Tiny infobits, huge shockwaves

October 2007

Quality click: a shift in the advertising market

Posted 31 October 2007 - 11:01am

Here is the opportunity: how do you eliminate 50% of fraudulent clicks that you pay when you buy a campaign on Google? It seems like also Andre is talking about it too, here and here.

Well, to put things in perspective, 50% seems a lot, but it is not much compared to more than 50% which is lost on TV ads, and who knows how much which is lost on traditional banner ads sold on cpm (cost per thousand banner displayed).

Computer technology vs. partial differential equations

Posted 29 October 2007 - 11:01am

I studied Engineering and graduated with honors, but I must admit that I never liked mathematical analysis, and was never too good at it. I found it as being too abstract and hard to visualize; on the other hand, I loved computer science, it was my second nature, I could naturally visualize it without efforts. My thesis work, when I graduated, was about a simulation of an automatic storage system at a car factory, which I simulated using what are now generically called cellular automata.

Some English humour about the subprimes

Posted 24 October 2007 - 8:37am
A good explanation about what happened with the subprimes ... funny and sad :-)

Old politicians do not get the Internet

Posted 21 October 2007 - 11:11am

The average age of Italian politicians is one of the highest in the world. Regardless of their background, either on the left or on the right, Italian politicians have been trying to "regulate" the Internet for a while now. Their latest proposal is to oblige any site or blog owner to register their site if they generically provide information. The registration would be done through a government agency adding more bureaucracy to a country that has so much of it that could export it, were there countries crazy enough to adopt the Italian system.