overture/yahoo ads network has serious cancer and will not survive the operation

Today I opened the MSN Adcenter account.
Currently MSN is showing 40% of all ads from it's own Adcenter and 60% from the Yahoo/Overture ad network.
The problem with Yahoo ads is that they are pretty much useless if you live outside of the USA. Yahoo simply can not deliver the amount of traffic you need unless you open a SEPARATE account for each country. And you must wait for a week to get your ads approved. And believe me, 70% of your ads gets disapproved, if the page you point your ad link does not directly relate to the words in the ad. Does Yahoo think that they know better than me where I want to send visitor who click on my ads?
Sure Yahoo might have higher conversion rate, but who cares about it when they can not deliver the traffic? 100% conversion from 0 visitors is still 0.
Yahoo's ad center interface is very confusing and non-intuitive.

So far I found 1 downside on MSN Adcenter: keywords must be approved before showing them in search. Not sure yet how long it takes to get them approved.

Mess with the best...

I was watching the movie "Hackers" today on TV and noticed an interesting Swedish subtitle translation of expression "Mess with the best, die like the rest". It was "Ge dig på eliten och dö i skiten", which translated word by word is "Attack the elite and die in shit" .. or more rhyming "Fight with elite and die like shite".

For those who don't know, in Sweden all foreign movies are shown in original language and at the bottom of the screen you can read Swedish subtitles.
On children cartoons voice is usually replaced to Swedish language though. Stupid kids.. learn to read!

Excel is a virus?

According to this article McAfee antivirus counts Excel as a virus. Personally I think Excel is a pretty good program :)

An error in McAfee's virus definition file released Friday morning caused the company's consumer and enterprise antivirus products to flag Microsoft's Excel, as well as other applications on users' PCs, as a virus called W95/CTX....

Login to Sametime without using username and password

I am working at 3 new features to Sametime Agent (STAgent):
1) Login to Sametime server from LotusScript run Notes client using Token instead of username/password
2) Login to Sametime server from LotusScript run in web browser using Token instead of username/password
3) Login to Sametime server from LotusScript as Anonymous user

The first feature is the most interesting as it allows to run STAgent without having to provide username and password, which can have numereous advantages when SAmetime actions are trigger manually by user.

A new quote from the great Homer Simpson

I can't take HIS money. I can't print my OWN money. I've to work for money. Why don't I just lie down and die?
(from the episode where Homer allows Marge to date Artie for one weekend)

Lean,mean DB2 synchronizing machine!

What is faster than LEI and cheaper than DECS? It's Botstation's SQL123 application which was released as alpha version today.
Synchronisation speed: 1000 records per second.

Here is a short Flash presentation of how it works:
http://www.botstation.com/downloads/other/sql123_flashdemo.zip


/Andrei
http://www.botstation.com/domino_products.php

Sametime awareness without Java applet

Sametime awareness without Java applet can be of course done with Sametime Agent STAgent using servlet interface.

STAgent can be easily adjusted to return an icon showing user's status when you call it with URL like this: http://stserver.company.com/servlet/stagent_servlet?type=status&user=John+Doe

Lotusphere comes to you

I was attending "Lotusphere comes to you" conferance in Stockholm today. Ed Brill was the first speaker. Then there were sessions about Sametime, Workplace and Portlets.
I forgot my digital camera at home so I di no pictures. There were too dark to make pictures with camera in the mobile phone.

I really liked the Sametime session. Interesting feature I haven't seen before is that with Sametime 7.5 client you can take a screenshot of selected part of the screen and automatically send it to the chat partner. Very useful for sharing information.

Would need to test if my Sametime applications (Sametime Bot and Sametime Agents) still work in Sametime 7.5.

Two new English words I learned today

Today I learned 2 new words. From TV of course :)

The first word is "womanizing", which according to Wikipedia means "engaging in love affairs with women he cannot or will not marry". This interesting word I heard in Simpsons cartoon, the episode when Homer created text for fortune cookie which Mr Burns then read when he was in the restaurang.

The second word is "churched up". It means strong and enthusiastic believing in something, mainly in God. This can apparently be used even in context not related to God. This phrase is from "My name is Earl", episode 2 where Earl begs for forgiveness from a man who was mistakenly convicted to 2 year in prison for robbery which Earl committed.


Today I also did some small changes to SMS123 Domino application, specially in custom LS class methods.