate, now that we know Droid is not just a model but a brand. It is, in short, the first in a veritable army of devices designed to fight for domination in the increasingly contentious smartphone space.

Of course, that battle is also about individual soldiers. As with Palm’s Pre, the Droid is Motorola’s comeback device – Motorola’s first real opportunity in years to recapture some of the luster it once had in the Razr’s heyday. Droid also marks a big line in the sand for the Android platform. As I alluded in a previous post, the alliance of Verizon and Android (with the right devices – check) should provide a big boost to carrier and OS alike (and increase distribution for apps in Android Market).

The larger question is: who’s fighting whom in this battle? Naturally, sitting as it does at the top of the smartphone heap, the iPhone is always the point of comparison for any new smartphone that comes to market, but it isn’t always the target (TechCrunch very ably covers this issue here).

I tend to subscribe to the notion that Apple and Google are more frenemies than enemies, with the recent skirmish over the Google Voice app and the ensuing board of directors drama more of a distraction than anything else, at least for the time being. For now, the two will be loosely allied in a “the-enemy-of-my-friend-is-my-enemy” sort of way against Microsoft. In other words, think of mobile as an important front, but in a much larger (and longer) war for computing supremacy.

Along the way, a rebel alliance is bound to emerge, and we know how that story goes….

Founded in 1999, GSI Commerce works with over 80 pure-play and multichannel retailers, including Toys “R” Us and RadioShack, as well as brands, including Ralph Lauren and Timberland. Clients look to GSI to implement strategies for customer acquisition to Web stores. We spoke with Jeff McCall, who leads the strategy services group at GSI, about how retailers are approaching the 2009 holiday season. A taste:

eMarketer: Where have retailers invested in their Websites, and where have they cut costs in preparation for the holiday season?

Mr. McCall: Retailers have spent time this year over the past few months making the shopping experience easier and better. Some have invested in usability studies, so they can remove some of the roadblocks that are keeping people from buying. It makes it a better customer experience, and it also raises the ROI on the marketing dollars that drove that traffic there, so we could argue that’s a cost savings.

The other place people invest that always seems to pay off is online gift centers. Retailers are anticipating what customers’ needs are and make some great suggestions, adding in customer reviews. It builds a community. Finally, we’ll see a push for gift cards and gift certificates for when customers can’t find the perfect gift or it’s late in the buying season.

eMarketer: Do you see differences in Website priorities for Web-only retailers versus the multichannel retailers?

Mr. McCall: Web-only retailers will do a lot of things we just talked about. Brick-and-mortar retailers have finally embraced the idea of tools such as associate ordering systems, where an associate can order an item not in the physical store from the online channel and ship it directly to the consumer. We’ve seen clients have great results with doing that. The same goes with in-store pickup. This has been around for a decade, but retailers have been slow to really embrace it, because there are challenges.

While we’ve seen divisions before between online and offline channels, I think a lot of those silos are breaking down. Customers are signing up for e-mail marketing in stores. Multichannel retailers are finally realizing that’s a good thing for both sides of the business.

eMarketer: How can small online retailers compete against large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Amazon during the holiday season?

Mr. McCall: The couple things I’d recommend to the smaller retailers would be first, make sure the site experience is everything it can possibly be, really fine-tune it to make it as compelling as possible.

No. 2 is to make sure that when you do get someone to come to your site and either sign up for e-mail or make a purchase, do everything you can to create that cycle of re-engagement with that consumer and bring them back again. Three or four years ago, retailers would throw lots of money into bringing consumers to their sites, but they didn’t worry about them after that. Now there’s a big shift, especially over the last year. Retailers know how much of their sales come from repeat customers. Make sure you’re locking those customers in and becoming their go-to source for whatever it is they’re shopping for.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access subscribers only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.

Three recent developments in the online sports world bear out our long-held view that more and more live game content would migrate online.

The National Basketball Association is now offering a comprehensive broadband game package, priced at $150 per season, that offers live access to more than 40 games per week. This is the NBA’s first standalone broadband offering; previously, the league offered live online game streams only to subscribers of its cable TV package. This latest move puts the NBA in line with Major League Baseball, which has had a similar offering in place for years.

Speaking of MLB, the league posted some impressive online video and mobile video stats for the first round of the current playoff season.

And finally, CBS Interactive cited comScore data showing impressive month-over-month gains in unique viewers, video streams and minutes for its CBSSports.com Web property. (CBS College Sports, meanwhile, posted growth in viewers and streams.) The company attributed these increases to the start of the National Football League season, and the fantasy-league activity that accompanies it.

We’ve posted a few great interviews recently from our Total Access database — here’s a quick roundup of the action:

• Helping Wal-Mart Get Interactive: Kenny Tomlin of Rockfish Interactive chats with us about the company’s work with Wal-Mart and the social media forecast.
• Clorox: Rewiring The Brand Experience With Social Media: Mary O’Connell of Clorox talks about the company’s efforts to make digital and social media part of its brands’ success. O’Connell referred to creating a new vision of digital marketing that is “rewiring and re-imagining our entire brand experience.
• Integrated Marketing and Media at P&G: Clark Reinhard of Procter & Gamble describes the integrated marketing and media strategy for launching the Scope Outlast product line, which includes online video consumer testimonials and multimedia tie-ins with “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest.
• Best Buy Talks Social Commerce on Facebook: We chat with Tracy Benson, the Senior Director of Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media at Best Buy, about the company’s recent launch of social commerce campaigns on Facebook and Twitter.
• The Social Power of User-Generated Content: Sam Decker of Bazaarvoice explains how retailers use customer reviews and stories to drive measurable business results.
• Coke Weighs The Value of Social Media: Carol Kruse develops interactive marketing programs and experiences for Coca-Cola’s global brands around the world. Here, Ms. Kruse discusses Coke’s use of digital media and marketing and the evolution of social media.
• How Honest Tea Brews Buzz Online: Jesse Merrill, the director of marketing at Honest Tea, chats about the company’s word-of-mouth and grassroots approach to marketing.

Ever find yourself with the need to monitor social network and online buzz about your brand, your products or even yourself while on the go? Well, now there’s an app for that.

Actually, more than one. A number of Twitter tools have built-in monitoring features, but so far they’re limited to Twitter chatter. Larry Chase, publisher of “Web Digest for Marketers,” has a rundown of some of these (and other) business-oriented iPhone apps here.

Digital agency iCrossing recently introduced Say What?, an app that aggregates keyword-based search results from Twitter and Digg as well as blogs and forums into a single interface (full disclosure: I used to work at iCrossing). It also allows you to save your search history, which is handy for frequently searched terms like brand and company names.

Revolutionary? No. Efficient and easy to use? Yes. And that counts for a lot, especially as the quantity of conversations about brands and products (and people, for that matter) multiply. A side benefit for iCrossing, of course, is that it can use Say What? to monitor the buzz it generates by launching a tool like Say What?. Maybe not the raison d’etre for building it, but no doubt a highly useful side effect for an agency focused on the intersection of search, social media and mobile.

iPhone users can download the app from the App Store here (iTunes required).