by Brian Heater
Don't let it be said that Google has given up on the iPhone. They may be plugging away at their own mobile OS, Android, but the company has just bestowed Apple's popular smartphone with the gift of hearing.
The thing is, this isn't new. Not by a long shot. But this is a story with the buzzwords "Google" and "Apple" in it, and people seem to automatically think anything with "Google" and "Apple" in it is magic, like fairies and pie.
Here's the deal: a free app, developed by the search giant, is available for free through the iTunes app store. It converts spoken questions into Google searches.
The most practical application for the service--at least at the moment--is local search. Questions spoken into the phone will bring up local results in moments, as the phone determines its location.
As The New York Times points out, Google's chief competitors Yahoo and Microsoft already offer similar voice services, as well as other carriers.
And, of course, local search, as ever, offers a unique targeted opportunity for advertisers. But mobile voice search isn't a new feature, and it doesn't require a high-end phone. For instance, V-Enable's voice search app is on almost every MetroPCS phone (branded as Metro411).
MetroPCS sells low-end phones with discount, unlimited plans. Yahoo's OneSearch with Voice already runs on BlackBerry and some Nokia phones. And Nuance, for years a leader in voice recognition technology, has an "Open Voice Search" product that may be coming to several major carriers in the very near future.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
YouTube to play full-length TV shows
By Joshua Hill
In the most recent attempt to squeeze money out of YouTube traffic, Google unveiled full-length episodes of some fan favorite TV shows. "We are starting to test full-length programming on YouTube, beginning with some fan favorites requested by you," the YouTube blog announced.
The full-length episodes will be available in traditional view as well as YouTube’s new “theatre view,” which seems to play upon the belief that people want fake curtains (and a ‘lights off’ gimmick) framing their online video watching. In addition, Google is playing around with a new advertising method, playing 15-second ads at the beginning of the video. Ads also roll in during playback and after.
“As we test this new format, we also want to ensure that our partners have more options when it comes to advertising on their full-length TV shows,” YouTube said. "You may see in-stream video ads embedded in some of these episodes; this advertising format will only appear on premium content where you are most comfortable seeing such ads."
However, the full-length videos are not available for viewing outside the U.S. Non-U.S. users trying to access the videos are greeted with a note saying that “This video is not available in your country.”
It is somewhat surprising to us that it took Google and YouTube so long to integrate full-length videos, while other services, foremost Hulu.com, have positioned themselves as leading services in this segment.
Can Google and YouTube turn the new service into a goldmine? Time will tell.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Sinking shares could make Yahoo a target again (AP)
When Yahoo Inc. co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang spurned Microsoft Corp.'s rich buyout offer this spring, he promised brighter days in Sunnyvale were just over the horizon.
Now the market collapse has helped drive Yahoo's value to a fraction of what Microsoft originally bid. If Microsoft — or another buyer — were to float a new offer, the acquisition would come much cheaper, and Yahoo would likely be under even greater pressure to take it.
Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said Microsoft is much less likely to bid for all of Yahoo this time. Its search engine, No. 2 to Google Inc.'s, would likely be Microsoft's target.
Rosoff said Yahoo's pummeled stock price leaves time on Microsoft's side. The company can afford to throw money into its own Internet search operations and swoop in when Yahoo is finally strapped.
"I think they're looking at Yahoo as a rapidly declining asset," he said.
On Feb. 1, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, or $44.6 billion at the time, in a mixture of cash and stock. The offer marked a 62 percent premium to Yahoo's closing price of $19.18 the day before.
Microsoft later sweetened its bid to $33 per share, or $47.5 billion — an amount Yang and board chairman Roy Bostock said in May still undervalued Yahoo.
Since then, Yahoo's share price has been halved and analysts are seeing few bright spots as they slash expectations for Web display advertising, Yahoo's strength, in the coming quarters.
Microsoft's stock has been battered as well, but even at the shares' current level, Microsoft's original stock-and-cash bid for Yahoo would be worth about $37.1 billion to Yahoo shareholders. That's more twice Yahoo's current market value.
Having missed that opportunity, many Yahoo shareholders would love to see another one emerge now.
Mithras Capital, a Napa, Calif.-based investment fund that said it holds more than 1.9 million Yahoo shares, this week urged Microsoft to come back with an offer to buy just Yahoo's search business for $10.3 billion, a tactic that failed for the software maker in July.
"It is imperative for the Yahoo board to embrace this proposal as the best outcome for long-suffering Yahoo shareholders," Mithras' Mark Nelson wrote in a statement.
The bigger question is whether Microsoft is still interested, even though its plan to pour more resources into Web search and online advertising have not borne fruit. And given the lack of support for a deal among Yahoo executives and employees, regulatory uncertainty that will last at least through the November elections and the economic turmoil, a deal could simply take too long, Rosoff said, giving Google time to grow even stronger.
Shares of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo fell 62 cents, or 4.9 percent, to $12.03 on Friday, and Microsoft's stock sank 82 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $21.48.
Now the market collapse has helped drive Yahoo's value to a fraction of what Microsoft originally bid. If Microsoft — or another buyer — were to float a new offer, the acquisition would come much cheaper, and Yahoo would likely be under even greater pressure to take it.
Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said Microsoft is much less likely to bid for all of Yahoo this time. Its search engine, No. 2 to Google Inc.'s, would likely be Microsoft's target.
Rosoff said Yahoo's pummeled stock price leaves time on Microsoft's side. The company can afford to throw money into its own Internet search operations and swoop in when Yahoo is finally strapped.
"I think they're looking at Yahoo as a rapidly declining asset," he said.
On Feb. 1, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, or $44.6 billion at the time, in a mixture of cash and stock. The offer marked a 62 percent premium to Yahoo's closing price of $19.18 the day before.
Microsoft later sweetened its bid to $33 per share, or $47.5 billion — an amount Yang and board chairman Roy Bostock said in May still undervalued Yahoo.
Since then, Yahoo's share price has been halved and analysts are seeing few bright spots as they slash expectations for Web display advertising, Yahoo's strength, in the coming quarters.
Microsoft's stock has been battered as well, but even at the shares' current level, Microsoft's original stock-and-cash bid for Yahoo would be worth about $37.1 billion to Yahoo shareholders. That's more twice Yahoo's current market value.
Having missed that opportunity, many Yahoo shareholders would love to see another one emerge now.
Mithras Capital, a Napa, Calif.-based investment fund that said it holds more than 1.9 million Yahoo shares, this week urged Microsoft to come back with an offer to buy just Yahoo's search business for $10.3 billion, a tactic that failed for the software maker in July.
"It is imperative for the Yahoo board to embrace this proposal as the best outcome for long-suffering Yahoo shareholders," Mithras' Mark Nelson wrote in a statement.
The bigger question is whether Microsoft is still interested, even though its plan to pour more resources into Web search and online advertising have not borne fruit. And given the lack of support for a deal among Yahoo executives and employees, regulatory uncertainty that will last at least through the November elections and the economic turmoil, a deal could simply take too long, Rosoff said, giving Google time to grow even stronger.
Shares of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo fell 62 cents, or 4.9 percent, to $12.03 on Friday, and Microsoft's stock sank 82 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $21.48.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Smartphone Success May Be in the Touch
By Judy Mottl
Handset designs that meet user needs will be market winners.
There's no debate that the touch screen is having a phenomenal impact on the smartphone market. Apple's iPhone finger-tap panel design is literally rattling the competitive smartphone industry into refreshing traditional small static screens and is driving handset innovations across the device from the keyboard to applications.
Now such a phenomenon may happen again, and possibly to a greater degree, as Research in Motion's BlackBerry Storm 9730'click technology' touch screen is viewed as an advancement on Apple's innovative design. And just like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), RIM's tenacity in taking its time in development and to get to market, to get it right out of the gate may pay bigger, according to one industry watcher.
The reason? RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) understands its user base just as well as Apple does, IDC analyst Ryan Reith told InternetNews.com. While many market watchers are already calling the Storm 9730, which RIM formally announced today, the biggest 'iPhone Killer,' Reith believes both smartphones will command impressive market segments.
"Smartphones are all similar but it's the touch screen that's the comparison point with these two devices," Reith said. "Apple and RIM both took their time but have different visions and different approaches," he explained.
Apple's vision, said Reith, was to provide an easy, enjoyable multimedia experience. The iPhone's multi-touch user interface lets users tap once to open applications and access functions, twice to reset the screen panel, and move icons around, and slide/swipe to browse music files, photos, e-mail and Web pages. For text, users tap on a keyboard that will magnify certain letters during activity to help avoid mistyping.
RIM's new touch screen mimics the look and feel and incorporate the 'click' bump of current BlackBerry keyboards. That provides users with a familiar experience, explained Reith. As another pundit noted in a report issued yesterday it provides "superior" typing accuracy as compared to the iPhone -- "leveraging a RIM hallmark" in the handset maker's push into the consumer market.
In typing the BlackBerry touch-screen is depressed "ever so slightly," according to a product press statement. Users experience a gentle “click,” similar to a physical keyboard, according to RIM. Users can also tap and slide screens for navigation needs.
Calls to RIM and Apple regarding touch screen strategy were not returned by press time.
"RIM has put precision into where the user's finger needs to be when typing," said Reith.
"I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong but RIM is pushing the next wave in this [design] area," he said. RIM went with its touch 'click' approach as testing revealed that iPhone touch and as swipe would frustrate RIM's heavy text user base. BlackBerry users are typically enterprise application users and that means much more text and e-mail use.
"What RIM did was make sure its touch screen fit the needs of its users, just as Apple did," said the analyst. "Both are sticking to the core fundamentals and the needs of their users," he added.
The fact that RIM is not deviating from what its loyal 'Crackberry' audience likes and wants could easily keep it ahead of Apple in the market race, and way ahead of newcomers like Google and its G1 Android-based HTC handset, said Reith.
"For example Google's G1 interface is going to change, as its users' needs come into play. BlackBerry already has the core foundation and is not giving up any efficiency, stability or security aspects in its design changes," said Reith.
"Yes, some will say the Storm is the number one iPhone competitor and see them as head to head," said the analyst. "But both have unique audiences and both are targeting those audiences."
Handset designs that meet user needs will be market winners.
There's no debate that the touch screen is having a phenomenal impact on the smartphone market. Apple's iPhone finger-tap panel design is literally rattling the competitive smartphone industry into refreshing traditional small static screens and is driving handset innovations across the device from the keyboard to applications.
Now such a phenomenon may happen again, and possibly to a greater degree, as Research in Motion's BlackBerry Storm 9730'click technology' touch screen is viewed as an advancement on Apple's innovative design. And just like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), RIM's tenacity in taking its time in development and to get to market, to get it right out of the gate may pay bigger, according to one industry watcher.
The reason? RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) understands its user base just as well as Apple does, IDC analyst Ryan Reith told InternetNews.com. While many market watchers are already calling the Storm 9730, which RIM formally announced today, the biggest 'iPhone Killer,' Reith believes both smartphones will command impressive market segments.
"Smartphones are all similar but it's the touch screen that's the comparison point with these two devices," Reith said. "Apple and RIM both took their time but have different visions and different approaches," he explained.
Apple's vision, said Reith, was to provide an easy, enjoyable multimedia experience. The iPhone's multi-touch user interface lets users tap once to open applications and access functions, twice to reset the screen panel, and move icons around, and slide/swipe to browse music files, photos, e-mail and Web pages. For text, users tap on a keyboard that will magnify certain letters during activity to help avoid mistyping.
RIM's new touch screen mimics the look and feel and incorporate the 'click' bump of current BlackBerry keyboards. That provides users with a familiar experience, explained Reith. As another pundit noted in a report issued yesterday it provides "superior" typing accuracy as compared to the iPhone -- "leveraging a RIM hallmark" in the handset maker's push into the consumer market.
In typing the BlackBerry touch-screen is depressed "ever so slightly," according to a product press statement. Users experience a gentle “click,” similar to a physical keyboard, according to RIM. Users can also tap and slide screens for navigation needs.
Calls to RIM and Apple regarding touch screen strategy were not returned by press time.
"RIM has put precision into where the user's finger needs to be when typing," said Reith.
"I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong but RIM is pushing the next wave in this [design] area," he said. RIM went with its touch 'click' approach as testing revealed that iPhone touch and as swipe would frustrate RIM's heavy text user base. BlackBerry users are typically enterprise application users and that means much more text and e-mail use.
"What RIM did was make sure its touch screen fit the needs of its users, just as Apple did," said the analyst. "Both are sticking to the core fundamentals and the needs of their users," he added.
The fact that RIM is not deviating from what its loyal 'Crackberry' audience likes and wants could easily keep it ahead of Apple in the market race, and way ahead of newcomers like Google and its G1 Android-based HTC handset, said Reith.
"For example Google's G1 interface is going to change, as its users' needs come into play. BlackBerry already has the core foundation and is not giving up any efficiency, stability or security aspects in its design changes," said Reith.
"Yes, some will say the Storm is the number one iPhone competitor and see them as head to head," said the analyst. "But both have unique audiences and both are targeting those audiences."
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Congress OKs bill to improve broadband access
By JOHN DUNBAR
Congress has passed legislation that will require the government to keep closer tabs on who has access to the Internet and who does not. Supporters hope the Broadband Data Improvement Act will help policymakers better identify areas of the country that are falling behind when it comes to high-speed Internet access.
The bill passed both houses of Congress, with the Senate approving a final version Tuesday on a voice vote.
Senate sponsor Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said the federal government has a responsibility to make sure Americans have access to the Internet, but "we cannot manage what we do not measure."
The Federal Communications Commission collects data on broadband use, but its methods have been criticized as outdated. The commission voted in March to greatly improve its data collection. Broadband providers will be required to provide subscription numbers by Census tract, speed and type of technology.
The legislation passed by Congress goes further. It requires the FCC to conduct consumer surveys of broadband use in urban, suburban and rural areas, as well as large and small business markets. Survey questions will include the cost of access and data transmission speeds.
The legislation requires the agency to compile a list of locales that lack broadband service and determine population and income levels in those areas.
The bill also requires the Census Bureau to add questions about Internet use on its survey. Residents will be asked whether they have a computer, whether they have Internet access and, if so, whether they have a dial-up or broadband connection.
It also orders the Government Accountability Office to study broadband speeds and costs and to compare the "availability and quality of broadband offerings" in the U.S. to other industrialized nations.
Such an analysis might provide some insight as to why the U.S. — the birthplace of the Internet — lags behind other developed countries in broadband usage. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks the U.S. 15th for broadband penetration.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who sponsored a similar bill that passed the House earlier this year, supported the legislation.
"This initiative will help us ascertain whether the nation is achieving its broadband policy goals because, unfortunately, our current knowledge on the state of broadband deployment, speed and affordability in the U.S. is grossly and inexcusably lacking," Markey said.
___
The bill is S. 1492.
___
On the Net:
Bill text: http://www.thomas.loc.gov
Congress has passed legislation that will require the government to keep closer tabs on who has access to the Internet and who does not. Supporters hope the Broadband Data Improvement Act will help policymakers better identify areas of the country that are falling behind when it comes to high-speed Internet access.
The bill passed both houses of Congress, with the Senate approving a final version Tuesday on a voice vote.
Senate sponsor Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said the federal government has a responsibility to make sure Americans have access to the Internet, but "we cannot manage what we do not measure."
The Federal Communications Commission collects data on broadband use, but its methods have been criticized as outdated. The commission voted in March to greatly improve its data collection. Broadband providers will be required to provide subscription numbers by Census tract, speed and type of technology.
The legislation passed by Congress goes further. It requires the FCC to conduct consumer surveys of broadband use in urban, suburban and rural areas, as well as large and small business markets. Survey questions will include the cost of access and data transmission speeds.
The legislation requires the agency to compile a list of locales that lack broadband service and determine population and income levels in those areas.
The bill also requires the Census Bureau to add questions about Internet use on its survey. Residents will be asked whether they have a computer, whether they have Internet access and, if so, whether they have a dial-up or broadband connection.
It also orders the Government Accountability Office to study broadband speeds and costs and to compare the "availability and quality of broadband offerings" in the U.S. to other industrialized nations.
Such an analysis might provide some insight as to why the U.S. — the birthplace of the Internet — lags behind other developed countries in broadband usage. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks the U.S. 15th for broadband penetration.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who sponsored a similar bill that passed the House earlier this year, supported the legislation.
"This initiative will help us ascertain whether the nation is achieving its broadband policy goals because, unfortunately, our current knowledge on the state of broadband deployment, speed and affordability in the U.S. is grossly and inexcusably lacking," Markey said.
___
The bill is S. 1492.
___
On the Net:
Bill text: http://www.thomas.loc.gov
Friday, September 26, 2008
More Americans watching video online
More Americans watching video online
by afp.com
The number of Americans watching video on their computers has doubled over the past year and growing numbers of younger viewers are enjoying movies and TV shows online, according to a study released Friday by ABI Research. The study found that the number of American consumers watching video streamed through a browser had soared over the past year, from 32 percent a year ago to 63 percent today.
ABI Research said growth in consumption of online video was due to a number of factors, including an increase in the amount of rich content available and more broadband connections.
"Consumers are changing their online habits quickly," ABI's Digital Home research director Michael Wolf said in a statement.
"Broadband speeds have continued to increase at the same time that Hollywood has decided online distribution is a legitimate monetization opportunity that will increase total return on their video assets, and expand audiences."
Much of the growth in the number of Americans watching video online was among younger viewers, the study found, but "consumers of all age groups (are) increasing the frequency and duration of their online video consumption."
It said that although there was increasing demand for both short- and long-form video it was mostly younger viewers who were watching movies or long-form television shows online.
"When asked if they watched long-form content in the form of TV shows or movies online, nearly half of those under 25, and 53 percent of those aged 25-29 indicate they do so once a month or more," ABI Research said.
"Today's younger consumers are developing habits that will mean drastic changes for the video entertainment market," said Wolf.
"Many consume a large percentage or even a majority of their video entertainment through online distribution today."
The study found that while some older viewers had experimented with watching long-form video online, "three quarters of those over 65 who watch video online responded that they have never watched TV shows or movies online."
New York-based ABI Research surveyed 985 online households for the study, asking consumers about their preferences in technology usage and entertainment consumption.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Google’s First Phone: The iPhone With More Buttons
By Saul Hansell
If the HTC’s new G1 cellphone, featuring Google’s Android software, were introduced two years ago, jaws would drop. But Apple’s iPhone already won the wows that go to the first small phone that is truly good at Web browsing. So the G1 offers some interesting evolution, but not a revolution in the concept.
After playing with the G1 for 20 minutes, my initial take is that the G1 is the PC to the iPhone’s Macintosh.
The G1, which is initially being offered exclusively through T-Mobile in the United States and Europe, has many more buttons on the front and many more options on the screens inside. That means that it takes longer to do the things you want to do most frequently, but you also have many more options at hand. For example, when you take a photo, the software asks you whether you want to keep it or delete it. The iPhone just saves all your pictures and you have to go back and delete the ones you don’t want later. (There may be a way to change that setting on the G1, but I didn’t get around to looking at the configuration options. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of them. It’s that sort of device.)
Physically, it is a little narrower than the iPhone, but thicker. That means the screen is a little smaller. I also found that the plastic case feels a little cheap. The biggest differentiator is the G1’s slide-out keyboard, some might find easier to type on than the iPhone’s virtual keyboard.
Some of the software in I played with seemed nice, like the mapping software, which is built on Google Maps and very clearly displayed travel directions. But the phone doesn’t yet give turn-by-turn directions the way a car GPS device does, which is also a well-noted flaw of the iPhone. Neither does the phone record video, another feature some people miss on Apple’s smartphone.
One area where the G1 falls far short of the iPhone is streaming media. The software supports neither Adobe’s Flash — the standard for Web video — nor Apple’s QuickTime. Google did write a special interface so the phone can play videos from Google’s YouTube service. The issue with both Flash and QuickTime appears to be royalties. Neither Google, nor HTC, nor T-Mobile want to pay for this software. If Adobe or Apple wants to release a video player for the phone, they are welcome to, a T-Mobile spokesman said.
It is a bit hard to evaluate the true capabilities of the phone because so much of its potential is what it offers to third-party application developers. In six months, we may see if people can make the G1 do things that no other phone can.
For now, it seems like a very interesting phone for people who really want to type on a little keyboard. But until the value of Android’s slightly clunky flexibility proves out, I suspect many people will prefer the polished simplicity of the iPhone.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Intel Lifts Curtain On Six-Core Server Chips
By Damon Poeter
Intel launched seven new Xeon 7400 Series server processors Monday, including the chip giant's first six-core chip, promising that the devices are better suited for virtualization than Xeon 7300 products already on the market and will deliver performance increases of nearly 50 percent over the previous generation of server processors. Although a good deal of industry interest in the 7400 Series has focused on the six-core processor, at Monday morning's San Francisco launch event, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel said surprisingly little about the $2,729, 2.13GHz chip listed as Xeon L7455. Instead, Intel focused almost entirely on pitching the virtualization advantages of its newest Xeon processors.
Describing the current transition in server virtualization from largely testing and development installations to full-on production deployments, Intel's Tom Kilroy argued that enterprise data centers are entering what he called the "Virtualization 2.0" phase, and the Xeon 7400 Series, formerly code named Dunnington, will be a key to getting there.
"With new features such as additional cores, large shared caches and advanced virtualization technologies, the Xeon 7400 series delivers record-breaking performance that will lead enterprises into the next wave of virtualization deployments," said Kilroy, VP and GM of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group.
The new Xeon series chips have up to 16MB of shared L3 cache, come in both quad-core and six-core flavors, feature 45nm process technology, include a low-voltage 50W version for blade configurations, and feature Intel's VT FlexMigration technology, which eases backwards and forwards VM migration across previous Core-based hardware platforms through to the upcoming Nehalem-based MP server products set to be released in 2009.
Intel describes the six-core product as an "x86-compatible 65-watt version which translates to just under 11 watts per core." The fastest chip in the 45nm Xeon 7400 Series is a quad-core 2.66GHz version, listed at the same $2,729 price as the six-core product.
The specs and prices for Xeon 7400 MP Series processors listed by Intel Sunday are:
- X7460 (16MB L3 cache, 2.66GHz, 130W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- E7450 (12MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,301
- E7440 (16MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
- E7430 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,391
- E7420 (8MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,177
- L7455 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 65W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- L7445 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 50W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
Intel launched seven new Xeon 7400 Series server processors Monday, including the chip giant's first six-core chip, promising that the devices are better suited for virtualization than Xeon 7300 products already on the market and will deliver performance increases of nearly 50 percent over the previous generation of server processors. Although a good deal of industry interest in the 7400 Series has focused on the six-core processor, at Monday morning's San Francisco launch event, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel said surprisingly little about the $2,729, 2.13GHz chip listed as Xeon L7455. Instead, Intel focused almost entirely on pitching the virtualization advantages of its newest Xeon processors.
Describing the current transition in server virtualization from largely testing and development installations to full-on production deployments, Intel's Tom Kilroy argued that enterprise data centers are entering what he called the "Virtualization 2.0" phase, and the Xeon 7400 Series, formerly code named Dunnington, will be a key to getting there.
"With new features such as additional cores, large shared caches and advanced virtualization technologies, the Xeon 7400 series delivers record-breaking performance that will lead enterprises into the next wave of virtualization deployments," said Kilroy, VP and GM of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group.
The new Xeon series chips have up to 16MB of shared L3 cache, come in both quad-core and six-core flavors, feature 45nm process technology, include a low-voltage 50W version for blade configurations, and feature Intel's VT FlexMigration technology, which eases backwards and forwards VM migration across previous Core-based hardware platforms through to the upcoming Nehalem-based MP server products set to be released in 2009.
Intel describes the six-core product as an "x86-compatible 65-watt version which translates to just under 11 watts per core." The fastest chip in the 45nm Xeon 7400 Series is a quad-core 2.66GHz version, listed at the same $2,729 price as the six-core product.
The specs and prices for Xeon 7400 MP Series processors listed by Intel Sunday are:
- X7460 (16MB L3 cache, 2.66GHz, 130W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- E7450 (12MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,301
- E7440 (16MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
- E7430 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,391
- E7420 (8MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,177
- L7455 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 65W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- L7445 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 50W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
Friday, September 12, 2008
Google and the SEO Benefits of Affiliate Tracking Links
by CarstenCumbrowski
Brian Klais wrote in June, 2008 in his post “Amazon’s Secret to Dominating SERP Results” at the Natural Search Blog about how Amazon.com leverages the inbound links of their vast number of affiliates for their organic SEO advantage by 301-redirecting BOTs for the URLs that include the affiliate tracking code to the single primary URL of the same page that they want to be indexed by the search engines.
Some folks think that what Amazon.com is doing violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines, because what they do is a special kind of cloaking, but I would argue that. The webpage where the bots and the user end up are the same. Amazon is not deceiving anybody, not the users and not the bots either. If you 301 only bots and not everybody who access your site via YourDomain.com to www.YourDomain.com to prevent duplicate indexing of your website homepage and PageRank leakage, is that cloaking? Is it unethical? I am sure that most people would agree with me when I say that it is not. So technically everything should be cool and peachy, or shouldn’t it?
Well, there is another aspect to the whole thing. I spent almost the entire year 2007 to get an answer my question whether affiliate links are considered paid links by Google or not and if they are, should they be “no-followed” by the affiliate publisher to avoid potential penalties (for “selling” links) by Google, or not?
After numerous posts here at SearchEngineJournal.com and ReveNews.com, Matt Cutts finally was so kind to provide a response in December 2007 in the comment section of my post about Matt’s “paid reviews” examples. I made it easy for him and provided pre-set answers to my question in multiple choice formats.
Does Google consider affiliate links to be paid links?
Yes No It depends We are not sure yet Matt’s Answer was:
“Hi Carsten, the short answer is 3 depending on the affiliate link.
Here’s a slightly longer answer: I wrote about this a bit on our webmaster help group discussion at http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/msg/7db86afb08801278where I said
“we’ve spent most of our time talking about paying money for text links or paid posts, because Google does a pretty good job of detecting and handling things like affiliate links or banner ads. In addition, many banner ads (whether they be the 468×80 kind or the 125×125 kind) end up doing at least one redirect through a 302. If you’re a site owner, one rule of thumb I’d recommend is that if you’re being directly paid to place a link, that link shouldn’t affect search engines, but we haven’t talked much about those advertising banners because Google detects and handles such banner ads quite well.”
The fact is that many affiliate links go through several redirects and don’t flow PageRank, so Google wouldn’t be concerned with such links at all. However, if your affiliate link were a direct static link that passes PageRank and you get paid for even placing that affiliate link on your site whether or not someone clicks on it, that would look pretty close to a paid link to us.”
The last sentence seems to provide the answer to the question and validate the legitimacy of Amazons SEO tactics. It also shows how little Google (or at least Matt) understands about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is performance marketing. Affiliates are not getting paid to place a link on their website. They only get paid for results. That is the whole point of this marketing channel. Affiliates are certainly not paid anything for placing one type of tracking link on their site over another. It is not uncommon that affiliates get an incentive for better placement or special exposure on a popular publisher website, but that deal has absolutely nothing to do with SEO. The incentive is often a higher commission rate across the board for all referrals and seldom a one-time cash bonus.
Furthermore, for advertisers to offer two different sets of tracking links, one set that does not pass PageRank (e.g. a traditional affiliate network provided link via Commission Junction, LinkShare or Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network) and a second set that does pass PageRank would create all kinds of new problems for the advertiser. Offering this second set of links for the sole purpose of SEO does not outweigh the complications and issues that come along with it. Offering a second set (or third or fourth) is being done by some advertisers, but that has usually many other reasons. Any SEO benefit would only be an afterthought or added bonus. The reason for the additional sets is usually the increase of reach to new and/or different group of publishers, which the advertiser cannot easily reach via his existing tracking and reporting platform.
However, there is an entirely different trend that should be of the concern of Google and that is the increase of affiliate tracking platforms that offer to advertisers not only the means to track referrals and manage affiliate publishers and their payments, but benefits for SEO purposes, by leveraging the inbound link power from the publisher websites as a special bonus. This bonus is not hard to implement from a technological point of view. Having tracking links (and tracking cookies) managed by the advertiser on his website requires more technical expertise from the advertiser for the implementation of the tracking platform, but the benefits beyond just SEO make this extra investment worthwhile for advertisers who can afford it.
LinkShare, one of the oldest affiliate networks always required this kind of expertise from their advertisers, which kept the setup cost for the LinkShare solution considerably high compared to the low cost, easy to implement “pixel tracking” solutions offered by competitors of LinkShare. LinkShare’s tracking links don’t provide any SEO benefit, because it was not thought about that back in 1996 when they developed their core tracking platform. This shortcoming could be changed fairly easy though, if LinkShare decides one day that this provides value for their advertisers and gives them a competitive advantage over its major competitors CJ and Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network.
I wrote a long article about the technology behind affiliate tracking at ReveNews.com back in April, 2008, if you would like to learn more about this subject.
Now that Google became a player in the affiliate marketing space themselves via their acquisition of DoubleClick, where they got the affiliate network Performics, which was owned by DoubleClick as a bonus. Google decided to split off the SEM part of Performics and sell it, but to keep the affiliate network part, which they re-branded to Google Affiliate Network not too long ago. I hope this will provide Google with a better understanding about the affiliate marketing industry.
The Amazon.com example is only the tip of the iceberg. I told Matt in a response to his comment that there is more going on than he seemed to be aware of, specifically the trend to provide affiliate tracking solutions that are SEO friendly at the same time. Affiliates are not paid money for putting up a link on their websites, but they (might, or they at least hope to) have a financial interest in putting up this link, because they want people to click on that link AND they want even more that the user takes a desired action at the advertisers website that will make them a commission. In contradiction to AdSense or other CPM or PPC based advertising is it necessary that the user converts, before the affiliate gets paid a single dime for their efforts and links on their websites.
This is the reason why it does not make sense to add irrelevant links on your affiliate website, because you can have millions of impressions and thousands of click-throughs and still don’t get a penny worth of commission for it, if the people who see the Ad and maybe click on it are not the right target for the offer and simply do not convert.
So the answer to my question should be a clear “NO“. This would end the debate once and for all. This subject is still on the minds of advertisers and publishers alike, because Google refuses to be clear about it.
A discussion at WebMasterWorld.com forums from December, 2007 shows that webmasters are uncertain and worried about what Google makes out of all of this, so I am not making it up that there are valid concerns that should be addressed by Google officially rather sooner than later, unless the folks in Mountain View prefer the strategy of deception, doubt, uncertainty and fear to deal with this issue as they do in the broader paid links issue already.
Since Google is now part of the affiliate marketing “family”, I hope that their attitude will change and that clear answers will be given to webmasters that they do not have to worry about possible Google penalties, if they do something that makes sense from an affiliate business point of view.
Google and Affiliates have the same goal, providing the most relevant results (and ads) to their users that they convert and are happy, because if they do a poor job, both will be put out of business in the long run.
Brian Klais wrote in June, 2008 in his post “Amazon’s Secret to Dominating SERP Results” at the Natural Search Blog about how Amazon.com leverages the inbound links of their vast number of affiliates for their organic SEO advantage by 301-redirecting BOTs for the URLs that include the affiliate tracking code to the single primary URL of the same page that they want to be indexed by the search engines.
Some folks think that what Amazon.com is doing violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines, because what they do is a special kind of cloaking, but I would argue that. The webpage where the bots and the user end up are the same. Amazon is not deceiving anybody, not the users and not the bots either. If you 301 only bots and not everybody who access your site via YourDomain.com to www.YourDomain.com to prevent duplicate indexing of your website homepage and PageRank leakage, is that cloaking? Is it unethical? I am sure that most people would agree with me when I say that it is not. So technically everything should be cool and peachy, or shouldn’t it?
Well, there is another aspect to the whole thing. I spent almost the entire year 2007 to get an answer my question whether affiliate links are considered paid links by Google or not and if they are, should they be “no-followed” by the affiliate publisher to avoid potential penalties (for “selling” links) by Google, or not?
After numerous posts here at SearchEngineJournal.com and ReveNews.com, Matt Cutts finally was so kind to provide a response in December 2007 in the comment section of my post about Matt’s “paid reviews” examples. I made it easy for him and provided pre-set answers to my question in multiple choice formats.
Does Google consider affiliate links to be paid links?
Yes No It depends We are not sure yet Matt’s Answer was:
“Hi Carsten, the short answer is 3 depending on the affiliate link.
Here’s a slightly longer answer: I wrote about this a bit on our webmaster help group discussion at http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/msg/7db86afb08801278where I said
“we’ve spent most of our time talking about paying money for text links or paid posts, because Google does a pretty good job of detecting and handling things like affiliate links or banner ads. In addition, many banner ads (whether they be the 468×80 kind or the 125×125 kind) end up doing at least one redirect through a 302. If you’re a site owner, one rule of thumb I’d recommend is that if you’re being directly paid to place a link, that link shouldn’t affect search engines, but we haven’t talked much about those advertising banners because Google detects and handles such banner ads quite well.”
The fact is that many affiliate links go through several redirects and don’t flow PageRank, so Google wouldn’t be concerned with such links at all. However, if your affiliate link were a direct static link that passes PageRank and you get paid for even placing that affiliate link on your site whether or not someone clicks on it, that would look pretty close to a paid link to us.”
The last sentence seems to provide the answer to the question and validate the legitimacy of Amazons SEO tactics. It also shows how little Google (or at least Matt) understands about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is performance marketing. Affiliates are not getting paid to place a link on their website. They only get paid for results. That is the whole point of this marketing channel. Affiliates are certainly not paid anything for placing one type of tracking link on their site over another. It is not uncommon that affiliates get an incentive for better placement or special exposure on a popular publisher website, but that deal has absolutely nothing to do with SEO. The incentive is often a higher commission rate across the board for all referrals and seldom a one-time cash bonus.
Furthermore, for advertisers to offer two different sets of tracking links, one set that does not pass PageRank (e.g. a traditional affiliate network provided link via Commission Junction, LinkShare or Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network) and a second set that does pass PageRank would create all kinds of new problems for the advertiser. Offering this second set of links for the sole purpose of SEO does not outweigh the complications and issues that come along with it. Offering a second set (or third or fourth) is being done by some advertisers, but that has usually many other reasons. Any SEO benefit would only be an afterthought or added bonus. The reason for the additional sets is usually the increase of reach to new and/or different group of publishers, which the advertiser cannot easily reach via his existing tracking and reporting platform.
However, there is an entirely different trend that should be of the concern of Google and that is the increase of affiliate tracking platforms that offer to advertisers not only the means to track referrals and manage affiliate publishers and their payments, but benefits for SEO purposes, by leveraging the inbound link power from the publisher websites as a special bonus. This bonus is not hard to implement from a technological point of view. Having tracking links (and tracking cookies) managed by the advertiser on his website requires more technical expertise from the advertiser for the implementation of the tracking platform, but the benefits beyond just SEO make this extra investment worthwhile for advertisers who can afford it.
LinkShare, one of the oldest affiliate networks always required this kind of expertise from their advertisers, which kept the setup cost for the LinkShare solution considerably high compared to the low cost, easy to implement “pixel tracking” solutions offered by competitors of LinkShare. LinkShare’s tracking links don’t provide any SEO benefit, because it was not thought about that back in 1996 when they developed their core tracking platform. This shortcoming could be changed fairly easy though, if LinkShare decides one day that this provides value for their advertisers and gives them a competitive advantage over its major competitors CJ and Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network.
I wrote a long article about the technology behind affiliate tracking at ReveNews.com back in April, 2008, if you would like to learn more about this subject.
Now that Google became a player in the affiliate marketing space themselves via their acquisition of DoubleClick, where they got the affiliate network Performics, which was owned by DoubleClick as a bonus. Google decided to split off the SEM part of Performics and sell it, but to keep the affiliate network part, which they re-branded to Google Affiliate Network not too long ago. I hope this will provide Google with a better understanding about the affiliate marketing industry.
The Amazon.com example is only the tip of the iceberg. I told Matt in a response to his comment that there is more going on than he seemed to be aware of, specifically the trend to provide affiliate tracking solutions that are SEO friendly at the same time. Affiliates are not paid money for putting up a link on their websites, but they (might, or they at least hope to) have a financial interest in putting up this link, because they want people to click on that link AND they want even more that the user takes a desired action at the advertisers website that will make them a commission. In contradiction to AdSense or other CPM or PPC based advertising is it necessary that the user converts, before the affiliate gets paid a single dime for their efforts and links on their websites.
This is the reason why it does not make sense to add irrelevant links on your affiliate website, because you can have millions of impressions and thousands of click-throughs and still don’t get a penny worth of commission for it, if the people who see the Ad and maybe click on it are not the right target for the offer and simply do not convert.
So the answer to my question should be a clear “NO“. This would end the debate once and for all. This subject is still on the minds of advertisers and publishers alike, because Google refuses to be clear about it.
A discussion at WebMasterWorld.com forums from December, 2007 shows that webmasters are uncertain and worried about what Google makes out of all of this, so I am not making it up that there are valid concerns that should be addressed by Google officially rather sooner than later, unless the folks in Mountain View prefer the strategy of deception, doubt, uncertainty and fear to deal with this issue as they do in the broader paid links issue already.
Since Google is now part of the affiliate marketing “family”, I hope that their attitude will change and that clear answers will be given to webmasters that they do not have to worry about possible Google penalties, if they do something that makes sense from an affiliate business point of view.
Google and Affiliates have the same goal, providing the most relevant results (and ads) to their users that they convert and are happy, because if they do a poor job, both will be put out of business in the long run.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Google Offers Web Searchers, Chrome Users More Privacy
By Thomas Claburn
The previous 18-month retention policy has been whittled down to address regulatory concerns.
Moving to address privacy concerns, Google on Monday said it will reduce the amount of time it keeps server log data.
More Internet InsightsWhite PapersSmall Business Web Design Guide Part I: SEO Tips for Small Business Websites Simple Tricks To Ace the Subnetting Portion of Any Certification Exam "We'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months," said Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath, and software engineer Alma Whitten in a jointly authored blog post. "We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users." Google also said it will change the way its Google Suggest feature works to make the service more private.
Google Suggest proposes possible search term refinements as Google users type their queries. It is available in Google Chrome, Google's new Web browser, as well as in Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Search for the iPhone, and Mozilla's Firefox.
To read what the user is typing and respond to it, Google Suggest routes typed input to Google, without any affirmative action on the user's part, like hitting the "enter" key. Ninety-eight percent of the time, Google says it does not record any of this input. But 2% of Google Suggest input gets stored and logged "to monitor and improve the service." The information retained includes the user's IP address, through which is it usually possible to identify the user.
Google insists that it needs to retain certain information to improve search and security. But Urs Holzle, Google's senior VP of operations, in a blog post said that in the case of Google Suggest "it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately."
"[G]iven the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use," said Holzle. "This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month."
Since last year, when regulators and policymakers began questioning Google's privacy practices in earnest and competitors' privacy initiatives made Google's efforts look half-hearted, Google has looked like a company on the defensive.
As recently as June, a coalition of consumer and privacy groups published an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt asking Google to place a privacy link on its home page, as required by California law. When Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, announced that Google had decided to add a privacy link to Google's home page after all, she noted that Google's co-founders would only agree to the change if the number of words on the home page remained unchanged. The deciding factor thus was technical -- minimizing page load time -- rather than customer respect or legal compliance.
But with Monday's announcements, Google appears to be more willing to engage on the issue of privacy. Perhaps that will be enough to keep regulators at bay.
The previous 18-month retention policy has been whittled down to address regulatory concerns.
Moving to address privacy concerns, Google on Monday said it will reduce the amount of time it keeps server log data.
More Internet InsightsWhite PapersSmall Business Web Design Guide Part I: SEO Tips for Small Business Websites Simple Tricks To Ace the Subnetting Portion of Any Certification Exam "We'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months," said Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath, and software engineer Alma Whitten in a jointly authored blog post. "We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users." Google also said it will change the way its Google Suggest feature works to make the service more private.
Google Suggest proposes possible search term refinements as Google users type their queries. It is available in Google Chrome, Google's new Web browser, as well as in Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Search for the iPhone, and Mozilla's Firefox.
To read what the user is typing and respond to it, Google Suggest routes typed input to Google, without any affirmative action on the user's part, like hitting the "enter" key. Ninety-eight percent of the time, Google says it does not record any of this input. But 2% of Google Suggest input gets stored and logged "to monitor and improve the service." The information retained includes the user's IP address, through which is it usually possible to identify the user.
Google insists that it needs to retain certain information to improve search and security. But Urs Holzle, Google's senior VP of operations, in a blog post said that in the case of Google Suggest "it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately."
"[G]iven the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use," said Holzle. "This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month."
Since last year, when regulators and policymakers began questioning Google's privacy practices in earnest and competitors' privacy initiatives made Google's efforts look half-hearted, Google has looked like a company on the defensive.
As recently as June, a coalition of consumer and privacy groups published an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt asking Google to place a privacy link on its home page, as required by California law. When Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, announced that Google had decided to add a privacy link to Google's home page after all, she noted that Google's co-founders would only agree to the change if the number of words on the home page remained unchanged. The deciding factor thus was technical -- minimizing page load time -- rather than customer respect or legal compliance.
But with Monday's announcements, Google appears to be more willing to engage on the issue of privacy. Perhaps that will be enough to keep regulators at bay.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Most Sensitive Data on Government Laptops Unencrypted
by Grant Gross
Only 30 percent of sensitive information stored on U.S. government laptops and mobile devices, including the personal information of U.S. residents, was encrypted a year ago, despite a series of data breaches at government agencies in recent years, according to an auditor's report.
The report, by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, found that 70 percent of sensitive information held on laptops and mobile devices at 24 major U.S. agencies was unencrypted as of last September. The GAO report defined several types of data as sensitive, including personal medical records, other personal information, law enforcement data and records essential for homeland security.
"While all agencies have initiated efforts to deploy encryption technologies, none had documented comprehensive plans to guide encryption implementation activities," the report said. "As a result federal information may remain at increased risk of unauthorized disclosure, loss, and modification."
The report follows a series of security mishaps by U.S. government agencies in recent years. In March 2007, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service reported that 490 laptops went missing or were stolen in a three-year period. It was likely that many of those laptops contained personal information about U.S. taxpayers, according to an IRS auditor's report.
In September 2006, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that 1,137 laptops were lost or stolen since 2001, with 249 of them containing some personal data. Other U.S. agencies also reported missing or stolen laptops.
In May 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported that a laptop and hard drive containing personal information of 26.5 million military veterans and their spouses was stolen from the home of an employee at the agency. Law enforcement officers recovered the hardware, and the agency began encrypting its laptops later that year.
The GAO report notes that several laws, including the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002, require agencies to protect their data. In addition, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) first recommended in 2006, then required in May 2007, that agencies encrypt all sensitive data on mobile computers.
But the OMB mandate and the GAO report largely miss a larger need for information security in the U.S. government, said Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of PGP, a vendor of encryption and other security products, in an interview. The U.S. government needs to focus on a broader approach to cybersecurity, including better protection of data on government networks, he said.
"When are we going to get serious about protecting data -- role-based and policy-based encryption, not just device encryption?" he said. "Until we're serious about taking a strategic view of data ... we're not going to have a big impact."
Even if laptops are encrypted, the government still faces security problems with removable media such as thumb drives, he added. And many U.S. agencies face challenges with finding time to encrypt thousands of laptops and with managing encryption keys once devices are encrypted, he said.
Many government devices may be too old to use recent encryption technology, and government workers may be using nonstandard devices for accessing sensitive information, Dunkelberger added. With all those issues, Dunkelberger said he's not surprised by the GAO report.
The U.S. government has "very well-intentioned mandates to secure data, and yet, the way they've gone about it is kind of a fallacy," Dunkelberger added. "The idea that you can send out a circular from OMB and suddenly, everything magically gets fixed ... is a completely wrong expectation."
Two democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee said they were disappointed with U.S. agency encryption efforts. The committee announced the GAO report late Monday.
"Encryption is not an option, it is a mandate," Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the committee, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, I'm not surprised that despite mandates by OMB, the federal government is only 30 percent of the way there. Making the right investments in cybersecurity today will keep us from paying dearly in the long run."
Federal agencies "lag far behind the private sector" in protecting and encrypting data, Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, added in a statement. "I'm concerned that our government is not moving fast enough in its efforts to secure its systems and procedures," she added.
Only 30 percent of sensitive information stored on U.S. government laptops and mobile devices, including the personal information of U.S. residents, was encrypted a year ago, despite a series of data breaches at government agencies in recent years, according to an auditor's report.
The report, by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, found that 70 percent of sensitive information held on laptops and mobile devices at 24 major U.S. agencies was unencrypted as of last September. The GAO report defined several types of data as sensitive, including personal medical records, other personal information, law enforcement data and records essential for homeland security.
"While all agencies have initiated efforts to deploy encryption technologies, none had documented comprehensive plans to guide encryption implementation activities," the report said. "As a result federal information may remain at increased risk of unauthorized disclosure, loss, and modification."
The report follows a series of security mishaps by U.S. government agencies in recent years. In March 2007, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service reported that 490 laptops went missing or were stolen in a three-year period. It was likely that many of those laptops contained personal information about U.S. taxpayers, according to an IRS auditor's report.
In September 2006, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that 1,137 laptops were lost or stolen since 2001, with 249 of them containing some personal data. Other U.S. agencies also reported missing or stolen laptops.
In May 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported that a laptop and hard drive containing personal information of 26.5 million military veterans and their spouses was stolen from the home of an employee at the agency. Law enforcement officers recovered the hardware, and the agency began encrypting its laptops later that year.
The GAO report notes that several laws, including the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002, require agencies to protect their data. In addition, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) first recommended in 2006, then required in May 2007, that agencies encrypt all sensitive data on mobile computers.
But the OMB mandate and the GAO report largely miss a larger need for information security in the U.S. government, said Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of PGP, a vendor of encryption and other security products, in an interview. The U.S. government needs to focus on a broader approach to cybersecurity, including better protection of data on government networks, he said.
"When are we going to get serious about protecting data -- role-based and policy-based encryption, not just device encryption?" he said. "Until we're serious about taking a strategic view of data ... we're not going to have a big impact."
Even if laptops are encrypted, the government still faces security problems with removable media such as thumb drives, he added. And many U.S. agencies face challenges with finding time to encrypt thousands of laptops and with managing encryption keys once devices are encrypted, he said.
Many government devices may be too old to use recent encryption technology, and government workers may be using nonstandard devices for accessing sensitive information, Dunkelberger added. With all those issues, Dunkelberger said he's not surprised by the GAO report.
The U.S. government has "very well-intentioned mandates to secure data, and yet, the way they've gone about it is kind of a fallacy," Dunkelberger added. "The idea that you can send out a circular from OMB and suddenly, everything magically gets fixed ... is a completely wrong expectation."
Two democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee said they were disappointed with U.S. agency encryption efforts. The committee announced the GAO report late Monday.
"Encryption is not an option, it is a mandate," Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the committee, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, I'm not surprised that despite mandates by OMB, the federal government is only 30 percent of the way there. Making the right investments in cybersecurity today will keep us from paying dearly in the long run."
Federal agencies "lag far behind the private sector" in protecting and encrypting data, Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, added in a statement. "I'm concerned that our government is not moving fast enough in its efforts to secure its systems and procedures," she added.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Microsoft tries to one-up Google PageRank
by Stephen Shankland
Though a distant third place to Google, Microsoft thinks it can teach its rival a thing or two about searching the Internet.
A big part of Google's rise to search engine leadership was an algorithm called PageRank that assesses a specific page's importance by how many other Web pages link to it and by the importance of those linking pages. Microsoft researchers and academic collaborators, though, detailed an idea this week it calls BrowseRank that seeks to bring more of a human touch to that assessment.
Microsoft likes the results BrowseRank, which assigning Web page priority based on how people actually use the site.
Essentially, the researchers tested out a system that replaces PageRanks' link graph--a mathematical model of the hyperlinked connections of the Internet--with what they call a user browsing graph that ranks Web pages by people's behavior.
"The more visits of the page made by the users and the longer time periods spent by the users on the page, the more likely the page is important.
We can leverage hundreds of millions of users' implicit voting on page importance," the researchers said in BrowseRank: Letting Web Users Vote for Page Importance, a paper from the SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) conference this week in Singapore. Authors are Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, and Hang Li from Microsoft Research Asia and Ying Zhang of Nankai University, Zhiming Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shuyuan He of Peking University.
Search is of tremendous importance to the Internet for many reasons. For one thing, search engines are highly influential middlemen that steer users to Web sites they may not be able to find on their own. For another, queries typed into search engines can be powerful--and in Google's case highly profitable--indications of what type of advertisement to place next to the search results.
But Microsoft lags leader Google and No. 2 Yahoo in search. It's trying hard to catch up, for example with unsuccessful proposals to acquire Yahoo or its search business that would cost the company billions of dollars. And Microsoft just bought search start-up Powerset.
Google isn't putting all its eggs in the PageRank basket, though.
"It's important to keep in mind that PageRank is just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine the ranking of a Web site," the company said in a statement. "Search remains at the core of everything Google does, and we are always working to improve it."
PageRank shortcomingsThe Microsoft researchers argue that PageRank has a number of problems. For one thing, people can game the system by building bogus Web sites called link farms. Those sites feature hyperlinks point to a Web page whose importance a person wants to inflate so it appears higher in search results. Another PageRank issue is that the indexing process doesn't take into account the time a user spends on a particular site.
But user behavior, monitored in anonymous form by Web servers and Web browser plug-ins, can be better, the authors argue.
"Experimental results show that BrowseRank can achieve better performance than existing methods, including PageRank...in important page finding, spam page fighting, and relevance ranking.
The researchers gathered their data from "an extremely large group of users under legal agreements with them," according to the paper.
There's no denying PageRank is useful, though, and such algorithms could be added into a larger formula for determining which sites come out on top of search results.
"It is also possible to combine link graph and user behavior data to compute page importance," the researchers said. "We will not discuss more about this possibility in this paper, and simply leave it as future work."
Bringing research to fruitionIt can be a long time before research comes to fruition, but funding a group of researchers can be much less expensive than acquiring other companies. No doubt Microsoft, especially after years of effort and its thwarted overtures to Yahoo, would like to see its in-house search efforts bring Google to its knees.
When accused of being dominant, Google representatives often argue the company could lose its search dominance if somebody else builds a better mousetrap and Internet users divert their path to that other door door. "If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results or more relevant advertisements, or in leveraging their platforms or products to make their Web search or advertising services easier to access, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic or the size of the Google (ad) Network," it said in its most recent quarterly report.
The top players are a moving target, though. Yahoo is hoping to improve search with three efforts: BOSS (build your own search service), which lets others employ Yahoo search results along with its search ads; SearchMonkey, which lets content publishers build elaborate mini-Web pages into search results; and Glue Pages, which present a smorgasbord of related content alongside search results.
And Google invests heavily, too. Its biggest research team is devoted to search, and the company updated its search formula more than 100 times in the second quarter. And researchers have huge infrastructure at their disposal to try new ideas.
"My group at Google has at its disposal many thousands of machines, with storage measured in petabytes," Udi Manber, head of Google's search quality, said of Google's search research infrastructure in a June talk. And, he added, engineers are empowered to try their results, with meetings once or twice a week to see how well they worked: "There is no separation of research and development. Everyone does both."
Though a distant third place to Google, Microsoft thinks it can teach its rival a thing or two about searching the Internet.
A big part of Google's rise to search engine leadership was an algorithm called PageRank that assesses a specific page's importance by how many other Web pages link to it and by the importance of those linking pages. Microsoft researchers and academic collaborators, though, detailed an idea this week it calls BrowseRank that seeks to bring more of a human touch to that assessment.
Microsoft likes the results BrowseRank, which assigning Web page priority based on how people actually use the site.
Essentially, the researchers tested out a system that replaces PageRanks' link graph--a mathematical model of the hyperlinked connections of the Internet--with what they call a user browsing graph that ranks Web pages by people's behavior.
"The more visits of the page made by the users and the longer time periods spent by the users on the page, the more likely the page is important.
We can leverage hundreds of millions of users' implicit voting on page importance," the researchers said in BrowseRank: Letting Web Users Vote for Page Importance, a paper from the SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) conference this week in Singapore. Authors are Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, and Hang Li from Microsoft Research Asia and Ying Zhang of Nankai University, Zhiming Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shuyuan He of Peking University.
Search is of tremendous importance to the Internet for many reasons. For one thing, search engines are highly influential middlemen that steer users to Web sites they may not be able to find on their own. For another, queries typed into search engines can be powerful--and in Google's case highly profitable--indications of what type of advertisement to place next to the search results.
But Microsoft lags leader Google and No. 2 Yahoo in search. It's trying hard to catch up, for example with unsuccessful proposals to acquire Yahoo or its search business that would cost the company billions of dollars. And Microsoft just bought search start-up Powerset.
Google isn't putting all its eggs in the PageRank basket, though.
"It's important to keep in mind that PageRank is just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine the ranking of a Web site," the company said in a statement. "Search remains at the core of everything Google does, and we are always working to improve it."
PageRank shortcomingsThe Microsoft researchers argue that PageRank has a number of problems. For one thing, people can game the system by building bogus Web sites called link farms. Those sites feature hyperlinks point to a Web page whose importance a person wants to inflate so it appears higher in search results. Another PageRank issue is that the indexing process doesn't take into account the time a user spends on a particular site.
But user behavior, monitored in anonymous form by Web servers and Web browser plug-ins, can be better, the authors argue.
"Experimental results show that BrowseRank can achieve better performance than existing methods, including PageRank...in important page finding, spam page fighting, and relevance ranking.
The researchers gathered their data from "an extremely large group of users under legal agreements with them," according to the paper.
There's no denying PageRank is useful, though, and such algorithms could be added into a larger formula for determining which sites come out on top of search results.
"It is also possible to combine link graph and user behavior data to compute page importance," the researchers said. "We will not discuss more about this possibility in this paper, and simply leave it as future work."
Bringing research to fruitionIt can be a long time before research comes to fruition, but funding a group of researchers can be much less expensive than acquiring other companies. No doubt Microsoft, especially after years of effort and its thwarted overtures to Yahoo, would like to see its in-house search efforts bring Google to its knees.
When accused of being dominant, Google representatives often argue the company could lose its search dominance if somebody else builds a better mousetrap and Internet users divert their path to that other door door. "If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results or more relevant advertisements, or in leveraging their platforms or products to make their Web search or advertising services easier to access, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic or the size of the Google (ad) Network," it said in its most recent quarterly report.
The top players are a moving target, though. Yahoo is hoping to improve search with three efforts: BOSS (build your own search service), which lets others employ Yahoo search results along with its search ads; SearchMonkey, which lets content publishers build elaborate mini-Web pages into search results; and Glue Pages, which present a smorgasbord of related content alongside search results.
And Google invests heavily, too. Its biggest research team is devoted to search, and the company updated its search formula more than 100 times in the second quarter. And researchers have huge infrastructure at their disposal to try new ideas.
"My group at Google has at its disposal many thousands of machines, with storage measured in petabytes," Udi Manber, head of Google's search quality, said of Google's search research infrastructure in a June talk. And, he added, engineers are empowered to try their results, with meetings once or twice a week to see how well they worked: "There is no separation of research and development. Everyone does both."
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Building a better website
By Steve Strauss
Q: I recently lost my job and am thinking about starting a business. I have a good idea for a website but I am concerned about all of the competition. Do you think it is possible to make my online business different and better, and if so, how?
Note that I am not talking about the business side here. What you sell is entirely up to you. Instead, I want to look at the online side of online businesses, and what makes that work.
I suggest that there are two key components to creating a successful online small business. The first is, you have to have a great site. The second is, you have to market your site so that people can find it.
Now, maybe the preceding paragraph seems self-evident to you, maybe you are thinking, "Thanks for the great insight there, Steve!" But I don't think so.
So the first secret online is to have a professional, elegant, site. Do that, and the rest is much easier, but fail to do it, and your chances of e-success are diminished greatly.
This brings me to the second factor — e-marketing. I spoke about this subject — online small business success — last week with Jeff Zimmerman, the Vice President of Product Management for Online Marketing and E-Commerce for Network Solutions.
Network Solutions (a company I do some work with), is an excellent friend to small business. It is one of those great Net companies that has been around seemingly forever. For instance, when I got my web address back in the late 90s, MrAllBiz.com, it was Network Solutions who helped me. Since then, their services have grown to include everything from web hosting and site design to e-commerce and online security.
Jeff first pointed out that succeeding online is much easier than some people think, and much more affordable, for three main reasons:
1. Marketing online is unique: Offline, marketing often is a shotgun affair for many small businesses. They spend a lot to target a lot of people (in the newspaper, on the radio, etc.) with the intent of hopefully hitting a few. But online, especially with tools like pay-per-click, it is much easier to spend your marketing dollars more specifically and intelligently by buying only those keywords and geographic regions that have the highest likelihood of success.
2. Tracking results is easier: Because of No. 1 above, it is easier with online advertising and marketing to track your results. Offline, it is hard to say how someone finds you and makes a call (signs, ads, networking, or what?) but online, you can see immediately which keywords pull best, which ads work best, which pages convert the most, etc.
3. Cycles are shorter: Quicker tracking means you can adjust your online ad campaigns much more quickly. If a TV buy does not work, it may take months to find out and adjust. Not so online.
Of course, there are no shortage of sites intended to help you succeed in your online business, but I must say that Jeff pointed a new one out to me that I found to be very powerful.
MySolutionsSpot offers the e-preneur a wide variety of success tools. The articles and forums are nice for sure, but it was the analytical e-tools that I found to be remarkable:
• The keyword suggestion tool helps take the guesswork out of choosing the right keywords for your SEO and your e-marketing
• The search engine spider simulator lets you see what a search engine spider sees. Are your keywords working? Do you have enough homepage content?
• The link popularity check helps you see how many people are linking to your site, a key component to SEO.
It is getting ever easier to start and succeed online because tools like these are making it possible to create a site that can get noticed. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. But if you build it right, and market it right, you can bet they will.
Today's tip: Jeff Zimmerman also point me to an interesting study which found that the average cost per acquisition for search engine advertising was $8.50 per customer, as opposed to $20 each for Yellow Page advertising, $60 for email and $70 for Direct Mail.
Q: I recently lost my job and am thinking about starting a business. I have a good idea for a website but I am concerned about all of the competition. Do you think it is possible to make my online business different and better, and if so, how?
Note that I am not talking about the business side here. What you sell is entirely up to you. Instead, I want to look at the online side of online businesses, and what makes that work.
I suggest that there are two key components to creating a successful online small business. The first is, you have to have a great site. The second is, you have to market your site so that people can find it.
Now, maybe the preceding paragraph seems self-evident to you, maybe you are thinking, "Thanks for the great insight there, Steve!" But I don't think so.
So the first secret online is to have a professional, elegant, site. Do that, and the rest is much easier, but fail to do it, and your chances of e-success are diminished greatly.
This brings me to the second factor — e-marketing. I spoke about this subject — online small business success — last week with Jeff Zimmerman, the Vice President of Product Management for Online Marketing and E-Commerce for Network Solutions.
Network Solutions (a company I do some work with), is an excellent friend to small business. It is one of those great Net companies that has been around seemingly forever. For instance, when I got my web address back in the late 90s, MrAllBiz.com, it was Network Solutions who helped me. Since then, their services have grown to include everything from web hosting and site design to e-commerce and online security.
Jeff first pointed out that succeeding online is much easier than some people think, and much more affordable, for three main reasons:
1. Marketing online is unique: Offline, marketing often is a shotgun affair for many small businesses. They spend a lot to target a lot of people (in the newspaper, on the radio, etc.) with the intent of hopefully hitting a few. But online, especially with tools like pay-per-click, it is much easier to spend your marketing dollars more specifically and intelligently by buying only those keywords and geographic regions that have the highest likelihood of success.
2. Tracking results is easier: Because of No. 1 above, it is easier with online advertising and marketing to track your results. Offline, it is hard to say how someone finds you and makes a call (signs, ads, networking, or what?) but online, you can see immediately which keywords pull best, which ads work best, which pages convert the most, etc.
3. Cycles are shorter: Quicker tracking means you can adjust your online ad campaigns much more quickly. If a TV buy does not work, it may take months to find out and adjust. Not so online.
Of course, there are no shortage of sites intended to help you succeed in your online business, but I must say that Jeff pointed a new one out to me that I found to be very powerful.
MySolutionsSpot offers the e-preneur a wide variety of success tools. The articles and forums are nice for sure, but it was the analytical e-tools that I found to be remarkable:
• The keyword suggestion tool helps take the guesswork out of choosing the right keywords for your SEO and your e-marketing
• The search engine spider simulator lets you see what a search engine spider sees. Are your keywords working? Do you have enough homepage content?
• The link popularity check helps you see how many people are linking to your site, a key component to SEO.
It is getting ever easier to start and succeed online because tools like these are making it possible to create a site that can get noticed. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. But if you build it right, and market it right, you can bet they will.
Today's tip: Jeff Zimmerman also point me to an interesting study which found that the average cost per acquisition for search engine advertising was $8.50 per customer, as opposed to $20 each for Yellow Page advertising, $60 for email and $70 for Direct Mail.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Social Bookmarking 101
A Simple Guide To Being Productive On The Internet
Social bookmarking is a surefire way to improve your productivity on the Internet. Most online businesses are finding out how social bookmarking can improve their venture, giving their Internet marketing strategies a much needed boost to increase their online presence and accessibility.
What Is Bookmarking And Social Bookmarking?
Bookmarking is a term used when an individual tags a Web site on their own respective Web browser. If you think that a page is interesting enough to merit another visit, you can just bookmark it on your application to be opened later on without needing to look for it again.
Social bookmarking has the same concept above except that it is on much grander scale than storing your tagged sites on your own computer. Social bookmarking involves tagging sites into your Web site that can be accessed by those within your network -- or if your feature permits, to the rest of the people in your social bookmarking community. But in what way can this benefit your Web site for it to be productive on the Internet?
Boosting SEO Results
We all know for a fact that search engine optimization (SEO) can boost your Web site's traffic by making it appear on the top ranks of search engine results. In fact, you might be hiring an SEO professional or you can do it on your own to implement on-site SEO strategies to increase your ranking.
But other than doing it on-site (which simply means that you are modifying your own Web site for SEO), you can practically go off-site to increase its probability to be in the top ranks -- this is where social bookmarking comes in.
One way to increase your rank in search engine results through other than keywords is through your page rank. Your page rank will increase with the number of links that is propagated on the Internet that points back to your site. In social bookmarking, you are practically tagging sites that are accessible to the rest of your network. The more people that bookmark your site into their own, then you can easily say that your page rank will increase as well.
You can implement a social bookmarking strategy that involves telling other within your network to bookmark your site in theirs, if you bookmark their site in yours. This is like a link building concept used in basic SEO. The more people that tag your site, the more successful your online venture would be -- in terms of reputation and profit.
Vanessa Arellano Doctor
wirefan.com
Social bookmarking is a surefire way to improve your productivity on the Internet. Most online businesses are finding out how social bookmarking can improve their venture, giving their Internet marketing strategies a much needed boost to increase their online presence and accessibility.
What Is Bookmarking And Social Bookmarking?
Bookmarking is a term used when an individual tags a Web site on their own respective Web browser. If you think that a page is interesting enough to merit another visit, you can just bookmark it on your application to be opened later on without needing to look for it again.
Social bookmarking has the same concept above except that it is on much grander scale than storing your tagged sites on your own computer. Social bookmarking involves tagging sites into your Web site that can be accessed by those within your network -- or if your feature permits, to the rest of the people in your social bookmarking community. But in what way can this benefit your Web site for it to be productive on the Internet?
Boosting SEO Results
We all know for a fact that search engine optimization (SEO) can boost your Web site's traffic by making it appear on the top ranks of search engine results. In fact, you might be hiring an SEO professional or you can do it on your own to implement on-site SEO strategies to increase your ranking.
But other than doing it on-site (which simply means that you are modifying your own Web site for SEO), you can practically go off-site to increase its probability to be in the top ranks -- this is where social bookmarking comes in.
One way to increase your rank in search engine results through other than keywords is through your page rank. Your page rank will increase with the number of links that is propagated on the Internet that points back to your site. In social bookmarking, you are practically tagging sites that are accessible to the rest of your network. The more people that bookmark your site into their own, then you can easily say that your page rank will increase as well.
You can implement a social bookmarking strategy that involves telling other within your network to bookmark your site in theirs, if you bookmark their site in yours. This is like a link building concept used in basic SEO. The more people that tag your site, the more successful your online venture would be -- in terms of reputation and profit.
Vanessa Arellano Doctor
wirefan.com
Friday, July 18, 2008
Get on Google's Good Side With SEO
Get on Google's Good Side With SEO
by Steven Strauss
One of the questions I hear most often these days goes something like, "How the heck am I supposed to keep my small business going in this economy? I don't have a lot of money for advertising." A valid lament for sure.
Unlike big businesses that are doing well (think Exxon Mobil XOM) or even big companies that are not (airlines, Starbucks SBUX, etc.) one of the first things to be cut when tough times hit small businesses is the advertising and marketing budget.
The good news is that there is in fact a great way to market your business that is not expensive and is very effective. However, it is quite time-consuming.
It's called search engine optimization. SEO gets you noticed, is practically free marketing and increases sales. SEO is the magic bullet.
Oh, I can hear your collective cries now: "Come on Steve, it's too hard; it doesn't work; it's for businesses far bigger than mine; I don't know how to do it, I don't have time to learn it."
I say, remember the immortal words of Paul Harvey: "In times like these it is good to know there have always been times like these." The point is, good times and bad times are part of this gig; you signed up for them when you decided to go into business for yourself.
And if that is true, then it is also true that in times like these, hearty entrepreneurs learn new skills. That is both the joy and sorrow of self employment.
Teach Yourself a New Trick Sure SEO is a challenge; no doubt about it. But it is also true that many people have figured it out. Whenever you Google GOOG some word or phrase, you can almost bet that the folks whose Web sites appear on the first page have put considerable effort into learning about, utilizing and honing SEO.And if they did it, so can you.
I am reminded of the 1997 movie The Edge with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. In it, the two men are stranded in the Alaska Outback after their small plane crashes.
Soon they are being stalked by a bear. Eventually Hopkins' character convinces himself and Baldwin's character, Bob, that they can slay the bear.
"I'm going to kill the bear," Hopkins' character says, "Say it! Say I'm going to kill the bear!"
Bob says it, halfheartedly.
Charles (Hopkins) then yells at Bob: "Say it! Say I'm going to kill the bear!" Bob says it.
"Say it again," says Charles. Bob, starting to feel it, says it more loudly. "I'm going to kill the bear." "Again!" Charles bellows. Finally, Bob yells, convincingly, " I Am Going To Kill The Bear!"
Finally, they kill the bear.
Not knowing SEO may be your virtual "bear." Take a class about it. Read a book about it. Practice until you become convincingly proficient.
Slay your bear.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Microsoft-Google-Yahoo Squabble Plays Out in Senate
by Chloe Albanesius
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo clashed Tuesday during a contentious Senate hearing that saw Yahoo and Google vigorously defend their ad partnership as healthy competition, while Yahoo slammed Microsoft's continued efforts to acquire Yahoo.
"This is a commercial arrangement between two companies who will remain autonomous and compete aggressively – in search and display advertising, mobile, news, e-mail, finance – you name it," Michael Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. "Yahoo is here to stay and we intend to compete across countless platforms, including search, for years to come."
"Supplier arrangements are commonplace in many industries," said David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google. "Canon supplies laser printer engines to Hewlett Packard, while also competing in the sale of laser printers."
Last month, Google announced a non-exclusive agreement with Yahoo that will allow the Internet company access to Google's AdSense for search and content advertising programs in the U.S. and Canada. Google stressed that the deal was not a merger, just a business partnership, but the deal has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers who want to make sure the arrangement does not run afoul of antitrust laws.
Among the detractors is Microsoft, which has been trying for months to acquire Yahoo. Yahoo last weekend rejected a proposed ad deal from Microsoft, and now billionaire investor and Yahoo shareholder Carl Icahn has launched a proxy fight for Yahoo in an effort to secure a takeover deal for Microsoft.
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo "are laser focused on being significant players in search," Callahan said. "With this business arrangement, Yahoo will continue to execute on its long term corporate strategy. Microsoft, on the other hand, has turned to activist shareholder Carl Icahn, in the apparent hope that this will force a fire sale of Yahoo's core strategic search business."
Yahoo will not "allow our business to be dismantled or sold off piecemeal on terms that would be disadvantageous to Yahoo stockholders and to the market as a whole," Callahan pledged.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's vice president and general counsel, painted the software giant as a company just trying to keep up in a Yahoo-Google world.
A Google-Yahoo match up will create an unprecedented level of concentration in search advertising, produce fewer choices for advertisers, result in higher prices, and create privacy concerns, he said.
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo clashed Tuesday during a contentious Senate hearing that saw Yahoo and Google vigorously defend their ad partnership as healthy competition, while Yahoo slammed Microsoft's continued efforts to acquire Yahoo.
"This is a commercial arrangement between two companies who will remain autonomous and compete aggressively – in search and display advertising, mobile, news, e-mail, finance – you name it," Michael Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. "Yahoo is here to stay and we intend to compete across countless platforms, including search, for years to come."
"Supplier arrangements are commonplace in many industries," said David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google. "Canon supplies laser printer engines to Hewlett Packard, while also competing in the sale of laser printers."
Last month, Google announced a non-exclusive agreement with Yahoo that will allow the Internet company access to Google's AdSense for search and content advertising programs in the U.S. and Canada. Google stressed that the deal was not a merger, just a business partnership, but the deal has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers who want to make sure the arrangement does not run afoul of antitrust laws.
Among the detractors is Microsoft, which has been trying for months to acquire Yahoo. Yahoo last weekend rejected a proposed ad deal from Microsoft, and now billionaire investor and Yahoo shareholder Carl Icahn has launched a proxy fight for Yahoo in an effort to secure a takeover deal for Microsoft.
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo "are laser focused on being significant players in search," Callahan said. "With this business arrangement, Yahoo will continue to execute on its long term corporate strategy. Microsoft, on the other hand, has turned to activist shareholder Carl Icahn, in the apparent hope that this will force a fire sale of Yahoo's core strategic search business."
Yahoo will not "allow our business to be dismantled or sold off piecemeal on terms that would be disadvantageous to Yahoo stockholders and to the market as a whole," Callahan pledged.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's vice president and general counsel, painted the software giant as a company just trying to keep up in a Yahoo-Google world.
A Google-Yahoo match up will create an unprecedented level of concentration in search advertising, produce fewer choices for advertisers, result in higher prices, and create privacy concerns, he said.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
No Manual Intervention On Rankings, Says Google
By David A. Utter
They don't, except for when they do
The search advertising company doesn't go in and tweak the results that come up for queries, except for the times that it does.
Plenty of sound reasons exist for manually editing search results. Listings leading to sites containing viruses or malware, pages detailing illegal content like child exploitation, or simply content that someone, somewhere, wants removed on some kind of legal grounds, all face the prospect of being excised from Google's index.
"In our view, the web is built by people," Amit Singhal said at the official Google blog, in his introduction to Google ranking. "You are the ones creating pages and linking to pages. We are using all this human contribution through our algorithms."
Don't get excited, webmasters, Singhal isn't shedding any sunlight on the black box of Google's rankings. He shared more of a philosophical viewpoint, an interesting one given he's worked on Google's secret algorithm sauce since 2000.
Ahead of the "no manual intervention" position Google prefers to maintain for its rankings, Singhal said the company wants to serve the most relevant results it can to a given user, and to keep that deliver simple. "We make about ten ranking changes every week and simplicity is a big consideration in launching every change. Our engineers understand exactly why a page was ranked the way it was for a given query," he said.
A couple of reasons occur to Singhal in response to that "common - but misguided" question about manual intervention. First was the 'people making links and pages' concept mentioned previously. The second reason, well, sometimes a broken query means an opportunity to improve the algorithm again.
And again, and again, and again.
For our webmaster readers who value their rankings, it means there will always be some kind of changes taking place under the hood of Google's ride. To echo Professor Moody from the Harry Potter books, 'constant vigilance' should be the webmaster's credo. Blogoscoped.com discussed Google and manual edits two years ago, but the advice bears repeating today.
The search advertising company doesn't go in and tweak the results that come up for queries, except for the times that it does.
Plenty of sound reasons exist for manually editing search results. Listings leading to sites containing viruses or malware, pages detailing illegal content like child exploitation, or simply content that someone, somewhere, wants removed on some kind of legal grounds, all face the prospect of being excised from Google's index.
"In our view, the web is built by people," Amit Singhal said at the official Google blog, in his introduction to Google ranking. "You are the ones creating pages and linking to pages. We are using all this human contribution through our algorithms."
Don't get excited, webmasters, Singhal isn't shedding any sunlight on the black box of Google's rankings. He shared more of a philosophical viewpoint, an interesting one given he's worked on Google's secret algorithm sauce since 2000.
Ahead of the "no manual intervention" position Google prefers to maintain for its rankings, Singhal said the company wants to serve the most relevant results it can to a given user, and to keep that deliver simple. "We make about ten ranking changes every week and simplicity is a big consideration in launching every change. Our engineers understand exactly why a page was ranked the way it was for a given query," he said.
A couple of reasons occur to Singhal in response to that "common - but misguided" question about manual intervention. First was the 'people making links and pages' concept mentioned previously. The second reason, well, sometimes a broken query means an opportunity to improve the algorithm again.
And again, and again, and again.
For our webmaster readers who value their rankings, it means there will always be some kind of changes taking place under the hood of Google's ride. To echo Professor Moody from the Harry Potter books, 'constant vigilance' should be the webmaster's credo. Blogoscoped.com discussed Google and manual edits two years ago, but the advice bears repeating today.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Toyota's solar-powered Prius
by Rory Reid
We applaud any carmaker that harnesses the power of technology, particularly if it helps fuel economy, makes driving fun, or makes us look cool. That's why we launched the U.K. version of Car Tech.
So our ears perked up when we heard Toyota is upgrading its Prius. Not only will it feature a hybrid electric-gasoline engine and automatic self-parking (see its robot skills in action here), but it will soon get solar panels on the roof to power its air-conditioning system.
That last bit might not sound too exciting, but it has potential. Automotive air-conditioning systems are usually powered by your car's engine, which has to work harder to keep the car moving and its occupants cool. By using a combination of a solar panel and an electric motor, Toyota is able to use the power of the sun against itself, save gas, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
It's a shame that these particular solar panels can't be used to power the entire vehicle, but there is hope: A U.S. company called SEV has already demonstrated a modified, solar-powered Prius that improves fuel economy by about 29 percent. According to SEV, this gives you a daily electric-only range of 20 miles.
We'll have to wait until 2009 to see whether Toyota's implementation makes a real difference.
We applaud any carmaker that harnesses the power of technology, particularly if it helps fuel economy, makes driving fun, or makes us look cool. That's why we launched the U.K. version of Car Tech.
So our ears perked up when we heard Toyota is upgrading its Prius. Not only will it feature a hybrid electric-gasoline engine and automatic self-parking (see its robot skills in action here), but it will soon get solar panels on the roof to power its air-conditioning system.
That last bit might not sound too exciting, but it has potential. Automotive air-conditioning systems are usually powered by your car's engine, which has to work harder to keep the car moving and its occupants cool. By using a combination of a solar panel and an electric motor, Toyota is able to use the power of the sun against itself, save gas, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
It's a shame that these particular solar panels can't be used to power the entire vehicle, but there is hope: A U.S. company called SEV has already demonstrated a modified, solar-powered Prius that improves fuel economy by about 29 percent. According to SEV, this gives you a daily electric-only range of 20 miles.
We'll have to wait until 2009 to see whether Toyota's implementation makes a real difference.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Fear The Google Blacklist
By Thomas Claburn
What happens when search engine optimization backfires? Hitwise researchers illustrate one cautionary tale.
Internet metrics company Hitwise on Wednesday published a cautionary tale about the dangers of excessive search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization (SEO) aims to make a Web site appear higher up on search results pages for keywords related to the Web site's business.
More Internet InsightsWhite PapersEffective Web Policies: Ensuring Staff Productivity and Legal Compliance Effectively Managing Online Transactions with CA’s APM Solution GoCompare.com, a U.K.-based car insurance comparison site, apparently used SEO techniques to reach the number one position for the term "car insurance" on Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s U.K. site.
Then, according to Hitwise U.K. research director Robin Goad, the site got blacklisted by Google, presumably because the SEO techniques it used violated Google's rules.
Google has a lengthy list of rules for Web site owners about what is and isn't acceptable. And Google makes the consequences clear: "If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or 'throwaway' domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index," Google explains. "Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to 'help' you."
The penalty for breaking these rules (and getting caught) can be devastating for online businesses.
"[S]ince being 'blacklisted' it has dropped down the listings and, at the time of writing, is currently on the seventh page of listings -- i.e. well outside of the top 10," said Robin Goad, research director of Hitwise U.K., in a blog post.
A spokesperson from GoCompare.com wasn't immediately available to confirm what had happened. But the company's listing is indeed on the seventh search results page for Google.co.uk.
To hammer the point home, Goad's post includes a graph that shows GoCompare.com's search traffic dropping 87% between the 26th of January, when it held the number one spot for "car insurance," and the 9th of February. During the same period, the company's competitors saw their share of traffic generated from "car insurance" searches rise.
Goad says the GoCompare.com's experience "illustrates the fine balance that needs to be achieved between effective SEO and breaking the 'rules.'" It also demonstrates why Google is feared.
What happens when search engine optimization backfires? Hitwise researchers illustrate one cautionary tale.
Internet metrics company Hitwise on Wednesday published a cautionary tale about the dangers of excessive search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization (SEO) aims to make a Web site appear higher up on search results pages for keywords related to the Web site's business.
More Internet InsightsWhite PapersEffective Web Policies: Ensuring Staff Productivity and Legal Compliance Effectively Managing Online Transactions with CA’s APM Solution GoCompare.com, a U.K.-based car insurance comparison site, apparently used SEO techniques to reach the number one position for the term "car insurance" on Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s U.K. site.
Then, according to Hitwise U.K. research director Robin Goad, the site got blacklisted by Google, presumably because the SEO techniques it used violated Google's rules.
Google has a lengthy list of rules for Web site owners about what is and isn't acceptable. And Google makes the consequences clear: "If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or 'throwaway' domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index," Google explains. "Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to 'help' you."
The penalty for breaking these rules (and getting caught) can be devastating for online businesses.
"[S]ince being 'blacklisted' it has dropped down the listings and, at the time of writing, is currently on the seventh page of listings -- i.e. well outside of the top 10," said Robin Goad, research director of Hitwise U.K., in a blog post.
A spokesperson from GoCompare.com wasn't immediately available to confirm what had happened. But the company's listing is indeed on the seventh search results page for Google.co.uk.
To hammer the point home, Goad's post includes a graph that shows GoCompare.com's search traffic dropping 87% between the 26th of January, when it held the number one spot for "car insurance," and the 9th of February. During the same period, the company's competitors saw their share of traffic generated from "car insurance" searches rise.
Goad says the GoCompare.com's experience "illustrates the fine balance that needs to be achieved between effective SEO and breaking the 'rules.'" It also demonstrates why Google is feared.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Why are SEO experts in high demand?
CIOL Bureau
To generate leads, enquiries or sales via your website, you need a professional that knows just how to get great results
With the rise in awareness in the public domain of the term SEO (search engine optimisation), SEO experts are now in great demand by ambitious website owners that want to increase targeted traffic to their websites. In order to generate leads, enquiries or sales via your website you need a professional that knows just how to get great results with a substantial ROI (return on investment).
SEO or search engine optimisation is the process of optimising a website in order to achieve top rankings on major search engines that attract vast numbers of searches every single day, which could be providing your website with lucrative sales.
While it isn't rocket science, search engine optimisation requires some hard work, smart strategy and patience, in order to achieve the substantial growth in targeted traffic that is possible for your business.
As more and more website owners become aware of SEO, it is vital that you have an online strategy to market your website effectively using an SEO expert with experience in successful campaigns.
Some of the more common methods of SEO are listed below, and if you follow these, you could be well on your way to increasing your targeted traffic.
Keyword analysis
Often overlooked, this is the most critical stage of any SEO or internet marketing campaign or strategy. Knowing what your users are searching for around the world is vital to increasing targeted leads and turnover. If you are focusing on keywords that you think are important, instead of using professional tools to find out what users are physically typing into the major search engines, then you are wasting your time and money.
Analysing your keywords is of paramount importance and you should engage people around you for their ideas on keywords, until you build up a complete picture of possible keywords and thin filter out the ones that are not being searched for.
Meta tag optimisation
By properly optimising the meta tags of your website, you are effectively informing the search engines what the subject and content of your site is. This also helps traffic to your site from search engine requests in the major search engines. Optimised properly, you can attract more visitors using this basic, but often overlooked essential area of SEO.
Content
Good content is precisely what the majority of visitors and search engines want to see. If your website is to appeal to users, then your site should have fresh, relevant, targeted content that is there to provide a benefit to the visitor.
Whether you employ a copywriter, a consultant or an expert in search engine optimisation, you must have well-written, compelling and above all unique content, to stand a chance in the ever competitive internet.
This is just three examples of how an SEO expert would increase your traffic, leads and turnover. To get a full insight into how to obtain top 10 rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, speak to your local expert and find out what business you could be generating from this highly rewarding area of Internet marketing.
To generate leads, enquiries or sales via your website, you need a professional that knows just how to get great results
With the rise in awareness in the public domain of the term SEO (search engine optimisation), SEO experts are now in great demand by ambitious website owners that want to increase targeted traffic to their websites. In order to generate leads, enquiries or sales via your website you need a professional that knows just how to get great results with a substantial ROI (return on investment).
SEO or search engine optimisation is the process of optimising a website in order to achieve top rankings on major search engines that attract vast numbers of searches every single day, which could be providing your website with lucrative sales.
While it isn't rocket science, search engine optimisation requires some hard work, smart strategy and patience, in order to achieve the substantial growth in targeted traffic that is possible for your business.
As more and more website owners become aware of SEO, it is vital that you have an online strategy to market your website effectively using an SEO expert with experience in successful campaigns.
Some of the more common methods of SEO are listed below, and if you follow these, you could be well on your way to increasing your targeted traffic.
Keyword analysis
Often overlooked, this is the most critical stage of any SEO or internet marketing campaign or strategy. Knowing what your users are searching for around the world is vital to increasing targeted leads and turnover. If you are focusing on keywords that you think are important, instead of using professional tools to find out what users are physically typing into the major search engines, then you are wasting your time and money.
Analysing your keywords is of paramount importance and you should engage people around you for their ideas on keywords, until you build up a complete picture of possible keywords and thin filter out the ones that are not being searched for.
Meta tag optimisation
By properly optimising the meta tags of your website, you are effectively informing the search engines what the subject and content of your site is. This also helps traffic to your site from search engine requests in the major search engines. Optimised properly, you can attract more visitors using this basic, but often overlooked essential area of SEO.
Content
Good content is precisely what the majority of visitors and search engines want to see. If your website is to appeal to users, then your site should have fresh, relevant, targeted content that is there to provide a benefit to the visitor.
Whether you employ a copywriter, a consultant or an expert in search engine optimisation, you must have well-written, compelling and above all unique content, to stand a chance in the ever competitive internet.
This is just three examples of how an SEO expert would increase your traffic, leads and turnover. To get a full insight into how to obtain top 10 rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, speak to your local expert and find out what business you could be generating from this highly rewarding area of Internet marketing.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: KEYWORD PLACEMENT FOR MAXIMUM RESULTS
I had a person in my office the other day looking to improve their Web site and their search engine visibility.
He said, “I had this idea, see, where we would put all the keywords we wanted to use over and over again in white text on a white background. Then, the search engines would rank us near the top but it wouldn’t clutter up our page.”
I explained that this was a great idea, presuming he had a time machine and could return to early 1997—the last time this technique actually worked.
Search engines are getting smarter all the time. If you’re looking for a long-term success strategy that will allow you to concentrate on building your business rather than chasing the next search engine bait-and-switch, you need to know where to place your keywords for maximum results.
Before You Begin
Placing the wrong keywords in the right places won’t help your search engine visibility. Start with a keyword analysis to determine which keyword phrases will be most effective on your site.
Tools like Keyword Discovery and WordTracker will help you determine how much competition you have for specific keywords, and how often people are searching for phrases. It will also prepare alternatives and variations of your keywords so that you can cast a wider net. Once you have your list of effective keywords it’s time to put them in their place.
Titles
Titles are one of the few things search engine experts agree on. They’re probably the most important variable for search engine optimization (SEO). And yet, you may never have noticed them before.
That’s because titles appear not on the Web page itself, but rather in the aptly named title bar. If you’re on a Windows machine, this is where you see the minimize, maximize and close buttons. If you’re on a Mac, it’s where the red, yellow and green buttons reside.
You should front load your titles with your best keywords. In other words, “Recycled Paper Goods from XYZ Corp” beats “XYZ Corp: Recycled Paper Goods” for a search on “recycled paper goods,” all other things being equal.
Additionally, you should make sure that each page of your Web site has a unique title. Not only is a duplicate title a missed opportunity, it can be a red flag to the search engines that want to avoid indexing duplicate content.
Finally, make sure your titles read well. Titles appear as the big, blue link on most search engine results pages, and if they’re an unintelligible glom of keywords, people are less likely to click on them.
Headers
Headers and sub-headers are the “titles” that appear in the Web page. They are usually bigger and bolder than the rest of the text, and summarize the themes of the paragraphs that follow. Most experts agree that they carry more weight than the rest of the body copy.
Headers should reflect the title of the page, but shouldn’t be identical. This is because a variation of the title can help you cast a wider net, and also because duplication of title and header can appear “spammy” or “over-optimized” to the search engines.
Body Copy
Your page-specific, keyword-rich body copy is also important. You should be using your keyword-rich phrases and variations, too. Your copy also needs to read well. Bold and italics can help the reader scan the material for the most important ideas, and some experts believe this can also affect the search engine ranking of the page.
Intra-Site Links
Search engines give extra-weight to the words used in an intra-site link (from one page to another within your site) and--to a lesser degree--the words around the link. So, instead of “learn more” or “click here”, use keyword-rich links such as, “Southern Maine Landscaping,” or “Pesticide-Free Gardening.”
Meta-Descriptions
Meta-descriptions don’t appear on the page, but rather in the source code. The only time people will see them is on the search engine results page under the big, blue title tag link.
There’s some debate on whether meta-descriptions help with your rankings, (I think they have little to no value,) but a well-crafted meta-description on a search results page may get a person to click on your link rather than a competitor’s. Think of this as a short ad; what will compel a Google-user to click on your link?
Like title tags, meta-descriptions should be unique and reflect the content on the page.
Meta-Keywords
Got that time machine ready? Search engines give no weight to meta-keywords anymore. We generally recommend creating a list of keywords and using the same list throughout the site because they’re a giant waste of time!
In Conclusion
Of course, there's a lot more nitty-gritty work that needs to be done in a competitive niche, but by placing your best keywords in the right places you can greatly increase your search engine visibility.
If you’d like help in running a keyword analysis on your own site, or would like to improve your site’s search engine visibility, contact flyte today.
--Rich Brooks
President, flyte new media
He said, “I had this idea, see, where we would put all the keywords we wanted to use over and over again in white text on a white background. Then, the search engines would rank us near the top but it wouldn’t clutter up our page.”
I explained that this was a great idea, presuming he had a time machine and could return to early 1997—the last time this technique actually worked.
Search engines are getting smarter all the time. If you’re looking for a long-term success strategy that will allow you to concentrate on building your business rather than chasing the next search engine bait-and-switch, you need to know where to place your keywords for maximum results.
Before You Begin
Placing the wrong keywords in the right places won’t help your search engine visibility. Start with a keyword analysis to determine which keyword phrases will be most effective on your site.
Tools like Keyword Discovery and WordTracker will help you determine how much competition you have for specific keywords, and how often people are searching for phrases. It will also prepare alternatives and variations of your keywords so that you can cast a wider net. Once you have your list of effective keywords it’s time to put them in their place.
Titles
Titles are one of the few things search engine experts agree on. They’re probably the most important variable for search engine optimization (SEO). And yet, you may never have noticed them before.
That’s because titles appear not on the Web page itself, but rather in the aptly named title bar. If you’re on a Windows machine, this is where you see the minimize, maximize and close buttons. If you’re on a Mac, it’s where the red, yellow and green buttons reside.
You should front load your titles with your best keywords. In other words, “Recycled Paper Goods from XYZ Corp” beats “XYZ Corp: Recycled Paper Goods” for a search on “recycled paper goods,” all other things being equal.
Additionally, you should make sure that each page of your Web site has a unique title. Not only is a duplicate title a missed opportunity, it can be a red flag to the search engines that want to avoid indexing duplicate content.
Finally, make sure your titles read well. Titles appear as the big, blue link on most search engine results pages, and if they’re an unintelligible glom of keywords, people are less likely to click on them.
Headers
Headers and sub-headers are the “titles” that appear in the Web page. They are usually bigger and bolder than the rest of the text, and summarize the themes of the paragraphs that follow. Most experts agree that they carry more weight than the rest of the body copy.
Headers should reflect the title of the page, but shouldn’t be identical. This is because a variation of the title can help you cast a wider net, and also because duplication of title and header can appear “spammy” or “over-optimized” to the search engines.
Body Copy
Your page-specific, keyword-rich body copy is also important. You should be using your keyword-rich phrases and variations, too. Your copy also needs to read well. Bold and italics can help the reader scan the material for the most important ideas, and some experts believe this can also affect the search engine ranking of the page.
Intra-Site Links
Search engines give extra-weight to the words used in an intra-site link (from one page to another within your site) and--to a lesser degree--the words around the link. So, instead of “learn more” or “click here”, use keyword-rich links such as, “Southern Maine Landscaping,” or “Pesticide-Free Gardening.”
Meta-Descriptions
Meta-descriptions don’t appear on the page, but rather in the source code. The only time people will see them is on the search engine results page under the big, blue title tag link.
There’s some debate on whether meta-descriptions help with your rankings, (I think they have little to no value,) but a well-crafted meta-description on a search results page may get a person to click on your link rather than a competitor’s. Think of this as a short ad; what will compel a Google-user to click on your link?
Like title tags, meta-descriptions should be unique and reflect the content on the page.
Meta-Keywords
Got that time machine ready? Search engines give no weight to meta-keywords anymore. We generally recommend creating a list of keywords and using the same list throughout the site because they’re a giant waste of time!
In Conclusion
Of course, there's a lot more nitty-gritty work that needs to be done in a competitive niche, but by placing your best keywords in the right places you can greatly increase your search engine visibility.
If you’d like help in running a keyword analysis on your own site, or would like to improve your site’s search engine visibility, contact flyte today.
--Rich Brooks
President, flyte new media
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Could Flash search change internet marketing rules?
by ClickThrough
New developments in Flash search indexing could lead to significant changes in search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies.
Adobe has revealed that it is providing its Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to help the two engines make improvements to their search indexing of Flash SWF file formats.
This could eventually lead to greater visibility of Flash content to search engines, helping web users to find more of the kind of information they are looking for, Adobe said.
According to Mashable, this development could rewrite the rules of SEO, which have historically suggested that those looking to improve search rankings should avoid Flash content as it is not easily picked up by engines.
"We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the web and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users," commented David Wadhwani of Adobe.
Google has already started rolling out the Flash Player technology across its engine and has developed an algorithm that looks at text in Flash elements such as buttons and banners, according to a recent Official Google Blog posting.
New developments in Flash search indexing could lead to significant changes in search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies.
Adobe has revealed that it is providing its Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to help the two engines make improvements to their search indexing of Flash SWF file formats.
This could eventually lead to greater visibility of Flash content to search engines, helping web users to find more of the kind of information they are looking for, Adobe said.
According to Mashable, this development could rewrite the rules of SEO, which have historically suggested that those looking to improve search rankings should avoid Flash content as it is not easily picked up by engines.
"We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the web and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users," commented David Wadhwani of Adobe.
Google has already started rolling out the Flash Player technology across its engine and has developed an algorithm that looks at text in Flash elements such as buttons and banners, according to a recent Official Google Blog posting.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Yahoo confirms Google commitment, pans Microsoft
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc.'s leaders defended online search leader Google Inc. as a more desirable partner than Microsoft Corp. in a Wednesday letter that affirmed the Internet pioneer's commitment to a strategy that has alienated shareholders.
Yahoo embraced its planned advertising partnership with Google amid reports that it had revived talks about a possible deal with Microsoft. The report, based information from unnamed people, surfaced despite Yahoo's repeated rejection of the software maker since their tense mating dance began nearly five months ago.
Although Yahoo's letter didn't completely rule out a Microsoft deal, it stressed that working with Google remains the best option on the table.
The letter is part of Yahoo's campaign to fend off an attempt to overthrow its board at its Aug. 1 annual meeting. The revolt was triggered by Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft's takeover offer of $47.5 billion, or $33 per share.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker withdrew the bid after co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang pushed for $37 a share — a price Yahoo's stock hasn't reached since January 2006.
Upset by the board's handling of the Microsoft negotiations, activist investor Carl Icahn has nominated nine candidates to replace Yahoo's current directors, including Yang. If Icahn prevails, he also plans to fire Yang as CEO.
Yahoo is urging shareholders to reject Icahn's slate and give Yang another chance to prove the company is worth more than $47.5 billion.
Icahn didn't return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
Under an agreement announced this month, Sunnyvale-based Yahoo will use Google's superior technology to show ads alongside its search results in the United States. Yahoo estimates the partnership will boost its annual revenue about $800 million and help end the financial malaise that has battered the company's stock.
"This carefully structured agreement strikes the right strategic balance, enhancing our financial results while advancing our strategic objectives," Yang and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock wrote Wednesday.
After dropping its buyout bid last month, Microsoft returned with an alternative offer of $9 billion for Yahoo's search engine and a 16 percent stake in Yahoo's remaining operations. Microsoft maintains that could have helped boost Yahoo's cash flow about $1 billion annually — much more than the $250 million to $450 million expected from the Google partnership.
But Yahoo disputed Microsoft's estimates Wednesday, saying the deal wouldn't have provided a "meaningful" improvement to Yahoo's cash flow, and it would have precluded a sale to anyone else without the software maker's approval.
The Google partnership allows for Yahoo to be sold, although the escape clause includes a break-up fee of up to $250 million.
Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The software maker has previously said it remains available to discuss a limited deal with Yahoo while emphasizing it's no longer interested in buying the company in its entirety.
Wednesday's developments seemed to disappoint investors, whose hopes had been raised by the reports that Yahoo might abandon the Google partnership for a Microsoft deal. The reports were published on technology blogs and an online news site owned by CNet Networks Inc.
Yahoo shares shed 26 cents in Wednesday's extended trading after dipping three cents to finish the regular session at $22.01 for a cumulative drop of 16 percent since the Google partnership was announced.
SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc.'s leaders defended online search leader Google Inc. as a more desirable partner than Microsoft Corp. in a Wednesday letter that affirmed the Internet pioneer's commitment to a strategy that has alienated shareholders.
Yahoo embraced its planned advertising partnership with Google amid reports that it had revived talks about a possible deal with Microsoft. The report, based information from unnamed people, surfaced despite Yahoo's repeated rejection of the software maker since their tense mating dance began nearly five months ago.
Although Yahoo's letter didn't completely rule out a Microsoft deal, it stressed that working with Google remains the best option on the table.
The letter is part of Yahoo's campaign to fend off an attempt to overthrow its board at its Aug. 1 annual meeting. The revolt was triggered by Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft's takeover offer of $47.5 billion, or $33 per share.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker withdrew the bid after co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang pushed for $37 a share — a price Yahoo's stock hasn't reached since January 2006.
Upset by the board's handling of the Microsoft negotiations, activist investor Carl Icahn has nominated nine candidates to replace Yahoo's current directors, including Yang. If Icahn prevails, he also plans to fire Yang as CEO.
Yahoo is urging shareholders to reject Icahn's slate and give Yang another chance to prove the company is worth more than $47.5 billion.
Icahn didn't return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
Under an agreement announced this month, Sunnyvale-based Yahoo will use Google's superior technology to show ads alongside its search results in the United States. Yahoo estimates the partnership will boost its annual revenue about $800 million and help end the financial malaise that has battered the company's stock.
"This carefully structured agreement strikes the right strategic balance, enhancing our financial results while advancing our strategic objectives," Yang and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock wrote Wednesday.
After dropping its buyout bid last month, Microsoft returned with an alternative offer of $9 billion for Yahoo's search engine and a 16 percent stake in Yahoo's remaining operations. Microsoft maintains that could have helped boost Yahoo's cash flow about $1 billion annually — much more than the $250 million to $450 million expected from the Google partnership.
But Yahoo disputed Microsoft's estimates Wednesday, saying the deal wouldn't have provided a "meaningful" improvement to Yahoo's cash flow, and it would have precluded a sale to anyone else without the software maker's approval.
The Google partnership allows for Yahoo to be sold, although the escape clause includes a break-up fee of up to $250 million.
Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The software maker has previously said it remains available to discuss a limited deal with Yahoo while emphasizing it's no longer interested in buying the company in its entirety.
Wednesday's developments seemed to disappoint investors, whose hopes had been raised by the reports that Yahoo might abandon the Google partnership for a Microsoft deal. The reports were published on technology blogs and an online news site owned by CNet Networks Inc.
Yahoo shares shed 26 cents in Wednesday's extended trading after dipping three cents to finish the regular session at $22.01 for a cumulative drop of 16 percent since the Google partnership was announced.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
So, You Think You're A Search Engine Optimization Expert?
by Shari Thurow
A few years ago, I wrote a three-part article series about the different levels of SEO skills: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. I placed copywriters at the beginner level, information architects and interface designers at the intermediate level, and web developers and programmers at the advanced level.
At the time, I was pretty confident at the delineations, because it seemed that is how the perception of search engine optimization had evolved. Now, as I re-evaluate what I wrote, I am not so sure. Instead of seeing a continuum, where a true SEO expert can effectively perform the skills at each level, maybe these three groups represent three unique skill sets. Some of the skills in each set can overlap, of course (I know plenty of people who are both web designers and developers).
So now I stop and try to reassess my perspective, and perhaps the search industry perspective. Is an SEO professional with advanced programming skills truly an SEO expert?
Keyword researchers and copywriters as SEO experts
What inspired my reassessment was a conversation I was in last week. I was showing a usability test participant some early web-page prototypes, and out of the blue, this question popped out:
Question: Would you hire a programmer to write your web site's copy?
Answer: [Expletive] no.
Intrigued, I asked more questions, since this person obviously had a strong opinion about the subject. In a nutshell, she essentially thought my questions were completely absurd because she felt no one in his or her right mind would allow a programmer or web developer to write or edit website copy.
Yet, this happens all of the time in the SEO industry—people who possess very technical skills are also the ones doing keyword research and writing/editing copy. Is this a good or a bad thing?
In my personal opinion, some of the most undervalued SEO professionals are copywriters and keyword researchers. I really do not care that they cannot configure a server or do the latest image replacement workaround. What I care about is that they identify the right keyword phrases and present them in the best possible light to site visitors. Apparently, I am not the only person who feels this way.
And by "identify the right keyword phrases," I do not mean that they know how to calculate KEI (keyword effectiveness index), which sounds like pure programmer jargon to most people. I'm waiting for Scott Adams to write a Dilbert cartoon about that one.
By "identify the right keyword phrases," I mean going beyond the available keyword research tools and really understanding what searchers and site visitors respond to. A truly gifted keyword researcher understands that searchers respond to words that they (the searchers) do not necessarily type as search queries.
Are advanced search-engine friendly copywriters any less advanced because they do not have the skills to implement the latest image replacement workaround? I do not believe so, but I do believe it is a common industry misperception... and not only in the search industry, either.
And that brings me to the next group, whom I often hear state, "Keywords are useless if search engines do not have access to that content." Which can be true, but...
Web developers and programmers as SEO experts
I accept that I might take some heat for this opinion: I have never believed that having advanced IT skills automatically means that a person has advanced SEO skills. I do not believe that having advanced IT skills is a requirement for being an advanced SEO expert.
Granted, the "science" part of SEO certainly requires some technical skills. And a multi-talented SEO professional usually has a combination of creative and technical skills, a union of analytical and creative thinking. But I do not believe an advanced SEO professional is a person who has technical skills at the exclusion of other skills. Just as I do not believe that an advanced SEO professional is a person who has copywriting skills at the exclusion of technical skills.
Even though a search-engine friendly copywriter might not be able to implement a Flash or image replacement workaround, he or she might need to understand what it is and when it is appropriate to implement it.
Believe me, the information architects and interface designers will certainly have more colorful opinions on that subject, and their perspectives might be incredibly valuable. Frequently, the interface designers will tell you not to implement a technology in the first place because users don't want it (because they test this sort of thing all of the time) and because users do not effectively, and successfully, complete desired tasks. Why implement a workaround when your site visitors don't want the technology in the first place? I know, I know. Because management told you to do it, marketing is only responding to industry buzz, and well? Web 2.x (insert current numbers here) is cool.
I hear these statements quite often when it comes to SEO workarounds, "You are against this workaround because you don't know how to do it," or "You are against this workaround because you don't understand it." These types of statements come from SEO professionals and even potential clients, who are usually people in the IT department. For example, one prevailing attitude seems to be: if an SEO professional does not know how to do optimization using Ruby on Rails, then that person isn't an an advanced SEO professional.
Okay, I'll bite. I prefer working with Cold Fusion. Now if I say that an SEO professional who doesn't know how to implement the Cold Fusion URL workaround isn't an advanced SEO,...I hope you get my point. SEO professionals often have a wide variety of skills, and having one skill doesn't automatically make a person more advanced at optimization than having another skill.
Conclusion
So what am I trying to accomplish with this article? Honestly, I would really like the search industry to re-evaluate what they consider to be advanced SEO skills. I do not believe that advanced SEO skills are necessarily "black-hat" skills. Nor do I believe that persons with little or no technical skills are not advanced SEO practitioners.
I do believe that an advanced SEO professional understands how all of these levels are interconnected, the big picture. Who knows? Maybe my opinion has the making of a Dilbert cartoon. I am very interested in what others have to say about this subject. How do you define advanced search engine optimization?
Shari Thurow is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.
A few years ago, I wrote a three-part article series about the different levels of SEO skills: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. I placed copywriters at the beginner level, information architects and interface designers at the intermediate level, and web developers and programmers at the advanced level.
At the time, I was pretty confident at the delineations, because it seemed that is how the perception of search engine optimization had evolved. Now, as I re-evaluate what I wrote, I am not so sure. Instead of seeing a continuum, where a true SEO expert can effectively perform the skills at each level, maybe these three groups represent three unique skill sets. Some of the skills in each set can overlap, of course (I know plenty of people who are both web designers and developers).
So now I stop and try to reassess my perspective, and perhaps the search industry perspective. Is an SEO professional with advanced programming skills truly an SEO expert?
Keyword researchers and copywriters as SEO experts
What inspired my reassessment was a conversation I was in last week. I was showing a usability test participant some early web-page prototypes, and out of the blue, this question popped out:
Question: Would you hire a programmer to write your web site's copy?
Answer: [Expletive] no.
Intrigued, I asked more questions, since this person obviously had a strong opinion about the subject. In a nutshell, she essentially thought my questions were completely absurd because she felt no one in his or her right mind would allow a programmer or web developer to write or edit website copy.
Yet, this happens all of the time in the SEO industry—people who possess very technical skills are also the ones doing keyword research and writing/editing copy. Is this a good or a bad thing?
In my personal opinion, some of the most undervalued SEO professionals are copywriters and keyword researchers. I really do not care that they cannot configure a server or do the latest image replacement workaround. What I care about is that they identify the right keyword phrases and present them in the best possible light to site visitors. Apparently, I am not the only person who feels this way.
And by "identify the right keyword phrases," I do not mean that they know how to calculate KEI (keyword effectiveness index), which sounds like pure programmer jargon to most people. I'm waiting for Scott Adams to write a Dilbert cartoon about that one.
By "identify the right keyword phrases," I mean going beyond the available keyword research tools and really understanding what searchers and site visitors respond to. A truly gifted keyword researcher understands that searchers respond to words that they (the searchers) do not necessarily type as search queries.
Are advanced search-engine friendly copywriters any less advanced because they do not have the skills to implement the latest image replacement workaround? I do not believe so, but I do believe it is a common industry misperception... and not only in the search industry, either.
And that brings me to the next group, whom I often hear state, "Keywords are useless if search engines do not have access to that content." Which can be true, but...
Web developers and programmers as SEO experts
I accept that I might take some heat for this opinion: I have never believed that having advanced IT skills automatically means that a person has advanced SEO skills. I do not believe that having advanced IT skills is a requirement for being an advanced SEO expert.
Granted, the "science" part of SEO certainly requires some technical skills. And a multi-talented SEO professional usually has a combination of creative and technical skills, a union of analytical and creative thinking. But I do not believe an advanced SEO professional is a person who has technical skills at the exclusion of other skills. Just as I do not believe that an advanced SEO professional is a person who has copywriting skills at the exclusion of technical skills.
Even though a search-engine friendly copywriter might not be able to implement a Flash or image replacement workaround, he or she might need to understand what it is and when it is appropriate to implement it.
Believe me, the information architects and interface designers will certainly have more colorful opinions on that subject, and their perspectives might be incredibly valuable. Frequently, the interface designers will tell you not to implement a technology in the first place because users don't want it (because they test this sort of thing all of the time) and because users do not effectively, and successfully, complete desired tasks. Why implement a workaround when your site visitors don't want the technology in the first place? I know, I know. Because management told you to do it, marketing is only responding to industry buzz, and well? Web 2.x (insert current numbers here) is cool.
I hear these statements quite often when it comes to SEO workarounds, "You are against this workaround because you don't know how to do it," or "You are against this workaround because you don't understand it." These types of statements come from SEO professionals and even potential clients, who are usually people in the IT department. For example, one prevailing attitude seems to be: if an SEO professional does not know how to do optimization using Ruby on Rails, then that person isn't an an advanced SEO professional.
Okay, I'll bite. I prefer working with Cold Fusion. Now if I say that an SEO professional who doesn't know how to implement the Cold Fusion URL workaround isn't an advanced SEO,...I hope you get my point. SEO professionals often have a wide variety of skills, and having one skill doesn't automatically make a person more advanced at optimization than having another skill.
Conclusion
So what am I trying to accomplish with this article? Honestly, I would really like the search industry to re-evaluate what they consider to be advanced SEO skills. I do not believe that advanced SEO skills are necessarily "black-hat" skills. Nor do I believe that persons with little or no technical skills are not advanced SEO practitioners.
I do believe that an advanced SEO professional understands how all of these levels are interconnected, the big picture. Who knows? Maybe my opinion has the making of a Dilbert cartoon. I am very interested in what others have to say about this subject. How do you define advanced search engine optimization?
Shari Thurow is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
iPhone pushes Google to early lead
By Michael Estrin
It's still early, but at first blush Google appears to own the wireless search market, according to data from Nielsen Mobile.
Google, which accounts for 61 percent of all mobile searches, bested Yahoo which came in second with 18 percent of the market. MSN accounted for 5 percent of the market.
But much of Google's success can actually be summed up in one word -- iPhone. Earlier this year, Google reported that the iPhone, which represents a mere 2 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, accounted for the bulk of mobile internet searches. But the good news for Google is that it's the default search engine on all iPhones, which is why marketers are closely watching the rollout of Apple's latest 3G iPhone.
So where does this leave the rest of the pack? Well, Yahoo has been working hard to cut deals with other handset makers and telecom carriers around the world. Most recently, the company announced six new telecom partnerships throughout Asia, bringing its total to 60 worldwide.
According to David Ko, managing director and VP of Yahoo's mobile division, the company can offer advertisers global scale to the tune of 600 million users. But while those numbers may sound good, Yahoo will have to offer more in terms of search functionality and ad serving if it's going to chip away at Google's lead. Otherwise, Yahoo may find itself cutting a mobile search deal with Google similar to the one the two companies are currently proposing.
As for Microsoft, it has the most ground to make up both in terms of raw numbers and user experience. While Microsoft is the default search engine on many mobile devices, it seems that fact did little to help it boost market share. According to technology blog Ars Technica, one potentially discouraging piece of information for Microsoft is that mobile users may have opted out of using it as the default search engine in favor of Yahoo, which is bundled in Opera Mini, a browser commonly downloaded by BlackBerry users.
It's still early, but at first blush Google appears to own the wireless search market, according to data from Nielsen Mobile.
Google, which accounts for 61 percent of all mobile searches, bested Yahoo which came in second with 18 percent of the market. MSN accounted for 5 percent of the market.
But much of Google's success can actually be summed up in one word -- iPhone. Earlier this year, Google reported that the iPhone, which represents a mere 2 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, accounted for the bulk of mobile internet searches. But the good news for Google is that it's the default search engine on all iPhones, which is why marketers are closely watching the rollout of Apple's latest 3G iPhone.
So where does this leave the rest of the pack? Well, Yahoo has been working hard to cut deals with other handset makers and telecom carriers around the world. Most recently, the company announced six new telecom partnerships throughout Asia, bringing its total to 60 worldwide.
According to David Ko, managing director and VP of Yahoo's mobile division, the company can offer advertisers global scale to the tune of 600 million users. But while those numbers may sound good, Yahoo will have to offer more in terms of search functionality and ad serving if it's going to chip away at Google's lead. Otherwise, Yahoo may find itself cutting a mobile search deal with Google similar to the one the two companies are currently proposing.
As for Microsoft, it has the most ground to make up both in terms of raw numbers and user experience. While Microsoft is the default search engine on many mobile devices, it seems that fact did little to help it boost market share. According to technology blog Ars Technica, one potentially discouraging piece of information for Microsoft is that mobile users may have opted out of using it as the default search engine in favor of Yahoo, which is bundled in Opera Mini, a browser commonly downloaded by BlackBerry users.
Monday, June 9, 2008
FCC Teases About Free Broadband
By Jason Lee Miller
Would you like free wireless broadband? Sure you would. As you might guess, though, free broadband is bad for the broadband provider business. In a weird twist of logic, broadband providers argue free broadband is bad for consumers, too.
In a move that turned out to be as self-serving as it was beneficial to US citizens – hey, the citizens will take what they can get these days – FCC Chairman Kevin Martin appeared, for about five minutes, to do something on behalf of the people rather than the phone companies by proposing the 2155-2175 MHz-band of spectrum be allocated for 768 kbps wireless access. In terms of capabilities, that's kind of slow, but matches the slowest options of incumbent providers.
It also matched the speed offered up by M2Z Networks, a broadband startup headed by former FCC official John Muleta, whose ad-supported and content-filtered broadband proposal was rejected by the FCC last year. Martin's proposal – if history is any indication – would likely also come with content filtering. Because the FCC was slow to even review M2Z's proposal, Muleta sued the FCC to make a decision, likely not garnering any good will from Martin in the process. Muleta once suggested the FCC was blocking wireless competition, or at least free services--wouldn't it be interesting if this was why?
Why did Martin change his mind about free wireless broadband? Om Malik suggests it wasn't a patriotic, altruistic decision. Martin, after years of lobbying for the telecommunications companies and in many ways continuing his service in that capacity as chairman of the FCC, is ready to begin an elected political career. So, he's suddenly very populist. Martin was to bring the issue to a vote next week.
But his old masters told him to cool it. Malik presents two letters to federal regulators, one from T-Mobile, and one from M2Z, which tell the whole story. T-Mobile, along with Verizon, argued that the spectrum needed to be tested more before launch for fear of interference with blocks of spectrum bought through the federal auction system.
Such interference would "ultimately disserve consumers." Malik was right to translate that as "Let’s delay this sucker for as long as possible." M2Z's letter expressed a similar view of T-Mobile and Verizon's objection, and laid out more detail.
The most telling tidbit: Both companies saved money by purchasing equipment made for foreign markets, which do not block interference within the spectrum, picking up signals from as far away from South America. Bottom line: Because they cut corners (and other reasons), you can't have free wireless broadband.
M2Z called this type of maneuvering "competitive gamesmanship" and an attempt to "squat on spectrum they never won at auction."
Despite M2Z's objections to T-Mobile's objections, telco-puppet Martin called off next week's meeting. Once a shill, always a shill it seems.
Would you like free wireless broadband? Sure you would. As you might guess, though, free broadband is bad for the broadband provider business. In a weird twist of logic, broadband providers argue free broadband is bad for consumers, too.
In a move that turned out to be as self-serving as it was beneficial to US citizens – hey, the citizens will take what they can get these days – FCC Chairman Kevin Martin appeared, for about five minutes, to do something on behalf of the people rather than the phone companies by proposing the 2155-2175 MHz-band of spectrum be allocated for 768 kbps wireless access. In terms of capabilities, that's kind of slow, but matches the slowest options of incumbent providers.
It also matched the speed offered up by M2Z Networks, a broadband startup headed by former FCC official John Muleta, whose ad-supported and content-filtered broadband proposal was rejected by the FCC last year. Martin's proposal – if history is any indication – would likely also come with content filtering. Because the FCC was slow to even review M2Z's proposal, Muleta sued the FCC to make a decision, likely not garnering any good will from Martin in the process. Muleta once suggested the FCC was blocking wireless competition, or at least free services--wouldn't it be interesting if this was why?
Why did Martin change his mind about free wireless broadband? Om Malik suggests it wasn't a patriotic, altruistic decision. Martin, after years of lobbying for the telecommunications companies and in many ways continuing his service in that capacity as chairman of the FCC, is ready to begin an elected political career. So, he's suddenly very populist. Martin was to bring the issue to a vote next week.
But his old masters told him to cool it. Malik presents two letters to federal regulators, one from T-Mobile, and one from M2Z, which tell the whole story. T-Mobile, along with Verizon, argued that the spectrum needed to be tested more before launch for fear of interference with blocks of spectrum bought through the federal auction system.
Such interference would "ultimately disserve consumers." Malik was right to translate that as "Let’s delay this sucker for as long as possible." M2Z's letter expressed a similar view of T-Mobile and Verizon's objection, and laid out more detail.
The most telling tidbit: Both companies saved money by purchasing equipment made for foreign markets, which do not block interference within the spectrum, picking up signals from as far away from South America. Bottom line: Because they cut corners (and other reasons), you can't have free wireless broadband.
M2Z called this type of maneuvering "competitive gamesmanship" and an attempt to "squat on spectrum they never won at auction."
Despite M2Z's objections to T-Mobile's objections, telco-puppet Martin called off next week's meeting. Once a shill, always a shill it seems.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Access to next-gen Internet uneven
By PETER SVENSSON
The lack of high-speed Internet access in some areas of the U.S. has been hotly debated, even as that digital divide has narrowed. But a new, wider gap is being created by technology that will make today's broadband feel as slow as a dial-up connection.
Much like broadband enabled downloads of music, video and work files that weren't practical over dial-up, the next generation of Internet connections will allow for vivid, lifelike video conferencing and new kinds of interactive games.
But while access to cable and phone-line broadband has spread to cover perhaps 90 percent of the U.S. in the space of a decade, next-generation Internet access looks set to create a much smaller group of "haves" and a larger group of "have nots."
The most promising route to superfast home broadband is to extend the fiber-optic lines that already form the Internet's backbone all the way to homes. Existing fiber-to-the-home, or FTTH, connections are already 10 times faster than vanilla broadband provided over phone or cable lines. With relatively easy upgrades, the speeds could be a hundred times faster.
In the U.S., the buildout of FTTH is under way, but it's highly concentrated in the 17-state service area of Verizon Communications Inc., which is the only major U.S. phone company that is replacing its copper lines with fiber. Its FiOS service accounts for more than 1.8 million of the 2.9 million U.S. homes that are connected to fiber according to RVA LLC, a research firm that specializes in the field.
FTTH is also offered by some small phone companies, cooperatives and municipalities, like Chattanooga, Tenn. The other major phone companies, like AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc., are laying FTTH in "greenfield" developments, but aren't pulling fiber to existing homes. Some cable companies are doing the same.
Graham Finnie, chief analyst for the telecom research firm Heavy Reading, believes 13 percent of U.S. households will be connected to fiber by 2012. Since Verizon is the major builder, the vast majority of those will be in Verizon territory on the East Coast, Texas and California.
"That does beg the question: What happens to everyone else? There's going to be a huge community of people who are not getting FTTH in the next five years," Finnie said.
"A quarter of the U.S. is going to get one of the best networks in the world," said Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime newsletter.
The rest of the country, he said, is going to be stuck with slow DSL or cable, though the latter is due for upgrades in the next few years that will boost top speeds fivefold.
Still, it's not entirely clear that people on fiber connections are going to have a big advantage over slowpokes on regular broadband. Today, there is not much that can be done on a fast connection that can't be done on a standard one. Fiber is already available to a third of South Korean homes, but that hasn't revolutionized society there, at least not yet.
Increased used of video, particularly high-definition video, is seen as the future of the Internet, but most cable modems and high-end DSL are already capable of streaming HD video downloads. However, fiber connections support higher upload speeds, potentially making for better video conferencing from the home, which in turn creates opportunities for distance learning. Games also could get a jump in realism and online interactivity, Burstein said.
Not only are U.S. regions going to differ tremendously in how fast they get fiber, the differences between countries will also be huge. Apart from South Korea, Finnie cited Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Sweden as other front-runners. He estimates that almost half of all Swedish households would have fiber by 2012, for instance.
"This is not a market where there's a smooth progression across countries and regions — it's going to be extremely variable," said Finnie.
Considered as a whole, the U.S. will be "middling" in the international comparison, trailing the pioneers but well ahead of other developed nations like Finnie's home country, Britain, which he estimates will have 3 to 4 percent fiber-connected homes in 2012.
The fiber buildout is going to take more time and be more patchy than the introduction of broadband because it's so much more expensive, Finnie said. Cable modem and DSL connections are retrofits to links originally laid down to provide video and phone service, respectively. Fiber-optic lines will be the first links that are built for data to reach U.S. homes.
The costs will remain high, because getting permits for the buildout and drawing the physical lines is "a hugely physical, human-type activity," said Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council North America. While the cost of the equipment keeps dropping rapidly, two-thirds of the cost of connecting a home are labor, he said.
The lack of high-speed Internet access in some areas of the U.S. has been hotly debated, even as that digital divide has narrowed. But a new, wider gap is being created by technology that will make today's broadband feel as slow as a dial-up connection.
Much like broadband enabled downloads of music, video and work files that weren't practical over dial-up, the next generation of Internet connections will allow for vivid, lifelike video conferencing and new kinds of interactive games.
But while access to cable and phone-line broadband has spread to cover perhaps 90 percent of the U.S. in the space of a decade, next-generation Internet access looks set to create a much smaller group of "haves" and a larger group of "have nots."
The most promising route to superfast home broadband is to extend the fiber-optic lines that already form the Internet's backbone all the way to homes. Existing fiber-to-the-home, or FTTH, connections are already 10 times faster than vanilla broadband provided over phone or cable lines. With relatively easy upgrades, the speeds could be a hundred times faster.
In the U.S., the buildout of FTTH is under way, but it's highly concentrated in the 17-state service area of Verizon Communications Inc., which is the only major U.S. phone company that is replacing its copper lines with fiber. Its FiOS service accounts for more than 1.8 million of the 2.9 million U.S. homes that are connected to fiber according to RVA LLC, a research firm that specializes in the field.
FTTH is also offered by some small phone companies, cooperatives and municipalities, like Chattanooga, Tenn. The other major phone companies, like AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc., are laying FTTH in "greenfield" developments, but aren't pulling fiber to existing homes. Some cable companies are doing the same.
Graham Finnie, chief analyst for the telecom research firm Heavy Reading, believes 13 percent of U.S. households will be connected to fiber by 2012. Since Verizon is the major builder, the vast majority of those will be in Verizon territory on the East Coast, Texas and California.
"That does beg the question: What happens to everyone else? There's going to be a huge community of people who are not getting FTTH in the next five years," Finnie said.
"A quarter of the U.S. is going to get one of the best networks in the world," said Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime newsletter.
The rest of the country, he said, is going to be stuck with slow DSL or cable, though the latter is due for upgrades in the next few years that will boost top speeds fivefold.
Still, it's not entirely clear that people on fiber connections are going to have a big advantage over slowpokes on regular broadband. Today, there is not much that can be done on a fast connection that can't be done on a standard one. Fiber is already available to a third of South Korean homes, but that hasn't revolutionized society there, at least not yet.
Increased used of video, particularly high-definition video, is seen as the future of the Internet, but most cable modems and high-end DSL are already capable of streaming HD video downloads. However, fiber connections support higher upload speeds, potentially making for better video conferencing from the home, which in turn creates opportunities for distance learning. Games also could get a jump in realism and online interactivity, Burstein said.
Not only are U.S. regions going to differ tremendously in how fast they get fiber, the differences between countries will also be huge. Apart from South Korea, Finnie cited Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Sweden as other front-runners. He estimates that almost half of all Swedish households would have fiber by 2012, for instance.
"This is not a market where there's a smooth progression across countries and regions — it's going to be extremely variable," said Finnie.
Considered as a whole, the U.S. will be "middling" in the international comparison, trailing the pioneers but well ahead of other developed nations like Finnie's home country, Britain, which he estimates will have 3 to 4 percent fiber-connected homes in 2012.
The fiber buildout is going to take more time and be more patchy than the introduction of broadband because it's so much more expensive, Finnie said. Cable modem and DSL connections are retrofits to links originally laid down to provide video and phone service, respectively. Fiber-optic lines will be the first links that are built for data to reach U.S. homes.
The costs will remain high, because getting permits for the buildout and drawing the physical lines is "a hugely physical, human-type activity," said Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council North America. While the cost of the equipment keeps dropping rapidly, two-thirds of the cost of connecting a home are labor, he said.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Microsoft Joins Low-Cost Laptop Project
By STEVE LOHR
After years of conflict, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child, have reached an agreement that will put Windows on the organization’s computers.
Laptops running Microsoft's operating system will be tested next month in limited trials.
Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to Windows.
The group’s small, sturdy laptops have been hailed for their innovative design. But they are sold mainly to governments and education ministries in developing nations, and initial sales have been slow partly because countries were reluctant to purchase machines that did not run Windows, the dominant operating system.
Education ministries want low-cost computers to help further education, but they often see familiarity with Windows-based computing as a marketable skill that can improve job prospects.
“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit group. “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”
The alliance between Microsoft and O.L.P.C. comes after long stretches of antagonism, punctuated by occasional talks, between the two sides. Mr. Negroponte, a former computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new media pioneer, said he first talked to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, three years ago.
But at the time, Microsoft was fiercely opposed to anything that might promote the use of open-source software, like Linux. Since then, Microsoft has become more comfortable in competing against Linux and at times running its products on the same machines in data centers, desktops and laptops, Mr. Negroponte noted.
Back then, he added, the nonprofit laptop project did not have a working machine.
Last year, Mr. Negroponte said he contacted Mr. Gates again, and this time the Microsoft chairman was receptive. He instructed Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, to work out a deal with Mr. Negroponte. Those talks began in January in private meetings, when both men were attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The first of the project’s child-friendly XO laptops running Windows XP will be tested next month in limited trials in four or five countries, said James Utzschneider, manager of Microsoft’s developing markets unit. He declined to name the countries, but said XO laptops running Windows would be generally available by September.
The pact with Microsoft is not an exclusive agreement. The Linux version will still be available, and the organization will encourage outside software developers to create a version of the project’s educational software, called Sugar, that will run on Windows.
Windows will add a bit to the price of the machines, about $3, the licensing fee Microsoft charges to some developing nations under a program called Unlimited Potential. For those nations that want dual-boot models, running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add another $7 or so to the cost of the machines, Mr. Negroponte said.
The laptops now cost about $200 apiece, and the project’s goal is to eventually bring the price down to about $100.
The project’s agreement with Microsoft involves no payment by the software giant, and Microsoft will not join One Laptop Per Child’s board.
“We’ve stayed very pure,” Mr. Negroponte said.
But the alliance with Microsoft has brought some turmoil within the project. Walter Bender, the president who oversaw software development, resigned last month. His departure, Mr. Negroponte said, was “a huge loss to O.L.P.C.”
Inside the project, there have been people who, Mr. Negroponte said, came to regard the use of open-source software as one of the project’s ends, instead of its means.
“I think some people, including Walter, became much too fundamental about open source,” Mr. Negroponte said.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Bender wrote that he left the project because he decided his efforts to develop and support the Sugar open-source learning software “would have more impact from outside of O.L.P.C. than from within.” Outside the constraints of working on a single hardware platform, like the XO laptop, his work, he wrote, should “lead to a broader base, more options, and a better set of tools for children.”
After years of conflict, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child, have reached an agreement that will put Windows on the organization’s computers.
Laptops running Microsoft's operating system will be tested next month in limited trials.
Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to Windows.
The group’s small, sturdy laptops have been hailed for their innovative design. But they are sold mainly to governments and education ministries in developing nations, and initial sales have been slow partly because countries were reluctant to purchase machines that did not run Windows, the dominant operating system.
Education ministries want low-cost computers to help further education, but they often see familiarity with Windows-based computing as a marketable skill that can improve job prospects.
“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit group. “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”
The alliance between Microsoft and O.L.P.C. comes after long stretches of antagonism, punctuated by occasional talks, between the two sides. Mr. Negroponte, a former computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new media pioneer, said he first talked to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, three years ago.
But at the time, Microsoft was fiercely opposed to anything that might promote the use of open-source software, like Linux. Since then, Microsoft has become more comfortable in competing against Linux and at times running its products on the same machines in data centers, desktops and laptops, Mr. Negroponte noted.
Back then, he added, the nonprofit laptop project did not have a working machine.
Last year, Mr. Negroponte said he contacted Mr. Gates again, and this time the Microsoft chairman was receptive. He instructed Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, to work out a deal with Mr. Negroponte. Those talks began in January in private meetings, when both men were attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The first of the project’s child-friendly XO laptops running Windows XP will be tested next month in limited trials in four or five countries, said James Utzschneider, manager of Microsoft’s developing markets unit. He declined to name the countries, but said XO laptops running Windows would be generally available by September.
The pact with Microsoft is not an exclusive agreement. The Linux version will still be available, and the organization will encourage outside software developers to create a version of the project’s educational software, called Sugar, that will run on Windows.
Windows will add a bit to the price of the machines, about $3, the licensing fee Microsoft charges to some developing nations under a program called Unlimited Potential. For those nations that want dual-boot models, running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add another $7 or so to the cost of the machines, Mr. Negroponte said.
The laptops now cost about $200 apiece, and the project’s goal is to eventually bring the price down to about $100.
The project’s agreement with Microsoft involves no payment by the software giant, and Microsoft will not join One Laptop Per Child’s board.
“We’ve stayed very pure,” Mr. Negroponte said.
But the alliance with Microsoft has brought some turmoil within the project. Walter Bender, the president who oversaw software development, resigned last month. His departure, Mr. Negroponte said, was “a huge loss to O.L.P.C.”
Inside the project, there have been people who, Mr. Negroponte said, came to regard the use of open-source software as one of the project’s ends, instead of its means.
“I think some people, including Walter, became much too fundamental about open source,” Mr. Negroponte said.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Bender wrote that he left the project because he decided his efforts to develop and support the Sugar open-source learning software “would have more impact from outside of O.L.P.C. than from within.” Outside the constraints of working on a single hardware platform, like the XO laptop, his work, he wrote, should “lead to a broader base, more options, and a better set of tools for children.”
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Icahn may run Yahoo proxy campaign
By Dane Hamilton
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is considering mounting a proxy campaign to replace Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) board members after the company failed to reach a deal to merge with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.
The veteran investor has built up a stake in Yahoo in the last week and would run a slate in an effort to force the company back to the negotiating table with Microsoft, the source said, asking for anonymity because the decision to go ahead with the move has not yet been made.
It is unlikely that Icahn, a veteran of numerous proxy battles, will join with other hedge funds in the campaign, the source said. A decision to run a proxy slate this year must be made by Thursday to qualify for the July 3 annual meeting.
Still, other activist hedge fund managers may try to get involved, including Scott Galloway and his investment firm Firebrand Partners LLC, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday evening, citing people close to the matter.
Galloway won a seat on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) board last month after hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners spent half a billion dollars to bankroll his campaign to try to force change at the newspaper publisher.
Galloway, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, declined to comment on the report. A Harbinger representative was not immediately available for comment on whether it would back Galloway if he were to wage a campaign against Yahoo.
Microsoft walked away from its Yahoo bid this month after the Internet company turned down its offer to raise it to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share. Yahoo demanded $37 per share.
A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment on Icahn's potential moves. Microsoft executives have said they were done with their pursuit of Yahoo, and one person close to Microsoft on Tuesday said that remained the case.
The size of the stake Icahn has built could not immediately be determined. He had no Yahoo shares as of early last week, the source said. The Wall Street Journal said Icahn has amassed a stake of roughly 50 million shares, or less than 4 percent of the company's roughly 1.44 billion shares outstanding.
One lawyer who has worked with Icahn in previous campaigns said such a campaign could have good odds of success, providing Microsoft is willing to come back to the bargaining table, which he said is probable.
"The odds are pretty decent," said Marc Weingarten, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel, who said he is not involved in any plans for a Yahoo proxy campaign.
"Yahoo has a lot of unhappy shareholders. And if someone could press the company in getting something done, I would think there is a decent chance at a transaction."
One hedge fund manager who heads a large activist fund said it is "a likely possibility" that Icahn would run a Yahoo campaign. The manager, who has worked with Icahn on previous campaigns, asked to remain unidentified.
Should he decide to get involved, Icahn could be in a position to force the companies to restart the talks. Not only does he have the resources to spend the millions of dollars needed for a successful proxy campaign, he also has experience in pressuring companies back to the bargaining table.
Last year, for instance, Icahn was successful in getting Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to return to the bargaining table to buy BEA Systems (BEAS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) after those talks collapsed.
Yahoo shares surged 5.1 percent after news of a possible Icahn move on Yahoo was reported by CNBC on Tuesday afternoon. The stock closed up $1.30 at $26.56 on Nasdaq.
The possibility of a proxy battle has loomed since Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer, sending Yahoo shares tumbling.
One Yahoo shareholder, Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital, said last week he was working to line up support to run a dissident director slate. Jackson said on Tuesday he could not line up financing for a proxy campaign that he said could cost at least $1 million. He told Fox Business Channel he would likely support an Icahn slate, depending on who Icahn proposes.
"It basically came down to dollars and cents," Jackson said in an interview. "The SEC hasn't enacted some sort of open proxy access and that makes it difficult for a shareholder like me to belly up to the bar and put up $1 million. That's the bind I'm in."
Jackson said he still plans to run a "no vote" campaign against current directors, which basically entails reaching out to shareholders and asking them not to endorse the company-sponsored slate.
Jackson was instrumental last year in a campaign to have former Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel replaced.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is considering mounting a proxy campaign to replace Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) board members after the company failed to reach a deal to merge with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.
The veteran investor has built up a stake in Yahoo in the last week and would run a slate in an effort to force the company back to the negotiating table with Microsoft, the source said, asking for anonymity because the decision to go ahead with the move has not yet been made.
It is unlikely that Icahn, a veteran of numerous proxy battles, will join with other hedge funds in the campaign, the source said. A decision to run a proxy slate this year must be made by Thursday to qualify for the July 3 annual meeting.
Still, other activist hedge fund managers may try to get involved, including Scott Galloway and his investment firm Firebrand Partners LLC, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday evening, citing people close to the matter.
Galloway won a seat on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) board last month after hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners spent half a billion dollars to bankroll his campaign to try to force change at the newspaper publisher.
Galloway, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, declined to comment on the report. A Harbinger representative was not immediately available for comment on whether it would back Galloway if he were to wage a campaign against Yahoo.
Microsoft walked away from its Yahoo bid this month after the Internet company turned down its offer to raise it to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share. Yahoo demanded $37 per share.
A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment on Icahn's potential moves. Microsoft executives have said they were done with their pursuit of Yahoo, and one person close to Microsoft on Tuesday said that remained the case.
The size of the stake Icahn has built could not immediately be determined. He had no Yahoo shares as of early last week, the source said. The Wall Street Journal said Icahn has amassed a stake of roughly 50 million shares, or less than 4 percent of the company's roughly 1.44 billion shares outstanding.
One lawyer who has worked with Icahn in previous campaigns said such a campaign could have good odds of success, providing Microsoft is willing to come back to the bargaining table, which he said is probable.
"The odds are pretty decent," said Marc Weingarten, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel, who said he is not involved in any plans for a Yahoo proxy campaign.
"Yahoo has a lot of unhappy shareholders. And if someone could press the company in getting something done, I would think there is a decent chance at a transaction."
One hedge fund manager who heads a large activist fund said it is "a likely possibility" that Icahn would run a Yahoo campaign. The manager, who has worked with Icahn on previous campaigns, asked to remain unidentified.
Should he decide to get involved, Icahn could be in a position to force the companies to restart the talks. Not only does he have the resources to spend the millions of dollars needed for a successful proxy campaign, he also has experience in pressuring companies back to the bargaining table.
Last year, for instance, Icahn was successful in getting Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to return to the bargaining table to buy BEA Systems (BEAS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) after those talks collapsed.
Yahoo shares surged 5.1 percent after news of a possible Icahn move on Yahoo was reported by CNBC on Tuesday afternoon. The stock closed up $1.30 at $26.56 on Nasdaq.
The possibility of a proxy battle has loomed since Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer, sending Yahoo shares tumbling.
One Yahoo shareholder, Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital, said last week he was working to line up support to run a dissident director slate. Jackson said on Tuesday he could not line up financing for a proxy campaign that he said could cost at least $1 million. He told Fox Business Channel he would likely support an Icahn slate, depending on who Icahn proposes.
"It basically came down to dollars and cents," Jackson said in an interview. "The SEC hasn't enacted some sort of open proxy access and that makes it difficult for a shareholder like me to belly up to the bar and put up $1 million. That's the bind I'm in."
Jackson said he still plans to run a "no vote" campaign against current directors, which basically entails reaching out to shareholders and asking them not to endorse the company-sponsored slate.
Jackson was instrumental last year in a campaign to have former Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel replaced.
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