Are Technology Books Obsolete?

I was just cleaning up some shelves and drawers in my former office in the basement and found myself packing up a bunch of books for GoodWill donations or some such thing. Many of these books I am given by publishers for review other promotional reasons, some I have bought, none, however, gets used that often. Google works better, and faster, to get me the answers that I need.

There are some series of books I really like, the "for Dummies" series is enjoyable and educational for beginner level introductions to some technologies, and some get very in depth as well. The "Bible" series of tech books are also great reference books. I have a few of each of those.

That being said, with some much information being online, and with Google, Yahoo! and other search engines being increasingly accurate and fast, it seem to me that books are loosing their worth to the technology sector of people.

Obviously books will always exist, there are so many other great reasons, but I do wonder if the life of the technology reference manual is limited.

InfoLinks Proving Itself

I just posted an article about me switching my in-text advertising from Kontera to InfoLinks. After quiet a few days, I have to say, InfoLinks is outperforming Kontera by over double in payout. The click through, with the exact same appearance, has double the eCPM and over double the CTR.

The popup is much more dynamic and attractive with InfoLinks. I can't say that is the reason the payout is better, but it certainly is better. Given the drop in Google ad revenue over the last months, finding this as a way to monetize some sites have really filled in some holes within my web based revenue streams.

At this point, on a bad Google day, InfoLinks almost matches AdSense revenue!

Obviously, any ad publisher knows that in text advertising in very controversial among some publishers. It's a love it or hate it thing. Personally, I like it, it's effective and it's relatively unobtrusive except for those visitors that have a habit of using their mouse pointer to follow along with the words as they read.

If you are the type of publisher that like in text advertising, and do not qualify for some of the big in text systems, definitely give InfoLinks a try, I am very glad I did. In this time of economic turmoil, with advertising revenue dropping all the time, all publishers are looking for new or better ways to generate more money from our web sites without taking up more space or interfering more with the visitor.

In my case, in text ads aren't new, I simply replaced my existing in text system, so from a user point of view, nothing has changed. I am continuing to do everything I can to generate more revenue without letting ads completely overrun my web sites. it's a delicate balance.