The Holtsville Swamp

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Yard work is beginning to get the better of me.  Upon uncovering our pool for the season, we found out there was a ton of leaves and debris sitting at the bottom and the water was black.  It's highly likely that it wasn't winterized properly. Throughout Memorial Day weekend, I was alternately scooping leaves and branches out of the pool with the skimmer and (later) a leaf rake attachment I got at Lowe's, and running the filter constantly.  We've gone through 35 lbs. of diatomite just sucking all the yucky algae and swampy stuff out of the pool.  At first, the filter would run for 20 minutes, get clogged and require backwashing.  As of this morning, it's clear enough to see the bottom, the water went from black to green to milky green to somewhat clear, and I can still see tons of leaves in the deep end.  At least now we can run the filter for 1-2 hours before it gets fully clogged again.

My pool guy says I need to do this until the water is clear, and nothing is going to clear the water up short of draining the pool.  I'd rather not dump over 20,000 gallons of water into my yard, so I'm stuck filtering and backwashing.  Lather, rinse, repeat until the damned thing is ready for the next round of chemicals that will need to be dumped into it.

On top of that, this weekend's ambitious project is getting the central air conditioning running again.  Thankfully, I have the assistance of my soon-to-be brother in law and his electrician friend.  Otherwise I'd be up a creek.

Will GoogleClick Give Away DART?

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It's been about a week since I floated my theory about Google turning DFA and DFP into two free products, and so far, I've not had any significant challenges to the theory, or even people telling me "Nah, it'll never happen..." After my column yesterday in iMedia, I even received some private e-mail from venture capitalists and industry analysts.  Most of it amounted to "yeah, that makes sense," although a few e-mails asked unrelated questions about what I thought of some of the other assets coming together in the Google-DoubleClick and the Microsoft-aQuantive deals.

I'm still trying to figure out what the Microsoft-aQuantive deal was, other than a blocking move by Microsoft.  The three primary divisions of aQuantive represent things that Microsoft will have trouble leveraging.  What does it want with an ad agency (AvenueA - Razorfish)?  Most people I talked to were surprised to see Microsoft indicate they wouldn't divest themselves of this potential liability.  After all, its new corporate ownership is going to raise many questions for AvenueA among its clients.  What does it want with DrivePM?  Drive is a terrific network that generates success for quite a few of our clients, but Microsoft has trouble figuring out how to sell advertising effectively, and the last thing I would want to see is DrivePM absorbed into MSN's advertising sales division.  While it's true Microsoft could turn DrivePM into the next Advertising.com, I think it would take them longer than they might envision.  What do they want with Atlas?  Unlike DoubleClick, Atlas doesn't have a robust publisher-side product.  (Okay, so they bought Accipiter a while ago.  Notice I said "robust.")  For twice the price, Microsoft gets half the ad serving products.  And it could be argued they got the wrong half.

Speaking of ad serving products, I told one of the money guys who e-mailed me earlier that I thought the value of "advertiser relationships" has been overblown in the media.  The relationships that DoubleClick and Atlas have with advertisers and agencies are technology- and research-driven relationships where little or no influence over advertiser media selection exists.  Meanwhile, the press has been going ga-ga over so-called "advertiser relationships" that will somehow give Google and Microsoft advantages over others in upselling their ad products, as if these relationships somehow kick down doors for MSN and Google.  It's more subtle than that, and my money's on Google to figure out how to leverage technology to make it easier to buy their products through DFA's interfaces.  I think it's almost a given that they'll revamp things to make it easier to buy AdWords, ads on the Google Content Network, radio, print, television and other ad products, right through DFA.

There is the question of what will happen to DCLK and MSFT search management products.  It's a big question mark for me.  We've used Atlas Search in the past and have been somewhat underwhelmed by its clunkiness.  DART Search seems more elegant, but I'm doubting that these two products will continue to exist in their present form much longer.  My guess is that if Google does anything at all, it will improve DART Search's integration with Google Search.  Would Microsoft do the same thing for Atlas Search integration with MSN?  If they do, it certainly has less impact than DART Search/Google.

What I think this all comes down to is that two free Google Ad Management products (one for advertisers, one for publishers) would have such strategic impact on our business that it would be silly of Google to NOT release them.  They have more offerings to integrate into the platform, they can gain more revenue and more clients, and they can make it harder for Microsoft to monetize aQuantive than Microsoft can make it tough for them to monetize DoubleClick.  It almost seems like a no-brainer when you look at it that way.

Modding Borg Implants

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jawbone_small.jpgEric scooped up two Cingular Jawbones last week for our Blackberries.  The headset has truly amazing technology built in, and when Eric calls the office from his mobile, I can't tell he's on a mobile phone.  His sounds crystal clear with no background noise.  Once, Eric called me from his car using the Jawbone, and with the Noise Shield technology, I couldn't tell he was driving with the windows down.  Amazing. With my Jawbone, I had a bit of a problem.  The earpieces that come with the unit didn't fit my ear well.  Then there's the notion of the annoying ear loop that holds it in place.  For the Jawbone's technology to work, the little sensor (white dot on the right-hand portion of the unit, in this picture) needs to be pressed against the user's cheek.  Here's the problem - the earloop is great at either holding the earpiece in one's ear or the sensor against one's cheek, but not both simultaneously, which is required for the unit to work properly. Eric read something on a message board about a potential solution, and he ordered packs of Jabra Ear Gels, which arrived earlier this week.  I took the stock earpiece and the stock earloop off and Krazy Glued the best-fitting Ear Gel to the Jawbone.  Note that this isn't the best way to do this.  Eric did a similar mod to his Jawbone, and he found that the stock piece of plastic on the stock earpiece can be removed and the Ear Gel can be stretched over it to fit the Jawbone, so that no glue is required.  But the Krazy Glue works just fine if you don't mind the Ear Gel being somewhat of a permanent fixture.

The Jawbone is now much more comfortable on my ear and it doesn't fall out.  The sensor is pressed to my cheek as it should be, and there's no annoying earloop to contend with. It's a much better unit this way.