Basically StubHub will be integrated all over AOL Music so people can buy and sell tickets (and pay comissions to StubHub) from practically anywhere on the site. From the release, “this includes AOL’s Artist & Video pages, as well as AOL Music’s concert touring website, TourTracker. For the first time, users can also see up-to-the minute concert ticket price ranges on StubHub’s marketplace without ever leaving AOL Music. ”

“Allowing our consumers to purchase tickets to sold-out shows through StubHub will significantly enhance our user experience,” said Bill Crandall, vice president of AOL Music.

I’ve spent a number of years working with retailers and their frequent shopper cards. I have a variety of frequent shopper cards including CVS, Kroger, Cosi, etc. I also have a few bank cards that I use at ATM machines that are owned by the bank.

Why can’t any of these systems get smarter with regards to receipts. Apple allows you to provide an email address and have a receipt emailed to you. The few times I’ve purchased items at the Apple Store, it’s worked perfectly – the emails will usually hit my mobile before I even leave the store.

CVS knows my email address – can’t they just email me the receipt each time I shop? It would help me manage my books, it would help CVS save money on the receipt printing and would save a number of trees (how many I have no idea but certainly a good number).

Banks are even worse with regards to receipts. Let’s not even talk about the fact that my bank knows I speak English – why they prompt me for 7 other languages is beyond me (and could be a security risk). With so many banks offering online banking, can’t they too email me a receipt when I complete a transaction? If they removed the language question and the receipt question, they could easily shave 10-15 seconds off the total transaction time. I can’t imagine it would be hard – the bank already knows my email address and they could offer a button that allows me to enter my pin and get a hardcopy receipt or enter my pin and get a receipt via email. Sure this won’t work when I use a foreign ATM, but I bet the majority of transactions are made at one of your own bank’s ATM.

So many of the things we do on a daily basis could be made smarter and save us time and natural resources. Ok, I’m done ranting…leave your thoughts on how machines like ATMs and cash registers can become smarter.

It appears in the UK users prefer different types of content than we do here in the U.S. Here are some of the differences between the UK and US AOL portal sites:

UK version of My Stuff – shows Horoscopes over AOL Radio – all other items are the same

UK version of My Networks – here we see the UK version pushing Bebo over AIM and also pushes Twitter to slot 4 while the US version pimps Twitter first (which is a huge mistake) and doesn’t even list Bebo in the top 4.

The content and stories on the UK version appear to be UK-based which is a good thing.

Bill Crandall, vice president, AOL Music said regarding the Where It’s At launch, “Where It’s At is the ultimate pop culture treasure map that we get to build together with our audience”. The map shows the entire world yet the locations seem to be limited to the U.S. There are about 200 spots listed in a variety of categories and locations. You can naturally interact with the team on Twitter and via RSS.

Adena at the All Points Blog has some suggestions for the Where It’s At team including not linking to Google Maps and some confusion as to what the site actually offers (i.e. nightlife or location-based trip planning). This seems to be the weakest of all of the sites that AOL has launched over the past year. This almost looks like they put it together as a quickie site for VISA. I hope the other 29 sites that AOL MediaGlow plans to launch this year are stronger than this one.

Here’s an example of the location spots on the MapQuest-powered map, this time it’s Britney Spears’ Quickie Wedding Chapel – the place she married Jason Alexander back in 2004.

This morning I was on aol.com (yes I use AOL) and noticed a large full width banner that reads, “Tweet Tweet! Got a Twitter account? Keep up with your tweets at AOL.com!”

AOL allows you to pull in a variety of other services including Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Facebook and MySpace. Bebo is still listed in the My Networks panel but to see it, you need to scroll over to the right. In the premier slot is Twitter – you need to provide AOL with your username and password to access your Twitter account via AOL.

It’s shocking that AOL has decided to push its $850 million acquisition on the side for the current media darling. At a minimum they should rework the widget to feature Bebo along with the other networks or push out Facebook or MySpace. Basically AOL is suggesting that Bebo isn’t as important as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Update: In the comments, Gary Benitt from yourminis/AOL notes that they have removed the ads and are working on better ads and will also make an announcement when the ads begin again. Thanks Gary!

On our sister site HTMLCenter, we run a Yourminis widget which includes the latest posts from CN (you can see two examples below). When I did my cruise around the sites this morning something made me do a double-take. The Yourminis widget now has an ad inside the widget! But not only is it any ad, it’s a completely non-targeted ad. And on the first load, it was that ^%$&@$*@$ stomach ad. Unlike many of the major tech blogs, I absolutely refuse the run the stomach ads that seem to be everywhere. I spent hours making sure they never appear on any of my network of sites. I’d be ok with an ad in the widget as long as the ad was targeted and I could provide a banned companies list.

I was on a panel last summer in Washington where we discussed widgets and widget advertising. I believe widget advertising will still be huge this year. Why? Exactly for reasons like this. You find a widget you like and install it into a popular post. You don’t come back to check the widget each day and so you missed the fact that the company jammed an ad (or other content) into the widget without notifying you. This is going to be a hot topic this year especially if the economy continues to decline.

The example I used on the panel included the following: let’s say you install a widget for a new movie that’s coming out in theaters. What happens to that widget once the movie has left the theater? Does the movie company have the right to change the content of the widget without notifying the site owner? Once consumer brands realize that by getting a user to install a widget they own a piece of real estate for free "for life" brands will start creating widgets on an exponential scale. Why pay for just a simple ad unit when you can push out a widget at the same time?

Part of the issue with widgets is that unlike ad networks, there’s no real record of where the widgets are posted and who is the site contact. I strongly believe that widget creators have a responsibility to notify the site owners when content in the widget changes. Even if it means they need to go to every single site where the widget is installed and send a contact inquiry.

I am certainly disappointed in the method yourminis decided to go about jamming the crappiest possible ads into the widgets on HTMLCenter. The widgets will be removed tomorrow and I highly doubt I will use another widget from Yourminis/AOL in the near future. 

The participating NBC local cities include: New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles.

So now you can see what sports star is injecting up the goodies on your favorite local NBC site. Fanhouse serves up a variety of "professionally written" blogs for most major sports teams in NFL, NBA, MLB, as well as NCAA.

Congrats to AOL on the big usage improvements. Back in July I noted that AOL changed their client app and would enjoy a huge increase in pageviews due to the change. I use aol.com currently to check my AOL mail and I find that the page "clicks" an unbelievable amount of times on each pageload. Does this have anything to do with the increased stats? Doubt it, but there is one interesting thing to note. When you enter/exit AOL mail, it forces a view back to aol.com. There’s no way (at least that I can find) to engage with AOL mail without being forced back to aol.com after you complete your business.

Naturally this wouldn’t directly impact advertising click-through rates, it would certainly affect unique visitor and daily visitor counts. It’s a smart move for AOL – force as many users as you can to see as many pages with ads as possible.

Libe Goad, Editor-in-Chief, AOL PlaySavvy said, "Playing video games is one of the top pastimes for children these days, almost more than watching TV. We created AOL PlaySavvy to help parents navigate through all the gaming information out there in order to decide what’s appropriate for their children."

PlaySavvy contains content in the following categories: gaming 101 (all about games), FAQ (apparently with feedback from a parental gaming panel), gaming reviews from a parent’s perspective but with the kids in mind and how-to articles including how to talk to your kids about gaming.

The login functionality uses AOL ids and some of the content is provided by third-parties. While I can’t imagine this site doing massive pageviews, it could help keep parents inside the AOL content network longer which is a good thing for AOL. 

Here’s the lists from the News category:

Some other fun bits….

• How to tie a tie = most popular how-to search on AOL
• AOL says Las Vegas was the most searched U.S. city for travel – NYC placed 5th
• Yahoo shows Jamie Lynn Spears moving up in the celebrity category – hey a teenage pregnancy and a baby daddy will do it every time!
• In Yahoo’s "influential women" category – mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano beat out Michelle Obama
• Heath Ledger and Bernie Mac lead Yahoo’s dead people category

I wonder if they could port this to a desktop app using Adobe AIR as it would allow everything to be contained inside the app instead of opening windows for each current chat. The new AIM Express also allows for text messaging using SMS for friends that are offline.

AOL also announced the launch of an updated Windows Mobile client. The new client includes ads from AOL’s Platform-A division.

Other companies in the Web IM and chat space include current CN sponsor eBuddy and Meebo.

The first company to use the new affiliate widget setup is Ticketmaster. The widget is named "EventEngine" and will allow for customization of specific events.

AOL acquired Goowy in February of 2008 and buy.at also in early 2008. I still believes that widgets will change the advertising landscape this year.

AOL has brought together nine sports bloggers as the initial content team members. Content from other AOL properties will be added over the coming months including a Truveo video search. There’s also an Olympics section which appears to drive users back to the main AOL Latino Web site.

AOL has apparently had a round of cuts and changes in their blog network which began last month. Interesting to see AOL launch a new blog when some writers may be writing for free.

One thing I note is that while Marshall notes that publishers will be pushed into Advertising.com, the email also mentions, "Your advertising.com representative…will follow up with you next week to discuss your inventory monetization options moving forward." This looks like there’s no guarantee what the publishers will end up with.

David Kaplan at PaidContent spoke with Lynda Clarizio, president of Platform-A. Clarizio disagrees with some of the statements that Marshall made on the VentureBeat piece. Clarizio says the behavioral targeting pricing is the same on Tacoda and Advertising.com. Kaplan has a good look at Tacoda and the changes since they were acquired by AOL a year ago.

As a side note, everyone I know using Advertising.com is happy when they get a campaign paying a dollar cpm.

The other change looks like it was made live today and I’ve embedded a screenshot below. When you sign in (not the initial load as noted above), another window now pops up over the main AOL page that is basically a large search box. The AOL search is "enhanced" by Google. The other options (jobs, images, shopping, etc.) all link to the specific section with the AOL client software.

Considering that the main AOL Web page already features the same search options, I am not sure why they decided to place this popup window on top of the AOL Web page. I’d prefer that they added this as a toolbar on the AOL client software instead. There’s no way to turn off the window permanently, you have to close it every time. It’s big and bulky – certainly not a great usability choice AOL.