Smart entrepreneurs be warned as Apple Apps for iPhone/iTouch apps – http://www.apple.com/webapps/whatarewebapps.html – are dramatically redefining Internet usage. With 200 million apps downloaded – most are free – but many have with low price points of $0.99 to $4.99 each, the gaming/app industry is going to massively increase.  Taking advantage of this gaming trend is www.MyGameMug.com – a social gaming network based in San Mateo, CA which I am an advisor to. The site allows gamers to find other like minded gamers…. see who you are matched with at http://www.mygamemug.com/matchtest.php?p=2

The SearchForecast ‘Directory of AdSense Publishers’ now has 350,000 AdSense Publishers inlcuded. Correct me if I’m wrong but I do believe its the largest in the world and with Google getting 35% of their revenues ($5.78 Billion) from AdSense in 2007, its important to understand who these publishers are.

Search and browse the directory at http://www.searchforecast.com/directory/index.php. Website Publishers can also now add a description, photo or video to their directory listing!

Recently, I’ve recently become an advisor to Parallel Capital Ltd. – a $10 million early stage venture fund.

Last week, I listened to Scott McNealey, co-founder & Chairman of Sun Microsystems, address a small room of 50 or so start ups in Sunnyvale, CA. talk about open source.  I learned that there are 68,000 downloads of MySQL a day. 4 years ago I made the decision to build SearchForecast with MySQL believing open source is the way forward.  With over millions of records now, the decision was a right one as it costs zero in licence fees. My advice to start ups is to watch and listen to guys like Scott McNealey who in 1982 began thinking differently about computer networks. Today, he’s giving back at www.sun.com/startups !

We have received excellent feedback from the commencement of David Rodnitzky’s series of editorial articles on SearchForecast’s AdSense Publisher Directory.

Based in San Francisco, David provides excellent insights into what technology trends are impacting AdSense and other contextual Publishers. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading David’s article as much as the SearchForecast team does.

http://www.searchforecast.com/article/article_details.php?itemSelected=5

We did it…..Our crawlers collected the 1 millionth keyword from meta tags across the worlds largest websites which run AdSense (i.e Goolge advertisements). Our keen users of the Keyword Suggestion Tool can now enjoy more targeted keywords and have greater reach for their keyword research.

We slightly changed our reporting at http://www.searchforecast.com/user/search_keyword_result.php so you can search on keywords and see the “Frequency” – that is, the number of AdSense websites that used the keyword.

I call this the “wisdom of the crowds” approach to synthesizing keywords -as the publishers running AdSense are generally more knowledgeable about which keywords drive traffic and conversion.

I decided this week to release more SearchForecast real time seo tools, SEO learning PDFs and a limited number of SEO video tips. The simplicity of these tools is really what clients want. With over 10,000 people now having used our “Real Times Scores” we have recently added 3 more scoring tools:

1. Online Reputation Management Score
2. Local Search Score
3. Video Optimization Score

With 1 in 5 search results having a video, image or blog – it is important website publishers understand the requirement to include Local and Video content on their website.

Please see our videos shot outside Facebook in Palo Alto, California

SearchForecast has signed a content licence agreement with www.SearchEngineWatch.com – and are promoting “Breaking News” stories on all AdSense Publisher Directory pages.

Hats off to Matt McGowan, VP Marketing at Incisive Media – who own SearchEngineWatch – as he really gets the vision we have to educate and inform the millions of small niche publishers on the latest insights.

With 60% of our viewers outside of the USA, its important to me that they have the latest industry updates.

I’ve been a fan of ClickZ and SearchEngineWatch for many years and hope it helps our visitors to read the latest trends to help improve traffic and revenue for their websites.

Over 500 classfieds have been posted on our website at http://www.searchforecast.com/classifieds/classifieds_index.php which has added another dimension to our business.

With 150,000 users accessing our website each month to view the AdSense Publishers Direcotry, the classifieds provide advertisers with a way to reach the “long tail” of publishers globally.

For the first time I decided to also publish http://www.searchforecast.com/adsense_directory_index.php providing an easier interface for users to navigate the AdSense Directory.

All classifieds are free and last 30 days.

I first heard the name Al Gore in the early 1990’s as the US Vice President coined the phrase “information superhighway”. Having started my first internet company whilst at the University of Melbourne in 1993, I read his speeches and knew he was a man of vision.

So when I had the pleasure of meeting Al Gore over lunch recently in San Francisco- albeit briefly – I mentioned that I hoped we could work on something together one day. As I’m Australian and live 2 miles away from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Sand Hill Road Venture Capital firm he joined recently, Al told me he needed our help in saving the planet. I said I would keep an eye out for good green-tech start ups and let him know.

Like most great people, I watched him graciously accept defeat in the 2000 US presidential election campaign and then win international praise for his environmental mantra and accept the Nobel Peace Prize with more grace earlier this year.

I hear from VCs here in the Valley that Kleiner Perkins has put around 40% of thier funds in 2007 towards green-tech; anything green is hot right now. I hope to meet up with Al Gore again soon and help turn our collective focus into making the world a better place for our kids. So let me know if you have need help with your green tech start up.

Kleiner Perkins investments are overviewed at  http://www.kpcb.com.

In the aftermath of the Quigo acquisition by AOL, it was reported in the New York Times on November 8 that they had exclusive agreements with several of publishers prohibiting them from running text ads from other companies.  Quigo clients include Time Inc. magazines, ESPN, Forbes, CareerBuilder and the McClatchy Company newspapers. This is yet another example of publishers turning exclusively to text ad providers.

What is interesting to note is that large publishers require more specialization from an text ad providers than merely money! As SearchForecast provides insights into SEO and technical advice, our InText advertising solution is differentiated in the marketplace as we help publishers optimize their website for natural listings as well.