Online ad optimization is the science of identifying on the basis of statistical data the best performing ads / ad network providers as well as the best performing ad position, layout, color and font style on your web pages. Paul Edmondson, Co-Founder and CEO of YieldBuild, a online web service designed to "take the guesswork out of ad formatting", has kindly agreed to have a good conversation with me to understand better how this service differs from already established online ad optimization services that focus specifically on real-time ad network optimization (such as Pubmatic and the Rubicon Project). Paul was in San Francisco and I was in Rome, when, a few days ago, I recorded this interesting video conversation. Here the complete recording and a full English text transcript. Check it out:

Interview With Paul Edmondson - CEO and Founder of YieldBuild

Full English text transcript

Intro

RobinGood: Hello everyone! Here\'s Robin Good from Rome, Italy and I am here today with Paul Edmondson who is the CEO and founder of a very interesting company: Yieldbuild. I don\'t know if my Italian pronunciation is the best one, but the service is, to my eyes, really interesting because, at least in my superficial knowledge (I haven\'t signed up yet), just like PubMatic or the Rubicon Project, this is supposed to be a service that allows you to optimize different ad networks and make the best of money, while not fixing yourself with just one advertising partner. From what I understand, Yieldbuild allows you to test out a number of things and in real time you can select for you what is the best solution that you should adopt. But let\'s find out from one of the fathers of Yieldbuild, Paul! How are you doing in San Francisco today? Paul Edmondson: Doing very well, thanks for having us Robin.

What is Yieldbuild?

Robin Good: You\'re very welcome. Thank you for reaching out and asking to have a conversation. That\'s only what it takes indeed. Why don\'t you introduce briefly yourself and Yieldbuild. What is Yieldbuild, from your take, in a short one, and what do you do over there? Paul Edmondson: Sounds good. You got it right, I\'m one of three founders of Yieldbuild and what we really set out to do is to help publishers make more money and that\'s about helping them manage the monetization on their website through the various ad networks they choose. To start, Yieldbuild it\'s really about text ad optimization and what that means is we help publishers to pick out the right combination of elements. For example, let\'s say you are a Google AdSense publisher. You wanna know: "should my background be white, should it be blue, should it be gray, should it have borders, what should font color be, what should the link color be..." So what Yielbuild brings in is a set of heuristics that figures out, tests algorithmically, to find you the best combination of ads. Then after on that site it will also do your ad network management.

Easier Ads On Your Site

Robin Good: Good. I was not completely on-track, actually quite off-track and that is great that I didn\'t know correctly what you\'re doing because I\'m much more curios now. While you do have some of the ad optimization facilities, your key focus as is about understanding what is the best combination of components in a text ad to make it work, is that correct? Paul Edmondson: Yeah, I think that\'s a great way of summarizing it. What we do is really specialize in the placement. There\'s the placement and the formatting of those ad. Think about your page and how a publisher may lay out the ads on it. For example, they may put a 720x90 at the top of the page, a 300x250 in the sidebar, maybe another 300x250 in the content footer ad, maybe another ad on the other side. We\'ll find the best combination of the formatting attributes combined with the placement. Then, once we get a real good understanding of that, then we go into the ad network management.

A Solution For Publishers

Robin Good: Let me understand. This service is more targeted to an advertiser, who wants to understand how to best package his punch to an ad, or is it for a publisher to optimize the delivery and click-through of the ads he is carrying from his inventory? Paul Edmondson: That\'s a great question. It\'s a publisher solution. For example, use AdSense. Most publishers that are getting started online use AdSense. It\'s very easy to get going, just a little JavaScript that goes in your page. What they don\'t know is really how to optimize their AdSense for the best performance for their site. It\'s a publisher solution and what we do is we help them tune their ads for the best response.

Overcoming Competitors

Robin Good: In this respect there are similarities or overlaps with the options offered by apparently similar services like PubMatic, the Rubicon Project or even some of the Google\'s own tools that have been coming out in the last few months. I guess I\'m thinking specifically of the Site Optimizer. What do you say? Paul Edmondson: Yeah, first technical problematic at PubMatic and Rubicon is that I can\'t speak for too much for those sites and those services. But I would say that what Yieldbuild does is it optimizes your entire ad layout of ads. It\'s aware of all the different ads that you have in your page. It\'ll do the formatting and the ad network optimization. Our best understanding of Rubicon and PubMatic today is that they really focus on the ad network management behind one given spot. We try to think about your page holistically and all the different ads that you have on your page and how they work as a ecosystem of ads for the publisher, so all the different rules that go behind their networks, all those types of things to give you the best monetization experience as a publisher. The great question about the Site Optimizer for Google. One of the things that\'s really interesting about the Site Optimizer. It\'s built on multi-variant type testing. Let\'s say for example you have a landing page and you need to figure out does the "buy now" button here work better than "save 15%". Something like that. And what it does, it requires the publisher, requires the web site operator to go in it to find those tasks and set out those pages. Yieldbuild is quite a bit different. In the sense that it goes in and sets up all the tasks algorithmically. It examines your site, figures out things that are about it and then it uses our optimization system to do all of that automatically. So no user setup for all the different tasks.

Placement Does Matter

Robin Good: That\'s very cool indeed. And that\'s something that had been bothering me about the Google Site Optimizer, so you\'re right on the spot in thinking a way that, even if I only read about it, it made sense and motivated me to try it out. And I\'m indeed motivated to go after you and your service. I\'m a Premium AdSense partner, I use AdSense as my main resource of income for now. I\'m opening new business lines, but as of now it remains my main one. I have recently signed up with a major advertising network in the US and the issue of not only optimizing the different solutions but make them live together is part of our daily work. I mean, you just can\'t do it all by yourself. Secondly, I\'ve even a person dedicated on a daily task of testing AdSense. The idea that this AdSense testing time could be saved and put to use in other direction, while some software magically could think as well as he does and develop all the possibilities that we\'re trying out, is definitely interesting. I understand this is not Disneyland and the software can only do so much. I suppose that if we contribute our help in defining where we wanna try out things, I\'m now imagining your tool displaying the ads with different colors, different fonts and styles until it finds a better click-through and then stays on that set of options that it has found. Is that how he dynamically learns about it? Paul Edmondson: Yeah, I think one of the interesting things that you talked about: First, when you set up a site to get tested by AdSense it requires you to put in a piece of ad code in the page and then to continually move it around to find the different placements that work best for you. But, with our system is you can put all the snippets of code in the page that you wanna possibly testing an ad location for. For example, let\'s say you only want to show two ads at one time. You can put three or even five, or six zones in your page and then YieldBuild will look at those combinations of placements and do the best. Then it will do all that formatting placement, bold, all the different text options that you have for the given ad networks.

A Worthy Dish

Robin Good: Wow, well you know what, this is really exciting. I don\'t know if to trust you or not but I gotta go try it out! In your words this is just godsend for a publisher. I\'m glad I reached you without having tried the service, because I got the opportunity of you really opening up for me the idea of what the service is. It looks like you said very clearly and we\'re gonna find out now that is clearly different from your competitors in some specific ways which are not insignificant. Why waste more of your precious time and possibly sliding to the hyping part when you\'ve just given the best facts and then what I\'m gonna do now it\'s just go out and try it. You know what? I think that the best video conversations are the ones that are like precious dishes at restaurants. They bring you this big dish with a small little thing on it and some fancy food decoration. You eat it and it feels like: "God, where\'s the rest man? This is gonna cost me 35 bucks and there was nothing here!" But you know you\'re not gonna forget that dish in that restaurant. I think we got some jewels from you and I just wanna thank you. I don\'t wanna go forward with more, I wanna go sign up and try it! Paul Edmondson: Great! Hey Robin, thank you so much for having us. It was a lot of fun being out here. Robin Good: Alright, have a great day in San Francisco and I\'ll talk to you right after I try it! Paul Edmondson: You too, take care! Robin Good: Ciao!


Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on September 4th 2008 as "Online Ad Optimization: YieldBuild Explains Itself - Paul Edmondson Video Interview" About Paul Edmondson Paul Edmondson is one of co-founders and CEO at YieldBuild. He held group management positions at MSN Entertainment over product management, quality management, operations, and business management. He also worked for MongoMusic and Hewlett-Packard after graduating from California Polytechnic University. ...

The Google Chrome browser is out and fully available for download right now. "Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.", that\'s what Google says. To help you out find out what Google Chrome is all about I suggest you to do one of two things: a) Download Google Chrome now and try it out for yourself. b) Look at this unique set of short video clips I have prepared and selected for you. They introduce you to Google Chrome basic features, tools and to some of the history and motivations behind it. Here all of the clips and my own introductory screencast:

Introduction to Google Chrome - Screencast

Here it is! The new Google Chrome browser is finally here, available in a number of languages from Filipino to Catalan. Is all there. So choose your proper language and download it. It\'s ready now for Windows XP or Vista only. No Mac, sorry guys, but is a very very cool new browser. Let me show you in 4 minutes only what are the key things you should expect to find inside Google Chrome. First of all, as you can see the navigation controls are very very simple. There\'s no more top menu, but there are a bunch of traditional tabs that now occupy the very top part of your screen. This tabs act as individual applications. If one of them crashes not the rest of the browser will follow along. If you\'re running through long-loading pages, javascript loaded once that seems to slow down everything, only that browser window or tab will be influenced by that. The rest will function just fine. The second interesting thing is now you can use the address bar also as a search bar indeed. You can say that you\'re looking for screencasting tools and this will act as a search engine. Is now searching inside Google Italy because I\'m based in Italy and this is the first time that I\'m using the browser, but I\'ve already found out that inside the wrench tool here, which groups together some of the key commands, you can certainly go inside options and go to basics and select your default Google search. It can be one of this Italian search engines, so the fantastic p2p Faroo or you decide what engine you wanna use there. You set Google.com. I will need to restart Google Chrome altogether to get this to work, I guess. Other features available trough the options are pretty much the ones you would expect to find there. Some minor tweaks, where you download things, if passwords are on or off and this is the more technical stuff with proxy settings, cookies, security protection from phishing and malware and so on. You find all of these stuff inside the wrench here where you can also discover about a new way to display the history which is trough a browser window, which I find very handy and the same approach is used for the download right there. These are the tricky things new in the menu. The other interesting menu here is the one represented by this paper clip and inside it the first interesting thing to point at is the new incognito window, which allows you to browse anonymously without leaving any trace of your destination page you\'ve been or any traces of the cookies and other stuff you may get along your browsing journey. The second very very interesting thing (and probably this is a premiere one for all the browsers out there), is the ability to create for any tab a shortcut on your desktop or inside your start menu. Let\'s say you\'ve got the e-mail and want to access it. This is more straightful without calling the browser and going to a proper Gmail window. You can say "create applications shortcut" and this is gonna ask you where do you want it. On desktop, on the start menu, on the quick launch bar. You can select the ones you want and when you say ok, you\'re gonna get an icon on your desktop actually with your Gmail right here. There it is. When I double click it I\'m gonna get a browser window just with my Gmail. Right there. These are the key new things for this fantastic browser. It\'s light and fast and is the fastest javascript engine that is out there. If you have a side you contain several applications or tools you use, you should find Google Chrome to be very fast. From Rome, Italy this is Robin Good with the introduction of Google Chrome (Beta) for Windows. Go download it yourself. Ciao!

Ten Features of Google Chrome

Learn 10 quick tips about using Google Chrome:

• One box for everything To navigate the web or do a search, start typing into the address bar. It will suggest popular sites, searches and even pages you\'ve already visited that contain your search terms.
• New Tab Page To view most frequented websites simply open a new tab. Google Chrome will automatically display your most visited pages and search engines as well as recent bookmarks and closed tabs.
• Application shortcuts To launch a web application in its own Google Chrome window, click the page menu and select "create application shortcuts". A shortcut for this app will appear on your desktop. Click the icon to launch this app in a Google Chrome window.
• Dynamic tabs To open a new tab, hit the plus icon next to an open tab. You can also click and drag the top of a tab to change the order or even pull a tab in its own window. Then put it back again.
• Crash control To see how much of your computer\'s resources each of your open webpages is using, right-click the tab of the Google Chrome window and select "task manager". You\'ll see memories per tab and plugins like flash appear separately. You can also close tags that are misbehaving by clicking "end process" from inside the task manager.
• Incognito mode To browse the web without storing the record on your computer, click the page menu and select "new incognito window". A new window will open in incognito mode. Websites can still collect personal information about you, but nothing from the session will be used in Google Chrome after you close the window.
• Secure browsing To help you browse the web more securely, Google Chrome will show warning message before you visit a site that\'s suspected of having malware or phishing.
• Instant bookmarks To save your favorite pages, just click the star next to the address bar. Then select bookmarks bar to add the selected link to the bookmarks bar.
• Import settings To import your settings after you\'ve installed Google Chrome, click the wrench menu and select "Import bookmarks & settings". Select the browser and then select any item you don\'t want to add. Then click import.
• Simpler downloads To download a file, click on the link to start the download. You\'ll see the download progress at the bottom of the Google Chrome window. When it\'s finished, you can drag the file to copy it to your desktop, click on the button to open it or click on the arrow for more options.

One Box for Everything

To navigate the web or do a search, start typing into the address bar. It will suggest popular sites, searches and even pages you\'ve already visited that contain your search terms.

Safe Browsing

To help you browse the web more securely, Google Chrome will show warning message before you visit a site that\'s suspected of having malware or phishing.

The Story Behind Google Chrome

• Why is Google building a browser For how much the web has evolved, the browser as a platform, haven\'t evolved that much. What we are trying to do with Chrome is to make sure the browsers are really evolving along with the web so that the web can evolve to the next level. Browsers had to get better because they were designed for an era when webpages were doing completely different things.
Today most of what we use on a day-to-day basis applications and not webpages. People are watching videos, they\'re uploading videos, they\'re chatting with each other, they\'re playing games on the web. All these things certainly never existed back when the first browsers were created, when the first web was created. Wouldn\'t it be great to start from scratch and design something based on the needs of today\'s application, today\'s webmasters.
• Speed. V8 and Webkit With Google Chrome we wanted to make sure that we improved browsers along. So speed, stability and security. Speed is always very important to Google. We want to make sure that Chrome executes as fast as possible everything from the Javascript engine to the renderer. We decided for V8 which allows us to execute JavaScript really fast. Javascript is the language that is used everywhere on the web. It was performing too slow so we decided to to make it faster. The team that worked on that did an amazing job. We\'re all stunned by how fast that works. We saw a big opportunity to try to make it a fresh start and to use a different rendering entering webkit something that we spent a long time evaluating and webkit is the underlying rendering engine for Chrome because it\'s very fast, it\'s very lightweight, it\'s very small and easy-to-maintain code base.
• Stability We\'ve worked really hard to keep the browser very fast, especially when it\'s accessing these very powerful sites and also to keep it very stable. For instance if you\'re playing a game in one browser tab and it suddenly slows down a lot because suddenly you have 50 monsters on the screen you have to kill you\'re next tab over that\'s running your e-mail isn\'t gonna be slowed down by that.
We came up with this system whereby each web app would be run in its own environment. Isolated from the others. Other browsers what might have on this is the entire browser would crash. so you lose your online banking session, you lose the document that you were editing, you lose everything. In Google Chrome, if one tab goes down the other tab would still stay up.
• Security In building Chrome we were very concerned about security. One of the thing that gives us a lot of is just the multi-process architecture of Chrome. Each render runs in a separate process on your computer. That means they\'re isolated from each other so one can\'t talk to the other and steal information. What we do is we essentially give each webpage its own little playground, its own sandbox. If you got online banking running in one tab you got your search results, your gmail and another tab, the two can\'t talk to each other and if something bad happen in one sandbox, maybe a giant flood or it starts to rain, the other sandboxes are gonna stay nice and dry, nice and happy. Your tab is going to be isolated from the other tabs.
• The invisible browser In the engineering browser essence in Chrome is the user interface itself. it\'s stuff around outside of the window. The buttons of the toolbar, that kind of stuff. Hand-in-hand with that was this design philosophy that we took because we wanted to maximize content and minimize Chrome. In designing Chrome we felt that we had to make it invisible. people shouldn\'t have to think about Google Chrome, people should have to think about their applications. In this process they\'ve taken a very minimalistic approach just like Google.com. If you think of the white page and Google.com we\'ve tried to do the same with the browser. from top to bottom we designed the interface to make sure that it was as efficient and clean as possible, in every single pixel of the chrome of chrome to be sure that was nothing wasted.
• The code is yours Google Chrome is a fully open source browser. We wanna release this in a way in which others adopt good idea from us like we wanna adopt good ideas from other folks. and help the browser get better. People should be apt to dig into that, people should be apt to learn from that. People should be apt to contribute. We really want the work that we do to sort raised the bar for browser. We want browsers free so everyone can make the capabilities better. We wanna be able to allow better web applications to be delivered. Even if Google Chrome itself isn\'t used by everyone on the web, as long as it makes the web better, we\'ve achieved that goal.

Google Chrome In-Depth Analysis from Mashable

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins of Mashable takes a quick tour around the functions and features of Google Chrome: Hello there Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins here. Going to do a quick screencast for the Mashable! readers on brand new Google Chrome. Really good stuff. Last night I did a quick blog post indicating that I wasn\'t going to be particularly excited to see this, but I would be try it out as soon as it came out. Google Chrome. First thing i wanna start with there\'s a memory manager here. I\'ve got three tabs open here. First thing I notice if you look at the task list, you get a lot of processes that open up. One that seems to open up for every tab and sometimes they seems to even spawn others in a row looking process. I found out when I compared it to FireFox is a 8% less memory usage tab for tab. At this point I\'ve had this browser opened for about 2 hours and there\'s no blotch. This one gone up is my gmail. Is 33MB memory item and had gone up about 4 MB and just drop back down when I started using it again. Interesting. Is very memory efficient and it shows in how rapidly stuffs pops up. I\'ve preloaded tabs here because with the screencast running it slows down my machine quite considerably, but as you can see I\'m switching between new stories here and it\'s no delay unlike the delay which exist in Safari, which is also based off a web-page code base. There\'s one little quirk with Gmail. This is strange that it happens here but I found that with some of the keyboard shortcut there\'s a bit of delay of the screen. You put some keyboard shortcuts and it scrolls the whole screen, not text, but like the whole applications got along off screen and that would duplicate yet but it seems to happen whenever I try to open windows. This is awesome. These are favorites, most favorites sites slashed on the screen. With thumbnails. That\'s basically the idea here. You can click on any of this here and it\'ll take you to back in the authentication. Most closely represents for example FireFox, it\'s got a little window that slides down whenever you log on and says if you wanna remember the password or not for that site. Let me show you some of these options here. It doesn\'t have the halt option for pull down menus. You get this two buttons here. One looks like a page and the other one looks like a wrench. "New tab", "new window", "do incognito window". You got your "find" options, "print", "set to zooming", make that back to a normal person size. Some "developer options", basically that\'s the fancy name for "viewing source". Over here you got your bookmarks bar. You can turn on and off. History, actually this is a slightly different thing this is a more detailed history. It kinda closely resembles the Google history that if you had your Google account and Google Toolbar set up it logs on to the server. It\'s all in the browser. It\'s supposed to be kinda file option thing like you see in FireFox and explorer. Your options are actually pretty skimpy at the moment. You got your basics: "setting your homepage" you can open multiple tabs and start up what you want to show you you\'re opening a new tab. They even offer the option to set a different search engine. as a default searches engine. Where you want to download your file, how you wanna save your passwords, default fonts, and what they are calling "under the hood options": setting a proxy server, setting help reports, that sort of stuff. How do you want your pages to load up, all that mess. Pretty basics. It\'s not like the 15 pages you see in Firefox or Explorer, but they get the job done. That\'s the basics, here\'s the big kicker. I\'m gonna load up the Mashable! Wordpress adman real quick, because this was the deal breaker for me when I came to Safari. The problem with that was that whenever you\'re in Wordpress this is an error kinda of cork that I verified happens with other folks, not just me and my crappy machine. In Safari it was randomly truncating certain parts like input fields. Whenever you type stuff into where you set the URL for the blog post and whenever you write directly into the editor window, it would seem that Safari would randomly insert paragraph text truncating the last letter just do all kind of cocky formatting things. If found with this I can duplicate that not at all its functions completely as it should. I can say this is definitely a step up over any other browser on the market, definitely worth trying give it a shot and think you\'ll be pretty pleased with it. (Source: Mashable!)

Learn More about Google Chrome:

• Fast and lightweight. Tests reveal it to be faster than 8% than Mozilla Firefox.
• Possibility to arrange tabs by drag&drop even outside browser\'s frame to create new browsers.
• Keybord shortcuts function gives users the possibility to access frequently consulted pages (for example Gmail), right from desktop or quick launch bar opening immediately a browser window.
• The address bar also serves as a search bar.
• Favorities are arranged in thumbnail view in a single tab. A click will redirect directly to selected page.
• History and download manager are displayed in a browser window and searchable via Google internal search engine.

Google Chrome Features Google Chrome - Why? ...

Summer is over, or at least it looks like so from the traffic trends in the last two weeks. Web traffic has been going up again quite rapidly and I expect the trend to continue for another week or two still, until the typical traffic levels are reached again. MasterNewMedia compared head to head with some of its many competitors: Poynter.org, Scoble, Copyblogger, Shoemoney. Source data: Google Trends Whatever the traffic trend, Master New Media publishes all of his web traffic stats every first week of each month, providing public access to demographics data and audience statistics as collected by the multiple services we use to gather accurate information about our online readers. N.B.: If you would like to suggest additional stats to be included, or would like to recommend a specific analytics technology to add to this web traffic analysis toolkit, feel free to utilize the comments section at the end of this monthly web traffic report. Next month we are adding Qantacast as a new source of traffic data to this list. MasterNewMedia web traffic stats for August 2008. Here the numbers:

Master New Media Web Traffic And Audience Metrics: August 2008

Unique Visitors and Page Views

• Total Visits on Master New Media: 469,734
• Total Page Views on Master New Media: 690,695

MasterNewMedia International Editions - Breakdown

• MasterNewMedia International - English Version:
  • Unique visitors: 243,345
  • Page Views: 355,030


• MasterNewMedia Italian Version:
  • Unique visitors: 96,583
  • Page Views: 149,411


• MasterNewMedia Latino Version:
  • Unique visitors: 104,123
  • Page Views: 152,991


• MasterNewMedia Brazilian Version:
  • Unique visitors: 25,683
  • Page Views: 33,263

Source data: Google Analytics
Alexa measures the number of pages viewed by site visitors. Multiple page views of the same page made by the same user on the same day are counted only once. The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the visitors to the site. Source data: Alexa

Ad Impressions and Clicks

Source data: Google AdSense

Demographics and Technographics

Audience Age

Audience Sex

Audience Education

Audience HouseHold Source data: Google AdPlanner

Audience Languages Source data: Google Analytics

Traffic by Platform Source data: Woopra - data relative to a smaller sample than total audience

Traffic by Browser Source data: Woopra - data relative to a smaller sample than total audience

Traffic Sources

Source data: Google Analytics

Most Viewed Content

Top 10 articles MasterNewMedia.org May 2008:

1. Slow Computer? Speed Up Your PC By Disabling Unnecessary Windows Services
2. Where to Find Free Images and Visuals for My Blog
3. How to Send Large Files without Email
4. Auto-Tracing: How To Convert Bitmaps To Vector Drawing
5. How To Blog: A Beginner\'s Blog Publishing Guide
6. How To Convert .MOD Video Files To MPEG-2 On Mac And PCs
7. Online Picture Editing: Free Web-Based Image Editing Tools
8. Bypass That Firewall - Mini-Guide
9. PowerPoint to Flash Conversion Tools
10. Call The World For Free - From Your PC To Any Mobile Or Landline On The Planet: GizmoCall Is Here

Source data: Google Analytics

Authority

Google PageRank Here below the Master New Media Pagerank calculated with PR Checker: PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. If you want learn more about Pagerank here are some relevant articles:

• Guide To Understanding Google PageRank
• Google Pagerank Explained, Defined, Best Reference Resources
• Future PageRank Helps Reputation And Trustworthiness Shine Over Artificially Inflated Search Results: Google TrustRank

Alexa Rank: The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). Source data: Alexa
Technorati Authority Source data: Technorati

Link Popularity

Google Inbound Links

• MasterNewMedia English: 2.350
• MasterNewMedia Italian: 1.390
• MasterNewMedia Latino: 331
• MasterNewMedia Brazilian: 205

Source data: Google

Yahoo! Inbound Links

• MasterNewMedia English: 3,713
• MasterNewMedia Italian: 754
• MasterNewMedia Latino: 16

Source data: Yahoo!

Social Popularity

Social News And Social Networks

• Bookmarks at Delicious: 2.136
• Pages posted on Digg: 124
• Pages posted on Reddit: 20
• References from Yahoo! Answers: 110
• Comments on StumbleUpon: 9

Source data: Quarkbase

Twitter Source data: TwitterCounter

Citations, Mentions and Trackbacks

Source data: Technorati Source data: BlogPulse

Master New Media RSS Feed Stats

Source data: FeedAnalysis

Edited and prepared by Robin Good and Max Badolati for Master New Media and first published on September 2nd 2008 as "Master New Media Web Traffic and Audience Metrics: August 2008" ...

If you want to increase the effectiveness with which you collaborate with your geographically dispersed team-mates this new set of online collaboration tools should come in handy. Among the new collaboration tools I have selected for you this week: a co-browsing facility, a new way to plan and share events via IM or SMS, and a cool tool to share documents and let other people annotate them. Photo credit: Joruba Here all the web collaboration tools I have selected for you this week:

1. Screen2: Co-browse any webpage with other people while chatting with them
2. Zoho Share: Upload any document and let people annotate it for further sharing
3. ShiftSpace: Annotate and highlight webpages together
4. Anyvite: Create and share events with your friends via email, IM and SMS
5. Jabbify: Embed a text-chat on your site and interact with visitors
6. Twitly: Create groups with your Twitter friends and start posting messages
7. DukaDial: Call any US landline phone number for free
8. TorChat: Instant message with people through this USB portable client

Here all the details:

1. Screen2 Screen2 is a web based app that you can use to share your browsing sessions with anyone. Just enter someone\'s email, the website you want to start browsing and click: a pop-up window will come up, and you will be able to navigate any webpage being sure that the other person can see whatever you look at. Plus, you can also chat with viewers while browsing. Free to use, no registration needed. http://www.screen2.com/



2. Zoho Share Zoho Share is a document sharing service, part of the Zoho suite, that supports all Zoho's formats, PDF files, Microsoft Office\'s documents, and other popular formats. After you upload a document, up to 3MB of size, users can grade, flag and comment them easily. You can then embed all of your documents in a viewer and share them on any site. Free. https://share.zoho.com/



3. ShiftSpace ShiftSpace is a browser plugin, which works in Firefox thanks to Greasemonkey extension, that anyone can use to annotate and editing webpages with others. When you are on a webpage, with a click of a button you can enter notes, highlight text, add images, and even edit the HTML code of the page, and make these changes public to anyone else who has ShiftSpace. The service is free to use. http://www.shiftspace.org/



4. Anyvite Anyvite is an online tool that lets you create and share events with people. You can create events in less than a minute by entering a title, description, time and location, and invite people via directly email. Recipients can reply directly to the email, without visiting any page, and they can be updated of any change via IM or SMS as it happens. The service is free to use and requires registration. http://anyvite.com/



5. Jabbify Jabbify is a free text-chat system that you can embed on your site. With a simple HTML code, you can can embed a text-chat are that floats on the right bottom of your site, to let your visitors interact with you. You can monitor new incoming messages directly through Jabbify, or using a Jabber client like GoogleTalk or Spark. The chat area is fully customizable and the service is free to use. https://jabbify.com/



6. Twitly Twitly is a new service that lets you create groups on Twitter. All you need to do in order to create a group is to enter your Twitter credential and email: then, just enter a name for the group in the "create a new group" text box and add any person you want. Once a group if finished, you can start sending messages to the subscribers of that group, creating a sort of private message board. Free. http://www.twitly.com/



7. DukaDial DukaDial is an online service that enables you to make free calls to North America landline or mobile phones (the latter are not free). After a free registration, you can start making calls: just enter the other person\'s and your phone number, click start, and wait for your phone to ring. You will then be automatically connected, and you will be able to talk for free. Free to use. http://labs.jaduka.com/dukadial/



8. TorChat TorChat is a light-weight encrypted instant messaging software that can run from any USB drive on any operating system (Windows, Mac, or Linux). The interface is really simple, made of a clean contact list with basic status indicators. Soon, TorChat will also support file transfer, multi-chat, and other options. The service is obviously free to download and use. http://code.google.com/p/torchat/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi and Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on September 1st 2008 as "Online Collaboration Technologies - New Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Guide Sept01 08" ...

If you need to edit your images without installing or paying for any professional software, today\'s visual communication centered Sharewood Guide can really help you out. Great tools personally selected by Robin Good, concerning video and image research, color schemes and visual charts, are waiting for you: check them out! Photo credit: Villedieu Christophe Here the visual communication tools I have picked for you:

1. Pixlr: Edit all of your images online with no software to install
2. FlickrBabel: Search for Flickr images, browse results and download the pictures you like
3. Dumpr: Apply effects to your images without registering to any service
4. ChartGizmo: Create free charts online that you can embed anywhere
5. Color Schemer: Get a list of the color used in a picture with their HEX codes
6. Picfont: Add captions and text to all of your pictures online
7. Upimg: Upload your pictures and get codes to share or embed them
8. YouTube Podcaster: Provide a YouTube search page and get an RSS feed out of it
9. VTubeTools: Create custom players with YouTube videos

Here all the details:

Visual Communication Tools

1. Pixlr Pixlr is an online image editing application that anyone can use to modify pictures online. Without any registration you can jump in, open any picture and start editing it: you can resize it, crop it, apply effects and filters, use layers, and every other thing you would do using a normal standalone software. Pixlr is free to use with no signup needed. http://pixlr.com/



2. FlickrBabel FlickrBabel is an image search engine that makes Flickr\'s results better. After you type a query, you can start browsing results in a more efficient way than you would normally do on Flickr, with 50 image results per page. You can then click on any image and download it from its Flickr page. Free to use. http://www.flickrbabel.com/



3. Dumpr Dumpr is an image editing app that allows you to apply cool effects with one click. To start, just select an effect from the home page, upload any image from your computer, Flickr, or URL, and wait for the process to complete. You can then have a preview of the image, with the provided sharing and embedding code. Free to use, no registration is needed. http://www.dumpr.net/



4. ChartGizmo ChartGizmo is a free tool that lets you create chart online. With a free signup, you can start creating charts of any type (Pie, Bar, Line, Ring, 3D Pie, 3D Bar, 3D Line): just select the chart type, provide a title, select the size, choose the background color and whether to provide a legend or not, and add your items. When your chart is ready, you can easily save it locally or embed it anywhere. Free. http://chartgizmo.com/



5. Color Schemer Color Schemer is a free online service that enables users to get a color scheme out of any JPG or PNG image. After you upload an image, the software will automatically analyze it and provide you with the list of colors that appear in that image, with their relative HEX color code. The application is free to use without any registration. http://www.atalasoft.com/31apps/ColorSchemeGenerator/default.aspx



6. Picfont Picfont is a web based app that you can use to easily add text on any picture. Just upload a picture from your PC or URL, input the canvas size and background color, and start adding text to it. You can modify the text-size, color, find and even position and, when done, you can download the final image in JPG format. Free. http://picfont.com/



7. Upimg Upimg is a free service for hosting your pictures online easily. Just select the image you want to put online (soon also with multiple uploader) up to 2MB, click upload, and wait for the process to complete: you can then retrieve the embed code to insert your image anywhere, or simply a direct link to share it with people. Free, no registration needed. http://www.upimg.net/

Video Publishing Tools

1. YouTube Podcaster YouTube Podcaster is a free tool that enables you to turn any YouTube result page into an RSS feed. Just go on YouTube.com, make a research, and paste the URL into the box. Now, everytime a new item is added to that research, you will be immediately notified in your RSS reader or iTunes. Free to use. http://vixy.net/podcaster



2. VTubeTools VTubeTools is a set of online video applications that allow you to download YouTube videos or embed them in custom players. To create a custom player, provide the video ID, customize the settings (player size, color, border, quality and loop settings), click OK, and the HTML embedding code will be shown to you. Else, if you just want to download a video, paste its URL into the box and get the FLV file (works also with other video sharing sites). Free. http://www.vtubetools.com/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media and first published on August 31st 2008 as "Visual Communication And Video Publishing - Selected Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic Aug31 08" ...

What will look like education in the future? Are we going to see a revolution in the education system we have built in the last 100 years or a dissolution of the same as new approaches to education and learning slowly contaminate our fast changing society? Photo credit: Stephen Downes AsGeorge Siemens writes: "...don\'t focus on the tools and the direct application of the tools. Focus on what the tools allow us to do better and then find a way to implement that functionality...". And indeed an increasingly larger number of people are enthused and hypnotized by cool new tools that new media technologies keep making available. What is increasingly lacking is a conscious ability to look at the overall picture, to understand better the role of these tools and to start distinguishing the the forest from the trees. In this weekly digest devoted to making sense of new technologies and media, George Siemens takes you once again into a fascinating journey into the issues, technologies and topics that offer a good opportunity to further think and understand where to use them and how, though them, make this a better place for everyone.

eLearning Resources and News

learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends by George Siemens

New Article: Systemic Impact Of Connective Knowledge, Connectivism, and Networked Learning

Most often, I don\'t finalize a presentation until just before the conference. The world has a habit of changing frequently. For an upcoming conference in Portugal, however, I was asked to submit a paper in advance. If you\'re interested: New spaces and structures of learning: the systemic impact of connective knowledge, connectivism, and networked learning (MS Word file). In this article, I suggest that the developments of technology and social learning theory are creating a sequence of change pressures that will alter traditional education. In particular, I try and answer: what will education look like in the future?

Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0

I\'ll take a brief respite from my usual dismissal of all things 2.0 to highlight a nice article by Thomas Vander Wal: Tale of Two Tunnels:

"The difference between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 is like the difference building a tunnel through rock and tunnel under water... The Enterprise 2.0 tunnel is built under water. This takes more engineering understanding, but it also requires more fault testing and assurances. A crack or crumbling of a tool inside an organization is not seen kindly and raises doubts around the viability of the tool... Web 2.0 does not work well in enterprise, but the approaches and understandings of Web 2.0 modified for enterprise work really well."

There is value in this for educators. I frequently hear reasons about why we can\'t implement blogs, wikis, Second Life, and social networking services in education... security, we can\'t control it, they\'re just playing (instead of learning), and so on. I\'ve been emphasizing a shift similar to Vander Wal\'s: don\'t focus on the tools and the direct application of the tools. Focus on what the tools allow us to do better and then find a way to implement that functionality in an organization. Should all grade 3 students have a blog on blogspot? Or videos on youtube? No. But all students in grade 3 should be communicating with others (preferably from around the world), expressing themselves in creative ways, co-creating with peers, and interacting with media and technology. Don\'t let the tools be used as a scapegoat for inertia.

Time For A Data Diet?

The best place to be an author or consultant these days has to be the field of personal productivity. Who isn\'t overwhelmed these days? Information Overload: Time for a data diet? looks at the problem: "The river of content is turning into a flood, and my instinct is to get to higher ground." Two main solutions are presented: turn to technology (relying on RSS/web feeds to bring info together)... and stepping away from the internet. The first solution makes sense. The second... I don\'t know... it seems like we are getting more tethered to the internet through smart phones. The solution to overload is twofold:

• New tools and techniques for managing what we want to track
• a new mindset - one that accepts always being behind, always learning, always missing something. And that\'s the way everyone else is. And that\'s ok.

Internet Populations In Europe

Sure, China gets all the attention for having the largest internet population. But don\'t overlook the internet population in Europe, with countries like Russia, France, Spain, and Denmark reporting double digit growth. Netherlands has 82% of the population connected to the internet. In spite of significant growth of internet access, online learning is still poorly utilized. In several recent discussions, the aversion to the internet as a teaching/learning tool have been highlighted. The question for me is no longer "is online learning as effective as classroom learning". Rather, I\'m asking "what better option do we have to meet current learning needs at a reasonable expense (of time and money)?"

OER Handbook

Open educational resources (OER) continue to gain significant popularity. It\'s an exciting space. Lots happening: pen text book publishers, OER wikis, handbooks and tutorials, etc. Just came across this: OER Handbook. It is a useful starter resource for academics that are new to the space. It was an interesting experience reading the book. Perhaps because I read it online, I didn\'t see any mention of authors (until the end). I assumed that the book was written via a wiki. And I found it distracting. I like reading the work of individuals, not organizations. I wonder why... The book widely references many of the key developments (Downes is reference about a dozen times, which is good to see). I was disappointed to not encounter any reference to mine and Downes\' work on open education from about five or six years ago. While the project fizzled, I think it was one of the first attempts to pull together numerous projects, educators, and set some type of path forward collaboratively (rather than the current top-down direction from foundations and governments). At least give us a footnote :).

Got A Minute?

If you\'re reading this in an RSS aggregator like Google Reader, this post will be redundant. But, if you\'re reading this on the site or newsletter, take a look at this one minute presentation on Google Reader. It\'s a great overview to RSS (or web feeds) in general.

Digital Natives

Last November, Chris Lott and I had a somewhat energetic chat on the whole concept of digital natives. I felt (and still do) that the term is not useful. Chris argued that the term is useful as a means of dialoguing about change and awakening educators to the impact of technology. It\'s a good argument. The term is not valuable in what it describes, but is important in how it permits us to interact with each other and talk about changes. Apophenia\'s discussion of digital natives is aligned with Chris\' argument:

"Academics tend to err on the side of nuance and precision, eschewing generalizations and coarse labels. This is great for documenting cultural dynamics, but not so great for making interventions. Creating an impression, an image in the minds of those who are fearful requires more than accurate data. It requires a compelling story and a framework that can replace the boogie monster... Combating pre-existing images requires more than accuracy, more than nuance. It requires either a new more-sticky image or a reworking of the original image."

The Secrets Of Storytelling: Why We Love A Good Yarn

We (as in humanity) often view ourselves as being logical. We spend much time in philosophy classes debating the nature of logic, playing with logic tables, and generally convincing ourselves that what defines us as humans is our ability to explore concepts and ideas through a framework of logic. After, isn\'t the scientific method a testament to the power of a logical framework to banish myth and superstition? While logic certainly is a large part of who we are, most of us are moved more by stories than by logic. Bambi, for example, did more to raise awareness about hunting than did studies and logical arguments. Political leaders aren\'t elected because they are the best or most competent, but rather because of their ability to translate a meaningful world view (through narrative and story) that resonates with what we aspire to be. And advertisers, well, let\'s not get into the latest Axe or Budweiser commercials. Regardless of how far-fetched and at times comical an advertising message is, something in a story stirs us. The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn tackles why stories have such power over people:

"Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world decisions? The answers to these questions seem to be rooted in our history as a social animal. We tell stories about other people and for other people. Stories help us to keep tabs on what is happening in our communities. The safe, imaginary world of a story may be a kind of training ground, where we can practice interacting with others and learn the customs and rules of society. And stories have a unique power to persuade and motivate, because they appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy."

Whatever Happened To Performance Support

Jay Cross digs through training and development\'s closet and asks: Whatever happened to performance support? He explores the roots of performance support, its rapid rise, and then apparent disappearance. It\'s a good, quick read into one of the concepts within training and development that holds much promise and, on the surface at least, appears to have failed to reach its potential.

Interview With Robin Good

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Robin Good of MasterNewMedia. The video of our discussion is now available. The conversation was somewhat diverse in topics, ranging from learning, trends, and the role of schools. Robin asked a series of excellent questions on the role of schools - at the secondary level - that I did a particularly poor job of addressing coherently. But I enjoyed the conversation... Robin\'s passion and energy come through very clearly in the interview!

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on August 28th 2008 as weekly email digest on eLearning Resources and News. About the author To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".
Photo credits: New Article: Systemic Impact Of Connective Knowledge, Connectivism, and Networked Learning - George Siemens Enterprise 2.0 And Web 2.0 - Goam Media Time For A Data Diet? - Marc Dietrich Internet Populations In Europe - Hotrec OER Handbook - WikiEducator Digital Natives - Born Digital The Secrets Of Storytelling: Why We Love A Good Yarn - Monika Adamczyk Whatever Happened To Performance Support - H3C ...

Daniele Bazzano contacted me via email to apply for the just re-opened MasterNewMedia Internship program, on Monday of last week. The next day, he had already been selected, among many, to be part of my extended virtual newsroom. Daniele Bazzano - doing his internship at MasterNewMedia Compared to the typical US guy (I have seen quite a few of these recently), who gets directed or recommended to me after having done a few blog stints here and there online, and generally thinks of knowing everything there is to know about web publishing, Daniele presented himself as he came from another planet. No hype, no attempts to show off, no list of blogs where he had already worked at... furthermore the new candidate, something a typical American blogger would never humble himself to do, had no apparent hesitation in accepting an unpaid nine-months-long commitment even in the face of an airplane ticket he had already bought and a solid plan for moving to Milan that he had long communicated to all his friends and family. Yet, the value of learning direct, with no intermediaries or books and directly from a team of active web publishing professionals made a whole world of difference to Daniele, who, nevertheless thorn by many doubts, questions and negative pressure from its social environment, had no hesitation in signing up and committing himself to this internship. Daniele Bazzano\'s brief story, says already a million things about who I am looking for and what I have to offer in return. What strikes me the most is again, the huge difference between the typical US would be pro-blogger / web publisher and people like Daniele. The first one is most of the time way too sure of himself and of the publishing practices she wants to master. She has little humbleness, no curiosity, and great expectations for when and how much she is going to be paid. Daniele, on the other hand, is highly curious, full of questions, very humble and interested in the one thing that DOES make the difference: knowing, NOT getting the money now. And so, as part of my initial training assignments with Daniele, I have actually asked him to write an article about his first 72 hours of internship here at MasterNewMedia. Here is what he wrote back:

How It All Began

William Shakespeare would probably say I am \'star-mark\'d\'. In the sense that what I\'m going through these days had to happen. On the morning of August 14th here in Catania was as hot as hell and I was probably supposed to be sunbathing by the sea next to my girlfriend. Or calling all my friends on their mobile to get ready for the usual ferragosto night on the beach. But, I had done it so many times I had got bored with it. So, I was having some coffee sitting in front of my laptop, instead. Plus, I\'m not really the go-to-the-beach guy and summer is not my favorite season of the year, so I was way fine staying at home relaxing and web-surfing. Just to spice up the day a bit, I thought I could listen to some new albums one of my friends had advised me, and have a look to all my RSS feed list to erase what I wasn\'t checking anymore. Obviously, while opening every one of them, I kept my eyes wide open for something worth noting. That\'s how I came across MasterNewMedia internship offer. I had not open MasterNewMedia feed for quite some time, but right after two mouse scrolling I noticed Robin Good\'s post regarding the possibility to apply for an online course with him. His offer was a learn-by-doing approach to understand what blogosphere and Web 2.0 are really about and how to get the best out the two of them. Blogs, wikis, social networks: I just knew I used them for much less than 2% of their possibilities, so the opportunity of an internship at MasterNewMedia sounded quite interesting. Moreover, I knew Robin Good for reading some of his articles in the past and seeing him as a guest at journalist Marco Montemagno\'s \'Reporter Diffuso\' show on Sky Tg24. The post was dated August 13th. It was just the day before, so I was right on time to apply for the internship. This opportunity at MasterNewMedia really seemed to match all my passions. Technology, New Media, communication studies at university and journalism. I also thought this experience could improve my English both in speaking and writing, so I thought I could give the internship a try and applied sending a letter and my resume to Robin Good. I had very few hopes that sending this application to MasterNewMedia might turn up to end with something real. Since my 1st level degree in 2005 I had been sending tons of e-mails to apply for many different positions. I wasn\'t looking for the job of my life, but just something to help me live on. Nada. Not a reply. I even started wondering if my mail account worked properly. I was pissed-off and frustrated. I mean, come on, no-one was interested in having a talented 22-year-old guy at his service? God I was frustrated. To make things worse, what was I supposed to do in the meantime? Just send resumes and chill out? No way. I kept on sending resumes but continued to write tech articles for Step1 (my university newspaper which I strongly contributed to gave birth and make grow) and attended the course to get the 2nd level degree as well. Unfortunately, this meant to stay in Catania for another while. Yeah I know. One may think: "So? What\'s the matter with that? Why on Earth leaving a city by the sea where the lowest temperature in winter is 12°C?! This is crazy!" I get the point, but Catania is not just about hot temperatures and bikinis. It\'s about having no opportunities at all for young people, too. Consider me as the perfect example. I wanna be a journalist, but there\'s just one newspaper here - La Sicilia. And that\'s not a lack of willingness which forbids Catania to have other ones. That\'s simply because there cannot be other competitors. Working as a journalist in Catania is kind of impossible unless you like to kiss asses for the rest of your life. And that\'s really not me at all.

The Application

But here is where Mr. Robin Good becomes part of the story. On August 16th I sent my first e-mail to MasterNewMedia at 4.08pm applying for the internship. Less than an hour later, I was already reading Robin asking me for a Skype meeting in the next few days. Hell, that was exciting. Not only had I received a feedback from him, but it had been very quick too! I cannot hide I was quite nervous about that meeting with Robin. I wanted to make a good impression on him so he could choose me to be part of his team. I started wondering about the right words to say, the right way to introduce myself and so on. And, as I always do, I stopped about ten minutes later: "Oh, come on. This isn\'t getting me anywhere. I\'ll know what to say just by being spontaneous!". Three days later I added him to my Skype contact list and we immediately had a brief conversation because he was online too (I soon realized he\'s ALWAYS online). Basically we introduced ourselves to each other. I talked about myself, my competences, my academic background, what would I expect from the internship at MasterNewMedia and so on. From his side, Robin explained me in detail what the internship was going to be about, how long would it last and that first two weeks would have been kind of a trial period. He said I could quit anytime if I wanted within this period and so could he. It sounded very straightforward and correct. He was very relaxed and easygoing and it sure helped me a lot to feel at ease while speaking to him! We even tested my internet connection to be sure I could handle the teaching sessions online. Later, after half an hour, Robin said goodbye. He would let me know something about my application in the next day or maybe that very evening. He told me he had to speak with his publishing partner Giulio Gaudiano to evaluate my application against other candidates. And so he did. Two hours later he contacted me, said he had spoken with Giulio and they had decided to pick me on board. Whoa. I really don\'t know how to describe the feeling of that moment, actually. It all seems so distant even if just a few days have passed. I have this blurred memory of all seeming unreal after knowing I was being accepted. For me it just didn\'t mean someone thinking I was a qualified individual, but that I would have been able to work side-by-side with a team of talented people and learn a tremendous amount of things. Not books anymore. Real life. God I was excited. My life was turned upside down. I was being accepted, really? I remember ringing up my girlfriend: "Honey, you\'re not gonna believe this, I\'m in!!!" She didn\'t know what to reply... After a few minutes of silence she congratulated me and then asked doubtfully: "Honey but what are you gonna do now? Are you still going to Milan or not?" A very good question indeed.

To Leave Or Not To Leave?

What was I supposed to do now? Not going to Milan anymore? That plane ticket suddenly began to stare at me. Just even the idea of not leaving anymore sounded crazy! That was my dream, what I had always wanted to do since I discovered my passion in journalism. Every human being I met knows about me heading Milan. Plus, my family, my friends. They all knew I would leave and everything was already set. "So, what am I gonna do now? Everyone\'s expecting me to go to Milan, but what about the internship at MasterNewMedia?" I started questioning myself about my beloved ones considering the possibility of me not leaving anymore. "Everyone\'s gonna be thinking of me as a loser who\'s too scared to follow his dreams but rather stay home with mommy" Yep, they sure could. "Dammit". To make things worse, if I decided not to leave, what about the room I had found? It really wasn\'t easy to find a good-priced room in the crowded Milan. But I managed to. A friend of mine had told me his pal was looking for a roommate so I immediately contacted him. He said he could give me a large room where to arrange all the stuff I needed. Yeah, because when you leave home you need stuff. A lot of stuff. All the things you\'ve collected through time and seemed necessary, suddenly begin to be re-considered having. Is that glass-snowed-sphere of London really useful? Don\'t think so. Jokes apart, I spent hours and hours thinking of all the things I should carry with me. What to bring, what to leave behind, what to ask my parents to pack and send me afterwards. You know, I wasn\'t supposed to leave for a week or two. I was prepared to leave for a very long time, maybe for good. Hell, someway I felt like I was going back in time, when people from Sicily set to leave to reach other places of the world in their quest for a better life. And now there was me, in 2008. Doing exactly the same thing. Did I mention: "Dammit"?! I knew that if I chose to apply for the internship with Robin Good at MasterNewMedia the whole learning process was going to be online. No airplanes, no face-to-face meetings. Just virtual meetings. Thus geographic location didn\'t really matter. There was no need to go to Milan anymore if I decided to apply for the internship. I also knew I had to be in front of my laptop at least 8-10 hours per day. So the idea of looking for a job, do interviews and hand in resumes while training for the internship was crazy. Furthermore, I had promised myself I would try everything in my power to help my parents paying my rent in Milan. But would I have been able to cope with the rent if I accepted to do the internship at MasterNewMedia? The answer is no, unless I were given the gift of ubiquity, of course. You see, the decision was a very though one. I mean, was it still reasonable to go to Milan, waste money and live in uncertainty while looking for a job? Or I\'d rather stay in Catania, try the chance to learn something with Robin Good, and maybe work for him after the internship? When I kissed my girlfriend goodbye, my head started to twirl drowning in such a difficult decision, but Robin Good made me snap back to reality. "Ok, if you want we can start having lessons right away. Would you?" I said yes. Shit, I never thought the lessons could have started that fast! That really caught me off my guard. I lacked time to reflect, and that\'s the reason why I decided I would choose what my heart told me.

You Never Stop Learning

That very evening Robin Good and me started having a screen-sharing session. Robin taught me how to edit and publish an article written by an external collaborator of MasterNewMedia. Robin told me there are different ways to write an article and you have to pay attention to many details. "You see, have a look at this page", The editor-in-chief of MasterNewMedia said while showing me some websites."This is unreadable. No links, no paragraphs. Nothing. How am I supposed to read it without falling asleep?!" I had to agree. From the very first moment I started to get the picture. Robin\'s lessons were going to be something like: "You think you know how to do that. Well, think again. You can do it way better". He went on showing me some other articles on the web.

"Consider this while editing someone else\' work: have they capitalized their titles correctly? Have they chunked their paragraph to allow the reader scan it? Have they chosen the right image to associate with every paragraph?"

I have to say I really enjoyed the image-related part of the lesson. Robin taught me how to employ the correct process formula to select impactful and attention-catching images for an article. It seemed like studying sociology at university. Reading about obvious things that no-one would have ever explained to you. "You cannot choose and image just because you like it. That is too much subjective. I might not like the image you like. So you have to use other criteria". Yep, he was right. The proper way is choosing an image which immediately matches to the message conveyed by the article. Just as a magnet. After the first lesson, I was truly amazed I had learned so many things in such a little time! I was given my first task too: edit and choose images for an article he was going to publish in some days. Me? Right away? "Yes, and to make the thing more interesting, you\'re gonna correct mistakes after article is published". I felt just like Tweek, a fictional hyperactive character from South Park: "There\'s too much pressure!!!" To make things worse, Robin even allowed me to spend his own money to buy images on a professional website. "Each time you buy an image you pay, so choose carefully". I was amazed. "This guy\'s great, dude. He\'s handing me money and he doesn\'t know me at all". I mean, how can he be sure I was not a douchebag and buy some crazy stuff? I don\'t know, maybe because he\'s such a talented teacher. I think he knows who\'s in front of him from the very first words. That\'s why every day I feel like I\'m learning a lot. That night I went to bed at 3am, after sending him an e-mail with the images I had picked. I felt elated even if I had messed all up. Yesterday (August 22th) I had this guy working with Robin Good, Massimiliano Badolati, having me for a training session. He taught me how to search, filter, aggregate and manage news. At MasterNewMedia they call this process Newsmastering. Robin Good itself gave birth to the term. It\'s like being a DJ selecting and picking news instead of songs. I had read something about it on MasterNewMedia\'s website, but I was very curios to know about it from someone who really does it everyday. Max, as Robin Good calls him, was very easygoing and helpful. He told me he\'s still in his internship but Robin already started giving him some important tasks and paying his work. He was very professional while explaining me what Newsmastering was about and very funny when we took a small break. "You\'ll see Daniele, 24-hours seem a very long time, but not while you\'re working at MasterNewMedia!" he told me lighting a cigarette.

The Recipe for Success

Chatting with Max and a first look at relationships inside MasterNewMedia team, gave me the idea of a very stimulating team, strongly dedicated to its work. But the good news is they were not just a bunch of stakanovists. They enjoy working with each other because they have a very easygoing approach. I learned this is part of a working approach called bioteaming. The core idea is that working in a relaxed and optimistic environment healths production and stability inside the group itself. Each member of the group is given confidence and does his job without being supervised. He surely can make mistakes, but they are considered as something that might happen and be avoided next time with the help of the others. Yeah, because members are given help freely, without having to ask for assistance. Members are given accountability as well. Everyone knows who can count for and what he\'s counted on for by the others. They share glory and failure, in a to