Rajeev Goel, CEO of upstart PubMatic, thinks his company can help print publishers recapture advertising revenue from their glory days.

Print media is dead! Yawn.

Goel says he can boost media companies' online ad revenue. Photo: PubMatic

You’d think media analysts and bloggers would find another catchphrase. This executioner’s call is as tired as Jon and Kate’s tabloid tussles.

So when Rajeev Goel, co-founder and CEO of PubMatic, told me that not only would print publications survive, but he knew how they could, he definitely got my attention.

PubMatic offers what it calls "real-time ad price prediction technology." In other words it lets publishers of premium content (read: traditional magazine and newspaper companies) decide in real time which ad networks on which to sell unused advertising inventory.

Others, including Google's (GOOG) DoubleClick and the Rubicon Project, make similar promises. But Goel touts that PubMatic is the only advertising optimization company completely devoted to publishers, pushing his close competitors into a separate category. Not to mention he’s doing this all in real-time.

Still not convinced? I wasn’t either. But Goel says his two-year-old company has already been able to increase publishers’ advertising revenue from 30% to 70%. (In one case, PubMatic was able to catapult revenue by 300%.) He only charges a 15% commission fee.

We sat down with Goel to see how he thinks PubMatic can help the ailing print industry.

Fortune: What trends and mistakes do you think publishers are making in choosing ad networks? More

Google-approved Conversion Rate Experts use statistical analytics and gumshoe tactics to help sites boost online revenue

By L. Michael Cacace, Senior list editor

Blanks, left, and Jesson help websites convert online visitors into buyers. Photo: CRE

If you think it takes a rocket scientist to improve your corporate website, you would be correct.

Conversion Rate Experts, a London- and New York-based company founded by Ben Jesson, 30 years old, and Karl Blanks, a 37-year-old former rocket scientist (really!), guarantees to increase substantially the revenue generated by a company’s website. Google (GOOG) thought so much of their methods that the online ad giant named CRE one of the first authorized consultants for Google Website Optimizer, a testing tool that helps sites figure out how to improve sales.

How is it possible to “convert” more website viewers into buyers? Jesson says his company has developed techniques that systematically analyze the behavior of a website’s viewers. Basically, it is a combination of multivariate statistical analysis and good old-fashion detective work.

First, CRE determines the website’s current conversion rate. For example, if 95 out of 100 visitors to the website leave without buying anything, the current conversion rate is only 5%. CRE then examines and analyzes the data of those 95 visitors to understand why they did not take action. More

Josh James' Omniture can tell you how many people click on your Web site, and how long they stay.  But is his company worth $1.8 billion?

Sweat beaded up behind his Gucci glasses as he thought back a dozen years to his company's early days, when he and his co-founder maxed out on student loans and hawked wedding gifts to buy computers. He remembered the time in 2000 when he agreed to a sale that fell through – and his trip to the Nasdaq Stock Exchange six years later to ring the bell when the company finally went public.

Read the rest of the story here.

At least one company is making money off of social networking. The game developer behind 'FarmVille' and 'Mafia Wars' has seen its web-based games take off – and deliver profits.

Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga

On any given day 500,000 tractors are sold on the Internet. But don't start buying stock in John Deere or Caterpillar just yet. These are $20 "virtual" tractors that belong to the 50 million players of FarmVille, the largest and fastest-growing social game on the Internet.

Social games are free online applications accessed through sites such as MySpace and Facebook. If you've spent any time on either site you're probably familiar with titles such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Caf World. All three games, which rank among the top five games played daily on Facebook, were developed by San Francisco-based Zynga, one of the tech sector's most talked-about companies these days.

Behind the buzz: Annual revenue at the two-year-old firm is likely to surpass $100 million this year, prompting speculation that the company — backed by the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and PayPal cofounder-turned-investor Peter Thiel — will soon go public. The software company also has managed to do something that other hot online brands such as Twitter and Facebook have not: Zynga has found a way to make social networking profitable.

Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, who also started social-networking site Tribe.net and software company SupportSoft (SPRT), which eventually went public. (The name Zynga is a misspelled tribute to his deceased American bulldog, Zinga.) While many of his Web 3.0 peers rely on advertising and sponsorship for revenue, Pincus makes its money by getting gamers to buy virtual goods, like tractor fuel or land in the case of FarmVille, that enable players to build bigger farms at a faster rate.

By developing games on social networks, Zynga is able to capitalize on the viral nature of the platform. (Zynga estimates it has 70 million monthly unique visitors.) Gamers can invite friends to join them in the game, and they can send updates on their progress to their friends, stoking interest. More

The trouble with being number one in any industry is that you have nowhere to move but down. Few companies know this better than Nokia (NOK), the Finnish telecommunications giant that has dominated cell phones for so long that in some parts of the globe the brand itself has become synonymous with the device. More

As the launch of Windows 7 approaches, one executive ponders the relevance of the OS.

By Richard Muirhead, chairman and CEO, Tideway Systems

Muirhead argues that operating systems are evolving. Photo: Tideway

The perception is that operating systems are dying. In truth, they are evolving.

For years we’ve witnessed wars waged among major operating system vendors, with computer purchases hanging in the balance. Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows was a household name for people who didn’t know what an operating system was, its popularity growing from the use of well-known, everyday applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint that other operating systems didn’t have.

Increasingly, that war is now over and irrelevant.  Users can access similar applications more cheaply, simply and wherever they are directly via their Web browser – whether it’s Google’s (GOOG) Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or something else – leaving them little reason to care what operating system is supporting them.

Today’s winning sales pitch to the end is all about usability, flexibility and a complete solution.

So are operating systems dead? Not really. More

Conglomerate invests money – and its considerable resources – in young energy firms.

By Marc Gunther, contributing editor

GE's Urquhart offers startups cash and connections. Photo: GE

When A123 Systems (AONE), a startup company that makes advanced lithium-ion batteries, had a successful initial public offering last month, one of the big winners was General Electric (GE).

That’s because A123 Systems is by far the biggest holding of a venture capital fund run by GE that invests in energy startups. Over six rounds of funding, GE had invested $69 million in A123, which makes batteries for cars, trucks, buses, utilities and consumer products, like Black & Decker tools.

Today, GE is A123’s biggest shareholder and its stake in the company is worth about $190 million.

With little fanfare, GE’s venture fund has been investing in a broad variety of energy startups since 2006. Most of the investments are small—so far, GE has invested about $160 million in 20 companies. More

Get ready for a new kind of hands-on computing: Thoroughly touchable apps

Microsoft (MSFT) launches its newest operating system, Windows 7, on Oct. 22, and one of the most-talked about aspects of the release will be its ability to support multi-touch applications.

Users of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone may shrug. After all, they already use their index fingers to effortlessly flick through their contacts, and they can "pinch" and expand photos with their thumbs and forefingers.

But Windows 7 will enable users to simultaneously use all ten fingers on their screens, a capability that should unleash a new wave of cool applications–and ultimately change the way some consumers interact with their devices.

"We will start to develop a language between us and computers that's very intuitive," says Amichai Ben-David, CEO of N-trig, a private company that makes technology that is integrated into computer screens to make them touchable. N-trig, based in Kfar Saba, Israel, counts Microsoft as one of its investors. More

Company wants to make its Flash technology available everywhere — and that means penetrating mobile devices.

Flash is coming to most mobile phones - except the one that starts with "i." Image: Adobe

Flash is finally coming to your smartphone—and so is Adobe (ADBE). With today's launch of the newest version its software, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, the San Jose-based company is making an aggressive push to get its product onto any gadget that allows for web browsing–Blackberry devices, netbooks, increasingly even TVs.

Crucially, Adobe has signed on a number of key launch partners for the product including Google (GOOG) and Research in Motion (RIMM). By the first half of next year, consumers can expect Flash on nearly every smartphone operating system including Google’s Android, Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian, Palm’s (PALM) webOS and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile.

This is great for developers, who have long had to use different software to make their applications work on different devices. And it’s even better for consumers, for whom web browsing will get faster and more consistent regardless of the device. More

Online sample-sale company tries to bring its model to luxury travel

Ready to jetset? This may be the site for you. Image: Jetsetter

At the Cotton House, one of only two hotels on the tiny Isle of Mustique, warm breezes drift in from the Caribbean, which is always in view. As you nibble on caviar and sip champagne at dusk, the only sounds are those of the waves gently breaking and a jazz singer crooning in the distance.

Daydreaming at work? Or maybe you just logged in to Jetsetter, a website launching later today that brings exclusive luxury travel within closer reach.

Jetsetter tells Fortune Brainstorm Tech exclusively that it aims to bring high-end travel online by adopting the model of its parent company, Gilt Groupe, a members-only shopping site featuring daily deals, or “flash-sales,” on limited quantities of designer goods. More