Fri, 2008-May-30 by nmw.

I’ve launched a blogging Network

Who cares? Well: You should! This is an experiment concerning relevance! This is not just: enter your pesonal data here, and then we’ll sell it to a bunch of advertisers — this is about CONVERSATION: so come on and join together with the band! (go to Help-Find.ORG/Chart :D )

BTW:

Esther Dyson also gets it!!

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Sun, 2008-May-25 by nmw.

Hi Folks!

I recently checked my server logs and was totally amazed that people actually seem to be reading what I write. So now do I have to apologize that I haven’t written anything in the past couple days? Well, for me: nothing much has happened. That’s in part because I am currently working on a MAJOR project (I’ll tell you more about it when it reaches something close to “alpha” ;)…

Breaking News!

Gasoline prices are up! This totally surprised me! ;D Well, so what does this have to do with Google’s share of “web search engine” traffic? I wouldn’t have thought “very much” — until I listened to the “daily tech news podcast” from CNet’s News.COM for Thursday, 22 May 2008. Although the news casters did not make the link between the two stories, it was quite funny to listen to the top story about search engines for gasoline prices and then a minute or two later hear the latest statistics (from ComScore) regarding “web search” properties. Since the pie chart displayed only 5 “web search” providers, the gasoline price search engines reported at the top of the news were apparently overlooked by comscore.

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Sun, 2008-May-18 by nmw.

Definitions of Advertising Formats

This is an interesting portion of the “IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report” (2007 Full-Year Results, May 2008). Note that the advertising format named “Digital Video” was not observed in 2006 — is this a new category?

What is Search?

If I go to hotels.com to search for a hotel, are the ads I see during that process included in the IAB’s “search advertising” format? Note the four subcategories of “search advertising” named in the IAB report (page 16 of the PDF):

Search—fees advertisers pay Internet companies to list and/or link their company site domain name to a specific search word or phrase (includes paid search revenues). Search categories include:

• Paid listings—text links appear at the top or side of search results for specific keywords. The more a marketer pays, the higher the position it gets. Marketers only pay when a user clicks on the text link.
• Contextual search—text links appear in an article based on the context of the content, instead of a user-submitted keyword. Payment only occurs when the link is clicked.
• Paid inclusion—guarantees that a marketer’s URL is indexed by a search engine. The listing is determined by the engine’s search algorithms.
• Site optimization—modifies a site to make it easier for search engines to automatically index the site and hopefully result in better placement in results.

Also, how does the IAB collect data on the amount spent for “site optimization”? Is using wordpress a “site optimization” expenditure? Why or why not?

While I’m busy asking questions, how is it that classified ads are not categorized as “search advertising”? Indeed, IMHO, the entire advertising expenditure on the Internet could be considered to be search advertising. For example: when I look at the homepage of the New York Times, I scan the page — is that not also a form of “search”?

And what about the New York Times search? Is that counted as search advertising or not? What about the search box on this blog (which is, BTW, not provided by Google)?

I feel this report raises more questions than it answers.

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Fri, 2008-May-16 by nmw.

I call that a bargain — the best I ever had!

Let’s go to the video tape:

What is CBS getting here?

Like, DUH! Why even talk with someone who cannot comprehend the Internet?!?

Reducing Overhead / Staff

No brainer.

Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0

Huge misunderstanding by reporters who do not understand the Wisdom of the Language.

Hot Blogs?

This is obviously something someone who still believes that Google is a hot search engine might say — totally useless….

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Thu, 2008-May-15 by nmw.

Censorship?

I was shocked to find that Mark Cuban has removed my comment from his blog post — and he has given no reason for the censorship. Please take a look at my comment and see if you can find anything wrong with it (and please tell me what you think it might be).

Here’s the full comment in question (please advise):

The English language is currently the strongest brand — at least in the United States (but also in many other parts of the word — some more than others)…

That’s it!

What could be wrong with that statement?

Thanks for your help!

ps/btw: I do not wish to link to a blog whose editor will censor remarks this way — so here is a copy of the post.

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Thu, 2008-May-15 by nmw.

How about: Hello!

You say yes! So do I! Why, why, why, why… — are we engaged?!?

Will You Visit Me?

Please come over to my place and visit: My address is…

Is typing in an address engagement? Or does engagement need a button or a link — or maybe even some strings attached? Please: Have a cookie! :D

Make yourself at home! Do you like the new wallpaper? I got it at…

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Wed, 2008-May-14 by nmw.

Somewhere, Over the Rainbow — Way Up High…

There’s a Monopoly I Heard of Once in a Lullabye: What was it’s name — Google or Microsoft?

Have My Love — It Fits You Like a Glove…

So what’s “in the cloud”? Is the cloud monopoly territory? Or is it a space where “users” come and go as they please? Where is the cloud anyways? Can someone show me where I can go to find this cloud — or is the cloud actually a mirage?

Please help me to understand this better! (and “hat’s off” to Judy Garland and George Harrison ;) )

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Mon, 2008-May-12 by nmw.

Following up on the previous post’s spam theme, I’ve just now posted the following to battellmedia.com (minor edits here for “readability”; I expect it will show up there shortly if/when it’s approved [I added some links — that usually seems to trip spam filters]):

Perhaps the interest in twitter comes from a community that has become aware that Google is no longer a useful resource for information retrieval. Since the other generic search engines are virtually identical clones, they aren’t exactly viable alternatives (though perhaps they are not quite as heavy-handed in censorship — at least if you go by the results for “miserable failure”).

I wonder how twitter would deal with a similar issue: What if someone started to breathe down *their* necks? And besides that: What is their revenue model? What about http://twitter.com/nmw/statuses/803723299 ?

I blogged about twitter in two installments about 10 days ago (here’s the first).

In all, I think the move to twitter.com or digg.com or similar “social” applications is most of all a move away from google (and similar “one-size fits-all” models) (and in that vein: the fact that digg.com is apparently aiming to be for “all” news does not really bode well for it’s future — I think they are biting off more than they can chew if the choose to go in that direction [and the same would hold for other social applications that are likewise insufficiently “community aware”]).

With the increasing amount of noise on twitter, I feel that it will — as with similar social applications (not just digg.com but even more so e.g. myspace.com, facebook.com, — and hundreds if not thousands like them) — ultimately become a superfluous bowl of soup that runneth over with meaningless nonsense and/or opinions about trivial pursuits.

I think one of the momentous events of the last year was the hotly debated launch of registrant search (see Jay’s blog post). Once spammers begin to realize that their spam tactics can be revealed (I guess if the whois data is invalid, then the registrations would be cancelled), they will think twice about using fraudulent behavior.

Honest people are becoming more and more willing to embrace transparency — and that is a world in which secrecy and/or secret formulas are simply old-fashioned and irrelevant: A transparent formula made Google popular, a secret formula will probably do it in.

Ultimately, the level playing field will be the most effective method: I know that you are battellemedia.com, and you know that I am nmw.info (or you could figure it out with registrant search). Since information “wants to be free” (or at least very cheap), such data will be traded according to market forces until profits approach zero.

I do not doubt that the demise of one-size fits-all search engines will ultimately improve the search experience of the wider public searching for information. Do I, personally, need to perform a registrant search on the domains of the many millions of hotel websites that exist? No — but perhaps it might be in the interest of hotels.com to do so. After all, selling viagra on hotels.com should be ruled out (well: I think it should ;D)….

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Sun, 2008-May-11 by nmw.

How to Get Rich Quick Using Only Your Brand Name

Hormel Foods must be having a ball — they’re the top result on Google.COM for “Spam”! :D

WTF is “Spam”? How to define “Spam” & Top Spam Definitions

I think there is little agreement on the definition of “spam”. There are many definitions, but spam is quite often confused with computer viruses, ad-ware and/or spy-ware. AFAIK, spam has nothing to do with this, but people quite often think, for example that anti-virus programs are suitable to stop / block spam. This is nonsense.

Spam is a Value Judgement

On the most basic level, “Spam” is simply a value judgement — it is the label used for “junk” that I didn’t ask for and that I don’t want to see.

Spam Filter Algorithms

How does anyone know that I don’t want life insurance? Maybe I might be interested in Viagra(?), or perhaps I might want to learn about a way to make money fast? Who knows?

An interesting case happened recently at revision3.com: the entire .INFO “top level domain” (TLD) was declared as “spam”.

According to that algorithm, you are now reading spam!

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Fri, 2008-May-9 by nmw.

Yesterday…

I commented recently on wigix.com. I still have plenty more to say about it. But at first blush it seems to be an interesting idea that simply needs to be hammered into shape… (more later).

Shopping Was Never Like this

OK, so now Paul can tell me to “press“! ;D

This is simply about creating easy-to-use navigational tools for navigating directly to top web sites without a lot of fuss.

Bargains.AT is very bare bones at present, but will be continuously developed over the coming weeks. I look forward to receiving feedback and input from developer (and I also welcome co-development :).

The current state of the project is posted at http://gaggle.info/project/at/bargains.

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