All posts by The Artist

AdSense Revenue Share Revealed

After so many years that AdSense has been in the market, Google finally seems it fit to reveal publisher revenue share in a long blog post on the official Google AdSense blog.

I guess it is because of the rife speculation that Google can give us whatever they like or perhaps it is because of the many complaints that seem to grow by the day that publisher revenues have continued to drop from one month to another. Many of my friends tell me so, and I am experiencing it myself.

For the sake of transparency, Google has revealed that that are sharing 68% of the revenue with publishers of AdSense for content and 51% for AdSense for search.

Don’t ask if these are fair rates or if they are industry standards. Heck, Google made the industry and like I mentioned earlier, they can give us whatever they like and if we want to earn from the program at all, we will have to take it. Some people just feel blessed that AdSense is here at all.

Let’s just hope that nobody will be banned from the programme just when they are reaching the threshold to cashout!

Source: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-share.html

Government Threatens To Reduce Subsidies Again

A friend told me that if subsidy for fuel is removed, he may consider taking a bicycle to work. It’s cheaper than driving a car and a the same time, he gets his dose of daily exercise too. While it is a good plan, I don’t think it’s viable because of the weather here.

Besides, it’s very dangerous to cycle in the capital city. Though I have never tried it before, looking at how car drivers are reckless in their driving as they chase for time to reach their destinations, especially during peak hours where it looked like the entire city was heading to work in the morning and home in the evening, I feel totally unsafe.

I told my friend that if he has to resort to cycling, he better equip himself with the contact details of an Austin Bicycle Accident Attorney first before heading out the door. I’m not being pessimistic but one can never be too careful these days.

Hong Kong Activists To Boycott Latest Apple iPhone

I received a text alert from a media agency that Hong Kong activists are planning a worldwide boycott on Apple’s latest iPhone to protest against the ten suicide cases of workers in a China factory that manufactures Apple iPhones among other electronic gadgets.

I haven’t seen the actual news report yet anywhere on the web after searching for almost 30 minutes so I don’t know if they have retracted their intention but this is very likely in protest of the work conditions of Hon Hai Precision’s factories.

Hon Hai Precision is the parent company of Foxconn. I am using a Foxconn motherboard right now, but with ten suicides of its factory workers in recent weeks, consumers and activists should really look into how production workers are pushed to meet the demands of clients, including Apple and Sony Ericsson, but still, I don’t think it’s particularly fair to target Apple products alone.

Google’s First Playable Doodle To Mark Pacman’s 30th Anniversary

I use Google every day and look forward to a new doodle when there is one. Last evening, I got a surprise when Google presented us with its first ever playable doodle in the form of the Pacman game. If you grew up in my era, you would surely have wasted enough time playing the game. I sure did!

Pacman Google doodle

My friends were all very excited to see Pacman on Google and they sent me text messages to let me know about it although I discovered it first and even played a few rounds of the game already on my Google search page. LOL

Anyway, I think Google doodlers came up with an amazing idea to mark the 30th anniversary of creator’s Tōru Iwatani Pacman game. It’s a very simple game of eating dots and at the same time avoiding “ghosts”.

Beautiful Costa Rica Holiday Home

A friend told me of his recent trip to Costa Rica. It was a work trip but he loves the place so much, he is thinking of buying a house in the beach town of Tamarindo. I have not checked out Tamarindo Real Estate yet but according to my friend, he could easily spend his retirement there because it is so peaceful and serene.

There’s no denying that! I used to have a pen-pal from Costa Rice who sent me plenty of photos of her local holidays. Well, when one lives in such a beautiful place, there is no need to take international vacations at all!

I don’t know if my friend will be able to turn his dream into reality but luckily, with so much information online, he could do a thorough research first before making his decision.

Top 10 Mobile Phone Brands

If you have wondered what are the top ten mobile phone brands this year, wonder no more. The top brand so far is Nokia. The Finnish mobile company, according to an article on Bloomberg, has shipped 107,800,000 phones in the first quarter of 2010 alone. This translates to a total of 37.4% of the market share. Can you imagine that a third of the mobile phone using population using Nokia? I have to admit that I use it too.

Coming at number two is Samsung. This is a South Korean electronics giant which is making a lot of heads turn with its Omnia series of smartphone. It garners a market share of 22.4% with 64,300,000 units shipped in the first quarter of this year.

At number three, and I am surprised, is LG Electronics. I do concede that LG mobile phones have very interesting designs but I can’t say the same for their quality. A lot of my friends say that their LG mobile phones break down one way or another after using for slightly more than a year.

Wrapping up the list of top ten mobile phones in the first quarter of the year are:

1. Nokia
2. Samsung
3. LG Electronics
4. Sony Ericsson
5. RIM
6. Apple
7. ZTE
8. Motorola
9. Huawei
10. Alcatel

Fring Buddy List Not Loading

I don’t know how many people actually use Fring but I love it and I find that the quality of VoIP is very reasonable. Well, I don’t have much complaints when it’s free. However, over the past week, Fring has performed really badly, and I am not talking about the voice quality of VoIP.

Since two weeks ago, my Fring buddylist has not been able to load. I went to check out the forum on Fring and found a handful of threads by people experiencing the same issue. On the times that it does load, my contacts who are online are shown as offline. We cannot send each other text messages but apparently, we can still voice chat. However, who is to know if it’s a real Fring call or a cellular call? I feel uneasy in case a call out is billed by my cellular provider.

Sometimes, my subscribed services like Twitter and Skype would have the same problems too. If I can log in, I am considered lucky, otherwise, either my contacts, offline and online, are not shown, online contacts are shown as offline, or I am unable to make Skype calls because I do not have that option.

Anyway, I hope more Fring users who are affected will make more noise so that Fring will get these issues sorted out as soon as possible. Otherwise, my friend and I may move to something else. Heard that Nimbuzz is a decent alternative.