Ravi's Rants

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Archives for January 2007

How To Use and Ping Google Blogsearch

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Google’s Blogsearch and Technorati are great sites for focused reading about a particular subject.

Doing a Google search is entirely different from doing a search on blog search. Google’s Blogsearch and Technorati will both bring you back all posts on blogs and niche sites that have been tagged with, or contain, the keyword that you are searching for.

So, if I wanted to know what’s new about Adsense, I wouldn’t do a Google search, but a Blogsearch for the word ‘Adsense’, or a Technorati blog search, or even a Technorati tag search – so I’ll know what’s the latest and greatest, and who’s saying what in reference to Adsense.

On the flip side, as a blogger, to automatically ping Google’s blogsearch every time you “post” to your blog, add this URL to your blog’s ping list.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

To ping blogsearch manually, go here.
To ping Technorati manually, go here.

– Ravi Jayagopal / LinkOverLoad.com

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And You Thought The iPhone Multi-touch Display Was Cool

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And you also thought that the crazy hand-waving, screen-manipulation stuff Tom Cruise did in Minority Report was just computer-generated special effects.

Just wait till you check out (below) Jeff Han outdoing Tom Cruise with the multi-touch displays.

The cool thing about Apple is not that they put one of these displays in the iPhone – it is that Apple simply had to be the first to bring it to the consumer. In spite of the big players like Nokia and Motorola and Sony, why is it that only Apple can blow people away like this? Is it great technology? Or simply great marketing?

Yep. It’s final. Apple = Uber Cool. Even if I don’t own a single Apple product!

Be it in your career or in your business, do you similarly strive to boldly go where no man has gone before?

[Read more…]

Gimp vs. Photoshop

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GrimThing has this interesting post that makes a practical comparison of Gimp and Photoshop.

Summary:
For businesses: Photoshop rules!

For home use: Don’t pirate Photoshop, and use Gimp instead, which can do all the basic stuff you need to do anyway.

Personally, I’ve used both Gimp and Photoshop, but primarily use Fireworks just because I’ve been using it for many years and am very familiar with the interface.

After Adobe bought Macromedia, they now own two of the most popular commercial image editors, Photoshop and Fireworks. Would be interesting to see what is the roadmap for these two quite-similar products. With Photoshop probably being the bigger brand, I suspect they just might fold ol’ Fireworks into Photoshop.

Go on to Gimp vs. Photoshop

Google Adsense Making Less Sense

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Imagine blogging for a whole year, ending up with a very popular blog that has 23,457 subscribers, ranked #45 out of all blogs in the world, and earning (brace yourself) a whopping $3,350 for the entire year!

Now stop imagining – this stuff is real.
I noted in an earlier post, that in spite of being a Google fanboi, I only see pure “click-thru” earnings decline over time for everyone. This is based on my own theory, as well as general consensus, that the more tech-savvy your audience is, the less likely they are of clicking on Adsense (or other PPC) ads, be it on Google’s search pages or on third-party web sites.

A recent posting on Guy Kawasaki’s blog only goes to prove my theory further, that:

  1. It is very hard to get tech-savvy folks to click on ads the way the average surfers (moms-and-pops) do.
  2. It is not easy making a living by blogging, leave alone by monetizing your blog with Adsense.

I own a site targeted at moms-and-pops, and I made many, many times more than what Guy’s #45-ranked blog earned. And mine is a very small niche, and many, many, many times less popular than Guy’s blog.
Here are some key stats from his blog:

  • 2,436,117 page views (about 6,200/day)
  • 23,457 RSS feed subscribers
  • Total advertising revenue for one whole year: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm.

This is not very far from the pathetic $1.80 that I’m seeing with my own Adsense earnings these days (a drop from the high $2’s, and even low $3’s). However, this drop is not because of number of click-thru’s or the click-thru rate (both of which have actually gone up due to my persistent optimization of the content and the ad placements), but actually due to a big fall in the CPM (Cost Per-thousand iMpressions).

This could be because advertisers are generally bidding lower in this new year, or the advertisers in my specific niche are bidding lower, or that Google somehow (read smart-pricing) has determined (or just decided) that my click-thru’s are worth less than before, or it could simply mean that Google has given themselves a pay-raise this new year by taking a bigger chunk of the earnings-per-click.

I have already started researching other ad options. I’m not sure how well other PPC networks will compare to Adsense, and in fact I don’t believe the other PPC networks will earn me more than Adsense does. So it is time for a change. Time to change not just my PPC options, but time to change the ad strategy – like maybe CPA (cost-per-action, a.k.a pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale).

It’s the new year after all. Out with the old, in with the new.

– Ravi Jayagopal / LinkOverLoad.com

Confessions of a 34-year-old i-Virgin

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The iPhone is out.

No, not that stupid Cisco thingy. I’m talking about “the” iPhone.

Yeah, baby – the one from Apple!

But why am I feeling like this about the iPhone? I’m not an Apple fanboi. I’ve never owned an Apple product – nope, not even the iPod. Well, 6 months ago, I did download iTunes, but I barely use it. I did drool about the Mac Mini a while ago, but heck, I haven’t even touched a Mac yet.

I do stare longingly at the white headphone cords coming out of all those subway commuters’ clothes, but my Treo 650 solved my music and podcast needs, while also fulfilling my phone and address-book needs. What more could I ask for, right? (keep reading…)

Apple iPhone
So just go away, Apple! I love my Treo. Wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world! Nothing would make me change my mind. I’ve never been more happy with my phone, so you can’t make me switch. Nope. Not a chance. Can’t do. I have sworn my loyalty to Tr…

What? You said it has a wide screen? I can watch movies?

And a 80G hard drive?

And it really is only a half-inch thick?

And a 2 mega pixel camera?

It won’t hang like my Treo does when downloading email?

And it is really as beautiful as it looks in the picture?

Ok, now give me my damn iPhone, will you?

Gotta pay close to $600? No problem.
I’ll skip lunch for a month.

Gotta switch from Verizon to Cingular? No problem.
Screw my friends and contacts. I’ll switch on them, even if it means getting a new number.

Can’t import my Palm address-book? No problem.
I’ll enter all 1700 of them manually. Better yet, I’ll make my 8 year-old do it (or else, no McDonald’s chicken sandwich on the weekends until she’s 18!)

Will get smudged with finger and face grease? No problem.
I will buy an expensive piece of anti-static, glass-wiping cloth, and wash my hands and face 17 times a day.

Hey Cingular, where do I sign the contract?

– Ravi Jayagopal / MyWebmasterInABox.com