Go fourth and prosper

To all of our U.S. publishers, we wish you a happy 4th of July! This weekend, take a chance to celebrate your liberty in patriotic (and AdSense-friendly) fashion. Exercise your first amendment right to freedom of expression by creating more of the rich, wonderful content that makes the web such a special place. Or, work on achieving future financial freedom by implementing a few of our optimization tips.

You might also want to take a note from the Declaration of Independence and pursue your unalienable right to happiness! Our reporting options make it possible to unchain yourself from your computer, so get out there and enjoy the summer weather (the right to bare arms?), fireworks, long evenings, and BBQs...because suffering from G.A.S.S. would be cruel and unusual punishment indeed.

(Oh, and one last thing: the AdSense Support team will be out enjoying our freedom over the holiday as well, so it may take longer than usual for us to reply to your emails. We'll be back in the office on Wednesday, but in the meantime you might prefer to turn to our Help Center, or Help Discussion Groups for assistance instead).

Posted by the Inside AdSense Team

Selling Cendant Travelport - Turning 7 into 4.3

Congrats to Cendant on selling TDS/Travelport to the renowned private equity firm Blackstone. Forbes called the price/deal "adequate". FT says the the price is "no knock out". Considering the state of the assets, the price on the deal is well described as adequate/OK as the earnings multiple is better than Sabre's, hence the congratulations. However, I would use harsher terms to describe the state of affairs that led to this being the best price of the assets. It is publicly known that the Travelport business was built over the course of 5 years and more than a dozen acquisitions costing $7bil. Simple maths shows $2.7bil is lost value. Should provide the remaining Cendant entities with tax credits as well as cash to help with debt. Blackstone are the masters and finding that lost value. Two possibilities from them, a turn around and flip within 3 years or a break-up and separate sale. I'm betting on a break-up.

UPDATE 1 - Travelmole comment
(login required)
UPDATE 2 - Redherring
UPDATE 3 - e-tid with a collection of comments from newsites and papers (registration required but free)

Bullish analyst report on Priceline

Morgan Stanley have put a bullish analysts report for Priceline according to Forbes. Expedia, Travelocity and Travelport look too far ahead for Priceline to catch up but this does not mean that there are not great profits to be made leading the second teir. Especially if they continue to get it right with integration of acqusitions.

View your Ad Group stats in tabs

Have you noticed that the Ad Group page looks a little different these days? Here's Jon D. from the Campaign Management team to give you more info on the new 'tabbed' look:

We've redesigned the Ad Group page to display more important account information and present it in a way that's easy to find and understand. None of your account statistics from the past or present will change because of this new feature, but we hope you'll find your stats easier to read.

So, what have we changed? Your account statistic tables are now presented on separate tabs, which can be found along the upper right edge of the table. You can now view your statistics on the following tabs:

Summary – Displays the performance totals for your Ad Group.

Keywords – Shows you how individual keywords are performing, and allows you to add new keywords or edit existing ones (appears only in campaigns with keyword-targeted ads).

Sites – Shows you how your ad is performing on individual sites you have selected. You can add new sites or change your bid for existing ones (appears only in campaigns with site-targeted ads; not shown above).

Ad Variations (New!) – Displays performance statistics for all of the ads that you have created. You can add, edit or delete ads here. (This very useful information has been added as a result of frequent advertiser requests. Keep that feedback coming!)

And if you’d rather see all of your stats at once, all you have to do is click the 'View all tabs at once' link below the display table.

As always, you'll find more information about the new tabs on the Ad Group page in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Sarah & Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

On the ball

Like many of you, we have "World Cup fever" and wanted to feature a publisher who is successfully using AdSense on a football (that's 'soccer' to all our American readers) site. We asked Ralf Möbius of Fussballportal.de about his experiences with AdSense:

Can you tell us briefly about how your portal got started?

Fussballportal.de was launched in August 2004 as an addition and alternative to those football sites that were already successful and established on the net. Over the last 2 years, we've built a following in the competitive area of football sites.



Why did you decide to use AdSense?

Online marketers often aren't able to fully book-out existing ad space. Therefore, AdSense is a great alternative to increase a website's revenue. Since ads are relevant to the content of your pages, AdSense provides a meaningful addition for content-rich sites with loyal visitors. You also don't have to deal with acquiring and maintaining relationships with advertisers, which can be time-consuming.

What is your most important optimization tip for AdSense publishers?

Try to blend your ads by removing the border and using the same color as the background of your page. With this simple measure you can avoid ad blindness and also considerably boost your revenue.

Does the World Cup have any effects on your AdSense stats?

With the world here on our doorstep in Germany, we've seen very positive effects since we always provide up-to-date content, interactive games for our users, special features and services surrounding the World Cup.

Who is going to win the World Cup?

Brazil. The "ball artists", behind coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, will improve their performance from game-to-game like they already proved they can do at the Confederations Cup 2005 in Germany, and they'll be at their best by the semi-finals and finals.

Posted by Walter Palma - AdSense Publisher Support (Translated by Michaela Tomberger)

More departures at Cendant - this time Octopus

e-Tid are reporting (registration requried for link) that Daniella Wagner (MD Octopus Travel) is joining the list of departures from Cendant TDS/Travelport. No word on her replacement or where she is going. Daniella is the creator of the successful affiliate model based Octopus Travel.

Have a track attack with new referral channels

We've added the option to assign channels to your referral units. Now, when you're generating the code for any referral unit, you can specify a channel to track the performance of that specific referral unit.

You can use the more detailed channel reporting to track anything from whether text or button referral formats perform better, to whether Firefox referrals are more successful on your product pages or your news pages. Channels will help you experiment to find out what's most effective in referring users from your site.

With the addition of channels for the referrals feature, now might be a good time to brush up on your channel expertise by reviewing our channel guide.



Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

Introducing Google Checkout

We recently had the chance to catch up with Eric Lange, product manager, to learn more about Google Checkout, a new service that works with AdWords to help advertisers sell more online and process sales for free. Here's what we learned:

Give us some background on Google Checkout. Why this product at this time?

A growing number of people look to online search when they want to buy and we believe Google Checkout can help make the search and buy experience faster and easier. For shoppers, the goal of Google Checkout is to include more relevant information in search advertisements and make it easier to buy from sellers with a single login--that way, users don't have to re-enter their purchasing information every time they buy online. For advertisers, we want to make it easier to attract new customers and process their purchases for free.

So what exactly is Google Checkout and how would advertisers use it on their sites?

Basically, Google Checkout is a checkout process that advertisers integrate with their websites. Customers who visit their sites can use this checkout option to buy from them using a single username and password. And once they do, advertisers can use Google Checkout to charge their credit cards, process their orders, and deposit funds in their bank accounts. We have several integration options for advertisers to choose from.

How does Google Checkout help advertisers attract new customers?

That gets back to the motivation for the product – buyers often start the purchase process by searching online and they're looking for places to shop that are convenient and secure. Google Checkout makes it easier for shoppers to find these places by displaying the Google Checkout badge on the advertiser's AdWords ads. The badge is like a little sign on the AdWords ad that helps shoppers more easily find stores that accept Google Checkout.

You mentioned processing purchases for free. How does that work?

Put simply: for every $1 advertisers spend on AdWords, they can process $10 in sales for free through Google Checkout. For example, if an advertiser spent $1,000 on AdWords last month, this month the advertiser can process $10,000 in sales at no cost. If advertisers exceed their free transaction processing for the month, they'll only be charged 2% plus $.20 per transaction. The processing fees – or lack of them – reflect what we see as a natural relationship between generating leads through online advertising and processing online sales.

Sounds interesting. Where should advertisers go to learn more?

I'd recommend taking a closer look at http://checkout.google.com/sell and watching this video introduction. We hope this new service helps our advertisers grow their businesses.

Thanks for taking the time to chat about this new service.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Flight Centre goes off to go on

Flight Centre's new online plan is to put computers in the store to allow customer's to book online as part of their shop of the future (travelweekly report pdf). Each store will have two kiosks. My how to grow the online business tip to Flight Centre is to ..well.. spend the money online, not off.

Tripadvisor and Google chasing PPC spend for travel

In paid search, almost every word you can think of has a travel angle. Google know this and have whole teams devoted to nothing but Travel. Every destination, activity, subject matter, mode of transport, event, function has a travel possibility attached. Oh for the relative simplicity of marketing "Home Loans", where all you have to bid on is three words "home" "loan" and "mortgage". This is both a blessing for marketers in the scope and possibility for finding second and third tier words to be bid on at lower cost. It is a curse as it is easy to lose your focus and bid too much on too many. Tripadvisor have also stepped up their efforts in taking travel paid search marketing dollars from Google by adding downloadble guidebooks to attract further qualified traffic.

Taking Persistent Notes

A lot of people use Lotus Notes. And now users can access and search more of their Notes content directly from the Google Search Appliance. Persistent Systems, a recently announced Google Enterprise Professional partner, has just released their new IBM Lotus Notes Connector. This connector, when combined with the Google Search Appliance, allows users to search pretty much all of their Lotus Notes content.

The new connector provides the ability to browse through a configured Lotus Notes content hierarchy of servers, databases and documents. This enhances the reading of structured and unstructured documents in Lotus Notes, plus passes them to the Google Search Appliance for indexing purposes. The connector also includes the ability to fetch attachments, detect changes, and handle authenticated search, which fits well with our paradigm of secure, efficient search.

To learn more about the Persistent IBM Lotus Notes Connector and how it can help complete the universal search picture for your business, check out:
http://www.persistentsys.com/products/enterprisecontentsearch/enterprisecontentsearch_google.htm

International Business Newsletter

How would you like to learn the answers to the following
questions (and more) from a full time importer/exporter who
earns on average over $100,000 a year and get the answers
to some of your most important questions, like:

Is exporting your full time occupation and if so, how long
have you been exporting?

What type of training did you take, if any?

Is your company considered an export management company in
that you actually take possession of the goods or are you
what would be called an Export Agent/Broker?

The article in Global Business, where we learned about you,
indicated how you put put parties together and earn a
commission on the transaction, like you just explained to
us. Do you have a standard commission or is each deal you
work on a new adventure?

Do you have a standard agreement that you use or do you let
that up to the buyer and/or seller?

Do you ever work as a sourcing agent or finder for
domestic USA companies?

Do you handle the actual paperwork involved with the
exporting transaction?

Is there any particular products that you try to work
with and those you prefer not working with?

Do you ever get paid by the buyer, rather than the seller?

Have you ever felt that you were ripped off by a seller
or a buyer that you were contracted with?

Is there a preferred method of payment that you choose
to receive?

What are the BEST trade lead boards in your opinion?

What would you say are the biggest hurdles for someone
thinking about entering the international trade?

What factors or parameters do you review when determining
if a deal is worth your involvement?

***Here is the link - scroll down the page a bit to begin
reading the interview with this importer/exporter:
International Business Newsletter

Enforcing their own monopoly is not enough now AAA Tourism wants your help

It is not enough for aaa Tourism that they have a government sactioned exclusivity to stars in ranking systems (or anything that looks like it). Now they want online retailers to refuse to stock self rated hotels (AAA press release, Travel Today story). I am all for quality controls and standards, especially after spending time in American hotels that claim to be 4 star. However I object to the monopoly that the government has granted to aaa Tourism. If AAA are such strong believers in their history and brand, then that should be enough to entice hotels to use their ranking system. If they are good enough at their job, voluntary participation would be extensive and consumers protected. The bullying tactics they take with retailers and properties look more like justifying their existence and extending an outrageous monopoly than protecting the consumer.

Octopus continues its offline push

More Victories for Octopus in signing up offline distribution in deal with HWT. It is time Cendant/GTA stopped describing this as a consumer brand and embrace its true nature - offline and affiliate specialist.

Maximum? Average? Minimum?

Over the years, a specialized vocabulary has evolved around cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, and many newer advertisers find themselves a bit at sea until they've spent a good amount of time with their accounts -- and in the AdWords Help Center, where they'll find a helpful glossary of the most commonly used terms.

One particular area of confusion revolves around the three types of CPCs -- Maximum CPC, Average CPC, and Minimum CPC -- so let's take a closer look at these terms:

CPC is an abbreviation for cost-per-click, and refers to the cost that you will pay (per click) when a user clicks on your ad.

Maximum CPC is a maximum amount that is set by you, the advertiser, and defines the most you wish to pay for a click on a keyword. Keep in mind that you don't automatically pay this maximum amount because the AdWords Discounter will always reduce the amount you are charged to be just one cent more than the minimum necessary to keep your position on the page.

Average CPC (also seen as Avg. CPC in your account) is literally that: an average. Since each click you receive may have a different CPC depending on a variety of factors, we show you the Average CPC in your account to give you an effective overview. The Average CPC is determined by totalling the cost of all clicks and then dividing that total by the number of clicks.

Minimum CPC (more commonly known as the minimum bid) is an amount based on the keyword's Quality Score that is assigned to each keyword in your account. The minimum bid is the least amount you may pay per click in order for your keyword to show ads.

We hope this sheds some light on the subject - and invite you to do a little further exploring in the searchable Help Center, if you'd like a greater depth of detail.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Do you see video ads in your future?

Terri Wild from thecarconnection.com was one of the first publishers to beta test click-to-play video ads on her site.

When Wild participated in the beta test, video ads were only supported for the 300x250 Medium Rectangle ad format, so she had to switch to Medium Rectangles from the Squares she'd previously been displaying on her site. (Video ads are now supported by Large Rectangles and Squares as well).

When video ads began to appear on her site, Wild had a positive first impression.

"The quality of the video was good," explained Wild. "It was unobtrusive and complemented the site well. It was the only video content we offered so it was not lost amongst clutter. I knew since it was coming from Google it would be the highest quality visually and technically."

Not only did Wild see a revenue gain from the click-to-play video campaign itself, but switching to the larger Medium Rectangle format resulted in an additional jump in clickthrough rate and a 42% increase in eCPM.



"The AdSense team's research is excellent and they understand how to integrate ads without intruding on the user's experience," said Wild. "All of their recommendations regarding ad size and placement have resulted in significant increases. In fact, our revenues are six times higher than they were a year ago when we had limited Google text ads!"

Wild says she would be excited about showing more click-to-play video ads in the future.

Got an interesting video ads story? Email us. Your valuable feedback allows us to further improve our product for all our publishers. Want to beta test one of our upcoming products? Let us know and we'll keep you in mind.

Posted by Sandra Tsui - AdSense Publisher Support

There must be another boom...!

RedHerring has a report on recent investments and the performance of the big guys. If online travel is back in RedHerring then you know there is more consolidation and investment ahead.

Proper Car Washing, Polishing And Waxing from the Experts

Proper Car Washing, Polishing And Waxing from the Experts by David Maillie

It is amazing the number of people that don't know how to properly clean or polish and wax their cars. Many people use products that were never intended for their car and others use products and equipment that should only be used by properly trained professionals. Some never even wax or clean their cars. Then they wonder why their car is given a very low trade in figure at the dealer, or why their paint is dull and flaking.

For the purpose of this article we interviewed numerous professional automotive detailers and similar professionals. We asked them what products they used and for tips that consumers could use. They pretty much came back with the same advice:

Properly clean the car: This is very important as the use of harsh, non-automotive products can actually harm your cars finish and make it wear quicker. Spray the car first and get it wet. Use the water to spray off dirt and other contaminates that will scratch your car if you immediately start using a sponge and water first. Also do not clean your car in the sun on a hot day. Do make sure you use warm water as it works best to loosen contaminates. After getting your car wet, use an automotive car wash solution and add to water in a bucket. Follow the directions on the bottle. Then wash the car. You will find it easier if you use a long handled wash brush (most auto parts stores have these). Be sure to wash and rinse in sections so the car wash soap doesn't dry before being washed off. Then using terry cloth towels or chamois, dry the car off. Expert tip: use a squeegee. It is much faster and easier.

Remove stubborn contaminants: There will be dirt, bugs, tar, etc... that will be left after washing. There are many products that are made specifically for removing these items you're your paint and car. The resounding answer from the experts was Meguiar's bug and tar cleaner. Remove all the contaminants and follow the directions (some products can remove paint if not used correctly). Expert tip: 3M and other manufacturers make a plastic shield that can be applied over areas of your car's paint like bumpers and behind the tires to protect from contaminants and rock chips.

Use a cleaner polish: This will remove any left over stubborn contaminates like ground in bug splatter on your painted bumper, acid rain etching, bird drop spots, and minor scratches. Use a circular motion, just like for wax. Follow the directions for that particular cleaner polish (some require a wet or damp applicator pad others don't). Do the car one section at a time and use a clean section of cloth to buff once dry. Most cleaner polishes will dry to a whitish haze. Be sure to buff off all the haze and residue from the cleaner polish. When done the car finish will be really smooth. Expert tip: for deeper scratches, contaminants, etc... you can use an orbital buffer or polisher to apply the cleaner polish. Be careful and use low rpm's (under 2000) anything above this and you risk burning the paint.

Apply several coats of polish or wax: There is a big difference between car wax and car polish. Car wax is usually a blend of carnauba and other waxes which will give a deep, wet look and new car shine. It comes in both a liquid and a paste, and it will not last as long as a car polish. Car wax is also less effective in high temperatures and can actually melt on hot areas like the hood. Car polish is a polymer blend usually with no wax. Car polishes can last 1 year between coats and is very durable protection for your paint. The experts recommend a car polish with Teflon in it for maximum protection and durability. The experts love the extra, deeper shine from car wax, but all agreed it was better suited for car shows. Whichever you choose, they are both applied the same way. Apply in a circular motion and let it dry to a haze. Then buff dry with a clean terry cloth or microfiber towel. Expert tip: Don't use regular towels or diaper cloths as they can trap dirt particles and similar and leave scratch patterns in your finish. A microfiber cloth works best for removing dried car polish or car wax haze. 2 to 3 coats are recommended for maximum protection and shine. A good rule is to reapply the car polish or car wax at least 2 times per year. Expert tip: Apply car wax, not car polish (as car polish will leave streaks and smudges on glass), to your windows. Do one light coat and completely buff it off. The car wax will work better than the leading brand glass treatment for rain (it will also quite your windshield wipers).

About the Author
David Maillie is an alumni of Cornell University and specializes in automotive safety products and information. He holds numerous patents and awards for his patented headlight cleaner and restorer. For more information, tips, and money saving products for your car please visit: http://www.mdwholesale.com

Learn about buying a car in ontario, and if need be how to do some car body work.

Are the Airlines catching up online?

SITA has published results of a survey confirming that online air sales continue to soar. "560 million of today’s two billion airline passengers now use the Internet to make their bookings" (travelmole, eyefortravel and SITA itself). If this is true and noting that both Sabre/Travelocity and Expedia had bad first quarters, then the airline tactics of investing more in their own websites and best fare guarantees must finally be paying off in shifting share from online travel agents.

Search knows no boundaries

Traditionally finding information embedded in Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) sites has not been that easy. SharePoint search uses SQL Server full text search internally. If a WSS site uses SQL Server as a content database, then it's available for search. However, if a site uses SQL Desktop Engine (the free, included one) it's out of luck.

Can Google Search Appliance help? You bet. The Appliance can crawl SharePoint directly, whether it uses SQL Desktop Engine or not. However, depending on the design of a SharePoint site, Google Search Appliance could face some difficulties. For example, sites buried under other sites might be "hidden" due to lack of direct links to them. That's why we have developed a little tool that will solve these challenges and enable thorough document discovery. This sample connector also pushes embedded meta data into the search index, allowing for advanced querying and fielded search. For example, a site designer defined several important attributes for a document library. By using the connector, these attributes will be treated as meta data of these documents.

This SharePoint connector is written in Java, and uses SharePoint's web services. It's not intrusive - you don't have to install anything on your SharePoint server or sites. You can run it from a single machine and retrieve any SharePoint site in the enterprise. The connector works with both SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services. If WSS sites are created by a SPS site or linked to it, the connector can discover them. If not, you can always tell the connector to point to them. It can enable indexing of all the personal sites inside SPS, both public and private content. It can access Google Search Appliance and SharePoint Server sites through separately configured proxy servers. It supports both basic and NTLM authentication for secured search, as does the appliance.

To give it a try or to get more details on this connector, including the source code, check out the SharePoint Connector Code Sample download on the Google Enterprise developer community.

Web 2 comes to air search with Flyspy

Have a look at the Flyspy alpha. They have put together a very impressive series of data points to show in a simple graph changes in price by departure date. In Web 2 speak it is an air search mashup. Podtech have an interesting podcast interview with the founder. Fascinating that one guy has found a way to display complicated flight info and options that (while data heavy) provides better price vs departure date guidance than any of the heavily tech staff stocked big guys. Will keep a watch to see if this comes out of Alpha.

UPDATE - Fast Company have a quick note here

Surprise - Priceline leads the way in Europe (?)

Priceline have shown the way in how to integrate acquisitions with the continued quiet growth of activehotels. Nine months after the acquisition, Activehotels continues to grow its business in the UK with new external distribution deals, increased internal distribution by taking over the home page of priceline.co.uk and adding local review content. They have avoided the misguided push to combine the Bookings and Activehotels brands and product. Critically the pre-acquisition Activehotels and Bookings teams have formed the core of Priceline Europe. The consolidation in online travel is not yet over. There are a large number of active (no pun intended) small to medium players that would benefit from being part of a larger network just as there are markets that the big players would do better to buy into rather than build. The stumbling block for some has been integration. Priceline's successful integration with Active and Bookings is in stark contrast to Travelocity with Lastminute and Cendant with everything.

Car Detailing Partners

Partners:

Here you will find a list of Supporting Sites, who have been kind enough to link back to our web site or are affiliated with our Site.

Hamilton Web Design - Provides website design, programming, graphic design and web solutions for businesses in Ontario (Hamilton, Burlington, Mississauga, Toronto areas)

Lowcost Web Hosting PHP, Domain Names for Less .com, .net, .info domain registrations for $7.95 US / year. Web site Hosting for less than $60 per year!

Toronto Classified Ads for the Greater Toronto Area. Post items for sale and items you are looking for. We offer free classified ads in toronto, hamilton, niagara falls and all surrounding areas.

Buy A New Car Ontario - learn about buying a new or used car, including what you should look out for and getting the best deal.

Toilet Bidet - learn to use a bidet, its health benefits and how to install a bidet in your home.

Sump pump Installation - learn to install a sump pump, repair a sump pump and find the right sump pump for your needs.

Liposuction Tips - learn about liposuction, where to get it, and the benefits and alternatives to liposuction.

Diabetic Diet- learn about Diabetes from a Diabetic of over 10 years!

Westin Automotive Pickup Truck Nerf Bars - TruckAddons.com offers Classic Platinum, Signature Series, Oval, Sport Tube and Wheel to Wheel Westin Automotive pickup truck nerf bars.

Why JMatter matters - a wake-up call for programmers

My fellow blogger Eitan Suez open-sourced jMatter last week... a Naked Objects inspired framework for creating workgroup business applications.

I am always interested in Eitan's activities, but jMatter really struck a chord when I read a bit about its background on the jMatter mailing list:

A small Austin software firm was "approached maybe a year ago by someone who wanted to develop a custom software application to aid him in his work."

"The customer was initially turned down."

"The problem was that the estimated amount of work to design and implement and deliver the solution approximated three man-months of software development. The customer's budget was nowhere near that."

"This customer recently contacted them again, coincidentally at a time where they became aware of the jMatter framework.
I ended up contracting to do the job using jMatter. I built the entire application myself in approximately eight days. There were 2-3 follow-up incidents where small change requests or bug fixes were implemented (maybe 2-3 hrs each)."

"Today, this customer is using this custom solution to aid him in his work and apparently it has already saved him a considerable amount of time and effort"

I have recently been working with very small businesses, and the scenario of customer need exceeding customer budget is an all too familiar tale.

What's not familiar is the outcome of Eitan's tale: The small budget customer gets a solution that he needs at a cost that he can afford. This outcome is what intrigues me about jMatter... Eitan was able to take a project that should have taken three man-months to complete, and he successfully implemented in 8 days (more or less).

This is a big deal if you are an independent software consultant... the number of potential clients on limited budgets far exceeds those with fat bank accounts, and the competition for the "well healed" clients is brutal. If you can find tools that make it profitable for you to service small accounts, you might do quite well for yourself...

But even if you aren't an independent or working for a small firm, tales like Eitan's ought to be a wakeup call: The "Custom Software" business is changing... Some clients have been paying far too much for the custom software that we've been writing for them, and they're probably about to figure that out.

Let's take a look at Eitan's numbers...

"Non-jMatter Estimate"	~3 man-months (about 480 hours)
"jMatter-based Result"	~8 days (about 64 hours)

This example is hardly a scientific survey, but using these figures one could make the case that over 85% of the "custom" development effort that this client would have paid for (without jMatter) would have been used to implement infrastructure and functionality that really wasn't "custom" at all.

Of course jMatter is not appropriate for all custom software... nobody would suggest that... but many, many custom business applications have a great deal in common, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that a manageable set of tailored frameworks could be used to eliminate 80% of the effort necessary to write 80% of the "custom" applications that we are writing today (Yes, I made up the 80% figure... but it's probably in the ball-park).

This is why jMatter and frameworks like it should matter to all professional programmers... If custom software can be now be built for 20% of the effort that it once took, the entire cost structure of our industry is about to go bonkers.

Programmers in the US had to adjust when companies started offshoring software development to programmers who work for lower wages... Imagine the adjustment that we'll all have to make if projects that once paid our salaries for 3 months now only pay our salaries for a couple of weeks?

Please don't take this "wake-up call" the wrong way... these new developments in programmer productivity are just the latest in a long chain of improvements. Back in the 80s, I wrote business applications in assembly language... Nobody would pay me to do such a thing today.

As the tools evolved, I evolved. I think that the tools just evolved again ;-)

---

(cross-posted at my java.net blog)

System maintenance Saturday afternoon

This just in from our tech team:

On Saturday, June 24th, the AdWords system will be temporarily unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance.

While you won't be able to log in or make any changes to your account during this time, your ads will continue to run as normal. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

System maintenance on Saturday, June 24, at 10:00am PDT

We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday, June 24, at 10:00am PDT. During this time, you may not be able to access your account. However, as always your Google ads will continue to display, and stats and earnings will continue to accrue in your account.

Thanks for your patience!

Posted by Suzie Dewey - AdSense Publisher Support

Importing Into USA and Other Countries

One of the most visited web pages within our 200+ page web
site is about how to get started importing to the USA.
This is also one of the most asked questions when someone
calls me.

It is very interesting though how the vast majority of
people who start importing into USA think they can do so
without taking a course or even studying a book.

Most believe that importing from Mexico or any other country
is easy and all they need to do is have a couple of their
questions answered in a phone call and they can get started.

The majority of the visitors to our site and callers are
people who sell or wish to buy low cost merchandise and
sell it on eBay for a high profit.

The process is or does not need to be complicated, however,
most of these people are setting themselves up for failure
with their unwillingness to learn even the basics of what
is required when importing into the USA or other countries.

Importing into USA can be a high performance business and
just like a high performance engine, it should only be
entered into by those who understand how that engine works.

For years now we have had a course about how to start an
importing business. It is a very good course and one
that has been used by community colleges and other
educational institutions.

Recently, the publisher decided to offer several
parts of the course as a downloadable product that you may
now obtain instantly via the Internet.

The parts of the course included in this condensed Ebook
version include step-by-step how-to instructions for
starting your own importing business.

The great news is, the publisher has included two of the
main parts of the course in the ebook.

The first section of the course titled the "Importers Action
Pack" has just about everything the publisher has ever
learned about importing. This is a big ebook in itself
(153 pages) and it is chock full of specific how-to tips,
step-by-step directions and the best online list of tools
and resources for new importers that you'll find anywhere.

The second part of the course you will get with your ebook
is the "Resources for Importers Guide" that includes the
best sites for identifying qualified suppliers of imported
products you can mark up 100 to 500 percent or more.

There are marketing tools that the publisher and many of his
clients are using today, links to importers who are selling
their products on the Internet right now, and too many other
tools and resources to numerous to mention here.

Even greater news for our worldwide business visitors is the
price of this ebook is about 1/3 of the full importing
business course.

There is much, in fact, too much to describe here and in
fact you are now even given a chance to take a free peak
inside this valuable ebook by downloading a free excerpt.

One of the primary reasons for making this available?

There are several, but number one was the fact more and more
inquiries are coming in from other countries from people who
are interested in starting their own importing businesses.

They are smart enough to see the trend in the value of the
US Dollar and realize now is the time to capitalize on what
they see as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Second to that, the cost to ship the entire course, with
videos was just too costly and time consuming for these
folks.

They also want to get started now and do not want to wait
for their course to arrive in the mail.

Now they can securely order online and within a few minutes
they can have their ebook stored on their computer and begin
discovering just how lucrative an importing business can be.

Here is where you may read more details about this brand
new ebook and download your free excerpt:
Importing Into USA and Other Countries

I wish you success in your new business.

Ron Coble
Import Export Business Help Center
Coble International

Pea soup fog in Sydney kills flights

Fantastic photo of the sky around Sydney this morning that grounded flights at Kingsford-Smith (thanks SMH). Never seen anything like the photo but have known the horror of delays in flights in Sydney on a Friday.

What's the good spin on Worldspan numbers?

Priceline cuts a deal with G2, Expedia takes/will take Amadeus in Australia and Europe, Orbitz is going to move to Galileo one day and Sabre bought Lastminute.com. Not a good time to be an owner of Worldspan. Citigroup led private equity spent a lot of money taking Worldspan private looking to streamline costs then flip for a good return. Worldspan made a loss in 2005. Is trying to fight back in 2006 though transaction numbers continue to fall. Somewhere along the line customer retention and product innovation was forgotten in restructuring and yield focus. Good article here from Michele McDonald of ATW on GDS challenges.

New Google Analytics blog

In the past, we've talked a lot about Google Analytics and how you can use it to track your account performance. Now, we're happy to let you know that you can find updates and tips on the recently launched Google Analytics blog. Here's Jeff, from the Google Analytics team, to tell you more:

As you may have found, Google Analytics can improve the performance of your account by helping you optimize your AdWords campaigns and showing you what aspects of your site are providing the most traffic and highest conversion rates.

Now, to help you reach your advertising goals with Google Analytics, we've started sharing information on feature enhancements and tips in our new blog.

So, if you already have a Google Analytics account, we hope you'll check it out. If you don't have an account and would like one, you can sign up here. As you may have heard, we're still in invitation mode, but it usually takes less than a week to send you an invitiation code.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Voice of The Enterprise

After his keynote at the MIT CIO Symposium this week, our very own Dave Girouard (VP & GM of Enterprise) sat down with the editor-in-chief of eWeek to talk about the growing importance of search in business, Google's plans for the enterprise, and even a bit about the Boston Red Sox. Go here to listen to the podcast.

Google Down Under

G'day Mates! We're excited to announce that we just launched our search appliances in Australia and New Zealand. Ever since we announced the Google Search Appliance and the Google Mini we've gotten constant inquiries from customers down under who wanted to provide Google-quality search across their corporate networks and websites.

Google's approach of providing a complete enterprise search solution - in an appliance - rather than selling just the software means that customers can be up and runnin' and searchin' in little time after unpacking the box. But it also means that we as a company have to go through demanding tests and government processes for importing hardware into a new market. Anyway, we cleared all that and we're happy that now we can answer all those "I want my Google Mini!" demands!

Our customers elsewhere might be asking, "when can I get my hands on the Google Search Appliance?" Well, the answer is: soon! We're working hard to make sure ALL of you can enjoy great enterprise search just as you enjoy Google's web search.

Rodrigo Vaca

Live, die and lose your job by data

CNET's news.com reports that some goose at Ernst & Young had their laptop stolen leaving the thieves with unencrypted access to personal data on more than 240,000 customers of Hotels.com. This is a customer screw up of the first order. It is also a huge competitive screw up. Online travel retailers live and die on their data - conversion numbers, price competitiveness, product spread, destination growth rates etc. While not underplaying the disaster in giving away customer data, if I was in the Hotels.com analytics group I would be just as concerned about the threat of my competitors finding out key metrics on performance. As for Ernst & Young - what the hell kind of encryption are they not using.

Video mailbag: Theresa Chow answers your questions

Theresa discusses the following:

1. How many Google AdSense products can I use in each website?

2. How do I get rid of an ad that I don't want on my site? I have some disagreements with it.

3. In case we would like to add other websites, do we need to create another AdSense account?

UPDATED to provide summary of content

Posted by Dobromir Montauk - AdSense Publisher Support

Inside AdSense goes video

We AdSense Googlers all have some sort of passion, like Mike's bike riding or Rob's prolific blog reading. Physical effort not being my forte, and suffering from the attention span deficit noteworthy of my generation, I think my fascination with film is easily explained. How can anyone beat sitting in a comfy chair watching images flicker by, full of sound and fury (usually signifying nothing)?

Thus, I am excited to present our first video mailbag post, conceived, directed, filmed, and edited by yours truly with help from some wonderful folks. We're still a bit short on special effects, and I don't think I'll be invited to any upcoming Oscars, but hopefully this will answer one or two questions while letting you see who we are.

Let us know how you like it. If you want your question to be featured on Inside AdSense in the future, email it to us along with a photo of yourself. I can't guarantee we'll be able to use it, but if we do, I can make a star out of anyone!

Posted by Dobromir Montauk - AdSense Publisher Support

Ciprian Morar joins Total Stay Group

Received a note that former Expedia Europe product superstar Ciprian Morar has joined the TotalStay Group (totalstay and hotelpronto). Ciprian has spent the few last years working on his consultancy LAE Ltd after three years at Expedia. This is a fantastic catch for Total Stay. I still to this day do not understand why Expedia let Ciprian leave the building.

MONEY TIPS: Here Is 1000 Pages of FREE Tested Business Ideas

Dear friends,

Do you have what it takes to become an Internet Millionaire?

Before you say "no"... or even "maybe"... here's something to think about: For the last 8 years, my friend Derek Gehl (yes, *the* Derek Gehl, the Internet marekting guru) has been giving REAL PEOPLE the chance to read 1,000 pages of step-by-step information that detail how he's grown a $25 investment into over $54,700,000 in online sales. And today, thousands of the people who have read, studied, digested, and *implemented* these secrets are now extremely successful.

Many are making $100,000... $250,000... even $500,000 per year. And even more interesting, many of them are now Internet Millionaires.

So I have to ask you -- if Derek gave YOU 1,000 pages of his personal business plans, test results, case studies, and Internetmarketing secrets to start and grow your Internet business, could YOU be an Internet Millionaire? I challenge you to find out.

As a favor to me, Derek has agreed to send the next 500 people who agree to read his 1,000 pages of brand-new Internet marketing secrets (freshly released from his personal testing labs) a FREE GIFT valued at $137.95! He's *also* going to take all the risk and promise... if this doesn't work out, he'll pay you for your time.

To claim your free gift (remember, only the first 500 people to contact Derek get this!) and get started right away, visit:
http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/879338

And good luck with your business!

Luis Galarza "The Success Guy",

P.S. Whoops, I should clarify... Derek's actually giving the first 500 people to contact him EIGHT BONUS GIFTS valued at over $1,096.00 -- but he's added a special *extra* gift valued at $137.95 to the first 500 people only.

To get all the details, visit:
http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/879338

All the best...

Luis Galarza, a Business and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates or http://www.Cogni360.com/ . For more Free or Low Cost marketing tips just stop by http://luisgalarza.blogspot.com/
.

Bezurk makes (some) progress

Bezurk has announced a new distribution deal with Yahoo! Singapore. Good news for Craig and Martin but Bezurk have a tough job ahead. I believe in the comparative shopping model they have adopted. Kayak and Sidestep have proven the model and the VCs agree. But Asia is going to be tougher and not just because of the usual language and currency issues. To succeed you need lots of online advertising, differentiated inventory sources that can be brought together and viable affiliate income streams from local players. In Asia you miss out on affiliate income and therefore the inventory from Wotif, Mytrip/Rakuten Travel and asiatravel (in declining importance). It is good to see distribution deals signed and a few internal issues cleaned up - but Craig and Martin will have to close few more inventory deals for Bezurk to make it.

Rain-X Bug & Tar Products

Rain-X Bug & Tar Pre-Wash Gel helps penetrate the tough soils on your car, making cleaning and detailing your car easier and faster.



Rain-X Bug & Tar Protective Shield creates a micro-thin clear barrier between the surface of your vehicle and residue. It helps assist cleaning in the future so tough soils will be less likely to build up.



Both are safe on chrome, metal, paint and plastic according to the makers of these Rain-X products.

Regards,
Michael Kralj
Visit the Car Buyer Guide!

Sensis will not win in the new world with old tactics

The more Sensis tries to pretend it does not think like it's parent Telstra, the more it proves that it does. Gostay.com.au was launched both online and in a delivered to the home directory. That's right millions of expensive old world hard copy books delivered round Australia as part of an online launch. Even better, the deals in the book and the deals online are different. The book deals are little more than a copy and paste from the accommodation section of the yellowpages and the online deal are exactly a copy and paste from AOT's needitnow. So that is a mismatching of online and offline strategy combined with no product differentiation with another player in the market place - sounds like a true Telstra offering.

WTF for Wotif

The market clearly believes that Wotif.com (ASX:WTF) is worth more than AU$650mm. Boggling results for a company with a projected profit of A$15.7, margins of only 11% (10% commission plus booking fee), only one language, dominance in only one market and a growth strategy hinging on the Asian and South American markets. Don't get me wrong I love these guys. Graeme, Robbie, Andrew et al are smart and established online travel in Australia. I have no doubt or question their profitability but I do question their growth plans and their multiple. Asia will be much harder to crack than they think. Mytrip.net/Rakuten Travel currently own Japan and ctrip, eLong and others are making China their own (well mainly but more posts on that later). As Bloomerg point out they are trading at multples well in-excess of online businesses with stronger margins and greater geographic penetration such as Expedia. Mixing acronyms and float codes - WTF WTF.

Who am I and a quick disclosure.

I am a recovering Lawyer turned online travel agent now Internet investor (linkedin profile). I spent four years as a lawyer specialising in Internet, Telco, New Media and IT commercial transactions. From there I spent almost six years deep inside online travel for first Expedia and then Cendant (TDS now Travelport). Recently I returned to my corporate development roots to join Daniel Petre and Alison Deans at netus. By way of disclosure netus owns ~ 20% of Travel.com.au who also operate Lastminute locally so I will (try to) avoid any undue positive comments about these sites

Readyrooms - the little things are critical to success

Basic tenet of online retail - not just travel - is to get your URL to work properly. Qantas took a long time to launch an online hotel play and has spent a fortune offline telling us how ReadyRooms was the perfect choice for consumers. Strangely the URL www.readyrooms.com does not go to the site homepage. It does not even contain an automatic re-direct. At the time of this post it was a blank page with the sentence "For Readyrooms.com.au click here". Open Note to Qantas - the best un-kept secret to online travel is for the URL to go to your home page so that customers can find you easily. Side Note to Qantas - even fixing the link may not be enough.

RIP Lodging.com

It seems Cendant/Travelport have finally pulled the plug on the terminal Lodging.com. Lodging has always struggled to compete with category king Hotels.com and even it's Cendant/Travelport brothers and sisters such as HotelClub. It is strange that the URL does not automatically redirect to sister site Orbitz . Makes not sense to give users an option. Lodging.com was always a two-bit player with poor tech, zero brand recognition and good but not-good-enough inventory. It's always sad to see a site go time was up a long time ago. RIP but unlikely to be missed.

Depends what you mean by new

Webjet's announcement of a "new" online hotel booking engine received a lot a press in Australia. Webjet first launch Bookabed in mid 2003 so no idea how they can call this either a launch or a new site. The huge valuation of Wotif post float has clearly re-excited David and team at Webjet on the potential for hotel focused businesses. Bookabed's failure first time round was due to poor inventory and insufficient marketing to take on Wotif and the other Australian market leaders Lastminute.com.au and RatesToGo. The only difference we can see so far from the announcement is the addition of S8 inventory. That is not going to be enough to change the fortunes of this not-so-new player. It will get lost in the noise of Lastminute's continued fightback and RatesToGo's continued decline.

Everything you want to know about the AdSense API

A few weeks ago we ran a post about the new AdSense API. Now we'd like to respond to some of your questions.

Can I participate?

Because we're still in beta, we're currently accepting developer applications. We're looking for developers who are likely to have 100,000+ daily AdSense impressions through the API. After you've applied, you should hear back from us within a few weeks.

What is the AdSense API?

The AdSense API is a free beta service that enables you to integrate Google AdSense into your website offerings. Using the AdSense API, you can enable users to perform a variety of AdSense functions without ever leaving your website. Users can create or manage their AdSense accounts, modify their AdSense ads, and view ad performance and earnings reports. Furthermore, you can earn money by receiving a percentage of the revenues generated by the ads placed on your site.

How much money will I earn?

This depends on how many AdSense publishers you sign up, and how much they earn. For each new publisher you sign up, you will earn a bounty of $100 once they have earned $100. Furthermore, you will receive 15% of the revenue generated by Google ads served using your API implementation. For details, please refer to our Terms & Conditions, Section IV, Paragraph 6.

Who should use the API?

Anyone with a large user base that publishes its own content (like blog hosts, wiki hosts, ISPs, or even social networking sites) should look into integrating the API with their application. By giving your users a chance to earn money using your service, you have an opportunity to differentiate your service from your competition while generating additional revenue.

If I'm accepted into the beta program, what kind of support will I get in implementing the API?

At the moment, we're looking into different support possibilities. We've set up a Google Group for our beta partners, which we will monitor so we can answer any outstanding questions. Additionally, we have a continually-growing developer site, complete with examples. We're also considering ways to expand our support for larger partners.

Posted by Dobromir Montauk - AdSense Publisher Support

Six weeks to set your time zone

Last night we released AdWords local time zone support to all advertisers. Now you can set the time zone that you prefer for your account. Doing so will enable your ad serving, reporting, and billing to be calculated and managed according to the time zone of your choice.

Here are two important reminders. First, please keep in mind that you have until July 30^th to set your account time zone. If you don't select a different time zone, your account will remain on Pacific Time. Second, your account time zone can be set only once, so please choose wisely!

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

Introducing ad scheduling

Today we released ad scheduling, an advanced campaign management feature that allows you to determine when your ads run. Here's Jon D. from the Advanced Bidding team to tell you more:

Ad scheduling (also known as "dayparting") lets you tell Google exactly when you want your ads to run, and more importantly -- when you do not want them to run. In addition, more advanced users can automatically modify their bids based on time-of-day and day-of-week cycles in campaign performance.

Ad scheduling can also help you improve your ROI by ensuring that your ads run when it makes the most business sense. For instance, a local business may only want to run their ads during business hours, or an online retailer may want to boost their bids during their busier-than-normal lunchtime shopping period.

If you wish to try this new feature, you can enable it via the Edit Campaign Settings page.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Export Finance

Exporting and interested in entering new global markets?

Exporters - are you interested in increasing sales in
existing international markets?

Are you exporting and would like to worry less about
getting paid?

You can do all of the above with teh help of the Export-
Import Bank of the United States which is chartered by
Congress to help the expansion and promotion of U.S. jobs
and U.S. exports.

The Export-Import Bank's trade financing products can help
your international business enter new foreign markets,
increase your international sales and minimize your risks
associated with international trade.

How and Why? Because export financing is often the critical
part of your winning an international sale.

The Ex-Im Bank is the official U.S. export finance credit
agency that can provide support to your international sales
and global transactions. With their assistance, your
international sales my no longer require letters of credit,
cash in advance or credit cards. Even more important, with
Ex-Im Bank’s guarantee, export financing lenders are more
willing to provide export financing to your customers and
possibly match competitive bids from other countries.

The U.S. Ex-Im Bank offers you superior export finance
information; strong interest in helping both medium and small
sized businesses; political and commercial risk coverage; and
international buyer financing.

You may visit the following web page and complete a short
questionnaire to have an export finance consultant in your
region to assist you with your export financing challenges:
http://www.exim.gov/marketing/enewsresponse.html

Καλημέρα σε όλους! Здравейте!

Following the successful Hebrew launch in April, we've now launched AdSense for search in two new languages: Greek and Bulgarian.

We're delighted that we can now offer the benefits of AdSense for search to web publishers with Greek and Bulgarian sites.

To celebrate the launch here are some fun facts about Greece:

The length of the Greece's coastline is estimated at 9,300 miles; America's coastline is estimated at 11,800 miles. The land area of Greece is slightly smaller than Alabama.

The yo-yo is the second oldest known toy in the world (only the doll is older), and was born over 3,000 years ago in the days of ancient Greece.

Greek people love to dance, so there are 63 different folk dances in Greece.

... and some interesting information about Bulgaria:

The territory of Bulgaria is 111 000 km², and even though it is considered to be a small country it is 2 times bigger than Denmark and 3 times bigger than Belgium.

Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, the bacterium that is used to produce yogurt, was first used in Bulgaria. It is named after the country and can be found only in Bulgarian air. Some of the biggest importers of the bacterium are Japan, USA and EU.

The inventor of the first electronic computer, John Vincent Atanassoff, is of Bulgarian origin. Professor John Atanassoff, together with graduate student Clifford Berry, built the world's first electronic digital computer, at Iowa State University, between 1939 and 1942.

Now, which languages will we turn our attention to next?

Posted by Konstantina Stoyanova (Bulgarian) and Mariela Foumi (Greek) - AdSense Publisher Support

Update: Google Video is even easier to use

Since Google Video and video ads have generated a lot of interest among advertisers lately, it seemed like a good time have Jon from the Google Video team provide a quick update:

A couple of weeks back, I let you know that you could use Google Video to add value to your products and offerings. Recently, we made this process even easier by introducing an html-based uploader, enabling your videos to go live within minutes. As before, you'll continue to have full reporting on all your videos, so if you have video content that you want to share with the world (and you'd like to track performance), Google Video can help you reach your audience.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Inside AdSense in your inbox

If you don't have time to check our blog frequently but would like to receive the latest news and tips from our Google AdSense team, you might want to consider subscribing to our Inside AdSense email and reading at your own convenience. You can also change your settings to a digest form if you prefer by logging into the Group.

Posted by Susan Taing - AdSense Product Marketing

How To Go About Car Detailing On Your Own

How To Go About Car Detailing On Your Own by David Maillie

Car detailing is an absolute clean up program for your car. Its a perfect sprucing up curriculum and is not just about cleaning, washing and polishing the exterior of the car. It involves a lot of tidying of the interior as well. Routine car detailing is sure to prove beneficial for your car. Every penny you spend for the detailing job (if you go for professional detailing services) and every effort you put in (if you decide to do it on your own) will go on to prevent damages to the vehicle and restore its good looks. The car detailing job is not all that complicated and you will not need to pick up any special skill or technique for it. The first detailing tip suggested by most car manufacturers and professionals providing car detailing services is to start cleaning from inside. This is essentially a three-step plan involving vacuuming, cleaning and conditioning. Follow it up with cleaning the car's windows. Some glass cleaner and a clean towel are what you need to clean the windows. Do not ever use used rags to clean the windows!

Once you have covered the interior, continue with the exterior. Start with the dirtiest part of cars - the wheels. There are two different ways for cleaning the wheels. You may either opt for the most prevalent 'soap and wheel brush method of cleaning' or go for 'spray on, rinse off' chemicals. Anyway, whatever be your choice of wheel cleaning method, you need to assure that there is not a speck of salt, dust or debris stuck in the wheel for that can lead to corrosion.

Following the car wash product manufacturer's directions will give you the maximum satisfaction with washing the car's body. Give the vehicle a thorough bath and then lather with sponge and soap solution. Always keep in mind to work your way downwards from the top. Rub the body in soft circular motions and rinse off. Soak dry with a soft towel.

Getting down to the polishing job, you can accomplish it with the applicator supplied with the wax or go about it with a damp cotton cloth. Once you have covered the full body, start buffing, again advancing gently.

Some car detailing tips that will help you avoid any damage to the car are: 1)Never go about the detailing job under direct sun or when the vehicle is hot 2)Never use harsh chemical washes, rough clothes and other abrasive kits

Wrap up your car detailing act by cleaning and polishing the headlights and the metallic fittings.

About the Author
David Maillie holds numerous patents including his recently awarded patent for headlight repair, cleaner and restorer. For more information please visit: MDwholesale.com

When you detail your car, you increase the value when you Sell your Car.

Put your business on the Map

For almost a year, the Google Maps API has been available for free, public-facing sites. A remarkable variety of websites (over 30,000 in number) have already integrated Google’s mapping technology using this API. Including our own. Check out the Google Mini Map here. These sites and organizations know the value of adding geographic context to data. But we’ve heard from many organizations that want to use Google mapping technology behind the firewall or for web-based enterprise applications.

Today, as part of Geo Developer Day at Google, we launched Google Maps for Enterprise. Now companies and government agencies can use Google Maps to help their business go geo. Now you can provide all the Google Maps features that users love -- such as the ability to drag maps in the browser and view satellite imagery. That means whether you’re displaying customer data on a map, managing assets in the field, or delivering a location-finder to your customers or partners, Google Maps integrates with your data to provide a truly compelling user experience.

Place a self-hold and reduce banking fees

Tired of losing a large percentage of every AdSense check to bank processing fees? As I mentioned in my last post, if you're outside the US and receive USD checks, you can let your earnings accrue and then receive larger checks less frequently by placing a self-hold on your account. This will help reduce the overall impact of any check processing fees charged by your bank.



Should you decide to experiment with this option, please keep in mind that changes to your hold status must be in place by the 15th of each month. For example, in order to let your earnings accrue or to remove self-holds for a June payment, you need to make the change by June 15th.

If you haven't done so already, I also encourage you to subscribe to the AdSense Calendar where you can find information about our monthly payment schedule.

UPDATED to include information about AdSense Calendar

Posted by Dan Marcus - AdSense Publisher Support

Import Export

As I was going back through my 1300 plus email sent files, one
of the most common questions received at our import export
business help web site is: "Can you help me find this company
or any information about them"?

If people would take advantage of our company information page
and the many import export business resources listed there,
they would not have to ask that question.

I really think that many people are just too lazy and expect
that I will do their work for them (for a price I will) but
when it's free, I will educate them on how to do it themselves.
If the information is important to them, they will take the
action.

Here was one of this type of questions:

message: Hi we need the web address for following company.
Lo Bridge Enterprise co, Ltd china.

My reply was as follows:

I suggest you do a search for their name like this in Google:
"Lo Bridge Enterprise"

The quotation marks are what narrow the search down to the
specific company you are searching for. I found several
listings for them when I did this.

Special Note to our blog readers: The quotation marks are just
one of the keys to narrowing or targeting your search. If
I did not locate anything with "Lo Bridge Enterprise", I would
have then taken the search down to "Lo Bridge".

Another great tool within google's search engine is
searching for someone by their telephone number. If you input
the phone number in quotation marks again and in the correct
format for the country in which the business is located,
you will often find their web site, or other information
about them.

Go ahead and try it now, go to google.com and do a search
for: "717-292-5763" which is my telephone number - try these
things out and you will soon find yourself using them on a
regular basis, especially if you are involved in the import
export business.

Next Import Export Business Question and Answer:

message: Dear Sir/Madam:

I would like to contact firms in Taiwan which can
manufacture hourglasses to my specifications.

I want to import them for sale in the United States.

I look forward to your response.

Hello ....,

I would suggest visiting http://embassy.org and looking up
the Taiwan embassy.

Contact them and ask to speak or correspond with their on
staff trade representative. Tell him or her what you are
looking for and see if they can help you.

Special Note to our import export business blog readers:

Most embassies have trade representatives on staff who are
paid to help businesses in their countries promote their
products to potential buyers.

Just be sure you come across as a legitimate business person
in either your correspondence by email, fax, mail or
telephone.

Here are a couple of no cost pointers for you to use in
presenting yourself as a professional when asking for a
professional's help:

1. Do not send a hand written letter, fax or other form
of communication - learn to type or pay someone to type it
for you.

2. Do not demand they help you. Yes, they are being paid to
help promote business for the companies in their country
but they are 'not' being paid by you.

3. If you have to rate how likely you are to get a reply
by the form of communication you use to contact the folks
in the embassies or anywhere in the world of international
trade from your worst chances to your best chances for a
reply - here they are from worst to best:
a. Email
b. Fax
c. Mail
d. Telephone call

4. All computer word processing programs and email programs
have a spell check - USE IT!

5. Do not expect the trade rep to do your research for you.
Do as much research as you possibly can using every
possible search parameter we have suggested in this blog
and on our web site company page.

If you are too lazy to do this preliminary research, I
suggest you find another business because you are not cut
out for this one.

6. Be ready to provide details about you, your business
and the types and quantities of products you are possibly
interested in purchasing. Be specific and do not waste
these peoples valuable time on today's whim or tomorrow's
wishes.

International trade and the import export business are
serious enterprises. If you want to command respect and
response from others, then be professional and treat
others you deal with in this endeavor with equal respect
for the time you are asking them to spend on your behalf.

Before closing this post, I need to rant a bit about how
many time wasters there are in the import export business
and other businesses.

Almost every day of the week I field phone calls or answer
emails from people who clearly do not have a clue as to what
they are getting involved in when it comes to international
trade.

They had a whim or wish for the day to become rich at either
importing this or exporting that. In most instances I ask
if they have ever taken a course or read a book about the
business.

Most will say they read a book or an article but
because they know so and so in this country and have
connections to people in this industry they can jump right
in without having an understanding of the processes that
are involved or required.

In most of these instances I recommend they take advantage
of all of our free information which includes an ebook
about setting up an export business and our free reports
on international trade and business.

After over 18 years in this business, I can tell from the
tone of their voice when they are going to follow thru
with my suggestions or keep calling around to other web
site owners in the hope that one of them will give them
the magic keys to success without having to learn anything.

In most instances, the people never download the free
materials (too lazy) or when they do, they find out that
it will require a learning curve before they can actually
become successful in this business.

They then either run off to the next thing they read about
that will make them their first million in the next 90 days
or they get fooled in to paying some fly by night company
$7,000, $8,000 or more dollars for a supposed hand holding
program that gives them a self ego boosting certificate
to hang on their wall.

In the end, I also let these people know that although our
Import Export Business courses are very comprehensive, they
do not need to read 'every' word of every book, CD Rom or
memorize every detail of every video included with them.

Our Import Export Business courses are probably one of the
best (if not the best) resource libraries in the world for
international traders.

Every international trade deal is going to be different and
having a resource library that you can refer back to as
often as you need it during your hopefully long and
successful career is priceless.

In closing this post, I did not mean to get off on a rant
but it seems like the number of time wasters has increased
dramatically over the past few months.

Either get serious and realize you are going to have to
invest in you and your business to be successful or forget
about international trade and move on to the next scheme
that catches your eye.

International trade is serious business - you are going to
have to invest in learning the processes so that you and/or
the businesses you represent or buy from are not ripped off
in those processes.

Time is your most precious asset - do not waste your time
or that of others if you are not serious - bottom line -
get serious or get out.

Regards,

Ron Coble
Coble International
Import Export Business Help Center

Keyword tip: when soccer and football mean the same thing

Soccer. football. Fútbol. Fussball.

In the US we refer to the game as "soccer", but remember, it has many different names around the world. This concept also applies to AdWords, where keywords in the same language can mean different things to different people. A good example of this is prominently highlighted during the World Cup, when millions of fans outside the US refer to their favorite sport as "football".

In such cases, you should carefully monitor your keyword traffic and consider modifying your regional targeting preferences so that the right audience sees your ads. For example, let's say you sell football jerseys in the US but are targeting your ads to a worldwide audience; you may want to change your ad text to specify that you are selling "jerseys for American football". Or, as an alternative, you may simply change your targeting preferences so that your ads with football-related keywords only appear to users in the US.

And with this quick tip, we're off to watch highlights from the many soccer (or football) matches this weekend.

Posted by Sarah & Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

Inxight on Extending Search

We at Google have teamed up with Inxight Software, one of our Google Enterprise Professional partners, to make it even easier to find documents, discover trends and find information within documents in the enterprise. To complement Google enterprise search capabilities, Inxight has created the Inxight Search Extender, an easy-to-install application that integrates with both the Google Search Appliance and Google Desktop for Enterprise. As our customers have experienced, the Google Search Appliance provides Google-quality search across your web servers, file systems, portals, content management systems and relational databases. Now, the Inxight Search Extender for Google integrates with the Google Search Appliance to enable users to filter search results sets and more easily navigate through documents, seeing at-a-glance automatically extracted people, companies, places, and other information. The result is that you can get more value from your information.

To help explain this powerful combination of technologies, we're jointly hosting a free webinar next week.

Import Export Business Answers

I have decided to begin something new with the Import Export
Business blog.

Because I am constantly answering emailed questions from people
about the Import Export Business, I thought that these
questions and my answers may be of interest to others and will
begin with this post to go back through my files and post some
of the questions and answers. Be sure to let me know if you
find this helpful to you, your business or your decision to
start an import export business.

First Post From Our Import Export Business Email Files:

message: I am 36 years old and know nothing about the import
export business, however, I am very interested in purchasing
your training package and starting a business in this field.

My concern is this. Does someone need to be in the field or
have experience before venturing into a business? Am I over
stepping by not being involved first? If you can give a
little guidance it would be greatly appreciated. Thank You

My Reply:

Hi .............,

Thank you for your inquiry.

The answer to both of your questions is No and No. You do not
need experience before venturing into this field. This is what
our Import Export Tool Kit is designed to provide you, i.e.,
the knowledge of how to proceed and the resources you will
need to do so.

No, you are not overstepping, unless you try to enter the field
by the helter skelter method of not learning the import export
business process and at least having a basic understanding of
the procedural flow of that process.

You may be interested in reading some or all of the posts I
have made to a new blog that was just set up within the last
two weeks. The emphasis on this blog is to individuals and
business owners such as you. The url is:
http://importexportbusiness.blogspot.com

One thing to keep in mind. Our course covers all aspects of
the import export business. The important thing to keep in
mind is, you DO NOT need to actually perform all of those
procedures or processes. You should, however, as I state in
my latest blog post, have an understanding of how those
processes work so you do not get ripped of in the "process" so
to speak or at the least you are able to talk intelligently
with someone you may be hiring to perform them for you.

I hope this has dispelled some of the fears you might have and
I strongly suggest you visit the blog and at a minimum, read
the latest post which was just completed an hour ago. If there
are any other questions, please feel free to contact me via
email or phone at 717-292-5763. If I am not in the office,
leave your name, phone and the best time(s) to call you back
and I will do so ASAP. Kindest regards, Ron Coble

Here is the 2nd Email and reply for this post:

message: I'm in retail business, since 1999, own a silver
jewelry store in Palm Springs, CA.

I came to US in 1992 from Russia and know that there is a huge
potential of products and raw materials that might have a demand
in USA. I have good connections, (brother, cousins) who can find
the right products to import here.

I would like to start my own import company, but the thing is
I don't have experience with mechanical part of the process. For
an example, two days ago, my cousin asked me if I can find the
long-term buyer for red iron-oxide.

Thanks in advance for advise or help.

My Reply to this 2nd Message:

Dear ......,

Thank you for your inquiry.

International trade and business is a very interesting field.
Each potential business deal offers you a different format that
you may or may not follow.

You may operate as an agent, broker or actually take possession
of the goods yourself (something we do not recommend for
beginners).

I strongly suggest that you review our free materials at our web
site (http://www.importexporthelp.com/small-business-resources.htm)
to get an idea of what can be involved in an international trade
deal. We have a great ebook on starting an exporting business
which is something that you should really consider as there is
much more government and private assistance for exporters,
rather than importers.

Once you have read all of our free materials, I suggest you
then review out Import Export Tool Kit.

You need to have reference materials and a solid understanding
of how this business operates. The tool kit provides you with
both. Here are names of the free import export business
resources that are offered at our web site that you should
first take advantage of before making a decision to purchase
anyone's paid materials:
http://www.importexporthelp.com/small-business-resources.htm
Free Exporting Business Ebook
Free Reports - (reports may be printed or downloaded):
International Trade is Serious Business
How to Check Out An Online Company (Due Diligence)
Exporting-Importing Without Investment
ABCs of Exporting
New Export intermediaries Biggest Mistake
Frequently Asked Questions - Starting a Home-Based Exporting
Company

If you do decide to proceed then I strongly suggest you review
and purchase the complete Import Export Tool Kit Business
course at:
How To Start An Import Export Business

If you have any questions after reviewing these materials,
please feel free to contact us again.

Regards,

Ron Coble
Coble International
Import Export