Watchmen
I cannot wait to see this movie:
http://l.yimg.com/cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/fop/embedflv/swf/fop.swf
WATCHMEN on Yahoo! Movies
AOL Opening Up to Growth
Bill Wilson, AOL’s EVP of Programming, emailed me a followup to my post on AOL’s recent successes to let me know that the new comScore Media Metrix reports were out.
AOL had significant growth both in the passive page view metric as well as the more active attention metrics. New visitors and users were also both up 9% this year over last.
The corporate press release with all of its statistical goodness can be found here:
AOL Sites Hit Record Audience Reach and Engagement in October | AOL Corporate: “AOL programming sites hit all-time high traffic numbers and marked the 21st month of consecutive year-over-year growth for unique visitors, according to the October 2008 comScore Media Metrix report. Unique visitors to AOL’s programming content sites grew 7% year-over-year to 54.3 million in October, and page views more than doubled, up 101% year-over-year to 4.2 billion. Engagement (total minutes) grew 51% year-over-year in October. Total minutes reached an all-time high on AOL.com, http://aol.com, growing 27% year-over-year. Additionally, AOL.com page views grew 27%, and unique visitors and total visitors were up 9%, year-over-year, as the site further opened up to third-party content, services and features. In addition, AOL Webmail, http://mail.aol.com, reached an all-time high of 3.5 billion page views marking a 31% year-over-year growth. “
As I wrote in my post last week, AOL is on the right path with their decision to open up and allow existing and new users to leverage the AOL.com homepage as their home base for the web. We’ve recently seen Yahoo and just this week Microsoft’s Live.com follow in similar paths as well as Google with the iGoogle platform.
I don’t think we’re in a return phase of the “power of the portal,” but we are seeing the metaphor of the portal being expanded to encompass social media and social networks and real time (AIM) data deliverability and consumption.
Pay attention to AOL and Platform-A.
Loa Power Tools: Haven’t Heard of It? You Will
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.
BeatMyPrice.com: Interesting Affiliate Model
The new rage for some of the shopping-centric affiliates and publishers is crowd source comparisons. Looks like BeatMyPrice.com is doing well with the model.
There is a nifty ajax interface, lots of options and the inevitable selling feature of the “deal feel.”
People Powered Price Comparison » BeatMyPrice.com
1. Find the best price you can online
2. Visit beatmyprice.com
3. Enter the details
4. See if someone has found it cheaper elsewhere
5. Save! (otherwise your price becomes the one to beat)
I expect to see more and more of these as the deal space heats up with the faltering economy.
AppScout also has some info on the site.
Microsoft Cashback Doing Something Right
Say what you’d like about Microsoft Cashback, but they seem to be getting the numbers right…
Microsoft Cashback: The Traffic Needle Is Still Stuck, But The Ads Are Rolling In: “Microsoft is reporting that according to Comscore, Live Search referred 12% of all commercial transactions across the web – a number that is much smaller than Google’s referral share, but one that is also significantly larger than Live Search’s market share, which hovered around 9% during the same period. This makes the Live Search user base very appealing to advertisers, as it shows that they’re more likely to purchase goods than their Google counterparts.”
I’m still not sold on the long term veracity of the program since Microsoft faces two serious challenges to Cashback if it is going to be seen as a reliable income stream: 1) affiliates doing this are smarter, more nimble and will eat into Cashback’s market share little by little every month 2) this won’t get (or sustain) the “Oprah crowd” that makes cashback sites successful because the lack of a community and/or branding for that purpose (I’m not being a Microsoft hater… just saying).
Still, the numbers are impressive. Glad to see Microsoft using Jellyfish for it’s potential and perhaps this will spur more companies into investigating the direct response space as the economy continues to stumble around like a stoned hippy at a Grateful Dead show.
Thunderbird’s Affiliate Program
Mozilla is best known for Firefox, but for fans of open source, sanity and alternatives to Outlook (or Evolution on Ubuntu), Thunderbird is a popular choice.
And now Thunderbird has an affiliate program to spread the good word (although you get points and pride, not cash… so it’s more for the fanboi’s than the serious affiliate business person).
Affiliates Home | Mozilla Thunderbird – Reclaim Your Inbox | Mozilla Thunderbird – Reclaim Your Inbox: “SpreadThunderbird offers a simple affiliates program (Beta) that enables members to support Thunderbird and earn fame and prizes.
SpreadThunderbird’s Affiliate Program is not the only program to help drive Thunderbird downloads.
We’re also interested in seeing more of these kinds of affiliate programs and if you’re interested in starting a similar program, please contact us”
I’m glad to see something like this, even if it is geared towards the diehards and fans.
I’ve been an off and on user of Thunderbird over the past few years and it is a viable competitor to Apple Mail or Outlook. While it doesn’t have native support on these platforms, the features often outweigh those costs.
Southern Baptists Show Us the Door
The Baptist State Convention is this week and it looks like the Southern Baptists have moved to put up more walls along with border with us Cooperative Baptists.
As a member of the CBF, I don’t have a problem with not finding approval from my more conservative Baptist kinfolk, but it is a shame that we can’t find common ground over the cacophony of politics.
I’m sure Jesus is proud.
NC So. Baptists cut ties with Coop. Baptist Fellowship | CITIZEN-TIMES.com | Asheville Citizen-Times: “The Greensboro News & Record reports that delegates to the 2008 Baptist State Convention in Greensboro have voted to remove the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship from a list of giving options for mission work.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was established as an alternative to the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. The group does not support the belief that the Bible is entirely without error, and the cooperative is willing to partner with churches that put gays into leadership roles.
Matt Williamson, pastor of Oak Forest Baptist Church in Fletcher, offered the proposal and said liberal theology will lead to liberal morality.
Remind me to not go to Oak Forest since I’ll infect them with my “liberal morality.”
Amazon Updates Deals Widgets
Amazon continues to make interesting and noteworthy improvements to its associates program. I wrote off the ability make any money with Amazon a few years back because of my own lack of success with their offerings on my affiliate sites.
However, I’ve been using Amazon more and more with great results on click-thru’s. They have so many options for affiliates and publishers (esp in niche categories that aren’t serviced well by traditional affiliate networks (which is a funny term to use since Amazon had an early affiliates program…but I digress).
If you haven’t given Amazon a shot in a while, you might want to reconsider.
Here’s an email sent out to associates/publishers this morning with details on new Deals widgets:
Dear Amazon Associate:
As you’re gearing up for the holiday season, don’t miss out on the new and improved Deals Widget. Now you can display the hottest deals from Amazon on your web page. The Deals Widget lets your users browse discounted items and ongoing promotions from the Amazon.com product category of your choice.
The new widget lets you display the deals most relevant to your website to improve customer retention and conversion.
Deals by Category
You can now configure the widget to display discounted items and promotions from any Amazon.com category of your choice! Simply use the drop down to select a specific category and we’ll keep the widget updated with the latest deals from that category. Remember that your viewers are more likely to click through a widget when the deals are relevant to the theme and topic of your site. You can now use the ‘Deals by Category’ feature to place relevant Amazon deals throughout your site.
Gold Box Deals
You can continue to display Gold Box deals using the Deals Widget. Gold Box deals are limited quantity offers that run for a specified time. The Gold Box deals widget lets your viewers browse through the latest Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and Our Best Deals.
Multiple Sizes
The Deals Widget is available in a variety of standard sizes and can be placed anywhere on your site. Available sizes include: Sidebar (120×400, 160×400), Large (250×250, 300×250, 336×280) and Banner (468×60, 728×90).
Create a Deals Widget in just a few clicks. If you want to display a list of handpicked products, be sure to try out the My Favorites, Carousel, and Slideshow widgets.
If you have any questions or feedback on this feature or the Associates Program, please contact us via the contact form. We want to hear from you!
Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program
Early Gospel of John Fragment Could Be Yours!
… for the low low price of 200,000-300,000 GBP.
Early third century, folks. That’s early. And beyond important for the history of Christianity and understanding how the fourth gospel got to be in its “final” state and what that process might have included (and excluded).
If only I were rich, this would be a part of the Wofford collection…
Written almost certainly in Alexandria, and used in the important early Christian community at Oxyrhynchus, in the desert west of the Nile about 120 miles from Cairo, partly covered now by the modern village of Behnesa. Ancient Oxyrhynchus was principally discovered Bernard Grenfell (1869-1926) and Arthur Hunt (1871-1934), both of Queen’s College, Oxford, who devoted their lives to excavating it. The site furnished many of the finest and most precious records of early Christianity ever found, including the sensational ‘Sayings of Jesus’ (later known as the ‘Gospel of Thomas’), as well as notable classical texts, including Pindar and Menander. The present fragment was recovered by Grenfell and Hunt on 28 September 1922, and it was classified as P. Oxy. 1780. Most of the Oxyrhynchus finds are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the British Museum. Some specimen pieces, however, were transferred by Oxford University to appropriate theological seminaries and colleges elsewhere, including the present piece which had been given by 1924 to the Baptist college, Crozer Theological Seminary, founded near Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1865. It was later the alma mater of Martin Luther King. In 1980 Crozer merged with the ecumenical Colgate Theological Seminary in Rochester, New York. The present manuscript was Inv. 8864 in the Ambrose Swasey Library in the combined Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, until their sale in our New York rooms, 20 June 2003, lot 97, $400,000, bought then by the present owner for what is still by far the highest price ever paid at public sale for any early Christian manuscript. Since 2004 it has toured American museums in the exhibitions Dead Sea Scrolls to the Forbidden Book and Ink and Blood, where it has been seen by hundred of thousands of people. The bibliography below takes no account of the manuscript’s truly enormous presence now on Christian websites, DVDs and published videos.
GOSPEL OF JOHN, IN GREEK, LARGE FRAGMENT FROM A MANUSCRIPT CODEX ON PAPYRUS