links for 2007-​​08-​​22

Left as an exercise to the marketer: Dead sponsors pool

I spend a lot of time scan­ning old books for Dis­trib­uted Proof­read­ers.

What I’m see­ing, this wee hour of the morn­ing before the caffeine-‘n-aspartame cock­tail has kicked in, is side­bar ban­ner ads for 19th-​​century books. “Dr. Fiske Explains it All”; “John Dewey does it again—prag­mat­i­cally!”; “Read the lat­est J. S. Mill in this month’s Con­tem­po­rary Review”.

I see Chank Diesel fonts, ver­ti­cal ani­mated Flash ban­ners, mod­ern design sen­si­bil­ity with a quirky eye-​​catching not-​​quite-​​AdSense-​​user-​​agreement-​​violating sim­i­lar­ity to all other side­bar ads.

And of course they link to the free, publicly-​​available, 100% pub­lic domain online edi­tions of those works.

Might be a good place for a contest.