Right Media Launches Online Ad Auction
Just how important is ad space? Evidently important enough to have competing companies to market these ad spaces. Popular ad networks such as Yahoo Publisher Network and ValueClick have another competitor on the market: Right Media. As Elinor Mills writes for CNet.com (reference below for link), what sets Right Media apart from other ad networking […]
Which Phone Would You Buy?
Related link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/galaxy-s-iii-sales-iphone_n_1855663.html Galaxy S3 recently became the best-selling smart phone in America, trumping iPhone. So what might be the reason why more people choose Galaxy over iPhone? Let’s say we are in another world where there are two competing mobile phone companies that each sells one certain model of mobile phone. Let’s also assume […]
Driving Cascades
Anyone who lives in southern New York can tell you what it means to “Drive like a Westchester mom”. Essentially, this statement describes the type of driver whose actions on the road reflect only his or her own self-interests. These drivers are easy to spot out and are more likely to cause road rage in […]
Why does Google use GSP instead of VCG?
In class, we learned that the dominant strategy in a VCG auction is to bid truthfully. This is different from the GSP auction, where truthful bidding isn’t necessarily a dominant strategy. So why does Google use GSP over VCG for selling ad slots? This topic is discussed on Quora, where posters give several possible answers. […]
Red Light, Green Light: A Discussion of Traffic Flow Optimization
Traffic is often thought of as a kind of fluid flow network, much like a complex thermodynamic system or electrical circuit. However, what is unusual about this fluid network is that the flow is discontinuous, halting at red lights and resuming at green. It is the goal of the traffic engineer to optimize the traffic […]
The iPhone Epidemic
Apple released its new line in the iPhone family back in mid-September with the iPhone 5. Many critics and blog reviews (like http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/iphone-5-1096004/review/1#articleContent) had many good and bad things to say about Apple’s newest product. Apple has definitely made an improvement from the previously released 4S with a lighter and dimensionally larger phone as well […]
Search engine optimization is filling the internet with trash
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/03/66893?currentPage=all This article is essentially about how search engine optimization through Google’s page-ranking system can be relatively easily manipulated to have a desired link reach the top 10 search results of Google. Greg Boser is a person who has made his living helping his clients make it into the top 10. There are many ways […]
Apple Fanboy and Network Effects
The textbook defines the network effects as “for some kinds of decisions, you incur an explicit benefit when you align your behavior with the behavior of others”. In other words, users of a certain product add more value to the product itself by enlarging the society of users, thereby attracting more users to use the […]
The Dark Night
My jaw dropped; a chasm of darkness formed from which a silence of shock and awe emanated. Cars drowning, houses ripped apart, lights blacking out, and trees thrashing about, this all shocked me. But it was the lightning-like flash and fireball that ensued from the explosion that did me in. The images reflected off of […]
PageRank Toolbar and What it Means
I recently read an interesting article discussing people’s obsession over Google’s PageRank, and how they try to increase their own PageRank. As we learned in class, PageRank is a useful algorithm that Google uses to measure the relevance of webpages when searching the Internet. What you may not know, however, is that Google has a PageRank […]
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