If your running an acquisition based campaign through Google Adwords the Conversion Optimizer feature lets you set maximum CPA bids for your ad groups the way you would set maximum CPC bids.

Using historical information about your campaign, the Conversion Optimizer then automatically finds the optimal cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it’s eligible to appear. You still pay for your clicks but the system will automatically adjust your bids to reach your CPA goals.

So the Conversion Optimizer sets higher CPC bids for more valuable clicks and lower CPC bids for less valuable clicks. The optimizer considers the site in the Google Network where your ad is eligible to appear, the user’s location, the user’s search query, and other factors.

However this is not a quick fix to getting lower CPAs.

To use Conversion Optimizer, you have to enable conversion tracking and you need to have a history of at least 100 conversion in the last 30 days. Also the conversion optimiser does not work so well for highly competitive search terms so sometimes it’s a bit of hit and miss. However like all of Google’s products it free so giving it a go won’t hurt the bank.

Google have now been around for 10 years, and I can’t remember surfing without them. To celebrate their first decade online they have created Project 10 to the 100th. It is an open call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Users submit their idea online by Oct 20th and then the voting polls are open. Google are committing $10 million to bring the winning idea to life.

They want ideas to help as many people as possible – whether it be and easier way to provide internet to people in remote areas, easier ways to generate wind power, etc. So if you have a big idea, try multiplying it by 100 and see what you get.

According to the online marketing consultants at Future Now when it comes to your copy, now matter how fancy and clever your prose the customer only cares about how you can help them and meet their needs and wants.

So they have developed the Wewe calculator – it’s a free analysis tool that offers insights into how customer focused the copy on your site is by tracking certain words. Whilst it doesn’t pretend to be definitive solution and has been around for a while it is a useful way of approaching how you write to try and tap into your customers needs and wants.

All of you have to do is type your Company URL into the test field and it will give you your customer focus rate vs you self focus rate. You can read more about the Wewe calculator and the effectiveness of customer focused copy in Bryan Einsenberg’s article “It’s the Customer, Stupid”.

I’m sure we’ve looked back through our notes and not been able to make any sense of them. Instead of trying to decipher your incomprehensible scribble Livescribe have come up with a solution gadget – the Pulse Smart Pen. It’s basically a digital pen and digital notepad that records while you write. It can capture handwriting and simultaneously record audio, synchronizing it to the writing. So when you go back over your notes you can tap on a certain section and the pen will play back what was being said at the time you wrote it. The software also lets you upload your notes and share them online. Watch the demo here.

More and more consumers today are conscious of their carbon footprint on the world but its still hard to track how much CO2 you emit just going about your daily life. So Rinen in conjunction with TechCrunch are creating project Open Trace; a massive resource documenting the environmental impact of all kind of products from food to aeroplanes. Rinen is Hirofumi Manganji and Hiroaki Shimachie or as they put it “two guys with no capital”. But with the help of TechCrunch and their big name sponsors they hope to unveil the first “green” Wikipedia – so you can see how much a loaf of bread really costs the world.

It breaks down the supply chain of consumer goods and looks at how each step in the production and distribution process effects the environment. It is also a great tool for Manufactures to find greener ways of producing goods with hopes that companies can use the results on product labels to help consumers make greener buying decisions.

Check out the video demo here.

With thousands of videos uploaded onto Youtube and Vimeo everyday it’s hard to sort through and find the ones you actually want to watch in the current interfaces. So to try and make browsing more visually exciting Vimeo have launched Vimeo Toys. Once you’ve entered Vimeo Land you can wander and explore all the latest happenings on Vimeo visualised as characters. Click the plane and it will drop down a random video from it’s cargo.

Not too sure if it makes video browsing that much easier but it’s definitely more fun.