Google Adsense…

Lately I have been doing a lot of reading, researching, and even a little experimenting with a certain Google product/service called Google Adsense.

For those of you who’ve never heard of it, it is essentially an advertising program and combined with it’s other half, adwords, and Google’s ever popular search engine, they form the perfect TRIFECTA. It is, in my humble opinion, the perfect business model and absolutely ingenious.

To try an explain in pure layman’s terms would be very tedious so I will craft a fictional scenario that will paint a picture for you of the TRIFECTA! Here goes:

Austin, is a web publisher, he runs a website for the purpose of spreading a message that he cares deeply about, say, the preservation of the American comic book as part of American culture. He pays for a server and hosts his files and images and writes articles and updates his page. He has a following of people who agree wholeheartedly with his cause, as well as thousands of people who stumble upon the site from searching for words like Comics, or Marvel or DC. Unfornately, however, Austin is running out of money and as much as he cares for the topic, he cant afford the server costs of xx a month.

Jerry, is an avid comic book collector who owns his own comic store in Florida. He does pretty well there and he’s got a good base of customers. However, he’s a business man at heart and he knows he’s not going to get rich doing this, and all the overhead of inventory and fluctuating demand on comic books is often leaving him with excess inventory of comics and other collectibles. He wants to sell it all so he can expand his store and maybe even start a chain.

Google, is a multi-billion dollar company that runs one of the highest volume (traffic volume that is) search engines in the world. And in case you didn’t notice, search engines are what everyone uses to navigate the madness we call the internet.

And FINALLY You, are just a person, browsing the web, looking for stuff that interests you and in this case you are one of the millions of people that like comics.

Lets see how it goes down.

Austin and Jerry, through Googles efforts in marketing both hear about Adsense and adwords respectively. Austin, a web publisher goes with adsense since he has a website that gets traffic. Jerry goes with adwords since he wants to start a website to sell his excess inventory and such but has no experience with online marketing and has no idea on how to get traffic to his site. How can he sell if no one knows about his page?

Moments pass… Jerry now has a rudimentary website up and running and has bought the following keywords though adwords, comics, Marvel, DC, Spider-Man, wolverine, and other such keywords.  Austin, whos website is already getting traffic for people searching those terms will place adsense ads on his webpage. This means that austins webpage now has advertisements on it. Not annoying flashy ones you see in places like myspace and such though. They are just plain text, they are informative and they fit in with the rest of the site. All done.

Now whenever people search for any of those keywords, marvel, dc, comics, wolverine, spider-man, they will get austin’s page, and upon going in there see Jerry’s ads, and maybe if they are interested, click on it, jerry pays google XX cents for each visitor this way and google pays austin xx-x cents for each person austins page sends to jerrys page. With thousands of visitors austins making hundreds of dollars, googles making a few bucks (but hey they’ve got millions of people making a few bucks for them), and jerry’s paying hundreds of dollars; but selling thousands of comics!

It sure sounds like everyone benefits huh? Yes its true, they all do. All three of them, or should I say, all TRI of them.

Thank you.

What’s New with Tech I care about!

I read a ton of tech blogs and articles on this sort of stuff so there is a ton of raw info that goes through my eyes, my brain and eventually out of me from either my mouth or poop. Every so often, in the crazy mist of information that is available there is something that really sticks out, at which point I feel very inclined to go out and share those bits of info to the world and to my friends who may also be interested but not interested in spending all day on the computer reading blogs like a straight up nerd!!!Anyways, its no mystery to anyone that I am a big lover of Google as well as Microsoft and their Xbox 360. Here goes!

What is new with Google? Well, a big thing thats been going on lately is the deal that they’ve struck with mySpace. To be slightly more specific, they have struck an advertising deal with Myspace. Now, for those of you who dont know, MySpace is one of the world’s biggest giants in terms of web traffic. In fact there is not a single doubt that they are in the top 5 and at some points have even been number 1 in terms of most visits per day/week/month, whatever. However, for any use who’s ever used myspace, you probably know that it is burdened with the same trouble that comes from a site that seemed to grow too fast. Updating your myspace code or changing your layout is an enormous mess of CSS and HTML that even experienced coders can have a ton of trouble with. As a result they have some trouble reaching their full earning potential through advertising because of the unstable, unorganized and sometimes plain difficult to use nature of myspace. Google has just sign a 900,000,000 thats Nine hundred million dollar advertising campaign with Myspace so now you can expect to find Google text and banner ads on myspace instead of those %^&*&^% games and flashy bs thats currently on myspace. Who knows, maybe this can turn into something more long term and google can help myspace become a better internet service.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft has come out with a free developers kit so individual people all over the entire world can create their own microsoft windows capable xbox 360 and windows games! What is the signifance of this? Well, if you have ever played the game Geometry wars or any of the other excellent (most of the time) games on Xbox Live arcade, and have done a little reading on this strange phenomena, then you know where this heading. For those of you who are in the dark. Please! Let me fill you in. With the advent of the next generation consoles coupled with the ever rising rate of piracy in the world, many large game developers have discovered that creating games is a huge risk. Gone are the days where one can create any kind of fun game and have it sell hundreds and thousands and make millions. Now are the days where million dollar budgets, hollywood voice actors, blockbuster movie are “required” in the name of gaming. Halos, and grand theft autos, metal gear solids, marios are practicaly a prerequisite in the title for a game to be successful. Millions are spent on testing and marketing and in a lot of cases, that may not even be enough. the player experience has changed too a major time investment is required for many games nowadays. The storylines are so thick and the plot twists are plentiful. For the producers, the sound effects and the textures need to be spot on, everything can be perfect and a voice actor can destroy the feel of a game, perfection practically needs to be achieved with console games because you can’t exactly release patches all the time either. The point is money is flowing fast and piracy is not helping. Game producers are finding it way too expensive to make games and put all their eggs in a basket. Now they are diversifying. Have a few programmers work on some simple games like geometry wars and mini games or even old arcade classics. Sell them through xbox live arcade at practically no risk and zero risk of piracy! What does this mean? Players can invest less time to get a fun experience while still playing a next gen console, producers can create cool, quirky, zany games at little risk and potentially a great return. Retro games make a comeback. All is well. Dont believe it? Well dont be stupid. Sony and Nintendo have already released news that suggests they are going to offer pretty much the same thing that microsoft is. Nintendo has thousands of games under its belt it could bring back and sony, well theyll figure something out. And now everyday people can create games too! Who can blame sony and nintendo for copying microsoft on this note? Shoot, microsoft is always playing the copy and improve game anyway! Cheers to whoever can do it better and may the consumer always come out the winner.

More in Microsoft Land: Vista

I got ahold of a beta copy of Vista and I installed it on my sisters computer. I gotta say that I am damn impressed with how well it works and everything. Motherboard drivers are instantly and easily installable post OS installation using the internet. Everything feels really automated and yet not to the level where you feel like they are babying you. Also, all the new “aero” effects are totally kick ass. I think its definitely got a really polished feel to it in terms of user experience. It’s really hard to put an exact finger on what it is that makes me feel different as a user but suffice it to say that I feel “smooth” using the new interface with the cool minimizing and the cool new alt tab and the cool new window 3d thing. IE 7 is something I’m pretty impressed with too. I can’t say that i’ve spent a terribly long amount of time using it or anything like that but it feels like they cut out a lot of the random buttons and other crap that used to litter the IE window. Also I didnt run for a firefox installation within the first 20 minutes of using the new IE which is also saying something! Great job MS. I can’t wait to use the final version! Ultimate of course

Rhapsody:

What’s new and exciting here? Well, what isn’t? Rhapsody, for those of you who dont know, is a sweet music service that for people who tend to buy over a handful of songs a month is a very worthy investment. For the price of under a CD or 10 ish tracks on itunes, anyone can have full access to over a million songs that they can burn or throw on their ipods or whatever. All the songs are “added” to your library but don’t actually take up any space on your computer. Get with the times people. Over 50 % of America is now on broadband. Isn’t it about time we stop using up all our precious storage space for thousands of cluttered files that we download from all but the sketchiest depths of the internet? The answer is yes. Yes it is time. Time for Rhapsody! Basically, you stream songs from the internet, and due to their small size, its possible to stream them at very high quality while not at all affecting your browsing speed or anything. What’s cool about Rhapsody is also that they have a really active developer community it seems. A lot of companies are often making little modules or mashups that take advantage of their cool system of music distribution. Theres a couple google desktop ones. Theres some MS space ones. Theres myspace ones…. Theres just a lot of cool stuff that you can do with Rhapsody and their dedication to RSS feeds. One of my favorite ones is the dedicate a song thing. You can dedicate a song to anyone with an email address and when they open their email and click on the link they get taken to the Rhapsody page where it plays them the song that you chose right through this mini browser player. Its tight.

Anyways, thats about it for these technological babbles . Until next time buddies.

What’s been goin on lately

Hey there. I havent posted for a few weeks now! Well here I am!!!

30 mile bike ride – I went on a 30 mile bike ride with the lovely Vy Duong yesterday. It was pretty damn tiring. We left at about 10 am from her house and rode up and behind her house to the 520 freeway which we followed alongside to Marymoor park. From Marymoor we rode along the Sammamish river trail alll the way past woodinville. We stopped somewhere around there to grab a bite to eat from Qdoba, which is suprisingly good! On the way back we rode up these steep hills. I nearly died…. Vy was just fine. that SMILER!!!!!

It’s actually really cool. We kind of unofficially started having sundays be exercise days but instead of just running at the IMA or something we usually do something cool like hiking different mountains or go bike riding. I’m starting to really see how out of shape i’ve been for the last couple years as I get out of breath so easy! Luckily I’m doing this lol. We’re not sure yet what we’re going to do for the next couple weeks yet and I would kind of like to keep it that way to prevent it from being too planned out, like the rest of my current lifestyle seems. But I am hoping that we eventually get to do some rock climbing and maybe some cayaking or canoeing. I am extremely excited because Vy always gets even more excited than me!

Vy and I went to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse together for the first time the other day (the one in Bellevue Square) We ordered the porterhouse steak for 2. Now, I’m not some sort of food critic or expert on steaks or anything but I gotta say… “Ruth’s Chris makes one helluva steak”. It was so good that the second day I ate the leftovers, which had been sitting, unrefridgerated, in my car, which had been sitting in the sun, with my BARE HANDS!!! So in case by some random fluke of reality anyone is reading this is one some sort of cosmic limbo in deciding whether or not they should ever try Ruth’s Chris, you should go. Its good. =)

I read that Microsoft will be releasing one new Live Arcade game on the 360 every week from this wedsday with street fighter until the end of the year. Good work MS. You make me glad I bought a 360. Speaking of games, August will be an amazing month in terms of video games for the 360. Dead Rising, 99 Nights, Saints Row, Enchanted Arms! If i had the cash I would by all of these. We’ll see i guess!!!! I’ll do a later post on some of these games I’m excited for and some basic info about them. Until then, know that those are the good ones. Anyone who wants to go next gen in gaming should get a 360. Each news release I hear about the other next genners makes me happier and happier that I went with the 360.

Interesting Tidbit. Recent studies conducted on the internal Microsoft network reveals that 80% of all searches run by Microsoft employees are through google. Maybe try winning over your own employees first Bill! Also, vista is gonna be awesome.

Google’s Many services

As you may or may not know ( most likely not ), I am a huge fan of Google. I admire the company, its goals, its visions, and its structure very much so. In this post I am going to do a little bit of a review of some of what I feel are Google's best products for the average person. I do this to express how much I like Google, but also in hopes that you may find their services and products as useful as I do in my everday Life.  Of course, each of these things are already rampantly popular, but there are still a lot of people out there who don't really know what google is all about other than their search features.

 Google – To shorten and summarize, googles business model is as follows: Unify, organize, and make readily available the world's vast amount of information and to do so while doing no harm.

 

 Major Products:

Search – Obviously, Google's main thing is search. Google does indeed do this very well as their search engine is ranked number one in the entire world. By using a revolutionary way of organizing results by way of backlinks to measure relevance, Google nearly overnight became the most used search engine of the world. 

Gmail – One of my favorite of Google's offerings is Gmail. Gmail started off by giving all of it's users 1 GIGABYTE of storage to store emails. Compared to 2mb and 10mb from hotmail and yahoo mail, 1024 mb of storage began to blow competition out of the water. When these competitors started offering similar 1 gb to 2 gb, Google once again underpromised and overdelivered by upping the limit to infinite storage. Of course not all at once obviously. Currently , users of gmail can store up to over 2.7 gb of email and files. Plus, you never have to delete emails and there is a built in chat function embedded in the browser whenever you chat.

Google Desktop – Google desktop is application that is installed onto your hard drive that makes it much easier and faster to search for files on your local computer. This is handy because the built in search with the microsoft puppy is, despite the puppy, absolutely terrible. In addition, if you so choose, its possible to have the desktop bar take up a portion of your desktop and actually give you live useful stats like emails, weather, stocks, maps, pictures and pretty much anything you can think of thanks to the easy to adapt interface. Like Konfobulator or many other widget applications that have recently become so popular, the side bar has thousands of user developed widgets or modules you can install. Highly recommended.

 

Google Maps – This is googles map program to compete with stuff like Yahoo maps and Mapquest. I've spent a lot of time using each of these throughout the years and in my humble opinion, Google Maps is superior by far. Not only are the maps simplified to the perfect amount of detail but you can also search any listing for stores and restaurants and homes right in the google search bar to find a number of addresses and directly click them to display on the map as opposed to copy pasting the addresses. EVEN BETTER than that is the ability to show the real time view, road view or hybrid to super impose streets and such into a satellite image of the area you are viewing. Just amazing. great for directions and cool for browing too. If you like this then you should definitely check out Google Earth. It is the same thing except rendered in 3d and you can zoom smoothly and see buildings in 3d. Amazing.

Google Calendar – Google calendar is somewhat of a new thing but nevertheless I must express my love for this service. Google Calender is much like Outlook where you can plan and schedule your days hour by hour. I am a busy guy and Calendar helps me out a lot to remember my work shifts, my appointments and even birthdays. The interface is very intuitive and easy to use and continue using. It is directly linked into Gmail so if you use both then they work with eachother (if you recieve an email with a date in it, you can have the option to directly add that into your calendar). The best part about this though is the fact that it is all online. This makes everything much easier for those of you who do not own a laptop or PDA as you can access everything related to your schedule in one easy place. And of course, in the spirit of non stop praise… Calendar allows you and your friends,spouse,coworkers to share calendars so that you can skip the whole "Are you available this day?" section and directly see if they are available. One more thing, each person can have several calendars each being a different color so say you want to seperate your work calendar and your personal dates calendar, Google Calendar makes it simple.

Google Spreadsheets – I havent been using this much yet but it is definitely one to look out for. Google Spreadsheets is one of the first steps in what appears to be an Online Free office suite that Google is trying to provide. Spreadsheets is much more simple than excel but sometimes for managing important data that may not be a good thing. Still, it does allow you to view and access your spreadsheets from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection as well as to share your spreadsheets with others. Definitely keep an eye out for this one.

Google Notebook – This is exactly what it sounds like. You browse the internet for say a school project. Everything you see you can note and save in a built in notebook and save it and take it wherever. I've never used this yet but that doesnt mean im not eager to try it out!!!!!

Google Reader – Store all your RSS feeds in one place. That way you dont have to go to a bunch of different websites to keep up with the times~!

Well Gang, its been a lot of fun and games but now its time to close our special time talking about google. Thanks a lot for letting me rant about how cool they are.

Im Currently Listening to = Never Let You Go by Third Eye Blind