Dot Com Note

Today, more people live in mega cities around the world than in rural settings. A 5+ year undertaking by 19.20.21 will explore the impact of this unprecedented phenomenon of the human history on consumers and businesses.

The site is aptly named 19.20.21: 19 cities in the world with 20 million people in the 21st century. Using multimedia charts, graphs, and statistics, the site shows our evolution to the urban species.

I always wanted to live in a large city for a couple of years to experience what I am missing by living in a small US city. I don’t have any experience in living in a small city outside the USA; so I can’t speak for small cities in other countries.   

If you don’t have to job hop frequently, small US cities provide all the modern life conveniences. Most medium size cities also have frequent flights to near by international airports. Still, it will be a romantic experience to live in Paris for a copule of years.

This is an old post in Mashable. I am posting it for those who have not seen it elsewhere. It will serve as a resource for companies that pay you to write reviews, affiliate networks, contextual ads, and every thing else.

Microsoft has an upcoming free web analytics tool code named Gatineau. The Gatienue project page is located here. You can sign up for an invitation to be a beta teaster.  However, you have to create an adCenter, the Microsoft version of the Google’s Adsense, account for $5 if you don’t have one.

This is a direct challenge to Google’s Analytics. Few year ago we would have believed that Microsoft could cause damage to Google just it did during the early days of the web. However, that stage has passed. Microsoft is now only an OS and Office application company. Gatineau is still a threat to independent on-demand web analytics vendors.

Gatineau will end up as an analytics tool for the adCenter customers. It will not be as popular as Google Analytics.

If you have a site that generates a fair amount of traffic, you can boost the traffic by changing the layout and the design of the site. John Chow  talks about how his site traffic has increased after he changed the theme. Some of his fellow bloggers have also gotten the same results after changing their sites’ looks. I have also noticed traffic boosts in my popular free classified site after layout and theme changes.

Why do people visit your site after you give it a complete makeover? John’s theory is that many infrequent visitors will come to check out your site for the new looks. How do these infrequent visitors know about your site’s new look? Do they network and ask each other if a site’s look has changed or not? I don’t know the answer.

If you are just starting out, don’t spend too much time on a site’s design. Start with a simple and aesthetic design and stick with it for at least six to twleve months. Change the design after you start getting a decent amount of traffic.