Photosynth is an amazing new technology from Microsoft Live Labs that will change forever the way you think about digital photos. It takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.

It can take any mix of photo’s, even with people blocking the object in the photo or a blurry cell phone picture. Now your brain knows that your eyes are about two inches apart. But when Photosynth does its magic, it doesn’t know where the cameras were, or which way they were pointing. Fortunately, when there are many cameras, and many features in common, the algorithms behind Photosynth can figure out not only where the features are in 3D, but where all of the cameras would have to have been, and which way they were aimed, consistent with the features they ”saw”.

That is really web3.0, taking all user submitted pictures from Flickr and stitching them together into one big world. Watch the video below, it is truely amazing. And take a look at the live demo at live labs.

The benefits of Pay Per Call advertising over traditional forms

Pay Per Call advertising is generally just what it says: advertising your business and get the customers connected to you by phone and you pay per call.

Let’s take 1800-free411 as an example provider of pay per call services. Actually it is a free directory assistance service in the United States that is rapidly taking directory assistance marketshare. Directory assistance is the phone number you call to get a person or a business’ phone number.

1800-Free411 plays a short add before providing the phone number you requested. As a caller you can either proceed and call the number you were actually looking for, but also choose to be connected for free to the business that just had their ad played.

Now one main difference with traditional advertising is that you catch the customer right before the point of purchase. A customer first has a need and researches that need to find possible companies that can help them. When you advertise on Pay Per Click this would be the moment you catch the customer if they click on your link.

When you advertise on a Pay Per Call based platform like 1800-free411 you don’t catch the customer during their research but at the time they are ready to place an order or talk to your company.

You can get two free links on marketingfan.com
A very nice gesture from Christoph and pretty smart as well, as it is giving his site back links as well by blogs like this one linking to that page. The site makes a good read though.

Google Print Ads is an online marketplace that makes it easy for advertisers and agencies of all sizes to run ads in newspapers across the U.S. – whether you’re buying space in one paper or a hundred. Running newspaper ads with Google Print Ads is easy – you use a simple online interface to select newspapers and place bids for ad space in them. The papers you’ve selected approve or decline these bids (and give you direct feedback about their decisions). After your ad runs, you can see electronic copies of them on the page.

http://www.google.com/adwords/printads/

Or you could try a pay per call solution.

Very simple concept but could very well take off. Not pay per click as with adwords but pay per call. It’s simple. People call 1-800-FREE411 looking for a business. And when that business matches yours, they play them your relevant advertising offer. Potential customers who are not only listening, but actually care what you have to say.
link: advertise 1800-free411