With Google soaking up a lot of mind-share, we’ve been looking hard at refining how we present Blogads. I just had long chat with Allan Karl, an old hand in advertising who has been exploring the nexus between blogging and business. Allan offered some blunt and very useful tips on simplifying and reinforcing the Blogads message. We’ll impliment his suggestions tomorrow AM.

Rick Bruner writes: “blogs are in themselves the most inspiring movement in politics I’ve seen since I was last idealistic back in college, lo many years ago.”

Having lost out in most of the arm wrestling for the family copy of Order of the Pheonix, I’m only now nearing the end. Rowling has continued to churn out amazing fiction, but is she wearying? In the penultimate fight scene, she serves up three “lunged out of nowhere” transitions. Or more. I’ll have to reread that section and tell you.

Seyed has announced a $500 for the best blog trader. My blog portfolio is up 186% this month, but I’m number 580 out of some 7000 traders.

Spent a great afternoon in right field seats at Fenway, watching the Red Sox beat the Tigers 6 to 4. We were in the shade and got occassional breezes, but outside the day was ablaze. After the game, we walked 40 minutes along Commonwealth Avenue to the car. Having wondered all year, my son can confirm that Boston does were red sox.

On another local tangent, welcome to Steve, my first Amherst friend to be bitten by the blog bug.

Congratulations to Marketingfix, which has been bought by marketing guru Andy Bourland. Yes, folks, blogs are media.

Rick Bruner and I enjoyed a beer together at the great happy hour hosted by Aaron and Jen last Thursday evening.

Rick’s had his nose deep into online marketing since 1995 — while I focused on the journalistic side of things when I started online in 1996 — so I was interested in getting Rick’s more senior view on whether our beta “top clickthrus” feature, which shows the top blogads clickthrus in the previous hour, had been done before. Seems obvious that advertisers might benefit from each other’s experience, right? Rick said he’d never run into the functionality. He offers more views on blog advertising here.

My six-year-old son first beat me at chess on May 11. He didn’t beat me again for a couple of weeks. A few days later, he snuck another one past me. Yesterday he beat me twice and again before school this morning. “Now, I’ve got my plan of attack,” he says at a certain point in each game. “Huh?” I say.

According to Auctionbytes, online auction giant eBay and ad serving technologists Doubleclick have paired up to offer a variation on Google’s Adwords. Worth recalling that eBay is the biggest used car dealer in America.

Sadly, most newspapers still think their classified ad revenues are down because of the soft economy. Wake up guys.

Dave Barry, normally a hilarious comedian, gives a straight-faced account of how the news gets made. “This requires a complex team effort, which I will explain by putting key terms in capital letters: First, the REPORTER gathers information by interviewing PEOPLE and trying to write down what they say, getting approximately 35 percent of it right. The REPORTER then writes a STORY, which goes to an EDITOR, who bitterly resents the REPORTER because the REPORTER gets to go outside sometimes, whereas the EDITOR is stuck in the building eating NEWSPAPER CAFETERIA ‘FOOD’ that was originally developed by construction-industry researchers as a substitute for PLYWOOD. The EDITOR, following journalism tradition, decides that the REPORTER has put the real point of the story in the 14th paragraph, which the EDITOR then attempts to move using the ‘cut and paste command,’ which results in the story disappearing into ANOTHER DIMENSION, partly because the EDITOR, like most journalists, has the mechanical aptitude of a RUTABAGA, but also because the NEW COMPUTER SYSTEM has a few ‘bugs’ as a result of being installed by a low-bid VENDOR whose information-technology experience consists of servicing WHACK-A-MOLE GAMES. So the REPORTER and the EDITOR, who now hate each other even more than they already did, hastily slap a story together from memory, then turn it over to a GRAPHIC DESIGN PERSON who cannot actually read but is a wizard on the APPLE MACINTOSH, and who will cut any remaining accurate sentences out of the story to make room on the page for a colorful, ‘reader-friendly’ CHART, which was actually supposed to illustrate a story in an entirely different SECTION. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but we do it night after night, with story after story, all so that when you, the reader, go out to your front yard to get your newspaper, it’s not there. Check your roof, OK?” (Via Gawker.)