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Like online music to your ears
Podcasts have taken the online world by storm and the variety of audio content is already mind boggling so it’s only normal that, at some point, an easy to implement revenue model be offered to podcasters who need to pay their rent.
With their dMarc Broadcasting acquisition, Google now owns a digital media solutions expertise that would help them bring their huge online advertising offering to the podcasting community.
It’s only rumors, at this point but already, the mere possibility that Google might be gearing up to serve ads within podcasts (or any other kind of streaming or on demand audio) is enough to create quite a stir in the podcasters community who are still looking to elevate their media to the next “commercial” level which would, in fact, translate into a sustainable business model.
There are many ways in which Google could implement their ads into audio streams but you may not have to hold your breath for too long since the word on the street has it that we might see a few “beta” releases before the end of 2006.
As far as anybody in the blogosphere knows, MSN-Search isn’t ready. Yahoo! Search isn’t ready. Ask isn’t ready. In this light, it sounds like Google might be first to market with the “next big -online audio- thing”, again.
Let’s hear it, one more time, for Mountain View’s finest!
Tags: google, music, ad revenue, audible, audio shows, broadcasting
The lion could end up eating up the mice’s cheese
Windows XP is the most widely installed operating system in the world and the number of companies contributing valuable software offerings for it is second to none.
Now that Microsoft is looking for ways to transit as many users as possible to its upcoming Vista operating system, in as little time as possible, there appears to be serious trouble in paradise between Microsoft and a growing number of its “partner” developers.
Two of those “previously friendly” partners are Symantec and Trend Micro.
They might be joined soon by many more developers who openly oppose Microsoft’s unforeseen move to shut down any kind of access to the root security access, effectively closing the gates for any serious security software company who are looking to launch offerings for Vista.
If Microsoft starts losing support from its developers, especially the biggest ones, the future for Vista could be somewhat compromized. If these frustrated (and justifiably so) developers start pushing their development for Linux, that could rapidly shift a significant part of the Windows market towards the “open source alternatives”.
To illustrate what’s happening in a rather humorous way, imagine Microsoft as being the figurative lion looking to eat away at the mice’s (figuratively reprensenting Symantec and Trend Micro) much smaller, but still appealing, piece of cheese.
This dangerous new tendency for Microsoft to shut out its developers is bad news for, well, the developers because they instantly lose their cash cow but consumers will also find it frustrating to see the software variety (and probably reliability, as Microsoft shuts off the access to important parts of its core codebase), not to mention the fact Vista might come to be seen for what it is, a grossly overpriced, underperforming and largely unreliable operating system that’s about five years behing MacOS X (especially the upcoming Tiger release) and Linux (namely the releases using the almighty Debian OS).
Microsoft should perhaps stop acting like a proverbial bully, especially with its developers, because all it’ll get with such an attitude is, most presumably, a plethora of damaging antitrust lawsuits.
Tags: antitrust, symantec, trend micro, microsoft, windows vista, windows xp
New designs for DomainSponsor landing pages
If you own a few (or a few thousand) domain names, you may be wondering how to make money off them, every day, from the “natural visitors” directly “typing them in” their browser.
Well, you’re not alone and DomainSponsor offers all domainers the opportunity to rake in impressive daily revenues from most (if not all) of their domain names by simply pointing them to DomainSponsor’s specially designed landing pages which morph to reflect the most popular (and profitable) keywords that “landers” might be searching for (also referred to as “auto-optimizing”).
As of October 23rd, 2006, DomainSponsor is offering four new lander designs that rotate dynamically within the whole portfolio of domains you’ve pointed their way. For existing publishers (that is, the domain name owners), the change is automatic.
That’s right, DomainSponsor takes the pain out of monetizing your domain names and now provides you with even more attractive landing pages in which visitors may feel even more compelled to “click” for the information they (most probably) need.
If you’re not a publisher yet, now’s the time to get registered (for free) and test a few domains with DomainSponsor’s new designs which were hand-picked among hundreds, mainly because the payout they “produce” is above all others.
Tags: domainsponsor, landing pages, domain monetization, pay-per-click, ppc, web publishers
Download your copy of Joomla! 1.5 BETA
Exactly one year after the Mambo / Joomla! split, open source CMS enthusiasts from the world over can finally download their very own copy of Joomla’s colossal milestone release, the 1.5 BETA.
While the beta review process is furiously underway and the community is pouring in the “bug reports” and questions of all sorts, early reviewers are amazed at how well this CMS has evolved into a simpler and arguably more effective package to publish all sorts of information (from personal sites to full-blown commercial sites).
A big round of applauds goes to all the Joomla! developers but especially to lead developer Johan Janssens who said that October 12th, 2006 is a giant step for the Joomlasphere! (notice the brand new term).
Johan Janssens went on to say: “Open source projects are delivering incredible power and features to end users — we’ve taken things a step further by building an opportunity for unlimited extendibility for developers,”.
He also added: “Once developers get to see how easily 1.5 can leverage their own ideas as plugins, they will certainly be a big part of continuing Joomla’s incredible growth. You only need to take a look at the Joomlasphere to understand how amazing the future can be.”
Here, at Beep.Name, we have no doubt that the future for Joomla! will be downright amazing.
You’re invited to consider the following basic facts about the (buzzword, again) Joomlasphere to see how -big- this is getting:
- More than 60,000 registered users on the Official Joomla! community site forum and more on the many international community sites.
- 1168 Projects on the Joomla! Forge (forge.joomla.org). All for open source addons by third party developers.
- 890+ extensions for Joomla! registered on the Extension site (extensions.joomla.org)
- Joomla.org exceeds 2 TB of traffic per month!
- Alexa report [October 2006]: Joomla.org at #492 of top 500 busiest websites in the world.
- Community forums, over half a million posts, and 60,000 activated users. Growing at over 1200 posts per day and 150 new partcipants each day!
With this in mind, you should allow yourself some “beta exploration time” and download your very own copy of the Joomla! 1.5 BETA release.Yes, it’s free (for those who are somewhat new to “open source”).
Some developers are hoping for a solid “Release Candidate” version before Christmas 2006 and you’re advised -not- to run a “live site” with this BETA (although some of you will try it anyway, as usual).
The enthusiasm is so high that a forum member has suggested that the “Stable Release”, once it becomes available, be called “2.0″, instead of the planned “1.5″. It gives an idea how big a step this release is, compared the (still current) 1.x version.
The language translation work is currently underway and a whole lot of extensions should get upgraded in the coming months, not to mention the available templates, namely those from RocketTheme (arguably the prettiest).
Tags: joomla 1.5 beta, free cms, open source, content management, web sites
Cooling down your data center
If your servers are running in a hotter environment, you’re bound to suffer from performance drops which are plain bad for your business.
Cooling down your data center in order for your servers to run without heating too much makes so much sense that, right now, Liebert and HP (namely via the Cool Team) are preparing direct chip-cooling technologies destined for the commercial market.
Just over a year ago, Liebert acquired Cooligy which developed a server cooling approach that sprays chemically treated water onto a plate placed on top of a processor. In turn, over a hundred microchannels in the plate direct coolant onto a server’s processor hotspots. Cooligy says this technology is already in use in tens of thousands of workstations and it’s allegedly working pretty well.
To help you get the most from your cooling down efforts, here’s a quick list of things you should keep in mind:
- Go Dual – Make the switch from faster (and hotter) processors to cooler dual and multicore processors to instantly reduce heat generation.
- Alternate – Think up your data center floorplan so you alternate between hot and cool aisles to improve (and cool) the airflow.
- Get Closer – Move your cooling systems closer to your servers to ensure the cool air is concentrated in the right place.
Look Underfoot – Be sure that perforated floor tiles are properly installed so they don’t impede the all important flow of cool air coming from under the floor.- Plug Holes – Seal the holes and any other openings to prevent cool air from escaping and hot air from circulating properly.
- Aqua Savvy – Make greater (and smarter) use of water to cool the air in your data center or, even better, to directly cool down the servers.
- Small Works – Consider cooling your servers at the processor level.
Cooling down processors and electronic components with water (or other liquids) may scare some IT managers. The main reason being that liquids can damage computer components and cause fatal short circuits. Fortunately, spraying your server’s processors with liquid coolant (consider the SprayCool M-Series) can yield significant power advantages like doubling the amount of electricity available to power computers while significantly increasing the processing capability.
You could install your data center in the Canadian Arctic Circle and draft a policy of “letting the doors open all the time” but using water coolant on processors, at your current data center location, might be more practical.
Tags: data center cooling, chip cooling, coolant, liquid cooling, water cooling, web servers
Easily creating niche content for landing pages
There are billions of web documents out there and hundreds of millions of people potentially interested in them.
If you’re serious about monetizing your domain names, namely using pay-per-click advertising, you have the choice of building web destination by yourself or letting other people do it for you, like through the “landing page” services offered by DomainSponsor, DotzUp and Sedo.
If you choose to develop a web destination by yourself, you need to know a few things about web development, including certain things about (basic) online page layout.
If you’re a little pressed by time and you need to come up with a rather informative “landing page” for any of your domain names, perhaps using the Instant Niche Content creation suite of software will work for you.
Some of the most important software titles that are included in this suite help in buidling a web page (or site) filled with relevant information, which is good for both the search engine bots -and- the real visitors.
Furthermore, there are a few interesting (and up-to-date) tools to promote your newly created web destination.
All in all, it’s a lot of “web bang” for the money, even for professionals… especially the busy ones!
Tags: niche content, niche web sites, pay-per-click, ppc, monetization, web content, seo
Future net connectivity initiatives
While more people are enjoy high-speed internet every day, from their school, from the office or from the comfort of their home, there are other people who are currently preparing the future of net connectivity.
Here are the projects you should learn more about if you’re serious about “insanely high speed” for you digital data packets transport:
- Coronet – Code name for the Darpa project looking to provide highly secure, multi-terabit core optical networks to the telecom industry.
- GENI – Next generation master plan for tomorrow’s internet, as envisioned by the National Science Foundation.
- Internet2 – Well established academic group focused on building high-speed networks for distributed computing, namely between universities.
There are quite a few more projects out there looking to build (somewhat smaller scale) very high speed networks but these three should, in and of themselves, get you excited about the internet’s capability to sustain our future needs to convey ever heavier information loads, from and to countless access points, domestically and abroad.
Furthermore, lots of R&D is going on alongside these great initiatives and perhaps you should explore those areas too, especially if you’re interested in learning what the future has in store for internet connectivity!
Tags: coronet, geni, internet 2, high-speed internet, connectivity, universities, military, fiber optics
Data centers’ costs and complications
Companies that have embraced the web revolutation usually own and operate their own data center.
At first, it makes perfect sense to keep all that critical data within the realm of the company.
We’re talking about customer data, accounting, sales and project management, research & development data, collaboration tools and of course, web-enabled resources destined to either prospective or exisiting customers, partners or employees.
After all, this data is so critical to the future of most companies, it would make little sense to outsource it to a rather remote and unknown “partner”. With this in mind, modern companies must realize that a well oiled data center is hard work and that the costs and complications must be factored in to stay on top of things.
For instance, here are a few rules of thumb when looking to establish a new data center, nowadays:
- Fewer & bigger – Choose larger systems which are considerably more efficient than multiple smaller systems.
- Power matters – Get the facts early on about how much power is available in your area and while you’re at it, obtain detailed records of usage by your current data center (if any).
- Location is still king – Picking the right site means looking for favorable power pricing and availability (frequent blackouts are bad for e-businesses).
- Keep your cool – If you pile up a lot of iron, consider directly attached and liquid cooling modules for specific server clusters.
- Virtualize intelligently – While it’s not widely advertised (for obvious reasons), some apps don’t virtualize at all while some of those that can come with license agreements that hinder any cost savings.
The electrical bill issue is currently costing way more than initially accounted for. Consider that between 38% and 63% of the power budget typically goes to servers while air conditioners eat up 23% to 54%.
Over time, data centers have become some of the most expensive real estate owned by companies. If you’re interested in opening up your own data center, you should know the upfront price tag for a 50k square foot facility with 40 watts of power per square foot runs anywhere between 20M$ and 25M$.
In the coming years, thoses prices should keep on rising so if you wish to build your data center now, it makes economic sense!
Intel and AMD need to bring down the power consumption of their chips. Intel is offering dual-core processors and they usually consume between 68 and 95 watts of power, which is a great improvement over the “regular” server processors burning between 130 and 150 watts. The lower the watts, the lower the cooling costs!
As you can see, outsourced hosting packages, for non-mission critical applications in your company, should be considered an awesome bargain because building up (and operating) your very own data center doesn’t come cheap!
Tags: data centers, web servers, web hosting, rack space, server cooling, computers, intel, amd
Top paying pay-per-click keywords
Like many web publishers who love to explore new themes to build engaging web destinations, you’re curious about which keyword terms pay the most pay-per-click money.
Well, the Beep.Name’s top keywords list might help you identify which keyword terms could help you get the most money for your web development efforts.
It’s always nice to “be in the know” about which pay-per-click terms pay the most.
Tags: top paying keywords, pay-per-click, ppc, highest revenue, best keywords
Keyword Elite helps master the PPC art
Thousands of pay-per-click advertisers are competing for your attention when you search for just about anything, within Google or any Google AdSense publisher’s web site displaying targeted ads.
If you’re an expert in any given field, it’s time you thought about starting your very own web site. After a while, when it’s sufficiently built up, you may apply to become Google AdSense publisher too!
Most quality web sites stand a fair chance of being accepted in the lucrative Google AdSense program, so why not you too?
Once you get your very own Google AdSense ID, you can add a few pay-per-click ad zones within your web pages and if some visitors feel these extra web links appeal to them, they’re welcome to follow them.
In turn, this usually pays you a cut off the initial “bid” price paid by the advertiser.
This supplements your monthly revenue stream and helps you pay the bills even faster. For most web publishers, this is all that PPC is about.
But what about the web publishers who want to have more insight about which keywords work (and pay) the most? Who are the advertisers? And so on.
There a new software you should know about called Keyword Elite.
In a matter of seconds, you can specify any “theme” you like to then be presented with significant, comprehensive and abundant insight about how the keywords associated with this theme perform, pay-per-clickwise.
Let’s say you like “dental hygiene” (it can be anything you like). Well, Keyword Elite can quickly find all related keywords to this theme and from these newly discovered terms (which usually contain many keywords), you can do different things.
You can advertise in Google AdSense with your own pay-per-click ad, which is nice since the interface is so easy to use.
Of course, web publishers will probably want to focus more on the keyword terms that pay the most money and (this is impressive) automatically build up a web of pages about the theme (with interesting content), which includes Google AdSense pay-per-click zones… which pay you for every click!
Keyword Elite has a uniquely crafted toolset that will surely appeal to the seasoned web publishers out there but the newbies should get their copy too so they can save months of work and immediately start making a lot more money.
Make sure to get your copy, including the free gifts!
Tags: keyword elite, google adsense, advertising, keywords, pay-per-click, ppc
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