I’ve been guest posting for the last few days on the Google Earth Blog while Frank has been out of town, which has left me with rather little time (and content) to post on here. I’ll be back posting again soon, but here’s what I’ve posted on GEB in case you missed it:
It’s been a few months since they first announced it, but AdSense for Feeds is now available to all AdSense/FeedBurner users.
You should notice a new entry on your main AdSense page for “AdSense for Feeds”. To get started, you need to ask Google to manually tie your AdSense and FeedBurner accounts together. To do that, send an e-mail to [email protected] and give them your Feedburner account name and the Google Account e-mail address that you use to sign into AdSense. I was bummed when I heard that it was a manual process, but they turned mine around in about 45 minutes. I’ve just added the ads to a few feeds of mine, so we’ll see how it goes.
The Google Operating System blog has more details (and screenshots) on how to get started.
I’ll post back with my results in a few days.
LivePlace.com has just released a video showing a new product they’re developing called “City Space”. Wow!
City Space is a 3D world, somewhat similar to Second Life. Users can create any content they want, and the world is persistent for others in the future (changes you make to the world will remain there). The “wow” factor is two-fold:
1 – The graphics are absolutely mind-blowing. They look very, very realistic. Not only that, but the entire world is alive. If you see a big skyscraper, every window is the portal to an office, which is fully rendered, and can even be seen through the window (depending on light, curtains, etc). You can drop a video clip on the wall for everyone to watch, or draw a sketch with people looking on.
2 – This amazing world will work on virtually any PC, and many mobile devices. No downloads, no plug-ins. All of the rendering will be done server-side using the OTOY engine, so your client simply needs to stream the graphics (just like streaming a video). I’m not sure how they can pull that off without even using a plug-in, but that mantra was repeated a few times during the video.
At this point, there is no launch date, and really no information beyond the video. The video is absolutely amazing, but I’m anxious to get a bit more hard evidence to see how this really works.
Watch the video below — it’s well worth your time.
The Daily Mail has published an article today with a variety of complaints that people have aired against the new StreetView imagery in Australia.
The first one is quite interesting. A guy lost his best friend in a boating accident, and drunk himself stupid to dull the pain. When he got home, he collapsed on the grass and fell asleep, where Google snapped his photo. The image has since been removed, but you can see a screencap of it here
.
Others include a woman who saw her recently deceased father in front of his house (which “renews the raw loss”), and another woman that was pleased to find herself in the imagery, working hard in the garden.
StreetView is coming to Britain soon, and they’re already calling it a “gross invasion of privacy”.
Do you agree with that? Or is it acceptable because it’s all taken from public property?
Frank Taylor of the Google Earth Blog has passed along a message from John Bailey of the Alaska Volcano Observatory
regarding the Kasatochi volcano, which is erupting as we speak.
According to John, the island is a bird sanctuary and two scientists were evacuated. He has sent along a time-lapse KML of the ash, which you can download here. According to the AVO site
:
An eyewitness account from a marine vessel (in the vicinity of Kasatochi and heading in the direction of Adak) reported ash fall (particles up to pebble size), spectacular lightening and thunder, and total darkness tonight between the hours of 21:00 and 23:15 AKDT.
More imagery and information about this eruption can be found on the Kasatochi page of the AVO.
I apologize for not posting very much lately. I’ve been working with a handful of bloggers to try to get their traffic (and revenue) beefed up, and I’ve not had much time for this site lately. The techniques I’m using are really working quite well, and now I’m opening it up to other people. I don’t want to try to assist too many people (it takes a personal relationship with each blog), but if you’d like some help with your blog, let me know. Here’s the simple version of how it works:
To help explain this idea to potential clients, I’ve set up a simple site outlining how it works. The first question that most people have is: “Wait. I’m trying to earn more revenue, and I’m not sure I want to give up 25% of my revenue.” It’s a fair question. However, my clients (so far) have all been very pleased, as they’ve started earning much more than the 25% that I get. Here are some stats froma recent client I’ve started helping.
Those are genuine stats from Google Analytics, snipped just a few minutes ago. Each dot represents one week, leading up to last week.
The beauty of the revenue-sharing is this — you pay nothing. Nada. $0.00. Also, because I’m getting a small portion of the ad revenue, you can rest assured that I will work hard to get your blog running as smoothly as possible.
If you’re already WordPress-savvy and doing well, then you certainly don’t need my help. However, if you’re having problems keeping your site running well, or if traffic just isn’t increasing as quickly as you think it show, shoot me an e-mail and we can chat.
When using Google Maps for driving directions, there is now an option to “Avoid Tolls”. As the LatLong blog said:
When half your wallet is already going toward gas, it’s nice if you can save some money for ice cream instead of dumping it all off at the toll booth.
I agree. It’s a nice little touch.
When Cuil launched a few days ago, one of the features they promoted is that they don’t store ANY info about searches performed on the site. Now Google has shot back by making their “customized results” a bit more transparent.
When you search, you might start to see a box in the top right corner that says something like “Customized for…”. Personally, I haven’t seen one yet so I’ll just have to show you the example photo they posted on the Official Google Blog:
They say the results are based on a few factors:
They make it clear that the results aren’t new — just more transparent. Good move, I think.
There have been arguments about this for months, but Google has finally made it clear — you are allowed to show ads from more than one AdSense account on a single page.
For revenue-sharing sites, it makes configuration much easier. Instead of having to make sure all of the ads on a page are from the same account, you can mix-and-match however you want. This has been the case since the last TOS revision back in February, but there has been a lot of confusion. Google simply wanted to make it clear.
It was announced months ago, and it’s finally here — the updated design on the Google Maps site.
It’s not a major change, but it does some nice things. The tabs are gone in favor of a single search box, and the map area is a bit larger as a result.
More details have been posted on the Google LatLong Blog
as well as on Google Maps Mania.
It seems like a nice step forward. What do you think?
