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Over the last few weeks I (and thousands others) have experienced a volatile experience from once-loved (before Google bought them) FeedBurner. Subscriber counts have been going up one hundred one day, down twenty the next. Some days stats do not function. Users have started to bail in masses and complaining via blogs.

Louis Gray posted his frustrations:

It’s alarming for some that a product that has become infrastructure and is expected to have 100% uptime continues to have such gaps and flaws. Losing one’s statistics for a day is essentially meaningless, but it really makes you wonder what’s going on over there. - Louis Gray

Similar frustrations are popping up on Twitter. The guys at Microblink said, “We actively made a decision NOT to use FeedBurner for Microblink’s feeds. WordPress actually has great RSS structure built in.”

This is true - syndication in platforms has gotten significantly better since FeedBurner started. But, without a significant competitor in the space - I think someone can come in a sweep the market out from under their feet. This is a great opportunity for a product to build off what FeedBurner is good at and take the market by storm while thousands of FeedBurner users flock from the service.

If this is your company - we’d like to talk to you so leave us a comment here.

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Google announces GMail Mobile 2.0…

Trying to figure out if this is supported on Windows Mobile… Trying now, will update soon.

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Quarkbase is one of those tools that we web strategy consultants love to use and never want to tell our clients about. Why? It’s a great resource to get a quick snapshot of a website. Whenever I start a new web strategy project and begin the initial analysis phase to figure out the state of the current site, I check Quarkbase first. Right away it gives you a quick screenshot and summary snapshot about the website including important information regarding the site.

Scrolling down, Quarkbase gives you very useful nuggets of information for analyzing a website. The “Social Popularity” section will show you information like how many bookmarks the site has on Delicious, how many Diggs it has or how many reactions it has on Technorati. It then breaks down this material showing you your top linked pages in social networks like Delicious or Twitter.

The “Spotlight” section will then tell you where your domain name is being discussed - on Twitter, in Googl News, on GetSatisfaction, or in blogs on Technorati.

Other nice features are traffic rankings, lists of people on the website, related websites, and technical details. They even have a nice bookmarklet you can put in your browser and click when you are on a website to find out its information.

If you are interested in learning more about what Quarkbase can provide you, check out your website using their tool. And don’t forget to follow them on Twitter!

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October 29th will be a special day here in the midwest as the Highlight Midwest Conference debuts. This FREE event will highlight some of the greatest entrepreneurial, new media, and web gurus from some of the finest cities in all the land - Des Moines, Omaha, and Kansas City (aka the next Silicon Valley, err Silicon Prairie :-) )

This day long event in our “flyover states” will be segmented in two parts. The first part of the day will be “focused highlights” which include demos and presentations from of the great companies that you’ve never heard of (but definitely need to). The second part of the day is a formal reception at the Kauffman Center featuring reps from each of these great cities to explain what the web means to their cities and how it is creating change.

If you are in the midwest and are into the web, social media, or are an entrepreneur YOU NEED TO COME.

Want more info?
Twitter @highlightmw
FriendFeed Room
Rob Jensen - Highlight Midwest: Oct 29 in Kansas City
Jeff Slobotski - Highlight Midwest - October 29th

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If you aren’t one of us lucky ones that got in on the beta for Google Ad Manager - you are in luck now.

Today Google announced that it is opening up Google Ad Manager for all AdSense users.

If you are not familiar with Google Ad Manager - it’s an awesome tool to help you manage your online ad sales and inventory. I had been using OpenAds (now OpenX) to manage ads across multiple sites until this came a long. The beauty of Google Ad Manager is its integration with AdSense.

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory

What about features?

Ad Manager offers a wealth of features to help you with:
* Inventory management
* Yield optimization
* Ad targeting
* Trafficking, ad delivery, and order booking
* Creatives and rich media management
* Reporting
* User interface navigation
* Account administration

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