domestic dilemna.

It's common knowledge by now that cooking isn't my favorite thing to do. I'm rather lazy, honestly, and I'd much rather go out to eat or order pizza. At most, I'll microwave a t.v. dinner or heat up some Hamburger Helper. Not once have I opened up a cook book and gone to the grocery store for specific ingredients to fulfill a tasty recipe. Shocking I know.

Since the wedding, we've received a vast number of kitchen items and a full library of amazing cook books with great recipes. But I have no idea where to even start. It's a little intimidating to just open up a book and start buying ingredients.

But, I'm a married woman now, and with that comes responsibility! I feel semi-inadequate as a wife if I can't cook up something nice for my husband at least a few times a week. So my new goal is to learn some new (and easy) recipes that both of us will enjoy.

Here's the dilemna. Our food tastes are VERY different. Ryan doesn't like potatoes (which I love) or green vegetables, and he LOVES creamy sauces (which I hate). Hmmm. Thankfully we both love meat and fruit and mostly anything else.

Any of you faithful readers up for the challenge of finding us a good and easy recipe?

On the other hand, I absolutely adore (yes, adore) baking. Especially cupcakes. And I literally can't WAIT to use my new Crate & Barrel cupcake carrier as well as the cupcake book I got too! Now that's something I can handle!!! Maybe one of these days, in my wildest dreams, I'll open up a cupcake bakery (ala Sprinkles) and everyone who laughed at my lack of cooking skills can come taste my wonderful cupcakes. :) Until then, I'm learning how to be a domestic cooking machine.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Alexandra's Mobile [Ad]itude - We obsess about user experience

Posted by Alexandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

In my last post, some of you expressed concern that intrusive and oversized advertisements on a small screen could result in a poor mobile user experience. You asked how we strike the delicate balance between ensuring a good user experience while providing effective advertising. At Google, we care very deeply about this balance and we're constantly striving to make sure that you have the best experience possible. In this post, I'll tell you more about some of the things we're doing to try to achieve this.

At the core of striking this balance is working hard to improve ad quality. The more relevant the ads, the fewer ads there need to be. In fact, when you go to google.com on your phone and do a search, we now return no more than two text ads per query. These ads can appear above or below the organic search results and most take up just two lines of text on larger mobile screens. And while a single ad may appear at the top or bottom of a mobile content page, a double ad unit can only appear at the bottom of a page. Watch the video below to learn more about ad size and placement.

Of course, we also want to make sure our advertisers have a good experience with Google mobile ads. Fewer ads per page can be beneficial for an advertiser because there is less clutter on each page and each ad gets more visibility. More importantly, showing relevant ads and maintaining a good user experience results in better click-through rates and return on investment.

I hope this addresses some of your questions. Thanks so much for your comments on my last post and keep submitting more questions. This is your opportunity to guide the direction of this series!