Can’t argue much with this assessment from Razorfish:
Razorfish issues last rites for Web 2.0 – iMediaConnection.com: “‘Web 3.0 will be much more focused on business solutions and less on marketing communications,’ he says. ‘We’re at a point now where you take all of these tools — websites, search, mobile, targeted ads — and put them together in an integrated fashion.'”
Although, I’d throw in web3.0 will be all about Track. No, seriously.
Head over to iMedia to get the full discussion.
sweet…
The Affiliate Summit team has put together a neat little Google Gadget for those of use who are always wondering how much longer we have to wait to fly out to Vegas for the show (come on, guys… how about San Fran or Phoenix or Denver one year??).
Regardless of location, Affiliate Summit is a can’t miss show if you’re in the performance marketing world or even the tech space and interested in how the web is being monetized.
Affiliate Summit 2009 West Countdown Google Gadget | Affiliate Summit Blog: “If you’re using iGoogle (Google’s personalized version of the Google homepage), you can add this gadget to it, to remind you just how fast the conference is approaching!”
Nice work, team Affiliate Summit.
Joe Magennis of Fluid Media has set up a FriendFeed room for podcast sharing and discovery (and has a good podcast of his own with Cameron Watson called Overflow).
I listen to podcasts on a daily basis and it definitely gets difficult to find quality shows that focus on the geek marketing realm where I live (and you probably do as well if you’re reading this).
So, I’m hoping this takes off as a place of sharing and discovery:
Podcast Place – FriendFeed: “A group of people who enjoy the amazing content being produced on the web & want to discover and share it with others.”
Head over and start sharing your favs so I’ll be able to keep the iPod full.
Nice work, Joe.
I don’t have the new “Themes” feature in my GMail yet (and probably won’t use them when I do), but my GMail interface just changed over to a new theme without me doing anything (pic above).
Is this one of the new themes or is there a new default GMail theme all together?
Anyone else seeing this?
I logged into my AIM mail account today. That’s not something I do frequently. However, if these new widgets I found waiting for me are any indication of future development, I may be giving AIM (how about AOL Mail?) a second look.
AOL is famous for having been a walled-garden portal in the past. However, as I wrote last week, AOL is really on the ball with the whole spirit of the open web by introducing ways to bring in content from such places (competitors?) as Yahoo Mail, GMail, Twitter, Facebook, etc on the main AOL homepage, which does millions of impressions every month.
And the results from this newfound embracing of openness are more engagement, more pageviews and more attention. AOL is on to something.
With these new widgets in AIM mail, you can integrate Yahoo Mail, contacts, AIM, AOL Finance, Mapquest, etc within your inbox. GMail has this same feature with its Labs platform, so it’s good to see competition there. The trick with AIM is that they are bringing in properties from outside the AOL universe (unless the AIM Mail team knows something about a Yahoo/AOL deal that we don’t). Nifty.
However, my main question is if this is a sign of the future? Will you eventually be able to update Twitter or your Facebook status (or send Facebook messages) within AIM or AOL mail as you can on the AOL home page? If so, that will be very compelling. Will I ditch GMail for AIM even if that happens? Perhaps not, but I will definitely take a second look at my AOL/AIM mail.
It’s time for web-based email clients to grow up and become platforms instead of proprietary gardens of in-house developers. I’m glad to see AOL is helping to make that happen.
Comics were a huge part of my dorky teen years (but I only read the cool comics that you had to ask for from behind the counter). I still have soft spot in my heart for all things Marvel, DC, Image, Darkhorse, etc.
So, I was excited to see that Pepperjam now has the Marvel affiliate program in their network. Pepperjam also has the Star Trek affiliate program, making it a nostalgic choice for fanboi’s and geeks who, like myself, appreciate the finer things from Jim Lee or Frank Miller. Come to think of it, they also have MGM (Stargate) and Warner Bro’s (DC merchandise, Batman, Harry Potter and 300). Lots of geek cred there.
The Marvel program has 45 day cookies and starts at 7% and works up to 10% with volume. There is supposedly a datafeed on the way as well.
I’ll definitely be checking that one out for Christmas since Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk were such big hits this year and there is always a crowd hungry for X Men and Spiderman goodness (plus there’s the upcoming Wolverine and Avengers movies in the works).
Good stuff.
I frequently mention Loa Power Tools on podcasts, but I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about it.
I’ve been a subscriber for the last six months or so and I can’t tell you how frequently Loa saves my rear when trying to send an email from a wifi hotspot, airport, university building, etc that doesn’t want to work well with my email client.
Or if you have an AT&T DSL line at your office space like I do, you know the frustration of trying to send out through an SMTP other than AT&T’s designated one. Loa solves that.
Yes, I do love and use GMail, but there’s the whole business aspect of not looking professional when you have the “sent from GMail on behalf of CostPerNews.com” in the header. Sure, I could go with Google Apps, but I’ve got 4 years of mail archived in my personal GMail account. Loa solves a huge problem there as well (and there’s a special plan for GMail users).
And that’s why I like Loa Power Tools. It’s a problem solving application for power email users that you don’t notice running in the background because it does what it needs to do quietly.
Just thought I’d plug the service (no, this is not a paid advertisement, I’m just a fan) because it’s an unsung hero of my daily work flow. Go read more and give it a shot if you need this sort of a solution (and who doesn’t with the ubiquity of wifi hotspots these days?)…
Tell me more about Loa PowerTools: “Loa PowerTools is a tiny utility that lets you send email from any internet connection anywhere. Once it is installed, you don’t have to change your life at all. You can use whatever email software you prefer: Outlook, Mac Mail, Thunderbird … it doesn’t matter, but Loa PowerTools will send your mail out through the Internet in a way that can’t be stopped by any but the most aggressive firewalls. And by ‘aggressive’ we mean firewalls in secure places where you wouldn’t expect to be able to have much Internet contact with the outside world.
It’s particularly useful for laptops. Without Loa PowerTools, when you travel from connection to connection, you never know what mail server to use to send mail. You often have to spend a lot of time fumbling around to find the address of an SMTP server that will let you connect. Even if you can find one that would let you connect, more and more often these days the network you use won’t allow any mail at all. The provider of the connection deliberately blocks all outward-bound mail. The detective work you have to do is exhausting and often fruitless! You never know from one trip to the next whether you will be able to send email when you are at your destination hotel, in a conference room or an airport lounge or using some other publicly available network. And as the number of malicious exploits around the Web increases, the problem is only getting worse: network operators are being forced to become more and more protective of their networks.”
Plus, they take PayPal. Can’t beat that. Tell ’em uncle Sam sent ya.
Not only did Jim Kukral rebrand today, he proved me wrong.
Curse you, Kukral.
Welcome to Sponsored Videos – YouTube Advertising Programs: “Create video promotions right now! Your promotions can run live on YouTube once you have signed up for an account and created your campaign.”
Episode Seven: Macbook's Kill Switch, Token iPhone Discussions and Essential Geek Skills (about an hour)
Show Notes:
– Tethering
– More on iPhones and Blackberries
– Macbook Self Destruct Mode
– 50 Essential Geek Skills
In all honesty, this is the best GTM yet. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Brian Littleton, head of ShareASale, was in NYC for Ad:Tech and sat down with Shawn Collins, Missy Ward and Connie Berg to discuss a few topics including the network’s interesting “3 Strikes” PPC policy on AffiliateThing…
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » Ad-Tech NYC, the Affiliate Thing Podcast, and the PPC “3 Strikes” policy: “I was also lucky to have the opportunity to speak with Shawn Collins on his ‘Affiliate Thing’ podcast at the Affiliate Summit booth. Also on board were co-Affiliate Summitter Missy Ward, and Connie Berg. We had a good time talking about some industry news, issues, and it gave me an opportunity to talk about our PPC ‘3 Strikes’ policy as well. Since September 1st when the policy became active, we’ve received a great amount of feedback and reports. I would also like to thank all of the affiliates who have really stepped up their efforts to make sure that they are in compliance with the rules at hand. I know how difficult it is to keep up with so many policies, and your effort is very much appreciated. We know there will always be mistakes, hiccups, etc… and will continue to do our best to determine the difference between an honest mistake and a continued violation. So thank you…. “
The show really is a good listen.
Here’s the mp3 or head over to GeekCast.fm for the streaming version.
Gary Vaynerchuk uses Howard Stern’s bitterness to make a great point about cost-of-entry and the new paradigm on the web.
In other words, don’t be that guy when you make it to the top and web7.0 or whatever comes out 20 years from now…
There are a number of tools (some free and some paid) that perform the same function as Backlink Watch, but if you need a quick and easy checker to see who is linking to you and with what anchor text, it’s not a bad little tool.
Regardless, you should be keeping an eye on these sorts of things for SEO purposes as well as reputation management. And if you’re running an affiliate site that is composed of more than just affiliate links, it’s always a good idea to see if anyone else is including you in their posts or blogrolls.
Backlink Watch with something like Google Alerts should get you to 99% of what you need in this realm.
GeekCast 43 is up and it’s a good listen. The entire gang of Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille and myself chat about online marketing, gadgets, web2.0 and all-things-geek for 70 minutes.
If you’re new to the show, start with this one b/c it’s one of our best (in my opinion).
Here’s the mp3 or head over to GeekCast.fm for the stream if you’re of that persuasion.
Show Notes:
– Shawn Got a Blackberry Bold
– AT&T’s Marketing Woes
– Calacanis Redux: Affiliates v Silicon Valley
– Of Runways and Layoffs
– Ad:Tech’s Mood
– Examples of Good Businesses (FatWallet, Zac Johnson, Scott Jangro)
– Twitter Woes and Feature Complaints
– Revenue’s Marketing
– Ask500People.com
– More AdTech Talk
– Branding: affiliate.com, Izea and Coke
– Netbooks
I absolutely love Remember The Milk. I’ve been an active (and heavy) user for well over a year and upgraded to their “Pro” level (best $25 you’ll spend this year) to take full advantage of their BlackBerry and iPod Touch syncing capabilities. Not to mention, they have amazing integration with GMail and your task lists stay in sync and in front of you whether you’re in GMail, on your mobile or on the web.
Obviously, I can’t recommend Remember The Milk enough. Honestly. Stop what you’re doing and go sign up if you already haven’t.
Anyway, my endorsement aside, they now have a designated app in the Apple App Store (for iPhone and Touch users). It’s free for Pro users (and works great as usual).
Remember The Milk – Blog: “To say that we were excited when Apple made it possible to start developing native apps earlier this year would be a massive understatement (we’re big iPhone fans!). There was no question that we’d be developing an app for the iPhone and iPod touch… the only question was, ‘how big?’ :)”
Go support a great company, team and platform that is constantly innovating… RTM is the embodiment of what we’ve all been asking for web2.0 in terms of real functionality and a business plan. Vote with your feet and head over there.
(end rant)
Hard to believe…
Congrats to the CJ team and here’s to the next decade of more innovation.
AOL is, on the whole, doing things right by its users and the web in general these days.
However, the mail team blew it with this bone-headed post complaining about GMail and written on the level of a jealous 14 year old girl that didn’t make the cheerleading squad but wore the same outfit as the prom queen last Tuesday at the basketball game.
Come on, AOL. You’re better than this. Don’t you have a pretty strict PR dept??
Make sure to read the comment thread for readers’ reactions.
AOL Mail Blog: “An Open Letter to Gmail: Happy Halloween! We love your costume!”
btw, the ability to only embed certain parts of a clip from Hulu is fantastic…
http://www.hulu.com/embed/adjaWvGmgDIOP7dfQqiyQQ/201/238
Hulu – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Thu, Oct 30, 2008 – Watch the full episode now.
A new report from Asustek (say it out loud… it’s fun) says the company will be shipping $200 variations of its now famous (and ubiquitous) eee PC.
I grabbed a 7″ model in January of this year before Asus flooded the market with more variations than imaginable. It’s one of their “weaker” machines in terms of specs now, but I still love the little guy to death and wouldn’t part with him for an ATOM processor-based 8.9″ eee for anything.
So, I was sad to read this:
Asustek expects to ship US$200 Eee PC in 2009, says president: “Shen also pointed out that 7- and 8.9-inch Eee PCs will slowly phase out of the market to be replaced by 10-inch products.”
Part of the charm and mystique of the little computer that started a revolution is its amazingly small size and form factor. I constantly get asked what it is when I’m out in public. When I have the eee and a Kindle at a coffee shop, I look like a real geek freak.
So, go grab a 7 inch Asus eee
The Obama ’08 iPhone app has won great applause from techies and geeks (not just because it’s from Obama) for it’s inventiveness and nifty viral nature for getting out the vote and educating potential or current supporters.
Now it looks as if Sen John McCain’s campaign has gotten into the act (tongue-in-cheek):
Good stuff, my friends.
Google has just announced its support for OpenID across its services. Yahoo and Microsoft have also adopted the “one-sign-in” OpenID platform as well.
That’s great news and great for users and people moving to the cloud with applications like GMail or Google Docs or Google Calendar. Best of all, you can use that same ID to login into a number of web apps that aren’t owned by one company such as Google.
This is incredibly important for the growth of cloud computing as more productivity moves to the web.
However, when will publishers be able to use a platform like OpenID to login to CJ or Linkshare or Motive’s Advent or LinkConnector or Azoogle or ShareASale or even the Google Affiliate Network?
I have a myriad of ill-thought out affiliate network logins that I simply can’t remember. Being able to login to a network with something like an OpenID would make that network a favorite of mine by default!
I can haz?
There’s a new software update for the Kindle that evidently improves (the already pretty awesome) battery life. I can go for days and days of heavy reading and not have to recharge.
And yes, I still freaking love my Kindle. Game changer!
EduKindle » Blog Archive » Kindle Battery Life and Release 1.04 (and 1.08): “What release is your Kindle running? Go to ‘home,’ scroll to ‘settings’ and click. At the very bottom of the settings screen you will see the version of the Kindle software you are running. If it is 1.0, go here to figure out how to upgrade to 1.04 (or 1.08, for that matter).”
So, for all the new converts to Kindle-ism, make sure you have the new update.
ShareASale has launched a really interesting new platform with the Gift Cards Database. Let’s face it… gift cards are the gift to give when you have no idea what to give. Plus, merchants love them given that the cards are such a money machine.
I’ll be interested to check in with the SaS team after the holidays and see how popular or successful this becomes. I have a feeling it could be a huge hit.
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » Gift Cards Database: “Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from our annual ShareASale Think Tank held a few weeks ago in San Diego, we’ve created a Gift Cards Database. Merchants are able to upload specific creatives that direct consumers to specific landing pages designed to sell Gift Cards – a popular item this time of year!
In similar form to the Deals Database, Affiliates can access these creatives from inside their Affiliate Interface as well as through RSS feeds and downloadable databases. Affiliates can also search for specific types of gift cards – and find/join programs that they might not have already been a part of.”
Additionally, it’s these sorts of platforms that will continue to make affiliate marketing more “mainstream” as large publishing sites turn away from CPM ad deals towards performance marketing given the economic slowdown. In a potentially bleak holiday selling season, this could be just the thing to make things a little cheerier for publishers.
Nice work, ShareASale.
