It’s important for retailers to focus when they run ads online. This post makes a good point about the search-to-store experience.

It explains that the retailers should make physical connections between an online ad and what shoppers see when they enter the store.

On my other blog - EngineBlog - I posted an idea about offering users a chance to pay to avoid seeing advertising. It’s an interesting discussing point, so I will post it here as well. I would love to hear your opinions.

Would You Pay to Skip Ads?

I have been running Gmail and Yahoo Mail side-by-side for the last month. I have found them both to be great email solutions, each offering great benefits. I’m curious to see who steals the more innovative features from the other first.

Both services advertise as part of the offering, but Yahoo lets you buy your way out of seeing ads. For $20 a year, you get several enhanced mail features plus a completely ad-free environment.

I started to wonder if users would be willing to buy themselves out of ad networks in other areas – mainly on search.

Both companies make an enormous amount of money serving pay-per-click ads as part of their search results. But would users be willing to pay to not see them?

A majority of users click on an organic link, not a paid one. But the paid links are clearly useful to many people, based on the growing profits of Google and Yahoo.

Maybe the question can be taking to a larger realm. Advertisements are finding their way into nearly every channel – including video games.

Would you be willing to pay to not see them?

Mircosoft announced a delay in the release of Vista. Many theories as to why.

But, according to this video demo, Vista looks like an exact replica of the Mac OS.

And why not? When Apple’s machines will fully be able to run Window’s after the intel switch, Microsoft will be competing with the Mac OS directly. Then everyone will see just how terrible Windows is.

A little while ago I asked for suggestions for the best email program. Now I’m at it again, this time with RSS Feed readers.

I’ve been using Live Bookmarks in Firefox to house all of my feeds, but it is somewhat limiting. You can’t, for example, see an excerpt of an entry, only the title.

I am currently trying the trial version of FeedDemon. But at $30, it’s a bit expensive, considering there are many, many free ones on the market.

(By the way, there doesn’t seem to be a way to alphabetize feeds. I like my in alpha order, and when I add a new one, it would be nice if it would sort that way, instead of just adding to the bottom.)

So, let me hear it. What RSS feed reader is tops?

The folks over at Adaptive Path have invited me into their private alpha testing of Measure Map. The setup was extremely easy. They have prepared specific walkthroughs for several different blogging platforms complete with screenshots that are clear and concise. I had my WordPress blog setup in less than five minutes.

It seems that Measure Map is currently focused on providing stats which are important to bloggers, but their proposed feature list will certainly include more and more robust (read: enterprise) type statistics. RSS feed management is coming soon and as it is an alpha, there are sure to be tons more features.

I only spent about 15 minutes with the app, so these are just initial impressions, but like most everything from Adaptive Path, it looks great. It seems to be fast right now; scaling will be something to keep our eyes on. I have not personally used Mint, but I can certainly say that setup is much easier with Measure Map mostly because it’s a hosted app and not something running on your own server.

I hope to post more insight both here and to the Measure Map folks after Thanksgiving. Heading to the folks for a few days and won’t be online, but I like what I see so far.

I was going to post about the new Google Talk on my search engine marketing blog, but it has nothing to do with search other than it’s made by Google.

I’m not overly impressed with Google Talk, though I will likely end up using it. While it is still in beta, it lacks many features people expect in an IM client – smileys and a web cam tool to name two. Having an integrated voice chat is nice, but Yahoo! has that already. In short, there is nothing that makes this stand out.

I think Google undermined themselves with this. There is no prize for being the fourth IM on the market, unless it’s stellar. It’s not stellar. Of course, it’s still beta so they might have a trick or two up their sleeves.

If you missed Live 8 like I did, you’ll love this page of Quicktime movies. It’s practically every performance from every Live 8 concert, which some believe had a great deal to do with the G8 agreement to cancel the debt of 18 of the world’s poorest countries, 14 of them in Africa, and deliver a $50 billion aid package. Let’s hope part of this aid goes to channelling the money effectively to countries that lack the systems to properly distribute said aid.

File-sharing services may now be sued (by companies such as Sony, or Disney) even if they have no direct control over the illegal activity so says the Supreme Court.

The question is over intent. Grokster claims the software they made was not intended to encourage copyright infringement. With this ruling, intent becomes a diminishing issue.

If intent is no longer an issue, and you can now sue companies even if they have no direct control over the final use of the product, then Anheuser-Busch becomes liable for every drunk driver.

Sure, they can say Bud Lite is not intended to be consumed by people who drive, and they can say they do not encourage drunk driving, but it doesn’t matter anymore. This new ruling tosses that argument out the window.

I’m going to play Halo 2 so long that I loose my job. Then I’m suing Bungie over the anguish of being unemployed.

Game on.

In a past post, I pointed out Amazon’s secret porn stash. I encourage you to read that post, or this one may not mean much.

Us Llama’s are nothing if not diligent. We have uncovered yet another stash of adult products.

So here is your SpittingLlamas challenge. Let’s find as much porn on Amazon and create a list here in our post comments. After we get a good list, I’ll create a SpittingLlamas Listmania Amazon List so this stash will be hidden no longer.

Robert Cringely, who writes a column at PBS regarding technological issues, has come up with a perfect solution to phishing.

Why wait for the government or big corporations to solve the problem. You can help!