by Vera H-C Chan Shades of Tea Party? Searches for the " don't tread on me flags " (AKA the Gadsden flag) are flying up 772%, as are lookups for the motto, " don't tread on me " (+334%). Watch for those rattlesnakes.

Scene: A college classroom

Professor: So. Out of the 20 students in the class, half wrote WordPress Summer of Code proposals good enough to receive an A. How many of you are planning to apply for the program?

Jack, a student: I am. They opened applications today.

Sophie, a student: I am. And that sentence was grammatically terrible.

Jack: Shut up.

Chris, a student: I’m not applying.

Jack (to Chris): Chicken?

Sophie: You’re such a jerk! Maybe he has a job lined up or something, did you ever think of that?

Professor: Whoa -

Chris: Actually, I’m going backpacking in Australia with my Dad. No internet for about half the time, and when I emailed the people at WordPress they said I should probably wait until next year to apply and make sure I’d be able to be online through the whole summer.

Professor: Fair enough. The application period opens today at 19:00 UTC and goes through April 9th, so let’s hear from the people who are applying.

Jack: I’m submitting mine today.

Sophie: That’s just stupid.

Andrea, a teacher’s assistant: Hey, that’s not necessary.

Jack: Yeah! The early bird gets the worm, or hadn’t you heard?

Sophie: What I heard was that the WordPress mentors are holding open IRC chats this week to talk to prospective students and give them feedback on proposals and ideas, and that talking directly to the mentors ups your chances of being selected. But I guess you don’t think you need the people who are actually choosing the students to know your name because your proposal is so brilliant?

Jack’s jaw drops.

Jack: Where did you hear that? It wasn’t on the GSoC mailing list.

Sophie: I joined the wp-hackers list and asked all the core contributors for feedback on my idea, and then I emailed 3 potential mentors to see what they thought of it personally. By the time applications are due, I’ll have revised it based on community and mentor feedback, and enough people will know who I am — and that I’m full of initiative — that my chances of being accepted will be much better.

Jack: You think you’re all Felicia Day with your MW2 level 70, but you’re just a computer nerd.

Sophie: Um, duh. We’re in an advanced computer programming class. We’re all computer nerds.

Professor: Now, now. Sophie’s correct; talking to community members and mentors will improve her chances. But, Jack, there’s no reason you can’t join the IRC chats and the mailing list to get your name out there, too, even if you submit your application today. Most proposals get tweaked a bit after the students are chosen anyway.

Sophie: Plus, Felicia Day is awesome! And she uses WordPress, so ha!

End Act II.

Here’s the deal. The application period opens today. Early applications will likely get a bit more attention up front, but it’s also important that your ideas and approach are vetted by the community and the mentors. If you haven’t already, you should join the wp-hackers mailing list and send your proposal to the list for feedback. We’ll also be doing a few IRC chats during the application period to give students a chance to talk directly with the mentors. Note that not every mentor will attend all three chats, so if you want to talk to a specific person, you might want to email them. Please arrive on time to the chats, as they will be scheduled for an hour, and will have to accommodate multiple students. IRC chats will be held at irc.freenode.net in room #wordpress-gsoc.

• Wednesday, March March 31 at 20:30 UTC (4:30pm eastern)
• Saturday, April 3 at 21:30 UTC (5:30pm eastern)
• Tuesday, April 7 at 20:30 UTC (4:30pm eastern)

This chat room will remain open during the application period, and various mentors and community members may be there and able to answer questions, but the scheduled chats are the only official times at which they are scheduled to do so.

Oh, and if you want to help publicize the WordPress summer of code, grab a flyer and post it somewhere on a bulletin board at your local college campus. Professors, don’t forget to encourage your brightest students to apply!

Last week, we saw some interesting findings from AdMob about smartphone usage. Now Compete has shared some of its own findings with WebProNews. The firm recently conducted a Smartphone Intelligence Survey. About 47% of T-Mobile smartphone users use their phones to find local branches and ATMs, while 45% of AT&T users and 36% of Sprint users reported doing this (see chart #1 for data). According to the survey, 34% of T-Mobile users use their phones to pay bills,

Internet Broadcasting has introduced a new collapsible ad unit it calls the "IB Hover Ad", aimed at giving online advertisers more visibility while allowing for user control. The hover ad is anchored to the bottom of a user's browser, with an above the fold presence even when the user scrolls up and down a Web page. The ad can be minimized by the user at any time, leaving a branded button at the bottom of the screen that can be expanded or closed.

Microsoft adCenter will undergo scheduled maintenance this Saturday, April 3, from approximately 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM Pacific Time. During the maintenance window, ads will deliver as normal, but you will not be able to make any changes to your campaigns.

We are planning system maintenance on Saturday, April 3, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific time. During this time you will not be able to make campaign updates via the API or the Web. You will still be able to make API reporting calls during this time. During the maintenance window, your ads will deliver as normal. Also, during the maintenance, any scheduled campaign updates may take an additional two to four hours to go into effect.

We're starting this Spring Break week off with a very rare guest post from TopRank Marketing client, Jiyan Wei. Jiyan is Director of Product Management at Vocus, Inc. where he drives product platform strategy and roadmap execution for PRWeb. I've presented on panels with Jiyan several times at search marketing conferences, talking about the virtues of search, social media and public relations, finding him to be a very strategic and smart marketer.

It's fair to say that most of us are running Google Analytics on at least a few of the sites we deal with. Market share for Google's traffic tracking platform was estimated last year around 75-80% in a few separate studies - here's one from Ghostery . Let's not get into the whole "Google knows too much" thing. The truth is, the platform is a pretty solid and user-friendly. (Even if it is the lure of an evil empire.

Imagine that you are a salesperson for a shoe store. There are three potential customers in the store - an athletic male, a professionally dressed female, and a rugged outdoorsman. Approach #1: You tell all three potential customers that you have 100% authentic Australian made Ugg Boots at discounted prices. Approach #2: You tell the athletic male that Nike running shoes on sale. You tell the professional female that designer pumps are on special this week only.

It is always fun to discover new and new possibilities of well-known tools. I already shared one tip on how Twitter favorites may help you better understand what your friends like and build closer relations with them. This week I am sharing two more interesting uses of Twitter favorites: Subscribe to Your (or Anyone's) Friends' Favorites Would you like to keep track of what your friends are adding to favorites on Twitter?