ZillionBits-Its about number$ and te<h^0!0gy

Yes I know—with the framework in progress, we don’t need no more stinkin’ frameworks. Except there’s a couple I’ve seen recently which are noteworthy. I haven’t delved into the source code in any depth—exploring framework code bases has become as much fun as watching paint dry, but there are some interesting ideas here, if you’re looking to new angles on the problem.

First up is Tonic by Paul James which labels itself as “A RESTful Web App Development Framework”. It’s interesting because the API of the controllers you write is much like web.py which I covered before here (and tonic actually came first). Some interesting ideas—and it’s one of very few paying attention to HTTP. You’ll need to pull it out of CVS BTW (no download at this time).

Second in todays framework fiesta is Code Igniter (thanks to Mark Barton for the tip off)—this is from the same people that put together pMachine hence think it’s noteworthy. It’s very Rails-esque from superficial trawling but it’s appealing to the KISS point of view, plus there seems to be a cunning approach to URL mapping in there.

Want your advertising message to reach 18-24 year old women?

Now you can with Google AdWords.

With the AdWords site tool, you can pick your preferences in up to three different demographic categories. The system will analyze your preferences and create a list of available Google Network sites that are popular with that audience. If you select multiple demographics, the AdWords system will look for sites that match all of your preferences. For instance, you might ask the site tool to look for sites popular with users who have children, or for sites popular with men earning a high income. The site tool will then return a list of sites whose audience tends to match those demographic descriptions.

The demographic data comes from comScore Media Metrix, which at the moment is only profiling US based visitors.

This entry reproduced from The Tech Times #134.

Have you ever noticed certain characters on your site not displaying the way they should? Perhaps the curly quotation marks look like little boxes, or the long dashes have been replaced with question marks. Problems like these usually arise from an incomplete understanding of character encodings on the part of the developer responsible for the site.

I’d go so far as to guess that, in English speaking circles at least, most web developers that have never learned about character encodings, and just deal with the consequences when issues like the above crop up.

As a site grows to the point where it must address an international audience (or even just an audience that likes curly quotes), however, it’s more and more difficult to ignore these issues. Even worse, in these heady times of daily hack attempts, incorrect handling of character encodings can result in severe security vulnerabilities (as Google recently discovered).

Microsoft announced that it will be engaging in world-wide tests of its new ad offerings on Office Live, Windows Live, Mail, and MSN Spaces.

The tests include participants from some very large and well-known companies, such as Coca-Cola Brazil, JCPenney, Monster, and others.

Given the global nature of the effort and the international standing of the participants it’s more than obvious to say this is a big event. Microsoft has been saying for some time that it has serious intentions of competing with Google in this arena and if this isn’t proof, nothing is.

Since MSN alone attracts more than 465 million unique visitors per month, the impact of new advertising methods and channels on Live, etc can hardly be overstated. Microsoft has a history of starting slow, but finishing big.

And for affiliate marketers the news can hardly be bad. Giving Google real competition will do for this space what Open Source is doing in Microsoft’s own back yard: Keep all of them on their toes to provide the best possible product and service to everyone.

Originally by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine from Affiliate Marketing Blog on March 15, 2006, 5:36pm