MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:25 MST

Google will use the information it collects on people’s Web surfing habits to show more ads tailored to their individual interests.

Under the program announced Wednesday, someone who frequents sites about dogs might see more ads for flea treatment products.

The program expands upon the Internet search leader’s efforts to figure out which marketing messages are most likely to appeal to different people at different times.

Google already makes billions of dollars showing ads tied to search requests and other content on a Web page. Now, it will analyze people’s favorite Web sites to divine individual tastes and package ads falling under the same areas of interest.

Apple Inc. unveiled a minuscule new iPod Shuffle on Wednesday that takes its “smaller is better” mantra to a whole new level.

The third-generation Shuffle, a slim aluminum rectangle less than 2 inches long, takes up about half as much space as the previous version even as it doubles music storage space to 4 gigabytes. To achieve such a tiny form, Apple had to remove most of the buttons from the body of the $79 device and build them into the headphone cord instead.

“Smaller has tended to work very well for us,” said Greg Joswiak, a marketing vice president at Apple.

The trade-off for a sub-$100 Shuffle always has been the lack of a screen to visually navigate through the music stored on the device. The first-generation Shuffle, which launched in 2005, could hold about 240 songs, arguably not enough to warrant a screen.

Now that the device can carry 1,000 songs, Apple has come up with a way for people to identify the music they’re listening to or find songs they want. A new feature called VoiceOver can, at the push of a button, speak the song and artist name or rattle off the list of custom mixes _ called playlists _ that the owner has loaded onto the device.

Here’s how it works: As you synchronize a new Shuffle using an updated version of iTunes, your PC or Mac looks at each track and playlist and creates a small file of a computerized voice speaking the title, artist for playlist name. If a song is in Spanish or Chinese, say, the software figures this out and speaks in the appropriate language. Apple says the device can handle 14 languages.

The new Shuffle, which comes in silver or black aluminum with a shiny stainless steel clip, is set to go on sale Thursday. Joswiak said Apple’s own earphones will be the only option for early buyers, but that other companies plan to make compatible headphones as well as adapters for regular headphones.

Ross Rubin, an analyst for market researcher NPD Group, said there’s no such thing as “too small” for gadget-happy consumers as long as Apple
stays focused on ergonomics and provides a way to secure the device and keep it from getting lost.

But people who do buy a new Shuffle will be paying a premium for Apple’s design, he added, noting less-expensive mini-models like SanDisk
Corp.’s Sansa Clip and Creative Technology Ltd.’s Zen Stone.

Shares of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple jumped $3.91, or 4.4 percent, to $92.54 in afternoon trading.

Tons of great things going on this week.  So mark your calendars and join in on all the fun:
 

Live Chats

• 3rd - Coffee Chatter w/ Action & Adventure - Rae Lori, Mike Davis, Beth Cornelison, Lise Fuller,
• 4th - Lyrical Press
• 7th - Tease Publishing

• 7th: Themed Chat: St. Patrick’s Day stories that involve the hero or heroine getting a surprise they might not have been ready for. All day chat.

• 5th: Paranormal Hunks and Greek Playboys Chat with Celia Jade from 6:00 PM-9:00 PM EST.
• 7th: Themed Chat: St. Patrick’s Day stories that involve the hero or heroine getting a surprise they might not have been ready for. All day chat.

• 6th: Open Mike in the Latte Lounge with New Concepts Publishing. All day chat.

• 2nd - Book Brew with the Coffee Crew with GLBT Books. Mark your calendars for this one because we are going to talk about our favorite GLBT books. You never know…with all of the readers we have in our Coffee Crew…we might know of a new book you are going to need! Stop by and post your favorite GLBT books! See you there!
• 3rd - Claudine’s Sweet Treat 

Each business card package comes in a zip file with a full size psd file, a full size jpg file, a thumbnail, the font that was used to create it and a READ ME file. I hope you enjoy our business cards. Drop a line or feel free to post.

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As much as this might surprise most bloggers, the #1 mistake most blogs are doing is not publishing their content via e-mail, as a supplement to their RSS feeds.

Just think about it: while RSS is growing strong, it still only penetrates about 5-6% of the American online population. Furthermore, according to a recent BlogAds survey, “only 12 percent of the blog reading audience said it used RSS always or often”.

If you’re delivering your blog content only via RSS, you’re missing out on about 80% or more of potential regular readership/followship.

THE KEY BLOG PROBLEM

There are millions of blogs already, but really few people have the time to watch more than a few daily. But if they come back just once a week, they can be quickly overwhelmed with the amount of new content.

That’s why it’s crucial to provide a “best of”, a helping hand to guide your readers to the “must-read” content you publish … and delivering this content either as a standalone “blog-zine” or as part of your regular e-mail newsletter.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

Deliver your blog posts as they are written via RSS, but then also publish a regular (weekly or monthly) e-mail e-zine with your “top blog posts” for those that are still not in to RSS.

Don’t do just one channel, do both.

E-mail is still the #1 end-user content delivery channel … whether we like it or not. Using e-mail (as a supplement to RSS) to deliver our content is just good business practice, at least for now.

THE CHRIS PIRILLO EXAMPLE

Chris Pirillo is the publisher of one of the most popular sites on the net, Lockergnome.com. He was actually the first to proclaim e-mail as being dead.

But still, while he preferrs for his subscribers to use RSS instead of e-mail, that isn’t stopping him from using or promoting either RSS or e-mail.

COMPARING BLOGS, E-ZINES, E-MAIL AND RSS

If you’re reading this article and thinking that blogs are actually “beyond e-mail”, just consider the following reality.

RSS and e-mail are content delivery channels; the tools that enable us to deliver our content to end-users. Blogs and e-zines on the other hand are two different internet media content formats, differing in how/what content is provided and presented through them.

RSS/e-mail and blogs/e-zines cannot be directly compared. Blog content and e-zine content can both be delivered via RSS and e-mail, and there is no direct business/logical relation between, for example, blogs and RSS.

Blogs are “personal” conversations, opinions and news, delivered in a linear structure, usually written in a more personal style, and confined to a limited number of content types.

E-zines on the other hand are more similar to magazines or newspapers, carrying content presented in a complex non-linear content structure, and having the ability to carry many different content types that do not mix well together if provided through a linear content structure.

A typical e-zine might include:

- an editorial;
- a leading article, representing the prevailing topic of a specific e-zine issue;
- supporting articles, clearly structured to show they are secondary to the leading article;
- links to “best of” blog posts in the given timeframe;
- links to the most relevant forum topics and posts;
- a news section;
- a featured client case study;
- different advertisements (banner ads, textual ads, advertorials etc.);
- a featured consultant;
- a Q&A section;
- a featured whitepaper;
- etc.

Providing all of this content demands a complex content structure and a strong and experienced editor. The blog format simply does not provide the level of structure needed to effectively present such a complex content mix.

But that’s not to say that blogs are in any way inferior to e-zines, they’re just different. And businesses need both, and they need to deliver both via RSS and e-mail.

Personal preferences towards content delivery channels and internet content media formats have no place in business. What matters is what our audiences want and how they want it.

About the author:
Rok Hrastnik is the author of »Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS«, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS experts. The complete guide on RSS for marketers: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa2
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On future Earth everyone is perfect. People live in protected bubbles called Biospheres. Sex is considered imperfect, addictive, a human flaw corrected by the Blocker program which is a mandatory microchip embedded in every human at birth.

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