Archive for August, 2008
For a while now I have been running Adphilia and we are only a small site representation company that is slowly growing. We have spent a lot of time trying to source the right Advertising server to meet our needs, but we still haven’t been able to find the right one in my mind. We have toyed with using free ad servers like OpenX or Google, as well as corporate ad servers like Right Media or Doubleclick. This is a post which just outlines what we have found within the company.
Free Ad Servers:
Open X – OpenX is an amazing piece of software that allows medium and large website to control their inventory. It is cost effective because the software is free, however you need to think about the implications advertising will have on your hosting servers, because huge amounts of ad serving can mean very large bandwidth costs. I also find OpenX a little hard to understand when you are first using the serving, plus I’m sure the larger your sites are the more complicated it becomes.
Google Ad Manager – Google Ad manager is a great product but it is built specifically for small publishers. It has a great design and easy to use. The first issue is that you can only use this ad server for small sites, because it is not compatible with any larger ad servers, and you have to put ad code straight into the header of your site. Additionally, I really don’t like the fact that when you deliver your first campaign you have to set it all up the day before it is allowed to be start. Small but bloody annoying.
Corporate Ad Servers:
Zedo – Zedo is very professional company with some great customer service. However, with them we got caught on the first hurdle, cause they were very expensive compared to all the other companies. Possibly, this is due to the great customer service and the results they can bring your sites. However, if you don’t have a great sales team to match what they can offer, there isnt too much point.
DoubleClick – This company just amazes me. Doubleclick seems to be a mish mash of several individual sections of software that has been mashed into one tool. Instead of Trafficking, reporting, billing and account details all in one sections, they seem to have segmented them, thus making it very untidy. However, they are the worlds best ad serving tool and the most used.
Atlas – Atlas, I tried to contact 5 times and they have never even responded to the messages I left. So I didn’t even get past the pricing stage let alone using their service. Typical Microsoft!
After all of these experiments it didn’t really bring me to finding the ad server solution that I was after. Im wanting a piece of software that is easy to understand and us, which doesn’t cost the earth, preferably free and web based. Does anyone know of a solution that I should try?
Mac users rejoice, the new version of Evernote has just been released. Version 1.1.4 can be updated from the “Check for Updates” command from the Evenote menu.
For a break down of what this version brings to you, read the release notes.
Evernote is an effective way of making sure you never forget your ideas. With the ability to catch your ideas no matter where they are, a napkin, online, a street sign, a window posting, capture it all with Evernote. Evernote also links across your laptop, your desktop and your mobile so you are never far from the inspiration you seek.
You can read a full review of Evernote here.
Last week I ran into a small problem when trying to put an audio book onto my iPod. The audio book was in .wma, or Windows Media Audio format, my iPod doesn’t like that format. A quick Google searches lead me to one of the simplest pieces of conversion software that I’ve used in some time.
Switch is a multi-platform dead simple program to use. Simply tell it where the directory of files lives that you want to convert, point it to the directory where you want them to end up (or the same one), along with what format you want them converted into and click a button. I seriously wish more software was this easy to use.
On my core 2 duo Macbook with 2GB of RAM it took about 4 hours to convert 12 .wma files into 192 kb/s .mp3’s. This isn’t a five-minute job to do, and I fully expected it to take some time, so plan ahead.
Sound quality, to my untrained ears was identical.
Ease of use for this multi-platform software, being able to handle dozens of file formats and being free means this small app will stay installed for some time.
While at the SummerMash party in Austin last week, I was introduced to a breakthrough site that had just launched in beta the week prior, MySites. A MySites representative spoke with me briefly to highlight some of the amazing features his site offers.
Some might say that MySites tries to be too much, but I think they execute their offerings very well. Let’s take a look at the Virtual Desktop aspect first.
MySites does a great job of storing up to 10GB of items, to include photos, movies, and music. While it can’t necessarily import files from Flickr, iTunes, or any other site, you can personally upload your own files. With 10GB of space available you can set up your virtual desktop with more than enough to keep it functional. The files are stored in folders that you have to double click to open, just like your real desktop. You have access to the full customization of MySites which makes it a great addition to the usual items you can place on there like calendars, emails, sites, etc.
The flipside of MySites is the Social Networking aspect. MySites fully intends for you to share your content with friends and across as many sites as possible. With the ability to add buddies and designate which files can be accessible, it’s sure to be a great place to gather to share all of your uploaded files. Seeking others with similar interests is also possible, and is encouraged to fully extend your network via MySites.
As of last week MySites could not connect to any currently existing social network site, but again the site is in beta. I was assured that future offerings would be made available as the site is built out.
There is famous and there is infamous, and StumbleUpon (SU) can make you both. In a recent event, Darren Rowse of Problogger got a first hand look at what SU did to make him infamous.
Darren has been a big supporter of SU, thus using it very heavily to rate sites across the net. In return for his dedicated support of others sites, a great number of his readership returns the support by stumbling his articles, creating a supportive community. Yesterday, he was notified that StumbleUpon had not just blocked, but banned him for abuse.
This misunderstanding hit the media networks in approximately an hour and a half the entire situation was resolved thanks to dedicated fans, but more importantly a customer friendly, transparent company willing to be open on the errors they make.
While many feel that SU was in the wrong, I find that measuring a business by how it admits and handles its errors is more important than assigning blame. SU did a fantastic and prompt job responding to Darren and Problogger was reestablished.
What is StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon, similar to Digg, allows you to vote for sites, increasing the popularity based on user support. Once a site has been stumbled, a chain reaction through the social network is viral, and many sites see an increase in traffic.
A toolbar installs into the browser header once downloaded. This allows them to “stumble” a site, a basic “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” If you “thumbs up” a site, you are allowed to provide a brief description of the site and your rating. If a site has already been stumbled then you’ve simply boosted the sites rating, which affects the frequency in the rotation of random sites that SU will display. StumbleUpon is heavily monitored for abuse to provide a level playing field for all sites involved.
I for one enjoy and fully support StumbleUpon, and encourage you to explore the application and while ranking sites is always enjoyable, clicking the “stumble” button can t
ake you to sites you may never have found otherwise.
Photo Credit, tris
Searching is big business. Those listings on the right side of any Google search are there because someone paid money to advertise there. Same goes with the top 2 or 3 links. Google makes a lot of money off of these paid placements, which are there based on their dynamic search technology. Google has also come under fire for the way in which it ranks sites, called Page Rank, it is a top secret way they calculate what search results should be at the top for any given term, based on their algorithm that, some have suggested, is based on the number of in-bound and out-bound links from other sites.
Google is the killer app of this decade, no one is doubting that. It is so popular it has become a verb, people just say, “Can you Google this for me?” which is almost impossible to do with anything anymore. So what if a new search engine comes along and tries to flatten the playing field?
That is exactly what Cuil (pronounced Cool) is trying to do. They claim to index three times the number of sites Google does and display them in a three-across pattern. That alone is kind of unique for searches, as they have always gone vertically. They have also implemented tab searches, a kind of, well maybe if you were looking for camera you might also want to look for digital camera. The search engine works, that really isn’t a question, but why should I use it?
Google does so many things now, like simple and complex math problems, fast weather look-up, package tracking from UPS and other services, all the way to stock quotes and word definitions. For me, it has eliminated the need to go to specialized sites if I can just put a special query in the Google search bar in Firefox. Cuil is also missing an image search function, something even Microsoft and Yahoo have worked into their site.
Cuil has some cool features, like roll overs, drill-down menu’s and the tabbed feature mentioned earlier. They are taking on the proverbial 800 pound gorilla by going after Google too. My two cents say that Cuil will have a small cult following for a while but ultimately, this will only make Google stronger.
