Signs of the times: Votemaster, CNET and Bill Murray

www.electoral-vote.com reveals himself as Andrew Tanenbaum, an American comp-sci professor in Amsterdam. With some outrageous ideas and programming and blogads on 90 blogs and some college newspapers, his traffic has grown to 700,000 page impressions a day in roughly 2 months. I’ve corresponded with Prof. Tanenbaum, but until today didn’t know who he was. Isn’t the Internet wonderful… one brilliant citizen can build an astonishing service and, by tapping into nature’s second-best network after the brain, reach millions of people in a matter of weeks?

CNET does a wrap of blogs’ political influence. “It is on the quick-shifting pages of the political blogs that the real pulse of the campaign can be felt,” write John Borland. The past year’s growth of political blogs is a template for lots of other niches, folks.

My favorite actor, Bill Murray, is appearing in blogads promoting the new trailer for his Jacques Cousteau movie Team Zissou. I’m there.

Dan Gillmor posts a hack’s e-mail promoting a company’s service to “manage bloggers,” which Dan’ readers vitriolically deconstruct.

Emmanuelle’s new LA wheelz.

Beth Kirsch, who the big blogads order from Audible.com, blogs about what blogs mean for her company. She concludes: “the combination of niche and buzz marketing supported by blog ads is powerful.” Beth pulled together Audible colleagues and developped a truly snarky set of ads. As the husband of a new iPod owner — ask me how to derail your wife’s iPod to Korean! — I’ve just signed up for Audible.com.

Marketing guru BL Ochman, sums up sums up blog advertising at MarketingProfs.com, as “a good (if scary) buy for advertisers.”