Webware Radar: More customization on Google's AdSense
Also: Zugara has launched an online app to design a Twitter background; U2 launched its new album on MySpace; the OpenID Foundation has a new executive director; and ProPay has a new encrypted payment service.
Google announced Friday that AdSense users will now be able to change the font face of the text in its ad units. According to the company's AdSense engineers, users will be able to choose between Arial, Times, and Verdana in their ads, but they will only be applied to units on pages primarily in Latin-based characters.
To customize the ad units, AdSense users will need to visit the "Ad Display Preference" section in their Account settings and select the custom font they want to use for their ad. Once they pick that font, they can update their account and all of their ads will immediately change, as soon as the updated code is copied to their site.
Online app developer Zugara announced Thursday that it has released a new Twitter app called "Free Twitter Designer," which allows users to create "professional-looking" background images for their Twitter profile. The new app is available now for free on the company's site.
Popular rock band U2 launched its new album on MySpace Music Friday. The album, "No Lone On the Horizon," will be available exclusively on the band's MySpace profile page until March 3, at which time it will be released on iTunes and CD. The songs can only be streamed and they cannot be purchased through MySpace Music's download partner, Amazon. I can't help but wonder if this is a response to Thursday's report suggesting the album has cropped up on numerous P2P sites around the Web.
The OpenID Foundation, an organization that attempts to promote and enable OpenID technologies across the Web, has hired a new executive director. According to the organization, Don Thibeau, who was an independent consultant prior to his new role, has taken the reins.
ProPay, a provider of merchant payment solutions and PayPal competitor, announced Friday that it has launched ProtectPay, an encrypted payment card processing and transmission service that it hopes will provide an "end-to-end secure option for processing credit card payments in real time." The tool is available now on all ProPay accounts.