Google AdSense publishers will soon be given the option to use Video Ads in addition to the current text ads available. The beta version of AdSense for video was released in February.

According to Google, the purpose of the new video ads is to help publishers monetize the videos on their sites and help advertisers extend their reach into the online community.

In my opinion, regular Google AdSense text ads already take away from a web site’s appearance and professionalism, and that the new video ads will only be a continuation of the same. Worst yet, many AdSense publishers are search engine spammers and now with video ads this may only get worst.

Box.net is an online web site that allows users to easily upload, store and share files with other users. Box.net also has other features like unlimited bandwidth which makes its suitable for hosting images for eBay auctions or storing videos, etc.

I signed up for a free account and found the service easy to use and I was able to access my files quickly from several different computers. I also tried the Box.net Sharing App for Facebook and was able to publish documents and photos, to a Facebook profile. They also have a new Box Widget available for Wordpress that makes it easy to share documents, photos, music, and files on any Wordpress blog.

YourSite.nu is a web site where members post and review each other’s web sites, blogs and forums. It also has its own discussion board and web development tutorials.

The site lists its membership at about 10,000 but I am not sure how many of these members are actually active on the site. Each time I’ve visited the site there have been about 30 or so people on it.

The site requires you to do three reviews of other member’s web sites before posting your own web site(s) for review. The feedback received ranges from anywhere between “cool site” to a dissertation on the fundamentals of proper web design layout.

The site is useful for getting basic feedback, but its appears to be more of a social community that a fully professional web development community – which might just be for the better.

The Suggestion tool at Domaintools.com allows you to enter keywords and/or a product/service concept and get a list of available domain names that use the words you entered or are related to the those word.

As a test, I entered “web news” and got a list of 20 available domain names. From that list, five of the best ones are shown below:

1. WebNewsGuide
2. WebDesignsInfo
3. ClearWebMedia
4. WebBusinessInfo
5. SiteWebNews

As you can see, the tool can save you time and frustration when you want to find an available domain name.

Customized news is nothing new.  In fact the process of creating a customized news portal using NetVibes or Google is very straight forward.  But Congoo is taking a different approach by adding a social networking layer above the news.

Anyone can create their own news portal which takes content from over 25,000 free sources and 300 premium sources.  Instead of adding an RSS feed, or keyword to gather news, you can select a fairly specific topic area (or focus) and then drill it down with keywords.

The “social networking” aspect of the site features the ability to comment on any news article on your portal and to “favorite” other news portals or “circles”

As an example, I created a news circle at www.congoo.com/tap 

Writing articles and submitting them to article directories for reprint is an excellent way to increase traffic to your web site. Because the article directories require those that reprint your article(s) to also include your byline and a hyperlink back to your web site, you get direct traffic from readers who want to find out more information about you and/or your web site.

In addition, since each reprinted article contains a link back to your site, you also increase the number of inbound links to your web site and this in turn increases your search engine rankings and overall traffic over time. This is why many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts consider article writing and distribution one of the best available SEO methods.

There are currently hundreds of article directories where you can submit your article(s) for reprint. Submitting to each one manually is an overwhelming task. Instead, Bryxen Software has developed a computer application called “ArticleSubmitter” to help automate the process. The free version of the software allows you to submit your article(s) to a variety of article directories and it also keeps track of your submissions, account information (logins, notes, etc) and more.

I currently use the software myself, and it has saved me a lot of time compared to the manual submissions I did before. I would highly recommend the program to anyone who is interested in increasing their web site traffic and search engine rankings trough article writing.

Im not sure if submitting a blog to a directory will increase your traffic dramatically but I do know that when I am looking for a new and interesting blog to read, I take a look through a few of them. Here are some of the most popular and interesting blog directories.

Blog Show Off - A dynamic directory that keeps on changing
BlogTopSites - A nice looking directory that will rank blogs on the number of visitors.
BlogHub - Im not a fan of this one, however im told it is quite popular
BritBlog - A directory just for British Blogs.
FindingBlog - Pretty much the standard directory
BlogCatalog - Ranked as the number site in Google for the term “blog directories”
Blogdup - Blogs are arranged by the country of origin.
KingOfTheBlogs - Another “Top Sites” directory
BlogFlux - A nicely designed and popular directory
Blogarama - Another standard directory
Blogwise - Blogs are arranged by country and keyword
Technorati - The most popular and largest directory of blogs!
Bla.st - Several categories, including one for blogs.

If you know of any other directories then let me know and I will add them to the list

Digitalpoint provides webmasters with several useful tools including many search engine related applications. One of the more useful tools is their Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Enter a keyword or keyphrases, and The Keyword Suggestion Tool will provide you information about how often those keyword or keyphrases are searched for daily in major search engines. The results are pulled from both Wordtracker and Overture.

In addition, the tool also provides alternate, related keywords to those you entered and provides their search frequency as well. The tool is an excellent resource for optimizing your web pages with the best keywords related to your site’s content.

I’ve been using Del.icio.us for bookmarking for a long time now, but I have always wanted a more visual approach to organizing and browsing bookmarked links.

Deskload seems to have filled this void by creating an online bookmarking app that resembles the desktop. Its very simple, and thats what I like. To add a bookmark, just select a title, URL and icon and it will be added to your online bookmarking desktop. So essentially you are organizing bookmarks in the same way you would desktop icons.

Its great to see some innovation in the bookmarking arena as it was starting to look a bit stale.

I recently begun using StatCounter to view web traffic statistics on about a half dozen web sites I maintain. The free version of the application provides enough of a log size limit to provide me with some quick and detailed information on my most recent site visitors. I particularly like how well the program tracks search engine referrals and visitor paths through each web site.

I mainly use StatCounter to get quick updates on my sites when I do not have the time to log into each web site’s control panel individually. To use StatCounter you just need to add a small piece of code to each page you want to track and you can track several sites with just a single free account.