Alcides Fonseca

When everybody talks about URLs and how you can associate all your stuff to a personal URL (through OpenID, microformats, etc…), it looks like in Japan they are already leaving URLs behind and they’re just using search engine keywords in their advertising. This is not a new thing, I remember a lot of movie posters not having the URL, but the AOL keyword. That was pretty useless in Portugal, since AOL has no presence here, and I can’t remember SAPO doing anything like this. Even I used this strategy! I was in doubt whether should buy this domain or not. I wouldn’t give out my old address to people, I’d just tell them to google “alcides fonseca” and thanks to the SEO magic of having a rare name, it works :)

However, this is something I wouldn’t suggest unless you have the KEYWORD.com domain. Search engines don’t always display the search results in the same order, so imagine you have a company, and some guy writes a bad review and he’s a SEO expert. Whenever a customer would search for your keyword, his bad review will be the first result! You don’t want this, do you? And guess that one of your competitors buys an advertising link in some Search Engine that displays first when search for your keywords? I wouldn’t like that too…

Even when “good” domain names are becoming rare and expensive, and “Big Mamas Bakery” looks more catchy than http://www.big-mamas-bakery.com, making sure that all your possible clients end up in the right place it’s very important!

Stay at Home Servers’ book is one of the most brilliant pieces of advertising I came across lately. Do click an read the flash-based book!

I already hear the voices: “Now they are brainwashing kids to get their parents to buy them the server , right in your faces!”. This ad is targeting end-users without geek skills, not the kids themselves… But it true they can see it and get the wrong impression. But I believe kids are smart enough not to buy it.

A small note: Flash? Where’s that so incredible Silverlight? Not even in Microsoft websites? And I bet the guy who did the design stuff used a mac! Can you spot the iPhone?

Regarding the product itself, I am not a believer. Why would I buy one more big fat box, just to be connected? I have my desktop backing up the notebook’s file. I can access my files from school through FTP. Why would I need that HomeServer? I am doing fine with my Windows XP desktop.

What I believe is more of a Apple mini/tv server. A media center that has a nice storage capacity serving as a backup for everyone (would be used mostly for storing movies and series, I bet), a well designed media player (to be seen in televisions), a smart and cute browser, bluetooth to sync mobile devices on the fly, and even some games. Not that hardcore games like Halo (MS has Xbox for that), but some casual games wouldn’t hurt anyone. Even the iPod has them!

This would be the “home server” I’d buy my family this Xmas. Ok, ok that I would make my dad buy… It would be really useful and meaningful.

Carlos Serrão announced today his latest project, a directory of video ads that are spread around services like Youtube, Metacafe, etc… It’s called All of Ads, its still in embryonic state and has some interesting ideas that soon will be implemented.

As a great fan of good advertisements, I find this an interesting project to follow and a nice way to gather inspiration for several stuff. This kind of ads seems to be the next generation of advertising, since it has everything to have success on the web and looks like Google has spotted that.

Context-driven advertising is becoming widely popular, proved by the Adsense’s success. Two days ago, while talking to Tiago Serra about how to get money from google maps mashups, I thought about a advertising system, just like Adsense, but georeferenced. Publishers would charge their GeoAds account with credits and then add their ads to the system with their coordinates. Mashup owners would add a little code to their website (compatible with GoogleMaps, LiveEarth and YahooMaps) and from then on, all the ads would be seen in their application. And for each user click, the credit changes from the advertiser to the publisher (can be traded later for real world money).

But this system will only work fine if adopted by a large number of online geo-based services in order to show advertisers this is really a good way of publicize businesses just like local outdoors. So if you own a GeoMashup, feel free to contact me and share some ideas about GeoAdvertising.

Since Age of Wizards Kingdoms, I’ve been using Google Adsense for displaying publicity and earning some bucks. Well, for now I have google ads in that game for over an year and in the last month, I’ve added them to my other websites. ATM, I have 26 dollars, that suck for the page hits and clicks I had for now. And I dislike the fact that they only pay us when you achieve $100. I have to get another system!

As a blog, most of my readers use RSS and not the website itself, so I had to get some RSS ads. Google’s Feedburner has this advertising program, but it is invite-only, so my little web log had no chance. Text Link Ads sounded nice, and they pay through PayPal! (great to buy domains!). I’ve submitted my website for approval almost one month ago, but I did had no answer. I decided today to contact them in order to find out what was happening. 10 minutes later, I had the email confirming it and another from the technical support explaining the rest of the process: I had to install the code, and one week later I will have ads selected by them.

When getting the code, I could choose from PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, JSP and PERL code, or even pluggins for various blogging systems (WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, MovableType, etc). Well, my blog is handwritten in Python. Bad luck! Fortunately I’m a nice coder and did this helper that you can use when working with Python.

Now I have to wait one week for it, but from people who use it, it’s very nice. In about one month I will post about my earnings. If you are interested in getting this too, please use my referral link and get $100 in free links.