Google Redesigns AdSense Ads

Here's something new about AdSense Ads from the AdSense guru Joel Comm from his blog www.joelcomm.com in his own words:

You've probably already noticed it. The look of your AdSense units has changed. No, you didn't push the wrong button and accidentally wipe out all your formatting. And no one hacked into your code and played with your Web page.

Google has redesigned its ad units.

The changes aren't radical but they do offer a couple of small advantages. First, the "Ads by Google" tag is now at the bottom of the unit instead of at the top.

That means that users no longer get a little warning telling them that what they're about to see are ad links.They see the links then they're told that they've been looking at ads. That's a nice little change.

The other change is the removal of the borders between ads within a unit. That's not a great surprise. Turning off the borders was always the first step in AdSense optimization. It seems as though Google has seen so many of its advertisers turning off the borders - and earning more as a result - that it has now removed the option of having internal borders altogether.

But that also means that you can have an external border around the ad unit without worrying about seeing lines between the ads. The only time that I can imagine someone doing that is if they had a very modular page with content placed in separate boxes. For the most part, this change is just going to lower the chances of new publishers accidentally putting up their ads with the worst form of poor formatting.

One thing we can be sure of though is that Google tested this newlook before it came out - and saw better clickthroughs as a result. We should expect to see the same.

US blogger just out of jail

Americans have caught up with the Third World. You can now be jailed in the US for posting a video clip on your blog!

Josh Wolf spent seven and a half months in a federal prison for protecting his sources after posting a video on his blog.

People have been jailed in Third World countries for reasons such as politics, religious issues, or racism, but Wolf was in prison for refusing to hand over video he shot during a protest in San Francisco in 2005.

In a brokered deal, Wolf posted the uncut video on his site JoshWolf.net, gave prosecutors a copy, told them he had not witnessed any crimes - and was released on April 3, 2007.

In exchange, prosecutors acceded to Wolf's key contention: that he not be made to appear before a grand jury and identify those on his video.

However, the broader issue is whether he is a Journalist or an Activist. Being a journalist might entitle him the right to protect his sources. The debate is ongoing.

Let your Outlook Express be spam-free free

A contact of mine sent me an email and at the footer of the email was a message saying that "I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 11,097 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Try SPAMfighter for free now!"

Try I did and found it a wonderful tool - saves me lots of terrible drudgery and time I always take to delete many dozens of dreaded spam emails that flood my Outlook Express inbox each morning when I open up the computer.

This remarkable SPAMfighter Standard is a free tool for Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail that automatically and efficiently filters spam and phishing fraud. SPAMfighter has partnered with Microsoft to build "the strongest, safest and most effective antispam tool on the market."

Whenever new mail arrives, it will automatically be tested by SPAMfighter. If it's spam, it will be instantly moved to the spam folder. Then you can run through the spam folder if you want to.

The program can be used with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP or Windows Vista.

Well, try SPAMfighter for free now!

(This is not a sponsored post.)

Time Machine for Your Websites

Jeff Mulligan of CBMall pointed out to me an amazing site that can take one back in time. It is like a time machine as far as websites are concerned:

www.waybackmachine.org

You can go to this site, enter any website URL and click "Take Me Back". It will then show you what that website looked like on a series of dates in the past, as way back as 1996.

It is a very useful tool which can be used in research to see in what direction your competitors are evolving. It can also be used to gauge the strength of progress of a potential partner.

I tried it with the URL of my seven-month-old blog but it was too new to have any matches. When I put in the URL of my 10-month-old website, www.HomeWebBiz.com , I discovered that prior to my acquiring the domain name, a certain company had been using the domain name for a business opportunity website before me for more than two years.

It is an amazing tool. According to the write-up, with this tool you can browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to several months ago. And it is a free service for all.

Don’t blog your way to Jail

Leonard Chen has an interesting post over at AffiliateMarketingBlogger.com. He says when deciding what to write, it’s best to avoid topics like Religion, Politics and Racism – otherwise you may end up blogging your way to jail.

Yes, you can go to jail by blogging on the wrong topics.

As for blogging on religion, recently on February 22, 2007, Egyptian blogger named Abdel Kareem Suleiman (a.k.a. “Kareem Amer” online) was sentenced to 4 years jail for expressing his views on his religion in his blog.

As for political blogging, in February 2005, an Iranian blogger had been jailed 14 years. Arash Sigarchi was arrested after using his blog to criticize the arrest of other online journalists. They accused Sigarchi of a string of crimes against Iranian state, including espionage and insulting the country’s leaders.

As for racist blogging, for posting racist remarks against Muslims and Malays on the Internet, two ethnic Chinese Singaporeans – a blogger and a web forum user – were sentenced to jail under the Sedition Act on October 7, 2005.

Freedom of speech is recognized freely in the United States but this cannot be assumed in some other parts of the world, as can be seen by the above examples.

Gmail goes public – no need invitations

In a posting on Google Blog on February 14, 2007, Google Associate Product Manager, David Murray said Gmail sign-ups are now open worldwide and gone public! No more waiting for someone to invite you—just create an account directly at www.gmail.com. This is indeed making it very convenient.

What better way to share the love with the people you care about than with Gmail chat with <3. And Gmail is available in over 40 interface languages (though <3 needs no translation).

But seriously folks, good relationships are built on good communication. There's no reason you should struggle to reach the ones you love or do business with, and Gmail helps you communicate fast and easily.