Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

In the last year I have seen several house ads running on the AdSense network, promoting different Google services such as Chrome, Picasa and Google Analytics. But today while reading TechCrunch, I saw for the first time an ad targeted to acquire new advertisers.

I wonder if that is a response to the fact Microsoft AdCenter came out of beta recently or to the Bing launch, a search engine that I highly recommend using.

BTW, does anyone know if (and how much) Google pays publishers when visitors clicks on these house ads and take action (download picasa or chrome, sign up for analytics or as advertisers)?

google-house-ad-adwords

I was using Microsoft Excel the other day and had that Eureka moment. I typed in a simple formula that had a closing parenthesis but forgot to put an opening parenthesis. An error message popped up and I realized that I have been getting that same error message, for doing the same mistake, ever since I have been using Excel. And even though Microsoft has released several Excel versions along these years, this specific problem has been carried from version to version without getting an elegant solution.

I am pretty sure that the same exact error happens to millions of users every day, and many of them are clueless and do the same thing – they get frustrated, delete the formula that has a minor error and start over.

So, here’s my suggestion to a very simple killer feature – AutoParenth. Excel should automatically add an opening parenthesis whenever it detects that a cell: (a) has a function (first character inside the cell is minus, plus or the equal signs) and (b) it has a closing parenthesis. This feature should be built similar to the AutoCorrect feature to give the users greater control.

If that’s too difficult to implement, Excel should at least provide an informative error message, just like Apple Numbers and Google Docs do. This is such a common error that a specific error message with clear instructions is necessary.

Apple Numbers informative error message.

Google Docs also provides enough information to guide the user.

I hope that someone at the Microsoft Office team will read this post and add this request to their todo list.

Globes.co.il published the results of a survey that was done by the Israeli research firm BDI-COFACE to rate the best Israeli high-tech companies to work for in 2008. BDI’s results were somewhat surprising (Intel first, Google ‘only’ second) so Globes decided to do their own survey.

But Globes forgot to include the “Other” category on the results page although it was one of the options. Oops.

So, let me fill the missing piece for you. Google does come first but the ‘Other’ category comes second with 23%. The remaining 8 behemoths (Intel, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, CheckPoint, Nice, Comverse and Amdocs) do not look that attractive anymore to many people.

So, if you are an Israeli start-up or an entrepreneur looking to build a team, there are plenty of people out there that might want to work for you.

ComScore reported yesterday that Google increased their US search market share to 61.8%. Yahoo is at 20.6% and Microsoft only at 8.5%.

I took a screenshot of my Google Analytics account and compared the results to ComScore’s report. During the month of May 2008, 96% (!) of the search users who came to this blog were Google users.

And yes, the numbers are small, they do not represent the US population and not statistically significant, but still, I find Google’s dominance among the readers of this blog to be really amazing.

This children book makes me think I should probably take out the media center from our living room…

Interested in the hard cover version? Get it on Amazon… 

I find it pretty funny that the most searched term on Apple’s Support site is “Blue Screen”…

When do you think a “Leopard vs Vista – my blue is nicer” ad will be released?

Today at BlogWorld, I met the product manager and the lead developer for Live Writer. Besides complementing them for creating a great desktop blogging application, I also learned that the official version for the product has just been released – welcome Windows Live Writer 2008.

I wrote in the past about this tool and how great it is. The new release makes things even better. Here are four examples for improved capabilities:

• Embedding images and video became easier and with more capabilities. For example – when pasting an embedded code from any video sharing service while working in the Web Layout mode, Live Writer immediately displays the video player instead of the html code. In the previous version you could only paste code in HTML mode
• The “New page” feature lets you create new pages. The previous version enabled only the creation of new posts
• An “Add category” feature was added (prior to that I had to do it via the Wordpress admin console)
• If you add post’s “Keywords”, those would automatically map to Wordpress’s tags (a ver 2.3 feature)

Basically, I have less and less need to login to Wordpress admin in order to post on a regular basis. The only reason to login is to manage comments or update the site template & plug-ins.

Kudos to the Microsoft Live team for the improvements. I highly recommend installing/upgrading.

I read some of the coverage around the blogesphere about Popfly, Microsoft latest innovation, and I am anxious to get the invitation email and start playing with it.

I felt the same when Yahoo Pipes came out but after playing with it for a while my enthusiasm ended since the capabilities were very limited and allowed creation of a limited types of mashups.

Popfly might turn to be different and big. Here’s why?

• The design tool looks amazing
• It could span a large social network for mashupers
• A site hosted on a .ms tld – not something you’d expect from “Microsoft”…
• Ducks

Here’s one example of a mashup created using Popfly.

BTW, you need to install Silverlight before accessing the page.