MeBeam

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection

2008-11-19T04:45:53+11:00

A small but important feature of MeBeam, is the ability to know who said what, in the MeBeam chat window, without the need to have a username.

This is accomplished by taking a snapshot of the person who typed in the chat window, so you can identify that person by their web cam image.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a web cam, and until now, these users all appeared as a light greenish blue box.

To differentiate chat messages from people without cam, I have now made it so, that these users has a unique color.

Now you should be able to determine who said what, unless of course your color blind.

Skype Conference

2008-11-18T12:09:00+11:00

Ashod Apakian

The Advertising Paradox

2008-10-31T09:55:01+11:00

It's fair to say that advertising is the cornerstone of the world wide web, and is an essential part of many online sites and services;

After all, a site requires servers, staff, maintenance and time, all of which require money.

It's also fair to say, advertising is ugly, annoying and we're all experts at ignoring it.

Online advertising, essentially consists of three things.

First, a person or company who has a product, service or web site they want to start promoting to the public - this person is known as the advertiser.

Second, a person or company who has a web site, who wants to sell advertisers a place to put their ads - this person is known as the publisher.

Third, a person or company who receives ads from advertisers, and takes care of finding the best possible publishers for the ad - this person is known as the broker.

The advertiser tells the broker, how much he is willing to spend to have his ad shown.

If the advertiser, requests his advert be shown on a publishers site who is very popular, e.g on the front page of the New York Times, then of course a very large number of well-educated people are going to know about his product.

Conversely, if the advertiser, only has a small budget, the broker might only be able to find advertising space on unpopular or questionable publisher sites.

Okay, so basically:

Advertiser ===> Broker ===> Publisher

The broker takes the advertisers money, finds a suitable publishers site, the ad is shown, the broker pays a percentage of the advertisers money to the publisher.

Everyone wins !
Wait..

No - The broker wins big time - The advertiser may win, depending on how many people saw or clicked on the ad - The publisher LOSES..

Why?

Alice wants to advertise her online apple pie shop, so she finds an advertising broker ( e.g Google, Yahoo , Adbrite etc ), and is willing to pay 5 cents each time her ad is clicked.

The broker keeps a list of all the publishers it manages, and how much they are selling advertising space on their sites. The broker goes through its list of publishers and finds one, which it feels is relevant to the audience Alice wishes to reach - Possibly a cooking or catering site.

The big problem is the advertiser is charged 5 cents for each ad put on the publishers site, but the publisher generally only receives 1 cent or even less - the broker keeps a huge 80% of more of the transaction.

The big bad broker - how dare he !!?...

Well, the brokers job is difficult - but it ain't that difficult - the whole thing is automated by computers.

Still we need brokers, because, unless your a Google, and have made the massive effort in establishing relationships with publishers,its next to impossible to do it all on your own.

This why, when you buy or sell advertising on Google, you are never told how much each ad was bought/sold for - Basically, if your a publisher, just shut up, don't ask questions, and you will receive a cheque in the mail each month from Google. How much of the pie was actually given to you, is none of your business, so don't ask !

So, is this why I am bitching about online advertising ?- NO.

Let's take TokBox for example, who would be considered a competitor to MeBeam-

If I phoned them up, and asked them, to redirect they're users to MeBeam in exchange for some money - how much would they charge me ?

I'm pretty certain it would be fairly hefty - $1, $10 , $100 per user -after all , I am asking them to send their customers to me.

However, if Tokbox became a publisher and started selling advertising space on their site, then Google would select relevant ads to video chat.

Essentially, Tokbox, would be displaying video chat/video conferencing class ads, and making nothing more than a few cents when they receive their Google cheque at the end of the month.

For a microscopic amount of revenue , they would have to had direct their customers right into the hands of the competition.

It's worth noting, that Google don't pay publishers to display ads, indeed they only pay publishers for ads which are clicked - so its a certainty - you have just handed over a customer to a competitor, and made peanuts in return..

MeBeam going live with Live

2008-10-07T05:51:59+11:00

Many plugins have been released over the months to integrate MeBeam into your favorite instant messenger.

I think we have covered pretty much every popular IM out there, from Google Talk to AIM, even Skype ( which is currently offline due to some unforeseen technical issues).

One plugin which was developed, but which I forgot to release , is the plugin to integrate MeBeam into Msn Live Messenger.

So here it is, a small plugin for MSN, which adds MeBeam video directly from your buddy list.

Click here to download the MSN plugin for MeBeam

IconDial, so can you

2008-09-28T17:37:39+10:00

IconDial is a new service which has been launched, which allows you to make telephone calls to any land line or mobile phone in any country.

Like MeBeam, IconDial does not ask you to download anything or ask you to sign up.

As you can imagine, this could very well be a very popular service, not to
mention expensive for me.

Sounds great, but so far this business model doesn't sound too healthy.
I think I may have a solution, which could work.

In return for this service, you listen to a short advertisement before the call, long enough to stick, but short enough not to be annoying.
I'm thinking 3-5 seconds.

Advertising space will be available to purchase, simply by uploading your short jingle in mp3 format, and a token fee of around 5cents per ad.

IconDial is still in pre-beta, so it might have some bumps, but all in all, it's
ready to use.

Check it out at, www.icondial.com