should

I am going to write something that is likely to be unpopular. Today I experienced a "perfect storm" of sorts regarding the Internet and the idea of free is good. This apparent entitlement mentality that is pervasive among Internet users that everything should free is going to potentially ruin a lot of good opportunities. Of course, all of this is in my opinion so you can take it for what it's worth. At least reading it is free, right?

All AdSense publishers should keep up with Google's official AdSense Channel on YouTube, as well as the Inside AdSense Blog (also official). There are helpful tips and other useful information posted to both periodically. As I noticed that the Inside AdSense crew just posted a webinar to the YouTube channel, I thought it might be prudent to point out that they have posted a few other useful videos over the past couple months. 1. AdSense Channels and Reporting Webinar

Update: The original title of this article was "USA Today Publisher Restricting Employees from Using Social Networks?" USA Today called Murdok requesting a change because it made it look like USA Today itself was discouraging social media use, which is apparently not the case.

It's not a news story--doesn't really rise to the level of newsworthiness--but people do seem to be talking more lately about the death of newspapers. Recently even Eric Schmidt of Google discussed how newspapers must find a mixture of advertising, micropayments, and regular subscriptions to fund their futures. To me, all this talk about how newspapers collect money is misplaced. Instead, I think newspapers must think about how to flourish by remaining relevant in the new digital world.

Microsoft faces some pretty tough competition in the pay-per-click space. On the adCenter blog today, they have posted some reasons they think users (at least in the UK) would benefit more from adCenter than its "main competitor."

Gmail has been all about improving usability lately. Most recently they've announced a big improvement in this area fixing a problem that has annoyed countless emailers including Googlers themselves. You know how when you get more than one conversation going based on one message, you don't always have time to read each new one? It can get pretty confusing when trying to remember which ones still need to be read when you go back to them. If you mark the whole thing as unread, then you have to wade through the ones you've already read.

The world is waiting to see how Google plans to make money from YouTube. Increasingly innovative in the slap-an-ad-on-it department, Google is a victim of its own success, relying on clicks when YouTube is better as a straight branding vehicle, just like its television predecessor.

There is an interesting article at Seeking Alpha called "Why 'GooBay' Makes Sense." Obviously this is a "what if Google bought eBay?" piece, and feedback to the article thus far isn't real keen on the idea, but there are some valid points throughout the article nevertheless.