By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher

ZDNet, where I now also blog, knows how to monetize my work. I'm useless at it, or perhaps just squeamish: I just can't bring myself to turn on the banner ads, the flashing ads, the ads that burst onto your screen if you accidentally mouse over to an interesting headline.

And then you have to find out where to click to close the annoying advertisements, so that you can see the news story under it.

It's too much work, too many clicks for the reader. I hate it, so why should I subject my readers to it?

You will not see (much of) such crude commercialization here. I'm resisting the ad networks, the Google AdSense, the Yahoo publisher network, and, a plethora of other advertising and RSS networks that are springing up faster than ever. I will work with some of the ad networks but I am picky.

Green Links

You will begin to see more ads on SVW, because my landlord says he needs to eat. I told him he looks a lot better having lost a few pounds, and he says he feels better too and has more energy.

But he says his mortgage banker needs to eat (ah, the tangled monetary web that we weave...)

Innovative Sponsors Needed

When it comes to advertising, I'd rather work with companies that would like to be innovative, try different things, and I've got a ton of ideas and challenges if that sort of thing appeals to you.

For example, let's turn the space occupied by a banner advert into something different, something useful. I don't know what that might be yet, but I have some ideas, and you have some too--that's where the innovation comes into play.

Are you feeling innovative? Call me, my cell is four one 5 33 six 7547.

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Here is my ZDNet blog.