Blogs

When I first saw the headline “Facebook Places Ads on Zynga” on The Wall Street Journal, my mind almost fell into an infinite loop. You see, Zynga is already buying ads on Facebook to promote their games. I had thought that headline meant that Facebook is returning the favor by buying ads on Zynga to bring on more users.

Nope.Turns out Facebook is testing out their own ad network on Zynga. Yes, looks like Facebook will be launching an ad network to compete with Google’s Adsense.

Between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, I was rooting for the team in a small town. I was also rooting against Lebron James.

Yesterday, Microsoft showed off their tablet computer Surface. According to the New York Times, it “has the same weight and thickness as an iPad, with a 10.6-inch screen.” According to PC Magazine, it weighs 1.49 pounds, which is about the same as Apple’s iPad. However, it still feels bulky.

In a previous article, I wrote: “Awesome Screenshot - Aptly named. It is awesome! Probably better than anything on Firefox. It’s my favorite Chrome app for taking screencaps. Features include cropping and annotation.”

I saw a tweet last night from FilmSchoolReject.com, a film site, that said how the “Pocket” app’s integration with Chrome had changed his workflow. As someone who’s always looking for online tools that would improve my productivity, I was curious.

Turns out the “Read It Later” app has rebranded itself as “Pocket.” The tagline is when you find someone you like on the net, put it in your pocket. Yeah, whatever.

I didn’t watch the fight. I’m not a boxing fan. If it’s on TV and I’m channel-flipping, I’ll watch it. I tend to prefer the faster punching of lightweights than the slumbering heavyweights. Being a fan of martial arts movies,I like watching boxing, but I’ve never became a fan. After what happened over the weekend, I’m not sure if I’ll ever become one.

A week ago, the economy was looking pretty bad. China and India’s economic growth have slowed. Before Europe even has a chance to fully deal with the Greek crisis, another one sprang up: Spain. In the U.S., unemployment went up slightly in May and job growth slowed. It’s just all bad news for the global economy.

I know it would probably be the most boring NBA Finals ever, but I was kinda rooting for the old farts - San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics. I wouldn’t mind if either wins another title, especially the Boston Celtics. I like these teams because there aren’t anyone with a super-huge ego, except for maybe Paul Pierce - but compared to Lebron James, it’s pretty small.

In light of Facebook’s disappointing IPO, I'll pull up an article I wrote in February, which said, “... social networks have always been poor at monetizing their traffic, and that hasn’t changed since they gain popularity. Click-thru rates for ads on social networks have always been really low, so they can’t charge nearly as much as Google per pageview. That hasn’t changed since social networks entered the internet landscape and won’t change in the future.”

It used to be that other browsers like Internet Explorer and Google Chrome would copy Firefox. Now, Firefox is copying Chrome. The latest release of Mozilla’s web browser, Firefox 13, has the handy new tab speed dial feature that shows thumbnails of your most visited sites - a feature that already exist with Chrome. I love that simple feature.