Tag: technology

Nuffnang’s Nifty Video Ads

loketyLeave a comment

On my Malaysia Crime Watch site, I noticed that ads integrator Nuffnang has started displaying video ads in the 336×280 rectangle format. This is simliar to Google Adsense’s video units which is currently only available to United States publishers.

MCW Nuffnang Screenshot, 25KB

The design of the video ad looks very neat and integrated, very much like Youtube’s design with a play button in the middle. The initial loading of the video stream is quite instant, typically starts playback in under five seconds. The video just ends and returns the cursor to the beginning.

I experienced a section of the video in the middle where it just jammed and refused to continue. I could only forward to a later point and continue viewing. Another small issue is that there does not seem to be any volume or mute control. The biggest question is: Where can I click to go to the advertiser’s website?

I think it’s a very good step forward for Malaysian online advertising with Nuffnang leading the way for advertising networks here. With online video being so popular, site visitors will be more compelled to view such ads and know more about the product or service. Nice work, Nuffnang.

The subject of the video is actually quite funny and is part of a series from a local service provider. Go take a look and have a little laugh. :)

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Network Market Your Blog, Get Exponential Exposure

loketyLeave a comment

Network marketing is a powerful and fast way to gain exposure to a product or service. Using a hierarchical network of referrals, people can quickly spread the news of the product or service.

Now imagine the same kind of system for blogs.

This is what BlogRush is designed for. When you create an account with BlogRush and set up a widget on your blogs, fellow blog owners who sign up with BlogRush under you contribute to your own reach in the blogosphere. Each widget impression in your blogs and those under you give you credit, which in turn gives you more traffic to your blogs by means of widget links in other related blogs. The effect of impressions ripples down ten generations below you, each lower one with less impression-to-credit ratio than the previous level.

Take a look at the widget in this blog along the sidebar. These links are contextually selected by the system to be relevant to this blog. Each impression here earns me a link in some other blog’s BlogRush widget.

Thus, your blogs gains exposure exponentially as your downline (a popular term in network marketing) grows both horizontally and vertically. It also adds value to your blogs as it gives more options for your readers as to what other related content may be available elsewhere.

One suggestion for the BlogRush folks: allow us to customize the design and size of the widget. Thanks!

See your blogs’ traffic grow by signing up with BlogRush today. If you choose “News & Media” or “Technology” as the type of blog you own, I may be pushing a new source of readers and traffic to your blog very soon!

Links

BlogRush
<URL:http://www.blogrush.com/r85147044>

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News – From nntp to rss

loketyLeave a comment

Over ten years ago when Netscape was the de facto standard and finger was not a rude thing to do, I got started in the news and discussion addiction using nntp, or Network News Transfer Protocol.

Think of nntp as the ancestor of rss, or Really Simple Syndication (really). A network of nntp servers would be available for you to access and browse the discussion channels available. The number of channels during those days were in tens of thousands, from Apple to camping, Star Trek to Microsoft. Each channel has a thread of replies to one another with each message looking very much like an e-mail. The messages are just text-based, with the occasional text-encoding of binaries such as warez and pictures.

Those were the humble and sometimes underground days when news and data were quietly exchanged between people all over the world. Browsers were not favoured yet, and ftp was like the Internet jet engine of file sharing. I remember this was the way we used to get antivirus and browser updates from McAfee and Netscape respectively.

Forte AgentThe program which I used to talk nntp was from Forte, called Free Agent for Windows 95. It was a simple three-frame Windows interface that worked well to deliver news. However, just like the news of today, I easily got flooded with news. Now, Forte seems to only have Agent commercially and it supports e-mail as well.

In 2007, we have Google Reader, which combines fancy http push (AJAX) and good ‘ol frames. It can automatically update the news as they are published from blogs, newspapers and corporations. You can tag and categorize news. Best of all, it uses the familiar vi command set (e.g. j for down, k for up). Just like other Google apps, it is very accessible since it is web-based.

Google Reader

Just like a decade ago, look at the volume of news I go through… it’s crazy in this information age.

Links:

Wikipedia – Network News Transfer Protocol
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nntp>

Forte
<URL:http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php>

Google Reader
<URL:http://www.google.com/reader/>

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