Admob is a mobile advertising company I’ve been using for the last six months.  It is the Adsense of mobile internet.  Admob typically only approves publishers that have a mobile-compatible website (like this for example).  Admob was recently acquired by Google.  The FTC is now asking for more details on the acquisition, as Google is starting to become more and more suspicious of monopolizing the mobile advertising industry.

Some other .mobi Advertising companies include:

• Third Screen Media - http://www.thirdscreenmedia.com/
• AdMob – http://www.admob.com
• Google AdSense - http://google.com/adsense
• Jumptap - http://jumptap.com/
• InMobi - http://inmobi.com/
• Unanimis - http://www.unanimis.co.uk/

I just bought a monthly pass with my Mastercard because I go to DePaul University in Chicago.  It worked very well I guess; Credit card processors can only be so exciting.  But anyways, I thought this was worth a note because of how much money Metra put into this redevelopment.  About $3 million as I mentioned before.  And it took 3 years.  Kind of gives you a “guage” of what you pay for in the web development market.

See you on the train.

Sorry for the lack of posting.  I’ll be short and just take this post to recommend a book I’ve been reading, titled ‘Predictably Irrational‘ (home page).  The book basically covers a wide scope of consumer and social behavior.  For example, every buyer decides whether or not to purchase something by weighing the positives and negatives.  By including the word “FREE” into your promotions (like free car wash with gas, buy one get one free, etc), you greatly decrease that negative consciousness and thus increase your sales.

Definitely a book worth reading for 2009.

peace

I’m all about major upgrades.  Did you know that WordPress has received almost 2 Million downloads since 2.3 was released?  WordPress is free, easy to use, but most important, stable.  Since WordPress has become such a widely used Content Management System (CMS), the coders on the dark side are always trying to breach its security to take advantage of people’s websites.  So, here is 2.5 to keep up with the security issues, as well as a few more features the WordPress team added.

If you’re upgrading: ALWAYS backup your MySQL database and your WordPress directory files.

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

By the way, I found this video at VirtualMarketingBlog.com – one of my favorite marketing blogs. The two authors of the blog post funny marketing-related videos, usually from youtube every Friday. Check em out. (not an advertisement).

TLA’s Text Link Price Calculator requires you to enter your website address, website category, # of text links to be sold, and to choose between site-wide or single-page links. To the right of this form is a “map” of a standard website layout. You choose where you plan on placing the text links and the price is weighted accordingly.

The results aren’t that accurate – as in, the tool doesn’t consider many other factors that might affect the price you might charge your advertisers. There is definitely room for improvement. Right now it seems their algorithm for finding an estimated price is based on link popularity, link position on page, single or site-wide, quantity of links being sold, and possibly some other calculations made behind the scenes.  For noobs or semi-experienced people, this tool might give a good example of the “going rates” for text link these days.

You might also be interested in Patrick Gavin’s Link Building Blog.

Here are a few upcoming products/services that haven’t broke that barrier yet, but probably will in the near future (within 5 years):

• Solar Cell Technology – A new, eco-friendly source of energy.  Take that Common Wealth Edison.  The only thing that’s really keeping Solar Cells from taking over is cost.  Right now it would cost a consumer about $50,000 to convert their home’s energy source to Solar Cells.  It would take about 10 years to get your moneys worth.  My dad is in this industry.
• Digital Movie Downloads/Rentals – Blockbuster and Netflix have both dabbled in this industry.  They both failed in some way.
• Wireless Internet Cards – Sprint is probably the leading Wireless Internet Card provider right now.  The technology seems ideal and its something that a lot of people will want (supply & demand).  However, in order to get one of these cards, you need to lock into a 2 year contract with Sprint, at $59.99 / month.  Not really cost effective unless you’re really needing internet around the clock.  Some do though.  I expect this price to go down A LOT once more competitors jump into the market.

While it may not directly involved search engines, it certainly explains a lot about how America’s (and other countrie’s) economies work.  You can definitely use this knowledge toward your web development and marketing in some way, shape, or form.

Barack Osama.com

(Note the misspelling)

Barack Obama has been criticized in the past, having been called Barack “Osama”, in order for the accuser to make his point politically. What better way than to make a third-grade level joke about a potential president candidate’s last name, right? Anyways, that’s where the term comes from.

It’s probably some 16 year old kid from Virginia who had his Adsense account with $99.99 in it terminated by Google for invalid clicks a day before payments were made.

But. Google would be wise to make the appropriate measures on taking this redirect down. Why? Well any ignorant or computer-savy web users can easily make the assumption that this is either a joke by Google or a polictal stand against Barack Obama. Not likely, but still something a large corporation like Google needs to address.

Bravo.