Reader's Choice

With coverage of the IMS 2009 behind us, now is a good time to take a quick look at what visitors to the Microwave Journal web site have been most interested in (based on page views).

Why now?

Well, the IMS is a time of heavy activity for both company product releases and a curious industry that wants to know who is doing what. So here's the quick run down of the ten most visited web pages since the third week of May.

1. The IMS 2009 Multimedia section. About 1600 "readers" came to see our video interviews shot from the exhibition space. We interviewed representatives from about a dozen companies, covering topics from EM simulation (Ansoft, Agilent and AWR) to miniature passive components (Anaren) to high-voltage LDMOS transistors (Frrescale). We heard about the Narda strongest link contest and why AWR had 3D glasses at their demo stations.

2. Over 1,000 people came to our new products report, proving customers (or competitors) have inquiring minds.

3. Our third most popular feature this month was a news item entitled " Development Report of Power FETs for Solid-state Power Amplifiers from GaAs to GaN Devices". This is timely with all the GaN news coming from the show and our cover story for June - The New Power Brokers. 900 visitors

4. Many site visitors went directly to the news item of choice via our online show daily home page or through a link in our newsletter, but a number of you browsed the master listing of all show news, making it our fourth most visited page at 700 page views.

5 and 6. Our cover stories from the May issue: "IMS in Boston: Reflections from the Past" and June: "The New Power Brokers" were next in line. Our cover story usually takes the top spot each month, but with competition from Show product news and splitting the reporting period over two 2-week periods, these two items slipped in ranking but still had over 1200 page views combined.

7. News of Andrew's expansion of a production plant in China was a popular item among our readers with about 600 page views

8. The technical feature from our May issue: "Frequency Generation and Synthesis: Cost-effective and Power-efficient Solutions" was the only technical article (apart from white papers which were not part of the review) to make the top ten list. Despite appearing in the magazine and online for several weeks, readers were still interested in the subject and continued to click on this feature.

9. More news in the top ten, this time "Rohde & Schwarz at Femtocells World Summit 2009 in London" with well over 500 page views

10. And finally.... The Puzzler. Clearly, microwave engineers like to have fun too.


So while everyone was busy this past month traveling to Boston for IMS and then digging out from a back-log of action items or perhaps you were back in the office the whole time holding down the fort, some of you managed to find the time to stay informed via www.mwjournal.com. Do you think this top ten list accurately reflects the industry's interest?

Announcing the AdSense for Mobile Applications beta

(cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

You don't have to be a mobile expert to see how smartphones are revolutionizing our daily lives. Lower prices, faster network speeds and unlimited data plans mean that people often reach for their cell phone rather than their computer when they are seeking information. As a result, mobile applications have become more and more popular, helping people find music, make restaurant reservations or check bank balances — all on their phone.

We want to contribute to the growth of these mobile applications, which is why we're happy to announce our beta launch of AdSense for Mobile Applications. After all, advertisers are looking for ways to reach potential customers when they are engaged with mobile content, and application developers are looking for ways to show the best ads to their users. We have already had a successful trial of this service with a small number of partners, and are excited that we can now offer this solution to a broader group.

AdSense for Mobile Applications allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in their iPhone and Android applications. For our beta launch, we've created a site where developers can learn more about the AdSense for mobile applications program, see answers to frequently asked questions and sign up to participate in our beta. Advertisers can also learn about the benefits of advertising in mobile applications.

We're excited to open up this beta to more developers, and look forward to offering new features for our mobile advertisers and publishers in upcoming releases. We also want to say a big thank you to the partners who worked with us on the trial stages of this project including Backgrounds, Sega, Shazam, Urbanspoon and more.

Check out this short video of Howard Steinberg, Director of Business Development at Urbanspoon, discussing his experience with AdSense for Mobile Applications.



Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management