Not yet three months old, Blogcritics had 7000 visitors on Friday, a new high. Many daily newspapers would be pleased with that kind of traffic. And many print magazines are not read by that many people in a month. You can advertise there for a month for just $40. Or with traffic surging, you might want to lock in a year for $350. As a friend likes to say, the wise man buys straw hats in the winter.

Bill Quick has rounded up blogs offering election day coverage. So far, he’s got 24 links.

Using NYTimes.com’s Newstracker, you can now receive news auto-generated whenever a certain word appears in an article, byline and/or headline. The service is free, but is probably a good candidate to join NYT.com’s premium services. I recall that LATimes.com once offered something similar called Newshound, but right now can’t find it (or any other e-mail services) on that site.

Distilling books has become big business, notes the Peter Myers in the WSJ. The old-timer, Soundview Executive Book Summaries (: 227 titles), is now challenged by [url=]audiotech.com (149 titles), (1069 titles), [url=]getAbstract.com (2,080 titles), and [url=]Summaries.com[/url] (305 titles). The form ranges from rephrasing to exclusive quoting of highlights. Audiotech rates top in the review.

Manindra Agrawal, a mathematician at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India, discovered a definitive test for prime numbers in August. The formula for determining that numbers are prime has eluded mathematicians for centuries.

Last week he visited Princeton last week to explain his discovery. “While no slouch in math, Prof. Agrawal said he sometimes had to use Google to find information on the more recondite aspects of number theory,” reports Lee Gomes.

Assuming that the the letters page of today’s International Herald Tribune contains a representative sample of reader opinion, readers are traumatized by the prospect of a New York dominated paper. I count sixteen negative letters, two centrist and two in favor of the new structure. Depending on how you filter the numbers, if the paper’s editorial mix does become dominated by New York editors, the IHT will lose either 16 readers… or 80% of its circulation.

“Yet another editor friend says that at one national publication he worked at, the general executive-level understanding was that only about a third of the magazine’s ratebase was truly legit (i.e., actual people who really wanted the magazine). Much of the rest of the lofty ratebase was comprised of ‘readers’ gained through a shady circ-pumping operation that charged a bounty of a few bucks per head. Did those faux subs come from mysteriously billed old ladies in Florida? Trailer-park residents in Iowa? It was never quite clear.”

So I’ll ask again — given the passion with which bloggers are read, why would anyone advertise anywhere else?

Darn juicy audience! (Via Weinberger.)

Heather Green writes: Samsung increased its online budget from virtually nothing to about $10 million this year. “We believe it’s a critical and highly profitable information channel for us and for consumers,” says Peter Weedfald, vice-president for strategic marketing and new media.