Last year’s successful launch of FIFA 2008 News inspired me to try again this year. Through hard work and a lot of viral marketing (commenting on blogs and forum participation) I managed to make FIFA 2008 News one of the major FIFA blogs.

I’ve moved the entire blog to FIFA2009News.com and redirected the traffic to the new site as well. I’m really looking forward to this.

I just love the smell of a new blog in the morning…

Last year’s blogging experience taught me a lot. This time I’ve got some more attention an already a lot of loyal readers and contributors.

I’ve changed the theme and reduced the number of ads. I’m not sure it will make me just as much money as last year, but I can always give it a small ad-facelift.

I’ve got a lot of available ad-space, so if you have any suggestions on how to fill them out, please let me know.

I’ve tried with in-text ads, but I think they are more annoying than helpful.

I want to monetize the blog, I’m just not completely sure which networks I should use. I’m really hoping on some input from you my dear reader.

Who should I put my faith in to? Which ad network will make me a few bucks? Which one do you prefer?

So if you are into soccer/football video games FIFA 2009 News is THE place to go.

Did you remember to read last week’s interview with Shoemoney? This season’s last interview is with Fake Steve Jobs.

Most people know Steve Jobs (creator of the iPhone), but not everybody read Steve Job’s secret blog/diary.

Some say it’s not written by Steve Jobs himself, but by Fake Steve Jobs. Some even say that Fake Steve Jobs actually is Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons.

Fake Steve Jobs aka. FSJ has nicknames for many things. Microsoft is The Borg, people who work at Microsoft are Borgtards, twitterers are twittertards, WSJ tech-journalist Walt Mossberg is Goatberg and Sarah Lacy is hot.

FSJ writes why Apple is so cool, and why Apple’s products are so damn innovative and awesome. He finds most people annoying and is upset by negative people.

FSJ like turtlenecks, black, white, trees, zen and is a benevolent dictator.

This video from TechCrunch’s Crunchies says it all:

And now the interview with the great Fake Steve Jobs

What is your background picture?

Solid blue.

Why did you chose that picture?

I’m boring. And easily distracted. Solid color lets me focus on what I’m doing.

If you have a personal and a work computer, which program do you use the most on your personal computer?

Firefox.

Which program do you use the most on your work computer?

Firefox.

Internet Explorer or Firefox?

Firefox.

Why do you use IE or FF?

I hate IE. I hate all the new Microsoft apps. Too cluttered and bloated.

What is your favourite program?

Firefox.

Which program is the worst?

If you mean what’s the worst program I use, I’d say it’s Quark CopyDesk. If you mean what’s the worst program in the entire known universe, it has to be Lotus Notes.

Do you have any tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your computer or blog?

Spend as much time as possible working on it.

Mac or Pc and why?

Mac. The OS is better.

Thank you very much Mr. Fake Steve Jobs. I’m really thrilled that you took the time, out of your very busy and innovative life. I know it can be hard to communicate with the man on the street.

Peace out!

This is the season finale (I always wanted to say that) of Show Me Your Desktop, but unlike certain other “shows”, I don’t cancel something, just because people don’t watch it. (Take that Fox, CBS, ABC and SciFi).

Season 3 will be back very soon with brand-new questions and more interesting people.

Every single Google service is brilliant and very useful, but when they connect you get a very powerful system, that could be too much good. Should we start to watch out?

The other day our son turned 7 months and it probably won’t be long until I have to help him set up his first Gmail account – it’s a father-son thing.

It won’t take long to set up the account, a few basic information about the kid and he is ready to roll.

In time more stuff will be added to his profile.

With tears in my eyes I will proudly say to him: Welcome to Google, son, from now on, most of what you’ll be doing on the computer, will be registered by one company.

It will be like his baptism – He’ll be a part of a huge and abstract universe, with some kind of obligations, I’m just not sure which.

While filling out the online Gmail form it’ll strike me, is this the right thing to do. Isn’t there an alternative instead of making his life public to the search engine?

But it’s so easy. It works, you get a lot of really clever and free services – and you just need to log in once and one place.

One thing is, that Google is already his start page and key to the internet and it searches your email and blog.

Google also remembers which video my son will watch on YouTube, which he’ll probably watch more than television.

This is probably just the beginning.

It won’t take long before my entire family will be equipped with cell phones embedded with GPS chips, so I can see on Google Earth or Ocean where they are.

The next step will probably be Google Health, where, like Microsoft’s “health vault”, all the data about our health will be collected. Everything from the doctor and hospital’s journals to the daily rating from the bathroom scale and data from my jogging watch.

It can even be more detailed, if you chose to get your DNA decoded by companies such as 23andme.

One of 23andme’s directors is married to Google-founder Sergey Brin and Google is one of the major investors in the company.

They will decode your DNA for $1000.

It isn’t unrealistic that DNA analysis will be the standard tool for doctors, like X-rays and blood samples are today.

But it will require a lot of computer power to store and manage all that data, and computer power is what Google have.

Everybody expects that Google will be one of the select few, who will offer “cloud computing“, where you can buy capacity of Google’s huge computer farms.

Soon you’ll buy computer power, just like you buy electricity today.

All we need is a 3D online-universe, that combines fictional and user-created environments (like Second Life) with real geographical data from Google Earth.

It will be connected with our cell phones, so that you can walk around in the physical world, while having a close encounter with a parallel and virtual universe, that combines real buildings and persons with avatars and 3D models.

Each one of Google’s services are really useful, but when you connect them you get a system, that is both powerful and extensive, but is it too much to be good?

As Google says: “Do no evil”. I think it’s important that we help Google maintain that motto.

Do you think Google can get too powerful?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

As some of you know (you will if you follow me on twitter), I’ve got a new job. This is my first week as team manager at Norriq.. I’m managing a team of consultants with expertise in Windows 2003, Symantec and Citrix products, Microsoft Exchange, firewall and various other infrastructure solutions.

Unfortunately I had to return my laptop to my former employer, so now I have to use my stationary PC, which is located in my office – away from the living room, wife, son, tv and so forth.

Hopefully I’ll get my hands on a MacBook Pro (somehow). I really want to try out one of those and see if they really are better than PCs.

The new job also means that I’ll be really tired when I get home, so I could really need a hand keeping me readers happy with quality posts.

So if you have something on your heart or would like to reach a larger audience, please send your guest post suggestion to me dbp (at) thebetanews.com.

Everybody is welcome as long as it’s within this blog’s topics.

According to experts the use of online advertising will increase by 23% in 2008. This is more than 40 billion dollars, but a riot might be around the corner.

Adsense has made Google one most valuable companies in the world and the ads on social networks such as Facebook help those companies make billions each year.

But could all this be in danger?

A new analysis from Deloitte indicates that more and more users are tired of online ads.

Are you one of them? Do you find online ads more annoying than ads in newspapers and television?

A good example is the latest protest against Facebook’s Beacon system. When Facebook users shopped online, Beacon told friends and businesses what they looked at or bought. The latest statistics show that users doesn’t spend as much time on Facebook and MySpace as they used to.

This tendency might turn Facebook and other social network’s ad-goldmine into a nightmare. There might be some light ahead though. According to the Media Summit 2008 in New York, there are other ways of targeting consumers online, but it requires courage.

As you probably already know blogs can circumvent this. If a blog recommends a product on Amazon, you usually don’t consider that advertising. If you let a blogger tell you what they think about a product, it will remove the suspicion towards a product.

But will companies entrust their brand to the users? Brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola spent billions of dollars building a strong brand. Will they allow users to play with their brand and values on YouTube?

The companies will have to redefine their brand and if they want the users to be engaged, they have to let go of their perfect image. This transformation requires a lot of confidence and I’m certain some companies doesn’t want to risk it.

Sources: Media Summit 2008, Beacon protests, Deloitte Report

From time to time people are kind enough to mail me and ask me to write about their startup or interview someone. I just love to get these mails. It makes me feel important and a bit like Darren Rowse and Shoemoney. Many of the mails are the copy/paste standard “Hey interesting site you have. Let me tell you about this great product we are about to launch…”-mails. Never mind that. Even those mails makes me feel important…

However communicator, Jonas Thoursie from Yooba was kind enough to mention that my site was interesting and that he found my interview series “Show Me Your Desktop“, particular interesting. Because he took the time to look at my site, I’ll take the time and space and write about Yooba.

Let’s start out with the official Yooba introduction.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So what do you think Yooba is about?

What I can see from the introduction Yooba is about redefining ads. The “brute” with Mr Clips (or Clipsy) in chains, changes the billboard from a boring commercial to a more interesting one. The same thing goes for the displays later on.

You can’t find any details on Yooba.com or on their blog, but the Yooba Facebook group reveals a bit more.

“Yooba lets you create different kinds of online content for marketing purposes. It can be anything from a simple ad to a full scale interactive campaign. Yooba provides a browser based flash/flex application that possesses everything you need to design and create your content. You don’t need any programming or artistic skills. If you just have a creative idea, you can have it published in no time.

The publishing is a simple procedure. You can put your creation anywhere you want. Yooba takes care of the hosting. Since Yooba is a completely web based service, you can work from any computer you want, and you can create and save projects and publish them later.

Finally we come to the evaluation part. Maybe the most important one in a marketing manner. Yooba provides a backend system that gives you feedback on your published content in form of information and statistics.”

I think this means, I can take my boring ads and make them flashy and hip without any programming skills. Sounds interesting. Now I just need to be creative.

If you are interested in joining the Yooba Beta, you can sign up on the Yooba page.

So is Yooba anything for you? Is this a new service or do you know other companies that offer the same?

Phew… Finally some time to blog again. I usually publish a Show Me Your Desktop interview on Sundays, but due to the screen writers’ strike we’ve had delays this season… Ok that’s not true, the cursed work has kept me busy, but now all important projects and presentations are done.

If you missed last week’s interview with Sarah Meyers head over here to read it. Sarah just launched Pop17.com.

This week it’s Duncan Riley’s turn to Show Me Your Desktop. If you Google Duncan Riley a lot of different articles and posts comes up. Many of them are about why he left b5media in 2006. That’s 1½ year ago, so there isn’t anything interesting in that anymore. Instead I’ll focus on what Duncan does now.

He is one of the more controversial bloggers. His posts on TechCrunch often starts a heated debate. This particular debate extended into this blog post on Duncan’s personal blog. I’m still not sure what the Australian government’s plan is, but what I gather it sounds really stupid.

Duncan also hosts a really interesting podcast show on thepodcastnetwork. Here he interviews a very mixed crowd from local Australian web experts to American money makers.

He is also a VERY active twitter. I remember Michael Arrington once told him to Wtwit less and write more.”

And now on with the interview.

What is your background picture?

The Apple store in San Francisco I took in July 2007.

Why did you chose that picture?

It seemed appropriate for my Mac Pro. The picture itself has the Apple logo on the store nearly dead middle

If you have a personal and a work computer, which program do you use the most on your personal computer?

I have two computers. A Mac Pro at home, and a Macbook Pro (17″) for when I’m on the road. As I work for myself there’s no personal or work computer as such.

Twitteriffic would get the best work out on both computers, aside from the browser and Mac Mail.

Internet Explorer or Firefox?

Until days ago I would have said Flock. It’s a great browser that in my experience at least is less of a memory hog than FF2 was. I’m now using the latest beta of Firefox 3. The first beta still had memory issues, but as of beta 2 it’s a pleasure to use, and it’s very memory efficient (even more so than Flock). It looks like Mozilla has finally fixed the memory leaks that ruined Firefox 2.Why do you use Fireox?

I was a windows user until nearly 12 months ago, and even then I used Firefox over Internet Explorer. I’m a heavy tab user and Firefox has done tabs from pretty close to the beginning. IE 7 is a vastly improved browser over IE6, but by that stage, like a lot of people, I’d switched to Firefox and had no interest in going back.

What is your favourite program?

Skitch. Being able to do 95% (perhaps more) of my image editing tasks super quickly and without having to open Photoshop has been a blessing for me, and it’s made me far more efficient in my day to day workWhich program is the worst?

Cyberduck, but to be fair FTP on a Mac just never seems to be as smooth for me using any program as compared to Windows.

Do you have any tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your computer or blog?

You need to have the right tools so that your focus is on blogging, not fighting with the software you have installed. Switching to Apple products was the best move I’ve ever made, I no longer worry about whether my operating system is getting a virus, or needs maintaining…or anything really. Macs just work.

In terms of other tools look for products that make your blogging easier. I use Skitch for basic image editing, Grammarian for US English grammar and spell check, iMovie to mix videos and Garage Band to mix podcasts. All make my life a lot easier and I think my work is better for using them. If you’re blogging for yourself, there’s a range of desktop blogging tools available as well, unfortunately for me the quirks of my main writing gig at the moment for TechCrunch means that I have to use WordPress directly, but presuming you don’t have a similar issue, use a blogging client.

Last tip: multiple monitors are a god send. I have twin 22″ monitors, on my left monitor I run Twitteriffic and Firefox, on the right monitor mail, Skitch and any other program I may want to run. This allows you to have a document or email open and visible at the same time you have access to your browser (or blogging client), negating the need to switch between windows when writing a blog post. You can go for one bigger monitor, but cost wise 22″ monitors in Australia at least are down to around the $300 mark ($275 US), much cheaper than say one 30″ at $1500-$2000, and ultimately you get more desktop with the twin monitors. Some suggest 3 works better again, but in my case I’d need a bigger desk first

Click to see a larger image

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions Duncan. The dual 22″ monitor made me a bit envious. I’m pretty sure three monitors would be overkill. I’m not sure what the benefit of that would be.

Personally I use two 19″ monitors (one HP and one IBM), but an upgrade to 22″ wouldn’t be too bad.

How many monitors do you use? Which size and brand? And why do you use more than one monitor?