I’m wishing I had one of these for BlogWorldExpo this week…
Adam Bartholl and Markus Angermeier teamed together to bring you this, the "Are You Social" T-shirt, on which you can check off (with a pen) whatever web 2.0 social media/network/community you belong to!
Google’s announcement of it’s mobile advertising platform and partnerships (“Android”) yesterday raises quite a few questions about the future of mobile as a computing platform. Instead of going the route of a desktop operating system, is Google putting its eggs into the mobile basket?
Consequently, since Google is an advertising company at the end of the day, is mobile the next brave new world for contextual monetization of users now that Google has conquered the search and intention engines?
And what about the smaller companies who are making forays into the mobile world of performance advertising? Do they stand a chance once the Google mobile operating system is up and running on millions of phones and serving up highly relevant contextual advertising based on years of user data?
Shawn Collins has a post about one such company throwing their hat into the pre-Google mobile ring, Ads-Click. Will companies attempting to stake a claim in the performance marketing and advertising world such as this or AdMob be eventually stomped by the Google behemoth or are they playing their cards right for getting into the ring early?
Ads-Click, a solution for search and contextual advertising, unveiled Ads-Click Mobile today. Ads-Click Mobile is a mobile advertising platform that offers a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing option to advertisers.
CPC is made possible because the Ads-Click Mobile tool includes an easy process for any organization to quickly create its own mobile landing page, which is hosted by Ads-Click. The tool also enables the creation of multiple banner ad formats and more sophisticated targeting methods than competitive offerings.
Ads-Click Mobile Launches | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins
How many links are too many links on an affiliate site?
Is there such a thing as "link saturation" (a term I’ve heard more than once at the bar during Affiliate Summit)?
While this "how-to" on effective linking doesn’t explicitly mention affiliate marketing, it’s still a good exercise in keeping things nice and neat (#10 and #11 are interesting points for affiliates).
But enough about the history of the hyperlink. How can we use them effectively in the here and now? I thoroughly enjoyed Philipp Lenssen’s recent link usability tips. I liked it so much, in fact, that I’m using it as a template for a visual compendium of link usability tips– the art of hyperlinking.
The once popular R-Mail has been rebranded by its new owner (NBC Universal) as SendMeRSS.
If you’re a marketer reading blogs or if you’re a marketer interested in leveraging the power of RSS for your campaigns, the feed-to-email route may be the way for you to go since utilizing a feed reader (such as Bloglines, Google Reader, Newsgator) is not always the most popular way to consume feeds.
Send Me RSS is a a free service that lets you read your favorites RSS feeds in your email inbox just like any other email messages. Similar services are offered by FeedBlitz and FeedBurner (now part of Google).
Send Me RSS (available at sendmerss.com) is actually an upgraded version of R-Mail that was developed by Randy Morin and later acquired by NBC Universal. The domain r-mail.org now redirects to sendmerss.com.
Read RSS Feeds In Your Email Inbox with Send Me RSS | India Inc | Digital Inspiration
Hard to believe, but this little blog is a year old this week.
So, I decided to bring it back after a few weeks on hiatus. I’ve missed blogging here and participating in some of the 50+ comment debates we got into in the past.
Starting today, I’ll be jumping back into the 3-5 post a day routine and plan to do some live blogging from this week’s BlogWorldExpo in Las Vegas. I’m speaking with The Conversation Group‘s Stephanie Agresta on Friday afternoon on the topic of affiliate marketing and social media issues, so if you’re in Vegas come by for that… should be fun. Or if you’re in Vegas and just want to grab a coffee, beer or something stronger you can email me (sam@costpernews.com) or give me a call (803.413.6834).
Looking forward to year two of CPN!
We’ll be back tomorrow (Tuesday November 6).
See you then.
I’m imagining a future 3,000 years from now when scholars and archaeologists attempt to put together the scattered fragments of our digital cuneiforms like we attempt to do today with the scant remains of Mesopotamian cultures from the past that were just as vibrant as ours.
I wonder how far Google will get before the barbarians invade and the library is burned?
As early as the third millennium B.C., Mesopotamian scribes began to catalogue the clay tablets in their collections. For ease of reference, they appended content descriptions to the edges of tablets, and they adopted systematic shelving for quick identification of related texts. The greatest and most famous of the ancient collections, the Library of Alexandria, had, in its ambitions and its methods, a good deal in common with Google’s book projects. It was founded around 300 B.C. by Ptolemy I, who had inherited Alexandria, a brand-new city, from Alexander the Great. A historian with a taste for poetry, Ptolemy decided to amass a comprehensive collection of Greek works. Like Google, the library developed an efficient procedure for capturing and reproducing texts.
Onward and Upward with the Arts: Future Reading: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. Richard Feynman US educator & physicist (1918 – 1988)
Quote Details: Richard Feynman: There are 10^11 stars… – The Quotations Page
We’ll miss you, David…
WIStv.com Columbia, SC: Family says soldier from Marion killed in Afghanistan
David was my cousin, but functioned more as a brother. While growing up, there wasn’t a week that went by when we didn’t see each other. We spent countless hours reading comics, drawing comics, watching Beavis and Butthead, playing with GI Joe’s and re-enacting our Transformers scenes in the backyards. He was always Superman and I was always Batman.
My favorite memory of David? The day we decided to walk to the comic shop a few miles from his house without telling anyone when we were 12 or so. To make matters worse, he had just had surgery on his toe, so he was on crutches. My dad finally found us walking the streets (we made it to the comic shop!) a few hours later and drove us home.
I love you, David… can’t tell you how much we’ll miss you.
A Marion soldier serving in Afghanistan has died in action, his family confirmed Tuesday.
Staff Sgt. James David Bullard, 28, was serving with the Army National Guard 1st Battalion 263rd Cavalry (Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition) S.C. National Guard Unit B Company based in Dillon, his brother-in-law Harold Caldwell said.
Marion soldier killed in Afghanistan – News – South Carolina Now (SCNow.com)
Blogged with Flock
Blogged with Flock
I’m seeing a few subtle and not so subtle changes in GMail tonight.
1) Quicker message loading
2) New graphics (the yellow type found in Google Reader) at the top of the screen for loading messages
3) New contacts manager which is very slick and a great upgrade
4) The ability to add an event invitation when composing or replying to messages.
Nothing revolutionary, but pretty neat tweaks given last week’s big inclusion of IMAP in GMail. After a couple of years of stagnation, it’s nice to see a few new additions to the interface.
MORE: Evidently Google is rolling this out to all users (whew, I’m not crazy). Thanks to Andy Beal for the pointer!
My pal Jim Kukral has just launched ScratchBack after a long period of development and testing. I’ve blogged about all of the specifics on ReveNews.
If you have a blog and are looking for a way to make a few extra bucks via a tipjar system (the links are “nofollow” which means Google won’t punish you for selling them), this is a easy way to do so. Plus, Jim has built in a little social flavor since you can encourage people to outbid each other for the top spot via snarky political messages or your momma jokes (ok, not really… but it could be done).
You can see an example (or tip me if you’d like!) over in the sidebar –>
Looking forward to travelling to Bean Town for the Affiliate Summit next summer…
It’s official – Affiliate Summit is going to Boston next summer from August 10-12, 2008.
Affiliate Summit Goes to Boston | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins
Merlin Mann lays down the smack on SEO. Good stuff that I can’t agree with more (and a darn fine analogy to Cargo Cults):
Most SEOs are making headphones out of coconuts, hoping it brings traffic, and then wondering why the gods are so angry at them. They never get that the headphones probably aren’t hooked up to anything but their make-believe radio.
Last Friday during my ConvergeSouth workshop on affiliate marketing for citizen media, I made the comment that it is very hard to make a ton of money with Amazon’s affiliate program. Looks like John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog found the sweet spot for making money with Amazon affiliate links…
Who ever said blogging doesn’t pay? Last Tuesday, Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber — one of Apple’s biggest cheerleaders — asked his readers to pre-order the newest version of Max OS X, “Leopard,” through his Amazon affiliate links. “If you pre-order through these links, Amazon will send me a 7.5 percent kickback,” he wrote. “I.e., you get a good price and free shipping, and I get about $10.”
Like any other type of affiliate program, the trick to Amazon is creating, sustaining and supporting a healthy community of readers and participants via blogging, etc then explaining to your readers what you’re doing with your affiliate links (especially if that community of readers is as passionate about something as the Mac fanboys/girls/squirrels are about Apple.
Silicon Alley Insider: John Gruber’s Leopard Windfall $5800 in 8 Days
Asheville, NC really is the most beautiful place in the world in October. Mountains, trees and lots of leaves…
But seriously, we Americans are a pretty frightening lot indeed:
To summarize: an alarming percentage of respondents are open to brain implants that allow them to access the internet with their minds and that allow their children’s locations to be tracked, they think government censorship of online video content is acceptable, the internet makes them feel closer to God and less close their significant others – but their own identities on the internet are not very important to them. This is frightening stuff…
More than half of respondents believe that internet content, like video, should be controlled in some way by the government. Only 36% said the blocking of internet video would be unconstitutional.
Wow. I’m as apple pie American as anyone, but with thinking like that, it’s no wonder we elect clowns like Ted Stevens to represent us in Washington.
Somewhere Karl Rove is stroking a bald cat and thinking “exceeelent.”
Poll: US Attitudes About The Internet Are Insane
Um…
Wow, this is definitely not cool:
“I was checking out the natural search results for Affiliate Summit on Google, as I do regularly, and I was surprised at one of the paid ads that was triggered.
There was an ad for the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago.”
There’s a general rule in the highly competitive affiliate space… don’t piss in the town well. Looks like SES is definitely doing that by bidding on Affiliate Summit’s name.
That’s sleezy in my book and won’t win SES any fans (or attendees if they realize what’s going on).
I’m incredibly excited that GMail now has IMAP.
Why? I’ve been a devoted GMail user since ’04 just after the launch and have gigs and gigs of emails and content locked up in GMail (bought extra storage to make due). While GMail has always allowed for POP downloads, IMAP is different.
Here’s why… with IMAP, you can have a more seamless email experience because IMAP allows you to sync your email where ever you access it from. So, for example you can interact with your email (read, label, etc) in Thunderbird or Outlook and see the changes in your GMail interface on the web. POP access doesn’t allow for this.
So, for those of us who prefer to keep webmail and offline mail nice and synced, this is a huge step forward for GMail.
There are even larger ramifications for people who have iPhones since the mail client there is heavily dependent on IMAP for sanity reasons.
Thank you, Google. You made my day.
According to my new ConvergeSouth pal Wayne Sutton, he’s seeing an IMAP option in his GMail account.
Oh please please please let this be true and spread quickly to my account!
Google’s Gmail has just integrated IMAP. However, its only appearing in a select accounts.
w4 network » Blog Archive » Gmail gets IMAP
Update: Looks like it’s official according to Techmeme! Hooray!
Update 2: I’ve got IMAP ON MY GMAIL!!
Sean Coon has a great post on the ability of laypersons (in this case musicians) to get their messages, voices and music out to an increasingly large number of folks from desirable demographics by leveraging web services and social platforms.
While Sean sticks to the music scene, his post certainly rings true for all of marketing (music is a form of marketing in my book) in general.
Recommended reading (especially if you like catchy diagrams):
What’s becoming obvious is that as more domains decide to make their APIs available in the public arena — to both independent developers and to the very same domains they compete with — our internet rapidly progresses from a linearly connective space to a multi-layered, inter-connected environment — more akin to a network — ripe with exposed hooks to latch onto and build upon.
The most powerful part of this equation? How about the fact that a great number of internet services — across numerous industries — have evolved to a point where Joe Layman can now leverage our internet’s many to many power of connectivity and discovery, yet never have to bust out one line of code in the process of doing so.
