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dd: Why Did Microsoft Just Bid $500 Million for Claria?
By Mark Naples
Friday, July 1, 2005
Let's say you're Microsoft CEO Steven A. Ballmer. After being part of a decade of dominance in the 1990's, you've watched Yahoo! beat you to the web portal business, then beat you at Search.
You've watched Google pass you at Search, then pass you again in building an ad platform for not just online directories, but for web publishers too.
You've watched as a truly intriguing business called behavioral targeting has made huge strides, with major players in that space reportedly in deals to link their robust user data with the Search Engines' data to provide far more precise targeting. Behavioral targeting, something of a nascent darling in interactive circles these past two years, has grown into a $500 million business across the web.
Because some behavioral targeting companies have been on the record in their dealings with the Search Engines, developing new models that could further distance these companies - Google and Yahoo! - from yours, you assign someone very high up in your organization to close this gap now.
If I were the guy assigned to do this by Mr. Ballmer I'd look at the largest player in this space first - wouldn't you? Far and away, that largest player is Claria, with more than 20 percent market share.
The guy Mr. Ballmer assigned, according to Thursday's New York Times, is Yusuf Mehdi, the senior vice president in charge of MSN and Microsoft's search business. According to The Times, in a news report reflecting seemingly unfettered access to sensitive information within Microsoft, Mr. Ballmer has instructed Mr. Mehdi to be more aggressive in closing the gap with Google, including making acquisitions.
All over our industry yesterday, people kept talking about validation for Claria's model and practices. But, it's important to keep in mind that news reports have indicated for months that Claria has been building a publisher platform that provides individualization for users. They've long since settled their legal disputes with publishers and advertisers. And their Privacy Officer, Reed Freeman, has done an amazing job at removing the spyware spotlight from the company.
The Claria technology is designed to work with publishers in ways similar to how other technology does, in terms of ad delivery. But, it is also designed to work in sync with search engines and in content delivery. Online newspapers and other kinds of publishers have begun to realize that such personalization is the grail to higher CPMs and more revenue in an inventory-strapped market. Smart publishers have been working with third parties, like Tacoda, Revenue Science, Intégrent and yes - Claria - to develop such technologies.
Companies that provide better user experiences... better search.... a better content experience... these would be pretty high-value companies, no? So, if Claria really did generate more than $100 million in revenue last year, as has been rumored, then maybe the question we should be asking is why is this offer so low?
If I were Mr. Mehdi, I could care less about Claria's adware/spyware legacy. What I would focus on is their personalization platform, which (remember) never dealt with personally identifiable information (PII) anyway. I'd get my hands on that platform and distribute it across my enormous footprint.
I'm Microsoft, after all. So, as MarketingVox's Tig Tillinghast and others have surmised, I could claim that I'm going to enter this behavioral field as I get to finally dip my toes more meaningfully in Search (sorry MSN - being third place won't do anymore) while becoming a serious enough player in the interactive ad space to even be part of the solution in terms of writing standards for adware.
This all seems pretty straightforward all of the sudden, doesn't it? Okay then, let's assume you're Mr. Medhi's counterpart at Yahoo! You work for a company that has a hand in as much as 30 percent of Claria's revenue. Are you going to stand idly by and let your rival in Redmond snatch them up without a fight?
Summer just got a lot hotter - watch this one as it develops. There is no way Microsoft is going to let its rivals beat them again in a growth market segment - and there's no way $500 million will be enough for this company.
Mark Naples is Managing Partner, WIT Strategy.
WiMax begins to gel at Sprint
By Ben Charny
http://news.com.com/WiMax+begins+to+gel+at+Sprint/2100-1034_3-5770354.html
Cell phone operator Sprint plans to begin testing next-generation WiMax handsets and other WiMax equipment from Motorola, a sign that Sprint's future network plans are falling into place.
Sprint will be puttering in its labs with a mobile version of the experimental wireless technology that distributes broadband Internet access over a range of several miles. If the technology passes muster, Sprint says, a small-scale trial in a major urban area will be next.
The Motorola/Sprint deal dovetails with Sprint's ongoing work with Intel to develop WiMax cell phone circuitry, said Len Barlik, Sprint vice president of technology development. The development work with Intel began earlier this year, he added.
Previous Next Sprint's growing interest in WiMax is no surprise. Most top-tier U.S. phone operators are experimenting with WiMax because it is thought to be an effective way to extend coverage into geographically challenging areas, and it could be used to beef up calling capacity in major urban markets.
Intel has been the driving force behind WiMax, touting it as the long-distance broadband Internet sibling of Wi-Fi.
For all the enthusiasm surrounding the technology, though, large-scale WiMax deployments are still years away. One reason for that is the WiMax standard, meant to ensure that equipment made by different manufacturers is compatible, still awaits ratification by the appropriate standards body. From an operator's perspective, a company prematurely committing to WiMax risks banking on a standard that might not be compatible with WiMax networks of the future.
Sprint won't consider a full-scale WiMax deployment at least until the standard is ratified, which is expected to happen sometime late this year or early next year, Barlik said. "This is more of a development exercise right now," he added.
Microsoft Said to Be in Talks to Buy Adware Developer
By STEVE LOHR and GARY RIVLIN
For the last two weeks, Microsoft has been in talks to buy a private Silicon Valley company, a move that underscores just how eager Microsoft is to catch up with Google, the search and advertising giant.
June 30, 2005
The company that Microsoft has pursued is controversial: Claria, an adware marketer formerly called Gator, and best known for its pop-up ads and software that tracks people visiting Web sites. The Gator adware has frequently been denounced by privacy advocates for its intrusiveness.
The offer price on the table as recently as yesterday was $500 million, according to people who have been briefed on the talks. But a person close to Microsoft said last night that the negotiations were on the verge of breaking off.
One person briefed on the deal said there was opposition within Microsoft to the acquisition.
The anti-deal group, the person said, fears the move could bring an outcry as critics portray Microsoft as a corporate Big Brother, trying to track every mouse click on the Web and profit from it.
Those in favor of the deal, this person said, believe Microsoft could help clean up the adware field, establish rules to protect privacy and benefit from the anticipated increase in personalized advertising.
Both Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, and Bill Gates, the chairman, have been involved in that debate inside the company, according to that person.
Neither Microsoft nor Claria would comment on the negotiations.
Claria, based in Redwood City, Calif., is moving beyond pop-ups to personalized services, like delivering local weather information and distributing software that lets Web publishers offer personalized pages.
Software tailored to individual preferences and browsing habits opens the door to personalized advertising. That emerging ad market is of great interest to Microsoft for its MSN Web sites, as it is for Google, which recently began testing services like individually customized Google home pages and software that stores the Web pages a user visits most often, for faster display.
Claria, which changed its name from Gator two years ago, has been criticized by privacy advocates and sued by Web publishers, including The New York Times Company.
The publishers typically have sued pop-up vendors like Claria for trademark infringement for setting adware programs to activate ads inside publications' Web sites. But in the last few years, Claria has settled nearly all its litigation. And the company has recently reached out to privacy groups for advice and made it easier for Web surfers to reject ads.
This year, according to the person briefed on the talks, Claria approached Microsoft about using one of Claria's new services, called BehaviorLink. The service would track the surfing patterns of the 40 million people who have Claria software installed on their PC's, but would use that information to buy ads directly from publishers. Publishers would be paid for showing the ads; Claria would be paid by marketers who want to reach consumers; and users would see fewer pop-ups.
Mr. Ballmer, according to the person briefed on the talks, had been pushing Yusuf Mehdi, the senior vice president in charge of MSN and Microsoft's search business, to be more aggressive in closing the gap with Google, including making acquisitions. And Mr. Ballmer, this person said, gave approval to begin negotiations with Claria two weeks ago.
Analysts said Microsoft would probably be most interested in the long-term potential of Claria's personalization software rather than its pop-up ads. Responding to customer complaints, Microsoft stopped selling pop-up ads on its MSN Web sites in May 2003.
ot SOG: Please use Spellcheck! eom
Two things...
1.) SOG TrivialT/A: As I always predict, PPS goes down whenever I buy a few more
2.) This timing of the settlement couldn't have been better imo and a true indicator that as "the flags" get raised together, bothe Neom and Virgin will be blazing a trail wiht this newly minted tech....and yes, I do believe the timing couldn't have been better as we have seen in DD last month, the Mobile Phenom is in full shift ahnd this summer/fall will be a proving ground for many...by holiday period year end, should be neet and thats les than 6 mos away
ot, Picked up 2,000 more eot.
Worth a repost imo: Virgin Megastore Makeover Revolution Kicks Off This June
Virgin Megastore Times Square to Be New Prototype of Future Retail Concept
NEW YORK CITY, June 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Virgin Entertainment Group, North
America, the world's premiere music and entertainment retailer, is pleased to
announce it will begin renovation work in late June 2005 on the brand's East
Coast flagship, the Virgin Megastore in Time Square, to create the most
progressive music entertainment store in the U.S. While many other music
retailers have closed their doors and are battling to stay alive, Virgin has
shown its complete commitment to the future of music and entertainment
retailing by investing in the development of its unique retail concept.
The brand plans to spice up entertainment retail by developing an
evolutionary environment which it will launch in late summer 2005 at the
world's premier music destination, Virgin Megastore, Times Square. While the
store will continue to carry the extensive music, film and book product
selection for which it has developed a world-wide reputation, it will also now
offer a greatly extended assortment of cutting edge portable electronics,
apparel and accessories. Customers will be able to browse the hottest
products from each category at a single location on the main floor, as well as
in each department. Virgin will also introduce new ways to try more music,
DVD, electronics and apparel items before purchase. Full details will be
announced shortly.
The inspiration for the refurbishment came from Virgin founder and CEO,
Richard Branson's original vision for the brand.
"Virgin's first record shop had to incorporate all aspects of how music
would fit into people's lives," explains Virgin's founder and CEO, Richard
Branson. "In exploring how to do this, I think we created the conceptual
framework of what Virgin later became. We wanted the Virgin Records shop to
be an enjoyable place to go at a time when record buyers were given short
shrift."
Virgin believes that Branson's original philosophy prevails in this day
and age, and that it's even more appropriate today than it was back in the
early 1970's. Richard Branson launched his first U.S. Virgin Megastore in
Times Square over 12 years ago. Since then, over 50 million shoppers have
walked through the doors at Virgin Megastore, Times Square. As the chain's
largest retail store at over 63,000 square feet, Virgin has been waiting for
the perfect time to expand and improve the company's retail offer.
"We've seen a major shift in the music industry in the last four years,"
states Simon Wright, CEO, Virgin Entertainment Group U.S. "As a result, most
entertainment retailers are not catering to today's consumers. They simply
offer basic products with no additional added value. We want to make the
experience of shopping for music and entertainment exciting once again. Music
is the glue that has always held Virgin Megastore together and that will
remain the same. However, we are going beyond to give the next 50 million
customers who walk through our Times Square Megastore a hands-on, customized
and emotional shopping experience in which they will find the best of what's
hot in the world of popular culture and entertainment. We believe we are the
first to offer this kind of shopping destination."
While the Virgin Megastore in Times Square will be open as usual during
construction, Virgin plans to complete the revolutionized new store concept by
September. The Virgin Megastore, Times Square, refurbishment announcement
comes shortly after the news that the brand will be opening a new West Coast
flagship in Hollywood, California later in the year.
About Virgin Entertainment Group
Virgin Entertainment Group is the world's leading multi-channel music and
entertainment retailer, providing customers with a range of superior
entertainment experiences through a family of integrated Virgin-branded
businesses. The "category killer" Virgin Megastores and Virgin Megastore
Online at http://www.virginmega.com are integral parts of a strategy to provide
entertainment customers with what they want, how they want it, and when they
want it. For more information, or to check out the location of the nearest
Virgin retail, go to http://www.virginmegamagazine.com
SOURCE Virgin Entertainment Group
Web Site: http://www.virginmega.com
And wouldn't it be nice for the ones thast choose not to liscence, that as you said ss9173, that NEOM "pursues vigerously" those that defy...and maybe NEOm pick up a few bucks along the way like Ampex...http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050614006... Ampex "strong buy," target price raised
Thursday, June 09, 2005 2:12:42 AM ET
JM Dutton & Associates
NEW YORK, June 9 (newratings.com) - Analyst Richard W West of JM Dutton maintains his "strong buy" rating on Ampex (ticker: AEXCA). The 12-month target price has been raised to $82.50.
In a research note published yesterday, the analyst mentions that the company is actively pursuing its strategy of licensing its intellectual property and has licensed its patents to 11 manufacturers for use in various digital consumer products. The analyst expect Ampex to continue to receive annual royalties on two more patents, 324 and 018, after April 2006, when its patent 121 is scheduled to expire.
BONUS DD: LES PAUL Ampex is in here for some of the technique/equip he involved ; Check out the Ampex part...anyway, Les imo was one of the countries greatest inventor types, up there with Edison!!!, lol, and he sure made stuff that soothes the sooul......http://www.modernguitars.com/archives/000818.html
What was your role in developing multi-track recording and how did people react?
LP: My role started at the very beginning. I went to three different tape machine companies, but no one thought it was feasible until I met with Ampex. They just jumped on it. They were so excited they put staff on it immediately while another project was underway across the hall. It ended up that two inventions were born at practically the same moment, both of them involving or using the same machinery. They were the first color tape machine and the first multiple sound recorder, each complementing the other and using similar equipment.
I was involved deeply with my dream, which was multi-track recording, that started in 1953 and finished in 1956. So, it took a lot of hard work. We flew the 8-track machine back to Ampex three times before we finally go it up and running.
And then we did some big modifications and made so many changes that the fellow who worked with me became the vice president of Ampex. It’s ironic, but they found that the guys I had working here were more on top of what was going on. We were working closely together and we were many years ahead of Ampex.
When it came out on the market it took the industry maybe five years to figure out what they were going to do with it because, for some reason, they limited their vision to, “Where do we find another Les Paul and Mary Ford?”
They weren’t thinking, “Where could we add an Artie Shaw part or a Benny Goodman, or another voice?” - or all the different things you could do with multi-track other than what Les Paul and Mary Ford were doing.
MORE BONUS DD LES PAUL: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050619/ENT/506190313/1031/NEWS01
NICE CHART!!! http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AMPX&t=1y
Well, bottom line, Window Of Opportunity too short and too critical imo to advance to the next evolutionary stage of the transistor as we plow thru this phase of the evolution....IOW, the companies that may be thinking of ripping off Neom or challenging the patents will think long and hard now that Virgin has settled all jmho (rather than tie thinmgs up as the mobile search phenom passes by in 2005/2006...
The trade off on the down side is too great given the immediate opportunity to grab a slice of this new Mobile Phenom dangling overhead...so maybe another 12 - 18 month window of opportunity to jump on for companies that wish to play in this rapidly changing and evolving space and they would much rather go with a sure thing and liscence or buy neom tech outright rather than fight or litigate in court system for possibly years and years....Am I on thrack wiht this thought process Luppetto???
OK, have a good week, I agree with Joed the philosopher, no need for me to watch every tick anymore...lol, but I am sure my frequrency will still be up there...
Have a good week and again, jmho this will turn out (next to the patents) to be some of the greatest news in Neom's existence once all the dust settles in a few years/decades)I suppose time will tell...patience is a virtue.
Not purpose driven at times,
SonOfGodzilla
Summer 2005, Must be the Season of the Niche
(ot comment, the Virgin Settlement couldn't of happenned at a more critical window of opportunity for search/navigation, etc)
Last modified: June 23, 2005, 10:22 PM
Contributed By: Jim Hedger
Summer 2005, Must be the Season of the Niche
The summer of 2005 is going to be an interesting one. The world of search will be fundamentally different by Labour Day. From the recent changes at Google (the effects of which will be shown over time in the core algorithm), to the introduction of several unique types of search engines, dozens of fresh ideas and innovations are finding their way onto our monitors each day. The landscape of the search environment is going to alter its appearance before the leaves change colour in mid-autumn. These changes should serve to solidify the market for a number of new niches in the search-marketing sector.
The environment has already shifted in substantial ways. For the most part, these shifts seem natural and in most ways will be enormously beneficial for search engine users, advertisers and marketers. It is a bit overwhelming though. The introduction of so many new features, tools and types of search in such a short time makes it difficult to phrase thoughts about the future of search, even three months down the road.
In the last year we have seen the introduction of new types of search tools such as local search, vertically themed engines, video search, and desktop search appliances. The four major search engines and about a dozen well placed competitors have spent the year collectively inventing, innovating, acquiring, and coping from each other. Not only are these new tools very different from the general search engines of previous years, the quantity and number of sources these tools draw references from has grown. As Andrew Goodman points out at Traffick, the number of places a search-generated reference might appear has also grown with Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN furiously creating new real estate to display them on.
For search engine users, the environment is evolving in what appears to be a beneficial way. Information continues to become more accessible as the mainstream search engines learn to better sort results with stricter relevancy standards. Local search offers users an experience combining the Yellow Pages, comparison-shopping and instant mapping. Vertical search engines cut a lot of static out from results by honing in on industry and interest specific search results. Personalization features like desktop search applications, toolbars and mega-storage search-friendly Email accounts can save hours of looking for information a user has already seen each month.
Search engine users appear to endorse the new tools and features by adopting their usage. A recent Harris Interactive survey commissioned by iCrossing shows that consumers are rapidly adapting to make use of the various new types of search.
According to the survey of 2139 US adults between April 19 - 21, 51% of US adults use the Internet for shopping with 80% of them using the 'net to compare prices. Local search is gaining a presence with nearly 50% of users looking for a local shop to purchase goods researched over the Internet. 54% of searchers use the Internet to find people and businesses instead of the phone book with most looking for personal contact information. By the end of the summer, it is reasonable to expect this trend to have a major effect on the services offered by search marketers and the expectations of their clients.
The search marketing industry is already a highly stratified environment with paid search marketing and organic search optimization defining the two basic search-systems influencing the environment.
Those focusing on paid search marketing have spent the last year learning to take full advantage of new places for ad placement created by the Big4 and their competitors. They are also learning how to best use the application programming interfaces offered by the major search engines to target their clients' advertising based on geography, time and season. There has been a rationalization in keyword prices over the past six months with a general lowering of keyword click-bids but concerns over click-fraud continue to grow.
Click-fraud in the pay-per-click market is said to be on the rise but a highly professional niche is growing to address the problem. Since last year, several firms have established PPC Fraud analytics and detection services . Anyone with a high ad-spend should consider the advice offered by these firms.
Another interesting paid-search niche is the growing Pay-per-call billing model in which advertisers pay a flat-fee per call as opposed to a bid-fee per click. Currently offered by AOL and MIVA (formerly FindWhat), Greg Stirling from the Kelsey Group predicts the pay-per-call model could grow from its infancy today to a $4billion industry by 2009. According to Stirling 's study of the industry, major online publishers MediaTracks and ZiffLeads are changing their business models to promote pay-per-call. Kelsey says the pay per call model will help drive live-leads to businesses that tend to be more valuable than electronic leads as there is immediate personal interaction between the potential buyer and the vendor. As it is easier to track telephone connections than it is to trace an individual over the Internet, pay-per-call is also promoted as a solution to click-fraud.
Serving the most obvious paid-search niche is the legion of smaller firms existing in, or jumping into, the search-advertising arena. From the major traditional media publishers such as the New York Times or TimeWarner through the AOL network to long-term players such as Kanoodle and FindWhat (MIVA), a significant number of Internet users are being delivered paid-advertising that matches the topic or context of the document the ad appears on, for fractions of the costs of Google and Yahoo Search Marketing advertising.
Over on the organic Search Engine Optimization side of the industry, several major changes that happened in the past twelve months are showing their effects today.
The first has been the introduction of new forms of search such as local search and vertical search tools. In both cases, unique databases are used to extract search results, even when the service is offered by one of the major search engines. Google local for instance draws its original results from the Yellow Pages based on zip codes instead of drawing results from its general database. The vertical search engine Become.com has its own spidered database and its own propitiatory ranking algorithm known as Affinity Index Ranking. By expanding the number of databases search results are drawn from, the search firms inadvertently create new niches and services for SEOs to specialize in.
A second trend over the past year is the flattening out of Google traffic numbers and the subsequent increases MSN and Yahoo have enjoyed. Today, the combined traffic driven by MSN and Yahoo exceeds that from Google. That might not sound like a huge shift, two years ago however, Google drove almost 85% of organic search traffic by feeding results to practically everyone. For the past year, MSN and Yahoo have created their own spidered results. This has led to a relevancy challenge between the major search engines.
New and unique algorithms are starting to take hold across the search landscape with MSN, Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Become, and others using engine specific algos instead of drawing results from a competitor. This trend leads to specialization within SEO shops with different staff becoming expert in different engines. For example, Google just updated its core algorithm and is examining documents within websites with an ever-expanding view of a website's historic existence. This shift has led to a major shift in link-building strategies and has pushed many SEOs to review their techniques. Thing is, what works at Google won't necessarily work with MSN, Yahoo, or Ask Jeeves.
As search engine users become more adept at finding the best search service for their specific need, the range of options for search advertisers in both paid and organic search marketing systems is increasing. Users are starting to adopt more sophisticated means of search and in turn search engines and ad firms are becoming more sophisticated. As the knowledge necessary to conduct a full fledge search engine marketing campaign has increased exponentially, specialization of services is taking shape both in SEM shops and in the world of freelance tech-workers. Established SEO and SEM shops are hurrying to catch-up. Those entering the field might want to think about niche-market SEO and SEM services. The environment is ready to support them and for those with well-developed expertise, that environment is only getting more resource-full.
Whatever the take on the news, volume, analysis, philosophies, shoe-string budget TA, etc etc...it's all good imho, this is the most reasuring news imo in quite some time cause it now grounds us to validation and ties in nicely with all the other pr's as in EPO one and I cant say enough good about this, only the beginning...
Agree, The Story Will Find It's Way Out In Due Time...besides, think about it, who in their RIGHT FRAME OF MIND will listen to someone who belongs to a public investment club with the mantra...:"...
"...Welcome to "The Asylum" where your emotional problems are of no concern to anyone and no one cares about your beliefs...."
PaperClick – more than just bar codes
NeoMedia’s PaperClick service marries internet data with real-world objects. Wherever a bar code exists, users can launch an application on their camera-phone, take a picture, and be transferred to the appropriate web site. Taking a picture of a book’s ISBN will direct the user to, for example, the Amazon.com web page for that book. A real estate sign bar code could take the user to a virtual tour of the home. A picture of a consumer electronics bar code could take the user to a page with demos, features, and user guides.
By the way, don’t try to make your own bar code picture technology, unless you use the NeoMedia switch. They’ve got a set of patents, including a few protecting the use of bar codes or other machine-readable codes to look up electronic information.
The beauty of NeoMedia’s business model is that they are monetizing the switch, not the end user applications. Companies can bid for specific bar codes or blocks of bar codes. For example, Amazon.com could pay for all ISBNs one year, but Barnes & Noble might win the bidding war in the following year. A real estate agent could pay for the bar codes for her properties. Sony could pay for bar codes for its products.
As more people use the PaperClick service the bar codes become more valuable, and NeoMedia has finally hit upon a combination of factors to make end user adoption easy. First, users can download the J2ME application to access PaperClick services for free. Second, the only necessary hardware is a camera phone with J2ME MIDP2.
PaperClick application on a Treo 600
The bar code technology can also be used to create interactive advertising campaigns, something NeoMedia is actively and successfully pursuing. Any sort of magazine or poster campaign can add a bar code, allowing PaperClick users can visit the site for information, ring tones, coupons, sweepstakes entry, or anything else deliverable via the Internet.
There are other ways to make money with PaperClick. Do you manage a tourist area? If you place a few signs with a PaperClick bar code, users can learn about when this building was built and burned down, what related information is nearby, how to get related souveneirs, how to get anywhere else in the tourist area, and where the nearest bathroom is, all for relatively low costs. The user can keep all this information, especially directions, long after walking away from the sign or kiosk. You can also track users’ interests by their behavior. You can integrate with a service such as Go2online to integrate your tourist area with the larger region, providing users with a nearly seamless integration.
At CTIA Wireless & IT 2004, NeoMedia also announced keywords for sale (their WordRegistry service). While this sounds like yet another Internet land grab, we need to look at it in the light of the PaperClick service. Within the same PaperClick application that allows users to take pictures of bar codes, users can type a word or phrase. The idea is that the PaperClick switch would then take the user to the "correct" web site. Typing "Treo 650" could take the user to the PalmOne Treo web site, rather than a community site or a sales site. This will work once PaperClick approaches ubiquity. In the meantime, it’s another land grab.
Conclusion
The dream of a virtual-enhanced physical world is one of the guiding visions of the mobile internet. Companies have been waiting a few years to get good location-based services from the carriers, and some have failed during the wait. NeoMedia has taken an alternate path to interacting with the physical world, one based on their deep experience with bar codes. This one may work, and soon.
http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/analysis/physicalintegration.html
As Ralph Kramnden would probably say..."How Sweeeeet it is..."..eot
I am sure that this is "...only the beginning..." (there goes that Chicago riff in my head again, lol). Hats off to both sides (NEom/Virgin) to avoiding the litigious playingfield in the court system, etc....and instead deciding TO COLLABORATE TOGETHER FOR AT LEAST 10 YEARS!!!!!)...I have to say waking up to this news is as good as it gets imo because "it's only the beginning..." and lays more of the crucial foundation for the bridge....did I read that right, thru 2016)
GLTA...
SOG
Online Retailers Expect 35% Growth in E-Commerce Revenues
An Internet Retailer web-based survey, completed in May, on the future of web retailing reveals that:
35.5% of merchants and others who responded believe that their e-commerce revenues this year will grow by at least 35%.
8% forecast an increase of 25% or higher. Another
30% expect revenue growth of 15% to 25% and
16.8% anticipate annual web sales to rise 10-15%. Only
9.5% of retailers surveyed expect annual revenues this year to grow by less than 10%, clearly a sign of the bullish prospects that retailers hold about the market.
Chain retailers see the web as a major sales engine moving forward, accounting for a greater overall portion of their total revenues. When chain retailers were asked where they expect their online sales to be in five years:
21.7% of chain retailers indicated that they expected web sales to be 100-200% higher
18.8% expect web sales to be 50-100% larger
20.3% of chains expect sales to be 25-50% bigger by 2010
18.8% anticipate an increase ranging from 10% to 25%.
Today the web accounts for about 5% of total annual U.S. retail sales. But:
23.8% expect the web will account for 20% or more of all retail sales in five years. 25.3% expect e-commerce will account for 15% to 20%
31% forecast 10-15%.
17.6% expect the web to account for 5-10% of all retail sales in five years
2.3% expect the proportion to stay the same as today.
When broken down by web merchant category:
37.7% of chains and catalogers believe that Internet will account for 10-15% of total sales in 2010
63% of web-only merchants believe the web will account for more than 15% of retail sales by 2010
73.6% of brand believe the web will account for 10-15% of all sales in five years
38.2% of respondents to the survey rate the continued growth in demand for time-saving convenient services as the biggest reason customers will keep shopping online. Overall, 42% of respondents indicated that broadband access to the Internet from home would be the biggest technology impacting the future of web retailing.
A decade ago many retailers saw the web as a stand-alone venue and even as a separate organization or business unit. But as the web retailing market continues to evolve, the Internet Retailer survey demonstrates that future success for retailers depends on how well they use the web to identify and convert multi-channel sales. And, 40.6% of chain retailers indicate that interactive TV will be a part of their e-commerce strategy within 5 years.
I don't know about anyone else, but amazing how much my blood pressure has dropped from about the same time a week ago...-))
Have a good week and GLTA!
SOG
(oIf A Re-post...sorry) - DD: Motorola CEO pushes cool phones, shakes up management
Thursday, June 23, 2005
By Christopher Rhoads, The Wall Street Journal
In recent years, Motorola Inc. had reason to be prouder of its past than its present.
The company, based in Schaumburg, Ill., built some of the first car radios, provided walkie-talkies for U.S. soldiers in World War II, enabled astronauts on the moon to talk to earth and led the development of cellphones. In 1996, when it introduced the hugely popular StarTAC cellphone, Motorola controlled more than half the global cellphone market.
From that lofty perch, Motorola declined steadily, a victim of its insular culture and inattention to a changing, and increasingly competitive, marketplace. In 1998, Nokia Corp. of Finland zoomed past Motorola in global market share of the cellphone business, when Motorola was slow to shift to digital technology from analog and ignored style and design. And for a brief period last year, it slipped into third place behind South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co.
The telecom bust at the beginning of this decade compounded the problems, prompting more than 60,000 job cuts in recent years, or 40 percent of the total at its peak in 2000. In January 2004, Motorola for the first time handed its reins to an outsider: Ed Zander, the former No. 2 at Sun Microsystems Inc.
Mr. Zander's predecessor as chief executive officer, a grandson of the company's founder, sowed seeds for a turnaround, including hipper products, a spinoff of the company's capital-intensive semiconductor business and much cost cutting.
Building on that, Motorola under Mr. Zander has churned out five consecutive profitable quarters, exceeding Wall Street expectations and regaining the No. 2 position in the handset market from Samsung. Revenue surged by more than a third last year to $31.3 billion, enabling Motorola to pay down debt and make 2004 one of the company's most profitable ever.
Mr. Zander has also revamped the company's once staid image, with a slew of cool devices and ads, featuring Motorola's trendy "batwings" logo. Its ultraslim RAZR cellphone has become the must-have handset since it was introduced last autumn, serving notice to Nokia that things are changing at Motorola.
Still, in a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Zander acknowledges there is much work to be done. Among other challenges: Operating margins remain about half those of Nokia; competition continues to intensify, as customers, namely carriers, consolidate; and the global handset market is expected to grow by about half the rate of last year. But Mr. Zander has high hopes for the cellphone's future, likening the wireless industry today to the computer industry in the 1980s.
Some excerpts:
WSJ: Motorola in recent years has been seen as a boring brand. How do you intend to make Motorola cool?
Mr. Zander: When I came here on January 1, 2004, I didn't think much about cool. I thought about making a quarter, meeting financials, meeting customer-delivery dates, developing the products on time, better quality. (He picks up a RAZR cellphone.) ... I bumped into this thing a year ago April, and I thought it was cool. I would walk around with it on the streets of Chicago or in restaurants or with friends, and when they saw the RAZR, they just couldn't believe this phone and said, 'I gotta have it.' Cingular actually got in early with us, helped us refine it a little bit, and took a risk with it.
WSJ: Can one cool product change the company's image?
Mr. Zander: In terms of the bottom line, sure we sold a bunch of RAZRs in the second half of the year. But in terms of the overall number of cellphones sold worldwide it was a very small fraction of it. What it really did do though was get Motorola in the minds of a lot of people around the world for being cool again. I also think it did a lot for employees, because you start getting employees believing again you can win.
The RAZR is now the iconic design we want to build a lot of our products on, such as candy-bar versions, video versions, music versions and a number of different versions. Motorola wants to own the iconic thin approach here.
WSJ: Motorola appeared stuck in the mud when you joined. What was the first thing you tried to change?
Mr. Zander: We had to get back the sense of confidence that you can win. It's like any ball team. How do you get the winning attitude? ... Some of it's got to do with psychology. I think we have to re-energize the company to think that we can win and be No 1. We're not there yet, but that's the mission I'm on.
WSJ: What still needs to improve at the company?
Mr. Zander: Motorola's got a thick culture. I had to learn it, and it's been hard bringing the things I think are valuable, such as a sense of urgency, fast decision making, shareholder value, competition. I don't want to imply that none of that was there, but it was not to my liking, not after living in Silicon Valley for 17 years. I got the feeling that there were days the company was on autopilot to a degree.
WSJ: How do you change a culture that's entrenched over decades?
Mr. Zander: The question is how fast do you step on the gas pedal? I always want to go a hundred miles an hour. But you can blow the engine on a car if you drive that fast. There are days I know I can only go fifty or sixty. It's going to take several years to build a high-performance company.
I think we ought to get back to putting the customer first. As simple as that sounds, I think it's something that every American corporation, every corporation around the world, sometimes takes for granted.
WSJ: How could you tell Motorola was not practicing this?
Mr. Zander: I just felt like, why weren't we talking about Nokia every day? Why weren't we talking about Verizon every day? Why weren't we talking about shareholder value? Are we here to make money or not? Or are we here just to work and go home? I noticed that after three weeks, nobody was in my office to call a customer. I thought it was strange. In my previous life, we'd bring a customer in or we'd be pounding away at our market share. And I just didn't see that. So I asked who our top customers are and started calling them, and then visited them, one by one.
WSJ: Are there tangible signs of progress in the areas you want to change?
Mr. Zander: We've had a couple of defining deals. We were told in three cases we were losing a deal. They were very big ones. So we went back in there and we hit them high, we hit them low, and we hit them in between, and we reversed some of the deals and won.
WSJ: Did you bring any lessons from your time at Sun?
Mr. Zander: Yeah, we had a Sun rule that says if you're a salesperson you're not authorized to lose a deal. You go to the person who told you you lost and say, "You've got to see my boss because I'm not allowed to lose this." We've still got a ways to go to create a high-powered sales force.
WSJ: How would you describe your management philosophy?
Mr. Zander: Whack yourself before somebody whacks you. I used to have these meetings called the whack meetings at Sun where we'd think about what could happen to us and what we have to do to keep that from happening. That approach led to the creation of Java and a lot of the Internet.
WSJ: Do you think there are parallels between the world of computers and the telecom world?
Mr. Zander: I think we're undergoing a transformation, big time, similar to what we saw back in the 1980s with personal computers. I think we're getting mobile devices that are going to transform our lives. And I think a phone call is just one of the many things you'll be able to do with these devices. They'll unlock your car doors or your home. They'll pay for purchases like a credit card, which they're already doing in some countries. So this device could replace your wallet and your keys.
WSJ: Is Motorola developing such products and services?
Mr. Zander: Yes, we're working with car companies and credit-card companies. There's a lot of R&D. I would venture to say there's more R&D today in mobile communications than there is in the computer industry. The rate of technology innovation is even quicker now ... I see TV on these devices. I just see things happening.
WSJ: In the handset market, where is your growth coming from geographically?
Mr. Zander: We got back to No. 1 in Latin America. And we put a big strong push in Europe, and we're No. 2 there now. And in China we're holding our own. To give Nokia a little credit, they focused on emerging markets a little earlier than we did because we were busy getting our house in order. But people in these developing countries want to make calls. And eventually they'll want to take pictures and hear music and do other things. So that is a big, big growth opportunity for us.
WSJ: Your company likes the buzzwords "seamless mobility." Can you give us some examples of how you use seamless mobility in your own life?
Mr. Zander: Here's my latest toy. (He pulls out of a bag a pair of Oakley sunglasses with a tiny cellphone earpiece and microphone attached to one of the arms and puts them on.) This actually works. I've been using these all day. (He then pulls out another pair, this time with an MP3 player attached to one of the arms.) We are making these into one device, where you can play music and get a phone call.
I just built a home in California. And now we have a home monitor system, which I can connect to with my cellphone. So I can sit here and look at rooms live or get alerts if there's anything wrong.
WSJ: There's been a lot of consolidation among U.S. carriers in the past 18 months. Do you expect telecom vendors to follow?
Mr. Zander: Yeah, I think things will happen. But it's not easy. Tech has not had a great track record in M&A.
WSJ: How much management upheaval has there been at Motorola?
Mr. Zander: The real challenge for corporations that are trying to transform is in the VP ranks. That's where the blockage is. A lot of companies have clogged arteries. So we have undergone a transformation of our vice-president ranks. I don't know how many dozens of VP's are no longer with us. Some have left on their own accord, some have not.
WSJ: Your stock price hasn't moved much, despite all the changes you're making. Why not?
Mr. Zander: I don't know. I think you have to discipline yourself to take a longer view. The market wants predictability. It wants not just one good quarter. It doesn't even want a great quarter. It wants six good quarters or 10 good quarters or 12 good quarters. We've done five.
WSJ: Can you knock off Nokia from the No. 1 position in the handset business?
Mr. Zander: We want to be No. 1. I don't wake up in the morning and say I want to finish third. I mean, do the Yankees get up and say we'll finish third this year? You've got to go to the ball field and think about finishing first.
ot: Even if bogus (which I doubt), imagine, "only the beginning" is the riff from that Chicago song that keeps playing in my head right now...imagine the possibility (disclaimer)all the refrences to PC in a few months or years time....
OK, have a good week.
SOG
dd: Peter Norvig - Web Search as a Force for Good (3.9)http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail382.html
---------------------------------------------
Web search as a Force for Good? No, we are not talking about a new beta service
from Google! Peter Norvig, Director of Search Quality and Research at Google,
says that when web searches are not actually saving people's lives they are
improving them by saving time! He talks about how the 4 billion web pages Google
indexes can be harnessed to actually make a difference in the everyday lives of
people around the world with the innovative new services that Google is coming
up with.
http://ipost.com/rd/9z1zv7hhlbhq6a15cc6o85iogln56pnvrcj4u8locd0
ot dd: Crime-busting cameras: a US-city experiment
By Clayton Collins / Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0627/p11s02-lihc.html
from the June 27, 2005 edition -
CHELSEA, MASS. - Sitting in Bellingham Square, hub of this city just north of Boston, Philip Quaglione remembers when a surveillance camera hung here at Washington and Broadway.
Its pole was knocked down several years ago, he says, either accidentally or by someone who didn't like the unblinking eye.
Now, surveillance cameras are coming back. In mid-July, Chelsea, Mass., hopes to throw the switch on a quarter-million-dollar system of 27 digital cameras with the capacity to monitor and record activity in any of its public spaces, says Jay Ash, city manager. His hope: that the system, which has cut crime in Chicago, will do the same in this high-crime city of 36,000 packed into less than two square miles.
Other small cities have similar aims. Officials in Schenectady, N.Y., reportedly plan to have eight cameras trained on the city's main commercial zone by fall. State funds will be used.
Chelsea's ally is the US government, which will add seven more cameras in a shared-feeds arrangement that has city officials encouraged, civil libertarians concerned, and some residents wondering how electronic policing and a federal presence will affect daily life.
The federal government is involved because a few Chelsea landmarks have special post-Sept. 11 significance. The Tobin Bridge, a major gateway into Boston, plants its northern footings here. Tanks of liquefied natural gas huddle down by the Mystic River.
Anika Hobbs, helping a friend load a car on Winnisimmet Street, says new cameras will do little to make her feel safer from terrorism. While she supports efforts to curb crime, Ms. Hobbs calls the use of terrorism concerns as a reason to boost surveillance "an excuse, especially in a city like Chelsea," with its high minority population.
Others differ. "The more [monitoring] the better," says David Flores, a teen who points to a spot a half-block away where he says a fatal stabbing occurred earlier this month.
Public-safety meetings, attended by residents and local businesses, will help determine where the city's cameras are aimed, says Mr. Ash. (Locations are as yet undisclosed, says Frank Garvin, chief of police, who maintains that the ambiguity effectively increases the cameras' value as a deterrent.)
Ash credits Washington with a new spirit of cooperation concerning the federal cameras. Chelsea is part of a nine-member cluster of communities called the Metropolitan Boston Homeland Security Partnership.
"What the federal government seems to be telling us is, 'We want you to use this equipment for other purposes as well ... but understand that [its] primary role is homeland security,' " says Ash.
"We have at least 10 places around the nation that ... are part of a pilot program," says Michelle Petrovich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington. Ms. Petrovich will not confirm that Chelsea represents one such program. Instead, she describes them collectively.
"[Federal cameras] feed into the local emergency operations centers, for example," she says. "It's intended to give a larger view for state and local law enforcement.... [The feed] goes into our Homeland Security operations center as well, so we have an equal view."
Testing the limits?
Ash says the city would probably not retain digital images for more than 30 days. He says police officers might eventually be able to call up views from any of the cameras through the laptop computers in their cruisers.
But civil liberties groups worry about the "federalization" of local police and the potential for abuse of a growing observational power.
"Where there's a human being in the loop, there's the potential for abuse," says Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Ms. Rose - who says the ACLU is still looking at the Chelsea case - says the legal limits of close new surveillance have not yet been tested in court. She wonders, citing an extreme example, whether a private journal being read in a public space could be discerned by increasingly high-tech cameras.
"We're coming up with protocols to make sure that those who are viewing the cameras are doing so for lawful purposes," says Chelsea's Ash. "And we are putting in place limitations on who has access to the images."
Despite signs of interagency cooperation, the future control of digital image banks remains in question, others say.
"Sharing is political," says Michael Rogers, president of Oracle Surveillance Systems in Baltimore, a $2 million-a-year firm that contracts with several government agencies. His company recently installed monitoring cameras at traffic lights in Fairfax, Va.
"Then the police wanted the feed," says Mr. Rogers. "The traffic-and-signal people didn't want to give the police the power to control anything."
Big business or Big Brother?
Perhaps the most controversial area of monitoring is the proposed inclusion of private-sector cameras. Many cities already have thousands, and demand for electronic-security products is projected to grow 9 percent a year through 2008 to $15.5 billion, according to Freedonia Group, a research firm.
Video related spending, $3 billion of that total, has notched the sharpest annual growth rate, nearly 13 percent.
"We had a discussion with members of the Chamber of Commerce about their own internal systems," says Ash. "We're not sure about the links right now, but ... we're sure they're going to be available tomorrow."
But many of the constitutional protections that Americans have regarding personal information in government databases do not apply where proprietary, private-sector data is concerned, says the ACLU's Rose. That, she says, could lead to their public-sector partners watching individuals without probable cause.
"We're not Big Brother," says a Chelsea police officer who asks not to be named. "If technology enhances our ability to fight crime, that's a good thing."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0627/p11s02-lihc.html
WEEKEND dd: Jack Kilby, A Giant Among Engineers, Dies
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/06/21/jack-kilby-integrated-circuit-obituary_cx_ah_0621kilby.h...
BONUS DD: JACK KILBY: MAN OF INFLUENCE
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/jan-june05/kilby_6-22.html
BONUS DD:Valley Wonk: The Quiet Jack Kilby JUNE 23, 2005
This week, an era passed in electronics, with the death of Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit. Just as in jazz, where past artists' innovations are taken for granted, it takes the death of a pioneer to generate a wave of nostalgia that illuminates the importance of earlier discoveries.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=76185&WT.svl=tease1_2
BONUS INTERVIEW DD:
Jack Kilby's Last Interview
By Mike Green, EPN -- 6/24/2005
Electronic News
"Jack did more than invent the integrated circuit … he invented the future"
Tom Engibous, Chairman, Texas Instruments
Advertisement
What do you say to a man that created an entire industry, whose inventiveness has led to nearly $300 billion dollars of business being generated each year? Jack Kilby -- creator of the integrated circuit, Nobel Prize winner, widely accepted “Father of the Silicon Age,” and the reason that just about any of you reading this article have a job -- granted Electronic News’ sister publication EPN an interview about five weeks before his passing. Below are excerpts of that conversation.
EPN: Creating the first IC was one thing, but selling the concept to the rest of the world was a whole different story. How did you set about converting people to your way of thinking?
Kilby: We had to take it one bit at a time, they weren't going to get widespread use overnight. We chose the applications to target very carefully. Aerospace and military were obvious places to try, and offered an important starting point for us.
EPN: The design engineers back then had a very Luddite perspective; they wanted to protect the business they had and feared that your creation would put them all out of work when in fact it was exactly the opposite that happened. ICs became more affordable and meant that whole new markets were opened up. Have we gone too far in the other direction now? When the dot-com bubble burst, was it a sign that we needed to become a bit more cautious about laying better foundations on which to build new industry sectors?
Kilby: Providing the market is there, then it is not a problem. So back in the 60s the fears of the design engineers disappeared when it became clear there would be new applications that could make use of it. As long as the industry reacts to demands it has nothing to worry about, it’s only when it tries to switch that order around that things get complicated.
EPN: It must have been interesting to see your brainchild grow to maturity. You must have watched avidly how semiconductors have evolved. What have been the other important milestones in your opinion -- microprocessors, flash and EPROM memories, organic LEDs?
Kilby: All of these have contributed to widening the places that semiconductor can be found, and I would expect there to be far more innovations still to come. We are still only at the beginning.
EPN: Back in the early days it was possible for one person to make a difference. The actions of men like you, William Shockley, Tedd Hoff, Jean Hoerni, and so on could change the way the world worked. Is it still possible today for an individual to have such a profound effect, or is the industry just too big for such pioneers now?
Kilby: I think it is still possible that one person can make a difference. The industry is a lot bigger now but someone with the right idea can still have a huge impact.
EPN: Of course when the applications emerged that would not be possible with vacuum tubes or discrete transistors, then ICs started to be utilized. This rapidly snowballed as the production yields kept on getting better, and the volume levels ramped up further. The cost per chip would continue to drop, and more tasks could begin to benefit for semiconductors. Is the problem now that we have gone down this route so long that it is now causing more harm than good. Has the system as described by Gordon Moore just gone out of control. The production volumes we will need when we move down to 65nm and 45nm architectures just to keep the current companies afloat will mean there will need to be chips in literally everything. Will there simply be enough places to put them all?
Kilby: Unless the economics are right, then it won't make sense to. But as long as there are cost advantages, then companies will make the investment and take the risks that go along with it.
EPN: Following on from that, the original TI solid circuits cost hundreds of dollars and had just eight transistors on board. Today you have microprocessors from Intel or AMD with tens of millions of transistors going for less than $50. Is the commoditization going too far?
Kilby: I don't see this being a major issue for a long time to come yet. There doesn't seem to be any slowing down, new applications are still being found all the time, so the number of places we can put chips is still getting greater.
EPN: Can you tell us about when you heard that you had won the Nobel Prize? What were your feelings at the time, and how were you informed?
Kilby: It was completely unexpected, I really had no idea that this would happen. As I recall, I heard the news from a reporter who was knocking at my front door to get my reaction. I got the official phone call just after that and the award ceremony took place two months later.
EPN: When you received the Nobel Prize you graciously said that if Bob Noyce had still been alive he would have shared the award with you. However, it was not always so civilized between you and your respective companies Can you tell us of the battled that ensued over priority to the microchip?
Kilby: There was some litigation, but in the end it was all resolved amicably. Even though we never worked together and we were effectively on different sides, we were to become great friends.
EPN: The English electrical engineer Geoffrey Dummer also speculated about the possibility of integrating an entire circuit onto a single chip, back in the mid 1950s, but never managed to get his idea of the drawing board. Where did he go wrong? Was it lack of funding or support from the British Government, technical deficiencies on his part, or was he just not able to convince people that he had something worthwhile?
Kilby: Dummer was able to propose the idea very early on, but he didn't really explain how it was going to be realized, and that was what counted.
EPN: After the invention of the integrated circuit you continued to do research on many different topics, can you tell us about some of these? Also once you had made such a huge innovation relatively earlier in your career, did it make things for you to start anew? Without trying to make myself sound too dumb, was the microchip a hard act to follow?
Kilby: No. I suspect if anything it helped; people are more willing to listen to you once you have something like that under your belt. Solar power was the biggest project that I worked on, but there were a couple of sizeable things that I attempted in telecoms.
EPN: Given the work you did on alternative sources of energy, do you think the time has finally come for it to make decisive headway. For along time such things seemed to progress no further than the original research, but with the current oil prices, and the huge energy drain that China will bring, must we favour this route?
Kilby: Its still there, whether the time is right is still hard to say. Though, clearly, we can't go on like we are now indefinitely. Things will have to change sooner or later.
dd: Beware the Google Threat By Adam L. Penenberg
Story location: http://nubertul.hotwired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67982,00.html
02:00 AM Jun. 23, 2005 PT
Google takes its name from the mathematical term "googol," which stands for a 1 followed by 100 zeros, a number said to be greater than the sum of all the particles in the universe. Obviously few of us, save perhaps a handful of farsighted astronomers, have need for a word that conveys so much.
You can't say the same for Google. If it continues to double profits every year for the next hundred, accountants a century from now might need to represent the company's gross revenue in googols.
Media HackIn less than a decade, the company has evolved from an algorithm to a search phenomenon to a verb. Google introduced an ad-free homepage and clutter-free interface, speedier downloads and more "relevant" results. In the process, it redefined the look and feel of the internet. When conventional wisdom held that search was little more than a free add-on for portals, Google figured out a way to make money from it. Paid search advertising accounts for $1.24 billion of the $1.25 billion Google took in last quarter.
On its way to wresting control of our desktops, Microsoft once asked, "Where do you want to go today?" Now Google provides the answer.
The problem is that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the geeks who coded Google from the algorithm on up, are inserting themselves into our lives. They wish to accompany us everywhere, forever. They want us to see the world through Google-colored glasses.
They can do this because Google has a grip on the interface. When we boot up and get online we hardly notice that Google dispatches a cookie set to expire in 35 years. Then Google filters our reality, dictates our aesthetic, collates and catalogs our memories, chooses what information we mine. The Google experience becomes a collective Rorschach test, which shapes our worldview and affects who we are and what we will become.
Some view Google as a media company. It isn't, because it doesn't create its own content. Rather it repurposes and repackages pre-existing material. Google is really little more than a content syndicator, a broker that makes money through information arbitrage.
Once any of us Google an old classmate, scan the day's headlines at Google News, use Froogle to comparison shop, seek direction from Google Maps, review academic books and scholarly papers, we strike an implicit agreement.
In exchange for free access to Google's resources, Google gets to fire advertisements at us from every conceivable angle. Google even gets to read our e-mail so it can customize our ad viewing experience. The beneficiaries: Google, its advertisers and ad affiliates.
This type of targeted search ad is all the rage, and as a result, Google has become the eyes and ears for millions of web surfers.
But Google won't stop there. It is hatching plans for an online payment system that would compete with PayPal, which led Robert Hof of BusinessWeek to write: "Another day, another new Google service that threatens to torpedo yet another outfit's business model." The company also recently encroached on Microsoft's turf with a desktop search function, which Google claims is "how our brains would work if we had photographic memories."
It struck deals to scan millions of volumes of books from the New York Public Library, University of Michigan, Stanford and Oxford, and filed several patent applications for a technology that would rank news stories on the basis of relevance, accuracy and reliability. (One wonders how Google will judge what is newsworthy.)
All of this reminds of me of two chilling comments courtesy of Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "Evil is whatever Sergey says is evil," and "We are moving to a Google that knows more about you."
Taken together, what do they mean?
The company won't say. But Google's attitude seems to be that it knows what's best for you. It's why Google is big, bad, ubiquitous, and whipping Microsoft, the dominatrix of the desktop.
I'm not the paranoid type. I don't watch a baseball game, see the catcher signaling the pitcher, and think they are discussing me. But I do wonder what impact Google's power will have on our culture.
I'm not the only who isn't gaga about Google. Daniel Brandt, who operates Google Watch, believes the problem is that Google has "no awareness of (its) responsibility to the public sphere. Geeks rule, libertarianism is cool, and the only thing governments do is meddle and regulate. That's the way Google sees the world."
Brandt is so vociferous in his hatred for Google that he inspired a hazing site -- Google-Watch-Watch, created by a Google lover who drank the Kool-Aid.
Nevertheless Brand has a point: He is concerned how Google plans to use the information it gets out of us. Will it cave every time the government comes bearing a subpoena? Can it be trusted to safeguard our personal information? All Google will promise is that it "will provide notice before any personally identifying information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy."
The googol, explains Wikipedia, is "of no particular significance in mathematics, nor does it have any practical uses." It was created "to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in mathematics teaching."
In this way Google has become far bigger than the googol.
Adam L. Penenberg is an assistant professor at New York University and the assistant director of the Business and Economic Reporting program in the department of journalism.
dd: Arbitron: Younger People Cut The Cord, Become Cell Phone-Only Users
by Joe Mandese, Friday, Jun 24, 2005 7:30 AM EST
THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO use cell phones as their exclusive or primary telecommunications device is growing rapidly, and this raises important questions about their media consumption patterns--especially for mobile media such as radio. That was the implication of new research on so-called cell phone-only households and individuals, released this week by radio researcher Arbitron.
The study, which was presented Tuesday at the ARF's and ESOMAR's Worldwide Audience Measurement Conference in Montreal, found that such cell phone-only users are younger and male, and index much higher among African-Americans and Asians than the general population.
The telephone-based study, conducted in October 2004, was deemed relatively small by Arbitron, and therefore is not representative of the overall population. But the study, which sampled 7,500 dedicated users in five markets, found that 23.3 percent of them considered themselves to be cell phone-only users, while a corresponding 23.1 percent said they had a land line available to them, but primarily used their cell phones.
The findings are important, because many believe that cell phone-only individuals are growing rapidly--and their behavior is beginning to influence how they use other media, as well as how marketing and media researchers measure them. Among other things, federal law prohibits market researchers from utilizing so-called random digit dialing phone survey techniques for mobile phones, a popular method of marketing research.
During their presentation in Montreal, Arbitron executives announced another study utilizing 1,500 diaries that would measure the radio listening behavior of cell phone-only users to determine whether there are profound differences in the way they use radio versus the general population. Those results are expected to be released at the 2006 WAM conference.
Age Skews of Cell Phone-Only Individuals in Arbitron's Study
Age Percentage of Sample Index to Universe
18-24 23.2% 189
25-34 20.2% 112
35-44 21.1% 101
45-55 19.1% 95 56+ 16.3% 57
Source: Arbitron. How to read: Of the 857 completed interviews of respondents called on their cell phones, 23.2% were ages 18 to 24
dd: Phone App Writers: The Next Generation
By Douglas Rushkoff, Wed Jun 22 08:00:00 GMT 2005
Last year, it was Dodgeball. What do this year's students have in store for the mobile phone?
New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program recently concluded its thesis week, an annual event in which graduating Masters students present a dazzling menagerie of projects and prototypes to the public. Over the years I've taught at ITP, I've found that these projects tend to predict the trends that dominate interactive media three or four years later.
Significantly, a full third of ITP's thesis projects this year were mobile. Sophisticated and remarkably imaginative, these projects highlight the priorities of a design and development community that's bound to make an impact.
Like Dodgeball -- the mobile startup bought by Google and easily one of the most successful projects to come out of ITP in recent years -- many of this year's projects were inspired initially by New York City. Not only is this city the creative spark for nearly all of these apps, but it presents a most challenging urban litmus test as well. We also see that group connectivity is a priority across the board, but these projects have moved far beyond the matchmaking novelty of existing social networking services and now aim to mine the deeper treasures of connection.
Perhaps surprisingly, light apps still rule the day. SMS-based interfaces are vital to most of the projects reviewed, design choices no doubt influenced by Dennis Crowley's "lowest common denominator" approach (indeed, the Dodgeball founder guided many of them in his Spring 2005 course, Ubiquitous Computing for Mobile Devices).
ITP's new developers also seem to understand that networks in mobile space can thrive independently of the Internet. One project in particular demonstrates a forward-thinking move toward proximity-based networks made possible by Bluetooth. Most notable though, are the effective utilizations of scale and density present in these mobile applications. Each project takes a slightly different approach but recognizes the immense value in using our collective knowledge and experience to give us tools to better engage our cities, as we move within them.
Four projects in particular stand out as exemplars of these qualities.
The first one could have only come out of New York, the city with a subway so dysfunctional, it's reliable. Karen Bonna wanted to design a system that could help NYC's public transit users schedule their local commutes more effectively and flexibly. Her answer to the metro nightmare, SubAlerts, relies on text messaging to distribute service advisories, train schedules and even community alerts when train lines shut down without warning (as they love to do).
Users of SubAlerts can schedule regular notifications if they have a typical daily commute or query the system directly. For instance, sending the message "C?" would return a list of any and all service advisories for the ever-troubled "C" line. Riders can also report delays via SMS, for the benefit of others.
The only thing SubAlerts can't do is make crowded subways fun. Enter Ian Curry and the incredible Pantopic, which may be just the app to bring a little love to the sardine can. Described as "digital ESP for your mobile device," Pantopic creates temporary, ad hoc networks with nearby devices, allowing some interesting shades of information sharing.
Being one of the brave few to go the J2ME route, Curry admits that while light apps are "chipping upward at the technology ceiling," apps like Pantopic are "upstairs drilling down through the floor." This brought him to a clever approach to Bluetooth: "If you are an early adopter of this kind of technology, your social network is more likely to include other early adopters." That's why Ian designed small-group functionality into the core of his software, hoping that Pantopic would take off "in little pockets of users who might ultimately emerge as some kind of global density."
Although Pantopic lacks a specific purpose, Curry has given the software enough versatility to "nearcast" everything from sound files to profiles. He's hoping his community of self-selecting users will take it from there.
Another project, already garnering heaps of attention, is Limor Garcia's Cellphedia. Promoted as a mobile, distributed encyclopedia -- think Google SMS meets Wikipedia -- its users subscribe to lists based on their individual interests and can then send questions to the rest of the community in hope of an informed response. With Cellphedia, Limor hopes to give people easy access to community knowledge, effectively creating a search engine that indexes its participants' minds. In a sense, it's the service that AskJeeves always wanted to be: users ask questions in natural language and receive answers -- but now the responses are provided by real, informed people, live.
Cellphedia's users have already answered hundreds of queries -- often accurately, if occasionally cheeky. Still, almost all the questions do get answered. Fielding inquiries from "Is Dom DeLuise alive?" ("yes he is. he is 71.") to "how does a diode work?" ("a diode blocks current from flowing in a certain direction. current will flow from the non-striped side to the striped side"), Cellphedia is clearly building the foundation for what could become an indispensable resource.
Perhaps the most inventive and predictive of all is a new project by Neighbornode and Grafedia creator John Geraci called FoundCity. Taking clear inspiration from folksonomy-based services like del.icio.us and flickr, FoundCity extends this system of casual organization and documentation from the web into physical space. As users move about the city, they "bookmark" various sites with a quick SMS or picture message, and then tag them up, folksonomically speaking, either immediately or later at their desktop.
Like the photos its users employ, FoundCity gives permanence to the ephemeral but takes this idea a step further by wedding these images so directly to physical geography. Of course, many projects have approached the idea of annotating space before but few have succeeded as well as FoundCity in giving this networked effort a more personal quality. By overlaying the perspectives of thousands of people, FoundCity approaches the dynamic nature of place and space.
These projects all point to a more sophisticated conception of cell space as a shared, always-on and collaboratively managed datasphere. It's only natural, since they represent some of the first applications for cell phones created by the generation who grew up with wireless. So even if you can't quite see what's so exciting about these apps, consider the mindset from which they emerge, and remember: this isn't just the way the designers of tomorrow are thinking -- it's the way your customers will probably be thinking the day after that.
dd: The Future Of Advertising
Jon Wuebben / Contributing Writer / 2005-06-22
Advertising is a medium that constantly evolves. It changes with the times. It adapts to new technologies. It is unrelenting in its desire to find new and better ways to reach an ever-growing consumer marketplace.
But its not simply advertising that evolves. Consumers and consumer behavior are changing too. As we look at the future of advertising, it's important to look at how the two interact and change together over time.
Without a doubt, the Internet has revolutionized the industry. It has taken the world - and the advertising world by storm. And it has only just begun to make an impact. The Internet has become a global medium with massive potential. Forty years ago, television was considered new media. Fifteen years ago, it was cable. Today, people spend increasing amounts of time online at the expense of other media. The first evidence of this audience migration appeared in 1998 in a Forrester Research report.
The researchers asked PC users which activities they were giving up to spend more time on their computers. 75% of the respondents said they gave up television.
Interactive. That is the real key behind the power of the Internet in advertising. The Internet is really the only medium where we see true interactivity. In addition:
It means greater viewer involvement.
It means users can access services according to their interests and their tastes.
They can request and receive specialized product information, make an instant purchase, all the while saving time and expense.
The effectiveness of Web advertising appears to relate to the fact that surfing the web is an actively engaging experience, similar to reading magazines.
Consumers also have the choice to "opt-in" to receiving additional information on a particular product or service. In Seth Godin's groundbreaking book, Permission Marketing, he said, "By reaching out only to those individuals who have signaled an interest in learning more about a product, Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness- and greatly improve the chances of making a sale."
All the Rage: Pay Per Click and Natural Search Using SEO
It's no secret what has taken over the business world, in industry after industry. Pay Per Click and Natural Search Using Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Today, being on the first page for your most popular keyword phrase is like having the most memorable prime time television commercial in 1973.
Pay per click advertising on search engines allows you to choose keywords you would like your site to appear under when a potential customer engages in a search. You decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. But it can be competitive - and expensive if you are trying to use keywords that are very popular.
Natural Search or Organic Search is the non-biased, non-paid results that come up when you do a search. This can be influenced heavily by what's called "Search Engine Optimization" - the complex and time consuming practice of ensuring that your website is doing all the right things in order to rank high for certain search terms. In this arena, smaller companies can out maneuver large corporations, so there's a lot of excitement generated because of this.
Essentially, that's where the power of advertising is going. It's all about Search. And Search is only going to become more important over the next ten years. If you can get on that coveted first page organically, well then, more power to you!
Web Sites, Banner Ads, etc..
The other forms of on-line advertising vehicles are of course, web sites, banner advertising placed on others sites, newsletters, ezines, and email. They are used in many different combinations, for different purposes at different times. But most savvy companies are using all of them. The value of banner ads has been hotly debated for a number of years. Opponents argue that the click-through rates have gone down so much, that banner ads are nothing but wasted money. But research clearly shows that banners are very effective in building brand awareness. On-line users may not click on a banner, but if they see it enough times, the company's name is drilled into their head. When its time to shop, that product or service is first in their mind. Simply being exposed to the brand as one surf's the web is enough to make a big impression.
The impact of banners on brand awareness was tested for the first time in fall 1996 by Millward Brown International. Three brands were tested including a men's apparel brand, a telecommunications brand and a technology company. The findings were significant and conclusive for each brand. Awareness was significantly greater among the banner-exposed (test) group than the non-exposed (control) group. Specifically, exposure to the ad banners alone increased brand awareness from 12% to 200% in a banner-exposed group.
The study also compared the impact of the banner ads in this test to television and magazine norms from prior Millward Brown studies. The findings were remarkable: Single exposure to a Web banner generated greater awareness than a single exposure to a television or print ad. Rather, the effectiveness of Web advertising seems to stem from the fact that Web usage is an actively engaging exercise.
Newsletters and Ezines
Most smart marketers out there have either a newsletter or ezine nowadays. These types of customer communication and advertising tools will only continue to grow in use and importance. It goes back to the whole "what's in it for me?" issue. The customer wants to be part of the process. They want to learn something. Or keep themselves updated on the latest news. Most of all, they want to get something out of the relationship. They want to do more than buy something, they want to improve their lives in some small way - and they want you to help them do that.
Email Advertising
Email is another of the big three Internet advertising mediums. Companies like Got Marketing, OptinBig.com, and N5R are providing new and exciting email marketing solutions for thousands of progressive firms. Their results are impressive. Consider response rates that average 10 to 20 times those of traditional direct mail. Or campaign Network marketing referral rates as high as 40%. The bottom line is that programs they put together have produced millions of leads for clients. And it's surprisingly affordable. This means that almost anyone can now utilize this advertising medium. But it has to be done smartly, because you don't want your emails to end up in spam filters. That is one inherent problem with email advertising, especially in the past two years.
N5R in particular is now one of the leading direct marketing agencies in North America. They develop innovative one-to-one marketing campaigns that drive a measurable, positive ROI on behalf of their clients by driving acquisition and conversion to trial and purchase for their clients. They have developed award-winning strategies in five major industry sectors. These include Internet Marketing and Online Contests/Promotions, Permission Based Email Marketing, Text Messaging, Success Based Email.
In Internet Marketing and Online Contests/Promotions, marketers can gather and compile behavior and preference data from prospects and customers and use this information to send targeted and relevant information. Developing ongoing programs of one-to-one communication is cost effective and measurable. Contests are the quickest and most effective way to gather this data and build relationships with customers. It's very possible to build a permission-based database of over 50,000 prospects in only 6 weeks, increase web site traffic by 900%, improved online sales revenue by 1,000%, and achieve $40 million in sales from leads generated by an online promotion.
With Permission Based Email Marketing, loyal clients are just an e-mail away. Where traditional marketing campaigns fail, e-mail can shine through. E-mail marketing allows companies to speak one-to-one with their audience in a respectful, intelligent and creative way. It is extremely cost-effective, provides the foundation for future marketing initiatives, and delivers measurable results.
Text Messaging or SMS (Short Message Service) is a technology that allows people to send and receive short (up to 160 characters) written messages on cellular phones. It is already hugely popular in Europe and Asia and is growing rapidly in North America. SMS marketing offers the following benefits:
One-to-one communication with your target group, anywhere, anytime reach, low campaign cost, and very measurable data. Imagine if your mobile phone received an email message, "You're only a block from a Starbuck's; stop in for a 20% discount on your latte." The data is available and marketers are starting to tap into these resources.
Success Based Email is free email deployment where companies only pay for results. This "pay-per-click" approach is based on the premise that companies will only pay for each email that receives a "click-through" from the recipient. Not only does the new approach enhance the value of marketing dollars spent on such campaigns, the move will likely trim total dollars spent.
For example if 100,000 emails are sent, 70% are opened and 15% of the recipients actually click on a link in the email then clients will only be charged for the 15,000 people that clicked on the link, not for the other 85,000 that didn't. The return on investment (ROI) or cost savings inherent in this new approach will be very appealing to permission-based marketers. The bottom line is that marketers will now pay for real, measurable results.
The Next Step
Compared with other media, the Web is still limited in its bandwidth offerings. But it's getting better every day. With the continued improvement of bandwidth development, we will soon be positioned well to create full-featured multimedia advertising on the Internet. Once a majority of consumers have DSL capability and the computer power to access it, there will be some incredible things happening. Sites like tvtonic.com are already offering some very compelling visual and audio imagery in the form of movie trailers and music videos.
Market researchers, futurists and industry experts predict that interactivity through multiple technologies and devices will change how consumers interact with marketers. Interactive advertising will soon be everywhere. So, in effect, it could be considered the age of mass customization in advertising. Advertisers will have the tools to narrow their targets and address Web ads to individuals and not to a demographic or psychographic group. Why market a commercial to 1 million people, most of who aren't in the target audience, when the same ad could be shown to 10,000 people who are very interested in the product or service? Most of those will even give their name and address.
Interactivity will also be a part of television. Interactive TV will be the norm in the near future, and this too is another exciting opportunity. There will be total integration between TV channels and advertisers web sites. While we are watching TV, we will be able to interact with what we are seeing, ordering hamburgers from the McDonalds down the street or communicating with the local car dealer that we are interested in buying a car. Clicking on products we see in TV shows and ordering them will be easy. Your TV will keep track of what you are watching. Your TV will even know what kind of car you own because you'll tell for the free oil change you're offered in exchange. The oil change will be compliments of DirecTV, and it is only good at Jiffy Lube, which has paid to be the official oil-change provider for DirecTV." That's the way it will work.
Service Initiative Advertising
Another major trend is what I call "Service Initiative Advertising". Let's face it; consumers are tired of advertising as usual. Many people say they hate commercials. The success of Tivo and satellite radio can attest to this. They want more from their advertising. And who could blame them? People are inundated with advertising today- every where they go. Service Initiative Advertising takes the whole process one step further. Essentially how it works is that it requires advertising to offer some value to the consumer.
For example: Kraft Foods creates a website that offers busy mothers a source for quick recipes for the family evening meal. The idea isn't to push Kraft products, but to promote Kraft as a brand that offers a service to customers. There have been companies who positioned their entire marketing strategy on this tenant. Now, it will become a key part of advertising for almost everyone. The consumer wants to know you care.
It's important to realize that advertising mediums of the past will still be here. But, they may look a little different in the future. Direct mail will always be around as long as people like to receive mail. And despite external challenges, the U.S. Postal service will still be around. TV and radio will be here too.
But the future is here. And advertising will never be the same.
One thing that is certain is that it will continue to be as exciting and dynamic as it has been in the past. But now, the consumer is a part of the process.
453099rff-d-0sctgk340=-zx0-cvb0w4l5t][234l52=dp=z-[;'g/34-63-4=-340-6p4t\p5-234-5=35gb-bn0n909j977865rjkvmb,n,.hldfir6897996904-3we0f=-0d-=vb0=d-0h=-36=o26o24903-w--=e96-2353
dd:MSN Enters Local Search, Promises Detailed Maps
by Gavin O'Malley, Wednesday, Jun 22, 2005 6:00 AM EST
MICROSOFT'S MSN ENTERED THE LOCAL search field this week with a beta version of MSN Local Search that will compete against similar tools from Yahoo!, Google, and America Online. The service provides geographically targeted search results of businesses and other local information, as well as online street and aerial maps pinpointing designated targets.
"This is only the beginning of a much larger search strategy," Justin Osmer, MSN product manager, said. "We're already well on our way to combining local search with more advanced online maps."
Indeed, industry watchers saw this week's release as a precursor to the pending launch of the MSN Virtual Earth tool, which lets users conduct virtual, aerial tours of multiple locations by layering multiple search results onto a map of aerial images, some of which will show locations at a 45-degree angle.
Virtual Earth will debut in "several months," Osmer said, and would afford a far more immersive experience than consumers are used to. "You'll be able to map out an entire evening's activities--from the bar to the restaurant to the show--and send it along with phone numbers and directions to everyone joining you that night," said Osmer.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates gave a preview of Virtual Earth last month, and MSN put a splash page on its site on Monday to whet users' appetites.
Analysts compare Virtual Earth to Google's upcoming service called Google Earth, a desktop feature meant to replace Google's existing Keyhole software. Google Earth is also supposed to overlay local search and driving directions on top of an aerial view of the globe, and allow users to view animated maps.
MSN is initially employing business and residential directory information from Amacai Information Corp. to power its new tool. MSN previously offered limited, geo-targeted search results through its "Near Me" feature, which was part of its overall Web search.
For MSN Local Search, online street maps from the Microsoft MapPoint service display the locale of local listings along with local search results. For some of the results, MSN also displays aerial images being supplied by a project from Microsoft Research called TerraServer-USA.
TerraServer is an online database of maps and aerial photographs of the United States, which the Microsoft's Research Center built in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey. MSN will use TerraServer-USA's data to employ MSN Virtual Earth, Osmer confirmed.
ot: I have officially declared myself a true battle scarred long after these last few sessions....nice to get a "taste" and now understand what the really really long longs have endured the paste year or two with some of these pullbacks...lol..ONWARD AND UPWARD........HOLD 'EM LONG AND STRONG AND TIGHT TO THE VEST...and ps, congrats to you who could afford more, as for me (and I am sure many others), I was tapped a long time ago but managed to pick up more last week fwiw...
EOT.
SOG
ot: "When you reach the top, keep climbing." eom
dd: MS Christopher Payne http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/payne/default.mspx
dd: MSN Formally Welcomes Virtual Earth to the MSN Search Team
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-20-2005/0003925948&...
ot: SOG
Check this one out, only a matter of time imho till whatever it is we are waiting for will arrive...imagine that...8in the mean time, thanks for all the great dd;)
ot dd while we await the motherwship connection: Ubiquity : Why Catastrophes Happen
http://www.mathreading.com/Shop/Ubiquity--Why-Catastrophes-Happen/0609809989
dd: Tech firms help tyrants keep their grip
By Hiawatha Bray / June 20, 2005
Microsoft Corp. is helping the government of China in its efforts to brainwash the country's 1.3 billion inhabitants. It's a tough job -- so tough even Microsoft can't pull it off. But it's willing to give it a try, along with such firms as Yahoo and Google.
It's about money, of course. China already has 94 million Internet users, the world's second-biggest online population after the United States, and there are still over a billion people yet to be hooked up. No way can Internet companies ignore a market like that.
On the downside, China is a thug state that forces women to abort their children, imprisons journalists for publishing the truth, and tortures religious believers for praying. It's hardly surprising that the country's leaders regard as profanity such words as ''democracy" and ''human rights." But it seems that Microsoft and China's oligarchs speak the same language.
Rebecca MacKinnon, a fluent Chinese speaker who spent nearly a decade covering China for CNN, is now a research fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Berkman last week visited the Chinese version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, and tried to set up a Web log entitled ''I love freedom of speech, human rights and democracy."
Instead she got back an error message: ''You must enter a title for your space. The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity."
There's nothing new about US Internet companies acting as censors on China's behalf. Yahoo does it, too, and so does Google. But these companies have taken a less aggressive approach. Yahoo, for instance, waits until Chinese authorities complain about a user's website, and then takes steps to shut it down.
Google censors its Google News feature to block out Web news sources that are banned by the Chinese government, like the Voice of America. But spokeswoman Debbie Frost said it's done mainly because China's Internet services are already programmed to block these sites. It used to be that the front page of the Google News Chinese edition would slow to a crawl while trying to display a headline from a banned site. Frost said that Google just gave up and dropped all such links from the Chinese news page.
The Microsoft policy has ticked off Web libertarians who barely shrugged at Google's and Yahoo's policies. That's because Microsoft seems to have programmed its own computers to enforce China's barbarous censorship policies. The government needn't even complain about subversive content; Microsoft will ensure that it never appears.
Ask Microsoft about it, and they issue a canned response. ''MSN abides by the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates," the statement said.
Microsoft employee and well-known blogger Robert Scoble goes a little further in defending his bosses.
''It's not my place to make their laws," Scoble writes on his blog. ''It certainly is not my right to force their hand with business power. Any more than it's their place to make American laws."
Rubbish, MacKinnon replies.
''By not agreeing to comply with filtering requirements, you're not forcing the Chinese to do anything," she said. ''You're just not playing along with their game."
Indeed, MacKinnon said that Microsoft and other Internet companies should flatly refuse to comply with the Chinese government's filtering standards, and not only out of a love of free speech.
''We're getting into a national security issue," she fretted. MacKinnon fears that our support of Chinese censorship is storing up trouble for the United States in years to come, in the same way that our tolerance of Saudi fanaticism is now paying such ugly dividends.
Consider the case of Taiwan. Most Chinese support their country's bellicose attitude toward their ''rebellious province." But MacKinnon thinks this is largely because the Chinese get so little accurate information about Taiwan, through the Internet or any other media. ''If you did have a free exchange of opinion," she said, ''maybe more people on the mainland might say, you know, let's let those Taiwanese do what they want."
Instead, Taiwan is demonized, and the masses cheer their leaders' belligerent posturing. All in all, it's a good way to start a war. And US Internet companies would share some of the blame, in MacKinnon's view, for helping Beijing keep its citizens in the dark.
''This comes down as their larger responsibility as Americans," MacKinnon said.
Against this noble sentiment, the pallid justifications of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo seem pretty limp. They'll only say that they obey the laws of the countries where they do business. What goes unsaid is that they must also answer to the laws of economics, and to shareholders who will be mightily displeased if the companies abandon the world's most populous country.
But something else has gone unsaid as well. The leaders of Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google know that China's effort to seal off its populace from reality is doomed to failure. Sure, Yahoo's China-based service is censored, but there are plenty of other Chinese-language sites stuffed full of subversion, and there's no way the bullies in Beijing can stifle them all. To continue its economic rise, China needs tens of millions of highly educated people. Such people don't need unfettered Internet access to realize their government is lying to them. The backlash is bound to come, sooner or later. And the American Internet companies will be well-established on the inside of the Chinese firewall, ready to open the floodgates of free information, as soon as the Chinese people demand it.
The Microsoft engineer who programmed their self-censoring blog system probably felt like taking a long, hot shower once the work was done. But he probably sang in the shower, and laughed at the stupidity of tyrants.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
dd: Ebay shares sink on talk Google eyeing PayPal rival
Mon Jun 20, 2005
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of eBay Inc. <EBAY.O> fell about 3 percent on Monday on concerns that Google Inc. <GOOG.O> may offer an "online wallet" service that rivals eBay's PayPal.
The move comes amid news reports that Google this year may launch "Google Wallet," an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify revenue. Like PayPal, the service could let users pay for purchases on Web sites by funding accounts from their credit cards or checking accounts.
"Regardless of the initial success of the product, we believe such a launch would likely negatively impact eBay shares and could be a positive catalyst for Google," said Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy in a note to clients.
Rashtchy noted that Google has a history of launching products that are superior to existing service, with new user interfaces or features. In addition, Google has a large user base to tap and can likely subsidize the cost of transactions with advertising, so it can offer a lower price to merchants.
"Google payment system may not compete directly with PayPal, but it could limit PayPal's expansion beyond eBay," Rashtchy said.
However, Needham & Co. analyst mark May said that while the launch of such a service could boost the company's growth, it will take time to match the market size of PayPal, which he says is generating $1 billion in annual revenue 50 percent.
"Any such service would take at least 12 months to contribute to earnings," he said in a note. "In order to gain traction in online payments, Google must first gain traction as a destination for e-commerce transactions."
On Inet, shares of eBay were off $1.06 at $36.99, from the Friday Nasdaq close of $38.05. Google shares also slipped, easing $4.30, or about 1.5 perecnt to $276.00.
ot & DD: FWIW, Here's Why I Am Here (see bold)...(and of course for the Vegas Trip)
Google Files News-Ranking and Other Patents Seeking Accuracy
18 Jun 2005
Google has filed several patents for technology that seeks to determine the veracity of the content offered up in search results, including news aggregated by Google News, The Guardian reports. Patent WO 2005/029368 is for technology that ranks news according to accuracy, reliability and topicality. Google wants to develop algorithms that account for the amount of important coverage produced by a source, the amount of traffic it attracts, circulation statistics, staff size, breadth of coverage and number of global operations.
A Google spokesperson said the company did not discuss individual patents but that Google News is "evolving all the time." Google News emerged directly from the company's policy of allowing its staff to spend a fifth of their time on their own projects. It now links to 4,500 sources worldwide and has become a valuable driver of traffic for traditional media sites and thousands of smaller, online publishers.
Competitors Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves are also spending huge sums to develop new versions of the complex algorithms that power search engines. The search engine market is in a period of huge development and change, according to Forrester technology analyst Charlene Li: "As MSN launches its new search engine and players like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, A9 and a slew of startups continue to innovate...the market remains open to big shifts."
dd: Search Engines Are Going to Love You for This.
Posted by Ron Hutton on: 2005-06-16 20:29:36
http://www.selfseo.com/story-2398.php
Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton
What's the most potent fre traffIc source on the web?
*** Search Engines! ***
Surprised? Of course not. Why do so many people concern themselves so deeply with search engine optimization, positioning and ranking?
In the United States, the follow FOUR search engines handle (*)94% of all search inquiries each and every day.
Google = 35%
Yahoo = 28%
AOL (powered by Google) = 16%
MSN = 15%
* Source: comScore Media Metrix
Given this information and the fact that 100's of millions of searches are performed every day; wouldn't you want to have your website ranked high enough that it was one of the first sites listed by Google or Yahoo or AOL or MSN? Imagine the exposure that you'll receive!
One undisputed fact is that search engines love websites that offer focused content.
If you're publishing a newsletter online, there are a number of things that you can do with the articles and content that you create. This article will discuss search engines and their affinity for focused and relative content.
I want to show you a free tool that will help you take articles that you write or other people's articles (with their permission, of course) and very quickly and easily incorporate it into your website.
STEP 1: Find articles that tie in closely with the theme of your website or any particular page on your site. For testing purposes you can use this newsletter to play around with.
STEP 2: Go Here:
==> http://snipurl.com/texttohtml
STEP 3: About mid-page on the right-hand side you’ll see a short paragraph with the title "Free Text to HTML Converter". Click on the title. This is a CGI script that I installed at Internet Marketing Power Tools for your use.
STEP 4: Copy the text that you want to convert to HTML code, and paste it in the open text box that you see when this page opens.
STEP 5: Scroll down the page and choose the options that will give you the output that best suits your needs.
STEP 6: Click the "Convert to HTML" button at the bottom of the page.
STEP 7: Click the "Select All" button to copy and paste the now-HTML-formatted text into your webpage.
That’s all there is to it.
By including meaningful content on your website, you should receive more favorable rankings in the major search engines. This is only one aspect of what search engines are looking for, but it’s an important component and will put you on the right track to getting ranked higher and increasing traffic to your site.
About the Author
Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Subscribe to "GoThrive Online", for big juicy marketing tips in small, easy-to-chew, bite size servings. 17 Free Cool Tools... http://www.gothrive.com
BT launches handset that operates as both cell phone and landline
Sunday, June 19, 2005
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05170/522209.stm
By The Associated Press
LONDON -- BT Group PLC unveiled its attempt to bridge the landline and wireless divide Wednesday, launching a service that operates as a cell phone connection outside and automatically switches to an Internet-based call once a user enters the home or office.
BT Group PLC
The new BT Fusion service uses a special phone and a wireless hub to offer landline and cell-phone service with the same handset.
The company is banking on the new service, dubbed BT Fusion, to attract customers by combining the convenience of a cell phone with cheaper fixed-line prices.
"We know that many of our customers enjoy the convenience of their mobile phones when they're out and about, but switch to using a landline phone when they arrive back home to save money or because they have little or no mobile coverage," said Ian Livingstone, chief executive of BT Retail.
BT is initially seeking just 400 customers for BT Fusion, followed by a more widespread consumer launch in September and a corporate package next year.
The new product is part of a bid to win back customers who have abandoned the company's fixed-line service for offerings from cell phone providers. Revenue from the company's traditional fixed-line operation fell by 9 percent in the first three months of this year.
The wireless part of the Fusion service is being provided by Vodafone Group PLC since BT sold its own mobile business, which now trades as O2, four years ago. The service is initially available with Motorola Inc.'s v560 handset.
The new service seamlessly joins landline and cellphone coverage. When the user is on the move, the handset uses the Vodafone mobile network.
But when a user reaches home or the office, the phone automatically switches to BT's fixed-line broadband connection without interrupting the call. At that point, the call is being transmitted with Bluetooth, a short-range wireless technology, essentially transforming the device into a regular cordless phone rather than a mobile.
The call is switched over when the handset makes contact with a Bluetooth transmitter installed in the home or office. BT said the hub generally has a 20-to-25 yard reach, meaning the call is switched over to the land line when it comes within that range or out to the cellular network when handset moves beyond that range.
The hub, which can support up to three handsets at a time, is also Wi-Fi enabled so customers can use it to connect computers, games consoles and printers to the Internet. The Motorola handset doesn't have Wi-Fi capability, but the hub will be able to connect with Wi-Fi enabled cell phones as they become available.
BT will offer two separate monthly packages, priced at 9.99 pounds ($18) for 100 cross-network minutes or 14.99 pounds ($27) for 200 minutes. Calls to land lines originating in the home will be charged at BT's normal landline rate of 5.5 pence (9.9 U.S. cents) for up to an hour.
Analysts at technology group Ovum welcomed Fusion as a breakthrough in technology, but said getting the pricing right will make or break the new service.
They noted that the hubs are provided for free and that offering mobile-to-landline calls at the same price as BT's current landline rates would generate savings of up to 95 percent. But the 9.99 pound monthly fee compared less favorably to deals being offered by mobile phone operators, some as low as 3 pounds ($5.45) a month.
BT refused to say how many customers it expects to sign up in the future, but noted that some 30 percent of the company's customers make mobile phone calls from their homes.
"The future will be convergence," Livingstone said. "This is going to be a market that grows fantastically over time even though it might take a while to get going. We still expect many millions of converged handsets by the end of the decade."
BT's sales strategy will also be crucial, Ovum said, noting that BT initially plans to offer Fusion only through its Web portal and over the phone.
"While this may seem counterintuitive, it does make sense as Fusion only works with a BT broadband line and the telco knows who all of its 1.3 million customers are," analysts said in a research note. "It will be interesting to see if BT needs to move into the High Street (retail districts) for volume sales or whether it finds it does not need to go down this traditional path."
One Last DD:Carnegie Mellon Head Language Technologies Institute
The Language Technologies Institute (LTI) of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University conducts research and provides graduate education in all aspects of language technology and information management. The LTI was established in 1996, as an expansion of the Center for Machine Translation (CMT).
http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/Research/cmt-projects.html