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Ads online…almost
For the past few weeks, the Adgator folks have tracked visits to this website using some embedded code. Their dashboard is already tallying all the page impressions and today, we should be ready to serve the first real advertisments.
The average number of daily visits is around about 500 and a few, adding up to about 18000 or so per month. That’s not bad and will hopefully increase over time. I’ve no idea yet as to what kind of ads will appear instead of the default Adgator banners. I do trust the selected companies will have been vetted and targeted at the appropriate audience. If I see one Viagra ad, I’ll turn the Adgator off 
Here are some stats for the past four months:
Thanks again for visiting!
Update: so I jumped the gun a bit. The ads will be served up shortly…
The Adgator’s comin’
Advertising was not the idea when I started this blog. The idea of monetizing my drivel didn’t occur to me until I received a rather interesting mail from the team behind Afrigator a few days ago. Their new initiative is named Adgator and is a means of serving advertisements to participating web sites.
This blog has been accepted into the Adgator network as have, without doubt, tons of others. For the next two weeks or so, nothing much will change. There is some tracking code in here that indicates hit rates and the like to the Adgator team. Based on that information, I will dedicate certain areas on the page to adverts. Seamlessly, they shall appear, hopefully not to annoy.
My decision is based on a very interesting paradigm that I have known about but have never considered applicable: virtually all visits to this site originate from a search. The number of visits that land here directly are in the absolute minority. I’m thankful for those, of course. You are the die-hards. But the fact of the matter is that everyone else lands here searching for GRUB Error 17 or Alien Lego. The library of content I’ve been building up is starting to pay off in the increase in daily unique and overall visits. At present, those numbers are starting to exceed 600, which is not too bad.
In that respect, FEEDJIT has also been an eye-opener. It displays visits to the site in real time. Proof of the search paradigm that rules the web couldn’t be any clearer.
The Adgator offer is attractive: instead of relying on the visitor to click on an advert or link, payments are made based on page impressions. If the numbers work out, this blog could be returning some decent pocketmoney and pay for itself without any problem.
As regular visitors, you may be irked by the ads. I apologize. If you’re a Firefox user, try this.
Google takes on Wikipedia
Google has always been an innovator. In the recent months it seems that their entrepreneurial flair is fading, however. Lively is a Second Life clone. Knol, launched yesterday, looks like another Wikipedia.
According to Google, a Knol is a unit of knowledge. But the basic premise of the service (once again in beta) seems to be the same as Wikipedia. Contributors create and maintain entries. The entries provide an overview of a term or concept, and collaboration is the name of the game. So far, Knol has authoritative articles ranging from the dubiously useful (How to backpack) to the bizarre (Chicago hot dogs). Content, and lots of it, will be the only means of making this site successful. And of course, the quality and authenticity of that information is even more important.
Competition is good, I guess. How well Knol will stack up against Wikipedia remains to be seen. Hopefully, Google isn’t falling too deeply into the trap of copying existing concepts. Their strength has always been innovation.
Nokia to open South African Music Store
Nokia is trying to steal the march on Apple‘s recent introduction of the iTunes App Store in preparation for the iPhone 3G rollout. The South African iTunes store provides only applications, with no sign of any content being prepared for our market anytime soon. Nokia has indicated that a localized Music Store will be launched at the beginning of next year.
In order for them to be able to launch their online store, Nokia will have had to make sure all the necessary paperwork is in place to permit music to be sold online. That means the larger record labels will probably be involved. A positive note, to be sure. For too long, there’s been little choice for consumers. This move may also open the door for the likes of Apple.
The biggest issue will probably be the DRM that Nokia seems intent on shipping with each downloaded file. From the early reports I’ve seen, it seems as though there is no chance the user has to copy the file to anything other than a Nokia phone. Even worse, Nokia insists on customers using Internet Explorer. That’s not good news for lovers of open source. There are always means of getting around DRM: burn to a CD and rip again, though that is also crazy if one has already paid for something.
There’s is no direct indication of price per track, though international music stores sell a track for approximately GBP 0.80 each. That’s about ZAR 11.70. (I can’t check the precise amount because I run Firefox). Too much, in my opinion. Give me a track at ZAR 6 and we have a deal: I’m saving you the cost of printing, packaging and distributing.
The Nokia Music Store could have been a revolution for South Africans starved of decent online media content options. Unfortunately, it looks like a waste of time before it’s even been launched…
The tagline for Nokia Music should read: Nokia Music: Our Music. Our Way.
BrowserSync goes open source
In a move that will keep the great Google BrowserSync application for Firefox alive, it has been announced that the further development of that great extension as been handed over to the public domain. From now on, development will take place within the Google Code-plex. A pity that this wasn’t done many months ago when the decision to stop development was taken at Google.The link to the open source BrowserSync can be found here.
I’ve pretty much switched all my systems over to Foxmarks, which I consider extremely reliable and unintrusive. With Foxmarks, multiple browser bookmarks can be synchronized and the synchronized bookmarks may be accessed online.
There is additional development planned to provide synchronization of various other browser settings. Since I’ve had to switch over to an alternative, it’s unlikely that I’ll use BrowserSync again. But at least, it’s good to know that the extension will still live on…
Look Lively, now
Another product from the Google Beta Labs cooker is Google Lively, a potential Second Life wannabe. Effectively, Lively is a social interaction platform where members select avatars and create rooms in various locations containing pieces of furniture. Then, they may log onto Lively, select a room and start chatting and interacting.
To start with Lively, a download of a 470KB file is required. It is installed to the Windows Start Menu and launches your default web browser to run in. If you have a Google account, there’s no need to register: simply log on and get lively
The default avatar is not to my liking, but the overall environment and interaction with it is pretty straightforward. Drag and click, you know the drill. Settings may be changed and various items selected from the available items in the dialog box on the right-hand side.
The items may be moved and placed as desired. Some items respond to double-clicks and perform an action. As I mentioned, I’m no big fan of the default avatar. Or was that simply selected at random for me?
The avatar can be changed of course. As can many other elements. Then, I guess the next thing is to start chatting to someone. Somewhere.
Second Life couldn’t hold my attention for too long, so I doubt that Lively will be able to top the 30 minutes I spent in that environment. Still, these social interaction platforms may be useful in the future. Developers will probably create a number of interesting objects that will expend the usability and appeal, but I still think a plain GTalk window is a lot more efficient…
Try Lively out and let me know what you think.
Getting the un-gettable
I’m not talking about Calculus. This is a bit of hacking for everyman.
Of course there are occasions when you may be tempted to Save As… some embedded content you quite like on a web page. With many Flash animations and movies that is not as simple as right-clicking in the browser and saving the source. Of course, there is always, or usually, a way around that. Let’s take the example of a movie trailer from io9.
Before you continue: content on web pages may be copyrighted and may possibly have terms of use associated with it. Use your own judgement. Do you really need to keep all that stuff in any case? How often do you need to view that trailer?
Right-clicking the embedded content has little effect. Our way out is the browser’s cache – it generally downloads all manner of junk to speed up the experience of browsing the Internet. To ensure the content is cached, you may choose to first play the content, but that’s not always necessary. Finding the embedded content’s name is generally accomplished by floating the mouse pointer of the content and looking for some form of description. Else, use some text that hangs around the embedded content in question. Remember or copy that, then open the Page Source from the View menu, for Firefox. Search for that text and use some additional detective work to gather the information on the URL you’ll need. For example, a movie trailer may have the extension .flv. Remember that source URL for the search in the browser’s cache.
Web documents online and offline
More and more, I’m relying on Google Docs to edit and view documents in a browser environment. That experience is made even more pleasant by the support for offline usage by integrating Google Gears. Gears is supported on all major platforms: Windows, Windows Mobile, Linux and Apple. The requirement is a recent browser for the relevant platform. I suggest you use Firefox. The add-on for the browser is a quick install and a restart of the browser is required. Go to your Google Docs page and 
click the Offline link at the top of the page. Google Docs starts to synchronize the documents available in its store and creates a desktop icon – that will come in handy once the system you are working on is no longer connected to the Internet.
In offline mode, a simple click on the icon launches the browser and opens the file view. Of course, not all menu items and options are available, but the documents that have been synchronized may be accessed and modified.
The document editor provides a decent array of functionality, including in-line graphics and text formatting. Similarly, the spreadsheet application provides the most commonly-used functionality.
Those that have been modified during an offline session are marked to indicate this fact. The moment the Internet connection is restored, it’s a reasonably simple task of launching Google Docs again – the changes are synchronized appropriately.
Google Docs in combination with Google Gears is an excellent solution to ensure all your documents are accessible in all locations.
Oh my goosh
When you’re so l33t that you can’t even bear to search the Internet without using a terminal, use goosh. It’s the Google shell and provides a terminal interface to Google‘s search functionality.
goosh is not a product of Google and is an Ajax application. Typing help shows the available commands.
Though specific searches may be prefixed with a command to indicate the search type, it is easiest to just type the search term after the prompt and hit Enter.
Somehow I like the GUI a lot more…
The Phoenix has landed
Quite some time ago, really. NASA‘s Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars roughly 15 hours ago and will spend the next three months or so on that planet to scout about for traces of frozen water.
With radio signals taking more than 15 minutes to reach earth, this little dude is really on his own! Most interesting is the use of Twitter by the project team at the University of Arizona and NASA. Follow the progress of the Phoenix on Mars at its very own Twitter page – currently a world record for the most remote entity to utilize such a web service. All the project team must hope for is that the Phoenix survives the three months. The earth-boundTwitter has already crashed…
The official mission page is here.
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