In Excel hell?
This will cheer you up – the world’s first Excel-based music video (I kid you not): [Via adfreak]
Election night: Make sure you get home early
My old friend and co-émigré Bruce Nash has put together a great presentation about how tomorrow’s election will unfold, in terms of when the TV networks will call each of the states. From Bruce’s model, it looks like it’ll be all over bar the shouting by around 8pm Pacific – so if you’re on the … Read more
Whence the universal tag?
With another E-metrics Summit over (sans me, sadly), it’s clear that interest in web analytics and online measurement remains high, even (or especially) in these troubled times. But as the technology sets for online advertising and web analytics continue to merge and overlap, one urgent question remains unanswered: what are we going to do about … Read more
Clouds, Impressions and Pork Bellies
With Microsoft’s (sort of) biennial PDC on the horizon, my mind (and the minds of many of my colleagues) turns to our cloud computing efforts, which will have their coming-out party in Los Angeles at the end of the month. Like anybody else here at Microsoft, there’s little specific that I can say about these … Read more
Love numbers? Obsessed by the election? If so…
…you’ll love fivethirtyeight.com, which is one of the best blogs to emerge about the 2008 presidential election. The name comes from the number of delegate votes up for grabs in the election, and the site takes the daily feeds of national and statewide polls and synthesizes them to create a running set of predictions about … Read more
Online Advertising Business 101, Part V – Rich Media
Welcome back to my Online Advertising Business 101 series. In my previous posts in this series, I’ve painted a somewhat simplified picture of the major players in the online advertising market, and how they interact; and we’ve looked at some of the technology that these folks use, specifically ad serving technology for advertisers and publishers. … Read more
‘Anonymous’ Netflix Prize data not so anonymous after all
Does entropic de-anonymization of sparse microdata set your pulse racing? If so, you’re gonna love this paper [PDF] by Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov of the University of Texas at Austin. Even if your stats math is as rusty as mine, however, the paper makes fascinating reading – and is surprisingly readable, if you skip … Read more
Yahoo! APT (formerly AMP!) emerges blinking into the sunlight
Well, they said it would launch in Q3, and it has – yesterday Yahoo! unveiled its new ad management platform, called APT, at a razzamatazz-filled event in New York introduced by John Hamm, star of Mad Men (currently the topic of much debate in our house as to its merits). APT started life as “Project … Read more
Phorm gets the all-clear from the UK Goverment (kinda)
[Update 10/1/08: BT has announced that it will commence a new trial with Phorm to start September 30 in the UK. The trial, in accordance with the conditions below, is opt-in] Beleaguered behavioral targeting outfit Phorm appears finally to have caught a bit of a lucky break – the UK Government has (belatedly) responded … Read more