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2006-09-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

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Crazy Egg Launched - Visitor Clicks Visualized Now

2006-08-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

Crazy Egg, the highly anticipated click tracking service from ACS, launched today. With Crazy Egg, users install a code on their website to track every click a visitor makes on links, forms, advertisements, and flash documents. Results can be displayed in either an overlay or heatmap form giving the user a visual on click activity around the website. This kind of data is very useful for website owners as it can help them learn how their visitors navigate their website and how they can improve and optimize its usability.

Before we get started, let me explain how Crazy Egg works. Crazy Egg can be setup on any website, whether it be a static or dynamic site (blogs included), and is to be used as a tool to test your websites click activity. When setting up a site, you set a length of time for your test session and Crazy Egg will then provide you with a code to insert in your sites body. The next time someone visits your site and clicks on a link, input to a form, advertisment, or flash document, Crazy Egg will record its position. You then can view the click reports during and after the testing session.

The first page you will see when logging in is the Dashboard (Note: numbers blurred in the above screenshot are from a master Crazy Egg test account and are not all in relation to my site). This is where you get an overview of all your pages that you are watching with Crazy Egg. It is also where you go to add a page to your account for testing. Each page listed provides you with details on when the page was last tested, how many tests you have ran, and its current status (actively running or not). Selecting a page from the list will make a new area slide down providing you with a screenshot of the site and basic statistics including number of visits and clicks during the testing duration. To get to the more detailed reports showing the overlay and heatmap, click on the “View Results” button of any page listed.

Viewing a pages report will bring you to a new section of Crazy Egg with a toolbar at the top and your site right below. At default, the overlay reporting method will be shown and if clicks have already been recorded, you will see colored markers around the site. These markers point out where the clicks have been made and will be colored based on the percentage of clicks (blue for low percentage, red for high percentage). Selecting a marker will border the clicked object and pop open a little percentage bar showing the amount of clicks made on that object. You can also open all markers at once by selecting the gear icon on the toolbar and clicking, “open all.”

The next reporting method is, List. Selecting the list button on the toolbar will have a box slide down that will show a table listing all objects that have been clicked. Sorted by the amount of clicks, each row will show the element clicked, what type of element it is (a, strong, span, etc.), the amount of clicks, and the percentage of clicks. Viewing results in the list format makes it very easy for you to quickly grab the names of the most clicked elements, or least clicked, and makes for a quick overview, which at times is easier to view then markers around the site.

The last method, and my favorite method, for viewing results is using the heatmap option. Heatmaps are commonly seen in usability tests and eye tracking tests where the site is overlayed with a grey layer showing high concentrated areas in bright colors ranging from blue to red. Crazy Egg decided to use the same technique to show what elements are most clicked. Blue colored areas have a low percentage of clicks, while red colored areas have a high percentage of clicks. Using the heatmap makes it very easy for you to see what elements around your site receives the most attention and what areas of your site may need some improvement.

Now, let’s say that based on the results from the reports, you made some changes to your website and you want to start another test. This is no problem and Crazy Egg makes this very easy for you. Head over to the Dashboard and select your page. You will see a link below the page name that says, “test a new version.” Clicking this will bring you to a form where you can enter the amount of time you want your new test to run and click save. You will then be directed back to the dashboard where you will see that your page has multiple tests. On the right, after selecting the page, you will see the most recent test on top with the older ones following below allowing you to easily view results for any test you have had under that page.

Crazy Egg offers four plans to choose from when signing up ranging from Free to $99/month. For some, the free plan is all that will be needed as it allows for tracking 5,000 visits/month with 2 pages, which I feel is plently for basic website testing. One downside with the free account is that statistics wont be shown in real-time (live reporting). On the other hand, it may get a little pricy but offering 25,000-250,000 monthly visitors and unlimited pages with live reporting.

All in all, Crazy Egg is a great product providing helpful data to any website owner. I’ve been anticipating its launch since I first learned about it on TechCrunch and Mashable back in March, and I must say, it was well worth the wait. I’m impressed with how simple Crazy Egg makes it for website owners to visualize visitor click activity. You can use Crazy Egg for testing new designs, structure changes, ad placement, page content, and more. Based on results, website owners can learn how visitors see their site and how they should improve it. I will definitely be using this for all future usability tests.

Crazy Egg
Source: Solutionwatch

Tags: Web2.0, Crazyegg, Techonlogy

Windows Live Contacts Beta Launched

2006-08-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

Today George Moore, GM of Windows Live, announced the Windows Live Contacts Gadget beta at the Microsoft TechEd 2006 conference, in Auckland New Zealand (I'm here at the conference courtesy of Microsoft NZ). Live Contacts provides programmatic access to a user's contact list, providing secure access to 400+ M active users with 12B contact records. The user is in full control over their personal data, George said.

Here's the official word:

"Learn how, with nothing more than a little JavaScript, you can allow customers to use their Windows Live Contacts (Hotmail/Windows Live Mail and Messenger contacts) directly from your Web site."

For more, check out the developer info and two working samples. MS developer Danny Thorpe notes:

"The contacts gadget is client-side JavaScript that enables end users to use their Windows Live contacts (from Windows Live Mail/Hotmail and Messenger) with third party (non-Microsoft) web sites, conveniently and securely. The gadget works with any web server, most browsers, and doesn't require reams of license or partnership paperwork with Microsoft. You don't have to assimilate your web server into the Microsoft collective in order to play with Windows Live contact data."

You can also show your contacts on a map using MS Virtual Earth, as per below:

Windows Live Stats

George Moore also told the conference attendees some stats of the current MS active audience - 240M Hotmail users, 230M Messenger, 72M Spaces, 8M mobile subscribers. He tells the mostly developer crowd at TechEd that "this is the audience that can be reached by Windows Live services." He goes on to say that at any one moment, 20M people are simultaneously connected on Messenger and 5.7 Billion messages are sent per day. Also there are 300M F2F video conversations on Messenger every month. George said Spaces is "now the largest blogging service on the planet" (RM: so it's bigger than blogger.com?) - it grew to 30M accounts in its first 6 months.

Source: Readwriteweb

Google developing social and interactive television applications for 'mass personalization'

2006-08-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

Google Research has proudly announced it won “Best Paper” award for its Interactive TV work presented at the Euro Interactive Television Conference held in Greece recently. The Google research, “Social and Interactive Television Applications Based on Real-Time Ambient Audio Identification,” is:

focused on using broadcast viewing to automatically present relevant information on a web browser…how to sample the ambient sound emitted from a TV and automatically determine what is being watched from a small signature of the sound…The system could keep up with users while they channel surf, presenting them with a real-time forum about a live political debate one minute and an ad-hoc chat room for a sporting event in the next. And, all of this would be done without users ever having to type or to even know the name of the program or channel being viewed.

Taking this further, we could collect snippets from the web describing the actors appearing in a movie or present maps of locales within the movie as it takes place (no matter if users are watching it as a live broadcast or as a recoded broadcast).

The Google research, produced by Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja, of Google, in collaboration with Michael Fink, of Hebrew University, presents four applications for personalizing broadcast content and making it more interactive and social:

Personalized content layers
Ad hoc social peer communities
Real-time popularity ratings
Virtual media library services, or TV-based bookmarks

The proposed framework for combining mass media with a highly personalized Web-based experience “listens” to ambient audio and connects the viewer with services and related content on the Web via three-components:

a client-side interface
an audio-database server
a social-application Web server

Will we soon see Google ITV? Join the conversation: "Talk Back" below to share your thoughts.

Source: ZDNET

Blogger New Features

2006-08-17T01:10:00.001-07:00

Customize your template

Create the blog you’ve always wanted with new page elements and font and color options.
Drag and drop page elements to customize your blog’s design in a snap.

Create a private blog

Want to share your thoughts with just family and friends, not the whole world? The new Permissions tab in Settings makes it easy to control who can view and contribute to your blog.

Add authors so multiple people can post to your blog.
Choose who can view your blog just by adding their email address.

Fresh new templates

We’ve added a bunch of new templates created by some of the web’s most talented designers.

More feed options

We’ve added some additional feed options for our more advanced users. Now you can have a feed for all the comments on your blog, and even individual feeds for all the comments on each separate post. We’ve also added support for the RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 standards.

Updated Dashboard

The new Dashboard makes it easier to check your blog’s activity and gives you one-click access to the most common blog management tasks.

Instant publishing

Say goodbye to the dreaded “Publishing…” spinner. Now, when you make a new post or change any of your settings, your blog is updated and changes go live immediately; you don’t have to remember to republish.

YouTube and Google - monetize music

2006-08-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

Music was the impetus for the MySpace explosion and now YouTube and Google are both getting ready to leverage music as well. YouTube says it’s aiming to put every music video ever made on its site, a move that would take it further from both its genesis as a site for home made clips and a magnet for copyrighted works. EMI and Warner have confirmed that they are discussing the prospect with YouTube, acording to Gigaom.

Presumably a stockpile of legal content would raise the price YouTube could command for advertisements on the site, but licensing the content could be an expensive gamble for a company already spending an estimated $1 million each month on bandwidth. The company says it wants to provide every music video ever made within one to two years. That could be very expensive.

YouTube has raised at least $11.5 million from Sequoia Capital. CEO Chad Hurley said yesterday that the site is already making “significant revenue,” and is more interested in brand driven advertising and mobile extensions than in search driven ads or combining ads and video clips.

I question whether music videos will have the driving power that viral video has for YouTube; staged, familiar footage seems likely to be watched once and unlikely to be passed on to others.

Meanwhile Google unveiled today their own music play, focused on analytics. Google Labs has launched Google Music Trends, a section of Google Trends tracking music listened to by users of Google Talk in iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player or Yahoo Music Engine. It’s an opt-in system that tracks both individually and in aggregate. The listings and search results are all accompanied by opportunities to purchase music. Google Trends was launched in May, along with the other projects like the Google Notebook and Google Co-op.

Recommendations seem likely in the future and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google take Music Trends beyond Google Talk and challenge the business models of companies like Pandora, Last.fm, MyStrands and others. . Users cannot currently listen to music directly through Google Music Trends.

To me the Google Labs experiment seems smart, while the YouTube music video strategy seems risky. It’s also not a sealed deal, or series of deals, by any means.

Google, YouTube

Tags: Web2.0, , video, music, Techonlogy

Google acquires Neven Vision

2006-08-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

Google acquires biometric company Neven Vision

Google announced today that they have brought biometric and photo recognition company Neven Vision into the Google fold. Neven Vision has patents on technology ranging from photo analysis to face recognition in video files to several patents for facial capture for avatar animation. Sounds like a fascinating partnership. The company is heavily focused on mobile phones and also offers a product to deliver coupons to mobile devices, something I was hoping would be included with today’s Google Maps coupon announcement.

Google was previously interested in aquiring photo recognition company Riya, but in the end did not. Riya has since expanded its focus beyond facial recognition.

Google says that it will use the newly acquired technology to extract information from photos, though it says that facial recognition in particular may be available “some day.” Gigaom’s Lizz Gannes points out that the LAPD already uses Neven Vision’s technology to recognize gang members. Investors in the company include Anthem Venture Partners and Zone Ventures. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.

Interesting update: as of midnight PST almost all the links on the Neven Vision site are now bringing up Google 404s.
Google

Tags: Web2.0 , Google, NevenVision, Technology

Google Talk Birthday comes with an Music Trends

2006-08-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

Google Talk, which is celebrating its first birthday with an upgrade, will let people easily transfer files and leave other people voice mail beginning Wednesday.

Now people who use the instant messaging and voice chat service will be able to click a "send file" button, choose which document, photo or other file to send, and transmit it through a chat window as a thumbnail that can be displayed in full size.

People also can leave each other voice mail by either initiating a call that is then unanswered or without initiating a call and going straight into voice mail. Users of Gmail, Google's e-mail service, can play the voice mail without having to download anything. But people who use other e-mail software will have to download the MP3 voice mail attachment to hear it.

Another new feature allows Google Talk users to indicate to their friends what music they are listening to via their status message. The new features will initially be available only in the English language version.

Google Talk is a key piece of the search giant's strategy to make it easy for people not only to search for any kind of information in any location, but also to communicate with each other in various ways online.

"We are investing in a real-time communications platform. Google Talk is the first instance of that," said Mike Jazayeri, a Google Talk product manager.

Google Talk competes with popular chat applications from AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. Last month, Yahoo opened its latest Yahoo Messenger with Voice, with nearly 200 plug-ins, to the public. Microsoft publicly launched its new Windows Live Messenger in June and added drag-and-drop file sharing and automatic contact updating.

As part of a $1 billion Google investment for a 5 percent stake in AOL, Google and AOL will make their chat services interoperate. Jazayeri said he could not provide a time line for when that might happen. Google is already interoperable with services that use the open XMPP, or "Jabber," chat standard, he said.

Meanwhile, Yahoo and Microsoft made their chat services interoperable last month.

Hooray! The new Google Talk features (file sharing, voicemail, and music status) have completed testing and are now available to everyone. Just use Google Talk normally, and it will auto-update to the new version over the next few days. If you just can't wait, you can download the new version directly. Each of the new features will be discussed here shortly, but I'm going to cover file transfer.

File and photo sharing (file transfer) in Google Talk works like you'd expect: Simple, fast, and fun. Simplicity means that you can drag and drop one or more files directly onto a chat window. As soon as your friend clicks 'Accept', the bits will start flowing. When the transfer completes, the recipient can open the file or find it on disk with a single click.

File transfer is fast. Google Talk makes a direct connection to your friend's computer whenever possible, enabling the fastest speed available. And even if your super-secure firewall won't allow a direct connection, we'll still get it there at a decent speed, because we're nice like that.

Photo sharing is fun! When you drop up to 10 photos on Google Talk, smaller previews automatically appear right inside the chat window, so you can chat about them right away. The previews adjust to the size of your chat window, so just enlarge the window when you want to see more detail. To view the images at full size, or to save them for later, click the 'Download Originals' link.

Google Music Trends

Google just added a new entry into their robots.txt file — "Disallow: /trends/music?". Well, that would naturally get me wondering what they are trying to hide. It turns out they have a new labs project — Google Music Trends.

Where does the data come from? Remember the new feature in Google Talk that lets users display what they are listening to in their status message? The new labs project proudly displays the text: "See what Google Talk users are listening to".

There is also a link that says "Participate in Music Trends" that doesn't have any content yet — but I'm guessing it will take you to a Google Talk download page eventually.

Update:

Google just released a new version of the testers version of Google Talk which explicitly asks your permission to share information with this new labs project. See screenshot below.

Google, Google Talk, Talk, File sharing, Voice Mail, Google Music Trends, File transfer, Photo sharing

Webshots relaunch

2006-08-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

There won’t be tagging, but CNet’s photosharing site Webshots is adding a number of features reminiscent of Flickr and getting a whole new look. The relaunch will occur some time in late August, but an alpha site is up here. The site currently looks straight out of the 90’s, it will be interesting to see how established users react to the redesign.

The Webshots team told Premium users in an email today that at relaunch Webshots users will be able to comment on each other’s photos. Premium users will have their accounts increased from 5,000 images total, with the limit being bumped up 500 images each month in the future future. Photo quality will be improved, information about the type of camera used for each photo will be included and advertising space will be decreased. Users will also be able to see aggregate stats and comments on their personal Webshots pages.

Webshots was purchased by CNet from Twofold Photos, Inc. in 2004 for approximately $70 million dollars. Webshots reports having 26 million registered users posting 85,000 images a day in online photo albums. For comparison, Yahoo! Photos is reported to have 30 million users, Photobucket reports having 19 million users and Flickr approximately 2.5 million. It’s clear who’s the trendsetter here, though, and that’s liable to continue with innovations like Flickr’s rumored drag and drop geotagging in the works.

Webshots

Tags: TechCrunch, Web2.0, , Webshots, Flickr, photos, photosharing

Google calls click fraud estimates overblown

2006-08-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Google is fighting back against what it says are exaggerations in industry estimates of click fraud in its bread-and-butter pay-per-click advertising system.

In a report released Tuesday, the search giant disputes claims made by third-party companies that sell services designed to combat fraudulent clicks--clicks that aren't from legitimate Web surfers seeking information from a given ad. Those companies have estimated that the proportion of advertisers paying for fraudulent clicks is as high as 35 percent.

But in a report titled "How Fictitious Clicks Occur in Third-Party Click Fraud Audit Reports," Google says the figures are often inflated because the companies are counting clicks that were never made on Google AdWords advertisements. (Google's 17-page report can be accessed on the company's Inside AdWords Blog.)

For example, a single AdWords click may appear as five clicks in some reports, leading to the reporting of five fraudulent clicks, according to Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google. Ghosemajumder referenced the Google report during a panel on click fraud at the Search Engine Strategies conference here.

Counting of fictitious clicks can happen when a Web surfer browses more deeply into an advertiser's site and then hits the back button, presses the browser reload button on the landing page or opens a new browser window, causing a reload of the landing page, Ghosemajumder said.

In addition, Google said it found evidence that the third-party reports were inaccurately "counting one advertiser's traffic in another advertiser's report, even if the advertisers span different ad networks," from, say, Google and Yahoo.

The Google report also criticized the third-party reports for using small sample sizes in their analysis, which Ghosemajumder said prohibits advertisers from being able to cross-check the data.

Part of the problem with determining an accurate click fraud rate is that auditors need to see both the traffic conversion data at the Web site and at the search engine company, which Google doesn't provide. Not having both sets of data "makes it difficult for us to marry it all together," said Tom Cuthbert, chief executive of Click Forensics, one of the auditing companies mentioned in the Google report.

"I will stand behind our methodology," Cuthbert said in response to his company's data being criticized in the Google report. "You are Goliath and we are just David down here trying to do what we can...You and I are never going to agree on the methodology."

Google's Ghosemajumder replied that the report does not dispute the methodologies used but concludes that the third-party reports are overcounting clicks, which results in unrealistic estimates of click fraud.

Like the representatives from the other anti-click fraud companies, Jessie Stricchiola, founder of Alchemist Media, said she had not seen Google's report. She pointed out that it took several class-action lawsuits to spur cooperation from Google. "The gloves appear to be off at this point," she said, referring to the contentiousness of the session.

A judge has given final approval to a $90 million settlement of a click fraud lawsuit filed against Google, and a settlement between Yahoo and advertisers is pending.

Stricchiola asked Google what percentage of its AdWords customers it gets data from on advertiser conversion data, a measurement of how many people who click on an ad take a particular action, such as make a purchase. Ghosemajumder said Google does not publicize that information but provides free conversion tracking tools that enable customers to provide that data to Google.

Ghosemajumder and John Slade, senior director of global product management at Yahoo Search Marketing, said the search giants would commit to abiding by third-party independent audits after standards for defining click fraud are enacted.

Google, Yahoo and others announced last week that they are working with the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Media Rating Council on standards for defining and measuring click fraud.

Abhilash Patel, director of Internet Operations at substance abuse treatment center Passages in Malibu, Calif., complained that he sees a "significant amount" of traffic coming to his site from "garbage Web sites" that are created merely to drive traffic to ads or to accomplish other fraudulent purposes, using a practice called "arbitrage."

Patel estimated that 15 percent of the clicks on his organization's ads are fraudulent.

The Google and Yahoo representatives said they kick Web sites off their ad networks if they violate the ethics policies.

Lori Weiman, director of KeywordMax, said that of a small group of customers, her firm found estimates of click fraud in the 8 percent to 10 percent range, but rates as high as 28 percent existed on the extreme end. KeywordMax data was not included in the Google report.

FBI calls for hacker help

2006-08-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS--The FBI needs help from hackers to fight cybercrime, an agency official said Wednesday.

"We need your expertise and input as we develop strategies to battle cybercrime in the 21st century," Daniel Larkin, a unit chief in the FBI's cybercrime division, said in his opening address at the annual Black Hat security conference here.

As cybercrime has continued to become more sophisticated and organized, federal agencies have increasingly sought to partner with the private sector. Earlier this year, FBI Director Robert Mueller used the RSA Conference to send out a similar message.

"The people we're going after are not just the script kiddies anymore. These people are making a lot of money," Larkin told the Black Hat audience of hackers and security professionals. "I am a recovering technophobe; I used to be really afraid of you all. But I realize that you all are really important."

Black Hat draws an increasing number of attendees from law enforcement agencies. This year, Larkin estimated, one in 10 attendees might represent federal agencies, he said. "Be nice to them. They are here to help you; they are here to team up," he said.

Although the government is trying to be nimble, others might know about potential threats before federal agents do, he said. "Critical information on terrorism and cybercrimes could be in your hands and might be in your hands before they reach ours," he said.

The FBI's call for help confirms that it is not equipped to deal with cybercrime, said Tom Thomas, a security consultant from California who is attending Black Hat.

"It is not reassuring," Thomas said. "It confirms what we already suspect. There is great technical inadequacy, if not downright ineptness, at the FBI. Therefore they are, perhaps desperately, seeking help from almost anyone."

To make cooperating with law enforcement worthwhile, the FBI is offering to share information in exchange for help. The FBI has been criticized in the past for going completely silent after a report was filed. "We realize that we need to give back information," Larkin said.

As examples of information sharing, Larkin said that the FBI is working on identity theft with Internet service providers and with merchants on shipping fraud. That way, all players get a better picture of the actual threat, and the FBI can cross-reference data and build better case data, he said.

Google, Yahoo! agree to independent click fraud audits

2006-08-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

As the outcry by advertisers grows louder than the assurances from Google that click fraud is not a substantial problem, representatives from Google and Yahoo! publicly stated today that they would accept independent click fraud audits. Of course the true independence of any audit will need to be closely watched. The pay per click advertising business is a monster - with billions of dollars exchanged annually. Yahoo! has made more than $9 billion since 2004 from all of its online advertising, Google more than $13 billion since 2001.

The day began with Google releasing a controversial 17 page report on click fraud, alleging that many outside observers were over estimating the extent of the problem because of browser behavior. Earlier this week Ask.com, Google, LookSmart, Microsoft and Yahoo! publicly formed a working group with the Interactive Advertising Bureau to establish a set of Click Measurement Guidelines.

At today’s session at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose titled “Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues,” ZDNet’s Donna Bogatin asked point blank whether the search engines would agree to independent audits of the click fraud inside their systems.

Bogatin reports that both John Slade from Yahoo and Shuman Ghosemajumder from Google committed to independent audits in the future. When pressed on a timeline, Slade said such an audit would follow the creation of the Click Measurement Guidelines. Update: If that’s supposed to mean that the industry group that these search engines are participating in is both drawing up the guidlines and providing the independent auditing - that’s obviously not acceptable. I can’t imagine that these companies would be so cynical as to think that anyone would accept that - I can’t imagine that some other party won’t be doing the auditing.

Both Google and Yahoo! are currently dealing with legal action from buyers of advertising that allege they paid for fraudulent clicks on ads. Google has offered to pay $90 million to settle a class action suit. Yahoo! may provide refunds to thousands of customers and pay almost $5 million in attorney fees.

Today’s public acceptance of independent audits shouldn’t come as a surprise given the pressure building, but it may go down as an important turning point in this industry.

MySpace Will Use Google For Search

2006-08-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

News Corporation and Google have reached an agreement in which Google is the exclusive provider of search and text ads for Fox Interactive Media's sites, that include MySpace. "The agreement calls for Google to power web, vertical and site specific search for MySpace.com and the majority of Fox Interactive Media properties. Google will be the exclusive provider of text-based advertising and keyword targeted ads through its AdSense program, for inventory on Fox Interactive Media's network," informs MarketWatch. The pearl of the crown, MySpace, has more pageviews than Google in the US, according to a Hitwise study.

"MySpace.com is a widely acknowledged leader in user-generated content and incorporating search and advertising furthers our mission of making the world's information universally accessible and useful," says Google's Eric Schmidt.

Well, sometimes the quantity is more important than quality.

Google Webmaster tools

2006-08-06T04:06:00.000-07:00

Vanessa Fox have published the last post of Inside Google Sitemaps...

We're surrounded by moving boxes and construction dust. To better reflect our goal to provide tools and information to keep you, the webmasters, informed and help you increase your crawl coverage and visibility on Google, we're renaming Google Sitemaps to Google webmaster tools. The Sitemaps protocol remains unchanged and Sitemaps submission mechanisms and reporting is still available from the Sitemaps tab. We're also renaming our blog and Google Group to be more broadly focused on webmaster topics.

You can find handy links to all the tools, the new blog, Google Group, help center and more from our newly launched Google webmaster central. Join us at the blog's new location at googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com where you'll learn about all the exciting things we're planning. Oh, and please don't forget to update your bookmarks and feed!

So, what's new ?

new name
new design
new RSS feed that you have to add to your RSS reader
... and that's all.

Other features are expected, but for the moment nothing new. And http://www.google.com/webmasters/ does work only in English at this time. I have discovered a kind of "AOL issue" with a tool extract from Sitemaps called "site status wizard" : an example with this blog. But nothing really disturbing.

EDIT : Sorry, I was too fast, or ~~Sitemaps~~ Webmaster tools team too slow. So there is new feature with this update : "preferred domain", downloading query stats, seeing revamped crawl errors, "manage site verification".

Google Webmaster tools

Update on CrunchBoard

2006-08-06T03:46:00.000-07:00

Om Malik has an insightful post about CrunchBoard called “Niche Job Boards Rising” today where he talks about how niche job sites can be successful, and cites Indeed.com stats on demand in the job market - there are 121 job listings per 1000 people in San Jose, and 74 job listings per 1000 in San Francisco, for example.

CrunchBoard has been live for about a day and a half, and so far traffic and postings are very strong. About 60,000 people have visited the site and 43 jobs have been posted.

We’ve also run into some bugs, almost entirely around taking paypal payments (I also have a hilarious email string with paypal customer service that I might post). People are occasionally getting error messages when they complete a payment, although from our end the payment is received and the job posts normally.

After we have a week under our belt I’ll do a full report on the status of the site. And as soon as it is 100% stable we’ll reveal some additional plans we have for the product.

CrunchBoard
Om Malik

Lycos Redesign, and Mail service Updated: 3GB FREE

2006-08-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

Eight years ago, we was reading news like this one

"Separately, Lycos also announced Monday that it began a preview of a new design of Lycos.com which the company said will give users quicker access to the information they want. For the next three weeks, every fifth user visiting the site will see the redesign. Lycos will incorporate user feedback that will be launched after testing is complete.
The redesign offers a reorganized hierarchy that aids in reducing download times. Features include "Smart" Navigation relevant links; triple the number of Web guides; a new look for the Lycos Shopping Center; "drag and drop" personal pages and a simplified layout for its message boards and chat areas."

Now, Techcrunch is spotted that the "New Lycos email tops Gmail in storage, attachment size", i can say more, lycos is trying to catch up, google, yahoo, msn are launching almost twice a month new product or services. We are seeng that Lycos with this update have made a big step forward, in the catch of email supremacy. I`m shure this comeback will be appreciated by old an new lycos mebmers, and i`m shure that the number of vizitators will grow very soon. Currentlyon alexa the traffic Rank for lycos.com: 246

"Lycos announced today that their beta email service now offers 3 GB fre storage and allow attachments of “essentially unlimited” size to be sent and received. Gmail is currently topping out at 2.75 gigs of storage, Hotmail at 250 MB and both limit attachments to 10 MB. For $20 per year, Lycos will up the limit to 5 GB of storage.

Whether Lycos can offer search and spam filtering as good as Gmail’s remains to be seen. It also stands at a disadvantage via Gmail’s integration with the rest of Google’s offerings. Gmail’s tabbed conversations and ability to view a wide variety of file types as HTML are also features Lycos mail lacks. Links clicked in emails at Lycos can be viewed inline, without leaving your email interface - that’s nice. One way or the other, the email wars continue. "

Lycos
Lycos Mail

Meebome Launched.

2006-08-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

Sandy posted today an article about the new launched product meebome.com from Meebo on blog.meebo.com. I consider this tool usefull for some webmasters, maybe for you to. Here is the article:

Since the launch of meebo, we’ve primarily focused on making the experience inside meebo.com a really great one. We’ve taken thousands of emails, hundreds of requests, and even shelled out a few dollars on real, live usability data.

Over the last few months however, we’ve been thinking “outside the box” and exploring ways to expand past traditional IM. Today, you’ll finally see meebo spread beyond meebo.com.

What if you could take IM functionality and put it on any personal web page? (ooh!)

Do you have a MySpace profile? Wanna see who’s visting your page, at that very moment? (yes!)

Are you an up and coming blogger? Would you like to chat with your readers, in real time? (nod nod)

meebo’s really excited to announce the release of “meebo me”, an embeddable IM widget that you can put almost anywhere on the web! It’s a lightweight, simple widget that enables you (in meebo.com) to see the people who are visiting your web page and chat with them if you’d like. It’s pretty easy:

1. Create a widget at meebome.com.
2. Embed the widget on your personal page.
3. Log into meebo.com, watch for visitors (they’ll show up on your buddylist), and chat! For you power users out there (with popular, chatty web sites), we recommend you use FireFox — it’s a bit faster.

It’s a bit experimental (we did some crazy things to get this to work) and probably a bit buggy (please be gentle =p) but we think it’s really cool. It’s the first endeavor meebo has done outside of meebo.com — we’ve had to solve quite a few tricky technical challenges (my oh my) but it’s been a blast.

The team has worked really hard (a high energy bonanza of candy and Coca Cola) and we’re excited to push it live. Simon and I are on the edge our seats, watching for any signs of trouble with the servers and the rest of the team is anxious to hear feedback.

Users have always played a tremendous role in helping tighten the product and we trust that you’ll do the same with meebo me. Please do let us know what bugs you spot and which features you’d like added in the new meebo me section of our forum. With that, I leave you to try out the widget and let us know what you think!

The New Yahoo! Search Crawler (Slurp) Is Online

2006-07-31T09:50:00.000-07:00

David Simpson on yahoo search blog:

We launched a new Yahoo! Search Crawler, Yahoo! Slurp earlier this week. In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

While transitioning to the new crawler over the past few weeks, we had been running both crawlers in tandem. In some cases, this increased the frequency of Yahoo Search requests to websites. Now, with the new crawler in full production, we have turned off the old crawler and site owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.

With this change of behavior in the crawler, you may see some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index and some changes in ranking as well.

The Technology of War

2006-07-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

In their current conflict, both Israel and Hizbullah have employed a surprising array of weapons. Israel has fought Lebanese guerrillas of one stripe or another for decades, but the latest war has allowed both sides to showcase weapons not usually seen on this battlefield.

CLUSTER MUNITIONS

Human Rights Watch photographed piles of cluster artillery shells on the border with Lebanon this week after NEWSWEEK reported that an Israeli reservist said artillery units had begun using the controversial armaments to destroy Hizbullah rocket launchers.

(Human Rights Watch field workers crawled through a meadow and used long-range lenses to photograph an artillery position in northern Israel from where the munitions were being fired. Israel won’t comment on the weapons it is using in Lebanon.)

Cluster shells are large munitions that explode in the air, scattering hundreds of small bomblets across a wide radius.

Military analysts say Israel has added the weapon to its arsenal because militants who launch rockets at the Jewish state are constantly moving, making them hard to target with a pinpoint strike.

“Clusters munitions happen to be fairly good at getting people who use rocket launchers,” says David Isby, a Washington-based defense and foreign-policy consultant. “They cover a large area, and it’s hard to hide from them.”

But because of their wide dispersal, cluster munitions tend to cause more civilian casualties than other armaments. And they have a high dud rate, which means civilians might set off the unexploded bomblets months or years after the end of fighting. Israel, under pressure from the United States, had not used cluster munitions in Lebanon since 1982. But the United States itself has made wide use of clusters in Kosovo and Iraq, setting back efforts to impose an international ban. “We came to the conclusion that the use of cluster munitions caused more civilian casualties than any other weapons system in Iraq during the three weeks of major fighting,” says Steve Goose, who directs the arms division of Human Rights Watch.

GUIDED MISSILES

For military analysts, the biggest surprise of the war has been Hizbullah’s July 15 missile strike on an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast that killed four sailors. Israeli officials said the attack marked the first time Hizbullah had used a guided missile, and they speculated that the Lebanese Army had provided the group with radar data on the location of the warship. So unanticipated was the attack that the Israeli ship had not activated its missile-defense system.

The weapon was identified as a C-802, a missile made in China and imported by Iran during the 1990s. The missile carries its own internal-guidance system, which kicks in during the last stage of flight and helps the missile hone in on its target. Steve Zaloga, a defense analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group, said he was surprised the missile did not destroy the entire ship. “It has a large warhead, and it also has fuel that gets sprayed on the engine of the ship and can cause a very large fire,” he said. “It may be that the missile failed.” Zaloga said firing the C-802 is a complicated task that requires extensive training. “It’s not something you just give to the boy scouts. It takes several months of training and an awful lot of prep work.”

OTHER MUNITIONS

Lebanon has accused Israel of firing white-phosphorous artillery shells at towns in the south. Phosphorous shells are usually used for illuminating the battlefield. When shot directly at a target, they can cause deadly fires. Israel has not responded to the allegation, and rights group say they cannot determine yet if the shells are being used. The United States was heavily criticized for using white phosphorous in its Fallujah battle of November 2004. “There was a big scandal with the use of phosphorous shells against civilians,” says Goose of Human Rights Watch. “If you’re using it against a human target, you’re going to incinerate the person.”

Israel says Hizbullah has at least one unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can be packed with explosives and crashed on a military or civilian site. Analysts say a UAV could find targets much more accurately than the rockets Hizbullah has been firing and could reach deeper into Israeli territory. The weapon, if it exists, so far remains unused.

Google Talk Update

2006-07-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

There’s lots of instant messaging news today. Google isn’t letting the fact that it has less than 1% market share and only 44,000 people used its Google Talk client last month get it down. Tonight they’ve released three significant new features to the product - file transfers, voicemail and music status. Information on all of these features is here.

File Transfers

Files and folders can be sent to Google Talk friends by clicking the “send file” button. There are no limits on file sizes or type, and the recipient will see a preview of the image within the chat session. Both users must be using the actual Google Talk client, however, for this feature to work. See left image below.

Voicemail

Voicemails can now be left for friends who do not answer calls through Google Talk. Unlike File Transfers above, this feature does not require that the friend use the Google Talk client. In that case, they’ll receive an email with the message attached as an audio file. Voicemails can be up to 10 minutes long, and messages can be left for people online without calling them directly by clicking the down arrrow from any profile card or chat window. Voicemail will also automatically kick in after 4 rings. See middle image below.

Music Status

If you are listening to music while logged in to Google Talk, you can show your contacts what you are listening to by selecting “show current music track” from your status drop down menu. This is only for “supported music players” but they do not say what players are supported. See far right image below.

Note that the Google Chat client is, ridiculously, available only for Windows machines.

Google, Google Talk

Netvibes Updates digg module, and introduces Meebo and Alexa modules

2006-07-27T01:10:00.000-07:00

Digg Module Update

Netvibes have upgraded the digg module to better support digg v3. Also, it will now auto refresh, allow you to browse more stories. And it loads faster.

Finally, they also provide some bugfixes for these parts of netvibes:

module closing;
keyboard navigation (make sure it is turned on in Settings);
http://del.icio.us;
module subscription;
mini API;
tab reordering.

Alexa module

Alexa is a website tracking service, based on statistics sent by an Internet Explorer browser toolbar installed on a sampling of Internet users.

You've been a lot to ask for this module and here it is : you will be able to display some colorful Alexa graph trends for up to five sites. To configure the module, just edit it, enter the url of one or more sites you want to see then click on Ok. You can also set a custom title, adjust the size and the range of the line graph.

You can easily switch between three types of traffic information:

Daily traffic rank trend;
Daily page views (per millions);
Daily reach (per millions).

Learn more about traffic on Alexa.

For even more information about the pages, click on the chart to be taken to Alexa.com.

Meebo module

Netvibes and meebo have been working tightly to bring you instant messaging. You will now be able to chat with people on most popular networks: AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.By adding the meebo module will automatically create a new tab so you have enough room for chatting with everybody.

All you have to do then is fill the form with your accounts information. If you have a Meebo account, you will be able to log in multiple networks automatically

You are now ready to chat !

You can safely switch between tabs, your meebo will blink when someone is talking to you on IM

Netvibes
Digg
Alexa
Meebo

Top 5 Strangest Pens

2006-07-26T12:02:00.000-07:00

Top 5 Strangest Pens

Our editors have compiled a list of the “Top 5 Strangest (or Coolest) Pens” for your enjoyment. Which ones are your favorites?

5. Wi-Fi Pen

Made by Informatica, this Wi-Fi pen allows users to detect wireless hot spots within a 50-foot radius — priced at $19.

It also includes a state of the art “writing” feature, allowing you to jot down notes and ideas on pieces of paper, no keyboard or printer required

[Source]

4. USB MP3 Pen

This nifty device not only functions as a pen, but is also a USB flash drive and MP3 player. It boasts 512MB of memory, an FM tuner, built-in microphone, LED indicator, and a shockproof case. Available now for $48 through Brando.

See, you use the voice recorder to record your CFO and CTO in the bathroom talking about embezzling funds—you were hiding in a stall, using the FM radio to pass the time

[Source]

3. Pen Scanner

At $300, the RC800 is a pen-sized scanner with 8MB of internal memory — good for use on magazine articles, newspaper clippings, small photos, and more. There’s also a built-in microSD card slot for memory expansion. Files are easily transferred via USB.

2. Baller Cheating Pen

For those who’ve always wanted a multi-function pen, check out this “Baller Pen”. It features a retractable 6.5″ sheet which can be written on. On the UV coated front side, you’re able to use fine tip markers/sticks while the back side is erasable — perfect for writing on with pencils.

[Source]

1. Pen Calculator

Not the most practical pen calculator, but quite interesting none the less.

A more reasonable application of this technology would be for one to be able to simply write out the problem 65 x 32 = (etc.) and have the calculator voice then answer the question

Latest RSS Compendium - Web Based Readers

2006-07-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

The RSS Compendium is designed to link you to information about RSS readers, resources, tools, etc...

The following is an up to date list of web based RSS readers that I found at allrss.com. There’s a bunch of other RSS information there as well. If you’ve been looking to find one to use; you may find it in this list.

24 Bytes - web-based RSS reader. You can also add your site RSS feed or blog 24eyes Premium RSS Dashboard - dedicated to rapidly empowering e-business by enabling you to view, search and share RSS news feeds and content across the Internet. 24eyes delivers a complete one-stop-shop solution: a ready-made Premium RSS Dashboard that creates a personalized single-point-of-access which delivers a wide range of turnkey content and critical business information. The 24eyes Premium RSS Dashboard is a FREE online service for browsing, searching, subscribing, and sharing RSS news feeds, blogs and rich web content. 24eyes is a window to a whole new world of thousands of news sources and dynamic content that is being created and distributed over the Internet. You can make your own personalized news pages tailored to your unique interests

30 Boxes - created for people looking for a robust yet simple social calendar that is easy to share with family and friends. You can make a calendar, add family and friends as Buddies, share all or parts of your calendar with Buddies, follow your Buddies’ web stuff (like flickr, myspace, webshots, livejournal, any personal blog), customize your calendar’s look and feel, publish some or all of your calendar (put it on your blog)

Aggregato - a web-based RSS feed aggregator organized with tags. Assigning feeds multiple tags makes very flexible display options possible

Alive News - view realtime RSS newsfeeds magically changing by themselves

AlmondRocks - web-based blog aggregator/reader from xblabs

Atiki - Social Feed Mixer - lets you share groups of feeds with other people. You can create your personalised feeds (up to 25 source feeds), adding search queries to filter items, tag these feeds, search them, clone them and much more

Attensa Online - a free Web-based RSS application

Bean Rocket - free RSS and ATOM web based news reader

bigfeeder.com: nü media syndication - search and surf the latest media feeds while integrating the ability to tag any RSS feed or podcast you find

BlinkBits - Imagine the collective Wisdom of ALL mankind on EVERY topic available in the Blink of an Eye… That’s what BlinkBits is trying to achieve using RSS! You can get a Feed on any topic with News, Pics & More from 11.2 billion root sources by entering a keyword plus you can add your feed to any topic, mesh feeds, convert feeds and get any Wikipedia page with updates via an RSS feed

Bloglines - a free service that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and newsfeeds. With Bloglines, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs, and Bloglines will monitor updates to those sites. You can read the latest entries easily within Bloglines. See my shared subscriptions at Bloglines

Blogofy - a customizable RSS feed reader. Create your account for free and train it to look for news items you like to read

Bloogz - Web Feed Reader - currently in a test version

Blox0r - ATOM and RSS feed reader and bookmark manager

bommie.com - web-based RSS reader. In Dutch

BozPages - a project to make small one off blogroll pages to keep track of a bunch of feeds on a single page

BusterNews - a web-based application that will periodically check web sites for new content, retrieve them for you, and save a summary of the new content. This is done through RSS feeds provided by web sites

Chameleon - Keeps track of which feeds you read on Bloglines, how often, and when. Figures out which feeds are your favorites, using a few novel algorithms, and highlights them . Identifies the top links in your feeds, like Blogdex, but for your feeds only. Shows you your usage scores based on the algorithms

Cloudee - an automatic aggregator. Think of it like an intelligent RSS reader that culls the daily headlines for hot topics. The hot conversations of the day are tracked using a cloud algorithm based on memes and links

Daily RSS - a web-based news aggregator that allows its readers to rate the articles. Articles with higher ratings will be shown first

Daily Rotation - Quick Loading Headlines From 300+ Tech Sites

Dotso.com - web-based RSS reader with a unique and easy-to-use interface

editaste.com - Read RSS feeds, edit your own

eskobo - customizable web-based RSS reader

Etamp.net - the fast rss-reader for RSS content including weblogs and news, the fast search engine for RSS content including weblogs and news, No software download, All OS’ & Browsers, IE, Netscape, Safari, Opera, Konqueror, Firefox, Etamp.net tracks it all and brings the web pages to you. Web-based

Fastbuzz News - A free web based aggregator to search and view the latest additions to your favorite online publications

fastnews - gathers news from Yahoo’s RSS feeds every 5 minutes and displays it in a unique manner. All categories are loaded right away and then you can switch from section to section with the click of a button. And news articles collapse and expand easily for quick viewing. Search using the Yahoo News API

fatcast - simple to use, web-based news reader to access and manage RSS feeds

Feed Collectors - a new web tool that collects and socializes your feeds. Whether it’s blogs, podcasts, video podcasts, or news feeds, we can collect it. Rather, you can collect it

Feed Rinse - an easy to use tool that lets you automatically filter out syndicated content that you aren’t interested in. It’s like a spam filter for your RSS subscriptions

Feed-Tank - Simple and easy to use web-based RSS/ATOM Feeds Reader

FeedBucket - provides a quick and easy way to view RSS feeds. No need for any fancy software or programming - just enter an address to view the headlines. Registered users can store several feeds and view each feed individually or all of the recent top headlines at a glance in a “River of News” format. FeedBucket will also generate some JavaScript code so you can easily add automatically updating headlines to your own blog or website

FeedButler - a feedreader with social bookmarking and non-hierarchical editorial control. All stories are automatically added using feeds submitted by the users. When a new story is imported from a feed it is placed in the new stories section. When enough users have marked a new story as cool it is promoted to the frontpage also called topstories

Feedexa - Free online service for subscribing, searching and tagging feeds, blogs and the like

FeedFeeds - a Free online feed aggregator. Read your favorite news, blogs, cartoons, etc all at one place, from anywhere. Get the latest feeds from all your feeds

Feedication.com - a web application that acts as your own aggregation service. It is able to fetch and display information about you. It supports syndication with some really popular web applications like 43 Things, 43 Places, All Consuming, last.fm, del.icio.us and Flickr

FeedLounge - a state of the art web-based feed reader. Subscribe to your favorite RSS and Atom feeds and enjoy the most powerful and elegant web-based feed reading experience ever created. Besides standard feed reading features, FeedLounge offers a number of unique features like tagging, saving items indefinitely, flagging items and access from any modern browser. FeedLounge even supports importing OPML files from popular feed readers like NetNewsWire, FeedDemon and Bloglines so upgrading to FeedLounge is a snap. Feedlounge will cost you $5 a month to use. If you would like to simply try it out for a time, you can sign up for their testdrive which gives you access for 24 hours.

Feedmarker - a free web-based RSS aggregator with del.icio.us-style tagging

Feednation - saves you time and keeps you in touch with the subjects you are interested in. When you see the orange XML or RSS button or a ‘Syndicate’ link on any blog or website, use the Feednation ‘one click’ browser link to add it to your account. It’s as simple as that. With a free Feednation account, you decide how to manage your subscriptions. You can send them to your email or read them in your Feednation account. You can turn them on and turn them off with one click. Feednation for individual users is free and will remain free

FeedReader.net - allows you to read XML/RSS feeds through your regular web browser. Just copy and paste your favorite RSS address in the XML bar and press Go, or select one from the directory. Nothing to install and maintain

Feedroll - select a feed to create a javascript to run on your own site

Feeds 2.0 - a Web 2.0 personalized RSS aggregator which prioritizes incoming information according to the user’s interests. Feeds 2.0 ranks posts according to the topics a particular user likes, and brings interesting articles first, based on what it has learned about the user’s preferences. Additional features of the system include the automatic real-time clustering of similar items aggregated from different sources and a recommendation feature which takes into account what the entire community of Feeds 2.0 users are finding interesting and recommends related posts and feeds that a user might want to read or subscribe to

feeds.reddit - lets you subscribe to all your favorite sites and read them in one convenient place

FeedShow - a fast and easy to use RSS feed reader that provides all the features that will let you browse news or blogs in a very efficient manner. Import/Export feed lists (OPML), Folder categories, Save items locally, Convert to PDF format, print format, … and many more

FeedSweep - an online service that streams news and content from one web site to another. You can use FeedSweep to display the latest sports and business news on your web site. You can also use FeedSweep to display updates and news from other web sites, such as business partners, for example

feedtagger - A web based RSS/Atom feed reader with a simple interface. You apply tags to each feed - helping organise many different news sources. Feedtagger also supports importing of OPML files and has many new features being added every day

Findory - web-based and personalized RSS reader. Key Features: Import your Bloglines subscriptions by entering your login. Import a users public Bloglines subscriptions. Import subscriptions via other readers and services via OPML. Related and personalized articles for every feed that you’re subscribed to. Personalization: “My Top Stories” page reveals articles from your favorite feeds picked based on the articles you read in the past

TheFreeDictionary.com - now allows you to create your own personal homepage by adding and removing, dragging and dropping, and “using or losing” existing content windows. In addition, you can add your own bookmarks, weather, and RSS feeds from anywhere on the web

fyuze -a news aggregator, a program that automatically collects information so that you don’t have to. Sign up for an account, tell fyuze what sites you read, and you’ll be able to - at a glance - see what news is new, each time you log on

Genecast News Service - a server based news aggregator, that converts XML streams to Usenet News. Anyone can add a new newsfeed/newsgroup, if it does not already exist

Globe’sNews - a service to collect news information from all around the Globe and filter by personal needs. The news search includes RSS feeds as well as traditional news sites. This service is completely web-based, no need to download/install any program on your computer

Google - now offering RSS aggregation that supports any site using its Google Personalized Home Page service. Still a very basic service in terms of what can be done, but it will compete directly with Yahoo! News with a similar layout and style

Google Reader - makes it easier to keep up with your ever-expanding reading list of content from across the web. You can Automatically get the latest news and updates from your favorite sites. Sort your reading list based on what’s most relevant to you. Organize what you read with labels and stars. Quickly share interesting items with friends via email or by blogging them, directly from Reader

goowy - a new free web-based Flash virtual desktop, 2GB email and calendaring application. It also has powerful widgets, integrates RSS and fun games

gregaire - a personal web-based news aggregator

Gritwire - presents an easy way to customize real-time text and multimedia SpeedFeeds that update you on the things you want to see and hear, by leveraging the latest in internet content syndication technologies (RSS, OPML) and the explosive power of social networking (a la Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook)

HDLNS.com - a web-based RSS reader that delivers a user-friendly customizable interface to read news, blogs, sport feeds and more

HyperDig - web based aggregator allows you to create custom collections of feeds and make them available to the public. Supports RSS and Atom

Hyperlinkage - a new online content syndication, search and publishing tool

HyperSuper - a personalized news aggregator. You tell the service what you’re interested in and it creates a customized news page for you

InfoMatchDirect - brings to the web a single site where users can browse the latest free articles from all over the net. InfoMatchDirect reads the latest RSS feeds from article submission sites like ArticleCity, GoArticles and EzineArticles, and presents them in a categories and easy-to-browse format. This makes it easy for readers and webmasters to find the latest articles from all these sites in one convenient place

Inform - “creating a free online tool that we believe will revolutionize how people read news on the web. We not only provide thousands of news sources and blogs in a convenient single interface, we process the news for you, allowing you to get at what you’re interested in more quickly, intelligently, and comprehensively. Inform’s differentiating technology uses a series of information structuring techniques and natural-language interpretation to auto-categorize and group news stories into thousands of categories, and then shreds the text of the stories to isolate the important elements of each. Once the elements have been identified, you can easily connect and read news on any person, place, organization, topic, industry or product quickly, successfully, and easily right from the article you’re reading, or by utilizing a custom news channel you create, all for free”

informednews.com - a one-stop website with the most important and informative news feeds, organized in a few categories. You can create a free profile with your preferred RSS feeds

ItsAStart.com - web-based RSS feed reader

JobExposer - the very first Canadian job search engine built on the RSS technology. Aggregated job feeds from major players like Workopolis and HotJobs Canada, US- and UK-based sites like Craiglist and CWJobs that feature job postings for Toronto, niche sites like Perl.org and OK/Cancel, and from blogging communities MSN Spaces and Live Journal

Journster - an online RSS / ATOM aggregator

Kinja - a free website that allows you to create your own Web page displaying articles from your personal collection of RSS feeds

lazytom’s FeedJumbler - Aggregate/merge several Atom or RSS feeds into a single feed or convert Atom into RSS or vice versa

Lightstreamer RSS Reader - a pure HTML RSS Reader, based on Lightstreamer technology, that does not require to download applets or application. It streams new headlines to any browser without refreshing the page, in true-push fashion

LinkedFeed - an automated and customizable information social network. The more you use it, the most accurate news it brings to you and people sharing your interests

You can edit everything (start with this message), and your page will appear as you let it next time you use it Linkselection.be - features daily news from worldwide RSS feeds. Dutch version

Linkselection.com - features daily news from worldwide RSS feeds

LisFeeds - links to library weblogs with RSS feeds. Browser-based

LiveFavorites - a sleek web-based manager for your bookmarks, RSS feeds, contacts and memos. Use it to access to your favorite information from any Internet connection

Lixlpixel RSS Newsreader

Manila - The News Aggregator feature for Manila allows server managers to offer a community aggregator for all of the sites on the server. The server manager chooses what feeds are available on the server, and the managing editor of each individual Manila site can choose what feeds are included on their site’s aggregator page

MediaTuner - an easy-to-use webbased Rich Media Aggregator and Player. MediaTuner allows you to easily manage both Text and Rich Media RSS Feeds, all through your browser. With the proprietary MediaTuner Universal Player/Viewer, you can view and listen to Video Blogs, Podcasts, Images, Streaming Video, Audio, Text Blogs and News

Meerkat - a Web-based syndicated content reader. It is based on Rich Site Summary (RSS), an XML specification used for distributing news, product announcements, discussion threads, and other assorted content as channels

Morenews.be - allows users to easily create their personalized news page. Webmasters can use Morenews.be to include RSS feeds on their own site. The newsticker is fully customizable using style-sheets

Moreover RSS News Feeds - online newsreader

My AOL Beta - View samples of news feeds and blogs. Search for feeds. Read updated headlines from your favorite sources. Add your own sites and customize the headlines you display. Copy your feeds to another computer

My USA Today - a web-based RSS reader

My Yahoo - allows you to subscribe to any RSS feed. You can also use this page to put an “Add-to-My Yahoo!” button on your site

My Yahoo! Ticker - makes it easy to track your favorite information, by bringing the news and opinions you’ve subscribed to in My Yahoo! directly to your desktop as they’re published. Choose from over 250,000 RSS feeds covering virtually everything on the Web. Use your existing My Yahoo! settings to track your stocks, news, and weather. Search the Web using Yahoo! Search directly from your desktop

myEarthLink Reader - makes it easier to keep up with all the web sites you visit. Choose the sites you want news updates from. The more you add, the more effective myReader will be. Come back every day (or every hour), and myReader will show only what’s new for you from these sites. Read, save or email the articles myReader has gathered for you

MySyndicaat - a news mastering tool that allows you to retrieve, filter, mix and monitor content from remote content sources available on the web. Collected content is cached by MySyndicaat and can be retrieved later on either by using MySyndicaat content viewer, or by subscribing to it using any RSS 2.0-compliant RSS aggregator

MyToday - a public aggregator having topic based collection of RSS feeds called Dailies. A Daily is a set of RSS feeds around the topic providing latest news, views and content on that topic

MyWireService - Instead of going to all the different news sites and weblogs that you like to read daily (weekly or just occassionally) and hunting around to see what is new (if anything), MyWireService delivers the headlines and summaries to you in an easy to scan page. You’ll always be up-to-date

The Nearest Neighbor News Network (NNNN) - a collaborative filtering RSS aggregator. It collects articles from news sites and weblogs of your choosing and then displays them all together. It also displays other articles that it believes you would be interested in

Netvibes.com - a custom made web 2.0 home page solution. This service is free and gives the user the ability to create a personalized page with the content they like, to put together data feeds and services from web 2.0 with a very simple interface, to access your page anytime and from any computer. It is also possible to browse, modify, and import your RSS feeds with our integrated RSS/ATOM feedreader. You can easily import an OPML file as well, to import, download and listen podcasts without any additional software, to check your mail on one or many gmail account, to stick webnotes, weather and many more to come

News Is Free - a powerful and flexible portal for browsing, indexing and publishing news headlines

News.co.za - serves up the latest news from selected sources across the web. This news comes to you via RSS news feeds, usually from the publisher or owner of the content. Visit the Personalize section and customize this site to suit your individual taste

Newsable - The User-Friendly Web-based News Aggregator

NewsApp - a web-based RSS news aggregator which can periodically poll RSS feeds from various websites and integrate them for you on one page

Newsbooster - an online RSS / Atom aggregator delivered as a free service

NewsBox - a unique news page that offers access to multiple news sources in german and english. Each source is configurable and there is support for RSS / RDF news feeds and the Mozilla / Netscape Sidebar

Newsburst - from CNET.com. A personal information tool for News.com readers. Pick your sources of information and collect them all in one place. Web-based

NewsFeed - a web-based News Aggregator made up of compiled RSS and XML news feeds from reliable news sources with the aim of simplifying routine web-based news reading. All the same content as your favorite news sites, but only one web site to visit

Newshutch - a newsfeed reader. You tell us what websites you like, and we compile those websites for you in one simple place

Newstation.com - web/browser-based RSS newsreader that’s free and doesn’t require registration. Newstation.com was founded in 1998 and quickly became the most comprehensive online news directory. Windows Magazine named Newstation.com one of the seven best news websites in 1999. Newstation.com is published by Brian Albert, a television news reporter, attorney, and Internet programmer

Newsvine - read stories from established media organizations like the Associated Press as well as individual contributors from all around the world. Placement of stories is determined by a multitude of factors including freshness, popularity, and reputation. Contribution is open to all, and editorial judgement is in the hands of the community

Orangoo - a simple web-based feed reader. Orangoo helps you manage your feeds in a easy and elegant way

Pageflakes - a personalized online desktop that allows users to read news and blogs, check their email, start Web searches and access a variety of services like Del.icio.us or Flickr, all conveniently accessible from any computer and from one page. Basically it’s all your daily information and needs in one place

parabola - a browser based news feed aggregator. It is written using Ruby on Rails and uses the quite excellent FeedTools module for all the parsing of feeds

Pluck Web Edition (PWE) - manages your bookmarks and research in a central location that you can access from any browser. You can easily store, annotate and interactively share links and folders with friends and coworkers

QuikView Channel Viewer and Bookmark Server - is provided as a free service to all subscribers of Quikonnex Publishers’ channels. QuikView makes it easy for subscribers to convert from email subscriptions to channel subscriptions. In addition, it is a personal bookmark server, allowing subscribers access to their bookmarks from any computer

Rezzibo - Spanish-language web-based RSS reader

The Rocketinfo RSS Reader - a FREE, web-based, personal news and information tool. Key functionality includes the ability to subscribe to RSS news/weblog channels, add your own channels, and search for channels. You can also create your own custom search-based RSS channels that produce news content from the Rocketnews database of 10,000+ sources

Rojo - a free web-based service that lets you efficiently read RSS feeds from publishers big and small, ranging from millions of blogs to the New York Times

RSS Syndication Web Viewer - Use this page to view RSS Syndication feeds without a special RSS viewer

RSS-Feed.org - a free RSS feed reader, a web based news aggregator. It allows you to create your own news page and to build custom news feeds using your favorite RSS Feeds

RssOnline.nl - a web-based RSS reader which you can easily personalize the way you like

RSSor - a social RSS/Atom/Xml online manager and reader. It allows you easily collect RSS, read and share others with the content syndicated by RSS you subscribed to

ScoopGO! - lets you search through the feeds of websites you choose by creating personal search engines: ‘Scoops’. You only get realtime results from sources you believe are worth following

Shortwire.com provides on-line, easy to use services that let you aggregate and read RSS feeds, place requests to be alerted about news in future RSS feeds, create, publish and host RSS feeds and web logs (blogs)

Side4 - Simple web-based news aggregator service

SimpleReader - free online feed reader. Powered by SimplePie 0.96

SimpleSyndi.com - Free Web/Browser-based RSS reader, with some unique features

Speakwire - the speaking newswire service of CEC systems, an Edinburgh based company, is a service to bring news to your desktop from around the world. It gathers news feeds from the prominent news organisations around the world and delivers it to your computer as a speaking summary of events from news, politics, business, sport, fashion etc.

Spot The News - reads RSS feeds from all over the world and groups them in many different categories. Also the user has the possibility to search within all the RSS feeds. New features will be added on a regular basis

SQLData RSS Reader - browser-based tool for accessing news feeds in RSS formats. The tool allows you to browse available news services and read news summaries online

startster.com - free web-based feed aggregator combined with a custom start page builder. it features a preloaded list of the web’s most popular rss feeds for you to choose from and allows you to add your own custom feeds as well. choose your refresh rate and several other options. No advertising, and no obtrusive questions to answer. sign up and be ready to go in seconds

StepNewz - offers free online news management services providing individuals and businesses with a friendly, secure and effective solution to effortlessly stay informed and up-to-date. StepNewz monitors thousands of web sites twenty-four hours per day looking for the latest news on every topic. In addition, StepNewz lets you design and publish your own news online. Web site managers can also take advantage of our services to display news headlines relevant to the content on their sites improving the experience for their users

SuperBlog - a free service allowing you to create a webpage which combines the headings or articles from one or more other websites that offer RSS of ATOM feeds. Every SuperBlog you create this way will automatically be kept up to date with the latest content from those sites

SuprGlu - gathers your RSS and ATOM feed content from popular webservices and publishes them in one convenient place. Presents your content with simple, great looking templates which you can customize. Is free to use

SyndicNation - web-based RSS reader. In French

Top5websites.com RSS Feed Viewer - works with RSS 1.0, 2.0, 0.93, 0.92, 0.91, 0.90 and Atom Feeds

ufeed - combine your blog posts, your del.icio.us links, and your flickr photos - or any combination of the three - all in one place. It takes less than five minutes to get started, and your personal page will update every hour. Best of all, it’s completely free

Urchin RSS Aggregator - a Web based, customisable, RSS aggregator and filter. It’s primary purpose is to allow the generation of new RSS feeds by running queries against the collection of items in the Urchin database. However, other arbitrary output formats can be defined and generated using XSL transformations or HTML::Template templates

Waggr - combines the look and feel of a client side reader with the inherent benefits of a web-based reader (cross platform, automatically updates your feeds, etc). “In a recent survey, more than 85% of visitors said they preferred Waggr to bloglines, and other web-based readers. It is by far the fastest, and most easy to use. Feel free to give it a try yourself”

Web RSS Reader - From ToolButton Inc. Lets you see your favorite RSS feeds on-line and in real-time using only a web browser! Use it on any shared computer - at school, at work, at a friend’s house or anywhere you can’t install the ToolButton RSS Reader software

Web RSS Reader - From plech.net. A free service, web-based replacement for usual RSS reader software. It’s ideal for people using more computers - you can travel and read your news from anywhere. It’s also the easiest way to start with RSS for regular user, no software installation is required, all you need is the browser and Internet connection

Windows Live - a new set of Internet software and services designed to put you in control of the information, relationships and interests you care about. Windows Live will make it easier for you to connect with people, and to quickly find the information you need, more safely and securely, whether you’re on your PC or on the go. And it’s evolving every day — with your feedback, it will just keep getting better. Also includes an RSS reader

wURLdBook - a bookmark managing service plus RSS news reader

YodPod - a free, simple web-based RSS Reader accessible from any device with an internet connection. All actions take place on one page (Web2.0). Registration is optional

YouOS - Web-based operating system with rich text editor, chat, email, RSS, file management, stickies, Flickr RSS, and more ZoekRSS - web-based RSS reader in Dutch

Motorola MOTO K1 KRZR: Officially Released

2006-07-26T05:32:00.000-07:00

The KRZR, the 1-centimeter narrower and KRAZIER successor to the RAZR we all know and are bored to death of, has been released.

-GSM 850/900/1800/1900 plus EDGE (or CDMA with EVDO)

-2-Megapixel camera
-A screen with the pixel count of 176 by 220 with support for 260K colors
-A MicroSD slot
-Stereo Bluetooth audio, with MP3, and AAC playback
-A new address book that can hold bdays, AIM address info, and hopefully doesn't suck
-Dimensions of 42 × 103 × 16 mm
-Purdy like your cousin's mouth

-Available the second half of 2006, worldwide.

– Brian Lam

Motorola

101 Fabulous Freebies

2006-07-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

Tune Up: Utilities and system tools
FoxIt Reader	For viewing PDF files, FoxIt Reader beats Adobe Reader hands-down--and it's got some tools Adobe lacks.
System Information for Windows	This utility will tell you everything you need to know about your computer's hardware, operating system, installed programs, and more.
PDF Creator	This printer driver lets you create Adobe Acrobat files from within almost any application.
CCleaner	Finds and zaps useless files--including cache files and old Registry entries--that may be slowing down your PC.
Microsoft Tweak UI	Take control of hidden Windows XP settings, from determining what appears on your Start menu to specifying how users log on to your computer, with this extra set of tools created by Microsoft developers.
7-Zip	Create ZIP compressed archives for free with this handy utility.
PuTTY	This free utility allows you to create an SSH, Telnet, or Rlogin connection.
OmniFormat	Convert BMPs to JPEGs, GIFs to PDFs, Word documents to TIF image files, and more with this free document conversion utility.
Find It: Online search and reference services
Google Desktop	Google Desktop extends the power of the Web's most popular search engine to your desktop by indexing nearly every document on your hard drive.
MSN Search Toolbar With Windows Desktop Search	This search tool indexes your hard drive and provides search results through a Windows application, rather than a browser.
Copernic Desktop Search	Copernic lets you search local files as well as Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail.
Free Download Manager	This companion to Internet Explorer can speed up single-file downloads, resume interrupted downloads, manage bandwidth usage, or schedule multiple file downloads for specific times.
FlashGot	This Firefox plug-in simplifies downloading, allowing you to grab every page from a Web site or download multiple files efficiently.
Project Gutenberg	Browse electronic versions of more than 17,000 books at this online library.
Wikipedia	This online encyclopedia is a convenient way to find general information on almost anything.
Wapedia	For accessing Wikipedia from a PDA or smart phone, try Wapedia.
Bartleby	This online reference library offers a host of features, including a dictionary, thesaurus, and various books of quotations.
WordWeb	This handy utility provides a dictionary and a thesaurus that work in any application on your computer.
podAmigo	podAmigo works with the Podomatic Web service to organize and download your podcasts.
Hyperwords	This Firefox browser plug-in makes any text on any Web page clickable.
Roam Free: Collaboration and remote-access tools
LogMeIn	This remote access service lets you control your PC from afar, via a Web browser.
Backpack	Create Web pages--with to-do lists, notes, pictures, and more--that you can share with a group.
WriteBoard	This service lets you create, edit, and share documents with others right in your browser.
FreeConference.com	Set up and host conference calls with this free Web service.
GetByMail	Don't pay for a pricey remote-access app--GetByMail offers access to your office computer through your e-mail account.
iTeamwork	This Web-based project management service helps groups keep track of complicated projects.
PBwiki	Create a free, password-protected wiki--a collaborative Web site--with PBwiki.
Groove Virtual Office	Bring your far-flung coworkers together with this file-sharing and collaboration tool.
Netomat	This social networking service allows you to create, access, and share content on the Web or a phone.
Get to Work: Business and productivity tools
Firefox	Still using Internet Explorer? It's time you made the switch to Firefox--a more secure, faster, and more flexible Web browser.
OpenOffice.org	This full-fledged, Microsoft Office-compatible office suite offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package, and database--and it doesn't cost one thin dime.
ThinkFree Online Beta	This software runs in your browser and lets you edit Microsoft Office-compatible documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
AbiWord	This lightweight, full-featured word processor is compatible with Microsoft Word documents and also runs on Linux and Macs.
Pegasus Mail	A longtime favorite of power users, this e-mail client provides a huge amount of control over your mail, with support for mail merges and flexible filtering options.
Thunderbird	The tighter security and robust stability of this e-mail client make it the top choice for managing e-mail on your PC.
Steganos LockNote	Password-protect text files with LockNote, a simple notepad with strong encryption.
Alleycode	A simple HTML editor for people who are comfortable with code and need to do some quick editing.
Nvu	This sophisticated Web page editor doesn't require any understanding of the underlying tags.
SeaMonkey	This suite of Internet tools includes the Mozilla browser, an enhanced version of the netscape Messenger e-mail client, the ChatZilla IRC chat program, and an HTML editor.
Keep in Touch: Communications tools and services
Trillian Basic	This universal IM client lets you keep in contact with your friends whether they use IRC, AOL, ICQ, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger.
eFax Messenger	You can receive faxes on your PC with eFax, viewing or printing them via the eFax Messenger software.
QNext	This universal instant messenger service includes robust music-sharing and photo-sharing features.
SightSpeed	This video calling service is simple to set up, synchronizes lip movements and audio neatly, and offers easy in-call controls.
Skype	Skype offers free PC-to-PC voice calls with text chat and file transfer capabilities.
Festoon Beta	This add-on for Skype and Google Talk lets users of these two services make calls to each other, and brings video chat capabilities to Google Talk.
Nail It Down: Calendars and organizers
Yahoo Calendar	This ad-supported calendar is one of the best available online.
Ta-Da List	Stay organized with this straightforward to-do list manager.
Palm Desktop	This remarkably well-designed calendar and address book application will appeal to users who don't even have a PDA.
Yahoo Widgets	This application puts "widgets" on your desktop that provide useful information, such as news updates, weather reports, stock tickers, or photos, or provide handy little services, like performing search engine queries, storing your notes, and more.
Del.icio.us	Forget bookmarks--this service keeps track of your favorite sites, and much more, from any Internet-connected PC.
EssentialPIM Free	EssentialPIM combines a calendar, contact manager, to-do list, and notes manager in a single program.
SyncNotes	This sticky-note application runs on your computer, but allows you to view and edit your notes from any Web or WAP browser.
FreeMind	FreeMind allows you to compile your notes in a "mind map"--a free-form tree structure that mimics the way your brain works.
Furl	Save your favorite Web pages in an online account that you can access from any computer.
Share It: File sharing and storage services
FolderSync	Keep your USB drive and your hard drive on the same page with this synchronization utility.
BeInSync	Make sure you have access to your critical files and folders with this remote-access tool.
FolderShare (Windows)	Automatically sync files and folders between multiple computers and easily share data with colleagues and friends.
FolderShare (Mac)
Flickr	Easily upload, share, and post pictures with this popular service.
Kodak EasyShare Gallery	This site's usability, mobile-phone access options, and lack of upload restrictions make it our top pick for photo sharing.
Yahoo Briefcase	Yahoo Briefcase is one of the easiest ways we know of to store and share files online.
BitTorrent	BitTorrent is useful for downloading legitimate content quickly or for sharing your own files.
Avvenu	This free remote-access and file-sharing service lets you and your colleagues get to files on an Avvenu-enabled computer from another computer, Web-enabled phone, or PDA.
Lock It Up: Security/antispam tools, system-stabilizing utilities
Spybot Search & Destroy	Spybot is a powerful antidote in the battle against spyware.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Personal	Ad-Aware scans your PC for spyware, making sure that no digital snoops are lurking in memory or on your hard drive.
Microsoft Windows Defender (formerly AntiSpyware Beta)	Microsoft's antispyware app catches spyware that other programs don't--including the dangerous "rootkit" Trojan horse that some Sony music CDs carry.
All-in-One Secretmaker	All-in-One Secretmaker blocks banner ads and pop-ups, filters spam, and offers an array of utilities for cleaning up and securing your system.
ZoneAlarm	Zone Alarm's free firewall keeps watch over inbound and outbound Internet connections, helping avert malicious attacks by hackers and spyware.
Anonymizer	This anonymous browsing service will display Web pages without revealing any information to the sites you visit.
GRC Shields Up	This browser-based tool checks your PC for common vulnerabilities, such as open ports.
Trend Micro HouseCall	This Web site runs software in your browser to scan for and eliminate malware on your PC.
AirDefense Personal Lite	This simple program alerts you whenever you connect to an insecure network or to a hotspot you haven't previously marked as safe.
Avast Home Edition	This antivirus scanner can do a boot-time virus scan (which can catch more viruses than scanning once Windows is running) and will continually monitor your system for threats.
Kick Back: Entertainment software and services (9)
Google Picasa	Picasa offers a simple--and free--way to organize, touch up, and share your photos.
Irfanview	This lean, mean graphics utility offers basic image editing and file format conversions.
The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)	This freely distributed app includes tools for photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.
Pandora	Enter the name of an artist or song that you like and Pandora creates a custom "radio station" for you--and makes surprisingly good choices.
iTunes	Apple's media player is a joy to use even if you never buy a 99-cent song.
Kristal Audio Engine	This sophisticated audio mixing and sequencing platform offers features found in much pricier apps.
Audacity	All-purpose audio editor lets you record, play, and edit digital files.
Google Earth	Spin the earth, tilt it, and zoom in to objects as tiny as one building.
Celestia	Zoom through the solar system with Celestia, which offers real-time views of planets, moons, comets, stars, and more.
Roundup: Web-based e-mail
Gmail	Google's e-mail service feels more like a Windows application than a Web mail service.
Yahoo Mail	With a traditional, forms-based Web interface, Yahoo mail is quick and easy to use.
Yahoo Mail Beta	Beta, not yet public.
MSN Hotmail	MSN Hotmail offers a respectable 250MB of storage and a familiar, Windows-like look.
Windows Live Mail	This Ajax-based service is still in beta, but you can put your name on a waiting list.
AIM Mail	AIM mail offers 2GB of storage and integration with AOL Instant Messenger.
Netscape Webmail	Netscape Webmail offers 250MB of storage and features large, easy-to-click buttons.
Roundup: Blogging tools
Blogger	This blogging service remains incredibly simple to use, but offers a rich complement of features.
WordPress.com	This hosted blogging service offers a clean, fast interface.
LiveJournal	LiveJournal offers plenty of customizable options for your blog, and carries no advertising.
MySpace	MySpace lets you store an unlimited number of small images, and makes uploading music and images easy.
Xanga Classic	Xanga offers 200MB of image storage and features plenty of blog-formatting templates.
Roundup: RSS readers
Abilon	This powerful, speedy RSS reader offers a choice of views, and features a built-in tabbed browser.
RssReader	RssReader displays your news feeds simply and cleanly.
Feedreader	This free Windows utility displays your news feeds, and includes flexible keyboard shortcuts.
Bloglines	This Web-based RSS reader lets you access your news from multiple PCs.
NewsGator	NewsGator displays your RSS feeds in a clean, readable display.
Roundup: Video sharing services
Revver	This service--our Best Bet--is a video sharing site from which you can actually make money.
Putfile	This basic video sharing service works reliably and well.
Vimeo	Of the video sharing services we tested, Vimeo is perhaps the easiest to use.
Streamload Mediamax	Streamload Mediamax is great for users who want to share lots of big files in addition to videos.
Google Video	Google's service is well suited for commercially oriented video producers looking for a large audience for their work.

Dabble Launched Today

2006-07-25T03:15:00.000-07:00

Mary Hodder says that after a year of work, and both an Alpha and invited Beta period, Dabble launches!

He invite you to come check out our site, which is now fully open for people to search, browse and view media or requests. For people who were part of the invited Beta, we have a few changes. First and most obvious at a glance is the site looks a little different. Emily Chang and Max Kiesler of Ideacodes helped with the new design. We’ve added a bit of color that brightens things up.

The new Dabble has more sophisticated searching. Dabble now uses the many different social gestures people make to express how they feel about media, to find better matches in our search results. If people play with media in playlists or by sharing their collections with others, and tell us how it’s useful to them, we can take that kind of information and show better lists of media. These results change over time, because value changes as people shift their attention.

Popular media and recent media both help people serendipitously discover things that are bubbling up, or the very latest things added to Dabble. Tagging allows people to both describe media in ways that matter to them, as well as find media with tags that others have described it.

You will need to login to Dabble to “write” anything to the site. This includes being able to collect media, make subcollections or playlists, tag media or request something (if you are trying to find a clip or music, some help on editing or to find a listing of video festivals). Check out my Star Trek Mashups playlist for an example of one.We expect that our first public launch will mean lots of folks will want to give us feedback and we’d like to hear everything you have to say about the service and what we can improve. We plan to spend a lot of time integrating feedback and suggestions, so please share with us!

Dabble

Technorati Redesign

2006-07-24T15:59:00.000-07:00

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs and Currently tracking 49.4 million blogs

After months of work and weeks of testing, Technorati just released an updated version of technorati.com. Here you have an official video presenting the new Technorati

Three years ago this month, Technorati was officially incorporated and became a “real” company, moving out of the "science project" phase of its life. Since then, so much has happened – not only has Technorati grown and changed, so has the live web. When I first started Technorati, my primary concern was how to be of service to a growing universe of bloggers, which then numbered in the thousands. Today, we’re tracking about 50 million blogs and we’re increasingly including other forms of citizen media, including photos and video.

While we got a lot of positive feedback from bloggers about the core Technorati service, we were increasingly hearing that we weren’t being of equal service to folks who are new to the live web. And because our mantra is to be of service – we set about renovating the Technorati site to make it easier to use for all people, whether they regularly create stuff on the web or not.
In short, we sought to make Technorati easier and more intuitive to search, discover and organize the World Live Web. What we released today is a big step in that direction.
First, in addition to a simpler and brighter design, we've continued to improve our core search technologies that index new information within minutes of being posted to the Web. We listened hard to your feedback - and redesigned the search results pages to include much less intrusive (and well-marked) ads, more results above the fold, and better sorting options - including sorting by language, authority, and freshness. If you're confused, you can get a deeper explanation of keyword results and of URL results. In addition, our link-counting mechanisms have also been dramatically improved. If you're a blogger, you should notice that your blog is being counted much more regularly, and that your rankings and authority information is much more accurate and up-to-date. If you've claimed your blog on Technorati, make sure to Sign In - we've worked hard to personalize your experience around the site to help you keep track of who is linking to you and what you care about, especially on the Technorati homepage.
Part of this work is also to make things simpler and more stable, so that we can understand and respond to all of your support requests. Hopefully, it'll also reduce the confusion! I know that some folks have sent in support tickets that we haven't answered. If you're in that camp, I'm sorry. I hope that with the back-end and front-end changes, you'll find Technorati more usable and easier to understand. Give us another try. I hope our revamped help section will answer any remaining questions you have, but if not, drop us another line.
Second, we've worked hard to make serendipitous discovery of interesting stuff easier and more intuitive. Our new “Discover” section, drawing on a commonly understood newspaper metaphor, organizes the blogosphere into easily recognized categories, within which some of the most interesting recent posts are highlighted. From news and tech, to sports, business and life, scanning what’s hot in the global conversation at any given moment in time is now only one click away. In case you're wondering how we did this, Liz has a screencast for later this week that will explain. Suffice it to say that if you want your posts included in the discover section, you'll first want to claim your blogs and then configure them with information on the things you regularly write about.

We've improved and updated our Popular section, putting all of the most interesting information on one page, including top searches and tags, The Technorati Top 100, the Most Favorited Blogs, Videos, Books, News, and Movies.
Third, Technorati’s Favorites feature has also been improved, enabling you to select and organize those blogs you like the most, and to see the most recent posts from your favorites each time you return to the homepage (you just need to be signed in!) The service now makes it easier to organize your Favorite blogs by simplifying the process of “favoriting” a blog in multiple ways, including right from your browser bar (drag that link to your browser" s="" toolbar="">
browser bar (drag that link to your browser" s="" toolbar="">If you've ever wanted to just get a better handle on who a blogger is and what they write about, have a look at our revamped blog directory. Simply put in a blog's URL into that searchbox and you'll get an at-a-glance view of what that blog is, how influential it is, and what the blogger writes about - even some interesting stats like their reach (thanks to Alexa), posting frequency, and more.

So, in summary:

Technorati is 3 years old! What an amazing trip so far.
The World Live Web is all about people - We're here to help make sense of all the interesting stuff we do in real-time.
Technorati's rolled out a major update to our site and to our back-end systems.
We've made some major speed and accuracy improvements in core search.
Link counting is a lot more accurate and timely.
We've personalized the homepage so you can get a look at all the stuff you care about on one page.
While we love expert bloggers, we've also spent a lot of time making Technorati understandable to normal people.
We've added in lots of features to help you make sense of the blogosphere, including Discover, which is topic-based, Favorites, which gives YOU the power to pick your favorite blogs, and Popular, which algorithmically derives the most linked-to items in the last few days.
We've made some big changes to blog profiles - allowing you to get stats about any blog that Technorati tracks, including the tags used, posting frequency, traffic, and Technorati ranking.
We've made things easier for advertisers and partners, and we've been overwhelmed with demand. We're building out our capabilities, and if you're interested in advertising, drop us a line.
This is just a start - there's more to come in the coming weeks and months, including better charts, more real-time spam detection and elimination, more real-time media indexing, microformats integration, and additional localization and language support.

JotSpot launches Web Office Wiki 2.0

2006-07-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

Wikis are traditionally editable webpages, allowing groups of people to "It's wikis meets Microsoft Office"collaborate on creating the page. However JotSpot is about to expand the definition of 'wiki', with a new version of its flagship wiki product - called JotSpot 2.0. The upgrade enables JotSpot users to collaborate on different types of "office-like" products. For example its spreadsheet product, Tracker, is being integrated into their core wiki product. Also integrated will be calendars, File Cabinets, Photo Pages.

In the new JotSpot wiki, if you click the "Create Page" button you will see various "page types" for specific tasks - web pages, spreadsheets, calendars, photo galleries, and file repositories. This allows users to collaborate on all types of documents, not just a blank wiki page or a Word document. Users can also customize their wikis - e.g. configure the color scheme and add logos. The usual wiki features are of course still present - permissions, WYSIWYG editing, etc.

I asked JotSpot CEO Joe Kraus what their new product augers for the Web Office (my hobby-horse here on ZDNet!). Joe said:

"JotSpot 2.0 allows users to create more than just web pages - it 'wikifies' calendars, spreadsheets, photos, and file sharing. It has some of the familiarity and functionality of Office — it's wikis meets Microsoft Office."

Let's put this into context of a recent Gartner study on wiki adoption, which noted that tools such as wikis and other web-based apps are becoming increasingly pervasive in the Enterprise:

"By 2008, 20 percent of "office" applications will be selected by users themselves. People are using more than the traditional personal productivity applications. Tools now include instant-messaging clients, Web-based applications, wikis, blogs, "folksonomies" and personal desktop search."

This is a continuation of the trend for consumer web apps infiltrating the enterprise - and as Gartner notes, that trend shows no sign of abating. JotSpot is doing the right thing morphing their wiki application products into office tools, because this is tapping into a growing market for web-based office tools and will also push the boundaries of what office tools can be in the Web Office era.

AMD said near $5.5 bln deal to buy ATI

2006-07-22T03:48:00.000-07:00

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD.N), the No. 2 supplier of computer processors, is close to a deal to buy graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc. (ATYT.O) (ATY.TO) for $5.5 billion, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday.

Such a deal would shake up the processor industry, which is witnessing a tooth-and-nail fight for market share between AMD and larger rival Intel Corp. (INTC.O). AMD would gain one of two major graphics chips makers, the other being Nvidia Corp.(NVDA.O).

Markham, Ontario-based ATI is also a big supplier of chipsets -- the cluster of secondary chips and interfaces that surround a computer's processor -- for AMD and Intel products.

Unless talks break down, a deal could be announced as early as Monday, the source said.

ATI and AMD both declined to comment.

Since rumors of a deal first emerged in May, many industry analysts have voiced skepticism, saying it made little financial or strategic sense for AMD to buy ATI outright.

One concern is that the price would be too high for AMD, which already plans to spend $5 billion on capacity in the next few years, even as it fights a bruising price war with Intel.

"It would be a very dilutive acquisition and they don't want to spend their cash because they are going to need that for capital expenditures going forward," said one analyst at a U.S. research firm, who declined to be identified.

Graphics chips are also less profitable than PC processors. Gross margins in the business are about 45 percent, compared to 55 percent for main processors.

A tie-up with ATI could raise concerns that AMD would shun Nvidia, and potentially clash with a new AMD initiative called "Torrenza" that will open up its technology so other chipmakers can make their products work better with it.

Shares of ATI rallied on Friday on belief that a deal was close at hand. After gaining 83 cents, or 5.3 percent, to close at $16.56 on Nasdaq in regular trade, they jumped another 7 percent to $17.68 in after-hours trading. On the Toronto Stock Exchange, ATI finished 99 Canadian cents higher at C$18.77.

Rumors that Sunnyvale, California-based AMD could buy the Canadian chip maker surfaced in late May when an analyst suggested the move could make AMD more competitive with Intel.

But AMD shares finished down 15.7 percent at $18.26 on the New York Stock Exchange as investors worried that the company would not be able to continue taking market share from Intel.

Others wondered why ATI speculation received no attention from analysts on AMD's earnings conference call on Thursday.

"The most surprising thing with these results is the fact there was not even a question about ATI on AMD's call," Scotia Capital analyst Devan Moodley wrote in a research note.

(Additional reporting by Scott Hillis in San Francisco and Wojtek Dabrowski in Toronto)

Digg Launches Sports category

2006-07-22T02:05:00.000-07:00

Today 22 July Digg.com launched a new category, SPORTS with this subcategoties:
Baseball, Basketball, Extreme, Fotball, Golf, Hokey, Motorsport, Soccer, Tenis, Other sports. Sound's good for digg, but not so good for netscape, because digg's competitor, netscape launghed with Sport category from the begining. For sport publishers this means great news. You may wonder why? They can add storyes now to netscape, but also submit diggs to digg.

Sports @ Digg

Sports @ Netscape

Wired pays Lycos to recover Wired.com site

2006-07-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

Wired magazine, the publication that helped popularize the Internet craze during the 1990s, is poised to recover the online business it lost when the company was divided in half eight years ago.

Lycos Inc. said on Tuesday it had agreed to sell its Wired News online properties for $25 million to Conde Nast Publications, owner of Wired magazine, the print publication that is equal parts technology culture trend-spotter and glossy product catalog.

Lycos acquired Wired News as part of the Wired Digital acquisition which closed in June 1999 for a reported $83 million.

The deal came a year after Advance Publications, owner of Conde Nast, paid $75 million to buy Wired from co-founders Louis Rosetto and Jane Metcalfe and other investors. The sale followed two failed efforts to hold an initial public offering.

The current transaction includes the sale of the Wired.com domain name and Wired News assets only. Lycos will retain other original Wired online properties including Hotbot, Hotwired and Webmonkey, the company said.

While one of the earliest and most insistent promoters of the notion that digital technology and the Web would transform business, Wired magazine's efforts to live up to its own mantra have been hamstrung by the loss of its online domain.

"We're bursting with ideas and can't wait to put them into practice," Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson said in a statement issued by Lycos.

Upon completion of the deal, the assets of Wired News will be operated as part of Conde Nast Publication's web division, CondeNet.

"Wired News has always been synonymous with Wired magazine, so it made sense for Lycos to transfer Wired News to Conde Nast, the parent company of Wired," Alfred Tolle, chief executive of Lycos, said.

Tolle said the sale of the online news property to Conde Nast provides additional funding to Lycos, once one of the best-known Internet search indexes, which is looking to become a destination for broadband entertainment consumers.

WIRED NEWS

2 million+ .eu domain Names registered

2006-07-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a small statistic

Despite what has been said they're still registering names!

http://status.eurid.eu/

1. Germany - 639,791
2. UK - 368,380
3. Netherlands - 241,414
4. Italy - 118,900
5. France - 113,879

Considering that France and Italy are both very similar with population to the UK, there doesn't see to be so much enthusiasm from them for their .eu identities

YouTube serves up 100 million videos daily online

2006-07-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers have are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare.
Since springing from out of nowhere late last year, YouTube has come to hold the leading position in online video with 29 percent of the U.S. multimedia entertainment market, according to the latest weekly data from Web measurement site Hitwise.
YouTube videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched online, the company said. Videos are delivered free on YouTube and the company is still working on developing advertising and other means of generating revenue to support the business.
The site specialises in short -- typically 2-minute -- homemade, comic videos created by users. YouTube serves as a quick entertainment break or viewers with broadband computer connections at work or home.

News Corp.'s MySpace, the social networking site popular with teens, has a nearly 19 percent share of the market according to Hitwise. Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN, Google and AOL each have 3 percent to 5 percent of the video search market. Collectively, these four major Web portals have a smaller share than either YouTube or MySpace.
In June, 2.5 billion videos were watched on YouTube, which is based in San Mateo, California and has just over 30 employees. More than 65,000 videos are now uploaded daily to YouTube, up from around 50,000 in May, the company said.
YouTube boasts nearly 20 million unique users per month, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, another Internet audience measurement firm.

Reuters/VNU

New Product from Google. Accessible Web Search

2006-07-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

What is Google Accessible Search?

Accessible Search is an early Google Labs product designed to identify and prioritize search results that are more easily usable by blind and visually impaired users. Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.

How does Accessible Search work?

In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully --- pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op's technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.

Why is Google offering this?

Accessible Search is a natural and important extension of Google's overall mission to better organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. Google Accessible Search is designed to help the visually challenged find the most relevant, useful and comprehensive information, as quickly as possible.

In the past, visually impaired Google users have often waded through a lot of inaccessible websites and pages to find the required information. Our goal is to provide a more useful and accessible web search experience for the blind and visually impaired.

How do you decide which sites are "accessible" and which are not?

Broadly, Google defines accessible websites and pages as content that the blind and visually challenged can use and consume using standard online technology, and we've worked with a number of organizations to determine which websites and pages meet those criteria. Our methods for identifying accessible pages and content are always evolving; Currently we take into account several factors, including a given page's simplicity, how much visual imagery it carries and whether or not it's primary purpose is immediately viable with keyboard navigation.

How can sites make their content more accessible to the blind?

Some of the basic recommendations on how to make a website more useable and accessible include keeping Web pages easy to read, avoiding visual clutter -- especially extraneous content -- and ensuring that the primary purpose of the Web page is immediately accessible with full keyboard navigation. There are many organizations and online resources that offer Website owners and authors guidance on how to make websites and pages more accessible for the blind and visually impaired. The W3C publishes numerous guidelines including Web Content Access Guidelines that are helpful for Website owners and authors. Broad adherence to these guidelines is one way of ensuring that sites are universally accessible.

Google Accesible Web Search

eBay losing its 'magic'

2006-07-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

Has the shine come off online auctions? eBay chief Meg Whitman has acknowledged that the site has lots some of its "magic", as the balance tilts away from home sellers to professional retailers.

Not that eBay is grumbling too much. The company reported profits of $310m on turnover of $1.4bn for 2Q 2006 yesterday. eBay also has $4bn cash in the bank. $9bn worth of trading went on under its roof in the period.

But revenue growth is faster than profit growth, which rose only one per cent sequentially, and this brought a frank admission from Whitman.

The marketplace has been overwhelmed with identical, often poorly-priced items that have diluted the magic of the eBay experience," she said.

This has resulted in fewer return visits, higher exit rates and fewer bids per listing. In turn, conversion rates and successful listings have declined and eBay's GMV growth has not been as strong as we would like.

To remedy this, she said, eBay will raise the profile of the auctions and raise prices for stores. That won't be popular.

eBay said that is has 78 million active users, 20 per cent more than a year ago, and there are 35 per cent more listings. But as a sign of its changing nature, fixed price listings - usually tagged "Buy It Now" - are up 35 per cent year on year.

The company offered no clues on how to turn Skype, which cost eBay $1.6bn, from an expensive albatross into a money spinner.The "communications" revenues grossed only $44m revenues in the period. ®

Jeff Bezos Invests in 37Signals

2006-07-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos has invested in 37 Signals, a Chicago-based software-as-a-service company. The investment comes from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment company of Jeff Bezos. The company has steadfastly refused venture capital investments, but I guess changes are in order.

Since we launched Basecamp we’ve been contacted by nearly 30 different VC firms. We’ve never been interested in the typical traditional VC deal. With a few exceptions, all the VCs could offer us was cash and connections. We’re fine on both of those fronts. We don’ t need their money to run the business and our little black book is full. We’re looking for something else. What we’ve been looking for is the wisdom of a very special entrepreneur who’s been through what we’re going through.

37Signals makes products such as the Ta-Da List, Basecamp, and BackPack.

37signals

Motorola Runs After Nokia

2006-07-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

his was a big week for wireless earnings and market figures, with Motorola grabbing the spotlight from Nokia in the ongoing battle between the two dominating global cell phone makers. Motorola, still milking the success of the Razr, gained significant market share in its attempts to catch up with Nokia. Strategy Analystics says in a research report today that Motorola’s market share in the second quarter of this year reached 22.1%, up from 18.1%–Nokia grew more modestly to 33.3% from 32.5%.

The companies’ earnings matched those figures. Motorola said it brought in $10.9 billion in revenue, a growth of 29% from the second quarter last year, and–even better–earned $1.38 billion in profits, up 49% from last year. Nokia said it generated $12.4 billion in revenues, with $1.4 billion in profits, up 22% and 43% respectively from the previous year. Motorola stock rose 7% on the news.

Two things come to mind from the announcements. First, that the rivalry is getting tougher between Motorola and Nokia as the companies both work on dominating both high-end 3G replacement phones and lower-end models in fast-growing markets. Both companies are opening global stores in competitive markets, rolling out design conscious models that are finding popularity and spending major money on marketing. The ultimate battle will come over China, as both companies are gaining sales in the country.

The other note is that the two companies’ strategies are both working pretty well, compared to the rest of the industry, as Motorola and Nokia increase the distance between themselves and the three trailing cell phone makers, Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung. The market share between Motorola and the third place maker Samsung was at its largest gap since 1999, points out Strategy Analytics.

Motorola also announced a savvy partnership with Yahoo today that will embedd “Yahoo Go for Mobile” on some Motorola cell phones. A move like that could gain more of Nokia’s customers. Nokia better watch its back!

Webmaster Guidelines

2006-07-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

Webmaster Guidelines

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index. Once a site has been removed, it will no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.

When your site is ready:

Have other relevant sites link to yours.
Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
Submit a sitemap as part of our Google Sitemaps (Beta) project. Google Sitemaps uses your sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Design and content guidelines

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
Check for broken links and correct HTML.
If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Technical guidelines

Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Sitemaps.
If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index.

Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at http://www. google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.

Quality guidelines - basic principles

Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If a site doesn't meet our quality guidelines, it may be blocked from the index. If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and request reinclusion.

Google Sitemaps

Site Crawler Diagnostics, LIVE from Google Adsense

2006-07-21T09:42:00.000-07:00

There's a new tab in AdSense: Site Diagnostics. The page includes information about Google crawler's errors when accessing a page to determine its content. Using the site diagnostic section, you can see the errors encountered by Google, when they happened, and what you can do to troubleshoot them in order to allow Google's bot crawl the specific pages. Some of the problems are: robots.txt files that forbid access to web spiders, servers down, HTML errors.

AdSense

Zooomr Launch officialy messed up!

2006-07-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

Version 2 of ZOOOMR the beta should be launched Friday 17.07.2006, at 5 pm PST. Today is Sunday 15.07.2006 and the service isnt yet launched. I`m shure Zooomr will loose its value.

Techcrunch:
"Rumors are circulating that controversial photo sharing site Zooomr, the creation of 18 year old Kristopher Tate, is in acquisition discussions with at least three possible acquirors, with discussions taking place in the $5 million range."

On Zoomr blog i`ve saw that "Official Zooomr Launch Slightly Delayed"
and
"Well I suppose it serves us right for running a countdown timer to our launch at 5pm today, but Zooomr has been under a massive denial of service (DOS) attack all day and it has forced us to delay our launch by a few hours or so. We think we will have it up and running at 7pm Pacific Daylight Time assuming we can clear up this vicious attack."

And my favourite:

"St. tonight talking about Zooomr. Come on down and enjoy a beer with us. We will be back and a lot stronger when we can and in the end as a wise man once said, “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”"

Firefox 2.0 with Google Toolbar

2006-07-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

The new version of Firefox, namely Firefox 2.0 Beta 1, takes most of its new features from Google Toolbar. And that's no surprise as the lead Firefox engineer, Ben Goodger, works at Google.

Let's see:

* Google Suggest in the search box. The Firefox implementation doesn't include your bookmarks and the results from the search history, but it's basically the same feature.

* Anti-phishing protection. Although not enabled by default, Firefox uses the same Google Safe Browsing technology from Google Toolbar. Previously that was a standalone extension. "By combining advanced algorithms with reports about misleading pages from a number of sources, Safe Browsing is often able to automatically warn you when you encounter a page that's trying to trick you into disclosing personal information."

* Subscribe to feeds. Like in Google Toolbar, you can subscribe to feeds using Live Bookmarks or a feed reader like Bloglines.

* Spell checking. The differences between Google Toolbar's SpellCheck and Firefox's new feature are that in Firefox every misspelled word is underlined automatically and Firefox uses a local dictionary, while Google queries their server. Google's dictionary is much more comprehensive and it's dynamically updated, but Firefox makes the feature more useful by integrating it in the normal use.
To test Firefox 2.0 Beta 1:

* you don't have to uninstall your current version of Firefox. The application installs itself in a different directory and you won't lose the stable version.

* most extensions will be incompatible with the new build, so you have to add Nightly Tools Extension after installing Firefox 2.0 Beta 1. Restart the browser, go to Tools / Add-ons and click on "Make all extensions compatible". Restart again. (Too many restarts, but that's how Firefox works.)

Here are the direct links for download:
Windows (5.4MB) | Mac (17MB) | Linux (8.9MB) | Non-English

Gbuy= Google Checkout and is Launched

2006-06-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

Google Checkout launched early this morning and may significantly change the online shopping sector. The system offers low transaction costs for merchants and mediation between buyers and sellers online in exchange for access to what will be a huge amount of data about shopping and sales conversions. There doesn’t appear to be many benefits for buyers in the system.

There are $10 discounts at many participating stores, but in order for me to welcome a new system like this into my life I need features that beat what’s already available.

Not a stored value system like PayPal, Google Checkout is more like a unified shopping identity for buyers who can give their credit card number to just one company (Google) and limit email contact received later from places they shop online. I’m not sure how much I trust Google at all and I’d need a more compelling feature set in order to give them this information (I use GMail because it’s a great system). I hope that stores will offer both PayPal and Google Checkout services, though it seems very unlikely.

The Google Checkout site is in its infancy, with only about 100 stores listed as participating at the program’s inception and few variant URLs that redirect yet to the program page. The program, though high profile in the media, is described on its page almost entirely in terms of its benefits to sellers. The system is limited to sellers in the US, many people were hoping that it would be available in more countries than PayPal is.

AdWords participants will gain extra benefits, with a $10 credit in Google Checkout fees for every $1 they spend on advertising with Google. Transaction fees are remarkably low, roughly 2/3 of PayPal’s basic rates.

The service’s pricing structure may ultimately be profitable enough for Google, but the major strategy here could be to access shopping data. The biggest question then appears to be whether consumers trust the Google brand enough to look to the company for more than just access to the rest of the world’s data, but as a repository for our own data kept private from a world of online shopping vendors. The benefits over PayPal seem clear for sellers, but whether consumers will react favorably is my question.

Google Checkout

Tags: Web2.0, Google, Checkout, PayPal, shopping, privacy

Streamload - 25GBs FREE storage!

2006-06-27T01:50:00.000-07:00

Streamload is a web service that allows users to easily send, store, move, receive and access their digital files. (video, photos, music)

Wite Streamload you can:

Store files securely on the web
Access your files from any web browser
Share all your files quickly and easily, without file size restrictions
Host videos, audio, images and more on the web
Backup your files and data safely and reliably

You can upload one file or multi files all together. Moreover, you can create albums, share videos and photos, tag them and send to your friends by email.

Your FREE account will provide you 25 GBs of secure online storage space pulse you can download and share 500 MB/Monte and you can also sent files up to 50MB in size!

If it's not enough space for you to have, you can upgrade to PREMIUM (250 GBs) or ELITE (1000 GBs) accounts:

What I liked most about Streamload is that you can easily send files to your friends by email and choose to send as links instead of attachments or set expiration date for the links that you sending.

The layout shaped like an email so it's easy and fun to use. Actually it's like your own multimedia center.

Get your Free account NOW

Digg 3.0 Launched

2006-06-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

Today 26 june 2006 digg.com launched the third version. The layout is really nice, it is very clean, has onea 728*90 big add on the top of the page.

The new digg design the one wich retains the essential Digg “experience”, has added a number of news categories beyond technology.

Topics are grouped into six “containers”, including technology, entertainment, gaming, science, world & business, and online video. The default view on Digg is still the technology container, although users can change that view and can also deselect individual topics within containers to further refine what they see on the home page.

I think this is a strategy to get Netscape`s users back

-----------
www.digg.com - Technology focused news site where the stories are chosen by community members rather than editors.
www.beta.netscape.com- Netscape.com is undergoing exciting changes

GBuy Screenshots and Quick review

2006-06-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

GBuy, the online payment system that will be launched by Google on June 28, will enable online merchants to become "trusted GBuy merchants", so they will have these kind of badges on their websites.

Google ads will most likely be CPA Ads and will have a

"Google Certified Merchant"

text that will try to increase people's trust in using the system.

Using this system, Google will find more information about what people actually buy and will update its ad ranking system.

Screenshots from Aneil Webber.

More about GBuy:
GBuy to launch this month

New Vista Build Released, WinFS Dropped

2006-06-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

New build brings enhancements to UAP and WinFS gets the boot

In its continuing efforts to improve its next generation operating system, Microsoft has released another interim build of Windows Vista to testers. Build 5456 is a rather large jump from Windows Vista Beta 2 (Build 5384.4) and offers a number of improvements which are sure to be welcomed by users. NeoSmart Blog reports:

Some of the new features include a revamped Aero/DWM subsystem, and a completely overhauled and significantly less obtrusive UAP for all those that couldn’t stand the previous one. From what we have been told by Microsoft, the Time Zone bug that plagued all most all previous builds of Windows Vista has been fixed and works great now, and quite a few fixes in the Regional Settings and IME are now implemented. And for the first time since Windows 3.0 Microsoft has finally announced that new mouse cursors will be made available for Windows - something they promised to do in XP with “Watercolors” but failed to deliver for internal reasons!

Of all of the improvements made to this build, the less intrusive User Access Protection (UAP) has to be on the biggest pluses. Vista's UAP scheme has been catching a lot of flak and Microsoft has seen it fit to gradually make the system less and less obnoxious.

Vista beta testers can download the new build immediately from the Windows Connect website. The rest of you folks will just have to wait until Microsoft releases another public build.

In other Vista news comes word that Microsoft has decided to drop its plans to offer Windows Future Storage (WinFS) as a future update to the operating system -- WinFS Beta 2 has been also cancelled. WinFS was the name for the new file system that was supposed to debut with the shipping version of Windows Vista. Over the course of Vista's long gestation period, WinFS was dropped from the feature count then later brought back to life when it was announced that the file system would be available at a later date as a system upgrade for Vista.

WinFS, which is based on Microsoft SQL Server technology, was supposed to do away with traditional file/folder hierarchy. From Betanews:

For example, no longer would documents need to be stored in My Documents or images in My Pictures; instead, Windows would simply display the files associated with a particular request on demand. In addition, WinFS could store structured data such as contacts, calendars and more.

As for the future of WinFS and other Windows technologies, lead programmer Quentin Clark goes on to air out his thoughts on his blog:

Of course, there are other aspects of the WinFS vision that we are continuing to incubate – areas not quite as mature as the work we are now targeting for Katmai and ADO.NET. Since WinFS is no longer being delivered as a standalone software component, people will wonder what that means with respect to the Windows platform. Just as Vista pushed forward on many aspects of the search and organize themes of the Longhorn WinFS effort, Windows will continue to adopt work as it's ready. We will continue working the innovations, and as things mature they will find their way into the right product experiences – Windows and otherwise. Having so much ready for SQL Server and ADO.NET is a big impact on the platform, and more will come.

Windows Live Spaces SOON! EXCLUSIVE SCREENSHOTS

2006-06-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

The next version of Microsoft's Spaces hosted blogging product will include more social networking, gadget integration, and premium options such as no advertising on your blog. The features were announced tonight in a post on the Spaces team blog.

Spaces has a whole new look (pictured above) with cleaner lines and additional featured content than current spaces blogs. Your IM friends list can be exposed as a blog module showing off all their latest content and online activity. You can add the same gadgets to your blog sidebar that run on the Live.com personal homepage. The new site also makes it easier to navigate your categories and entries, exposing more content to your site visitors to encourage them to stay a while and get to know more about your digital content.

The biggest surprise is the addition of a Windows Live premium account with special features for Mail and Spaces users. Twenty bucks a year gives you more storage space in your online mail and removes advertisements from your blog as well as from Windows Live Mail. Yahoo! offers a premium mail service for $20 that is limited to just the mail property.

Google Sitemaps: Latest release

2006-06-24T06:52:00.000-07:00

In response to our requests, Google Sitemaps has been updated.

Increased crawl errors
Previously, we showed you up to 10 URLs for each error type. We now show all URLs we’ve had trouble crawling. We’ve also put 404 (not found) errors in a separate table from other HTTP errors.

Just choose an error type and either browse the table using the Next and Previous links or download the entire table as a CSV file.

Expanded query stats
Query stats show you the top 20 search queries that brought up your site in the Google search results (both when users clicked on your site in the results and when they didn’t), along with the average top position of your site for that query. Previously, you could view aggregate data across all properties and countries, as well as mobile-specific queries.

Now, you can view data for individual properties and countries as well. For instance, you can see the search queries from users searching Google Images in Germany that returned your site in the results. You’ll only see properties and countries for which your site has data.

Site owners can also view aggregate information for all properties and languages. Properties include Images, Froogle, Groups, Blog search, Base, and Local. More than 100 countries are available.

Previously, query stats were available for sites that were located at the top-level domain (for instance, http://www.example.com/). These stats are now also available for sites located in a subfolder (for instance, http://www.example.com/mysite/).

Increased number of common words
On the Page analysis page, we’ve expanded the list of words we show in the report of common words on your site and in external links to your site from 20 to 75 and we've removed http and www from the words we list.

Increased limit of sites and Sitemaps that can be added to an account
In response to requests, we’ve raised the number of sites and Sitemaps that site owners can add to a Google Sitemaps account from 200 to 500 — a direct result of a request from a Google Group member.

robots.txt analysis tool addition
Our robots.txt analysis tool is a great way to ensure that the robots.txt file on the site blocks and allows only what’s intended. We’ve added the ability to test against the new Adsbot-Google user agent, which crawls AdWords landing pages for quality evaluation. We only use this bot if you use Google AdWords to advertise your site. You can find out more about this user agent in the AdWords help center.

We want to know what you think
We are constantly looking to improve Google Sitemaps and appreciate the feedback we get from our Google Group, other places online, and at conferences. But we know that we don’t get to hear from everyone that way. And so, to gather more feedback, we’ve added a rating tool to each feature in Sitemaps. Tell us if you love the feature, would like us to improve it, or if you don’t find it useful. Simply click your choice beside each feature.

Digg 3.0. NEW SCREENSHOTS AND STATS

2006-06-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

According to techcrunch:

Digg 3.0 will launch Monday, June 26, in the morning PST. The launch is being announced this evening, and Digg has made a number of screen shots available to me which are included in this post.

Here are the digg 3.0 screenshots

Digg 3.0 Screen Shots:

Pluggd podcast community launched today

2006-06-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

Seattle based start-up Pluggd opened their podcast directory for public use today; the company aims to make podcast listening easier for nontechnical users. It has several features that I think look great.

Company CEO Alex Castro came from Microsoft, with an emphasis in multimedia. The Pluggd team also has members with backgrounds at Real and ESPN.com.

Pluggd offers a few things that really differentiate it from other podcast communities. A javascript bookmarklet lets you send podcasts you discover off-site to your Pluggd bookmark list. That list is different from your subscription list so you can evaluate podcasts before subscribing. As I test it, sometimes the bookmarklet works for autodiscovery of podcasts and sometimes it doesn’t. Since the service launched just minutes ago, I hope that will be taken care of soon.

The Pluggd search engine actively crawls the web for new podcasts to index, instead of relying only on user submissions. The podcast player can be put in a pop-up from the listening page, so you can navigate around or off of the Pluggd site without breaking the podcast you are listening to. The site design is totally unpretentious without looking unprofessional, too, I like that.

The service takes two thematic approaches that are interesting. First, Pluggd believes that social networking and podcast listening work well together. That means that commenting and list sharing are available throughout the site. Second, the company believes that the majority of podcast listeners are listening at work and at school, in a web browser instead of a mobile device. There has been a growing chorus of voices arguing that prime time media consumption hours are shifting from night time to 9 to 5 work hours and Pluggd seems well positioned to respond to that.

The podcast directory space couldn’t be much more crowded, but I like this one. Presuming that all the early kinks get worked out, it looks good.

Pluggd

PCWORLD:The 100 Best Products of the Year

2006-06-22T03:24:00.000-07:00

Powerful computers, handy services, tiny utilities, mammoth HDTVs--our editors' top picks include all these and a whole lot more.

Top 100 listed numerically

Intel Core Duo Notebook/Desktop CPU
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Desktop CPU
Craigslist.org Web Classifieds
Apple iPod Nano Digital Audio Player
Seagate 160GB Portable Hard Drive Portable Hard Drive
Google Earth Satellite Imagery
Adobe Premiere Elements 2 Video Editor
Canon EOS 30D Digital SLR Camera
YouTube.com Video-Sharing Site
Apple Boot Camp Mac Dual-Booter
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 Image Editor
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Web Browser
Engadget.com Gadget Blog
Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD Player
Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV600 Power Notebook Computer
nVidia GeForce 7600 GT Graphics Card Chip Set
Google Search Engine
Sonos ZonePlayer 80 Digital Audio Streamer
RedOctane Guitar Hero Video Game
Yamaha RX-V4600 Home-Theater Receiver
Pioneer BDR-101A Blu-ray Drive
Adobe Photoshop CS2 Image Editor
Citrix GoToMyPC 5 Remote Access
Dealnews.com Online Bargain Tracker
Palm GPS Navigator GPS
MioNet Remote Access
Ubuntu Linux Distribution
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 E-Mail Application
Canon Pixma MP950 Multifunction Printer
Yahoo Mail (Beta) Web-Based E-Mail
TiVo Digital Video Recorder
Avvenu Remote File Access
Blogger Blogging Service
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1 Advanced Digital Camera
Apple Mac Mini Value Desktop Computer
Apple iPod Digital Audio/Video Player
Lenovo ThinkPad X60s Ultralight Notebook
SideStep.com Travel Site
Windows Live Local Online Mapping
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Sound Card
Alienware Aurora 7500 Power Desktop Computer
NEC MultiSync LCD 2180WG-LED Flat-Panel Monitor
Apple iTunes Digital Audio Software
Olympus Evolt E-330 Digital SLR Camera
Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 Pro Earphones
Creative Zen Vision:M Digital Audio/Video Player
Google Desktop Desktop Search
Opera 9 (Beta) Browser
Mitsubishi XD460U Projector
Vonage VoIP Service
StumbleUpon Browser Add-On
NoScript 1.1.4 Browser Add-On
Webroot Spy Sweeper 4.5 Antispyware
Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 Keyboard
Western Digital Raptor X Hard Drive
Yahoo Maps (Beta) Online Mapping
Intuit Quicken Premier 2006 Personal Finance
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX Graphics Board
Javacool EULAlyzer Personal 1.1 License Analyzer
Eizo FlexScan S2410W 24-Inch Wide-Screen LCD Monitor
Kosmix.com Search Engine
T-Mobile SDA Cellular Phone
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP 30-Inch Wide-Screen LCD Monitor
Meebo (alpha) Instant Messaging
Corel Painter IX.5 Graphics Software
Samsung LN-S3251D LCD TV
Cerulean Studios Trillian 3.1 Instant Messaging Client
Rhapsody Online Music
In2M Mvelopes Personal 3 Online Budgeting
Canon Pixma IP6600D Photo Printer
EMC Retrospect Professional 7.5 Backup Software
Yahoo Music Engine 1.1 Digital Audio Site/Software
Network Magic Home Networking
Z-Wave Home Automation
BitDefender 9 Standard Antivirus
Sage Software Simply Accounting Basic 13 Small-Business Finance
Flickr Photo-Sharing Site
Nero 7 Ultra Edition CD/DVD Burning
Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Voice Recognition
Kodak EasyShare Gallery Photo Printing Service
EvDO Wireless Broadband
LaCie d2 Hard Drive Serial ATA External Hard Drive
HP Md5880n DLP TV
Qnext 2 P-to-P Communications
Salling Clicker 3 Presentation Remote
Epson Perfection V700 Photo Scanner
Mindjet MindManager Pro 6 Data-Organizing Software
Microsoft Xbox 360 Game Console
iRiver Clix Digital Audio/Video Player
Fujifilm FinePix E900 Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera
nVidia GeForce 7900 GTX GPU
Del.icio.us Social Networking
Serious Magic Ovation PowerPoint Add-On
WordPress Blogging Tool
Amazon A9 Toolbar Search Toolbar
ThinkFree Office Online Online Office Suite
Greasemonkey Firefox Extension
NewsGator FeedDemon 2 RSS Reader
Sysinternals Rootkit Revealer 1.7 Antispyware

Funny Google AdWords & eBay Ad

2006-06-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

What I am about to show you is nothing new, it happens all the time, but today is starting out to be a slow day, so I thought I post on it.

I DigitalPoint member conducted a search on the keyword [baby] and up came an eBay ad. eBay AdWords ads come up all the time for random keywords and they often are funny to read, since the content of the ad is auto generated and often don't make much sense. In our case of the [baby] search, we get an ad that reads;

Baby
Buy it Cheap on eBay
Low Prices, New and Used
www.ebay.com

The Devil's Guide to Google

2006-06-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

Here’s how to become a totally evil, worm-like creature with Google’s array of services in under a month:

Start a spam blog with Blogger.com. Use Google News to send automated email alerts on any conceivable high-paying topic to your Blogger’s blog-by-mail address.
Copy Wikipedia’s content, which is free to share, and create a website with AdSense ads that look exactly like content. Wait a week or two for Google to index your site and send innocent searchers toward you.
Create a module for the Google Personalized Homepage that does nothing more but advertise your website.
Pay a 12-men army of Russian click-workers to click on your AdSense. Tell them how to switch proxies so they won’t show the same IP to Google. Cash in the check.
Spam every blog on Google’s BlogSpot. Pay a couple of thousand upfront for some poor developer to crack the captcha Google uses.
Create a huge database of affiliate products (stuff you don’t own, but get paid for in commissions), and automatically create a multitude of variants for each product title, including spelling errors. Then, submit this massive spamfest to Google Base and find new income streams in a week.
Become a copyright lawyer, search Google Images for copyright violations committed by teenagers, and threaten their parents to pay you hard cash or be sued.
Pay for advertisement on any major location on Google Maps, and make your ad read “Frank sucks.” (Replace “Frank” with someone you hate.)
Tell the Chinese gov’t that website xyz.com (replace “xyz” with your competitor’s website) is doing some “really nasty human rights stuff.” Watch see the site be censored on Google.cn in approximately two weeks.
Buy 2 million cheap domains, heavily interlink them, and wait until they go up in Google’s ranking. Start using them to sell Viagra.

50 ways to become a better designer

2006-06-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

The way you work can have a huge impact on your creative success. We present the best advice from leading designers on every stage of the creative process, so that you can keep clients satisfied and make the most of your talents.

What is design? Design is both the process and the final product of an endeavour to fulfil a personal or professional brief. Whether you are creating a piece of graphic work, a website, or a design for a new product, the underlying principal is the same – the creative process is everything.

Bad design results from faults with this process – poor planning, ignoring the conventions of the media, poor technical skills or poor communication. So how can you streamline your working methods? How do you go from haphazard doodler to a well-oiled design machine? Listen to the experts.

We approached 17 leading designers working in print, video and on the web, to obtain their words of wisdom on every stage of the design process, from ideas and planning, through to best practice and software skills, and finally putting the finishing touches on their work. We also asked each of our experts to reveal their worst experiences, and how they turned them to their advantage.

Despite their very different backgrounds, many of our designers offered the same advice – about reading the brief, and planning your work on paper. Design is a subjective thing, and we all have different ways of getting results, but take heed of the expert advice offered within the following pages and you’re sure to improve the way you work.

The ideas stage
A blank canvas can be terrifying, so where do you start? Our experts reveal ways to force your ideas into motion

01 ROUGH COMPS
“I put a rough composition together using scans or low-res images found on the web. This enables me to use the assets I like without worrying whether I have them at the right size or in the right colour. Once the rough is complete, I recreate it in a high-res format – shooting, recycling or buying any photography I need to complete the piece.”
SUPPLIED BY: DARREN FIRTH

02 METAPHORS
“Themes and metaphors are great platforms for ideas and I try to develop them both from a holistic perspective (ie, basing a site around a playground metaphor) as well as a design perspective (colour schemes and layout styles, for example). If you can hit a decent theme that allows you to convey and house the content, it’s a good place to be.”
SUPPLIED BY: LAITH BAHRANI

03 FROM WORDS TO PICTURES
“When I receive a commission, the first thing I do is read it and underline key phrases. Then I draw some very small rough thumbs for each. Once I’ve got a bunch of little thumbnails together, I look at them all and see which ones make good symbols and which are identifiable and relevant to the content of the story.”
SUPPLIED BY: DEREK LEA

04 BRAND THINKING
“I would recommend going on any brand courses run by the likes of the Design Business Association. Brand thinking is essential; it encourages you to develop a visual way of thinking and helps you develop keywords to hang everything off – the essence of the idea. Above all else, keep it simple. If it gets complicated it isn’t going to work.”
SUPPLIED BY: JAY ARMITAGE

05 KEEP YOUR BRAINSTORMS REALLY SHORT
“When coming up with ideas it’s essential to bounce ideas around with a colleague, but the secret is to keep the brainstorms as short as possible, otherwise they’ll get stale. It’s better to have a couple of smaller sessions than a single mammoth session.”
SUPPLIED BY: JASON ARBER

06 USE A SKETCHBOOK
“I usually plan my work in an A4 hardback book, which I carry with me at all times. Any ideas I have (often when on public transport staring out of the window) go in here, and they can then be referred to at a later date. Diagrams, sketches, thoughts, book titles and reference URLs go in, too.”
SUPPLIED BY: OZ DEAN

07 GET AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER
“I find the worst thing is to sit staring at a blank canvas on screen. Get out of your chair and take a ten-minute walk in the fresh air. If you can’t do that, I find it helps to grab a Thesaurus and look up synonyms for the key words in the design brief.”
SUPPLIED BY: RIGEL

08 JOIN A FORUM
“Freelancers walk that lonesome road, but that shouldn’t stop you from seeking feedback while in the concept stage. If you have creative friends, great! If not, join an art forum to bounce ideas off of your peers.”
SUPPLIED BY: DAVE CURD

09 TAKE A SHOWER
“I get a lot of my thinking done in the shower. Running water increases brain productivity, apparently, which explains why some of the best ideas are hatched in the shower. I try to read a brief well in advance of working on it, allowing ideas to gestate in the run up to the actual work.”
SUPPLIED BY: OZ DEAN

10 SPECS!
“Taking into account the different media that will be required in your project is really important. If there will be photography, illustration, 3D renderings, charts or diagrams then all this has to be taken into consideration and planned for. The printing spec should be explored as soon as possible with the printer – it’s pointless waiting until the last minute, because some processes always take longer than others to complete.”
SUPPLIED BY: JEFF KNOWLES

Best practice
Work smarter, not harder, with advice for best working practice

11 KEEP A LIBRARY
“When working with Flash files, I always make a point of giving my layers and symbols relevant and self-explanatory names. I also keep a file called ‘library’, which contains timers, loopers, buttons, code snippets and symbols that I use regularly. This really speeds up production.”
SUPPLIED BY: OZ DEAN

12 WEB STANDARDS
“When designing websites you can save loads of time by using Firefox extensions such as Web Developer, HTML Validator and Fangs. Each will reduce the time it takes to create standardscompliant, accessible websites.”
SUPPLIED BY: ODOG

13 KEEP IT CURRENT
“Visit sites such as pixelsurgeon.com or designiskinky.com and read Computer Arts. Staying up to date with design doesn’t mean just looking at the work of others, you should know the industry and stay ahead of the software curve. Don’t fall behind as many designers do, but don’t chase fads either.”
SUPPLIED BY: JJ JOHNSTONE

14 KEEP IT SIMPLE
“My illustrations can be quite complex, so I always place one limitation on myself. If I have an illustration with a lot of visual elements and textures, l force myself to use a simple colour palette. If I want to use loads of different colours I ensure that the illustration is kept simple. That way colour and design don’t fight against each other.”
SUPPLIED BY: DEREK LEA

15 RECORD YOUR ACTIONS
“If there are procedures you do repeatedly in Photoshop, it’s worth recording them as an Action. I only learned this trick recently, and it’s a great time-saver.”
SUPPLIED BY: RIGEL

16 SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!
“Computers always seem to know when you’re hitting a deadline and choose that moment to crash, destroying any unsaved work. So hit Save as often as possible.”
SUPPLIED BY: JASON ARBER

17 STORE YOUR ASSETS
“Everyone has their own way of doing things. I like to keep lossless versions of all the assets I’m going to be using in a piece to allow for any last-minute changes of size/format by the client. This is helpful should someone decide to take a postcard design and turn it into an A0 poster. Keeping things at maximum editability is handy, too – don’t flatten layers in Photoshop until the very end, for instance.”
SUPPLIED BY: JON BURGERMAN

18 COLLABORATE
“Since there are only two of us, nothing gets released without approval from us both. If the other person thinks that it still lacks something, he/she will work on it. Or if one of us doesn’t like the first draft, we start from scratch. Being on the same page makes the work easier and, more importantly, fun.”
SUPPLIED BY: INKSURGE

19 GET IT RIGHT FIRST TIME
“Even if you factor-in time for testing a website into your initial workflow, problems and client vacillations will inevitably eat into it, and it’s not unheard of for sites to go live with only cursory testing. For web designers, however, this quality assurance process is worth its weight in gold, even if project managers start sweating at the expense. Getting a site right the first time is the kind of cherry on top that can ensure you get more work from the same client.”
SUPPLIED BY: JASON ARBER

20 PRACTICE ALWAYS MAKES PERFECT
“The more projects you work on and the more time you spend using programs, the quicker and more efficient you become. You learn not only from your mistakes but also from your successes, and these will help raise your standard of production.”
SUPPLIED BY: LAITH BAHRANI

Software skills
A bad workman blames his tools, so make sure your software works for you, not against you

21 ALPHA CHANNELS IN PHOTOSHOP
“Take the time to experiment with Alpha Channel-based selections. I find that Alpha Channels are often the key ingredient to bringing real-world elements and textures into my artwork. Once you get into the groove of working with channels it changes the way you observe things in the real world.”
SUPPLIED BY: DEREK LEA

22 BUY MORE RAM
“My number-one tip would be to buy as much RAM as you can afford, because Photoshop will devour as much as you can throw at it. I tend to use lots of layers and so small jobs, such as designs for websites, can quickly grow into mammoth files.”
SUPPLIED BY: JASON ARBER

23 GRADIENTS IN PHOTOSHOP
“To prevent gradients from ‘banding’ when printing, add a small amount of noise to the layer, varying the amount depending on the size and resolution of your canvas.”
SUPPLIED BY: RIGEL

24 MORE LAYERS
“From past experiences, my best suggestion when producing work in Photoshop (especially complex compositions) is to use as many layers as possible, avoiding merging objects together if you can. There is nothing worse than merging something together that later you wish to delete or change – especially if you have gone past its History state.”
SUPPLIED BY: DARREN FIRTH

25 AIRBRUSH IN ILLUSTRATOR
“Lowering the Opacity of a path, adding a Gaussian Blur and combining them with a Clipping Mask in Illustrator allows for wonderful airbrushed styles to be built up with a level of control that isn’t found in Photoshop.”
SUPPLIED BY: INKWORM

26 EVIL FLASH
“Never ever, ever, ever use the default Green-to-Black Gradient Fill tool in Flash. This is evil and will ultimately bring about the demise of humanity.”
SUPPLIED BY: LAITH BAHRANI

27 NAME CONVENTIONS
“Rather frustratingly, for me and everyone else, I always seem to approach projects in slightly different ways – even naming files differently from job to job, with Photoshop versions named with 01, 02, 03 suffixes for one project, and then A, B, C for the next. So, no matter how smoothly the job goes, I admit that there is plenty of room for improved consistency in my approach!”
SUPPLIED BY: JASON ARBER

28 GROUP LAYERS
“Setting up Layer Group colours and Shy Layers in After Effects can be a massive time saver when it comes to client alterations and amends. I like to take the vector image into Photoshop for a bit of final colour tweaking. I usually do the same in After Effects using a Pre-Comp. I find it unifies the image colours just that little bit more.”
SUPPLIED BY: JAMES WIGNALL

29 FORBIDDEN FRUIT
“We’ve all hit that stage when mastering Photoshop where we forbid ourselves certain filters or effects, but if you take some time to refresh yourself with these forbidden fruits, you’re bound to discover some new tricks. For example, while you might not use ‘difference clouds’ to make a blue and white sky, you can use it to make a selection while in Quick-mask mode, and you could exploit that selection to help render a more organic sky.”
SUPPLIED BY: DAVE CURD

30 THINK ON PAPER
“Use often-ignored tools called a felt-tip pen and sketchbook first, then a scanner, then various applications – the usual suspects. My tip is to think with a pen and paper first, then use computers. It will lead to a stronger, more original voice.”
SUPPLIED BY: JEREMYVILLE

Finishing work and finessing
An eye for the final details often makes the difference between a good and great piece of work. So read on and learn to how to ‘put the cherry on top’

31 WALK AWAY
“I find that it is best to finish my illustration and then walk away from it for a day if I can. Sometimes by the time something is finished I am completely spent, especially when I’m up against a tight deadline. Once I’ve had a break (even a short one), I’ll start up my machine and open up the finished file one last time. If I don’t have any finishing touches in mind already I’ll usually come up with some refinements that need doing after I look at the finished piece again.”
SUPPLIED BY: DEREK LEA

32 ACROBATICS
“For print designers, checking overprints, spot colours, trapping and knock-outs in Adobe Acrobat Professional is an often-overlooked step that can save you money and goodwill if your print settings are not right.”
SUPPLIED BY: JASON ARBER

33 KERN!
“…and get a fresh pair of eyes to look at your work. I always ask my girlfriend to look at something I’ve been working on. This is mainly because she is not a designer and sees things I don’t look for – she has a good eye for detail.”
SUPPLIED BY: OZ DEAN

34 BACK TO THE BRIEF
“Get feedback from the team as well as people not involved – you need to stand back at the end and go back to your original notes and thinking. Check it still meets what you set out to achieve.”
SUPPLIED BY: RALPH AND CO

35 ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
“The most important thing with finishing touches is knowing when to stop. There is always a danger of pushing a piece of work too far. The advantage of computers is that you always have the undo options, but it’s all too easy to ‘put some cherries on top’ for the sake of it, when all that it needs is a subtle sprig of parsley.”
SUPPLIED BY: INKWORM

36 PRINT FINISHES
“I find printing techniques a great way to enrich a project once it leaves the computer. There’s a multitude of ways to enhance a piece that can’t be achieved in the digital world. Metallic inks, spot varnish, embossing, de-bossing, foil blocking, matt-laminating or diecutting can all be used individually or together to great effect.”
SUPPLIED BY: JEFF KNOWLES

37 ADDING TEXTURE
“I suppose most of my work has an organic feel, so for me the finessing is adding various textures and handmade marks such as pencil and crayon. Your instinct should tell you when the piece is complete – although this does tend to be more tricky when it comes to personal projects!”
SUPPLIED BY: KERRY ROPER

38 BE PREPARED
“Working in the motion world can be tough. Print has tried and tested processes for high-quality work, but motion and video work is less predictable. Learn about your compressors and try to learn what works best for you and your projects. Make sure you stay lossless for the entire project – a little bit of compression early on will just magnify as the project progresses. Save compression for the final output, and save lossless versions of your final version as well.”
SUPPLIED BY: JJ JOHNSTONE

39 A LITTLE SHADING
“The last things I normally add to my digital pieces are shadings, shadows and minor tweaks to the colours. These can help to solidify the piece and make it look all nice and polished.”
SUPPLIED BY: JON BURGERMAN

40 BULGING EYES
“Once a design, site or animation is virtually complete, it’s good to step back from the whole thing, take a deep breath and stare at it until your face turns blue and your eyes start bulging like that bit in Total Recall. During this time you should look for elements that could be tweaked, polished, scaled, added or removed to some effect. With designs, especially, I’ll look for colours that could be made stronger or knocked back, and elements that could be nudged around to balance or otherwise complement the composition.”
SUPPLIED BY: LAITH BAHRANI

Things to avoid
Finally, learn from your mistakes. Ten things you should avoid when working with clients

41 READ AND RE-READ!
“When writing an email, do not fill the address bar until last. Go back and read what you have written at least twice. Too many people have horror stories about sending an email to somebody that it was not intended for. Don’t become one of those people. It’s not possible to ‘undo’ a sent email.”
SUPPLIED BY: OZ DEAN

42 BE SPECIFIC
“Be specific when working with new clients, especially as far as revisions or changes are concerned. In my excitement to work with a client I didn’t spend the necessary time going over the details of what was included in the fee. I received a call out of the blue from one of Canada’s leading magazines. I simply said that minor tweaks and revisions would be fine.”
SUPPLIED BY: DEREK LEA

43 DON’T RELY ON THE SPELLCHECKER!
“Don’t rely on your computer’s spellchecker! Always proofread any text extremely carefully. Preferably, get someone else to proofread your work because you may be too familiar with it.”
SUPPLIED BY: RIGEL

44 STICK TO THE BRIEF!
“In the earlier days we used to do too much to try and win a pitch and produced way too much work on spec – it made us look desperate when we were just enthusiastic. Stick to the brief and make sure you have answered it – don’t deviate, just answer it in the most creative way possible.”
SUPPLIED BY: RALPH AND CO

45 WORK WITH CLIENTS
“Everyone knows about ‘thinking outside the box’, but in creative circles, the real excellence comes from finding the best possible solution inside the clientmade box. Don’t look at external direction as a damning prison wall, but instead as a clue to finding your solution.”
SUPPLIED BY: DAVE CURD

46 STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW
“Definitely avoid briefs that are not your core strength and style. I’ve been that hapless salmon trying to swim uphill with a terribly inappropriate brief on a few occasions, and I now avoid those types of jobs. Choose your clients as well as they choose you. Turn a bad experience to your advantage by not repeating the same mistake again.”
SUPPLIED BY: JEREMYVILLE

47 DON’T ASSUME ANYTHING
“Once we had a very bad experience when we asked for a dummy mock-up from the printers for some packaging with the assumption that we were on the same track. They only showed us a blank mock-up and we assumed it was right, but when they started to print it, we noticed that the cover was on the other side! So never, ever make assumptions.”
SUPPLIED BY: INKSURGE

48 JUSTIFY YOUR ACTIONS
“I have worked with a few fashion brands recently and they can seem like the worst clients in the world, but I think if you provide valid reasons for your actions and maybe provide several solutions to their requests, you can steer things back into your control. I tried this recently and it proved successful.”
SUPPLIED BY: DARREN FIRTH

49 DESIGN HISTORY
“I’ve never really had any problems, but one thing I always do is to have back-up files. Keep some of the original ideas that you may have presented – sometimes people change their minds and this makes it much easier to revert back to earlier stages.”
SUPPLIED BY: KERRY ROPER

50 MANAGE EXPECTATIONS
“A good way to avoid client problems is definitely to be as up-front about what they can expect and when before the project is fully underway. If expectations are managed as early and openly as possible you can avoid misunderstandings and unreasonable demands. As a rule-of-thumb, a good way to deal with clients is actually to treat them with the contempt you would a small horned imp from the ninth layer of hell’s gate.”
SUPPLIED BY: LAITH BAHRANI

Tips,Tricks and secrets for google adsense

2006-06-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

5 Google Adsense Secrets, Tips and Tricks

Updated 17 June, 2006

I want to share you some secrets I learned up until now. I am not going to tell you basic stuff like “use channels”. Also, bear with me on the graphics. I’m no designer

1. Blend your ads. Adsense color and font size

1.i It’s tested and it works. Use the same colour of your page background, for the border and the background of the ad.

1.ii Use the same colors used in your page, for the Adsense ad title, text and url link.

1.iiia If possible use the same font in your page, as the Adsense ads. Since the ads have variable text size and font, according to dimension and type of ad, you can never do this 100% right. But every little bit helps.

Real life Adsense font size and type

768×60 Ad unit:
Title: style="line-height:12px; font-size:11px; font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif"
Description: style="line-height:12px; font-size:10px; font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif"
URL: style="line-height:12px; font-size:10px" face="verdana,arial,sans-serif"

300×250 Ad unit:
Title: style="line-height:14px;font-size:11px" face="arial,sans-serif"
Description: style="line-height:14px;font-size:11px" face="arial,sans-serif"
URL: style="line-height:14px;font-size:10px" face="arial,sans-serif"

As you can notice above, some ads have the arial font as default, some have verdana. Some have a 10px description text, some have 11px. And besides all that, each box may contain 1 up to 4 ads, and depending on that the font sizes will change. So it’s really up to you to experiment and see what works best for you, in as many cases as possible.

1.iv Try to not separate the ad from the content (like trashing the ad in some remote corner of your website. Integrate it within the content (in, within, next to, above, below etc).

2. Placing ads high on a page is good

Position the ads with the highest CTR, as high as possible in the page, in the source’s order (in the image below, notice that the ad appears just below the body tag). The first ads that appear in the pages (in the source’s order) get the most income per click.

3. Use images. Images and Adsense work together

Use images left or right of the ads. It makes them seen as part of the pages content, and your CTR increases. It doesn’t matter what images you use. Use any plain generic images. If you can, try to corelate those with the niche/domain of your website/blog. Be carefull not to write text, point arrows or similar on the images, as that might be seen as click incentives.

4. Earnings are variable, based on CTR

With the Smart pricing ideea, your income varies a lot, according to each of your channel’s CTR rate.

Now this is very important: It’s account-wide, not channel-wide. So if you have a very good CTR (5%-50%) for one website, and you include it in the same account with a 0.04# CTR website, you will loose money.

Remove all the websites (from your account) that don’t have at least a 5% CTR (or depeding on your overall CTR, remove the ones that are really lower than your average), or you’ll affect the income of all the other good converting websites.

5. Use non-standard types of ads

We all know that web-savvy (eg. webmasters or people that use the Internet for so many years, and know all the standards, convetions and so on) users are ad-blind.

Banners like 468×80 have been on the Internet since it’s creation. Even people who use the Internet vaguely or once a month, are kind of blind to these standard banners.

Instead, use vertical skyscrapers, or boxed ads. They have a much higher click rate. The Adsense team even published a list of their highest performing ad sizes:

336×280 large rectangle
300×250 inline rectangle
160×600 wide skyscraper

End note: I hope these advices help some people. If they did, drop me an e-mail and tell me about it.

Wetpaint is now public

2006-06-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

Today, 19.06.2006 I`ve got my wetpaing invitation and make this account. Seems to be a great web2.0 product, good ajax coding, nice and easy article editing. If u can take it for a ride here is a link.

www.wetpaint.com

Google Pages Used to Host Trojan Horse

2006-06-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

Google's Web site hosting service is apparently being used by hackers to try to steal money using a malicious program, a security company said.

The Trojan appears to have been noticed before its authors have managed to launch an attack, Websense said. The company has not yet detected e-mails or IM links leading back to the Trojan, which is designed to steal bank details relating to certain financial institutions.

Google Pages Used to Host Trojan Horse

What's new with Google Calendar

2006-06-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

What's new with Google Calendar

Just launched!

Add your calendar to your Google Personalized Homepage
Now you can add a Google Calendar module to your Google Personlized Homepage so your calendar is always at your fingertips. This module lets you browse through your schedule and add new events, right from your Homepage. Learn more

Publish your calendar and share it with the world
Have a website or a blog where you'd like to show other people what's going on? Now you can place an interactive, graphical version of your calendar into any page that you manage. The Event Publisher Guide shows you how, plus other ways to add Google Calendar information to your sites.

What's been keeping us busy...

Ever since we launched Google Calendar, we've been listening to our users and working hard to make Google Calendar even better. Here are a few of the features we've added:

Access your calendar from your phone
Now when you're on the go, you can access the events on your calendar (or even add new events) with your mobile phone. Learn more
View your calendar with Google Desktop
The handy mini-calendar gadget for Google Desktop lets you view your agenda without even opening your browser. You can place the Google Calendar gadget right on your desktop or leave it docked in the Desktop Sidebar. Learn more
Support for Verizon
Now you can get SMS notifications and send SMS calendar commands with your Verizon phone. Just go to the Notifications Settings page to select the kind of alerts you want and to verify your cell phone number. Learn more
Integration with Gmail for your domain
Now Google Calendar works with Gmail for your domain, so every user at your domain can enjoy all the benefits of Google Calendar, including the useful integrations between Gmail and Google Calendar. Learn more
Simple event and calendar publishing
We've made it easier for you to add Google Calendar event reminder buttons to your web pages, so you can help visitors to your site quickly add individual events or a whole series of events to their calendars. Learn more.
Google Calendar data API
We launched the Google Calendar data API, which lets developers create services and applications that build on Google Calendar. This API lets your applications display and modify Google Calendar data. Learn more

Live.com Beta goes Live

2006-06-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

The new Live.com, now featuring Flair/Vapor, went live.
this upgrade mainly focuses on the new UI and first-run experience. Now it is much easier to get rolling with customized content right from the start.

Your homepage the way you want it.
It's really clean and super fast, with the content and layout you choose.
The weather in your hometown, headlines from across the globe and Web search results for any term you choose - all there the minute you bring up your browser.

Not that much of a change but still, Sweet.

Windows Live Ideas

Yahoo Hack Day Today

2006-06-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has had a a couple of regional “Hack Days”, which are day long events where engineers stop everything they are doing and just build stuff that they think is cool. The idea was first popularized by Jot last year, and a number of companies have picked up on the idea as a great way to stoke innovation and creativity in a semi-organized way. The goal? Take something from idea to prototype in 24 hours.

Today at noon, however, Yahoo got serious about Hack Days by making it Yahoo-wide. Every Yahoo engineer is invited to participate, and other employees are joining in as well. Anyone with an idea is encouraged to gather a team up and spend a day coding. Tomorrow (Friday) at noon, the hacking stops and everyone will get together to review what’s been built.

The effort is being led out of Bradley Horowitz’s product strategy group, with Chad Dickerson and Caterina Fake organizing the event.

I’ll be there to cover the event tomorrow, as will Jeremy Zawodny and John Markoff of the New York Times.

Yahoo

Tags: hackday, techcrunch, web2.0, web 2.0

Riya 2.0 On the Way; Major Strategy Shift

2006-06-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

Photo search and facial recognition site Riya (a TechCrunch sponsor) had a million photos uploaded in the first two days after launch and seven million photos uploaded in the first seven weeks. For details on the core service, see this post and listen this podcast interview with Riya founder and CEO Munjal Shah.

Next up - Riya 2.0.

It’s still a few months away from launching, but I spoke with Munjal this evening and he gave me an overview of what to expect from the service. It will be a “visual search engine” - give Riya an image and it will return image results that are similar from across the web. They’ve already begun crawling the web for images, a process that will take many months.

When it’s ready, users will be able to search on an image (the easiest way will be via a browser plugin to search right from the page containing the images). See a rug on ebay that has a pattern you like? See other rugs from across the web containing similar patterns. Riya will make money if the result you click on is from another ecommerce company - Riya pockets the referral fee.

Dating is another (if slightly creepy) use for the new Visual Search engine. See someone’s picture on MySpace that you like? Search on their photo to find single people who look similar and who have profiles up on match.com or other dating sites. Again, Riya makes a referral fee by moving the traffic along.

The infrastructure needed to crawl the web is substantial, says Munjal, and they’ve been working to build out a new data center over the last few months.

I believe Dan Farber was the first to write about Riya 2.0. More on Munjal’s blog, and he briefed Matt Marshall and Laurie Sullivan as well.

In other Riya news, a Mac version of their uploader was released tonight.

Riya

Google sales chief says still testing display ads

2006-06-15T05:25:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc.'s global sales chief sidestepped questions on Tuesday over whether its foray into graphical display advertising has been a disappointment, saying the effort remains in testing mode.

"I think it's fair to say we have basically just started," said Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice president of global online sales.

Sandberg was responding to a question from analyst Safa Rashtchy at the Piper Jaffray Global Internet Summit in Laguna Beach, California, about whether the company had gotten off to a slow start in its display ads business.

Her comments were Webcast on Google's investor relations Web site.

Google derives virtually all of its revenue from selling pay-per-click, text-based advertising as opposed to display advertising, such as banners on an Internet page, a market that rival Yahoo Inc. continues to dominate.

The company has been experimenting for two years with running graphical advertising on affiliated Web sites supplied by Google rather than testing ads on its own search results pages.

Last month, it introduced a plan to offer "click to play" video advertising.

"When we think about display advertising, we think we are just beginning," Sandberg said.

Rashtchy asked Sandberg whether Google planned to offer ad services to cover "all media," including the broader world of traditional media outlets.

AOL-Netscape Launches Massive “Digg Killer”

2006-06-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, AOL’s Netscape property will no longer be just another portal - it’s being converted into a Digg-killer. I was briefed on the new site by Jason Calacanis last week. As of tonight, he owns the Netscape property at AOL. The new site will run at beta.netscape.com for now, converting over to the main Netscape.com property soon.

It’s not exactly a Digg clone (home page screenshot here). Submitted stories are voted on in much the same way, and the more votes a story gets the higher it appears in a category home page or on Netscape.com itself. However, the top few spots in each category and on the home page are determined by an “anchor” - essentially an editor choosing from stories moving up the ranks.

There are 30 topical channels, from “Art & Design” to “Women”. Eight full time and eleven part time editors will manage the site, determining both the top stories as well as staffing a 24×7 chat room where users can discuss stories in real time.

The fact that AOL is launching the new service under the Netscape brand instead of building out a new property says how serious they are about the space. According to statistics provided by AOL, Netscape serves a whopping 811 million monthly page views - far more than Digg today.

Putting this kind of audience in front of a Digg like service could spell trouble for many sites that ultimately make it to the top of the site. A Digg or Slashdot story can send tens of thousands of visitors to a site in a matter of minutes or hours. With Netscape, this effect could be many times larger - possibly resulting in outages at sites headlining the new service.

There are a number of other notable features of the new Netscape. Story submissions can be tagged by the submitter along for easier search in the future. Every category, user and group of friends has their own RSS feed. Also, category anchors will follow up on many stories and post their own editorial content on those stories (see screenshot here).

Netscape

Tags: web2.0, web_2.0

Vista Sidebar showcases desktop/Web integration

2006-06-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

Long Zheng has published some fantastic Windows Vista screencasts, which display Users will be able to manage their gadgets from both platforms - Vista and Live.com the power of the Vista OS - released as a developer beta last week. The screencast that I was most interested in was the Sidebar. Similar in appearance and functionality to the Dashboard feature of Mac OS X Tiger, the Vista Sidebar allows users to manage their gadgets (Microsoft's term for widgets) and other content such as RSS feeds. The Sidebar can be easily shown or hidden on the Vista desktop, and individual gadgets given varying degrees of opacity. Gadgets can also be dragged and moved around the desktop.

As you probably know, gadgets are little customizable software apps that offer various bits of functionality - from a simple calculator to some of the more advanced apps that we're beginning to see nowadays (e.g. a Media Center programmer app). They are a feature of Microsoft's live.com platform, but will also be a key aspect of Vista. This shows the increasing integration of desktop functionality (Sidebar) with Web (live.com). Once Vista is released and live.com is more mature, users will be able to manage their gadgets from both platforms - and easily interchange according to whatever context they're in.

Also Microsoft is beginning the big push to get its extensive Windows developer community to build online apps that integrate with the Windows platform. Recently Microsoft announced Windows Live Dev, the Windows Live developer platform. The aim is to encourage developers to build services that are not only online apps, but which leverage the Windows platform as well. Gadgets are a key aspect of this and may well be one of the most visible parts of the desktop/Web integration in the Vista/Live rollout.

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Categories: Web 2.0, News, Tech, Design, RSS, Internet Companies, Microsoft, Convergence, Products, Reviews, Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Two-Way Web, Web as Platform, Operating Systems

New Product What is Picasa Web Albums?

2006-06-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

Picasa Web Albums is Picasa’s newest feature, designed to help users post and share their photos quickly and easily on the web.

It’s available by invitation, along with the latest downloadable version of Picasa, and offers:

One-click web upload using Picasa’s new “Web Album” button
Free storage space to post and share approximately 1000 photos, with the option to upgrade to more space
High-quality photos, automatically resized and optimized to fill available screen space
Pre-loaded images enable quick scrolling using arrow keys, and mimic a desktop experience of “flipping” through photos, even on the web
End-to-end photo management that makes it easy to download uploaded photos back to your computer

Take a look at this public gallery to see what it’s like to share photos using Picasa Web Albums.

Quick facts

Cost: The latest version of Picasa with the Web Albums feature is free. It’s also free to use Picasa Web Albums for posting, sharing and viewing photos.
Access: You need an invitation to post and share photos on Picasa Web Albums. You can sign up for an invitation using your Gmail username. No invitation or sign-in is required to view a friend’s photos online.
Storage: Each Picasa Web Albums account comes with 250MB of free storage space, or room to post and share approximately 1,000 wallpaper-sized photos (at 1600 pixels each). For $25.00 per year, users can get a subscription to an additional 6GB of storage – room to post and share approximately 25,000 photos.
There are no ads in Picasa or on Picasa Web Albums
Language: Picasa Web Albums and the latest version of Picasa with web uploading are supported in English only
System requirements:

Picasa: Windows 2000/XP, Internet Explorer 6.0+
Picasa Web Albums Internet Explorer 6.0 (also works with IE 7 Beta 2), Firefox 1.0+ or Safari 2.0

Using Picasa Web Albums

Uploading Photos

Just select the photos you want to share online and upload them into web albums instantly using the latest version of Picasa.

Viewing Photos

Viewing is optimized so photos look as good on the web as they did on your computer: big enough to fill the largest screen sizes and fast to scroll through. You can write captions, zoom in for a closer look, even view your photos in a web-based slideshow.

Sharing Photos

Once your photos are online, it’s easy to share them – click the “Share” button from anywhere on the site to email a link to your photos, albums, or gallery. Or, just let people know your public gallery’s URL.

You can also easily keep track of your favorite people’s photos using “My Favorites.” If a friend has shared photos with you, you can add a link to his or her web album in your list of My Favorites. Now you can access your friends’ albums in a few clicks and even receive notifications whenever they add new photos.

Other things you can do with Picasa Web Albums

You can add captions, post and view comments, and organize photos online.

Using the latest version of Picasa with web uploading, you can even download photos back to your computer. Now, you can truly use Picasa for every aspect of your photo management needs, both online and off.

EBay integrates Skype into auctions

2006-06-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

After months of anticipation, eBay announced tonight its pilot integration of Skype, the internet telephony giant it acquired last September for approximately $4.1 billion. The announcement was made tonight at eBay Live!, eBay’s annual community conference.

Beginning June 19th, US eBay sellers will have the option of adding a SkypeMe button to individual item listings in 14 select categories. Prospective buyers will then be able to contact the sellers by voice or instant messaging. Users can currently add a SkypeMe button to their personal profile, but not to individual items for sale.

The categories included in the pilot project will be:

Automotive GPS devices
Camera and photo lenses and filters
Wired networking routers
Skype devices
VOIP / Internet telephony
Diamond solitaire rings
Real estate (residential, commercial)
Manufacturing and metalworking
Beds
NBA basketball cards
Silver coins
Lost in Space collectibles
Radio control toys
Cars and trucks

The categories above were selected because eBay believes that instant communication of such goods would help sales, the items are complex or local delivery is required.

The Skype acquisition and its price have been widely questioned since last September. If this pilot integration anywhere near as successful as the 2002 acquisition of PayPal has been then most of those questions may be put to rest.

Whether sellers will welcome voice or IM contact from prospective customers remains to be seen. A more sophisticated offering enabling users to, for example, select only IM or IM and voice contact, or a permission request process letting sellers see a user’s eBay reputation before accepting a call would have been a good thing to see.

Some observers warn that enabling voice communication via Skype will only make transactions easier to complete outside of eBay auctions, thus cutting into the company’s monetization of transactions.

Last week’s announcement of eBay’s new hosted blogs quickly proved interesting when some sellers put their blogs to use in building their reputations by educating prospective buyers in subjects related to their eBay stores. A similar use of auction-specific Skype communication could emerge and prove eBay better at leveraging high-profile acquisitions than other big web players seem to have.

eBay Skype

Tags: TechCrunch, Web2.0, eBay, Skype

Windows Vista screencasts

2006-06-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

Here’s several Windows Vista screencasts focusing on various important new features: Aero Glass, file management, guided help, tablet PC functionality, sidebar, improved search indexing and Media Center. These are just a taste of some of the new features you will find in Windows Vista. These screencast was done in quite a hurry, so I apologise for the lack of depth and ~~variety~~, had a bit more time so there’s a bit of variety now.

These were all recorded on the Toshiba Portege M400 tablet PC. You might notice the resolution is quite low at 1024×768, but it wouldn’t record fluidly at the native resolution of 1400×1050. Encoded to Quicktime H.264 format.

Added: Windows Sidebar and Search and Media Center videos!

Windows Aero Glass

Click image to view video
This looks at the key aspects of Aero Glass: windows translucency - which helps reduce Windows clutter and orients attention towards application content, live previewing - ability to manage windows with the help of an actual preview of the window content, and general performance and fidelity enhancements.

File copying

Click image to view video
Managing multiple versions of the same file is no longer guesswork, with clear indications of the differences between two file variations including a live preview, document size and attributed dates and time.

Guided help

Click image to view video
There are two major improvements in this area. Help is no longer for the inexperienced. And help is no longer long pages of text. Not only if help going to offer support to the computer novice, it also offers advanced tips and tricks that caters to all users. Guided help introduces interactivity and assistance to the knowledge-base, kind of like having a virtual wiz-kid, visual cues will assist users in completing many help tasks. Interestingly, if you notice the arrow in the ‘compass’ always points to where you need to look at. Also the window moves around pretty fluidly placing itself around the focused area.

Tablet PC

Click image to view video
There are a wide range of enhancements to the tablet experience in Vista. From better navigation to pen flicks, personalisations handwriting recognition and an improved tablet input panel.

Windows Sidebar

Click image to view video

Vista Search

Click image to view video
A common-day scenario of how an information ~~slave~~ worker can utilise Vista search to improve productivity.

Media Center

Click image to view video
Note: The Aero Glass UI has been disabled as it causes problems when the video recorder was in use with Media Center. In actual use, Aero Glass + Media Center is very fluid and does not have any issues.

There’s a lot of undocumented but exciting new features in Windows Vista that puts up a lot of competition towards OS X and Linux. Anyone that says Vista is only XP with a new skin should not only read reviews or view screenshots, but install it and check it out for themselves.

Google Ajax Search API

2006-06-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

Google has released a new search API that lets you add an Ajax version of Google Search to your site (instead of just a simple search box that heads off to Google land).

As well as the API itself, you can take a look at the search module as an example:

Yahoo! Answers launches Ask the Planet campaign

2006-06-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Answers unveiled a new promotion today called “Ask the Planet,” where celebrities, notables and allegedly interesting people will pose questions that users will answer for a chance to win prizes. The celebrity line up is high-profile and should garner a lot of attention.

Questions will be posed to users by the following:

Marilyn vos Savant, the holder of world’s highest IQ, begins the promotion today with a question about the best way to help kids in school.
Friday through Sunday will be your chance to answer a question from Donald Trump, in exchange for a $5,000 spending account.
CNBC’s finance guru Suze Orman’s prize is 3 oz of pure gold.
Click and Clack, or Tom and Ray Magliozzi from NPR’s Car Talk will participate. The prize for their question is free gas for a year. And all you get for Donald Trump’s question is $5,000!
Arrianna Huffington will pose a query about News and Events, the winner will get a trip for two to DC. Thrilling.
Al Gore’s question is tied to a free 2006 Prius.
Stephan Hawking’s social science question gets one person a trip to the Smithsonian.
Bono will close the event and Yahoo! will donate $25k to his One campaign in honor of the winner.

It’s called Ask The Planet, but the company claims that it is legally prohibited from give prizes to anyone outside the US. That’s liable to raise some ire. In fact, for having a name like that, the campaign seems pretty US centered. Likewise, in the spirit of mass page views - I mean scientific inquiry, it appears that the winners will be selected at random and users are encouraged to offer more replies for greater chances to win. The company plans to plaster ads for the campaign all over the US. None the less, looks like an interesting campaign that’s liable to raise the profile of Yahoo! Answers significantly. Is asking your audience to all throw their answers in a hat the best way to solve the world’s most vexing problems? Call me cynical, but I’m not sure it is.

Yahoo Answers

Tags: TechCrunch, Web2.0, AskThePlanet, Yahoo!, Yahoo!Answers

Flock Raises New Venture Round, Launches Public Beta

2006-06-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

It’s been nearly eight months since Silicon Valley based Flock released a developer version of its Firefox based browser. Today at 3 pm PST they are releasing their first public beta version, available for Windows, Mac and Linux machines, at Flock.com.

Flock is a Mozilla based browser (see also Songbird, another application built on the Mozilla code base). They’ve built additional features to the core Firefox code base that make the browsing experience more seemless, including photo integration with Flickr or photobucket, social bookmarking integration with Del.icio.us or Shadows, a blogging tool and a RSS reader.

Firefox has also raised a new round of financing led by Shasta Ventures, rumored to be in the $10 million range.

Another Googlebomb Campaign for Egypt Blogger

2006-06-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

<
On Sunday, May 7, 2006, Abd El-Fatah was arrested during a peaceful protest which spoke out on behalf of an independent Egyptian judiciary. His arrest, along with that of several other bloggers and democracy activists, spurred a protest by others around the world, some of whom created a new blog, “Free Alaa”, devoted to calling for his release from jail.>>

In the meantime, a Googlebomb campaign has been started to associate the word “Egypt” with the Free Alaa blog, so that people wanting to learn about Egypt hear of this case.

The Google Connection: Google Employees on Orkut

2006-06-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

Marissa Mayer, Googler, 173 centimeters, blue-eyed, blond and athletic, who likes dancing, candlelight and flirting and doesn’t like smoking, is a friend of ...

... Niniane Wang, Googler currently leading a “confidential project in the social application space,” born in Beijing, age 26, who worked at Microsoft before, and likes people who are funny, and is a friend of ...

... Orkut Buyukkotken, the guy who did Google’s Orkut, who lives with roomates and has a homepage, and tries to experience all the wildest things in life, and who’s a friend of ...

... Chris DiBona, the Open-source program manager at Google, who’s living with partner & kids, likes to dress casual, plays videogames here and there, eats “anything but dog food,” has a homepage and is friend of ...

... Google employee Jason Shellen, born August 30, left-liberal, married social drinker, who according to one testimonial “will probably make you shoot milk through your nose. Not from laughing or anything, he just requires it of people from time to time,” and who’s a friend of ...

... Kevin Fox, the Google guy born on the 4th of July, who loves his pets and was able to snatch a 4-letter domain name, and who according to a comment is “awfully smart. And don’t let that shy smile fool you,” and a friend of ...

... Chris Wetherell, occasional drinker and Googler behind massless.org, who likes alternative fashion and the movie Chungking Express and is a friend of ...

... Biz Stone, who quit Google a while ago for Odeo, so let’s go back to ...

... Chris Wetherell, who is a friend of ...

... Kimbalina, quick-witted Christian/ Protestant and Googler, who likes the TV show Friends, is married, and likes to wear Google stuff, a friend of ...

... Eric Case, San Francisco-based Google employee with 94 friends, still single and into meditation, Radiohead, blogging, and The Cluetrain Manifesto, and a friend of ...

... Greg Stein, initiated member of Cult of Googleplex, Libertarian from Portland, Oregon, and Dragonball-fan who digs Mexican food and metal music, and friend of ...

... Josh MacDonald, 30-years old Willimantic, Connecticut Googler with a good taste in film (Fight Club, Office Space, Kill Bill, Clerks), a “scary good coder” (according to Sanford) with 9 fans, a member of Orkut’s “What should Google do” community and a friend of David Lynch fan Evan Williams, who left Google for Odeo, but who is also friend to ...

... David Krane, left-liberal Google spokesman of Kraneland.com, born on January 31, who likes The Godfather, 80s John Hughes Films and Sushi, and is friends with ...

... Doug Edwards, married man of the Google Blog Team, who likes Jazz, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and sarcasm, and collected 7 hearts on Orkut (“Hearts: Sexy”), and is a friend of ...

... Jonathan Rosenberg, 44-years old married Google Senior Vice President, Product Management (we’re climbing up the career ladder here), reader of Richard Dawkins who likes to watch West Wing, who is a friend of ...

... Google VP of Engineering, Jeff Huber, a Formula 1 and gadgets lover who wishes for a Lego Mindstorm robotics set 2.0, with good taste (Monty Python, Blade Runner, Indian, Sushi), and who, according to Rob, once faked his own death during hostage rescue drill to scare the bejesus out of the drill sergeant, and who is a friend of ...

... Google’s Adam Bosworth, who’s “difficult, demanding, driven,” and loves to build software, whose music taste spans from Bach to Beatles and who hates TV, who, as we remember, is a friend of Jeff Huber, who is also friend of Adam Sah, “execu-speak” hating & skateboarding Google Software Engineer, who has lots of friends including ...

... Karen Padham, product manager at Google’s shopping search Froogle with 19 fans, who likes – of course! – shopping (but also Lord of the Rings and 24), who is friends with Larry Schwimmer, male single Google Software Engineer and fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide (cool), whose 395 friends include pretty much every known and unknown Googler in this spiral arm of the galaxy, including ...

... Sergey Brin, who understands sharing anything on Orkut could allow the NSA to datamine him, and who is friends with Google Product Manager Bret Taylor, Google logo doodler Dennis Hwang, Google’s director of search quality Peter Norvig, Google blogger Matt Cutts (8 hearts!), Google mastermind Larry Page (born March 28, and, according to those who know him, “crazy. In a good way”), Google CEO Eric Schmidt (a workaholic from Blacksburg, Virginia, who likes Lord of the Rings and A World Lit Only by Fire, and who dislikes commercials), and also, Marissa Mayer, which brings us back to where we started.

New! Google News Arabic

2006-06-13T15:11:00.000-07:00

Google News is now also available in Arabic language. [Thanks Hermon.]

Google Maps Overlays Samples

2006-06-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Michael Hart in the forum points to examples of how you can now overlay Google Maps with KML map data, like this map showing Avian flu outbreaks.

Google Earth 4

2006-06-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

Google released Google Earth 4, with SketchUp integration and an improved interface. Google writes:

I noticed two things that suck with the 13 MB setup, in order of importance:

Google installed a German version of Google Earth. I didn’t want that, I downloaded it from the English site. (A German interface means I’m not able to talk about the program or search for online help on it effectively.)
Google tried, again, to set itself as default search engine in Internet Explorer.

Google "Onebox" Results We Still Need

2006-06-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

A “onebox” is an instant result on top of Google’s organic search result. For example, when you enter weather ny, Google shows you the current New York weather without you having to leave the results page. Here are a couple of onebox results we don’t have yet, but which might prove useful:

1. Social network profiles

2. Whois queries*

*If I’m not mistaken, a similar feature was briefly available for real.

3. Directly ask at Google Answers

4. Chat with a Googler

5. Google Book Search results

6. Instant recipes

7. Creative Commons content

8. A “Like"-operator for images

9. Calories counter for people on a diet

10. Instant quotes

What other oneboxes you’d like to see?

Windows Vista Beta Available on Bittorent

2006-06-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

Windows Vista Beta 2 download weighs in at a whopping 3.2 GB (even the product guide is over 70 mb). You can download the file or order a DVD. Microsoft is strongly pushing the DVD option, noting that their servers are under severe strain from downloads and that many customers are simply unable to obtain the software this way:

Microsoft, of course, has chosen to ignore the most efficient file distribution method in existence - bittorent. Chris Pirillo and Jake Ludington have, without any endorsement from Microsoft, created VistaTorrent with instructions on downloading the file through Bittorent. They also point to the Microsoft site that will generate a key for the software.

iF Historical Figures Had been Webmasters

2006-06-12T07:16:00.000-07:00

Like some giant high school class, Google, through its popularity-based search engine algorithm, rewards the popular and punishes outcasts.
As a measure of a page's popularity, Google assigns it a page rank (PR). Inbound links (IBLs) from pages with high PRs will raise a page's own rank (the page has, in effect, been graced by the magic touch of a prom king or queen, bestowing a fraction of their popularity upon it). Not surprisingly, this system has been subject to a fair bit of abuse, with avaricious quarterbacks and cheerleaders selling their blessings to viagra and smut peddlers and the like.
The public form of page ranking is a scale from 1 to 10. How would historical figures have done in this system?

PR0: Emily Dickinson

No incoming links, no outbound links. This sad orphan website will never be discovered by anyone.

Except to heaven, she is nought;
Except for angels, lone;
Except to some wide-wandering bee,
A flower superfluous blown

PR2: Shakespeare

The bard would be handicapped by what search engine optimation types call "canonical" issues. There would be no clearly authoritative versions of his pages. What's more, his variant spellings would confuse Google's index:

You searched for Shakespeare
Did you mean Shackespeare?
Did you mean Shackespere?
Did you mean Shackspeare?
Did you mean Shackspere?
Did you mean Shagspere?
Did you mean Shakespear?
Did you mean Shake-speare?
Did you mean Shakespere?
Did you mean Shakespheare?
Did you mean Shakspear?
Did you mean Shakspeare?
Did you mean Shak-speare?
Did you mean Shaksper?
Did you mean Shakspere?
Did you mean Shaxberd?
Did you mean Shaxpeare?
Did you mean Shaxper?
Did you mean Shaxpere?
Did you mean Shaxspere?
Did you mean Shexpere?

Shakespeare would also be hurt by claims that his content wasn't original, and he wasn't the true originator of it.

PR4: Carolus Linneaus

The father of modern taxonomical nomenclature was one of the most influential figures of his time, and he would have a lot of inbound links. Needless to say, his site would be logically structured. His rank, however, would be limited by three factors:

Links pages: Oddly, for a search engine predicated on links, Google hates links pages, as each outbound link may drain a fraction of a page's PR. (Google prefers links that occur within syntax.) Linneaus, with his worldwide network of botanists and plant hunters, would have extensive links pages. Not only would Google penalize his PR, but it might mistake him for a link scraper (a person who culls links from other sites).
Duplicate content: Google looks askance at elements that are repeated on a large number of pages. All of Linneaus's pages would repeat a few terms over and over: family, genus, species, etc. A clear case, to Google, of duplicate content, and probably keyword stuffing as well.
Canonical issues: Google sometimes ends up punishing sites that are too successful, in the sense that popular pages tend to get copied so often that the originator of the content may be lost in the thread and perceived as secondary to a copying page. Everyone adopted Linneaeus's schema.

PR6: Leonardo da Vinci

This guy would have killer content. His website would feature excellent graphics and innovative animations and interactive elements. He would be the master of all things web 2.0. Links from high-PR sites by Michelangelo and Raphael, along with some good .edu and .gov links would boost his ratings.

The reason he would be stuck at PR6 is that his website would be too diverse. Google likes a website to have a tight focus, but it would have trouble identifying Leo's main thrust. By dabbling in a variety of things, he would water each one down a little.

I suppose you could say he would be too much of a Renaissance man for SEO.

PR8: Niccolo Machievelli

Machievelli would be what is called a "black hat seo." He would use the whole arsenal of knavery: cloaking, scraping links, keyword stuffing, hidden text, mirror sites, reciprocal link schemes, spoofing competitors and bombarding them with crap links to drain their page rank, posting to forums and wikipedia to get IBLs, hosting multiple dmoz sites under a variety of names, filing false spam reports, and on and on.

Niccolo's websites would all rank in the top three search results for their chosen keywords, but he would occasionally be set back by penalties and bans. No worries: he would have bought up dozens of expired domains with positive PR. He would move his penalized pages over to those addresses, and they would quickly regain their top positions.

PR10: The Buddha

The Buddha's IBLs would be of the prized kind that Google calls "natural." And he would have a lot of them, because many of his messages would resonate with the on-line community, such as:

The essence of SEO is suffering
All traffic is transitory
There is a rank beyond page rank
No ban is permanent — all pages get reborn

The Buddha would also be well served by a start-up cadre of sharp South Asian web gurus. He would go on to rapidly recruit legions of talent in West Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere.

But he would teach that search is pointless. What is needed is already found. Increasing acceptance of those teachings would lead to the decline of Google, which would continue losing market share until it would finally be purchased by a group of former Alta Vista executives.

They would repurpose it as a tool for locating holiday-related graphics.

50 Ajax Reference Websites from Around the World

2006-06-12T07:11:00.000-07:00

Max Kiesler is back with another great (long) list today - this time, it’s a great look at some of the best Ajax resources from around the world (and no, I’m not just saying that because we’re on it). He’s listed fifty of them, and in more than just English too.

As a consistent devotee of the AJAX scene over the past year or so I have hundreds of feeds in my reader. Recently, I’ve had several email requests from readers requesting to know what AJAX websites I visit daily. While I visit any title that interest me, these are the sites I go to consistently.

Included in the list are:

As always, he’s always welcome to additions to the list - it’s all about sharing as much information as we can with everyone that needs it, and providing these resources is a great way to start.

eBay to sell ads through other Web sites

2006-06-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

Developer sees new contextual system as a way for bloggers and other small sites to generate revenue.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Online marketplace eBay Inc. is set to unveil a keyword advertising system for eBay sellers to promote auctions on other Web sites, borrowing from the strategies of Google and Yahoo.

Michael van Swaaij, eBay (Research)'s chief strategy officer, told a conference of software developers here Saturday of plans to allow eBay's army of auctioneers to run contextual ads on other Web sites in exchange for a cut of the resulting eBay sales.

eBay's system differs from existing pay-per-click advertising systems offered by Google and rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. by linking only to eBay auctions rather than serving as a generic advertising network.

The world's largest e-commerce site said it plans to provide hundreds of thousands of eBay auctioneers with simple snippets of code they can embed on other Web sites that showcase items that are for sale on eBay's site.

A test of the program, dubbed eBay AdContext, is set to be introduced early next week, Swaaij said. What goods appear in any particular advertisement will be determined by the keywords on that Web page, a technique known as contextual advertising.

eBay's system scans the text of a Web site for keywords and returns links to relevant eBay sales listings to the Web page. A Web site about sports could automatically feature links to sporting gear or memorabilia available on eBay, for example.

As listings change on eBay, advertising automatically changes on affiliated Web sites to reflect the new products or services for sale on eBay. Web site affiliates receive a cut of 35 percent to 60 percent of sales, depending on volumes.

"It is a way for Web sites to get an additional monetization stream," Swaaij said. Monetization is Internet industry jargon that refers to the potential for making more money by driving potential buyers to a Web site.

Such advertising, in effect, becomes another means for Web site owners large and small to make money to support their sites, especially blog site publishers, who often rely on small text ads from Google's keyword system to finance themselves.

eBay sees the AdContext system as complementary to, rather than competing with, the online advertising networks offered by Google and others. Many Web sites may offer both eBay and other advertising on their sites, spokesman Hani Durzy said.

The eBay Developers' Conference is showcasing how eBay is changing from a one-stop shopping center where everything happens on the eBay site to a supplier of auction, payment and communications technologies that can be used on any Web site.