Watch it now on Netflix July 7, 2007
Posted by Bryan in : New Products, News , add a commentNetflix has launched a new feature that allows members to watch full-length videos online.
After logging into your account click on the “Watch Now” tab. Pick a video, click “Play”, and you’ll be prompted to download a player.
Not all of their catalog is available. Right now the selection consists of mostly older movies and TV series, but this is still good news for people who like to watch videos online or who feed video to their TV via their computer. The number of hours you can watch is determined by your Netflix plan.
Bad news for a good portion of the internet though, the service currently requires Windows and Internet Explorer (i.e. no old school Apple or Firefox).
AuctionAds filling up fast June 10, 2007
Posted by Bryan in : New Products, News, Site News , 1 comment so farIf you run a website and you haven’t yet tried AuctionAds, it’s time to get off your ass. A recent post on the AuctionAds blog noted that they had met and surpassed their initial year end goals for new registrations in their first three months. For those interested in getting referral credits, the number of people who haven’t yet signed up is decreasing quickly everyday.
The AuctionAds service grabs eBay listings and posts them as ads on your site. When people click through and purchase a product, you make a percentage of the sale. Additionally, if people register for the AuctionAds service via your site, then you get a little extra percentage for referring them (at no cost to them).
As you may have noticed, we’ve been running AuctionAds on our site for about a month and a half. Since this site makes most of its money from the ad revenue it generates (will the new store change that?), I was initially concerned about them detracting from our big breadwinner - Adsense. I started them out at the bottom of the page to see what would happen.
One of the great things about AuctionAds is that the ads show product images. People like to get a sense of what they’re clicking before they commit to it. I’m not sure why Google hasn’t yet developed anything with this approach, but even at the bottom of the page, AuctionAds click-through rates were beating Adsense click-through rates considerably.
The first few weeks were slow, but now the service is really starting to take off. The AuctionAds perform so well that I am comfortable leaving them at the bottom of the page AND replacing the Adsense ads with some different, more risky, CPA links. Essentially AuctionAds have freed up an Adsense block (since you can only have three per page) and given us the ability to try out some new income generating options.
If you have a blog or other website and haven’t yet tried AuctionAds, I definitely recommend it. The service is structured such that the more people that register, the more money people make. However, if you’re interested in getting that referral bonus, it’s best to get in as early as possible before everyone else has already signed up. To register (and give us some credit) click here.
I Survived the Web 2.0 Expo April 19, 2007
Posted by Tara in : Humor, News, Opinion, Reviews , 3 comments
I arrived at Moscone West in San Francisco early on Monday so that I could get an amazing seat for my first session of the Web 2.0 Expo 2007. As soon as I got there, I headed to the check-in desk to pick up my badge. There, I was given my first indicator of how this experience was going to be. All the badges were color-coded - mine was yellow, meaning that I only paid $100 for access to a few sessions, the keynote speaker - Jeff Bezos! - and the Expo hall at large. Translation: All people in possession of yellow badges are the lowest form of life at the Web 2.0 Expo. One of the many rude staff members handed me my scarlet letter, I mean badge, with a grunt as I watched all of the blue and gray badge people get bags of free goodies and information while I am excluded.
Dejected, I traveled upstairs to get to that coveted “good seat” (or shall I say seat period, since those who did not get seats were forced to sprawl on the floor). I reached my destination - “Jump Start Your Startup,” which should have been named “Listen to Dan Roberts from Sun Microsystems drone on and on about Sun products that are too costly to deploy and have nothing to do with my startup.” It only took me about 3.5 minutes to realize I was going to get zero out of this session. I got up and headed over to “The Wonderful World of Wikis: Case Studies, Benefits, Dos and Don’ts†presented by Ken Lui (InfoGation, Holographix, HNC Software, Virage, and IPivot.) This session was really informative. Ken talked about the benefits of Wiki compared to Forums and Blogs and laid out some cost effective solutions for companies that wanted to use Wiki as part of their websites or for their intranet systems.
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Problem with VIA IDE controllers and Windows Update April 18, 2007
Posted by Liz in : Microsoft, News, Tips , 1 comment so farOk, so I have pinpointed the cause of an issue I was having at my job with 12 computers. Some were restores, some were new hard drives which were then restored… but they all ended up having an identical problem. After doing the last batch of updates on Windows Update, they ALL BSOD’ed. Two HPs. 3 Dells, a Gateway and three E-Machines. The only commonality was the repartition/reinstalls, so I did some research. (more…)
Wiki War March 27, 2007
Posted by Tara in : News , 3 commentsThe free online encyclopedia and Web 2.0 phenom Wikipedia now has some competition with this week’s launch of Citizendium. Larry Sanger, alleged co-creator of Wikipedia, has launched the new site which is similar to its predecessor and is an answer to many of the problems that Wikipedia readers and contributors face: vandalism, content inconsistencies and serial overwriting. (more…)
Get the Photoshop Experience You’ve Always Wanted March 26, 2007
Posted by Leslie in : News , add a commentSoon you can have the all of the Photoshop with none of the price tag.
In a move to compete with Google’s Picasa web application and the free digital imaging software Gimp, Adobe has plans to create a web version of Photoshop that users can access for free. How can they make it accessible for free? They are planning a complex ad share set up that would finance the use of the software online in exchange for ad views, though that is subject to change. (more…)
Apple TV Customers Already Cracking The Shell March 25, 2007
Posted by Leslie in : Hacks, News , add a comment
Apple TVs shipped March 20th, and Apple TV customers are already cracking, hacking, and upgrading their new toy. Lucky for us, they are also blogging it and making videos about it. Since I chose to wait to get one - in case they add some upgraded features - I’ve been tracking and bookmarking the information being put online. I want to be able to go back to my “Apple TV Unleashed” folder later on and do some of these upgrades myself.Hopefully, keeping a similar folder in your browser’s favorites will help you find your own solution to your Apple TV questions. Please keep in mind that cracking the shell on your new Apple TV to upgrade the hard drive or perform some of these other upgrades and hacks will definitely void your Apple Care warranty.
New Digg-like environmental and activism sites March 7, 2007
Posted by Bryan in : News , 1 comment so far
If you know us at Texxors.com you know we speak for the trees. That’s why were very happy about these two new sites that are a twist on the Digg model. Greendope.com and Protestdope.com focus on environmental and social activism news, respectively.
As a bonus, if you’ve got an Adsense ID you or your organization can participate in the sites’ revenue sharing programs. We would have loved that in our college organizing days.
Links:
Protestdope.com
Google Adsense penalizing popular sites? March 5, 2007
Posted by Bryan in : News , 5 commentsCENTRAL TEXAS — Data on several sites maintained by the operators of Texxors.com suggests that Google may be manipulating the profits webmasters receive from Google’s Adsense program. Our analysis shows statistical evidence that as a website becomes more popular, it receives less earnings per click (EPC) from Google Adsense. Since the EPC is determined by Google’s algorithms prior to the ad being served to a page, this suggests that Google may be intentionally or unintentionally manipulating EPC to increase their profit and/or Adsense participation. The method appears to be similar to the “throttling†practices that landed online movie retailer Netflix in legal hot water last year.
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What’s in a name? October 25, 2006
Posted by Bryan in : Humor, News , 2 commentsLots of website traffic apparently.
This is pretty funny. In the wake of the news regarding Google’s purchase of YouTube earlier this month, the pipe manufacturing website Utube.com saw a HUGE increase in traffic. The graph below shows the site’s page view statistics from Alexa.com. Note the peak around mid-October…
I can just hear all those not-so-internet-savvy people going “I don’t see what the big deal is all about…”
And then I’m sure there were a few people thinking “What would Google need that much pipe for?”, which begs the question, “What *could* Google need that much pipe for?”
Server cooling? An underwater circus? Some nefarious plan to drain the oceans and control the worlds water supply?
Post your theories in the comments section.
