According to Tom Foremski and Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com, Google is about to announce technology that will allow its advertisers unprecedented levels of control over when, where, and who can view their advertising on Google search pages and those of Google partner web sites.

For the first time, the search giant will provide its advertisers with an application programming interface (API), which will enable them to link their computer systems with Google and control parts of the mammoth Google ad delivery system. The API will allow advertisers to self-administer the delivery, the timing and the price they will pay for their text ads.

This raises the bar in the online advertising market as Google turns to technology to try and outwit and pull ahead of media savvy competitors such as Kanoodle and others. Kanoodle says its average click-through revenue is twice as much as that of Google's because it gives online publishers greater control over what types of advertising is displayed, at which times, and is better matched to page content or search terms.

Philipp Lenssen has a nice idea: highlighting every link with the NoFollow attribute easily with Firefox:

A nice way to visualize which links use the new "nofollow" relation is to include a special user-stylesheet into Firefox. To do so, you need to install the Web Developer extension (unfortunately, Firefox doesn't allow an easy way to include user-stylesheets via the native menu). Once you've got this extension running (this needs a restart after installation) you can right-click any page and select Web Developer -> CSS -> Add User Style Sheet. Now you select a simple text file with the extension *.css (you may want to call it "user.css" and put it right on the desktop), in which you saved the following lines:

a[rel="nofollow"]
{
background-color: red !important;
color: white !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
}

This will instantly reformat all "nofollow" anchors on the page to have white-on-red colors – no need to check the HTML source for what's happening. And here's a nofollow link to Example.com for you to easily try it.

Here is a screen capture for those who cannot see the NoFollow link highlighted in Firefox:

Picasa 2 has a new blog and also official forums (since Jan 20, 2003).

(via Zorgloob)

More and more bloggers show their opposition to the system proposed by Google, MSN and Yahoo to fight against comment spam (rel=nofollow attribute on links).

No-nofollow initiative

Sascha Carlin has a nice small pic for the no-nofollow initiative.

Nofollow Free

Philipp Lenssen (Google Blogoscoped) has created a GIF image to put on your blog if you're not following the "nofollow" attribute. His nofollow-illustration banner is used to promote "Nofollow Free" zones in and around blogspace.

Link condom

(via rustybrick) You can even adopt the first Link Condom! They're mocking the solution provided by the search engines to comment spam:

Now is the time to act and stop the spread of Viral Link Popularity. For far too long now the Internet has functioned as a network of interlinked sites that have been likened unto a 'web' of sites. This is clearly a poor view of the Information Super Highway. To that end the Powers That Be have banded together to fix this massive problem and reshape the web into a more useful controlled environment.

THE SOLUTION......wait for it.....

rel="nofollow"

This handy new tag is simply added to the code of your site next to the link you want to disinfect and voila!! one more link no longer spreading disease. Yes! it's just that simple. Cut and paste the Internet in to shape today. Don't delay. Your links are oozing all sorts of nastiness such as PageRank and Link Popularity.

FEATURES...

• Hoard your PageRank
• Hide your outgoing links
• Screw your reciprocal link partners
• Add code bloat to your page
• Find out today if people are buying links for the right reasons
• Yet more to obsess about
• Freely link to bad neighbourhoods
• Far easier to use than JavaScript, perl, php, robots.txt etc

Very nice site, really!