The gold standard was replaced with a floated currency during the Great Depression after the stock market crash.  This was a US only activity and the rest of the world did not follow suit (even though some countries did eventually.)

There was a time when using gold for engineering purposes was considered a good thing due to the maleability and condutivity of gold.  But advances in technology have decreased the engineering benefits of gold a bit.

This has reduced the potential that someday world governments would natioanlize gold to be used solely for engineering purposes, a move that in theory could have decreased the value of gold significantly.

Our sponsors at the Monex Deposit company have recently provided a release discussing the historically continuation of a trend where the value of gold continues to increase.

They offer collectors the ability to purchase artistically rendered gold coins and ingots made of gold, silver, and other precious metals.  These artistic renditions may someday have a value greater than the market rate of gold (this is where the collectibility factor comes into play and its not something that you can look at if you are a pure investor) but if you like to gamble on collectibles MDC provides a wide selection of products that you can purchase.

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No one has figured out this conundrum yet, but everyone is chasing after the new holy grail of Internet 2.0 Advertising, the contextually placed video advertisement.

What is it?

Basically, a computer program that would be able to view a video online, and Figure out what that video is about and then place a relevant advertisement in, below, before, after or in the middle of that video automatically.

No one has figured it out, not even those supposed genious types at Google.  They just don’t make PhD’s the way they used to  . . .

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I received an invitation to join a new advertising program for publishers and advertisers via email this week from Tumri called AdPods.  The new service offers a unique twist on the concept of offering up one of those little boxes with rotating product ads.

Instead of offering a box that only provides ads to products from one site like chiquita or Amazon or a dozen others, AdPod offers ads from multiple retailers from Amazon to Target to Best Buy and more.

Basically, they consolidate lots of different offers into one box.  For a publisher or blogger that is good as it utilizes your web real estate much more efficiently and effectively.

Everything else about the program seems to be pretty much standard as these types of programs go.

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Capella University has been one of our sponsors for quite some time. They offer online degree and educational programs and in general I believe this education model is the way of the future.

They recently provided a new press release about one of their faculty members that recently published a new book.

Sara Orem, PHd, co-authored a book with Jacqueline Binkert, PhD, and Ann Clancy also a PhD. The new book buy this collective of PhD’s is titled Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change.

The general concept behind the book is that organizations can do very well when they motivate people by appealing to their ideals. That would probably be a no-brainer for anyone that is a fan of John F Kennedy’s Moon speech, but it is a good reminder and provides a look at how other organizations can apply those lessons to achieve results that are also out of this world.

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I have been using a number of tools to test my websites, web pages and web designs for several years now.  I keep a long list of these tools in my bookmarks in my browser.

For about a year now I have been meaning to organize these bookmarks and write up an article to share the list and the tools with other web designers, programmers, web masters and or bloggers.  I just never got around to it.

Fortunately, on the internet no great idea remains unique for very long.

Aviva Directory put together a list of 31 website tools that happens to include all of the tools on my goto list plus a half dozen more that I wish I had had a year ago.

Accessibility

In particular they have an excellent section of tools listed covering accessibility.  In the United States website accessibility has not been a major concern.  However, in the United Kingdom its actually the law.

I have a number of readers and visitors from the UK and upgrading and improving my sites to comply with accessibilty requirements is one of my major goals for 2007.

Not only is it good for SEO and good for compliance, but its good for your readers.  I don’t think any website owner or bloggers wakes up and thinks to themselves, “I’d like to make my site less accessible today.”

Browser Simulators

I’ve used a number of browser simulators over the years but I also really liked the concept of Browsershots, which takes snapshots of your website rendered on several different browsers.

Missing Tools

The article definitely covers its bases, but I’d probably also throw in some type of keyword density tool.  I’m always looking for a better tool in this regard, but I do regularly use a tool from SearchEnginePromotionHelp.com (yeah its a long domain name, but that doesn’t bother me if the tools work).

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