Friday, June 03, 2011

Ads man.

I’ve had a long-standing pact with myself about how my Website would operate and function. It was simple. The site would run on it’s own, without ads.  That’s all well and good, but times have changed.

As a consumer, I’m not a huge fan of banner ads or on-site advertising, especially if unless it has nothing to do with the site that I’m on or the topic I’m reading about.  I do, however, understand it’s necessary.  Knowing your readers interests is as important when serving ads as it is when writing content.  That said, I’ve begun adding select banner ads on the blog sections of the site.

The ads are hand-picked by me and are in-line with the content you’ll see me right about.  I’ve just about finalized the ad zones and will be making some visual adjustments to mark these areas as advertisements.  

Monday, May 23, 2011

To the clod!

Lady Gaga is, to put it mildly, quite popular.  Some might also say she’s weird, eccentric, odd, crazy, etc.  Whatever descriptor, she sells albums.  She REALLY sells albums when they’re priced at $.99.  Today, AmazonMP3 sold Gaga’s new album, Born This Way for just that price and people took advantage of that sweet deal.  Unfortunately for some, the experience left a bitter aftertaste.

I’d call myself a closet Gaga fan…ok, not really a fan as much as I like her music and appreciate the artistic ways that she’s handled her career.  After reading about the low price for her new album, I decided to get myself a copy.  I’ve been using Amazon’s CloudDrive service since it came out and am enjoying having my music located “in the cloud”.  Add to that the slightly lower prices that some songs on AmazonMP3 sell for vs iTunes, it makes sense to my wallet too.  I made my purchase and didn’t think anything more of it until this afternoon.  I pulled up my Amazon account on my iPhone and was about to stream some of Gaga’s latest to help speed along my day when I noticed I only had two of the songs from the album.

After some social digging it turns out Amazon had some issues dealing with the crush of traffic brought on by their offer.  While cloud computing may be the future, it needs more testing in the present.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

What will become of Skype?

Today’s news that Skype has been purchased by Microsoft has me a bit worried about what might happen to this one-of-a-kind communication platform.  Listening to today’s episode of Tech News Today got me thinking about this even more as the acquisition news was of their hot topics.

Skype is currently available on many popular platforms with Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android among the leaders of the group.  Microsoft could keep them all as-is and continue to build more versions for emerging systems (which is where I’m placing my hopes) or they could effectively shut the door on all non-Windows devices and leave the competition out in the cold.  Doing this would put many people who rely on Skype in a bad position.  There aren’t many competitors that are on the same playing field that Skype has established.  No matter how easy it is to use, Apple’s FaceTime is lacking in the number of non-iOS devices that it can make video calls to.  Google’s purchase and burying of the Gizmo Project effectively put the nail in the coffin of Skype’s closest competitor (thought you never know what Google has up their sleeve, and with Google I/O taking place this week, they may reveal some product that will occupy that space). 

Hoarding Skype for themselves, Microsoft could build an communication infrastructure that would connect their entire world from desktop Windows 7 to XBox to Windows Phone 7.  They could achieve the same connectivity and build on the existing Skype community if they were to add to the existing app environment.  More connectivity, more potential power, more possible revenue streams.

Ultimately, Skype’s fate lies in the hands of it’s new owner.  I hope they find something useful to do with it and, for the most-part, leave it intact.

No comment(s).

I’ve shut down commenting for a while so I can get my hands around a comment spam issue that’s cropped up. Commenting will be back shortly (with a new look to boot).

UPDATE: Comments have been relaunched with Disqus power.

Thursday, January 06, 2011

How to follow CES from the comfort of your home (or your mobile device).

The annual geek and gadget-fest that is CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) is alive and rockin' in Las Vegas. While I'd love to be there soaking in all of the amazing tech news, I'm getting more than enough coverage online. Here are some great sources you can use to follow along too (if you haven't been doing so already).

• CES Web
• TWiT Live - Leo Laporte and crea are doing killer coverage this year.
• Mashable
• Engadget
• Twitter - #CES11#CES, #CES2011 (Note: You may encounter spam on these topic searches.)
• Arstechnica