While you could write a book on the design elements of creating display ads I wanted to write a post about the technical side of creating online Display ads. With all the adserving, tracking and site requirements that need to be met to actually get the ads live, mis-communication and mistakes are all too easy, but in fact the technical side of it, at least the bottom line, is really quite simple. Please note i’m talking here about Standard display ads not Rich Media.

Here’s a great step-by-step tutorial …

This is hands down the best Youtube video downloader I’ve ever seen. It’s a simple plugin for Google Chrome (Firefox tended to crash, and Opera, Safari and IE also available though untested), which adds a ‘Download’ button to the panel under the Youtube video.
The difference though is that the plugin allows you to download straight to the iPod format MP4, whereas in the past you would need to download the FLV Flash video file and then convert it to MP4, and if using free tools you could possibly be required …

After mine and other’s Firefox address bar fell victim again to the Yahoo/ Alexa Spyware, I thought I’d post how to solve the problem as it seems a recurring problem.
Many browsers use Google as a default search engine in the address bar, so if you type an incorrect URL or a partial URL, search results will be returned rather than an error page. Firefox uses Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky engine as the default, and Google’s standard engine if there isn’t a relevant search result. This is great because you no …

One of the defining features about Tumblr is the community that develops from being able to follow each other’s blogs. Special interest blogs are connected with each other and relationships develop.
Unfortunately though the features are quite limited compared with more powerful blogging tools such as WordPress. By default the blogs don’t include a recent posts widget, and inside the Tumblr interface this isn’t really a problem, but for users who rely on external sites such as Twitter to drive traffic it’s imperative to have this function to push users around …

The Google algorithm has it’s limitations when finding new things on the web. As great as it is, your success relies entirely on your ability to predict the right search query for your needs. Until personalised search becomes all encompassing which is going to take years, the results you get from the search query will always be generic, watered down results going with the status quo.
Generally you’ll use one of two techniques: 1. use keywords, for example “windows divx avi converter” or 2. pose a question such as “firefox address …

Delicious is one the greatest and certainly one of the older services on the web. It was started in 2003, which is pre-Youtube and Facebook by several years. In fact, the relic Myspace was founded in 2003, so it’s quite surprising that Delicious, which has never really taken off mainstream, is still going so strong – but that’s really down to the usability and longevity of it. Unless a competitor can provide a robust importer and match the substantial user base (5 million) benefits, I can’t see Delicious going anywhere …

Estimating an upcoming ad campaign’s unique user reach across a site is less about forecasting and more about evaluating one site against another. What I’ve tried to do here is look at a fairly robust way for comparing proposed activity across sites, rather than being able to magically predict how many people will see an ad – which is impossible.
The model is based on a Run of Site inventory buy, but could be easily used across Channel buys or networks if the Page Impression and Unique User stats were available.
So, …

Fences desktop organiser by Stardock is one of the most useful apps I’ve ever found. Simply drag out the desired box (or in this case fence) on the desktop and then drag other files into it, allowing for the whole group of files to be moved at once and stopping new files saved to the desktop from getting mixed up with the old ones. Everybody has a massive amount of different types of files which they saved to the desktop, and keeping them organised automatically like this stops anything going …

For the communications on Twitter to flow freely, there has to be a minimum amount of obstruction, and from a user perspective this means the interface. There seems to be a great level of ignorance or at least naivety surrounding the masses of tools there are available to make accessing Twitter as streamlined as possible.
My all time absolute favourite method is the Firefox plugin TweetLine. Updated tweets from your Following list rotate just under the address bar like a news ticker, and a one click drop-down box appears at the …