Category: Techno Bob

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Techno Bob

Two cool tools for Mac geeks …

A few gems I stumbled on while surfing this week:

Gruml: I switched from Bloglines to Google News long ago as my RSS reader of choice. But although Google News was superior for managing my feeds, I missed Bloglines’ user interface. Gruml gives me the best of both worlds, allowing me to read and manage Google News through Gruml. I’ve been using it for a few days now, and the only thing I’m not liking about it is the email function. I constantly email items I find in feeds to friends, and Google News makes that very simple. Gruml has that feature, but I don’t like it as much. It sends the URL to the feed and in a sample I just sent, the URL was so long it broke and wasn’t clickable in the email. I think I can live with that, but it’s a glitch I’d like to see fixed. The app currently is free. Definitely worth a test drive if you use Google News on the Mac.

Witch: Most Mac users quickly learn the command-tab trick to toggle among open apps. Witch puts this on steroids, allowing you to toggle not only among apps, but also among open documents in apps. I’ve been using it for a few days and fully intend to pay the $15 they want for it. The demo version works for 250 switches, and then a payment nag starts popping up. I tried using Mac’s Spaces to solve this problem but always found it weird and buggy. Witch allows me to hop from item to item on my computer fluidly. It’s a keeper.

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Media Bob Techno Bob

Four Square fatigue

When Internet advertising talk turns to targeting, people start to twitch. Just consider the maelstrom Facebook walked into with its Beacon blunder. The concerns about online privacy are quite valid. It’s important to be vigilant about how your personal data are being used. The snarky PleaseRobMe.com drove this point home beautifully. But I  think it’s important to seek a middle ground, a place where the use of your data provides value to you while you retain control of who sees that information and under what circumstances.

Venture capital blogger David Hornik does a great job finding that middle ground in his post: Four Square Fatigue and the Evolution of Privacy. He’s not flapping his arms yelling the sky is falling. Not by a long shot. His post is more a meditation on how our notion of privacy is evolving, and how online companies need to understand that as they devise ways to leverage this data.

Hornick writes:

“The coming generations of consumers may not abandon the idea of privacy in its entirety, but they will certainly have very different views of the appropriate balance between privacy and utility. That balance has already clearly shifted in the direction of utility and I believe the trend will continue.

“To some this will be viewed as a warning — a cry of the coming privacy apocalypse. I don’t see it that way. As technologies and standards evolve, doors open to new products and services. We are on the verge of an explosion of new ideas.”

I think he’s right on target here. It will be interesting to see how this progresses …

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Media Bob Techno Bob

Google’s take on the future of online display ads

Google has begun a series of blog posts laying out their “vision for online display advertising in the years ahead.” The first post, by Vice President of Product Management Susan Wojcicki, looks back at the foundation Google has built for online display ads, including the “hundreds of thousands of engineering hours” they’ve invested in the problem. It cites the acquisition and subsequent enhancements to DoubleClick. And Wojcicki says Google has put “hundreds of thousands” of engineering hours into display ad technology, including enhancements to DoubleClick and the creation of the Ad Exchange.

It all sounds great, but overall, the post is little more than a hagiography of Google’s efforts to date. No mention is made of how ad exchanges have encouraged a race to the bottom on rate. There’s a lot of bullish talk about “the incredible creative units that we see today.” Not so much talk about consumer tendency to ignore ads, the rock-bottom rates most display ads command and the anemic clickthrough rates they generate. I’d also like to know where Google sees the “branding” function of online display ads going. Clicks aren’t the only way to measure value. Impressions do matter. How is Google planning to help advertisers understand the value that impressions can create?

I hope that as the series progresses, Google will address some of the specific problems publishers are seeing as they try to build business models that rely on display ads. What I’d really love to see are some case studies of how things are working (or failing to work) now and how Google’s vision of the future would alter these case studies …