links for 2009-03-19

Twitter finally has a business model! Premium Accounts! this sounds like a hoax article. but intersting business model

twitter philly tweeple

The immediate differences show in the way the base UI is handled. Twhirl (as shown here in figure 1 for version 0.8.3 ) goes for the sidebar look and feel. Tall and thin. You can move it where you wish and still have other applications right next to it. You can easily drag the length, but the width is fixed. Twhirl wins you over with subtle colors for general postings, replies and direct messages of those you follow. Indicators (stars) for new messages make it easy to catch up while you are away. Multiple views (for lack of a better word) are available for each type of communication.

When creating a pay-per-click ad (PPC) ad, it is easy to overlook the importance of the display URL. However, search engine marketers have only a limited number of lines of text to work with and should take maximum advantage of each of them. This article summarizes the results of an eye tracking study and reviews the findings of two other tests of display URLs. The eye tracking study demonstrated that the display URL in PPC ads captures a significant portion of the gaze time allocated to the ads. The results of the other two tests showed that display URLs can have a meaningful impact upon click-thru rates.

While Twitter offers a few themes for your background and color them, if you’re an active twitter user you’re more likely to notice and appreciate a unique theme that helps you see the personality of another twitterer. Making your twitter presence a bit more colorful isn’t very hard and here are few suggestions you might want to consider for choosing a great color theme for your twitter profile:

My email is full of links: my friends send around YouTube videos to try and get a laugh, we share Picasa and Flickr albums with photos from last weekend's camping trip, and we email around the Yelp reviews of restaurants we're considering going to next Friday night.

The other day, I made a mistake. I sent 17,600 (or so) people an email that was actually intended for a select 200 people. It was a mechanized delivery process, and it just went to the wrong list. I started getting messages back almost immediately by people who didn’t much appreciate what felt very much like spam.

"Gmail currently automatically detects package tracking information, addresses, and event information and shows quick links to delivery status, maps and directions, and Google Calendar," explains Google software Engineer Vishal Kasera. "So why couldn't Gmail automatically detect links in emails and show videos, photos, and ratings right inside these messages as well?"

Awareness, and its close cousin attention, are scarce commodities in our fast-paced world. We're constantly bombarded by information and strong sensory impressions. Unceasing advertisements haunt us from our first waking moments to our exhausted slumber at the end of the day.

Some may frown on this topic being brought up right now. But some businesses use prosperous times to build up their cash reserves (war chest) to acquire other businesses during down times. They could have invested the funds during the good times into aggressively expanding their business and probably straddling their companies in debt as so many did. One has to admire such long-term strategic thinking and fortitude.