The River

Danny Sullivan has the scoop on Google’s plans to become more transparent about its ad policies. I’ve written about this a bunch and would love to quit doing so. Kudos to Danny and to Google.

My prior writings here, here, and here.

Not that I want to boost the level of competition or anything, but I thought folks who spend a lot of time online (aka readers of this blog) might find the Urban Challenge Online fun.

I was interested in playing this game when it was a physical event that had contestants running around the city solving puzzles. In fact, one of my buddies even finished in the top 10 in NYC back in 2002. Alas, it all started up right when I was in the middle of wedding planning, so it was not to be. Anyway, am pleased to see there’s an opportunity to play online.

The organizers seem to have big ambitions and have a history of getting sponsorships (Verizon Wireless) for the competitions, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see product placement or online gaming sponsorship play a role. (That was my lame attempt to bring this post back to an online marketing/advertising focus. But, seriously, I think gaming sponsorships can be pretty powerful, though there’s a lot to be done regarding establishing pricing and measuring results. )

Scoble blogs about discovering the secret beind Google’s “invite a friend” Gmail distribution strategy:

I met Chris Uhlik of Google. He’s the program manager of Gmail and the Google Toolbar and a few other things. He gave a talk at 11 p.m. to well after midnight. I asked him why they only give out a few Gmail accounts at a time. Remember, I thought it was sheer marketing genius. Turns out it wasn’t. Turns out they don’t have enough server capacity to deal with everyone who wants an account. So, when they buy a new server and get it installed they hand out another round of invites. Heh, their server salesperson must cheer everytime he or she sees more invites being advertised on weblogs.

Speaking of which, I have a few more invites if anyone wants one. E-mail theriver (at) mcnigel (dot) com.

From the new Search Engine Watch Blog:

What’s This? A Search Engine Watch Blog?

That’s right, kind reader — you’ve stumbled into the beta test of our new Search Engine Watch Blog. We’re telling everyone about it on September 16 in more detail, but feel free to enjoy what we’ve been testing!

Yes, Danny Sullivan’s blogging. Looking forward to hearing from him!

[via Gary, who is also participating in the SEW blog and apparently is too excited to keep quiet about it.]

Fred says the spam crisis is over. It’s ironic with all of the controversy roiling about Sender ID that — from the investor standpoint, at least — the problem is negligible. (It’s happened even faster than Bill Gates predicted.)

Still, I tend to agree that the problem is becoming more manageable. Filtering technologies (I use P2P tech from Cloudmark and a Bayesian filter called SpamBayes) have gotten more effective. We’re beginning to see the promise — if not the fruition — of technologies for e-mail authentication. Still, plenty of resources (time, money, personnel) are being employed to deal with the spam problem — and that situation would have to improve immensely for me to say spam was no longer an issue.

Will all the dough companies now spend on “ISP relations” and “deliverability” be saved when authentication becomes a reality? I doubt it. That money will probably end up going to “reputation management” and maintenance of correct Sender ID and SPF records.

UPDATE: Matt weighs in.

Apologies for the lack of blogging action this week. Between getting stuck at home due to subway flooding and the usual vagaries of the workweek, things have been busy. I do have news to report on a personal front, though. We’ve finally set the date for my moving to the Bay Area. Yes, it appears to really be happening. As of November 22nd (Monday of Thanksgiving week), I’ll be reporting to work in our San Francisco office. I’m sticking around NYC for Ad-Tech, then driving across the country the next week, possibly staying at various relative’s places in Missouri, Colorado and/or Nevada along the way.

We still don’t know where we’re living, but we’re working on renting a place starting in November — if you know of anyone looking for tenants, let me know. My husband is growing keen on the inner Sunset area. Maybe I’ll get a chance to check it out this weekend when I visit.

UPDATE: Now we are thinking of a house (to rent) in Berkeley. Anyone got a line on anything? And, yes, I’m familar with Craigslist — got my searches on my RSS reader. Just thought there’s a chance of someone having a place to rent out, or someone knowing someone. Thanks in advance.