Google, AdSense, Yahoo, YPN, Yahoo Publisher Network, advertising, advertisement, ads

I finally got my invitation to Yahoo’s Publisher Network a week or so ago and decided to give it a shot. The YPN spiders have indexed Betaflow and are serving up relevant ads already, essentially the same companies that Google’s AdSense was serving. Once I get a firm grasp on YPN and can get some stats compiled I’ll be writing a short article, YPN vs. Google AdSense - not only focusing on the monetary benefits of either service, but the administration and end-user interface as well.

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Netvibes, RSS Feed, Homepage, Personal, Personal Homepage

I have recently discovered Netvibes, a drastically “Web 2.0” personal portal that I have fallen in love with. Netvibes allows users to customize the page with various modules, including RSS Feeds, Weather reports, Notes, To-Do Lists, and more - all without registering. If you would like to view your page from any computer, a simple registration and login structure allows you to do so.

The reason I have grown so fond of Netvibes (and the reason I leave it’s browser window open all the time) is it’s RSS Reader. Currently, my deployed network, filters out various websites I read on a daily basis. Problogger, Performancing, Matt Cutts, and various others are all blocked under the “Message Boards and Clubs” filter. With Netvibes, and a little help from Google, I can get the URL of the RSS feed, plug that into my personal homepage, and I still enjoy the articles these websites publish.

I have found only a few minor faults with Netvibes, some of which I can’t actually pinpoint on Netvibes themselves.

My PopMail Modules, which monitor my various email accounts always report mail as being unread. This may or may not be a Netvibes issue, although I believe it is - when I login to the Webmail client for these account these messages are seen as read.
I wish there was a way to tag and then hide/show feeds based on tags. I currently have 18 feeds on my netvibes page and it is becoming quite difficult to organize them logically in the 3 provided columns.
I wish I could add a fourth column.
I wish I could resize the RSS Reader, there are times I would like to see the first column (which contains 2 Note modules: one for my phone card info, and another for phone numbers) as well as read the RSS feeds.
I wish there was a Contacts module, Notes can get cluttered quickly.
I wish the coloring of modules colored the entire module and not just the title bar (or writing area, in the case of notes)
If you have yet to give Netvibes a shot, I recommend it. I was never a fan of RSS Feeds until I was limited on my browsing abilities - now I can’t get enough of them! Unfortunately, many websites (Darren) don’t provide their entire article within their feed. If you are one of these people, please consider offering a full-text feed for those of us who can’t visit your website due to circumstances beyond our control.

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Microsoft’s recently unveiled adCenter Incubation Lab, adCenter for short, is making quite a stir in the advertising world. Currently 25% of MSN’s search advertisements are being served via adCenter (while the rest are through Yahoo’s Overture, a contract that will end in June).

Microsoft is targeting many areas for it’s online advertising, including blogs, search, and video. The most remarkable of which being video hyperlinking that detects products on TV and allows an instant referral to information about the product. For instance, while watching Desperate Housewives you could click on a cast member’s outfit and be taken to a page full of information and further links to websites in which you could purchase the items within the outfit.

Microsoft’s taking a gamble with this, but people said the same of Google a number of years ago - only time will tell if Microsoft can dethrone the king of advertising.

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Viral marketing is one of the key buzzwords on the web today, and Performancing is taking a step in that direction with Performancing for Firefox. Following in the path of the Spread Firefox movement, Performancing is working on a Spread PFF campaign and is in need of some graphics work. To provide these graphics they are running a competition seeking a 160 x 160 square banner, a 160 x 32 medium sized button, and a 160 x 15 small sized button. The winner of the competition will receive $1000.

They’ve provided vector images of the Performancing logo, and you can read more about the competition on their website.

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Om Malik has provided some great insight into Toni Schneider’s move from Yahoo to Automattic. Toni Schneider was previously a senior exec at Yahoo’s Developer Network, but has now left the Internet giant to begin a career at the rising star of Web 2.0 startups.

Automattic is headed by Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress fame and is a company many have placed a lot of faith in. Automattic primarily provides licensing and service to large corporations (including Yahoo’s Web Hosting) for the Wordpress software and the Akismet anti-spam plugin.

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Point of View is hosting a Wordpress 2.0 theme competition - seeing as a slew of Wordpress designers visit this site I figure I’d link to it from here. If I had some more time I would do some modifications to WPAndreas03 and submit it myself - if anyone has time and wants to do so you are more than welcome to. Just leave mine and Andreas’ names within the credits. It would be nice to see something I helped work on receive some added recognition.

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Matt Mullenweg posted a small explanation of the direction of Wordpress 2.0, namely it’s bundling with Akismet, after a concerned author at The Blog Herald questioned this decision.

I think the decision to bundle Akismet with Wordpress 2.0 is abolutely fantastic, Akismet is a great product with a lenient user license. As Matt pointed out, most everyone that uses Akismet obtains it freely, just by registering for a Wordpress.com account and obtaining the API key.

The beauty behind this tactic, and I don’t fault Matt and the rest of the Wordpress gang at all for this, is that it is a powerful introduction to a extremely valuable tool. So, for the few within the blogosphere that actually meet the definition of “Problogger,” already have experience with this tool, know it’s capabilities, and are comfortable in paying the required license fee to use it.

Excellent marketting by the Wordpress crew, for an excellent piece of software that should have been included in Wordpress distributions since it’s development. Akismet has worked wonders for myself and I know it’s done the same for many of you.

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