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ot: SOG GO TO BED!
Random dd: ARDA's AQUAINT Program is seeking innovative, creative, high-risk, high-payoff research to achieve significant advancements in technologies and methods for advanced question answering against large heterogeneous collections of structured and unstructured information of multiple media and genre types (including structured and unstructured text, speech, document images, other multi- media) in English and multiple foreign languages, as well as video, images, geospatial, and abstract data.
The ultimate goal of the AQUAINT Program is not to develop question and answer capabilities for only single, isolated, factually based questions whose answers can be found as a single string or within a relatively short window of text (e.g. a 50 or 250 byte window) in a single document. Rather this R&D program intends to address a scenario in which multiple, inter-related questions are asked in a focused topic area by a skilled, professional information analyst who is attempting to respond to larger, more complex information needs or requirements. While some capabilities exist in these areas today, they are extremely limited and inadequate to meet the Government's broader requirements for question and answering. In addition, ARDA has a high interest in demonstrating the improved effectiveness achieved by combining the capabilities emerging from the R&D sponsored under the AQUAINT Program in an integrated, "plug-and-play" system environment.
Major areas of research are:
Question Understanding and Interpretation (including contextual interpretation, query expansion, query taxonomy),
Determining the Answer (including information retrieval and extraction from multiple media/languages and data types, interpretation, synthesis, resolving conflicting information, justification),
Formulating and Presenting the Answer (including summarization, synthesis, generation), AND/OR
Cross-Cutting/ Enabling/Enhancing Technologies that directly and materially support the above goals (including but not limited to advanced reasoning, sharable knowledge sources, content representation, interactive Q&A, role of context in Q&A, role of knowledge in Q&A, and language processing and natural language processing research required to support advances in Q&A.)
http://cslr.colorado.edu/
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/projects.html Research Projects
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/papers.html
http://www.ic-arda.org/InfoExploit/aquaint/index.html
DD: Semantic Web For Dummies 101:
http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/0407-swans-tbl/
Advanced Pot Luck Semantic Web dd 401: http://www.daml.org/meetings/2005/04/pi/Semantic_Web_Govt.pdf
http://www.daml.org/2002/04/why.html
http://www.daml.org/
dd:Aquaint Project 101
http://www.ai.sri.com/project/aquaint
Bonus dd:
http://www.ai.sri.com/pubs/files/986.pdf
dd:Enough Keyword Searches. Just Answer My Question.
By JAMES FALLOWS
SEARCH engines are so powerful. And they are so pathetically weak.
June 12, 2005
When it comes to digging up a specific name, date, phrase or price, search engines are unstoppable. The same is true for details from the previously concealed past. For better and worse, any information about any of us - true or false, flattering or compromising - that has ever appeared on a publicly available site is likely to be retrievable forever, or until we run out of electricity for the server farms. Carefree use of e-mail was once a sign of sophistication. Now to trust confidential information to e-mail is to be a rube. Despite the sneering term snail mail, plain old letters are the form of long-distance communication least likely to be intercepted, misdirected, forwarded, retrieved or otherwise inspected by someone you didn't have in mind.
Yet for anything but simple keyword queries, even the best search engines are surprisingly ineffective.
Recently, for example, I was trying to track the changes in California's spending on its schools. In the 1960's, when I was in public school there, the legend was that only Connecticut spent more per student than California did. Now, the legend is that only the likes of Louisiana and Mississippi spend less. Was either belief true? When I finally called an education expert on a Monday morning, she gave me the answer off the top of her head. (Answer: right in spirit, exaggerated in detail.) But that was only after I'd wasted what seemed like hours over the weekend with normal search tools. If it sounds easy, try using keyword searches to find consistent state-by-state data covering the last 40 years.
We live with these imperfections by trying to outguess the engines - what if I put "per capita spending by states" in quotation marks? - and by realizing that they're right for some jobs and wrong for others.
One branch of the federal government is desperate enough for a better search tool that its efforts could be a stimulus for fundamental long-term improvements. Last week, I spent a day at a workshop near Washington for the Aquaint project, whose work is unclassified but has gone virtually unnoticed in the news media. The name stands for "advanced question answering for intelligence," and it refers to a joint effort by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and other federal intelligence organizations. To computer scientists, "question answering," or Q.A., means a form of search that does not just match keywords but also scans, parses and "understands" vast quantities of information to respond to queries. An ideal Q.A. system would let me ask, "How has California's standing among states in per-student school funds changed since the 1960's?" - and it would draw from all relevant sources to find the right answer.
In the real Aquaint program, the questions are more likely to be, "Did any potential terrorist just buy an airplane ticket?" or "How strong is the new evidence of nuclear programs in Country X?" The presentations I saw, by scientists at universities and private companies, reported progress on seven approaches to the problem. (The new I.B.M. search technology discussed here last year is also part of the Aquaint project.)
There will be more to say later about this effort. On the bright side, apart from whatever the project does for national security, its innovations could eventually improve civilian search systems, much as the Pentagon's Arpanet eventually became the civilian Internet. Of course, the dark potential in ever more effective search-and-surveillance systems is also obvious.
For the moment, consider several here-and-now innovations that can improve on the standard Google-style list of search hits. Ask Jeeves, whose site is Ask.com, recently introduced two features that enhance its long-established question-and-answer format. One tries to recast search terms into a question that can be answered on the Web; the other offers suggestions to broaden or narrow the search. Answers.com, a free version of what was once called GuruNet, combines conventional search results with questions and answers.
Two related sites, Clusty.com and its parent, Vivisimo.com, categorize the hits from each search, producing a kind of table of contents of results. Another site, Grokker.com, does something similar in a visual form; it is free online or $49 for a desktop version. And the bizarrely named but extremely useful MrSapo.com has become my favorite search portal, because it allows quick, easy comparisons of the results of the same search on virtually any major engine.
FINALLY, some updates. Last month, I complained about those ill-designed Web sites that force users to re-enter information from the start if any error occurs. The real solution to this problem is better design, but of the many work-arounds, the best is the free utility Roboform, from roboform.com.
In the same column, I mentioned that Google Maps' satellite view of the vice presidential residence in Washington had been camouflaged with a protective thoroughness not applied to the White House, the Pentagon and other significant structures. It turns out that at least one other center of power has received similar treatment; zoom in on downtown Albany to see what it is. (A Google spokesman says that the company itself has never blurred or altered the photos but that it simply posts what it gets from "third parties.") It also turns out that a crystal-clear aerial view of every bit of the vice presidential compound is readily available - not on Google, but on another free, public, mainstream site. Ever vigilant, I will say no more. But the contrast illustrates the inanity of many "homeland security" measures, which gum up life for the average citizen while offering no genuine protection against real threats.
The idea of pointless protective gestures brings us back to the intelligence agencies and Aquaint.
As the briefings went on last week, I began to notice that they were not being delivered in American-accented English. The first project was introduced by a man born in Romania. The second, by a native Pole. The third, by a scientist who had emigrated from Russia. The fourth, by one from Greece. The fifth presenter was from New Zealand, the sixth was another Romanian and only the seventh sounded as if he had been reared in the United States. All the rest had come from around the world to study, in several cases to start companies, and now to lend their skills to this national security effort.
Several of the foreign-born scientists told me afterward that their counterparts at home would have a much harder time following their example, because of post-9/11 visa restrictions to keep America "safe."
James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. E-mail: tfiles@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/business/yourmoney/12techno.html
dd: AOL Building Free Portal To Make Its Content Pay
Fri Jun 17, 5:17 PM ET
In its latest reinvention, AOL is opening up much of its content and services to the outside world in the hope of earning a bigger piece of the expanding online-advertising pie, a key goal for the Time Warner unit as its subscriber numbers continue to decline.
After years as the Time Warner problem child, AOL sees an opening in the market. Thanks to its trove of Time Warner media content, it is betting it can transform itself from primarily a dial-up Internet service provider to a video- and audio-saturated destination in a broadband-enabled world. "There is a huge leg up for AOL there," said Jeff Lanctot, vp of media at aQuantive's Avenue A/Razorfish, which places $300 million worth of Internet media annually. "If content's still king, AOL's going to ride in on a horse called Time Warner and lay claim to the throne."
The new AOL portal, which will launch in late July, is squarely centered on the growing broadband market, looking to leverage both its own content and increased interest in online video advertising. "What [advertisers] are saying is, 'Give us more.' They want more inventory, more opportunities," said Michael J. Kelly, president of AOL Media Networks. The company will not only have the extensive resources of Time Warner but also has deals with XM Satellite Radio, the NFL and ABC News. In addition, the portal will come in three parts: a splashy main page that includes search and access to video, weather and news; a text-based My AOL page that resembles My Yahoo!; and a video hub aggregating video content, much of it exclusive.
In terms of advertiser opportunity, Kelly pointed out that AOL's current exclusive Monday synopsis of ABC's Desperate Housewives garners 300,000-500,000 streams a week and, like the TV series, is sponsored by Buick. AOL will also use its exclusive Webcast of July's Live 8 benefit concerts to promote itself as a destination for great free content, executives said.
AOL's move comes as online advertising is surging, growing 26 percent in the first quarter to $2.8 billion, according to figures released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau last week. Investment banks and research firms forecast full-year Web ad spending this year to be $12-15 billion, compared with $9.6 billion in 2004, according to the IAB. "There's a significant increase in demand with what I think are diminishing opportunities to place the dollars," said Eric Valk Peterson, vp of media for Omnicom Group's Agency.com.
"If supply is a problem, this goes a long way to solving that," said Gary Stein, an analyst with Jupiter Research.
The AOL portal will compete with established destinations like Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN, which have been adding their own video content. And Google is waiting in the wings after unveiling a beta version of a customized home page last month and testing its own video search engine. Consumers' portal habits may be hard to break. Thus, the key to AOL's marketing strategy is to home in on distribution, driving traffic from its well-known to its far-flung properties, which include brands such as Mapquest and Moviefone. One cornerstone is AOL Instant Messenger, which currently has 30 million unique users a month. In a nod to free e-mail services from Yahoo! and MSN's Hotmail, AOL launched AIM Mail in May. Much of the marketing, AOL officials said, will revolve around search-engine optimization—ensuring that the new free content will rank at the top of search queries. "We're going to have more than 30 doors into the house," said Kevin Conroy, evp of AOL Media Networks.
Considering it charged even its own subscribers extra for the content as recently as two and a half years ago, AOL may be risking more than most by throwing its content onto the Web. But with its mostly dial-up subscriber base waning (down another 500,000 in the first quarter to less than 22 million), AOL feels it is time to leverage its vast resources—there are some 30 online properties under the AOL brand, with more than 110 million users—to catch up in ad revenue to Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN. (In the first quarter, AOL's ad sales grew 45 percent to $311 million, compared with $1.3 billion for Google and $1 billion for Yahoo!)
Jim Bankoff, evp of programming and products, said making content free would not cause the subscriber erosion to accelerate, as company research shows AOL members generally do not subscribe for the content.
Media-agency executives said AOL has the pieces in place to become a solid competitor to other portals. AOL.com drew 70 million visitors in April, per Nielsen/NetRatings, a substantial base. "It's not like they're starting from scratch," said Nick Pahade, evp and managing director of the Beyond Interactive unit of WPP Group's Grey Global Group, who served on AOL's broadband advisory panel.
Agency executives express cautious optimism that AOL is finally settling on a strategy that can work. In the dot-com era, AOL was notorious for going around agencies to cut deals directly with clients. AOL has been mending fences with advertisers and agencies. It has revamped its sales structure, abandoning the proprietary "Rainman" technology in favor of industry-standard HTML pages, and jettisoned its proprietary ad server in favor of DoubleClick's DART system. "They're not making excuses, they're not being defensive," Pahade said. "The presentations they're giving are a lot more polished."
-- By BRIAN MORRISSEY AND CATHARINE P. TAYLOR
dd: Google Takes Search Mobile Kimberly Hill, toptechnews.com
Fri Jun 17, 2:17 PM ET
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - news) has rolled out a beta version of a search tool specifically designed for mobile phones. For some time, the company has had a portal through which wireless phone users can access the mammoth search engine.
Now, though, users can choose to receive in their results list only those sites that have versions specifically formatted for the small screens of mobile handsets.
The tool is mobile-provider agnostic. Any mobile user whose device includes a Web browser can access the Google main site to use the Mobile Google tools, including the new Mobile Web Search.
Browser Takes Command
More mobile phone handsets are being introduced with Web browser software as a standard feature, said Yankee Group's X.J. Wang. In fact, the browser is quickly becoming the most important way that callers use their phones, he noted.
That is, the browser is the most important user interface on wireless phone handsets, next to the address book feature of the phone itself.
Thus, more and more mobile phone users will be wanting access to their favorite Web sites via their tiny-screened phones.
Site designers are rushing to meet that demand by building mobile-friendly versions of the sites that sit alongside the more full-featured versions that users can access from desktop computers.
Two Choices
With the new tool, users have two choices when conducting a search on Google from their wireless phones. First, one must surf to the Google site and enter a search in the query box.
Then, users must check one of the radio buttons; they include options for "Web" and "Mobile Web."
The "Web" button will return a standard list of Google results -- those that one would see on a desktop computer screen. The "Mobile Web" button will return only those sites that have pages specifically designed for mobile phone handsets.
Early Morning dd: Mfrs. Announce Flood of New Phones
ARTICLE DATE: 06.14.05
By Sasha Segan, Sync
Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, showed off a boatload of gorgeous new phones at events Friday and Monday. Most interesting among these are the first Walkman music phone for the US from Sony Ericsson, an ingenious origami-like e-mail phone from Samsung, a two-megapixel cameraphone from Nokia and the follow-up phones to the ultra-sexy Motorola RAZR.
Sony Ericsson breathes new life into the Walkman brand + other news
Announced on Monday, the W600 from Sony Ericsson is the first US phone with the Walkman brand name. As you'd imagine, it has a definite music focus: 256 MB of built-in memory (enough for 80 to 120 of your favorite songs) and comes with software to let you copy files from your PC to your phone. It's also very cute, a little swiveller with a handlebar-style antenna. It comes with a USB cable and some relatively high-quality headphones, and has a 1.3 megapixel camera on the back. The W600's European cousin, the W800, with its 2-megapixel camera and memory card slot failed to make the cut for the US market—Sony Ericsson just couldn't see parting with it for the under $300-magic-mass-American-market price.
Product Guide: Mobile Phones
Sony Ericsson Z500a
Siemens CF62T
New York Nights: Success in the City
We expect Bluetooth and EDGE on high-end GSM phones these days, but we were happily startled to also find the excellent Access NetFront HTML browser (www.access.co.jp/english/products/nf.html) on board the W600. This browser really lets you get at the Web via the phone's bright little 176x220 pixel screen; usually most non-smartphones provide only a pathetic WAP browser.
Our big question regarding the W600 is just how well it will perform as a music device? The onboard music player supports MP3 and AAC, but not WMA, and works with music ripped from CDs or downloaded from Sony's struggling Connect store. Sony Ericsson also promises a terrific 30 hours of music playback with the phone off, or 15 hours with the phone on. Still, we'll remain a bit dubious until we get it into our lab because the phone doesn't plug directly into iTunes, Musicmatch or Windows Media Player—it comes with its own music software. If you don't want to use Sony's software, you have to drag your music files onto the phone in Windows Explorer (or the Mac Finder), and create your playlists either through Sony Connect or on the phone. Apple rocked the music world with the iPod through ease of use. For the W600 to succeed, Sony Ericsson will have to do the same.
The new Z520a, a cute flip phone with removable colored covers, appears to solve all of the problems we had with Sony Ericsson's Z500a, currently on sale through Cingular. Both new Sony Ericsson phones have a new keypad which we like a lot better than the one on the Z500a and S700a. The keys are raised, instead of depressed; they're also much larger, and domed.
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The Z520a takes a few cues from Siemens' CF62T, too: like the Siemens phone, it has a handle-like loop antenna at the top and pulsating lights around the sides that change colors based on who's calling you. Adding to the playful feel, the Z520 comes with an unusually good game onboard: New York Nights, which we gave a 4.5 rating to recently. For more serious work, it's quad-band, so it can roam the world flexibly. If the Z520a lives up to its promises, it will be an excellent Cingular phone in the $100 range.
Sony Ericsson also announced the J300a, a basic GSM candy-bar phone coming in various fun colors, a Bluetooth 2.0 headset and an innovative car kit with a large, dashboard-mounted screen.—Continue reading
Samsung came by our offices Monday afternoon with some innovative phones that are so secret, they wouldn't even allow us to take pictures of most of them.
Most startling among them was the SGH-D307, the first dual-fold phone in the US. Opened one way, it's a standard flip phone with an unusually long keypad. Refold it and open it horizontally, and it's a messaging device with a full QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is usable in all sorts of applications, too, making the D307 superior to phones like Motorola's A630 and LG's F9100, which only let you use the keyboard in certain situations. Bluetooth also comes standard with the D307, which will be offered by a big GSM carrier in August or September.
In other news, the A940 is a large, two-megapixel flip cameraphone with a huge lens built into the side. It looks a lot like the Nokia N90—same swiveling screen, same Cyclopean eye (but no bulge on the back.) Samsung also tossed in a memory card slot, Bluetooth, a speakerphone, speech recognition and a business card scanner for what may become the cameraphone to beat when it comes out.
Another phone, the A920 is music focused where the A940 is about video. We know precious little about this one, though it has a scroll wheel on the front for navigation, like the Motorola E725. Otherwise, its features are a lot like the A940's, though it replaces the 2-megapixel side-mounted camera with a more conventional 1.3-megapixel unit. Both phones are coming this fall.
The i645 is also quite enticing: it will be the first EV-DO, Windows Smartphone in the USA. Samsung is saying late summer for this flip phone, but that's dependent on whether carriers pick it up.
If all those sound too expensive, keep an eye out for the SGH-E635, an utterly tiny slider phone that will be available on T-Mobile in the next few months. A little black lozenge, the E635 curves in slightly when you open it, making it more comfortable against your head than most sliders. It has a VGA camera and speakerphone, but no Bluetooth. No mind; this phone is more an affordable fashion statement than the latest in high tech.
Puffy Combs would probably prefer the new white version of the SGH-P207, coming next month from Cingular. It's just like the black P207 we've already reviewed , but white. It looks great. For a different fashion statement, Samsung also showed us a Betsey Johnson version of their chameleon like E315 phone; we've reviewed other fashion versions of this phone before. The Betsey version is pink with little rose petals all over the outside, comes with a purse and a bunch of signature screen savers, and will cost $250.—Continue reading
Nokia announced seven new phones Monday, at least three of which will probably come to the US.
Nokia's flashiest new entry, the 6265 will be their flagship CDMA phone. It's a squarish slider with Bluetooth and a 2-megapixel camera on the back. For a non-smartphone, it's stuffed with features: it takes Mini-SD memory cards, has an extremely sharp 320x240 pixel display, plays MP3 and AAC music files, and supports Bluetooth stereo headsets. It runs a new version of Nokia's Series 40 OS (the one on most Nokia non-smartphones) with high-resolution graphics that take advantage of the new screen.
The 6265 is a lot like the Samsung MM-A800, Sprint's new 2-megapixel camera phone. So expect the Nokia model to show up on Verizon, Alltel, or US Cellular.
In an entirely different vein you'll find the Nokia 2125, a tiny, cheap, tough little candy-bar phone that you should expect to see in prepaid packs for around $50. It has a color display, speakerphone, and an easy to dial, rubberized keypad. There's even a flashlight in the top. But this phone's selling point will be price and durability—we wouldn't be surprised to find it in TracFone or 7-11 packs.
For GSM customers, the Nokia 6060 is a low-cost black flip phone aiming for a stylish crowd, the folks who would otherwise look at the Samsung P207. It's sleek and black, with MP3 ringtones and chrome detailing, but limited features; hopefully, it will also come at a limited price.
A tasty little slider phone, the Nokia 6111 probably won't come to the US, and that's a pity. It's the cutest slider we've seen in a long time, without the blocky edges or clunky size of a lot of other phones. The tiny 6111 has a megapixel camera on the back, uses MP3 ringtones and supports push-to-talk over GSM networks, which is popular in Europe but hasn't happened in the US yet. The phone also has Bluetooth and an FM radio.
Nokia also brought by a model 6170, a squarish GSM flip phone with a masculine look that's currently on sale from a few small regional carriers in the US. We'll review it within the next few weeks. The 6170 is a pretty basic cameraphone as far as its features set goes, it has a VGA camera, a speakerphone and EDGE data transfer, but no Bluetooth. It's also pretty thick, but its shiny stainless-steel casing stands out in a crowd, and it should be available for around $100 if you buy it through a carrier.
We've seen the Motorola V6 PEBL and V8 SLVR before, but at Motorola's event on Friday we got even closer to the new phones and spotted a new variant of the PEBL in a velvety black finish.
The PEBL, an egg-shaped flip phone, and the SLVR, a very flat candybar, are likely to get the same buzz as Motorola's RAZR, and that's saying a lot. Real effort has gone into the design here: the PEBL is shiny, for example, but somehow the outside doesn't attract fingerprints.
Neither phone has ground-breaking features, but that doesn't matter, because they're both striking; the SLVR may be the first candy-bar phone since Sanyo's 6000-series that you can actually slip into a pocket, and the PEBL looks like an object from outer space. Both have Bluetooth; the SLVR has a VGA camera, though PEBL doesn't.
We should be seeing Motorola's new phones in stores by Christmas.
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/0,2394,pg=0&s=25696&a=154010,00.asp
ot: Cut Up Cards. Make a Budget. Be Debt-Free.
By M.P. DUNLEAVEY
THE world of personal finance is rife with get-out-of-debt clichés.
June 18, 2005
A few straightforward rules applied with elbow grease are supposedly all you need to know. Cut up your credit cards, double your minimum payments, pay off the higher-interest cards first, and make a budget. Follow these guidelines and anyone with a little gumption ought be able to get out of debt.
Well, it's actually not so simple. Living on borrowed money has never been so easy, but if you're in debt, it's never been so hard to get out.
In the last decade or so, deregulation in the credit card industry has changed the rules of the game - and not in the consumer's favor. Sure, it's easy to get credit, and there are plenty of low-interest teaser rates on the market. For most people carrying monthly balances, though, rates are higher, minimum payment requirements are lower and there are hidden penalties, fees and rate increases that kick in for a head-splitting number of reasons.
Debt isn't a problem for everyone. Just over half of Americans either don't use plastic or pay off their balances each month. And some people find clever uses for those low-interest offers, like using cheap money to pay off a higher-rate loan. But for those struggling to disentangle themselves from debt's ugly web (that would be me), the old get-out-of-debt-guidelines simply don't work.
"It's not only that they're inadequate, they're wrong," says Elizabeth Warren, a law professor at Harvard and the co-author of "All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan" (Free Press). "We're living in a different world now and individuals have to be smarter about money - a lot smarter."
Take the stock advice to double your minimum payments. Few consumers know that the typical minimum, once based on 5 percent of your balance, is now a measly 1 or 2 percent. That won't even cover the interest on some cards, says Robert McKinley, chief executive of Cardweb.com. "The minimums are like a gravy train for credit card companies."
For example: the balance on my own credit card is $3,682.00. My minimum payment is $73 a month - but at that amount, it would take 18 years before I'd pay off the debt. Doubling the payment to $146 gets me out of debt in 29 months. But if I gird up my loins and triple it, I'm debt-free in a year and a half.
Of course, that's assuming I read and understood what I was doing before checking "I Accept" for all the terms and conditions attached to my card. Which I didn't - and most people don't, says Professor Warren. They lack the time, patience or savvy to digest what is actually a complex legal document shoved into a small envelope with your bill.
I'm not trying to justify my fear of fine print. Professor Warren once asked a class of third-year Harvard law students to dissect the contract for a credit card that promised a 3 percent cash-back bonus. By the end of class, she says, they had managed to decipher only one of the terms: there was no cash-back "bonus", just a 3 percent reduction on the card's 17.99 percent A.P.R.
If credit card companies can be vicious, consumers who are stuck in the debt maze need to get medieval. Rather than following the old half measures, here's what it takes to be debt-free in today's world:
¶Know thy debt. Read (yes, read) your statements.
¶Create an aggressive payback strategy. Use online calculators to determine an affordable monthly payment that will get you out of debt fast. Then, set up an automatic monthly transfer so you can't talk yourself into smaller payments.
¶Adjust your cost of living. Debt is code for living beyond your means. Figure out what's causing you to be overextended.
¶Quit using plastic for a while. This is boot camp. By switching to cash for at least a month, you'll know how much money you can afford to spend.
¶Generate more income. Sorry. Did you think you were going to pull bigger payments from under the bed? Get another job, a raise, a roommate - then sell anything that you can live without and put the profits toward debt. (Finally, a sane use for eBay.)
¶Save.
The only way to get on top of debt is to live on 80 percent of what you earn, Professor Warren says. At first, the remaining 20 percent will help you climb out of debt - a savings in itself, if your balances carry interest. From then on it becomes pure savings - and can keep you from ever falling into that hole again.
M .P. Dunleavey writes about personal finance for MSN Money.
Services expand world of the Internet
6/12/2005, 12:24 p.m. CT
By JUSTIN GLANVILLE
The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Next time you're walking down a city sidewalk, look out for the Internet. It's all around you — and not just in the phone lines and cables running under the streets or in the airborne Wi-Fi streams. In recent months, several services have sprung up to allow a communion of the real world with the Internet, with cell phones acting as the medium.
If you send a text message to an e-mail address scrawled in paint on a subway advertisement or on a sidewalk, for example, you could get some digital pop art on your phone in return.
An adhesive arrow on a telephone poll could hold the key to the history of a nearby building.
One of the most popular of the new projects, Grafedia, translates seemingly ordinary urban graffiti into works of art. A piece of grafedia (multimedia graffiti) is either written as an e-mail address ending in "(at)grafedia.net," or in blue underlined text, mimicking the look of a hyperlink on a Web page.
Sending a message to "in_here(at)grafedia.net" — spotted in Brooklyn — returns a digital image of a man sitting beside a stream. Another New York grafedia artist underlined the word "McDonald's" in blue on a billboard for the fast-food chain; a message yields a portion of a kitschy sign instructing viewers how to avoid choking.
Some people use grafedia as a promotional tool, linking to images or text that includes a personal Web site address or a rock band's name.
An art teacher in Australia creates treasure hunts, with one grafedia image pointing to the next.
The creator of Grafedia, John Geraci, recently graduated from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications program, which explores new applications for emerging technologies. He started the service as an offshoot of his studies.
Geraci likened grafedia to putting a message in a bottle.
"You don't know who will find it and uncork it, and it doesn't really matter," he said. "It's an act of anonymous, artistic sharing, done with strangers in your city."
More than 2,000 images have been uploaded to the Grafedia server since it went online in December, a level of interest Geraci says has exceeded his expectations. (He pays just $7.95 a month for the server space, and costs aren't likely to go up much as there's a 100-kilobyte limit to what can be uploaded for a single message).
Another service, Yellow Arrow, encourages people to plaster adhesive arrows — each assigned a unique code — to physical landmarks or even other people (Yellow Arrow encourages posters to get permission before placing stickers on private property.)
Passers-by who see an arrow can send a text message to a phone number with the arrow's code. The reply message contains information about the place or person.
Some of the arrows simply designate someone's favorite cafe or restaurant ("Best breakfast in town").
Others mark a place where something significant took place. At Central Connecticut State University, a professor had his students post arrows at overlooked historical sites, including a clinic that was among the first in the state to dispense contraceptives.
Then there are more artsy comments, such as one attached to an arrow on a stop sign in Key West, Fla.: "It was here where he laughed heartily, called her a good egg and then threw the cell phone in the pool with no remorse."
The arrows "transform the ordinary into the extraordinary," said Jesse Shapins, a creative collaborator for Counts Media, a New York-based game and entertainment company that started the concept in May 2004. "Counts Media initiated the project to foster a global community around ... local interests and experiences."
The company also makes T-shirts branded with coded arrows. Its wearers can change messages associated with the arrows anytime.
Coded arrows cost 50 cents each; T-shirts are $20. About 15,000 arrows are currently in circulation, Shapins said, and 300,000 more will be bound into an upcoming Lonely Planet guide, "Experimental Travel." Readers of the guide will be encouraged to post arrows at their favorite travel spots.
A Canadian company called (murmur) — complete with artsy brackets — allows people to record stories about specific locations. By dialing a number when they see a sign designating that a location is featured, cell phone users can listen to a personal history of the site.
There are stories about apartment buildings and stores, including a lobster shop in Toronto's Kensington Market where a woman relates a fond memory of shopping with her boyfriend for ingredients for a seafood feast.
So far, the service is limited to three Canadian cities: Toronto (where it started), Montreal and Vancouver. Would-be storytellers must submit an application to the site's curators, who then visit the site with the applicant and record the story.
Such digital signposts to interactive experiences are likely just the beginning as access to the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, Grafedia's Geraci said.
"The boundaries of what we think of as the World Wide Web are arbitrary," he said. "The Web can be anything, anywhere."
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/national/index.ssf?/base/national-0/1118595955130950.xml&storylist...
My Encounter With Search Spam On Blogger
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050613-153053
With 100 million billion trillion new blogs springing up every day, some of them are going to be spam. And with Google operating one of the biggest blogging services, it's not surprising that Blogger will be host to a few search spam sites. Indeed, I've seen complaints about this in the past from others. But today, Blogger spam got in my face.
Check out this blog, which is about watches, or Seiko watches or wait a minute -- about me! From the blog's description:
Search Engine Watch: Tips About Internet Search Engines & Search ... Danny Sullivan's comprehensive coverage of the search engine world. Forums, reviews, articles, ratings, and frequent newsletters. Paying members receive access ...
Nice. Sounds like someone did a Google search for watch, saw that Search Engine Watch get listed first (not my fault -- blame Google, not me) and scraped off the description that showing at that time to use on their blog.
Not nice, Jim. Jim? Jim's the blogger who created the blog. I tried to contact Jim using his profile page, but he didn't leave an address. He was probably too busy to do that, what with creating other high-quality blogs on topics such as:
cell phones
juicers
home repair
currency trading
t-mobile
telecommunications
Not able to reach Jim, I figured I'd drop Blogger itself a line. Surely it doesn't tolerate spamming its parent, Google. Off to the Blogger help page I went.
Where to go? The Blogger Terms of Service link seemed helpful. It even eventually got me to the actual terms. Anything about not using Blogger for search engine spamming purposes? Not that I could spot when skimming. Here are the most relevant areas:
The Service makes use of the Internet to send and receive certain messages; therefore, Member's conduct is subject to Internet regulations, policies and procedures. Member will not use the Service for chain letters, junk mail, spamming or any use of distribution lists to any person who has not given specific permission to be included in such a process.
--and--
You agree to not use the Service to: (a) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; (b) harm minors in any way; (c) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a Pyra official, forum leader, guide or host, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity; (d) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that you do not have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements); (e) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party; (f) upload, post or otherwise transmit any material that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment; (g) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service; (h) intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national or international law, including, but not limited to, regulations promulgated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, any rules of any national or other securities exchange, including, without limitation, the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, and any regulations having the force of law; (i) "stalk" or otherwise harass another; (j) collect or store personal data about other users; (k) promote or provide instructional information about illegal activities, promote physical harm or injury against any group or individual, or promote any act of cruelty to animals. This may include, but is not limited to, providing instructions on how to assemble bombs, grenades and other weapons, and creating "Crush" sites;
Hmm. Can I suggest that if spamming in terms of email isn't allowed, Blogger might specifically say search engine spamming isn't allowed, either?
In case I missed something, I thought I'd report the blogs to Blogger anyway for potential violations of the terms. There's even a link at the bottom of the terms page:
VIOLATIONS Please report any violations of the TOS via the Blogger Support home page.
Sadly, while I easily found advice such as:
What to do if your Mom discovers your blog...
How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog
I found nothing on how to report to Blogger about a terms of service violation. There was, at least, this section:
Can't find what you're looking for in Blogger Help?
First check Blogger Status and our known issues page,
then write Blogger Support and we'll see what we can do.
Annoyingly, to report anything, you have to have a Blogger account. I do, but not so nice for someone else who doesn't.
Next, the report form has these options:
Something is Broken
I Have a Question.
How Do I...
Nothing about reporting terms of service violations or search spam. Well, I reported the spam I spotted as a "Something is Broken" options and pointed them over to this post, in case they wanted to know more.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on Jun. 13, 2005 / Permalink
See related stories in these categories! (available to SEW members)
Google: Blogger, SEO: Spamming
way ot: "if you can think of it, we can link it"...Paperclick and you, Perrrrrrferct together)
The physical world hyperlink will now allow website owners to direct traffic to their site with a physical object rather than a search engine. That’s what I call disruptive.The physical world hyperlink will now allow website owners to direct traffic to their site with a physical object rather than a search engine. That’s what I call disruptive.The physical world hyperlink will now allow website owners to direct traffic to their site with a physical object rather than a search engine. That’s what I call disruptive.The physical world hyperlink will now allow website owners to direct traffic to their site with a physical object rather than a search engine. That’s what I call disruptive.The physical world hyperlink will now allow website owners to direct traffic to their site with a physical object rather than a search engine. That’s what I call disruptive.The physical world hyperlink will now allow website owners to direct traffic to their site with a physical object rather than a search engine. That’s what I call disruptive.The physical world hyperlink will now allow website owners to direct traffic to their site with a physical object rather than a search engine. That’s what I call disruptive.
Who was it that said about the first generation mobile camera phone (in sog's ho a remote computer in a sense) "this is the remote control to the physical world to the internet"???)http://www.paperclick.com/PaperClickOnAbc7.wmv http://www.paperclick.com/PaperClickOnNbc8.wmv
With Paperclick, anything is possible....
Compare prices in a retail store
Buy the next book in the series from your couch
Get an in-store coupon
Watch a movie trailer and buy tickets from a newspaper or movie poster
Watch a how-to video on an instructional manual
Find concert dates from your own CD collection
Sample a song from the CD
Watch a product demonstration video from a brochure
Find a lower price from a book or DVD
Get directions and a coupon from a poster at a bus stop
Watch a virtual tour and obtain pricing from a real estate sign
Obtain real time pricing on airfare from your home city in a magazine ad
Obtain a vehicle history report from a license plate
Look up product ingredients/recipes while food shopping
Obtain your medical history and doctor recommendation from a prescription bottle
Enter a contest without mailing anything or logging-on from your home PC
Text-to-win without entering a long stream of numbers
Purchase items from a mail-order magazine directly from the magazine
Obtain a patient’s medical history from a single barcode
Click on a code to instantly report a problem (great for field sales reps
Nice comnentary, and I am now at almost 90,000 shares and won't be long till I catch up to you, Joed, JP, and others...LOL...also, in case anyone wants info on TA trends, imho here's one I noticed as I tripled my position these past 2 mos.... each time I decide to buy, the PPS usually drops at least 3-5 cents...lol....
All kidding aside, I am confident for myself and that with all all in Neom's pipeline that we have been dding here and connecting the dots with, it is only a matter of time and sooner or later, we will all be happy with the palces Neom will take us on this continuing journey they and we are all on...something like that...and as painful as it is for me (and I am sure all other longs)at times to see pps decline, I remind myself that if it wasn't for that, I would have never been able to triple my position these past two months...but I would be happy just where I cam and watch it continue a steady climb in the coming months so as I can not afford anymore)
HOLD 'EM LONG AND STRONG AND TIGHT TO THE VEST...100,000 HERE I COME!
ot, thx for feedback, in at .467 eom
Help from Fellow Chartreaders,
If you have a moment and do not mind, any guess on what may be a good opportunity today (PPS/dip Wise)to pick up a few more today?? I am ooking to pick up a few thousand more and at the end of the day just want to maximize my dollars)and always appreciate the feedback given in the past...
Kind regards,
SonOfGodzilla
Paradigmn Shift For Dummies 101 Refresher:
Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.
For example, agriculture changed early primitive society. The primitive Indians existed for centuries roaming the earth constantly hunting and gathering for seasonal foods and water. However, by 2000 B.C., Middle America was a landscape of very small villages, each surrounded by patchy fields of corn and other vegetables.
Agents of change helped create a paradigm-shift moving scientific theory from the Plolemaic system (the earth at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe), and moving from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics. Both movements eventually changed the world view. These transformations were gradual as old beliefs were replaced by the new paradigms creating "a new gestalt" (p. 112).
Likewise, the printing press, the making of books and the use of vernacular language inevitable changed the culture of a people and had a direct affect on the scientific revolution. Johann Gutenberg's invention in the 1440's of movable type was an agent of change. Books became readily available, smaller and easier to handle and cheap to purchase. Masses of people acquired direct access to the scriputures. Attitudes began to change as people were relieved from church domination.
Similarly, agents of change are driving a new paradigm shift today. The signs are all around us. For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a Paradigm Shift. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and increases in technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable. It's the only true constant.
In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.
Reference: Kuhn, Thomas, S., "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Second Edition, Enlarged, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970(1962)
SOAB SOG, Heres The Link you forgot: Grandparents learn to surf — and they like it: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050615.Wseniorz0615/BNStory/Business/
SURFS UP!
(ps, still landscaping btw and fwiw, but imagine an invisible mesage that one could leave on every plant stake to figure out after a year, 2, 50 whatever, figure out what is planted actually and also who planted it and go figure on how many other things one could do with the concept, heck, an entire industry could "spawn" off that idea imho...oh well, time for bed...of course, after a cold adult beverage and a chat or two with one of my newly planted plants)ps...imagine the same for grass, wildflowers, farms, ok, ok, nite nite and on wiht the dd....)
By ANN GIBBON
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Updated at 9:34 PM EDT
Grandma's on the Net again, the kitchen's not her home.She used to make us cherry pies, and call us on the phone.We miss her homemade biscuits, and I'll make this little bet,If you want to contact Grandma, you'll have to surf the Net.— From an Internet chain letter
My 78-year-old father, a retired stockbroker and still avid investor, used to track his stocks by hand in dog-eared notebooks. My 69-year-old mother thought chips were reserved for tuna casseroles. In the lives of this tech-averse couple, a computer had no place.
Two years ago, they caved. Now, dad is at the computer at 6.30 a.m. in Vancouver, poised for the Toronto Stock Exchange's opening, to track his on-line portfolio. When mom bakes biscuits, she downloads the recipe from a website.
They're not alone in their tech transformation. An Ipsos-Reid study shows older Canadians are closing the “technological generation gap.” The study indicated that in the second quarter of 2004, 60 per cent of Canadians 55 years and older used the Internet, up 12 percentage points from that period three years ago. Use by younger Canadians, aged 18 to 54, rose by just four points to 86 per cent.
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And, the research suggests, there's a reason grandma in that chain letter isn't baking pies any more. In 2004, older Canadians spent almost 10 hours a week on-line — a 41-per-cent jump over the previous year. Younger Canadians' level of use may be higher, at 12½ hours a week, but it hasn't changed in three years.
For many older Canadians, the Internet is great for learning about things such as health and retirement issues, says Sandra Kerr, program director for the Seniors Education Program at Ryerson University's continuing education school in Toronto. Internet interest among seniors has become so strong that Ryerson runs a website, SeniorCentre.ca, to offer courses to those eager to get on-line.
And while seniors often have been stereotyped as technophobes, these days many are anything but. Anita Mountjoy, a 72-year-old retired nurse who lives in Montreal, is a prime example, using her wireless portable computer to e-mail friends from Venezuela to Oman. Craig Dobbin, founder and executive chairman of CHC Helicopters Corp., is as techno-savvy as they come — the 69-year-old's tech toys and tools include several PCs, a wireless laptop and a BlackBerry 7100 phone/e-mail device (he conducted this interview on it).
And as more seniors use computers and the Internet, they're becoming more vocal about their shortcomings. Ms. Kerr, for example, says the industry needs to pay more attention to seniors' particular needs, such as making on-screen text easier on the eyes. Mr. Dobbin wants enhancements, such as better voice-recognition systems. “If you could dictate e-mail, wow, wouldn't that be an advance.”
Pria Nippak, who manages the Ryerson website, adds that feedback to the university's on-line courses for seniors indicates they want websites that are easier to navigate and read. She adds that, in her experience, seniors generally don't like things such as flashy pictures or Flash technology (fancy website images that move).
Coloured text, particularly blue hues, can also be difficult for aging eyes to read. Web designers who fill seniors-oriented sites with bright colours and graphics are wasting their time, she says, and they may even be turning their intended audience off. “Seniors would rather read black and white [content]. They're newspaper-era people.”
So, with a large wave of baby boomers reaching retirement age, is the tech industry responding to feedback from seniors?
John Kelly, product marketing manager for consumer desktops at Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co., admits that, for now at least, the tech giant doesn't market gear specifically to seniors, despite the huge demographic the baby boom generation represents. Rather, he says, it tries to make all its products easy to use, adhering to what he calls a “plug and play” philosophy. The company also offers computer packages with some basic features that might appeal to seniors — bigger monitors for those with vision problems, and notebooks with larger keys for those with reduced dexterity.
Mr. Kelly added that HP is aware of the 55-plus market's potential spending power, estimated by some at more than $1-trillion (U.S.), and the fact that people in this group often have needs that differ from those of younger consumers. “We certainly have looked at and are tracking the seniors market,” he said, without giving specifics.
Other vendors aren't willing to discuss their product and marketing strategies for seniors at all. Repeated attempts to obtain comment from tech hardware giant Dell Computer Corp., for example, were unsuccessful.
Ms. Nippak believes the tech industry would do more to meet seniors' needs if there was clearly more money to be made. “Many are living off pensions. That's why they're using our services here,” she says.
Seniors are the ideal market for the technology industry, Ryerson's Ms. Kerr adds. “As people and are less able to get around ... they can [use technology to] keep up with their peers, and learn.”
Both may be proved right as the baby boom generation heads into retirement. An eMarketer Inc. report says that today in the United States alone there are 33.2 million Internet users between the ages of 50 and 64, triple the number of on-line users over the age of 65. The Pew Internet and American Life Project study adds that as this “silver tsunami” of Internet users in their 50s tends to have a bigger disposable income than non-techie senior citizens. And if the trends highlighted by the Ipsos-Reid poll continue, seniors could soon be logging more time on computers and the Internet than their younger counterparts.
RIM says option exists if NTP deal crumbles
By JASON KELLY
Thursday, June 16, 2005 Updated at 8:55 AM EDT
ATLANTA — Research In Motion Ltd. co-chief executive officer James Balsillie said yesterday he has back-up technology to keep U.S. BlackBerry devices running should a three-month-old patent settlement with NTP Inc. fall apart.
"A workaround is a viable option," Mr. Balsillie said in an interview. The alternative technology would run BlackBerry phones and pagers and is designed not to infringe on patents held by NTP.
Mr. Balsillie said he is making preparations to continue operations in the United States after a $450-million (U.S.) settlement with Arlington, Va.-based patent licensers NTP collapsed last week. The dispute may force RIM to stop selling its BlackBerry devices in the U.S., where sales to Wall Street traders and corporate executives helped generate about two-thirds of its $1.35-billion in 2004 revenue.
"There is a danger that the injunction on U.S. sales might happen," said Edward Timmons, an analyst with Legg Mason Wood Walker in Richmond, Va., who said questions around the settlement caused "turmoil and uncertainty."
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Shares of Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM fell 44 cents yesterday to $72.01 on the Nasdaq, and $1.21 (Canadian) in Toronto, to $89.25.
NTP isn't publicly traded.
Legg Mason's Mr. Timmons and colleague Timm Bechter, as well as Peter Misek of Canaccord Capital, cut their ratings on Research In Motion after the company said the settlement was in doubt. Two other analysts, Deepak Chopra of National Bank Financial and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Paul Coster, lowered their price targets for RIM stock.
RIM had more than three million BlackBerry subscribers as of May 9. Known in some circles as "CrackBerries" for their habit-forming tendencies, the devices are used by money managers eager to keep up on market news, and political figures like Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
NTP and RIM are awaiting a court decision, expected this week, on whether RIM can ask a judge to enforce the settlement terms. The accord fell apart when the companies met to forge final terms. Bloomberg News
Dittos dlethe01
I have to go back and refresh/remind myself of all the great things that are going on as well...as a matter of fact, having only stumbled upon this stock this past February, there are still months of catching up to do on my side as I can't focus on this the way I'd like to unfortunately every day like I'd like to...(because of my day job)
In any event, thanks again to all for the great DD and comments and it is so reasurring to be be able to pop on here after a busy day/s and read a few posts to see where we stand,and catch up on anything significant in the NEOM world, a true timesaver and sure lends me peace of mind etc....
Wish I could aford more time to spend here at present but work and life gets busy so GLTA and hold on to those shares tight! Patience is a virtue!
SOG
dd interview: Bob Garfield
Are market researchers really getting inside our minds?
(a follow-up to a post from a while back, lol, I cant remember which one, in any event, this is good stuff from one of Ad Ages' gurus...jmho enjoy)!
There are two things happening at once. There is more and more granular information -- demographically, ethnographically, psychographically -- about consumers that is available now. There's just many, many more ways to slice the bread than there were before. So you can figure out people's preferences, their needs, their desires, their values, and you can organize your media buy based on everything from people's ZIP code to their age to what they read to their usage of cellophane-wrapped beef stick products. And so the information is all there, and it's sliced and diced in more ways than ever before. I don't know if it's good or if it's bad, but the information is there. So if that is the path for "the man" to get inside of your head and manipulate you, and if that's bad, OK, it's there.
The other side of it is that these aren't being used very much. The fact is that even sophisticated marketers are saving money by not doing any kind of real sophisticated research and are instead making decisions based on what they regard as research: some focus groups here and there, where they get what they believe is "data" but isn't data at all -- it may as well be overheard conversation in the beauty parlor -- and they're acting on it. So it's kind of a paradox. There are more ways to get inside the consumer's head than ever before, and because it's so expensive to do that, advertisers are substantially relying on data that are absolutely meaningless.
In his "Ad Review" column for Advertising Age magazine, Bob Garfield, an essayist, critic, and broadcaster, regularly delivers stinging critiques (and occasional praise) of the ad industry. If criticism is more common, there's a reason -- most ads, he tells FRONTLINE in this interview, are "historically, actually, quite bad." Yet the industry keeps trying harder and harder to get people's attention, resulting in a media landscape cluttered with pitches. "Since time immemorial, advertising agencies have been trying to create emotional reactions to goods and services," he says. "But there is no magic string for the puppet; there is no Svengali spell; there's no poison gas, there's no magic wand. … What they are doing mostly is failing again and again and again." In the end, he believes advertising and marketing is not actually that powerful and can't persuade us to buy or do things we otherwise wouldn't. This interview was conducted on March 23, 2004.
What drives them to pursue this data about consumers?
Think about what marketing is. Marketing, if you've got any sense at all, is not about coming up with a product or service and then just trying to figure out a way to sell it. Marketing is about figuring out what people need or want or believe they need and want (which I actually believe are synonymous), and then creating the product to suit that need or desire and then selling it. To let the horse pull the cart instead of vice versa. If you want to know what to make and how much of it and how to sell it, you really have to ask the question: What do people need and desire? And there's nothing sinister about that.
I know there is a body of thought that believes that the marketing world is out there foisting off unneeded, unnecessary products on people who are persuaded that they need them. Well, the truth is that's not how it works. The marketing world is people who make a living by figuring out what people want or think they want, and then they make it for them, and then they sell it to them. Do they sell fear? Do they sell insecurity? Do they sell stuff that you don't think you need or that anyone needs but someone out there thinks they need? The answer to all those questions is yes, but fundamentally, the world of marketing is about fulfilling people's perceived needs and desires. And they've come up with a whole lot of really good stuff with which to do that. Maybe someone in Toronto thinks I don't need a VCR. You know what? I think I need a VCR, and I refuse to cast aspersions on the world of marketing for making me think so, because I have one, and I like it.
Procter & Gamble tries to figure out what people will buy so they can make a lot of it and sell a lot of it, and their goal is profits for their stockholders. Well, I'm failing to understand why that is a problem. No, they're not meeting and saying: "What will help humanity? We'll make that, and in fact, we'll do it for free." No, Procter & Gamble is not a government; it's a company. Its responsibility isn't for the commonweal; its responsibility is to sell s--- and they do. Ultimately, I believe that economies being what they are, it's a good thing. It satisfies consumer needs; it creates jobs; it creates a middle class; and the accumulation of lots of Procter & Gambles all over the world creates wealth. OK, so they're selling extra-absorbent Pampers instead of the cure for cancer, but if they could figure out a way to do that, they would do that if they can make a buck on it. Procter & Gamble is not a government; it's a company. To conflate the raison d'être for governments and nongovernmental organizations with commercial enterprises is ridiculous. Why criticize a shark for not being a baboon? They're different.
Corporations weren't created by governments. You have to incorporate so you can do business lawfully, but corporations aren't an instrument of government; they're an instrument of their shareholders' desire to make money. Most of what they do is to the good, and some of what they do is to the bad. But to impute to them the responsibility to take care of the general welfare is a logical flaw. If they were breaking the law, you should sanction them, and if they're not playing fair, you should make them play fair in court. And if you can get them to do things that are relatively selfless and you can convince them, God bless you, to do it, let them be philanthropic. But their job is to make money, and you can't judge them on the same criteria that you judge a government, because they're different beasts.
There's a line of thought -- it's really kind of an economic philosophy -- that corporations and businesses out there trying to make money and foist ever more goods and services on people is not only kind of morally corrupt, but actually dangerous to the world; that it's an environmental catastrophe in the making, and that the profit imperative is creating a world where people are essentially bribed with comforting goods and services while we're destroying the ozone layer, while we're polluting the water and doing all sorts of other horrible things. Governments have to decide what is too much in terms of the environment. But the notion that there is something inherently evil or corrupting about selling stuff to people who want it strikes me as being completely ridiculous.
OK, someone at Adbusters in Canada doesn't think I need a Sub-Zero refrigerator. Maybe they think I don't need a Jaguar. Maybe they think I don't need my VCR. Who are they to tell me what I want and need? Who are they? Listen, do they have chairs in their homes or apartments? Do they have central heating? Because all over the world, in Central Asia for example, they don't have chairs; they don't think they need them. They sit and sleep on mats on the floor. And by the way, they might be heating their homes by burning dung. Are the people in Canada telling me that I should also be sleeping on mats and burning dung? You know what? I don't want to sleep on mats; I don't want to burn dung for my heating. I want to have central heating; I want to have chairs; I want to have beds. And oh, by the way, you know what? I really like my VCR. I didn't think that was going to really matter, but 25 years ago I got one, and it really improved my life, and so does my conditioner. My conditioner improves my life because my hair was kind of flyaway before, and it was dry. I like my conditioner. You know what? I use the expensive conditioner. Am I a spiritual coward? No. I determine what makes my life more comfortable, and whether that makes me happy is really not material. Does it make me an enviro-criminal? I don't think it does. And I don't want somebody else to impose his or her values on my trip to the Safeway.
Do you think consumers are ultimately knowable?
There are some things that are predictable, yeah, but the annals of failed product introductions are ample proof that consumer behavior is not all-knowable, and it's not all-predictable. I think the people who came up with Touch Of Yogurt shampoo thought they knew what they were doing in whatever it was, 1980, but it turns out the public wasn't all that interested in Touch of Yogurt shampoo. And yet these people invested many millions of dollars with all the sheaves of data in their hands, thinking that, well, yogurt seems to be a trend, and hair-care products are a trend, and we've got market research that [says] people are looking for something. And it's one of the giant jokes in the history of product introductions.
There's this idea that advertising people and marketers are these Svengalis who not only know everything about us but can manipulate us to act out their will. Well, they can't. They've never been able to. They're no better at it now than they ever were before. It's really, really hard to make anybody buy anything. In fact, not only is advertising not very good -- and historically, actually, quite bad -- at getting you to buy goods and services that you don't want or need; advertising and marketing historically aren't all that good at getting you to buy their brand of good or service that you've demonstrated that you do want and need.
They can't just pull the strings and make you jump. There is 90 percent failure and 10 percent success with new products, for example. And you use toothpaste all the time, but there's a multibillion-dollar fight to get you to choose one brand or another every time you go to a store. But tell me, how manipulated are you in that purchase? I can tell you categorically, not very much.
What's the difference between a brand and a product?
Are you going to buy the Arm & Hammer? Are you going to buy the Colgate? Are you going to buy the Crest? Are you going to buy Pepsodent for a little blast from the past? That's where all the money is spent -- to try to influence that decision. If you buy the Pepsodent, Arm & Hammer, Colgate and Crest have failed. And yet decisions are made to the tunes of billions of dollars every day -- voting for the "other guy." So has advertising pulled your strings? Evidently not. That's one answer. Sometimes brands are just brands. Sometimes there's actually something inherent, something intrinsic to them that makes them different. Sometimes it's an actual property of the product that's different, and sometimes it's just an idea.
Three of the greatest campaigns in advertising history are built on nothing more than an idea. Marlboro cigarettes: It's built on the idea of rugged individualism, of making your own decisions, of taking on the world all by yourself, squinting into the sun. And Nike, "Just do it." They hire the same slaves in Southeast Asia to make a pair of shoes for $4 and then sell them for $120 as all the other sneaker manufacturers.
What has imbued Nike with this special something? It's two things: One is Michael Jordan, who was this extraordinary athlete doing seemingly impossible, virtuosic things, and they borrowed that interest at great expense. The other was "Just do it," because hitherto, no sneaker manufacturer had taken upon itself to say to the audience, "Why don't you just get up off your fat ass?" They began to own the aspirational quality of sport, and the campaign grew to have them own all of the emotion of sport, the drama of sport, the grit of sport, the aspiration, the triumph and so forth. They own the idea of all of the really powerful emotional sentiments that we attach to sport. They own them because they bought them, and they bought them by advertising this idea again and again and again and again and again. There's just not a whole lot of difference between the most expensive Nike shoe and the most expensive Reebok. But they've got much, much, much, much larger share of the marketplace on the strength of an advertising idea.
"A diamond is forever." How is it that the diamond is the default demonstration of lifelong love and affection? How did that happen? An advertising idea. They turned a commodity -- a rock -- into the ultimate expression of enduring love. It was just an advertising idea, and it has penetrated societies throughout the world for 100 years. That's pretty extraordinary.
You know what, though? Marlboro, Nike, "A diamond is forever" -- this very, very seldom happens. These are the few examples when advertising really does cast a Svengali spell. And I guarantee you there's a lot of advertisers out there trying to do that all the time, but 99.9 percent of the time they're failing, because it's hard to do. Very seldom can you trade on an idea to change the way people view your good or service. Mostly it's just "12 percent more whitening power," and the "12 percent more whitening power" struggle and ideas sometimes are triumphant.
Is Kevin Roberts onto something with his book, Lovemarks?
No. To be honest, I haven't read Kevin's book, but he's just belaboring the obvious, from what I've read. He seems to be just belaboring the obvious: that there's emotional connections between brands and consumers and that it's not just intrinsic qualities that motivate people. Well, OK, fine. Sometimes you can make emotional connections. AT&T has done it. Hallmark has done it. Coca-Cola has done it. But mostly the people who have tried to make emotional connections with consumers over the years, by far, the vast, vast majority have failed.
Since time immemorial, advertising agencies have been trying to create emotional reactions to goods and services. But there is no magic string for the puppet; there is no Svengali spell; there's no poison gas; there's no magic wand. Advertising works, and sometimes good advertising campaigns work, especially, but they are not controlling your mind, they're not controlling your heart, and they're not controlling your glands. What they are doing mostly is failing again and again and again.
So you don't think we can get to our "lizard brain," like Clotaire Rapaille argues.
Clotaire has worked on I don't know how many brands, but none of them is dominant. Tell me exactly how many cars he's sold. The answer is, not that many. There's just no poison gas. There happens to be something about cars which does generate a response. I own a Miata that I put about 2,000 miles on per year because I really love those 2,000 miles. I love the wind in my hair. When I'm in my Miata, I don't even go fast, and I feel like I'm sailing. But it wasn't a Miata ad that did it for me; it was something intrinsic to the car. And, you know, fundamentally, people armed with information make decisions of self-interest. This is not The Manchurian Candidate, where they're responding to messages buried deep within their psyche that they don't even know are there. There's a lot of people in the advertising industry who would like it to be that way, and there's a lot of people outside of the advertising industry who imagine it to be that way, but it ain't that way.
Can persuasion based on advertising and marketing techniques work in politics?
If you're looking for an example of how advertising is a really corrosive force in society, I advise you to look away from consumer product advertising and just look at political advertising, because it's a stain on our democracy. If you're selling soup or soap or oatmeal or automobiles, one thing you basically have to do is tell the truth -- not the eternal truth, but the factual truth. Sometimes you put your best foot forward, but you have to fundamentally not mislead people, not overly exaggerate. There's a limit to the amount of puffery that you're entitled to. You basically have to stick to the facts, because even if the government doesn't do anything about it, your competitors are going to drag your ass into federal court, and they're going to sue you, and they're going to make your life a living hell. And while they're doing that, your campaign is off the air, and by the way, it's in the newspapers, and you're taking a lot of hits to your brand image.
So by and large, advertising is essentially truthful, except political advertising, which year after year ... gets worse. It's just the artful assembling of nominal facts into hideous, outrageous lies. And it is the fundamental venue for political discourse in this country. It's an abomination. Because of the First Amendment, there's not a whole lot we can do about it, but it makes me sick.
What do you think of the job America has done selling itself abroad, especially in the Muslim world, using advertising and marketing techniques?
We were talking about Svengali, pulling strings, and the whole idea of manipulating people into doing something that they're not apt to do. They say that under hypnosis even, you cannot get someone to do what they morally would not do. Well, if hypnosis can't get people to do something that they don't in the core of their psyches wish to do, you think advertising can? Well, I can answer that question; it's rhetorical, but the answer is no.
It's [an axiom] in the marketing business that nothing kills a bad product better than good advertising. Because the advertising's clever, it makes the product look fabulous, people try it, they find out it doesn't help them, it doesn't do what it was advertised to do, it doesn't make their life simpler. For whatever reason, they don't like it, and these customers never come back. Nothing kills a bad product better than good advertising.
The American government's problem in the Muslim, and especially Arab, world is not how it presents itself; it's the product. Our product is of no interest to the Muslim and Arab world. I'm not saying the Muslim and Arab worlds are right, but I'm saying from their point of view, American support of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, the American propping up of these authoritarian regimes all over the Middle East, and American unilateralism, especially military unilateralism, has made this a bad product.
We decide to create a softer image [of] America by showing [on television] happy Muslims living and working in this perfectly integrated, pluralistic society where they're free to express their religion. And they wear headscarves at their jobs, and everybody holds hands, and it's "Ebony and Ivory." Do you think that makes any difference to somebody who has no hope of getting to America, someone who hates America for its position in their eyes? Do you think that an advertising campaign is going to change their perceptions? No. It just calls their attention to everything that they don't like about the product. Once again, you think you're a puppet master pulling strings, but you're not. You're just calling attention to something that people are in their own minds deciding ever more that they don't want any part of.
You can put all the pictures of Muslims happily living and working in the United States on TV in the Arab world that you desire, but it is not relevant to the discussion. What do they care? They like Britney Spears, but they don't like America's policy in Israel. So how does some woman who's happily teaching in Detroit with a headscarf on have any bearing on the existential realities of life in the Middle East? The answer is, it doesn't. So, in fact, America's failure to be able to use advertising and marketing techniques to soften the image of America around the world is just the ultimate, quintessential proof of what I've been saying all along, which is that advertising is a tool, but it's not a poison gas, and it does not alter substance for the most part. It doesn't change conceptual structures. It just gives some information and puts a little burnish on the product. It cannot perform miracles. So there you go. Sure, let the government try to embrace the magical techniques of consumer advertising, because if they do, they're going to find out that they failed right alongside of Touch Of Yogurt shampoo.
Does political advertising compromise democracy?
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I believe there actually is a sort of conspiracy afoot among people inside the Beltway, political consultants. It's very clear that the American electorate has been disaffected by years and years and years of this attack advertising and the state of coarseness and obnoxiousness of political discourse as exemplified by TV commercials. It's very, very clear that fewer and fewer people show up for elections, and they constantly explicitly cite the tenor of the debate. Well, if you're a political consultant and your business is to mobilize the masses of people you can depend on -- for example, the religious right -- and you want to maximize their influence, how do you maximize their influence? By simultaneously mobilizing your people and diminishing the overall electorate to give your mobilized forces a disproportionate influence on the outcome of the campaign. I believe that part of the strategy of the Republican revolution in the off-year election in '94 was to so sully the debate, to turn voters away in droves so as to give disproportionate influence to the seething white males who are at the core of their support.
I think that a bell went off on the right and also on the left. Clinton was trying to energize women, for example, and he was perfectly happy for whole other populations to fall off because it maximized the impact of the women. I think that these people in Washington would much prefer speaking to fewer people among potential voters than more. It's just a lot easier to manipulate. And they have. Whether it was intentional or not, that's certainly been the effect, and we're much the poorer for it as a democracy. And advertising actually has been the tool not of selling but of scaring away.
Is there a difference between a consumer and a citizen?
Yes, there is a difference between being a consumer and being a citizen. And yes, those two issues have been conflated -- illogically in my view. Let's just talk briefly about super-sizing and the obesity of America and McDonald's. McDonald's sells hamburgers. Hamburgers are fatty; they make you fat. And the more you eat, and the more french fries you eat, the fatter you're going to get. Now, is it personally better for you as an organism not to eat this stuff? Yes. You as a consumer, does it make you feel good to eat this stuff because you like french fries and hamburgers? Yes. As a citizen, do you have any responsibility to adjust your diet according to what others think is best for you? No. And yet somehow the notion of what's good for you and what's good for public health and what a corporation sells for a living have all been twisted together when there are three separate issues.
McDonald's sells hamburgers and french fries and have zero responsibility, zero responsibility for the public health. Your job as a citizen is to participate in your democracy, and your job as an individual is to decide what's good for you. It's not McDonald's fault that you eat like a pig. Yet somehow it's all viewed as part of the same whole, and it isn't. They are completely separate, discrete issues, and to confuse them, I think, is ridiculous.
ot, Late Nite/Early Morning Comment and DD:
IGNITION SEQUENCE GO NEOM!!!!
Mobile Search Engine for Off-Portal Content
Europe : The mobile boom continues unabated and as the industry matures, parallels are beginning to emerge that suggest that the mobile industry is now where the Internet was in 1996.
Back then, online newbies had little points of reference as to what was available out there on the web – directories that were available were those chosen by the ISP’s (AOL, CompuServe, MSN etc.), often within an editorially and commercially biased ‘walled garden’ environment. Eventually, World Wide Web search engines began to emerge that allowed surfers to discover the full diversity of what the Internet had to offer – warts and all!
The same can be said of today’s mobile environment. The gatekeepers to the Mobile Internet (Vodafone, T-Mobile & Co) have historically been adept at keeping their subscribers from straying too far by keeping their customers within their branded portals. But things are changing, with carriers moving away from a walled garden approach. Their expected shift from being a full content provider to being a transport infrastructure that provides others content is heralding the dawn of the real Mobile Internet.
Enter www.mooobl.com - a new off-portal search tool that allows users to discover the Mobile Internet for themselves. Developed by ENQUIRE S.L., a Barcelona based company recently featured in FORBES and FORTUNE magazines; the strategy behind MOOOBL is to capitalize on the increasing volume of search traffic outside of said operator decks.
"There is, perhaps, just one last component required to deliver a fully functional Mobile Internet solution - the mobile search engine" observes Marc Jarrett, Communications Manager of ENQUIRE. “There are a lot of people searching out there. Our aim is to help them find what they want, not what their mobile network wants them to find.”
It may come as no surprise that according to Overture, a Yahoo! Company, only 19% of web searches are for mobile consumables such as ring tones and logos offered on operator decks. 10% look for search engines, 5% for information services and a stunning 38% look – according to Overture – for adult content. As it happens, the sort of content mobile phone users really want is the sort of content MNOs do not normally want to be associated with! MOOOBL behaves content agnostic and portrays the entire mobile internet.
“Our WAP search solution features, amongst other things, a search box on the mobile device for free text search, a WAP emulator on the web and a directory search of thousands of hand-picked WAP sites”, notes Jarrett. “Furthermore, our technology allows consumers to create and share mobile content & blogs thus creating a mobile forum by people, for people – enabling them to share experiences borne from of the brave new wireless world such as Toothing and SMS Dating.”
According to industry analysts, only 12% - 15% of mobile users today use their WAP browser. But by 2008 roughly 48% will be using mobiles as part of their Internet access. With carriers introducing flat fees that will certainly spur this trend there is only one way to go for bookmark candidates such as MOOOBL.
Initially, WAP was a flop. Not anymore. Visit wap.mooobl.com on your mobile and start discovering the Mobile Internet yourself!
http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/June2005/1588.htm
hOLY mOLY, ITS 1AM EST(
lol, just got done landscaping our front yard bed, ready to plant all the neet plants I bought recently fwiw and watch em grow (like neom will in the coming years imho)...amazing, last I looked at a watch it was 9pm...anyway, things are heating up imho:
A highly mobile Microsoft surges forward
The Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference 2005 will be held in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, June 16. CHARLES F. MOREIRA talks to the company on its latest moves in the mobile devices market.
BUOYED by its dominance of PC operating systems, software giant Microsoft Corp is now gunning for the mobile devices space to fuel future growth.
The company expects its strong initiatives in mobile computing to transform the way people work by allowing them to literally do almost anything – create documents and presentations, access the Internet and e-mail, make calls – on handheld devices, anytime and anywhere.
The business potential is huge, according to technology market research firms.
Gartner forecasts that 80% of mobile knowledge-workers worldwide will have access to wireless e-mail by 2008, while Yankee Group sees a 93% increase in global smartphone sales to over 75 million units this year.
Venture Development Corp estimated the global market for commercial mobile software – including operating systems, applications frameworks and provisioning solutions – to have been worth US$560mil (RM2.13bil) last year, and expects the figure to surge to US$1.6bil (RM6.1bil) in 2008.
Microsoft is banking on help from its development partners to implement its mobile and embedded operating systems on smartphones and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants).
It’s also relying on developers to provide a large number of applications and multimedia content for those devices.
“For every US$1 (RM3.80) that Microsoft gets in the desktop PC space, we enable another $7 (RM26.60) of revenue for partners ? and we expect the same type of platform catalyst in the mobile space,” says Peter Bernard, Microsoft’s group marketing manager for mobile and embedded developer platform marketing.
Bernard will be delivering the keynote address at the Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference (MEDC) 2005 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on Thursday, June 16.
Encouranging process
Microsoft began investing in mobile devices space three years ago.
The company's break with smartphones came a year later when European mobile operator Orange took delivery of the devices running its operating system.
Since then, Microsoft has seen encouraging growth, with 40 different device makers supplying to 68 different mobile operators in 48 different countries.
Microsoft operating systems has shipped on over a million smartphones and PDAs in Europe alone in the last six months, and in the long term, it expects more smartphones than PDAs to be shipped.
There are currently over 18,000 Windows Mobile applications by over 640,000 developers worldwide.
And the company wants to continue making it easy for its partners to develop even more.
One hot area is mobile messaging. A web-based survey of mobile device users in North America and Europe found that mobile operators can expect to see a 37% increase in ARPU (average revenue per user) and 93% in AMPU (average margin per user), largely driven by demand for mobile messaging.
“We already have over 20 million Microsoft Exchange 2003 customers worldwide, a third of whom residing in the Asia Pacific,” says Bernard.
He’s confident that with the Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0, Microsoft will be able to very quickly expand its market share of mobile messaging worldwide and regionally.
Due to the relatively high data charges, Bernard expects these types of services to initially be adopted by businesses, where there is a clearer return on investment.
He believes that Microsoft’s ability to take advantage of the broad adoption of Microsoft Exchange and Office is a key asset for the Windows Mobile platform.
For example, the Beijing local government recently needed a mobile application to track public complaints.
Working through its subsidiary Beijing Mobile, telecommunications services provider China Mobile provided the local authority with a solution allowing its inspectors – armed with Microsoft-based handheld devices – to submit their reports, with the location and picture of the problem, and allow the city to immediately despatch workers to attend to the problem.
This solution took four months to implement and it resulted in “more phones being used, a larger number of customers, more data activity and more revenue for Beijing Mobile,” says Bernard.
In another example, mobile applications developer Vocollect custom-built Windows CE-based Talkman – a voice-directed distribution handheld device – for Office Depot in the United States to use for inventory management in its warehouses.
With the device, Office Depot managed to save US$5mil (RM19mil) in operating costs through increased productivity and reduced errors, Bernard says.
Microsoft doesn’t it see itself shifting downmarket by scaling down Windows Mobile to run on low-to-mid-range phones, as it expects smartphone prices to fall.
“We are seeing stronger adoption of Microsoft smartphones by consumers, like Cingular Wireless’ recent introduction of a very reasonably-priced phone from Audiovox (in the United States), and the success of T-Mobile with their Windows Mobile-based Music Phone in Europe,” says Bernard.
“The shape of the market is changing quickly as subscribers buy their third or fourth phones, and are demanding more,” he adds.
As its track record has consistently shown, Microsoft has usually been a latecomer to the markets, but like the tortoise in the familiar children’s story, it eventually catches up and overtakes the competition.
But Bernard claims that Microsoft’s priority is not to be number one.
“Our goal is to provide the best mobile platform – one that not only generates tremendous value for operators, OEMs, and subscribers, but also drives tremendous value for partners and developers,” he says.
“Windows Mobile 5.0 is a big step toward that goal.”
Feature-rich and standard-based
Launched at the US-leg of MEDC in Las Vegas last month, Windows Mobile 5.0 features new tools and application programming interfaces (APIs) for driving accessories like Global Positioning System (GPS) and digital cameras.
It also comes with an improved navigation experience for users with more soft keys, better device support, and rich icons for email attachments, as well as easier application-launch.
Music lovers will find its easy synchronisation of play lists and album art with their PCs a treat, says Bernard.
Windows Mobile 5.0 also supports various types of radio technologies and networks, including 3G (third-generation) and WiFi (Wireless Fidelity), EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution), and CDMA2000 EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimised).
Windows Mobile 5.0 devices announced recently by Vodaphone and T-Mobile are based on the HTC Universal device – a 3G PDA-phone by High Tech Computer Corp (HTC) in Taiwan.
An original design manufacturer (ODM), HTC also makes the O2's XGA and Xphone, as well as other Windows CE-based devices.
Other Microsoft Mobile-based devices include the Samsung i300 and Hewlett Packard's (HP) iPAQ devices.
Bernard is confident the company's business model of relying on third-party hardware manufactures to provide PCs and PDAs will pay off for phones as well.
“We have strong OEM relationships, and they build great phones like the new Samsung i300 or the HP devices for business,” he says.
“With 40 devices so far and many more in the pipeline, we think this is a good strategy.”
Microsoft is also committed to compliance with standards, including email, media, and connectivity standards, to enable devices to reach the masses, says Bernard
One example is its Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, which is based on the Open Mobile Alliance's (OMA) DRM standards.
“We also support the new OMA device management standards, and we’re very active in promoting interoperability,” says Bernard.
Microsoft is a member of the Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum (www.nfc-forum.org), which is a non-profit industry association founded by Nokia Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics and Sony Corporation to advance the use of NFC short-range wireless interaction in consumer electronics, mobile devices and PCs.
The forum also promotes the implementation and standardisation of NFC technology to ensure interoperability between devices and services.
dd: Navigation Systems for Mobiles Gaining Ground
The market for GPS navigation systems is shifting from cars to mobile phones. Mobile phone navigation systems provide traffic and geographical information using GPS signals and installed digital maps.
Until last year, navigation service market growth focused primarily on areas with highly developed automotive cultures like the U.S., Europe and Japan, but the mobile phone navigation market is growing rapidly in both Korea and Europe.
Samsung Electronics “Telematics Phone” (SPH S1100) comes with a complete map of Korea so users can look up geographical information on their phone wherever they are in the country.
The POZ X310, a PDA phone from Cyberbank, is equipped with Thinkware’s iNavi navigation system, providing users with locations of service areas such as restaurants, theaters and gas stations.
Samsung’s Anycall SCH-X750 is supported by 24 Nate GPS satellites and is based on a mapping system that can accurately pinpoint the users location within 10 m. Pressing the emergency button will send an alarm signal to the security company.
Major handset makers like Samsung Electronics and Nokia are competing for new technology as they expect the market to grow in the U.S. and Europe. Europe’s largest communication equipment maker Tomtom is also moving fast, launching Mobile 5, a navigation system for pedestrians.
Users connected to the service are guided to their destination with both graphics and voice. Tomtom says the margin of error of the product is less than 50 cm.
url: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506050005.html
dd commentary: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 by Wendy Davis
SonOfGodzilla,
In the late 1990s, as dot-coms were sprouting right and left and entrepreneurs wanted nothing other than to be first, the phrase "Internet time" entered the public lexicon.
Of course, the subsequent dot-com bust made some rethink whether speed was really all it was cracked up to be -- especially if the race to be first made people overlook little matters, like profitability plans.
But, in at least one respect, Internet time is making a comeback: online ads.
Faster, shorter ads are definitely better for the Web than the traditional 30-second TV spot -- at least, so said Carat Americas' CEO David Verklin at a panel discussion about online publishing this morning in New York City.
Citing a Mark Twain quote -- which went something like, "If I had had more time, I would have made this letter shorter," -- Verklin presented a case for keeping online ads snappy. "The shorter the ad, the better the user experience, the more they like it," he told an audience of several hundred at the Reuters building in Times Square.
A natural corollary of running shorter ads is that marketers need to get away from measuring the success of online campaigns by evaluating how much time viewers spend watching the spot. "Time spent," Verklin said, "is really not the measure that should be guiding our experience."
Verklin made his comments at a forum hosted by the Online Publishers Association, at which the group presented recent research looking at how and why consumers go online. One of the findings, as reported in OnlineMediaDaily ("OPA, Web Ads a Draw for Many Consumers," June 2), is that Web users enjoy many of the online ads.
Some consumers state that the ads give them ideas for shopping, gifts, or entertainment, said Todd McCauley of Northwestern University's Media Management Center (which fielded the research) this morning. On the other hand, Internet users also dislike pop-ups, or ads that move across the page, distracting them from the reason they're online.
If marketers want to keep the goodwill that some online consumers have already extended with regards to ads, it seems obvious that a re-purposed 30-second television ad is the wrong way to go.
While it might take longer to create a five-second ad than re-run a spot already prepared for TV, it's better for agencies to spend their time making new ads than to ask consumers to spend their time re-watching ads online they already saw on television.
Google readying Web-only video search
By Stefanie Olsen
http://news.com.com/Google+readying+Web-only+video+search/2100-1024_3-5745038.html
Google is expected to unveil a search engine for Web-only video this summer that will let people preview media clips from its Web site, CNET News.com has learned.
Google's planned service will let visitors find free short-form videos such as the popular "Star Wars" video spoofs, according to sources who asked to remain anonymous. The engine will complement the search giant's existing experimental site that lets people search the closed-caption text of television shows from PBS and CNN, among others, and preview accompanying still images. The new capabilities will let people watch roughly 10 seconds of Web video clips for free before shuttling visitors to the video's host site, sources say.
Sources said the new video search engine will be unveiled within the next two months.
News.context
What's new:
Google is expected to unveil a search engine for Web-only video this summer that will let people preview media clips from its Web site.
Bottom line:
Video search has become a highly competitive field for many Internet companies because it's seen as a valuable new market for online advertising.
More stories on video search
A Google representative declined to comment on the details of the search engine or the exact timing of the launch but acknowledged that a new service is in the works. "All those details are still being worked out," the representative said.
Video search has become a highly competitive field for many Internet companies because it's seen as a valuable new market for online advertising. Google and Yahoo, for example, are looking to expand their multibillion-dollar advertising businesses into videos, which will help them land ad dollars from TV commercial advertisers. Even Amazon.com's search unit, A9.com, is eyeing the video search market, according to one source. A9 could not immediately be reached for comment.
Longer term, Google is preparing a payment system for a premium video service that would let people pay to watch full video clips. Google is talking to several top-tier content providers, including Hollywood movie studios, to gain agreements for aggregating their video and selling premium or pay-per-view access.
"The ultimate endgame is streaming video, otherwise Google can't get video advertising dollars," said one source. "They have to figure a way to get video into their world to capture those dollars."
The Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant outlined plans for a payment service when it launched its video-upload program in April. The program solicits video submissions to Google's searchable video archives, inviting small and major producers alike to submit work and grant copyrights to the company. Google said on its "frequently asked questions" page that it will let content producers host and sell access to their video using Google servers. It has yet to launch the service for public consumption.
The first stage of the video search engine will put Google on par with chief rival Yahoo, which finished work on its own Web video search engine in May, as well as others such as America Online's Singingfish and Blinkx. Unlike Yahoo, which already has submission deals with companies such as Reuters, Google will avoid mining the Internet for video clips and will use only video clips that have been submitted by their producers.
But some content providers have reservations about Google's plans to offer and sell searchable video. One content owner, who asked to remain anonymous, said among the details to be ironed out are how much of a video's rights should be granted to Google and how much should be retained by the owner in order to drive traffic to its own site.
One key to easing content providers' concerns will be digital rights management technology that can protect producers' intellectual property, though Google has not revealed details of a DRM solution. Google also has to work with content publishers on labeling their videos, so-called programming meta tags, which make searching for material possible.
To a certain extent, Google is playing catch up. Reuters, for example, also has deals with America Online's Singingfish, Yahoo and Blinkx. It provides all those companies with a video content feed, which includes "meta data" or descriptive language that defines the content for automated indexing by the search engines. In turn, the search engines drive traffic to Reuters.com, which is trying to become a news destination site supported by online advertising.
"For video, advertising is our chosen business model (because) there's a strong demand," said Stephen Smyth, Reuters' vice president of media. "We continue to assess the market and evaluate it for paid models."
Regarding a search deal with Google, Smyth said that the company is "exploring all options," but he declined to comment further.
Another content producer, AtomFilms, has deals with Yahoo and Singingfish to provide feeds of its video, said AtomFilms CEO Mika Salmi. Yahoo, in turn, points Web surfers back to AtomFilms' site. In all cases, Yahoo does not host the video playback on its own servers.
Eventually, Google plans to leapfrog its competitors by creating a "walled garden" of video content hosted on its servers. The content will originate both from independent and A-list video producers, sources say. That way, Google can eventually sell access and video advertising, or online commercials.
Morgan Stanley analyst and Google investor Mary Meeker outlined such a business model for Google at an industry conference in April.
Previous Next For studios such as Sony Pictures, working with Google Video could be tricky. Studios must get permission from actors and various guilds to show clips of films for promotional purposes. Even then, the amount of material shown is restricted. It would likely be a long time before Google could secure searchable content from major film studios, but several sources have said that the company's executives have approached the film studios to seek approvals.
In a sign of Google's courtship of Hollywood, the company attended the Digital Media Summit in Los Angeles last week. Jennifer Feikin, director of Google Video, acknowledged during a panel discussion that allowing playback of video clips was a complex issue given the copyright concerns and having to vet the content being submitted.
Google has already forged an alliance with former Vice President Al Gore to provide search features for his interactive television project, Current.tv, a 24-hour network with viewer-contributed broadcasts that range in length from 15 seconds to 5 minutes. The project is similar to Google's upload program, but for television.
dd: Chinese Target Web's 'Prohibited Language'
Tuesday June 14, 12:11 pm ET
By Elaine Kurtenbach, AP Business Writer
Chinese Censors Scold Internet Users Who Input Taboo Words, Like 'Freedom' and 'Human Rights'
SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Chinese bloggers, even on foreign-sponsored sites, had better choose their words carefully -- the censors are watching.
Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities -- such as democracy, freedom and human rights.
"Prohibited language in text, please delete," the message says.
However, the restrictions appear to apply only to the subject line of such entries. Writing them into the text, with a more innocuous subject heading, seems to be no problem.
Microsoft's Chinese staff could not be reached immediately for comment. However, a spokesman at the tech giant's headquarters in Seattle acknowledged that the company is cooperating with the Chinese government to censor its Chinese-language Web portal.
Microsoft and its Chinese business partner, government-funded Shanghai Alliance Investment, work with authorities to omit certain forbidden language, said Adam Sohn, a global sales and marketing director for MSN.
But he added, "I don't have access to the list at this point so I can't really comment specifically on what's there."
Online tests found that apart from politically sensitive words, obscenities and sexual references also are banned.
MSN Spaces, which offers free blog space, is connected to Microsoft's MSN China portal. The portal was launched on May 26, and some 5 million blogs have since been created, Microsoft said.
The Chinese government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to ban access to material deemed subversive.
Although details of the authorities' efforts are kept secret, users of many China-based Web portals are prevented from accessing sites deemed subversive by the government.
A search on Google for such topics as Taiwan or Tibetan independence, the banned group Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama or the China Democracy Party inevitably leads to a "site cannot be found" message.
Internet-related companies are obliged to accept such limitations as a condition of doing business in China. And government-installed filtering tools, registration requirements and other surveillance are in place to ensure the rules are enforced.
Recently, the government demanded that Web site owners register with authorities by June 30 or face fines.
Sohn said heavy government censorship is accepted as part of the regulatory landscape in China, and the world's largest software company believes its services still can foster expression in the country.
"We're in business in lots of countries. I think every time you go into a market you are faced with a different regulatory environment and you have to go make a choice as a business," he said. "Even with the filters, we're helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs and build relationships. For us, that is the key point here."
The consequences of defying government limits can be severe: at least 54 people have been jailed for posting essays or other content deemed subversive online.
The international media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has protested the online limits, sending letters to top executives of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and other companies urging them to lobby Beijing for greater freedom of expression.
"In terms of the reality of the situation, those business deals are going to continue as globalization expands," said Tala Dowlatshahi, a spokeswoman for the group. "But we want to make sure that pressure is being put on the companies to pressure the Chinese government to ensure a more democratic process."
ot: Hey SOG, Imagine if they cut back 625 mm on TV and even if they continue with their wholly owned soap opera and other direct tv type owened shows to advertise, , I suppose the point I was trying to make is they could easily kick in a 20% stake in a heartbeat...and so can INTC for that matter and a host of others, either way, Neom Mgt is playing the chess game just fine imho at this stage in the companys development...eot
ps dd: Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble Co. (PG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is sharply cutting how much it commits in advance to buying television commercials next season, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the situation.
The move by Cincinnati-based P&G, maker of Tide, Crest and Pampers, is the latest sign of rapid changes in how companies reach consumers and TV networks and cable channels draw revenue, the newspaper said. NEW YORK (Reuters) -
People familiar with the situation said P&G's decision to scale back spending on commercials has been disclosed to TV executives in recent weeks during "upfront" negotiations, the annual round of talks in which advertisers commit to spending for the coming TV season, the report said.
Its commitments to cable channels will fall by as much as 25 percent, according to several cable industry and advertising executives, while its spending on broadcast networks will be cut around 5 percent. It also is expected to reduce spending on syndicated daytime talk shows such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Ellen."
While cutting back spending on TV commercials, P&G is looking to shift money into several different forms of TV marketing. Among them is increased activity in the fast-growing area of product placement -- use of its products on TV shows -- said people familiar with the situation, the Journal reported.
P&G could not immediately be reached for comment.
P&G exerts wide influence on how other companies make their marketing and advertising decisions, the newspaper reported.
In 2004, the company was the No. 1 U.S. advertiser, spending roughly $2.5 billion on TV -- more than 80 percent of its estimated $3 billion ad budget.
ot: Comment...Anyway, one thing I know as an ex p&g'r, lots of times they will tell anyone anything who calls IR, etc and lots of the P&G 'teams" don’t really know what’s going on cuz they work on an "assignment" for a few years and typically after 3, move on to something else....a good strategy to keep m100, 000 plus at the top of their game by introducing them to constant change...jmho but one thing I see is that they are always committed to technology and it appears they are cutting their TV budget to go and budget in other areas...how's that for rocket science, lol...iow, they will simply take those monies and place in other mediums...so I suppose they are a front runner to a 20% stake imo but so the heck is anyone else, this tech, if proven to be valid as far as patent infringement proof, etc (ie Virgin), lots will be knocking down NEOMS doors imo to "partner and grab a slice of the nice M-Commerce pie,"..etc etc...Something like that...
Ok, have a good day!
SOG
"...Tom - I think your note is a great additional clue for those trying to interpret the front-page WSJ article this morning - "Ad Icon P&G Cuts Commitment to TV Commercials."
We've been talking about the decline of viewership on network television for some time now, but in the past few months, the dissatisfaction with the current marketing model has reached a tipping point. The early indicator was Bob Garfield's article in April 4th's Advertising Age called "The Chaos Scenario." He basically asked what happens to the current structure of network TV if advertisers stop buying but there is no great alternative place for them to spend their money. He points out that even taking 10% of the money that CPG firms have been spending on traditional advertising and diverting it to the Internet would DOUBLE the total dollars being spent on the Internet. But he also points out that it costs roughly twice as much to reach a household with a network TV ad as it did a decade ago, while the effectiveness of that ad is more suspect than ever.
CPG marketers are herd animals, and I think there is plenty of reason to be nervous about what will happen next. Your note about design above is one of the positive signs, I think. Greater emphasis on design is important and follow the Target model will help a lot of brands win customers. There is also lots of room to improve customer service. When Bank of America spends huge dollars on a primetime ad showing a branch manager helping a customer personally, but then you have to go through 5 levels of automated menu to get a real person when you call them, what does that say (more on this at http://brandtrainers.blogspot.com/2005/06/bank-of-…
So the big question is where the rest of the money will go? And what will happen to the network TV model if this really is a tipping point and not a gradual decline and in a year or two ad revenue is down by 50%. Product placement and buzz marketing won't fill the gap. When we're all working for buzzagent.com and plugging products to one another, who will believe anything anyone says?
Posted at 8:52 PM ET on Jun 13, 2005 by
ot: penny
relax, could be a long summer but imo, don't fret, I think everyone here would like the intoxicatingly days of April back again every day with all their 8-10 cent rnge (give or take a ferw pennys...however, look at whats hapopenning over in Asia and Pac rim, its only a matter of time before you'll be in the same category over here in the states when you become a millionare...however, no one said it would be easy)
Have a good weekend,
sonofgodzilla
Number of Hong Kong Millionaires Grows
06.10.2005, 06:36 AM
The number of millionaries in Hong Kong grew by 19 percent last year to more than 67,000 people, thanks to gains in the stock and property markets, the latest World Wealth Report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini said Friday.
Some 10,700 people in Hong Kong joined the ranks of so-called high-net worth individuals - those with financial assets that total more than US$1 million (euro818,000), excluding their residence.
Hong Kong's millionaire club now totals 67,500 - on a par with much larger India, which had 70,000, and South Korea, with 71,500, the report said. The city's population is 6.9 million.
"Over the past two years, Hong Kong has seen an almost 50 percent increase in the number of wealthy," said Cheong Soon Tan, managing director for Greater China at Merrill Lynch Global Private Client. "Hong Kong enjoyed its second year of robust economic growth in 2004 and both the property and stock markets continued to rebound as well."
Across the border in mainland China, the story is very different, as domestic stock markets have declined sharply despite the country's rapid economic growth.
The report estimated the number of Chinese millionaires increased by only 12,400, or 4.3 percent, to 299,500. Strong gains in property markets - particularly in Shanghai - helped cushion the collapse in equity portfolios.
Overall in the Asia Pacific region, the number of wealthy rose 8.2 percent in 2004 to 2.3 million, with their combined wealth increasing 8.5 percent to US$7.2 trillion.
Japan has the single largest population of wealthy, at 1.34 million, though their numbers are growing only slowly.
Singapore recorded the fastest growth in the number of wealthy, with the ranks of dollar millionaires surging 22 percent, or 8,800, to reach 48,500. Taiwan saw a gain of 6.5 percent, or 3,400 people, for a total of 55,400.
Though the number of wealthy individuals in Asia still lags behind Europe and North America, the region has become the focus of expansion efforts by private banks, said Albert Lee, regional managing director for Merrill Lynch's global private client business.
That's because it offers the most prospects for growth, as the population of wealthy people is expanding rapidly, and relatively few of them have engaged private banks to help manage their assets, Lee told a press briefing.
dd: Blink, Thin Slicing, And The Art Of Search Marketing
by Gord Hotchkiss, Thursday, June 9, 2005
IN MALCOLM GLADWELL'S BOOK BLINK, he examines how we make decisions in a split second, and how these intuitive decisions are often more valid than ones we labor over for months.
While Gladwell's book examines how intuitive decisions are made in a number of situations, it's fascinating to apply his insights to how we search.
After asking thousands of people to think about they search (through all our research, we're probably closing in on 3000 now), only one thing has been consistent in our findings. People don't really know. In some cases, we think we know--but our interactions happen so quickly with the search results page and at such a subconscious level that we're often at a loss to explain how we chose the results we did. The fact is, the minute we ask people to slow down and start examining their search interaction, that interaction changes and we don't get a true picture.
When we interact online, we make decisions in split seconds. The rapid-fire assimilation of information and clicking on navigation options is aided by the fact that we can navigate the Web with relatively little risk. If we follow a false lead and end up on a site that doesn't offer what we're looking for, the back button is one click away. If only life came with a back button. Wouldn't it be nice to back out of our mistakes in real life as easily as we can online?
As we navigate, we click merrily along, in a headlong rush to get to our online destination. Only when we perceive that there is increased risk to ourselves--which could present itself as committing some of our personal information, making a purchase, or downloading a file--do we stop and deliberate.
In searching, none of the above risk threats are there. As long as we're on our favorite search engine, we can't commit to anything that can't be corrected with a couple of clicks on the back button.
In our study, we found that people spend an average of 6.4 seconds on a search results page before clicking on a link, and in that time scan an average of 3.9 results. In these few seconds, we assimilate an average of 140 words. Included in those words are between 35 to 60 factors and details we have to consider to make a decision. Yet we take just a few seconds to do this. This is what Mr. Gladwell calls Thin Slicing.
Thin Slicing is the ability to take huge amounts of information and focus in on just what's important. Then we take these few key pieces of information and make our decision on a subconscious, intuitive level. We don't know how we made the decision, and if we stop to examine it, we can't explain the steps we went through. But the decision was made, and in a surprising number of instances, it proves to be the right one. In fact, by trying to take a more logical approach, we often paralyze our decision-making ability.
For the majority of us, the decisions we make while we are on a search results page are an example of thin slicing. Both through cognitive assimilation (actively reading titles and descriptions) and by finding matches to our semantic maps--the group of words that make up the concept we're search for--through what we see in the listings with our peripheral vision, most of us make decisions on what to click on in seconds.
There are a few deliberate searchers out there who take the time to actively read each title and description before making their decision, but they are few and far between.
What's the application for search marketing? Understand that placement of keyphrases and words that can catch attention are vital in this split-second environment. This is why position is important. With decisions made in seconds, not a lot of screen real estate is scanned. And every decision is made by weighing the factors in those few listings that were scanned.
So don't create your search marketing strategies in a vacuum. Explore the competitive environment defined by the search listings for your prime keyphrases. See who else you share the space with, where they're positioned relative to you, and how you can compete with them for grabbing the attention of your prospective customer. Remember, you can gain them or lose them in the blink of an eye!
Gord Hotchkiss is the president of Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm. He loves to explore the strategic side of search and is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies and Ad:Tech.
dd: Google maps give life to demographics
Wednesday, June 8, 2005 Updated at 4:59 PM EDT
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Tracking sexual predators in Florida. Guiding travellers to the cheapest gas nationwide. Pinpointing $1,500 studio apartments for rent in Manhattan.
Geeks, tinkerers and innovators are crashing the Google party, having discovered how to tinker with the search engine's mapping service to graphically illustrate vital information that might otherwise be ignored, overlooked or not perceived as clearly.
"It's such a beautiful way to look at what could be a dense amount of information," said Tara Calishain, editor of Research Buzz and co-author of Google Hacks, a book that offers tips on how to get the most out of the Web's most popular search engine.
Yahoo and other sites also offer maps, but Google's four-month-old mapping service is more easily accessible and manipulated by outsiders, the tinkerers say.
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As it turns out, Google charts each point on its maps by latitude and longitude — that's how Google can produce driving directions to practically anywhere in the United States. Seasoned developers have figured out how to match these points with locations from outside databases that can contain vast amounts of information — anything from police blotters to real-estate listings.
Thanks to Adrian Holovaty, 24, who overlaid Chicago Police Department crime statistics on a Google map, house-hunters in the Albany Park neighbourhood can pinpoint all the sexual assaults in the district between May 19 and April 19 on a single map. With each crime marked by a virtual pushpin, Chicagoans can quickly learn what dangerous train stations, pool-rooms and alleys to avoid.
Mr. Holovaty hopes to make the maps more current by persuading Chicago police to provide the data directly, rather than forcing him to glean it from the department's Web site. Police seem amenable — he's got a meeting with them next week. But community activist James Cappleman is already impressed with Mr. Holovaty's Chicagocrime.org — no longer do citizens have to trust politicians crowing about safer streets.
"We've never been able to track trends before," Mr. Cappleman said. "Now, when we tell police there is a problem, we'll know what we're talking about."
Visitors to Floridasexualpredators.com, which combines Google Maps with data on convicted sex offenders, can call up maps of their communities and click on the pushpins to see the name, last known address and mug shot of each offender.
Drivers searching for their area's cheapest gas can go to www.ahding.com/cheapgas, which blends Google Maps with data from Gasbuddy.com's database of prices at individual gas stations.
Home buyers can pinpoint the locations of houses in their price range at Cytadia.com. And renters can turn to Housingmaps.com, which melds the technologies of Craigslist and Google, to spot available housing in 29 cities including San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
All these sites are operating without Google's permission, clearly violating the company's user agreement. But none charges any fees, and Mountain View-based Google, which declined to comment through a spokesman, has made no effort to shut them down.
"Why would they?" asks Kenneth Tan, who works for a Chicago-based media research firm and is relying on Housingmaps.com to find a new place in New York. "This is fantastic publicity for the company."
Before Housingmaps.com launched in March, Mr. Tan spent up to 30 minutes a day reading through Craigslist postings in his price range, trying to figure out if any were located where he wants to live.
On Housingmaps.com, the listings he wants are represented on a single map, marked by either a red or yellow pushpin symbol. Yellow pins come with apartment photographs; red have none. A click on a yellow pin sends Mr. Mr. Tan directly into the Craigslist posting on the street where he hopes to live.
"It takes two seconds to glance at the map to see if there is anything for me that day," Mr. Tan said.
Computer animation engineer Paul Rademacher developed Housingmaps.com shortly after Google Maps launched in February, matching it with all the U.S. apartment listings on Craigslist. He says he was intrigued by Google's technology and began tinkering with it after a long apartment search.
James Brown, founder of Floridasexualpredator.com, charted the home addresses of every registered sex offender in Florida's Megan's Law database, then wrote a software program that automatically converts addresses to the correct latitude and longitude.
Mr. Holovaty requested data from Chicago Police but never heard back — so he wrote a program that automatically retrieves crime location data each time the department's Web site is updated.
Why go to this much trouble?
The site's creators said it was for the love of discovery and a chance to help their communities.
Mr. Brown came up with the idea for his site after watching television reports about a kidnapped girl with his father, a former policeman in Ocala, Fla. Mr. Rademacher says he wanted to help others avoid painstaking and time-consuming searches for new apartments.
"I figured out a way to do it and I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't share it with everybody," said Mr. Rademacher, who lives in Santa Clara.
None said they did it for the money. But their efforts are certainly getting attention.
Several companies have approached Mr. Rademacher about setting up other sites that marry data to Google maps. And San Francisco is among cities interested in whether Mr. Holovaty can develop crime-mapping sites for them.
"I would be happy to help them set it up," Mr. Holovaty said. "The world is a
DD: Cosmetic Changes at Google Precede Larger Overhaul
http://www.isedb.com/news/article/1195
(ps, some really great embedded links btw in this piece and also if you haven't figured out already, a neet site to stay on top of search related news imho here>>> http://www.isedb.com/ , have a good day and ps, thanks to the stagnation, I was able to accumulate/pick up one last 1000 share block fwiw)
Last modified: June 8, 2005, 8:52 PM
Contributed By: Jim Hedger
Google is undergoing some of the most sweeping changes in its short, seven year history. As of next week, Google will have finished sorting what might be its largest algorithm shift ever as the final points of the 3.5 part Bourbon Update were installed last Monday. This update has been staggered into three and a half sections in order to avoid a massive amount of dislocation in established rankings as was seen in previous major updates. While changes stemming from the Bourbon Update have not actually manifested into a full reordering of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), many individual webmasters have reported fairly significant losses or gains in ranking over the past few days.
There are dozens of factors behind changes at Google but the greatest is the enormous valuation of the company itself. With share prices nearing the $300 mark and current market capitalization topping $80billion, Google is considered the most valuable media company in the world, surpassing the $78billion value of Time-Warner and rising far above Yahoo’s estimated value of $56billion. Most of Google’s riches are newly found, having been generated after their August 2004 IPO. In their race to outlast, outperform and outsmart their competitors, Google has changed its PR strategy and its appearance to suit the legions of suits swirling in and out of their Mountain View offices.
While money may move mountains, it takes a community to change an institution. The search environment has changed substantially over the past three years and in that time, every major player in the search sector has changed as well. Today, Google has become a lot more complicated, so much so that it has stopped trying to look simple. This change in corporate attitude is best reflected in two places, the homepage and the About Google section.
Google’s homepage used to be quite simple. Recently, Google created a personalized portal interface (google.com/ig) offering users instant access to several of these new features. For folks with Google accounts such as Gmail users, subscribers to Google Groups, Google desktop users and other account holders, personalized versions of the once sparse homepage now presents instant entry points to the various applications the individual uses. Many industry observers have suggested Google’s adoption of so many new features and an all-in-one interface show they are moving towards presenting themselves as more of a portal like Yahoo or MSN. Google has always been a bit different than its competition. Even when borrowing and innovating on competitors’ ideas, Google has, until now at least, managed to keep itself at an arm’s length from the mainstream in appearance and operation. The maintenance of that image gave Internet users an alternative view of Google, one that propelled Google to a position of almost total dominance of the search engine sector. While that dominance might have slipped over the past year, Google is still the most popular search appliance in the world.
One of the ways Google has acted differently than others is in the appearance of not taking itself too seriously. Its corporate ethics policy was limited to the three word phrase, “Don’t be evil”. Its front page interface retains the double-entendre induced “I feel lucky” button, even though the button is rarely used. The prospectus issued during their August 2004 IPO was specifically written to appear idealistically anti-corporate. Since its introduction, Google has practiced projecting a simple, youthful image that required very little in the way of explanation, so long as their search engine lived up to users’ expectations.
Google strives to live up to user expectations and, for the most part, has met and exceeded them time and time again. There is one long-held expectation that Google may not be able to live up to any longer though. Many of us assume Google’s relatively informal public attitude will continue to carry over into the later part of the decade. It won’t. By comparison, Google will almost certainly continue to be perceived as the search engine driven by youthful energy. Whenever competitors such as MSN or Yahoo try to appear as down-to-Earth as Google does, their efforts seem obvious and forced. Does anyone remember that poor-fellow in the butterfly suit wandering aimlessly around New York last year? Google’s communication style is maturing and the best place to view these changes is on the About Google section of their site.
Google has published information about itself on pages found behind the “About Google” link for several years. While documents found in the About section have never been totally static, a facelift over the past few weeks has radically altered the look and feel of the section. Along with the traditional organic search engine results and highly targeted paid-ads, Google is actually a series of 30-someodd search-based applications ranging from alerts and answers to wireless search and weather information. Driven in part by an inventive entrepreneurial spirit and in part by a desire to keep up with products offered by competitors, Google has been rapidly adding new features and tools to their core search service for the past three years.
Google’s About Google page was once much smaller than it is today. It has grown slightly larger every time Google adds another offering to it. The biggest changes are found behind the increasing number of links on the About page. Today’s version of the About page has five boxes added to the left hand side of the page advertising Google Desktop, Blogger, Google Code, Google Mobile, and My Search History. In the center column, Google continues to show four main site sections labeled, Our Search, For Site Owners, Our Company, and More Google. Collectively, those sections contain a larger number of links than they did previously and the number of documents found behind those links has grown as well. Serious Google users should take an hour or two to tour these changes and learn more about the staggering range of features, services and search-enhancements Google now offers.
For webmasters and SEOs, an examination of the new Google Webmaster Guidelines is a definite must. Google has recently changed its webmaster guidelines which are also considered to be a primer on “ethical SEO” practices in relation to Google placements. Google has recently updated its webmaster guidelines to include information on “supplemental listings”, crawling frequencies and prefetching. Google has also posted information on its new Google Sitemaps experiment.
Google Sitemaps is perhaps the most important new feature for SEOs offered by Google in a long time. Said to be an experiment in spidering, Google Sitemaps invites webmasters to feed site data directly to Google through an XML sitemap page. Webmasters and SEOs can now tell Google exactly which sections of their sites to crawl, and providing they are keeping their XML sitemap current, when and where to look for changes to their sites. This experimental initiative will especially help webmasters working with database driven sites or large Ecommerce sites where documents are subject to frequent change and are often found behind long-string URLs. Google has been kind enough to provide detailed information on establishing an XML feed and setting priorities for Googlebot.
As it grows, Google appears to be running into the same problem other webmasters with numerous sites or services encounter, the rapid dilution of a domain’s unique topic focus. In order to keep themselves accessible, understandable and relevant, Google’s teams of engineers, programmers and public relations specialists are involved in what appears to be a massive overhaul of the interface, public documents and the basic sorting algorithm that produces organic results. As in previous years, how this all plays out in the end is entirely up to the searching public. From the SEO/SEM perspective, it is a good thing Google is in the midst of this update. Web workers have been demanding a greater degree of transparency from Google for some time now and perhaps these updates are the beginning of a new commitment to communication from the Googleplex.
dd: Anatomy Of An Internet Search Engine
Last modified: June 8, 2005, 8:48 PM
Contributed By: Dave Davies
For some unfortunate souls SEO is simply the learning of tricks and techniques that, according to their understanding, should propel their site into the top rankings on the major search engines. This understanding of the way SEO works can be effective for a time however it contains one basic flaw ... the rules change. Search engines are in a constant state of evolution in order to keep up with the SEO's in much the same way that Norton, McAfee, AVG or any of the other anti-virus software companies are constantly trying to keep up with the virus writers.
Basing your entire websites future on one simple set of rules (read: tricks) about how the search engines will rank your site contains an additional flaw, there are more factors being considered than any SEO is aware of and can confirm. That's right, I will freely admit that there are factors at work that I may not be aware of and even those that I am aware of I cannot with 100% accuracy give you the exact weight they are given in the overall algorithm. Even if I could, the algorithm would change a few weeks later and what's more, hold your hats for this one; there is more than one search engine.
So if we cannot base our optimization on a set of hard-and-fast rules what can we do? The key my friends, is not to understand the tricks but rather what they accomplish. Reflecting back on my high school math teach Mr. Barry Nicholl I recall a silly story that had a great impact. One weekend he had the entire class watch Dumbo The Flying Elephant (there was actually going to be a question about it on our test). Why? The lesson we were to get from it is that formulas (like tricks) are the feather in the story. They are unnecessary and yet we hold on to them in the false belief that it is the feather that works and not the logic. Indeed, the tricks and techniques are not what works but rather the logic they follow and that is their shortcoming.
And So What Is Necessary?
To rank a website highly and keep it ranking over time one must optimize it with one primary understanding, that a search engine is a living thing. Obviously this is not to say that search engines have brains, I will leave those tales to Orson Scott Card and other science fiction writers, however their very nature results in a lifelike being with far more storage capacity.
If we consider for a moment how a search engine functions; it goes out into the world, follows the road signs and paths to get where it's going, and collects all of the information in its path. From this point, the information is sent back to a group of servers where algorithms are applied in order to determine the importance of specific documents. How are these algorithms generated? They are created by human beings who have a great deal of experience in understanding the fundamentals of the Internet and the documents it contains and who also have the capacity to learn from their mistakes, and update the algorithms accordingly. Essentially we have an entity that collects data, stores it, and then sorts through it to determine what's important which it's happy to share with others and what's unimportant which it keeps tucked away.
So Let's Break It Down ...
To gain a true understanding of what a search engine is, it's simple enough to compare it to the human anatomy as, though not breathing, it contains many of the same core functions required for life. And these are:
The Lungs & Other Vital Organs - The lungs of a search engine and indeed the vast majority of vital organs are contained within the datacenters in which they are housed. Be it in the form of power, Internet connectivity, etc. As with the human body, we do not generally consider these important in defining who we are, however we're certainly grateful to have them and need them all to function properly.
The Arms & Legs - Think of the links from the engine itself as the arms and legs. These are the vehicles by which we get where we need to go and retrieve what needs to be accessed. While we don't commonly think of these as functions when we're considering SEO these are the purpose of the entire thing. Much as the human body is designed primarily to keep you mobile and able to access other things, so too is the entire search engine designed primarily to access the outside world.
The Eyes - The eyes of the search engine are the spiders (AKA robots or crawlers). These are the 1s and 0s that the search engines send out over the Internet to retrieve documents. In the case of all the major search engines the spiders crawl from one page to another following the links, as you would look down various paths along your way. Fortunately for the spiders they are traveling mainly over fiber optic connections and so their ability to travel at light speed enables them to visit all the paths they come across whereas we as mere humans have to be a bit more selective.
The Brain - The brain of a search engine, like the human brain, is the most complex of its functions and components. The brain must have instinct, must know, and must learn in order to function properly. A search engine (and by search engine we mean the natural listings of the major engines) must also include these critical three components in order to survive.
The Instinct - The instinct of a search engines is defined in it's core functions, that is the crawling of sites and either the inability to read specific types of data, or the programmed response to ignore files meeting a specific criteria. Even the programmed responses become automated by the engines and thus fall under the category of instinct much the same as the westernized human instinct to jump from a large spider is learned. An infant would probably watch the spider or even eat it meaning this is not an automatic human reaction.
The instinct of a search engines is important to understand however once one understands what can and cannot be read and how the spiders will crawl a site this will become instinct for you too and can then safely be stored in the "autopilot" part of your brain.
The Knowing - Search engines know by crawling. What they know goes far beyond what is commonly perceived by most users, webmasters and SEOs. While the vast storehouse we call the Internet provides billions upon billions of pages of data for the search engines to know they also pick up more than that. Search engines know a number of different methods for storing data, presenting data, prioritizing data and of course, way of tricking the engines themselves.
While the search engine spiders are crawling the web they are grabbing the stores of data that exist and sending it back to the datacenters, where that information is processed through existing algorithms and sp@m filters where it will attain a ranking based on the engine's current understanding of the way the Internet and the documents contained within it work.
Similar to the way we process an article from a newspaper based on our current understanding of the world, the search engines process and rank documents based on what they understand to be true in the way documents are organized on the Internet.
The Learning - Once it is understood that search engines rank documents based on a specific understanding of the way the Internet functions, it then follows that in order to insure that new document types and technologies are able to be read and that the algorithm be changed as new understandings of the functionality of the Internet are uncovered a search engine must have the ability to "learn".
Aside from a search engine needing the ability to properly spider documents stored in newer technologies, search engines must also have the ability to detect and accurately penalize sp@m and as well as accurately rank websites based on new understandings of the way documents are organized and links arranged. Examples of areas where search engines must learn in an ongoing basis include but are most certainly not limited to:
Understanding the relevancy of the content between sites where a link is found
Attaining the ability to view the content on documents contained within new technologies such as database types, Flash, etc.
Understanding the various methods used to hide text, links, etc. in order to penalize sites engaging in these tactics
Learning from current results and any shortcoming in them, what tweaks to current algorithms or what additional considerations must be taken into account to improve the relevancy of the results in the future.
The learning of a search engine generally comes from the uber-geeks hired by and the users of the search engines. Once a factor is taken into account and programmed into the algorithm it them moves into the "knowing" category until the next round of updates.
How This Helps in SEO
This is the point at which you may be asking yourself, "This is all well-and-good but exactly how does this help ME?" An understanding of how search engines function, how they learn, and how they live is one of the most important understandings you can have in optimizing a website. This understanding will insure that you don't simply apply random tricks in hopes that you've listened to the right person in the forums that day but rather that you consider what is the search engine trying to do and does this tactic fit with the long term goals of the engine.
For a while keyword density sp@mming was all the rage among the less ethical SEOs as was building networks of websites to link together in order to boost link popularity. Neither of these tactics work today and why? They do not fit with the long-term goals of the search engine. Search engines, like humans, want to survive. If the results they provide are poor then the engine will die a slow but steady death and so they evolve.
When considering any tactic you must consider, does this fit with the long-term goals of the engine? Does this tactic in general serve to provide better results for the largest number of searches? If the answer is yes then the tactic is sound.
For example, the overall relevancy of your website (i.e. does the majority of your content focus on a single subject) has become more important over the past year or so. Does this help the searcher? The searcher will find more content on the subject they have searched on larger sites with larger amounts of related content and thus this shift does help the searcher overall. A tactic that includes the addition of more content to your site is thus a solid one as it helps build the overall relevancy of your website and gives the visitor more and updated information at their disposal once they get there.
Another example would be in link building. Reciprocal links are becoming less relevant and reciprocal-links between unrelated sites are virtually irrelevant. If you are engaging in reciprocal link building insure that the sites you link to are related to your site's content. As a search engine I would want to know that a site in my results also provided links to other related sites thus increasing the chance that the searcher was going to find the information that they are looking for one way or another without having to switch to a different search engine.
In Short
In short, think ahead. Understand that search engines are organic beings that will continue to evolve. Help feed them when they visit your site and they will return often and reward your efforts. Use unethical tactics and you may hold a good position for a while but in the end, if you do not use tactics that provide for good overall results, you will not hold your position for long. They will learn.
dd: All search is local.
May 24, 2005
By: Mickey Alam Khan
Senior Editor
mickey@dmnews.com
That twist on the famous political rule of thumb soon will become reality for search, the fastest-growing online marketing activity. Estimates claim that 40 percent of all search queries are for local services or products and 92 percent of local searches convert offline.
"[But] there's really no one player that's nailed local search," Dana Todd, principal of interactive marketing agency SiteLab, said last month at Ad:tech05 San Francisco.
Search engine marketing has grown from a tiny spend in 1999 to $5 billion forecast for this year and nearly $9 billion by 2009, JupiterResearch claims. Search accounts for 36 percent of U.S. online advertising and will grow 24 percent yearly in the next five years.
Fueling such growth is the pay-per-click model where advertisers pay the search engine for each time a consumer clicks on the rented keyword. Yet this model may not suit small businesses and entrepreneurs, including doctors, lawyers, caterers, Realtors, plumbers and corner stores.
Kelsey Group research shows the number of companies using pay-per-click advertising is about 350,000 versus 7 million listed in the yellow pages and 13 million that don't own an e-commerce-enabled site but advertise locally.
These small firms or entrepreneurs "don't own or operate transactional Web sites, but advertise locally," a new paper from pay-per-call search technology provider Ingenio Inc. said. "The question then becomes: how does the industry grow the paid search advertiser base?"
U.S. businesses spend $90 billion yearly on local advertising, according to Kelsey. But only a fraction of that amount, which is hard to break out separately with accuracy, is spent on local performance-based search marketing.
About $10 billion last year was spent on Internet advertising and marketing, including e-mail, banners, affiliate marketing and search. However, most of the spenders had something to sell online. But most businesses nationwide are providers of local services.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates the nation's 23 million small businesses represent more than 99 percent of all employers, account for more than 50 percent of all private-sector workers and generate three out of four jobs. Small companies account for one-third of all American exports and more than half of the U.S. GDP.
Ingenio's pitch for pay-per-call advertising could become an alternative to, or even complement, the pay-per-click model. What most local, service-based businesses have in common is the telephone. A survey from Ingenio and JupiterResearch showed that most vertically aligned businesses prefer phone leads over Web site clicks by a 2:1 ratio. The respondents, it seems, would pay as much as five to 15 times more for a phone call than a click to a site.
Using Ingenio's system, the highest-bidding advertiser in a specific category is shown at the top of the search listings. The ad shows basic business information and a toll-free number unique to the advertiser-publisher pairing. Advertisers pay only when they get a live phone lead.
"As paid search advertising continues to mature, the emergence of new models only means more marketing options for the advertiser," Ingenio said in its local-search analysis. "The one-size-fits-all mentality won't work. In some cases a particular advertiser might opt for clicks, another for calls and even another might choose to leverage both."
Industry players like Google, Yahoo Search and Ask Jeeves are focused on national advertisers. But that may change with the number of innovations in development. And they may have no choice but to focus on local advertising, not with Amazon's A9.com search engine operating.
The Internet retailer in September launched A9 with a mandate to innovate search, which it did. The site has taken 26 million pictures of shops, streets and storefronts in 15 cities with details of the establishments included.
"It's a new way of searching -- you can search visually," Barnaby Dorfman, vice president of search at A9, said at Ad:tech05 San Francisco.
Match A9's ability with Amazon's influence. Nearly 48 million consumers spent more than $7 billion last year through the Amazon interface. Also, 850,000 people sold something last year through the Amazon platform.
"People come to Amazon just for one thing: They are there to spend money," Dorfman said.
The Yellow Pages Association sees a natural fit for what its members do with local search online. A study conducted for the association by comScore Networks claims that Internet yellow pages offer a more efficient local marketing opportunity. The study examined local search behavior in financial services, healthcare, home services, automotive products and services and restaurant dining. It had three key findings:
· Web search engines accounted for 66 percent of consumers searching for local information while Internet yellow pages had a 34 percent share. But consumers using online yellow pages found local information faster: an average of 4.6 clicks versus 7.6 clicks for search engine users.
· Local searchers who use Internet yellow pages spend 4 percent to 22 percent more per buyer than local search engine users in the automotive, health and beauty, home and garden and general services categories. Internet yellow pages users spend 4 percent to 17 percent more per buyer for offline purchases in the drugstore, automotive, restaurants and home and garden categories than local search engine consumers.
· Internet yellow pages users are an attractive demographic market for advertisers. They are 71 percent more likely than the average online user to have an annual income surpassing $100,000. They are also likelier to have a broadband Internet connection.
Given its legacy offline, local search online is the yellow pages' market to lose. But Internet-only players are tweaking their algorithms and tailoring offerings to local markets.
"Slowly over this year, you'll see everyone carve local search out of national search," Zorik Gordon, president/CEO of ReachLocal.com, said at Ad:tech05 San Francisco.
ReachLocal's Internet marketing platform uses search engines to help local businesses advertise online. Gordon stressed that small business behavior must be taken into account for local search advertising to become more appealing.
Local advertisers, he said, value a call more than a click. Local businesses are uncomfortable with the self-service nature of search advertising. And it is too complex for this audience. They would rather cut a check and have someone do the rest of the work.
"These businesses need to be sold," Gordon said. "They will not buy."
Mickey Alam Khan covers Internet marketing campaigns and e-commerce, agency news as well as circulation for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
Good Bonus DD With links : PremierGuide Launches 25 Private-Label Local Search Sites in 25 Days -- Drives New Online Advertising Revenues For Newspapers and TV Stations http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050524005...
Bonus dd:Broadband Consumers Make Local Search a Reality
By Greg Sterling - May 31, 2005
http://www.searchengineguide.com/sterling/004594.html
Bonus DD: Sky High Search Wars ....Local Search http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111686642569040715,00.html?mod=todays_free_feature
dd: Email Subscription> Finally, a conference that wasn't dominated the nuts and bolts of search. Really.Wednesday, June 8, 2005 by Tobi Elkin
SonOfGodzilla,
Sure, search was a constituent part of the OMMA-West Conference and Expo in San Francisco, but it didn't supplant all the other parts of the program. E-mail marketing, media integration, blogs, podcasting, RSS feeds, and other game-changing publishing methods and technologies, along with behavioral marketing and agency/provider issues each emerged as part of the discussion. Each has its place, to be sure, in the ongoing dialogue on interactive media and marketing and the way in which people consume media.
A provocative and entertaining talk by Bob Garfield, Advertising Age's ad critic, put a fitting spin on conference. Garfield argues, and quite convincingly, that the online marketing and media world needs to prepare for the influx of dollars coming its way and fast.
Geoff Ramsey, OMMA-West's emcee and CEO of eMarketer, always a lively presenter with anecdotes plucked from his own life and interactions with clients, colleagues, and conference networking, coined the acronym "IMPACT." It stands for what all advertising and marketing should be - "involving," "measurable," "personal," "actionable," "consumer-led/driven," and "targeted." You can't argue with that. It makes sense.
And yes, we go back to search. While eMarketer says the search market accounts for $5.4 billion, we need to remember that this is just part of the puzzle - albeit a very important part. The local search market, a paltry $162 million in 2004, is projected to swell to $3.4 billion by 2009, according to The Kelsey Group. Remember the adage "all politics are local?" When it gets right down to it, all search is local, too. We all need to find stuff: people, houses, jobs, doctors, you name it.
Sure, search pervades all online marketing efforts now, but brand advertising dollars are flowing online at an astonishing pace. Search methods and software platforms that we have yet to know will emerge. Video and personalized search are two of the most interesting, but there are other forms that we can't even contemplate yet. Search has forced major media companies and Fortune 500s alike to rethink their media models.
One of the conference highlights was hearing from John Battelle, co-founding editor of Wired magazine and founder of The Industry Standard, a paean to the Internet economy. Battelle's been underground for a bit, writing a book on the search wars, due out September 8, teaching at Berkeley (courses in blogging and magazine development, he says), blogging on Searchblog.com, and masterminding a new business venture called FM Publishing.
FM, Battelle says, stands for Federated Media, which will serve as an ad and marketing network for high quality blogs. FM will function much like a book imprint or record label, aggregating like-minded blogs, "10 to 20 per category to start," Battelle says, in the technology, media, pop culture, entertainment/gaming, and sports segments.
"It will feature authoritative and influential reporting and analysis;" he will vet each site for quality of content, Battelle adds. "We'll provide services between marketers and authors so advertisers can have a conversation with and in those blogs." Battelle declined to name the blogs he's chosen but he'll start with his own Searchbolog and BoingBoing.
It's his third startup and he hopes this one, set to launch in the third quarter (his fingers are crossed), is a keeper, or at least sustainable. Battelle is poised to close an angel round of funding with what he described as "killer investors" this week. He begged off when asked to name these "killers." The sites in the federation will link to one another and authors will be able to retain intellectual copyrights.
Battelle's simple chronology showing how publishing has evolved over the last few years from the heady pre-game show dotcom frenzy to full-tilt boogie, and finally to the sputtering heap of imploded ideas without business models, was an interesting one. So too, was the notion he advanced about the architecture of participation, or the way in which blogs enable users to build your business and therefore, value. "A good blogger," Battelle notes, "is leading a conversation, he's a great filter and editor. And, the best publications are driven by editorial conversations, not market opportunities." Now that's food for thought. Bring it on.
Tobi Elkin is Executive Editor, MediaPost.
google talk on cnbc now fwiw eot
Old media shout to be heard
Newspapers, radio and magazines are spending millions to combat the perception they're obsolete.
June 7, 2005: 4:33 PM EDT
By Krysten Crawford, CNN/Money staff writer
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The radio industry, whose main goal is not to entertain but to help companies build consumer awareness through advertising, has discovered it's got an image problem -- and it's fighting back.
Facing sluggish growth and the perception that traditional radio is on the decline, AM-FM radio operators are banding together in ways that once were improbable.
On Tuesday a radio industry group released the findings of a new study purporting to show that a 30-second radio spot promises advertisers a far better return on investment than a 30-second television commercial.
While TV executives will likely dismiss the claims as flawed, the study is remarkable for another reason: it's the product of a $5 million-a-year, industry-funded research group whose mission is to help radio station owners combat the growing popularity of subscription-based satellite radio and the iPod portable music player, among other competitive new technologies.
The fact that the research firm even exists is a sign of how times have changed for the lumbering AM-FM radio industry, which is expected to see advertising dollars grow just 2 to 4 percent in 2005. Its backers include the country's two largest radio operators, Clear Channel (Research) and Infinity Broadcasting, owned by Viacom (Research).
"The industry used to compete with itself," said Gary Fries, the president of the Radio Advertising Bureau and co-chairman of the research group, the Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab.
Today radio station owners recognize that their main threats are external. "Now they're trying to make sure they all have a seat at the (advertisers') table," said Fries.
Magazines: it's hip to be square
Other traditional media at risk of being drowned out by the din over the Internet and television are suddenly looking a lot scrappier.
Magazine publishers, still not fully recovered from a severe slump in 2001, have signed off on a three-year, $40 million marketing campaign that is a first for their fiercely competitive industry.
Last month the magazines boldly crashed a major TV party: the annual "upfront" in New York during which networks present their fall lineups and fete advertisers.
As ad execs arrived to watch ABC showcase its coming shows in the hopes of luring advertisers, they were greeted by groups of magazine reps in bright-colored T-shirts blaring "We'd be LOST without our magazines" and "We're DESPERATE for our magazines" -- puns on ABC hits "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost."
And the magazine industry ran ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and various trade publications earlier this year using fake magazine covers to convey the message that the industry is here to stay.
Nina Link, president of the Magazine Publishers of America, the industry group running the marketing campaign, said a joint effort of this magnitude is new to the magazine world. "In terms of scale, this is huge," she said. "It is a very, very important step of an industry that has been very competitive."
Newspapers look for a common language
Several years ago the actress Meryl Streep and singer LL Cool J touted the virtues of newspaper reading in industry-sponsored ads similar to the milk industry's famous "Got Milk?" campaign.
Today, newspaper publishers think much more needs to be done. They're battling competition from the Internet, a circulation scandal, and the perception that they're stodgy and unappealing to young readers.
To address these threats, publishers are gearing up for a major ad campaign starting this fall, said John Kimball, chief marketing officer of the Newspaper Association of America.
A centerpiece of the effort: for the first time, a single message that newspaper sales teams can take to advertisers.
"How powerful would it be if all of the presentations being made by thousands of advertising sales people at newspapers across the country were all talking about the medium using the same words, the same data, and describing us in the same way?" said Kimball. "We think it could make difference."
Newspaper publishers are also planning an ad campaign for next year and to find a way to convince advertisers to look past current circulation measures, which they don't believe accurately reflect how many people read newspapers
"We want to surprise the advertising industry with the facts and truth about newspapers," said Kimball. He declined to estimate the costs of the campaign, but said direct expenses would come directly out of his budget.
Looking for the payoff
To be sure, newspapers, radio and magazines still control roughly half of the $180 billion-plus U.S. advertising market. But their growth rates are among the slowest of all major media, causing concerns that they will lose out to the faster-growing Internet and cable television in the long run.
Kimball and his radio and magazine counterparts see the image makeovers as a way to shed their industries' reputation for stodginess and to refute the impression that their industries are doomed by new technologies.
Radio, for instance, is touting its move toward high-definition radio. The industry is also embracing a popular new practice called "podcasting," in which users can download popular radio shows onto their computer hard drives or a portable device.
Newspaper and magazine publishers are looking to tap digital technologies for new revenues streams, including providing content to cell phones and other wireless devices.
Newspapers, criticized for failing to see the revenue potential of online job searches and other forms of classified advertising, are taking business risks now that they never did before, said Kimball.
Changing perceptions will take time and money, said Link of Magazine Publishers of America. But she thinks the image makeover will work.
"I think it's a time of great transition and a time of great opportunity," she said.