In the future (generic, I know), the bulk of affiliate marketing will be driven by mobile devices and mobile transactions. Start building for that.
Google Makes Blackberry’s Usable (and Enjoyable)
I admit it. I still have a Blackberry instead of an iPhone. And I love my Blackberry (and so does my 1 year old daughter). It doesn’t help that I’ve sold my soul to Verizon and AT&T has poor coverage in this area of Western North Carolina. I have an iTouch, so don’t take away my geek cred.
However, things such as Google Sync and the GMail app make having a Blackberry beyond bearable and actually enjoyable. The ability to sync Google Calendar with my Blackberry’s Calendar over the air is tremendous.
And now there is an impressive new update to Google Sync that also allows you to sync your Blackberry’s contact manager with your GMail contacts. Sweetness:
Official Google Mobile Blog: Google Sync for BlackBerry: Now with contacts: “You asked for it, so here it is. We’re happy to announce that in the latest update to Google Sync for BlackBerry, we’ve added two-way contacts synchronization. This new functionality will enable you to sync your handheld’s built-in address book with your Gmail contacts. This all happens in the background and over the air, so your information is always up to date, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.”
Now I can sync my calendar, contacts, mail and to do list (via Remember The Milk’s awesome RSync Blackberry app) over the air. Not to mention I can check Google Docs, Google Reader and Evernote all from my device.
All of a sudden my Blackberry just became a complete cloud computer.
Messianic Ethics?
John Howard Yoder’s still influential The Politics of Jesus
continues to evoke responses from a variety of angles within the large umbrella of “religious studies.”
While I’m most familiar with the historical responses to Yoder, here is an interesting piece on the possible ethical implications of Yoder’s work on politics and early followers of Jesus (and Jesus himself):
(Thanks to my advisor/teacher/mentor/friend/provacateur Prof Goodman for sending over…)
Is a Messianic Ethic Possible: Recent Work By and About John Howard Yoder http://documents.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=4617204&access_key=key-2a430n4jkgsokb4zegf3&page=1&version=1&viewMode=
Is a Messianic Ethic Possible: Recent Work By and About John Howard Yoder
Testing Out Mobile Posting
Apologies for the test, but I’d like to see how well this WordPress app for the iPhone works on my Touch and with this site.
This will be quite nifty for on the fly posts!
So far so good.
iPhone and Touch Apps for Parents
I’ve been doing lots of daddy day care for my 1 year old daughter this week, so this a topic definitely on my mind…
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): “Baby Monitor Did you forget to bring Jr.’s monitor to Grandma’s house? Put your iPhone next to his crib and launch Baby Monitor. When he starts to wail like a banshee, Baby Monitor calls a pre-determined number, like Grandma’s landline. Baby Monitor costs $0.99US.”
Nifty!
Yahoo Profile Fail
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.