Sam I am

A few weeks ago, I went to the DUMBO Arts festival with Betsy. We both went there a few years ago. Basically, the Arts festival is an annual event where artists open up their studios to the public. One fun studio we visited was run by Jane Walentas. She is restoring a carousel from 1922.



We saw “real” art as well. Some of it was pretty great, and some of it was mediocre. All of it was interesting in one way or another.

Saturday was misty and gray without being chilly. You couldn’t see the other side of Manhattan from my window. I walked into the park and chilled out at the waterfront. Fall is my favorite season, and this was a great example of a perfect Fall day.



The birds were having a fine time on the rocky shores of the east river.

Saturday night I went out with my friends Harri and Kristiina. We went to their local bar later in the evening. Harri just had his book The Dodo and Mauritius Island: Imaginary Encounters published. Kristiina has been doing a lot of work taking photos at weddings.

I decided to walk home after I left. I was going to get a cab, but even though it was after 1:30 am the streets were quite crowded. It was the night before Halloween; since it was also Saturday, everyone was out that night. I started at Broadway and Elizabeth. I got into Chinatown and started across the Manhattan Bridge. It scared me a bit, which made me even more determined to cross that way. Once you are one third of the way across the bridge, it is quite difficult to see either end. It is much more desolate than the Brooklyn Bridge. With the mist over the city, you could hardly see a thing. But the bridge was crossed without incident.

I am in the process of switching Internet providers. I hope to kill my old account within the next couple of weeks. I was with my old hosting company since 1995, when I just graduated from CMU. That company, Best Communications, was purchased by Verio a few years later. Shortly after that purchase, Verio was bought by NTT DoCoMo for around $5.5 billion dollars (see this Forbes article). The service hasn’t been horrible, but it has stagnated over the years. While the price remained fairly constant, other providers managed to provide the same service for less money.

I have switched to DreamHost. There was a really good deal for a year of service, but their regular prices are pretty good as well. In fact, I will probably upgrade my level of service next year. I have been really happy with their services so far. The servers seem to be a bit snappier, and I like their attitude more than that of Verio.

This post is only posted on my site at DreamHost; the fact that you are reading this post means that my move is going well. People who are viewing my site at Verio will not see this post.

A while back, I wrote that my site has started to accept advertisements through the Google AdSense program. Before I go any further, let me share some information from the Google AdSense program. The Program Policies contain the following clause:

Incentives

Web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. This includes encouraging users to click on the ads or to visit the advertisers’ sites as well as drawing any undue attention to the ads. This activity is strictly prohibited in order to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as “click here,” “support us,” “visit these links,” or other similar language that could apply to any ad, regardless of content.

The Terms and Conditions of the Google AdSense program contain the following clause:

7. Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google’s prior written consent. “Google Confidential Information” includes without limitation: […] (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google; […]

So what does this mean to you, my dear reader? Simply put, please do not consider anything I am writing to be an exhortation to click on advertisements on my site. Nor will I reveal what I am make from the AdSense program or what advertisers are paying to be a member of the AdSense program.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the AdSense program and whether I want to continue to participate. Having advertisements is a nice way to generate income, but I’m not sure I have been happy with all of the advertisements that have been delivered by Google. For example, I wrote about bathroom equipment in Italy; astute readers may remember the ads that got placed. Frankly, these were not the most aesthetically pleasing advertisements I could have gotten. Today, I saw that Google placed an advertisement for political paraphernalia on my blog from an organization with whom I disagree. While I find it a bit ironic that this advertisement may cost the political organization money, I am not thrilled to accept money indirectly from the political organization.

I have a very easy choice: I can accept Google’s advertising placement or not. (I can also blacklist sites one by one, but the process is so difficult that it is impractical.) The advertisements I have seen so far do not bother me so much. Would I feel the same way if there were an anti-abortion advertisement on my web site? What about a bigoted advertisement? More importantly, how would I know such an advertisement had been placed? Google does not provide auditing facilities that show me what advertisements have been displayed on my site, and I do not visit my site very frequently.

The story becomes more interesting when you consider the advertiser’s point of view. Do you want to advertise on a web site when the web site is portraying your product in a negative light? Do you want to advertise on a web site if it portrays your competitors in a relatively positive light? For example, I felt Rossini Restaurant in Florence was a terrible restaurant. The food was merely adequate, but the experience as a whole was horrible and overpriced. Now imagine that I am one of the owners of Rossini and I wanted to place an advertisement. I would never want my advertisement to appear on this web page. People may click through my advertisement just for spite!

At Sports Illustrated, where I work, we are very concerned about advertising positioning. Most of what we do with regards to positioning is common in the publishing world. Advertisers can make sure that they are the first advertisement for their line of products in the magazine. For example, a car company may pay a premium to be the first automotive advertisement. Advertisers can also specific certain demographic or geographic splits. That is, in one part of the country, an advertiser may place one advertisement; they may place another advertisement in another part of the country. There are many other different variables, and the magazines at Time Inc. are very good at positioning advertising.

At the same time, many publishers, including Time Inc., strive to make sure that their advertising and editorial content do not conflict. This can cut both ways. I can cite two examples from my time at The Tartan, the student newspaper of Carnegie Mellon University. One time, our features section ran an article on contraception; it also briefly discussed masturbation. It was a fairly well written, serious article, and no one though two minutes about it. After our issue was printed, an advertiser from one of the local religious institutions stopped by. He was not concerned that we had run an article on this kind of topic; in fact, I believe that he would have felt foolish complaining about such an article in a college newspaper. However, he was a little disappointed with the positioning of his advertisement. Unfortunately, his advertisement for religious services was right next to the article on contraception and masturbation. Since his institution felt that both contraception and masturbation were, shall we say, less than ideal, he would have preferred a different location in the newspaper for his advertisement.

In a way, a publisher has an advantage over an advertiser–the publisher can always see the advertising content at any point in the publishing process; the advertiser cannot always see the editorial content before publication. While I was at The Tartan, an anti-abortion group asked to place an insert into the paper. The Tartan was a weekly broadsheet newspaper; the insert was a full-color tabloid size insert. Like most anti-abortion material, it was highly inflammatory and prejudicial. Personally, I was against running the insert in our paper. The group could distribute the insert on campus by themselves, and I didn’t feel we had any obligation to carry the advertising. I was outvoted, and the insert was distributed with the next issue of the paper. I wonder sometimes if I should have left the paper after this decision was made.

I wish Google AdSense were a bit more sophisticated in how it placed advertising. I can’t say a better algorithm exists, but I don’t want to give money to causes and organizations that I find objectionable. I’m not sure that Google can make this sort of guarantee. I think I will consider the issue for another month or so, but right now I am leaning towards dropping out of the program.

Do you have opinions on the topic? Send them my way.

Finally, here is a quick disclaimer: not only do friends and family work at Google, friends of mine work at Google’s competitors. And I also use many Google products myself, both in my personal and professional life. My disagreements with the Google AdSense program will probably not dissuade me from using their other fine services.

This site now validates as XHTML 1.1. It is almost identical to the strict form of XHTML 1.0. As a general user, should you care? Probably not. As a techie, should you care? It remains to be seen. The default page for this site is served as text/html. You can see view this page as application/xhtml+xml if you are using a browser that supports application/xhtml+xml. I do not believe Internet Explorer has this support.

I’ve switched from using Mozilla as my primary mail reader and web browser to a combination of Thunderbird and Firefox. All three programs are from the same organization. Thunderbird and Firefox are their new standalone mail reader and standalone web browser. Both are not completely finished products, but they are fairly stable. Firefox is going to have it’s first general release shortly. It was worth switching to Firefox for its web developer toolbar alone. This tool is going to be very helpful for me at work. Thunderbird is worth using as a mail reader because it has a well-designed and implemented interface. The icons they designed are fantastic.

Finally, I will probably be moving this site from Verio to Dreamhost. Dreamhost had a deal last week for a year of hosting for $10. At Dreamhost’s regular rates, I still pay less per month than what I pay for Verio. And Verio’s pricing has not changed in ten years! If I were to create a new account at Verio, I would be paying four times more than my new account at Dreamhost! I don’t see any big differences in functionality between the two companies. If anything, I think Dreamhost may be a bit more responsive to small customers.

There was a storybook quality to the landscape of Manhattan last Sunday. The sky was a rich blue color with vivid fluffy clouds. I was going to a restaurant that I talk about far too much, and the stark reality of DUMBO contrasted sharply with the opposite shore.

I wasn’t going to have a drink with breakfast, but the bartender really wanted to make one. It’s a bit funny really; Bloody Marys are a lot of work for the bartenders to make at Superfine. They don’t use a mix there, and every drink is from scratch! Regardless, it was a pretty drink for a pretty day.