I mentioned last week that I’ll be giving away some free WordPress themes this coming month. In addition to that, I’ll also be giving away several copies of commercial DVD authoring tools, rippers & converters for Windows/Mac computers and iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) each month for the next few months. If you’re interested, make sure to check back in a week or so for when I publish the details.

Blogging

• Time Management for Travel Bloggers … and Others
• 3 Ways to Make Your Writing Clearer and More Engaging
• How to Create Your Own Blogging Road Map
• Tools To Improve Your Online Marketing Campaign

WordPress

• Making Sure Your Content is Found with Joost de Valk
• Automatically add Twitter and Facebook buttons to your posts
• How to Hide the WordPress Upgrade Message in the Dashboard
• Dear Theme Devs, Stop Pasting Random Snippets of Code in functions.php

SEO

• How to Execute a Flawless Ad Copy Test in AdWords
• How Organized Spam is Taking Control of Google’s Search Results
• Algorithm Change Launched
• Google SEO Correlation Analysis

Social Media

• How to Create Your Personal Social Media Brand
• Social Media … or Social Blogmarking?
• Why I Was Wrong About Quora as a Blogging Service…
• History Being Made with Social Media: What a Social Web Week!

Technology

• Hackers Increasingly Using Twitter For Botnets
• Social Media As a Weapon In Egypt
• 10 things (and 4 outrages) techies need to know about President Obama’s State of the Union Address
• Bomb Detecting Plants To Root Out Terrorists

Gadgets

• Hammerhead HMR989 PC Case Mod
• Sony reveals the Next Generation Portable
• Razer debuts Ferox portable gaming speakers
• The Emoticon… Keypad?

Pinoy Blogs

• HTC Mozart: How to set up your Windows Phone 7 device
• Who’s The “Big Bad Blogger”? Does it Really Matter?
• Tablet vs. Netbook : Which One to Get?
• Cyber-criminals moving from attacking PCs to Mobile Devices

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

• Sight WordPress Theme for Magazines and Blogs
• Google Censors Piracy-Related Keywords from Search Tools
• Foursquare Integration WordPress Plugin
• Apple Releases iTunes 10.1.2 – Bug Fixes & CDMA iPhone Support
• WordPress Anniversary Theme
• Google Voice Adds Number Porting

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or would want to share your article or any interesting story that you found in the Internet and have it featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Here’s an excerpt from The Official Adwords blog:

Today, we’re introducing several new features that integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google advertising solutions. These features help streamline the process of planning and building online ad campaigns and give you useful data for making more informed media planning decisions.

Ad Planner Top 1,000 Most Visited Sites
One of these new key releases is the Ad Planner 1000 list, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by Ad Planner. Published monthly, this list details the number of unique visitors, number of page views, and reach for each of the sites included. It’s a great way to quickly reference the most popular sites on the web.

The Ad Planner 1000 list is another step in the evolution of Ad Planner in providing reliable traffic and audience information for websites. In conjunction with it, the Google Content Network just released an Ad Planner 1,000 targeting feature. We hope that the combination of these two features helps provide you with more actionable data to use in your display ad campaigns.

Screenshot:

The list displays the following information for each website: rank, site name, category, unique visitors, reach, pageviews and if the website accepts ads or not.

It’s not surprising to see Facebook on the #1 spot and as a WordPress user/advocate, it’s nice to see WordPress.com hit the 12th spot. If you go through the list, you’ll find a number of big-time blogs like The Huffington Post, Engadget, Gizmodo, Mashable and TechCrunch. It’s also interesting to note that there are no adult websites and ad networks on the list which I believe were intentionally excluded from the list by Google.

The Ad Planner 1000 list will be a very useful tool for Google Adwords users, giving them an easier and more convenient way to target and find large-traffic websites that accept ads and at the same time, help them make the most of their Google Adwords coupons.

View Google’s Ad Planner Top 1,000 websites

Got an email earlier today from Google regarding something new called Google Certified Ad Networks, a feature that enables advertisers from external Google-certified networks to compete with AdWords advertisers for ad space on Adsense publisher sites. This is good news for Adsense publishers like me because this new feature will help me generate the most profit for every ad that appears on my blog, whether it comes from an AdWords advertiser or from the Google Certified Ad network.

Here’s a demo video explaining the concept behind Google Certified Ad Networks:

For those who aren’t familiar with ad networks, these are companies who partner with advertisers/publishers to buy and sell ads on other people’s sites. The ads that come from these networks will compete with Google ads for the right to be displayed on a publisher’s site. The ad that generates the highest revenue for publishers will be displayed.

Ad networks have to adhere to Google standards for user privacy, ad quality and speed before they can be admitted into the program. As a publisher, you have full control as to which network can show ads on your site. Publishers can also choose to opt out from receiving ads from a specific network or from all networks if you choose to have only ads from AdWords.

The Google Certified Ad Network feature is initially available only to publishers in North America and Europe but I’m quite sure Google will eventually make it available to other parts of the world in the near future.

For other Adsense publishers like me, what do you think about this new feature? What do you think are the advantages or disadvantages of having this new feature? Please share your thoughts.

[image by lainians7]

Adsense just recently announced that they have updated their program policies.

We’re now requiring AdSense publishers to comply with the spirit of our Page Quality Guidelines. If you’re an AdWords advertiser, you might already be familiar with these guidelines, which are intended to provide a better experience for users, advertisers, and publishers alike. If you use any kind of online advertising, know that these guidelines encourage publishers to, among other things, create sites with simple navigation and substantial, useful content.

There are several new changes but the most significant one is for those who use advertisting to send traffic to their pages that have Adsense. These folks now have to follow the same guidelines for Landing pages used by AdWords users.

Among the changes or updates to the program policies, the one that I’m sure most publishers would be happy to hear about is that Adsense now allows publishers to have 3 link units per page. Yes, you read it right. Three, tres, trois, tiga, drei. Although link units don’t work well for most blogs or bloggers, this is still a welcome change for most publishers. Now, I’m gonna have to edit my layout again and find a way to squeeze in those 3 link units. Personally, I would want to see new ad formats added like a 450×250 large rectangle or a 200×600 skyscraper.

Read more about the recent program policy updates at the Inside Adsense blog or read the updated version of the Program Policies.