Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Contextually Relevant Ads from Google AdSense that made me click

Today I found an ad that I readily clicked. This is an ad about weekend trip to Lonavala. Such a relevant ad and such great timing. I clicked on the ad, and it actually kept it's word of the pricing at Rs. 3568. Good job Google AdSense!

Following is the contextual ad. I did a little a little more digging, and found 2 more interesting things:
  • Google AdSense click URL shows up in Chrome (on mouseover), that doesn't show up in any other browser - kind of cool
  • Google AdSense URL is now pointing to http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ , while earlier it used to point to http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ . Interesting. Obvious integration with DoubleClick; but is that some kind of 'lead generation' ?
Following is the contextual ad.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, December 12, 2008

Some fun with Google Hindi translation!

Google translation for Hindi is pretty cool. I test drove it, then I got some ideas, here they are, have fun:

English: Google translation rocks!
Hindi: Google अनुवाद चट्टानों!

English: Google translation is cool!
Hindi: Google अनुवाद ठंडा है!

English: Google translation is a kick-ass product!
Hindi: Google अनुवाद एक लात-गधा उत्पाद है!

English: Google translation is a super awesome product!
Hindi: Google अनुवाद एक सुपर भययोग्य उत्पाद है!

Click here to try more stuff.

Labels: , ,

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Top 15 Posts last week, which are still fresh

Following are my top 15 posts on Twitter last week. Check them out:

Komli is Red Herring's top 100 Asian promising startups for 2008.
Red Herring Asia 100 recognizes the 100 “Most Promising” Asian Companies Driving the Future of Technology. Red Herring announced that 27 out of the 100 winners of the Red Herring 100 Award are from India. This is quite a high number given that China, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia were some of the other countries that were in the list as well.
Read more here.

YourBillBuddy.com is an amazing website that checks your phone bill and recommends the best mobile plan based on ur usage. Check it out here.

Driveme.in lets users view streets with driving like experiences, share them, find & explore favorite places
Driveme.in is a new startup from Pune that let users view the streets with driving like experiences and can also let them share, find and explore their favorite places online. One thing to clear here in this application is that it has nothing to do with Google maps or its API support. Its completed independent application.
Check it out here.

Indian Media Takes To Twitter
Following the siege in Mumbai which brought the Twitter and its usage by citizens to share and spread information into the limelight, media publications including Mint and DNA have signed up for Twitter. While media publications on Twitter are not new - New York Times, Wired, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal have their own twitter feeds.
Read more here.

Almost No Web Users Would Pay To Remove Ads
When we asked consumers if they would pay $39.99 a year, which comes out to less than $4 a month, for an ad-free version of one of their favorite sites, only 2.4% said definitely yes, they would be likely to do so. And only 3.5% said they'd be very likely. In fact, 84% of the people said they'd be unlikely or not at all likely.
Read more here.

10 of the Most Fuel-Efficient Cars in the United States. Read more here.

Top 10 Tips To Get Your Startup Noticed. Simple, easy and cheap ways of marketing your startup. Read more here.

Performance of multi-core machines would level off or even decline beyond 8 cores,due to limited memory bandwidth

Read more here.

Why Auto-Scaling In the Cloud could be a Bad Idea? Read more here.

Will VC's become irrelevant - totally Awesome Post by Paul Graham
VC funding will probably dry up somewhat during the present recession, like it usually does in bad times. But this time the result may be different. This time the number of new startups may not decrease. And that could be dangerous for VCs.
Read more here.

"No evidence from last 10 years that users want Indian languages" says Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO Rediff.com
Rediff has email in 11 languages, and 99% of the users prefer to use email in English. One of the issues is that “practically all of the 300 million young people who aspire to something in this country aspire to learn English.” Therefore “Let us not assume that users want Indian languages.”
Read more here.

"BlackBerry Storm, by far the worst product Research in Motion has ever produced". Read more here.

Are rounded corners going away? - "Square is the new round."
Google Reader changed their UI - out with the old rounded corners, drop shadows and heavily saturated colors -- in with a softer palette, faster components and a fresh new look.
Read more here.

Google Apps SLA redefines downtime - “Downtime Period” means a period of ten CONSECUTIVE minutes of Downtime
Read more here.

New Android Phone Debuts, Looks Like a Blackberry. Comes unlocked at $256 US; looks pretty COOL
Read more here.

Firefox malware collects logins & passwords of banking sites, forwarding that information to a server in Russia. Read more here.

Web Scrapers win hundreds of auctions at eBay Holiday Contest at $1 . Read more here.

Follow me on Twitter here.

Labels: , , , ,

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Yahoo! Email Ads still can’t get geo-targeting right

Yahoo! Email continues to serve me US ads, wasting money on those high eCPM expandable rich media ads.

What a pity. Yahoo! knows that I live in Pune, India; it can tell the temperature of the city, but cannot geo-target the right ads for me.



There are so many other ad-servers that get it right, why can’t Yahoo! get it right?

Thoughts?

Labels: , , , ,

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Komli Launches ViziSense: India’s First Free and Open Online Audience Measurement Platform

I’m very excited today to announce the launch of Komli ViziSense, the first free and open audience measurement platform for India that accurately reports details of site visitor demographics and other audience characteristics. ViziSense helps publishers with an independent measurement system, enables advertisers to access and understand their online audience with precision, and allows ViziSense agencies to plan better media buys.

Read more details here and here.

Some screen shots below:


Labels: , , , , , ,