Thanks Mark for pointing me to this eBay auction for the license plate, L1NUX. Current bid is £5,100 and the reserve hasn’t been met yet. I wonder will Alan Cox bid? There are a few days left so take your time and empty out that piggy bank.
While it didn’t invent search-triggered ads, Google figured out a far more efficient way of turning web-users into buyers. Rather than doling out premium space to the highest bidder, as its competitors did, Google used another algorithm to work out how relevant the ad text was to a given query and the odds someone would actually click on it. This meant ads were targeted at the users most likely to respond to them. The result was that Google’s ‘click through’ rate (the number of times users click on ads) was twice as high as its nearest competitor’s.
You signed up for Google Adsense, verified your home address, typed in the secret code they sent you and now you have adverts on your website. Are you earning the most you can from them? Probably not. Read the quote above again. I’ll wait.
Done? Many advertisers already know this and exploit how Google pick their adverts so their low-paid adverts show in preference to higher paid ads. A whole industry has sprung up around this to create “Made For Adsense” or MFA sites. MFA sites make money because the link clicked to get to them costs them less than the money they make from the adverts your visitors click on their sites. Google took action earlier in the year and disabled many MFA accounts but it’s easy enough to get an Adsense account and they’re coming back. Here are the Alexa graphs for a couple of MFA sites who were stopped in their tracks in June:
And here’s an inappropriate site I don’t want advertising on my site.
Unfortunately despite the culling of MFA sites in June there are still plenty of low-paid adverts in the Adsense inventory. That’s where the Competitive Ad Filter comes in useful. At least once a week, or maybe more often I browse through the most popular posts on my sites looking at the adverts. If a URL looks particularly suspect I manually type it into a new browser window (don’t ever click on your own ads!). If the page that loads looks like an MFA site it gets added to my ad filter.
Criteria for MFA Sites:
Basically, spammy behaviour.
How do I know if cheap adverts are being served? Log in to Adsense and check the “Page eCPM” column on the Reports Overview page. Is it lower than $5? You could probably do much better! eCPM stands for “Effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions”. From the Adsense help page:
From a publisher’s perspective, the effective cost-per-thousand impressions (eCPM) is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programmes. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands. For example, if a publisher earned $180 from 45,000 impressions, the eCPM would equal $180/45 or $4.00. However, please keep in mind that eCPM is a reporting feature that does not represent the actual amount paid to a publisher.
I document changes to my Competitive ad filter on notspam.org. The sites listed in those posts suit my sites, but if you don’t use the ad filter in Adsense it’s a good starting point. Hopefully you can increase the eCPM of your Adsense account above US$5 with only a few small changes.
I previously documented my problems with Ubuntu and the DVD in the D630 but the upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy From Feisty went almost painlessly.
All the packages downloaded and installed through the nice GUI front end. I was able to work away while they downloaded and for most of the time during install too, but when I rebooted I found that sound wasn’t working! I found this solution but I didn’t want to compile a kernel again. That’s so 90’s and this is 2007! Instead I checked my grub menu.lst and found there was an older 2.6.20 kernel listed there. A quick reboot later and sound works again, and it’s even louder! WiFi never stopped working thankfully but if you’re having problems, the page above explains what you need to install to get it working.
I haven’t tried the eye candy features yet, but so far the system feels springier and lighter, even with the old kernel. Let’s hope it stays that way!
Bah. GIMP 2.4rc3 broke a lot of the Script-fu scripts I use. I read about this somewhere. Time to get my hands dirty in my lomo plugin for starters.
Nice! Gthumb supports RAW images although it takes ages to initially process them initially.
How will it end? I watched Earthstorm last night in which the moon was hit by a huge asteroid causing a gigantic split in the surface of our closest neighbour and potentially slicing off a bit that falls into the Earth killing everyone. Luckily, demolition expert John Redding (played by Stephen Baldwin who’s the spit of his brother) saves the day and everyone lives happily ever after. Well probably. I didn’t bother watching the last few minutes.
I can’t believe Dirk Benedict appeared in this awful film.
Anyway, here’s another way for the world to end. Thanks Alex for the link! WTF?^^
The first mention of “youtube Earthstorm” took me to this television commercial for NicoDerm. Guess there are more fans of Anna Silk than of the movie!
PS. First Christmas advert of the season spotted while I fast forwarded through this film on Sky+!
If you use protected posts on your WordPress blog you may have noticed that WP-Cache doesn’t cache those password protected posts properly. I didn’t know this, but James Farmer did so I went looking and found a fix.
In the plugins/wp-cache/ directory, open wp-cache-phase1.php in your favourite text editor and look for the following line:
if (preg_match(“/^wordpress|^comment_author_email_/”, $key)) {
Replace that line with this one:
if (preg_match(“/^wp-postpass|^wordpress|^comment_author_email_/”, $key)) {
Save and upload the file if necessary and clear your cache. Password protect posts should be cached properly now!
Ironically, this post wasn’t being cached by WP-Cache because the url contains the string “wp-“. Here’s how to fix that bug. Open wp-cache-phase2.php and look for the following line:
if (strlen($expr) > 0 && strstr($uri, $expr))
Change it to read:
if (strlen($expr) > 0 && substr( $uri, 1, strlen($expr) ) == $expr )
Phew. This post is now cached.
Definition of Disimprove
Dis`im`prove´
v. t. 1. To make worse; – the opposite of improve.
v. i. 1. To grow worse; to deteriorate.
And here was me thinking my wife had made up this word because I never hear anyone else use that word. Sorry Jess. 🙂
What unusual words do the people in your life use?
The Sunday Times hitlist listed the top 5 movie car chases in memory of the grandfather of stunts, Bud Ekins died earlier this month at the age of 77. He appeared in several films including The Great Escape, Bullitt and coordinated the stunts in CHiPS. I won’t subject you to Poncherello, but thanks to Youtube, here are the best car chases of all time:
The French Connection (1971)
… it’s never better than when Hackman’s character Popeye Doyle commandeers a Pontiac LeMans and hares off after an elevated E-train driven by a hitman.
The previous owners of my home had a Chorus box and never cancelled their account properly, or told them they were moving so for the past three years they have been sending me brochures every few weeks or months. At least I presume they didn’t, but all the brochures are addressed to “The Resident”. This blog post is a reminder to myself that I finally rang them on 1890 940 940, pressed 1 for sales, pressed 1 because I really wanted to buy lots of channels and told Sarah that I didn’t want to be contacted again.
Within moments it was sorted and hopefully I’ll get no more junk mail from Chorus.
If you’re getting unsolicited email this document from the Data Protection Commissioner might come in handy but here’s what it warns about those anonymous “The Resident” mail that so frequently litters our doorsteps.
This is the traditional and oldest form of direct marketing. For mail received through your letter box to be considered to be direct marketing it must be addressed to a named person and must be promoting a product or service. Unaddressed mail put into your letter box or mail addressed to “the occupant”, “the resident” or “the householder” does not necessarily involve the use of personal data and consequently data protection legislation does not apply.
You can also opt to be removed from company mailing lists by contacting the IDMA.
Apart from contacting organisations individually, you may also wish to avail of a service run by the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA). Under the Mail Preference Service, if you supply your contact details to the IDMA, it will circulate these details amongst its members. This will result in most of the main direct marketing companies removing your details from their mailing lists.
If only those fake charities respected the law too, we might stamp out all the rubbish flyers that drop through the letter box. Reminder: I really must set up clothingcollection.org soon!
I love this story from boards.ie:
Apparently the postman in my hometown was removing all the spam and advertising from people’s post, putting it in a bag and dumping it in a bog outside the town. Had been successfully un-spamming people for years before he was found out and fired.
A recent comment urged the boycotting of Ewan McGregor on the grounds that he has insulted Star Wars fans. I don’t know what he did to make them mad but I think Star Wars should be boycotted on the premise that they were crap films and the sooner the whole merchandising juggernaut disappears the better. Even Grandad thinks they’re rather strange. How long is your lightsaber Grandad?
‘Course I’m probably alone in thinking this but I should start an online petiton. Who’ll sign?
PS. Only joking Conor, about the boycott part anyway!
All bow before the dance sensation that is Snowball the Cockatoo. Watch him move to the rhythm of “Everybody” by Backstreet Boys. If you like that, you might like As Long As You Love Me too!
There is a serious side to this however. From the original Youtube description:
Not my video but I felt that it had to be posted on youtube to draw attention to an important issue, Bird rescues and sanctuaries.This is a video of a medium sulphur crested Eleanora cockatoo named Snowball living at the Bird Lovers Only Rescue in Schererville, Indiana. Snowball loves the Back Street boys and has taught himself to dance to their song “Everybody.” Bird Lovers Only Rescue needs reliable volunteers to help on Tuesday and/or Friday evenings. They are a donation-based not for profit bird rescue. There is tons of useful information about parrots on their blog. To see their Website, Blog and birds ready for adoption go to:
- http://www.birdloversonly.org/
- http://birdloversonly.blogspot.com/
- http://www.birdloversonly.org/bladopt.shtml
I hope this draws attention to their cause. Fortunately there are some really great people running these rescues. As we all know, all to often parrots are abused. There is also another wonderful Youtuber OverTheRaynbow who also runs a sanctuary. To view her videos click here: http://www.youtube.com/user/OverTheRaynbow