This week saw the release of a new product from Google, their web browser Chrome.

I downloaded and installed Chrome and tried it out on a few sites and applications I use a lot. One of them, of course, is OpenX, and it works fine there. What I like is that you can create a so called ‘application short cut’ that sits as an icon on your desktop. When you click that icon, the browser opens with almost no clutter, so you get maximum work space for the application.
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OpenX have released version 2.6.1 of the OpenX ad server product. According to the blog post, there are no less than 58 bug fixes and enhancements. There have been some reports of people having problems with upgrades from OpenX 2.4 to 2.6.0, and this new fix release should be an answer to those problems. Also fixed is the issue where targeting channels for websites could be created but not used when defining delivery limitations on banners.

Starting today, I’m offering a fixed price OpenX 2.6 Upgrade Service. I’ve been doing upgrades for a long time now, but with the demand for this service increasing, I decided it was time to put together a complete description of what I do when performing an upgrade, what the conditions are, and how the procedure works in detail.

Yesterday the Openads OpenX team announced a new name for their company and the software. OpenX is the name now, and they say it’s not going to change again. If you’ve changed your name once, what’s stopping you from doing it again? Nothing, really. So even though I was initially somewhat surprised, I tried to look at it from some distance and understand this name change.

The software started it’s life about 10 years ago as ‘phpAds’. After a while it was given a new breath of air and obviously it was not so strange to call it ‘phpAdsNew’. It was hard to pronounce, that’s true. So people started calling it PAN. Then, in late 2006 if I recall correctly, the name was changed again when Max Media Manager (a fork or branch of phpAdsNew) was joined with PAN to again get a new lease on life. Openads was born. I think the latest name change to OpenX adds a little bit of mystery and anticipation, but I do agree with some people saying it’s harder to tell from the name what the software is really for.

There is a very practical reason why OpenX is a better name than Openads, by the way. There are ad blockers on the market (built in to browsers or as separate programs) that block just about anything with the word ‘ad’ or ‘ads’ in the URL. And since people often installed Openads in a folder called ‘openads’ on their site, they were more or less jelling out at these ad blockers to come block their ad content. OpenX is probably less vulnerable to that problem, at least in the short term. I’ve been saying to users and clients all along not to name the folder after the product. And this name change serves as a strong reminder of my point.

I want to wish OpenX (the software and the company) the best of luck with the new name, because after all, it’s just a name!