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AOL’s Platform-A has collaborated with T-mobile for a two day ad blitz. The campaign will have the mobile carrier buying 1 billion impressions over the two day time frame, which is expected to reach 81.5 million consumers. Platform-A currently reaches 90% of the U.S. internet audience.

What will be advertised? The new Android-powered G1, of course!

“The T-Mobile G1 offers a rich, accessible mobile Web experience for the masses, so we want to drive that message to the broadest range of U.S. consumers possible,” said Brett Dennis, director, branded entertainment and media management, T-Mobile USA. “The groundbreaking experience of the T-Mobile G1 is really what motivated us to pursue this exceptional online advertising program.”

Clearly, both AOL and T-mobile are gunning for the upcoming holiday season:

“The innovation behind the T-Mobile Billion Block clearly demonstrates the value marketers place on the combination of reach, impact and innovation that only Platform-A can offer,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A. “It also spotlights the role online media will play in the upcoming buying season, with strategic marketers like T-Mobile relying on the near-universal reach of Platform-A to connect with United States consumers in an effective, efficient and engaging way.”

Spam is something that bugs the heck out of a lot of people.  Sometimes I wonder about the tenacity and motivation of the people who are behind all sorts of spam activity.  We do have a good thing in spam filters, though.  They are automated programs that do everything by themselves.  Of course, sometimes, legitimate [...]

Most companies use Twitter as a PR machine, covered in a thin veil of down-home personalization. But Zappos’ CEO exposes a deep level of intimacy and behind the scenes information. In today’s link building column, “Zappos + Twitter = Innovative Success!,” Sage Lewis explains that this helps Zappos connect with their audience, and get links as a result.

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WebMD is apparently the target of yet another merger by 2 major health web sites. Last week, Revolution Health and Everyday Health merged.

This week, HealthGrades.com has announced its acquisition of WrongDiagnosis.com.

Here’s a Compete.com snapshot at how the 5 sites stack up against each other.

It looks like Revolution and Everyday are in better position to take on WebMD. HealthGrades has a ton of content behind a premium content wall.

But all of them, including WebMD, have a long way to go in catching Yahoo’s Health site:

UPDATE: As a commenter pointed out, Compete can only measure the Yahoo.com traffic. So, I looked up the most recent comScore ratings for the health niche. Here they are, showing WebMD as the clear leader:

ChunkIt is a new search toolbar that bills itself as an x-ray for search. What it does is search your choice of the “big five” search engines, and then displays results on the right and the textual content of the results on the left.

Once the results are loaded, users can click on a paragraph in the left hand side, and it will highlight the paragraph - and then load the full page in the right side.

Highlighted paragraph

Page loaded in the right hand side

I personally find this to be a great tool for search. But one issue for ChunkIt might be copyright. Google has come under fire from newspapers for the issue of copyright when it comes to indexing their pages. Their argument, which has won over some in Europe, is a poor one since Google primarily provides just links to articles.

So, I contacted Brian Cheek at TigerLogic Corporation, the company behind ChunkIt, and here’s what he had to say:

“ChunkIt! is a user-driven device that resides on the client-computer and is not a web service. All processing is handled by and all logic resides on the user’s local computer. ChunkIt! does not persist, store or cache information and does not use a back-end server to perform any of its functionality.”

Smart companies will see the value in ChunkIt’s search tool and not make a fuss over copyright. But expect a few to ignore a good thing when they see it and challenge ChunkIt, but only if and when the tool gets wildly popular.

Last week, Google launched a site that explained what they feel are the facts behind their search advertising agreement with Yahoo. Now, Yahoo is doing the same.

The site does not offer much new in the way of arguments supporting the partnership. Yahoo reiterates the point that advertisers set the price of search ads through the bidding process, and that there will be no price setting between Google and Yahoo.

But that argument hasn’t seemed to calm many fears. It’s almost like saying, “Hey, if the price goes up, it’s your own fault.”

There has been no denying that the price could, indeed, rise as a result of the deal. If there was such assurance, that would mean that Yahoo and Google are, in fact, price setting. That would go against Google’s business model that has brought them so much success.

Most of this just chalks up to bad timing. The economy is what it is right now, emotions are high, fears are high. It’s a bad time to defend this deal, whether it has merit or not.

Google has launched AdWords API Local Database Sync. This allows you to run reports, store them in a local database, and then query that database.

The AdWords API team says that this should make querying a local database faster and more cost effective.

Jeffrey Posnick informed on the code behind the project:

The scripts are written in Python, and make use of the SOAPpy libraries for accessing the AdWords API SOAP service. The Python code is written against the dbapi2 database API, and by default it will use the SQLite implementation and store the report data in a SQLite database file on the local file system. It’s possible to swap out the SQLite libraries for another database library that supports the dbapi2 interface.

What do you think about Local Database Sync? Share your impressions in the comments.

Related Reading:
Conversion Optimizer Now Supported by Adwords Editor and API
Google Releases Version Four of AdWords API
Google Adds Pricing Model To Google AdWords API: Opens Commercial Use

Semantic search engine hakia is calling for librarians to contribute credible web sources. They’ve done this in the past in the health industry. One of the reasons behind the request is that popular websites aren’t always credible and vice versa.

It’s also clearly a strategic alternative to Google, which bases rankings largely on popularity via links.

“By having information experts suggest sites to hakia, we can guide searchers to relevant and credible information on the Web. As a search engine, we will rely on information professionals’ collective knowledge to add a dimension to search: credibility,” said Melek Pulatkonak, President and Chief Operating Officer of hakia, at the Web Search University event in Washington DC.

“The campaign that hakia is starting is a great way to leverage the never-ending knowledge and information analysis skills of the information professional in building a Web database full of the web resources that are most useful, and most importantly, have the most credibility,” said Gary Price, Editor, ResourceShelf.com. “This is a new chapter for library collection development. I hope this is only the beginning.”

Librarians can find out more or contribute here.

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hakia Comments on Leveraging Yahoo’s BOSS
Semantic Search Engine hakia Launches Syndication Web Services
Hakia Holds Concert To Launch Music Search

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Google has made some adjustments to the blue “My Location” circle on the mobile version of its mapping product.

If you’re in a metropolitan area, the circle will be smaller. If you’re in a rural area, the circle will become bigger. The reason behind the change and the sizes has to do with cell tower triangulation.

Google gathers data from cell towers near your phone to determine your location. If you’re in an urban or suburban setting, you’re likely to be close to more towers, giving Google the ability to pinpoint your location more precisely. If you’re out in the boondocks, you have access to fewer or maybe just one tower, so the location is more approximate.

What do you think about the change? Let us know in the comments!

Related Reading:
Google Adds “My Location” Search Feature to Windows Mobile Devices
Google Opens Location-Aware Application to 3rd Party Developers
Google Maps for Mobile Adds Public Transportation Directions