Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

Very useful addon for firefox: adsense notifier

Earlier today I decided to get a little tool that I had read about a few months ago: it's a Google Adsense notifier for Firefox.

Basically it sits at the bottem of your browser and periodically checks for you:
- the number of page views on your site (GREAT to keep track of traffic on your site in a snap)
- number of clicks on adsense ads (yeah... who cares ;)
- CTR (click-thry rate = clicks/PV)
- eCPM (value of each click)
- MONEY you are making with Google's Adsense program.

This little tool might inspire some of us to write about stuff more often ;)

By they way, are the ads on this blog too intrusive ? Do you want me to reduce the size of them, get rid of them, or leave them just as they are ?

My desk at home

My desk at home, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

I guess I keep on talking about my computers at home. I just took a picture of what it looks like right now: 3 laptops, 3 screens, 3 keyboards...
Each serves a different purpose...

Click on the picture, go onto Flickr and see the notes on the picture that I've made ;)...

Mac-addict Joi Ito switching (maybe) to linux ;)

I couldn't resist re-posting this note by the great globe-trotter, VC and entrepreneur Joi Ito. If you read his blog or have met him at conferences, you know he is a devout Mac user, and has spured a whole group of fellow entrepreneurs to use a Mac.

Joi has been playing with VoIP for some time (he even has recently invested in a company in this space, PhoneGnome), and more recently with an open-source private PBX, Asterisk. I guess this had led him to use linux more often. In his most recent note, he claims he is going on travel this week only with a linux box. Waow!

His distribution of choice ? Ubuntu (and not one of the top 3: Mandriva, RedHat and Suse) from South Africa. I can only say that is an excellent choice, as it is the distro running on my desk for the whole family ;) Very simple to use, great menu selection, easy upgrades.

Still haven't given it a try ? You can just download a FREE live CD .ISO, burn it to a CD, and boot off the CD without touching anything on your current Windows install!

Of course, Ubuntu has already been mentionned on this blog a number of times before.

Taking an extended Weekend in Cannes next week

Anyone is going to be in the Cannes/Nice/Grasse region at the end of this week ? I'm taking the family down for the month of August and will be staying an extended week-end. We already have plans with Codor to meet up by the pool, dinner in Mougins, lunch in St-Paul de Vence, and maybe a round of golf at the Mandelieu Old Course?

If interested, leave a comment: it's in 5 days ;)

"someone really smart should buy Global IP Sound"

I got a SkypeIM ping last thursday from a VC friend asking whether I knew anything about Google buying up Skype. Nope I said, as I have not been talking to VCs lately. There is a persistent rumor he said. So I check my usual sources of early information leaks: Om Malik, Scoble, The Register, etc. nada. Then I checked Google's and Skype's official sites: no press release. And of course, I had a look at what the rest of th eblogosphere was saying no Technorati and IceRocket. Nada...

In French we say something close to this : "there is no smoke without fire". So indeed, something was on.

2 days later, the blogosphere is full of reports that there were talks last week between Murdoch and Skype for a $3b deal. Check the SkypeJournal for many pointers to all the stories which seems to have started here.

Anyways... This article is the best analysis I've seen so far: Skype enjoys 3 great assest (+ maybe a fourth : hype):
- an excellent voice Codec supplied by Global IP sound
- close to no CAPEX
- almost no OPEX

The conclusion of the article is in the title. I couldn't agree more. I'd love to have a look at the licensing deal between GlobalIPSound and its clients. I really hope it is variable to sales or downloads... :)

A lot happening aroung MSN Virtual Earth and Google Earth

You already know that I really enjoy using Google Earth. 2 hacks have quickly surfaced since the launch of a competing product by Microsoft this week:

• An enterprising coder has put together a page that allows you to compare the results from Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth for any given address side-by-side. (via Download Squad)
• Zmarties has created a CSS file for Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth respectively, making some very impressive improvements to both interfaces (via Download Squad)

I've been podcasted again ;)

Xavier des Horts, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

This week pointblog.com interviewed Xavier des Horts, communications director for Nokia France, to talk about the Nokia 7710 VIP Blog that I launched a while ago.
(Sorry, interview in French).

Funnily enough, everyone believes the blog was created by Nokia (including BusinessWeek a while ago), which is not the case. Xavier nicely corrects that statement in this podcast again and mentions me a couple of times ;)

And to make things clear, Nokia *gave* us the phone with the only constraint to use it for 2 months as our main phone. We could do whatever we wanted, say whatever we wanted, and no one was asked to do anything, including set up a blog. But it worked out as the Nokia7710 is a cool phone...

Pix above taken at lunch this week with Xavier and some other folks. The guy didn't even mention he had been talking about me on this podcast or at EBG conferences (I've heard it ;)

PS: Xavier & Cyril: you were wondering about the stats of this Nokia7710 blog. They are here! Available since the very beginning :) Last, but not least, it's not 10 bloggers that I invited to join me on this blog, but indeed 22 bloggers + myself.

PPS: my first mention in a podcast (actually a real interview) was at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

What's That? (52)

What's That? (52), originally uploaded by jurvetson.

Steve Jurvetson (yes, the very renowned VC) keeps a series of close-ups on his Flickr-roll. Every now and then, he throws a quizz to his readers. This is an exaple of his now famous question 'what is it, or what do you want it to be...'.

Check the comments, which is where the contest gets going.

Make sure your reply to my challenge mail when you write to me

Many of you take the time to send me feedback about this blog, and I thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Some of you even send me reports and articles you write, for me to read. Thanks again: very interesting.

I just wanted to remind you that I use an anti-spam filter in my inbox: hence whenever you send me email for the FIRST time, it gets locked in a 'pending' folder waiting for you to reply to my challenge, before the email gets promoted to my inbox. This tool - Mailblocks (description of how it works here) - has nearly kept my inbox spam-free for over a year now.

Nevertheless some of you don't reply to the challenge, hence I don't bother to go into my 'pending' folder, and I never read your email. That's a pity. I'm sure many people are using these challenge/response tools these days to keep their inbox junk free, and if you haven't, give it a try.

What's the best personal computer these days?

We are approaching september, and I think it's about time I upgrade my hardware at home. I already own:
- a Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop, running Ubuntu linux 5.04
- a Compaq Armada M700, currently on dual boot WinXP Pro and Fedora Core 4 (default OS)
- a Sony Vaio Z1 RSP, currently running WinXP Pro

I actually want to get a new laptop and a new desktop. Here are my required characteristics:

laptop:

• very slick design (indeed important to me. I like aluminium cases)
• very thin
• long battery
• excellent keyboard
• fast (whatever it means in tems of processor and memory)
• lots of connectivity (wifi b/g, bluetooth)
• built in mic and speakers
• reliable

This is supposed to be my main computer on the road, hence professional usage.

Update: here are your suggestions: an Asus W5, an Acer TravelMate C310 ...

Desktop:

• multimedia capabilities
• powerful

This is supposed to be the PC for the family, so anyone should be able to use it. I will only use it for some video editing, and to store all our multimedia files (I currently use an external hard drive).

What are your recommendations ? Price tag is of course not the first criterion.

note: pix above of some cool gear from Alienware