by Eric Auchard
Google Inc said on Monday it is taking the next step to make its Web-based software useful in the real world of spotty Internet access by allowing users to edit word processing documents offline.
The world's top Internet company said it will begin over the next several weeks to allow users of its Google Docs word processing application to edit documents without an active Web connection, on planes, trains and other disconnected spots.
The offline feature of Google Docs temporarily stores documents changes on a user's local computer. Once reconnected to the Internet, any changes the user made will automatically be synchronized and stored on Google-hosted computers.
"This is still early days. We're working to make more Web applications and functions work where connections are unavailable," Google said in a statement.
These include the ability to edit spreadsheets and viewing or editing presentations, among other applications Google now offers online, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company said.
Offline editing is a free feature using a technology known as Google Gears that the company introduced around 15 months ago to application developers to build offline features into their own programs.
The technology already works within Google's news feed reader, Google Reader, and applications from independent Web developers such as task-management service "Remember the Milk," from an Australian-based company of the same name.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
New eBay Policy: Digital Downloadable Goods in Classified Ads
Brian Burke, eBay's Director in Trust & Safety who manages the Feedback system, recently announced that Digital Downloadable Goods must be listed using the Classified Ad listing format effective March 31st. This policy affects items like eBooks, MP3 files, content in PDF format, recipes, etc. -- anything that is "shipped" to a customer via email or download link. These items cannot be listed any longer as auction-style or fixed price listings.
The Classified Ad format is a lead-generation tool which gives sellers an "ad" that shows up in default Search results for 30 days. Currently, the only accepted category is Everything Else > Informational Products. (To learn more, read Help: Advertising with Classified Ads.)
The reason for this change is the concern about Feedback manipulation (or artificially padding a member's feedback score). Since Classified Ad format listings are not transactional, no feedback is exchanged between buyers and sellers and no feedback manipulation can occur.
The Classified Ad format is a lead-generation tool which gives sellers an "ad" that shows up in default Search results for 30 days. Currently, the only accepted category is Everything Else > Informational Products. (To learn more, read Help: Advertising with Classified Ads.)
The reason for this change is the concern about Feedback manipulation (or artificially padding a member's feedback score). Since Classified Ad format listings are not transactional, no feedback is exchanged between buyers and sellers and no feedback manipulation can occur.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Google video ads in SERPs
by Michael Bloch
Google video ads have started to appear in SERPs (search engine results pages) under some Adwords text ads.
It looks like it’s just a test at this stage - Digital Inspiration have posted a shot of what they look like. At present, the ads are hidden unless you click the “Watch Commercial” link under the ad text.
Imagine if this was rolled out with the video in full view when a search engine results page was shown. Given Google’s bare bones type interface, they would really stand out. No doubt they’d attract a primo rate as well. From an advertiser’s point of view, this could be very attractive. As an AdSense publisher, I’m not keen on it. From a site owner and surfer’s point of view (mine); I’m not so sure about it either.
As an AdSense publisher, I certainly like making a few bucks from Google and have enjoyed the stream of income over the years. But my sites aren’t made for AdSense, I want people to actually read what’s on my pages first. I think video ads that appeared when the page loaded would have a negative effect in that respect, and whether that would be balanced out by extra AdSense earnings is another matter.
Like many webmasters, I get a lot of my traffic from Google and these ads would certainly distract some from clicking from the SERPs through to my sites. But Google doesn’t owe me anything and they don’t exist purely to send traffic to me - like me, they exist on the web to generate revenue.
As a surfer, I’ve always appreciated Google’s simple interface and I feel this would certainly detract from my experience.
.. but I’m jumping the gun I guess - a) this is a test b) the ads *don’t* appear unless the link is clicked on. I don’t consider myself an average surfer, but in it’s current form I wouldn’t go to the trouble to view the ads. If I’m going to click on something, it would be to the merchant’s site. It would be really interesting to see the clickthrough rates once the novelty factor wore off.
Google video ads have started to appear in SERPs (search engine results pages) under some Adwords text ads.
It looks like it’s just a test at this stage - Digital Inspiration have posted a shot of what they look like. At present, the ads are hidden unless you click the “Watch Commercial” link under the ad text.
Imagine if this was rolled out with the video in full view when a search engine results page was shown. Given Google’s bare bones type interface, they would really stand out. No doubt they’d attract a primo rate as well. From an advertiser’s point of view, this could be very attractive. As an AdSense publisher, I’m not keen on it. From a site owner and surfer’s point of view (mine); I’m not so sure about it either.
As an AdSense publisher, I certainly like making a few bucks from Google and have enjoyed the stream of income over the years. But my sites aren’t made for AdSense, I want people to actually read what’s on my pages first. I think video ads that appeared when the page loaded would have a negative effect in that respect, and whether that would be balanced out by extra AdSense earnings is another matter.
Like many webmasters, I get a lot of my traffic from Google and these ads would certainly distract some from clicking from the SERPs through to my sites. But Google doesn’t owe me anything and they don’t exist purely to send traffic to me - like me, they exist on the web to generate revenue.
As a surfer, I’ve always appreciated Google’s simple interface and I feel this would certainly detract from my experience.
.. but I’m jumping the gun I guess - a) this is a test b) the ads *don’t* appear unless the link is clicked on. I don’t consider myself an average surfer, but in it’s current form I wouldn’t go to the trouble to view the ads. If I’m going to click on something, it would be to the merchant’s site. It would be really interesting to see the clickthrough rates once the novelty factor wore off.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Adobe opens shop on Web-based Photoshop Express
Posted by Martin LaMonica
Adobe Systems opened up Photoshop Express on Thursday, its long-anticipated Web-based image editor aimed at the millions of consumers that want a simple way to touch up, share, and store photos.
Photoshop Express, available for free with 2 gigabytes of storage at www.photoshop.com/express, is a significant departure from Adobe's desktop software business and a big bet that it can make money offering Web services directly to consumers.
The application, which needs Flash Player 9 to run, pushes the limits of browser-based applications and will likely ratchet up the competition on the dozens of free and online photo-editing products available now (see our full review of Photoshop Express and gallery of screen shots of the application).
News of an online version of Photoshop first came to light last year when Adobe's then-CEO Bruce Chizen told CNET News.com that the product would be available within six months.
Since then, Adobe has expanded the scope of the project, one reason why the product launch has taken longer than expected, according to executives. Rather than only an image editor, Photoshop Express also has ties to social networking sites like Facebook and other image-sharing sites.
Also, Adobe needed to build the back-end infrastructure needed to offer the service directly to consumers, rather than partner with another photo-sharing site, as it did with its online video editor, Premiere Express.
"We've seen a convergence of trends where the everyday consumer is becoming overwhelmed with the number of images and they have the desire to share images in new and interesting ways," said Doug Mack, the vice president of consumer and hosted solutions at Adobe.
"We're at the point now with bandwidth that most consumers can use really rich Internet applications and also have a relationship with a service where they store and upload images," he said.
The service will go live in beta test mode on Thursday. Mack said that the company intends to use the test period as a way garner feedback from customers.
Adobe intends to offer more features to consumers who pay a yearly fee. Some planned features include a printing service, more storage, support for audio and other media, and the ability to read additional image file types (the service works with .JPGs now.)
Adobe also plans to build an offline client using AIR (the Adobe Integrated Runtime) so that people can edit photos offline, executives said.
Under the hood
Adobe already has a few other Photoshop-branded products--Photoshop Creative Suite 3 and Photoshop Lightroom are aimed at professional and serious amateur photographers, while $99 Photoshop Elements is a consumer-oriented product.
Photoshop Express is designed to be used essentially by anyone who uses a point and click digital camera, said Mack.
People can organize photos by dragging them into albums or create a gallery to share images. The service also lets people email links images stored online, embed them in a Web page, or download them.
When people hover a mouse over an image, a menu appears that lets people do tasks, such as rotating an image. The editing tools are designed for speed, with an autocorrect option, redeye removal, and a touch-up tool.
Adobe has sought to make Photoshop Express intuitive enough for people to use without any training but still have features that appeal to more sophisticated photographers, said Geoff Baum, director of Adobe's Express products.
For example, the touch-up tool will automatically choose a color from a surrounding item to, say, remove a blemish on a face. Or, a person can choose where to sample a color to replace the blemish.
Photoshop Express also includes several ways to tweak photos just for fun. There are a number of effects to change the color of one item in a photo, like a hat on someone's head, or blur parts of an image.
While editing, the application displays thumbnail images that let people view how effects will change a photo before saving it and people can revert back to an original. The connections to Facebook and other social networking sites let people edit and update images from within Photoshop Express.
First impression
Adobe engineers wrote Photoshop Express from scratch using its Flex development framework and ActionScript, its JavaScript-compatible language.
"We had some of the top Photoshop engineers who understand the technology and science behind Photoshop rewrite some of the algorithms in ActionScript 3," Baum explained.
Having used Photoshop Express for a short time, I can say that it is simple to use. It's attractive, too. The use of Flash animation makes for a dynamic page and smooth transitions between operations.
Adobe is hoping that people who use Picasa, Google's free downloadable application, will be tempted by Photoshop Express.
As someone who uses Picasa for both work and personal photo editing, I'd say that Photoshop Express is indeed tempting because it's slick yet easy to use. You can get edits done quickly, particularly using the thumbnail preview feature.
However, launching the editor and actually saving changes is far slower than Picasa. That's not surprising, given that Photoshop Express has to download photos and upload changes, while Picasa doesn't. By design, Photoshop Express also has a broader range of options for sharing photos on other sites.
Adobe Systems opened up Photoshop Express on Thursday, its long-anticipated Web-based image editor aimed at the millions of consumers that want a simple way to touch up, share, and store photos.
Photoshop Express, available for free with 2 gigabytes of storage at www.photoshop.com/express, is a significant departure from Adobe's desktop software business and a big bet that it can make money offering Web services directly to consumers.
The application, which needs Flash Player 9 to run, pushes the limits of browser-based applications and will likely ratchet up the competition on the dozens of free and online photo-editing products available now (see our full review of Photoshop Express and gallery of screen shots of the application).
News of an online version of Photoshop first came to light last year when Adobe's then-CEO Bruce Chizen told CNET News.com that the product would be available within six months.
Since then, Adobe has expanded the scope of the project, one reason why the product launch has taken longer than expected, according to executives. Rather than only an image editor, Photoshop Express also has ties to social networking sites like Facebook and other image-sharing sites.
Also, Adobe needed to build the back-end infrastructure needed to offer the service directly to consumers, rather than partner with another photo-sharing site, as it did with its online video editor, Premiere Express.
"We've seen a convergence of trends where the everyday consumer is becoming overwhelmed with the number of images and they have the desire to share images in new and interesting ways," said Doug Mack, the vice president of consumer and hosted solutions at Adobe.
"We're at the point now with bandwidth that most consumers can use really rich Internet applications and also have a relationship with a service where they store and upload images," he said.
The service will go live in beta test mode on Thursday. Mack said that the company intends to use the test period as a way garner feedback from customers.
Adobe intends to offer more features to consumers who pay a yearly fee. Some planned features include a printing service, more storage, support for audio and other media, and the ability to read additional image file types (the service works with .JPGs now.)
Adobe also plans to build an offline client using AIR (the Adobe Integrated Runtime) so that people can edit photos offline, executives said.
Under the hood
Adobe already has a few other Photoshop-branded products--Photoshop Creative Suite 3 and Photoshop Lightroom are aimed at professional and serious amateur photographers, while $99 Photoshop Elements is a consumer-oriented product.
Photoshop Express is designed to be used essentially by anyone who uses a point and click digital camera, said Mack.
People can organize photos by dragging them into albums or create a gallery to share images. The service also lets people email links images stored online, embed them in a Web page, or download them.
When people hover a mouse over an image, a menu appears that lets people do tasks, such as rotating an image. The editing tools are designed for speed, with an autocorrect option, redeye removal, and a touch-up tool.
Adobe has sought to make Photoshop Express intuitive enough for people to use without any training but still have features that appeal to more sophisticated photographers, said Geoff Baum, director of Adobe's Express products.
For example, the touch-up tool will automatically choose a color from a surrounding item to, say, remove a blemish on a face. Or, a person can choose where to sample a color to replace the blemish.
Photoshop Express also includes several ways to tweak photos just for fun. There are a number of effects to change the color of one item in a photo, like a hat on someone's head, or blur parts of an image.
While editing, the application displays thumbnail images that let people view how effects will change a photo before saving it and people can revert back to an original. The connections to Facebook and other social networking sites let people edit and update images from within Photoshop Express.
First impression
Adobe engineers wrote Photoshop Express from scratch using its Flex development framework and ActionScript, its JavaScript-compatible language.
"We had some of the top Photoshop engineers who understand the technology and science behind Photoshop rewrite some of the algorithms in ActionScript 3," Baum explained.
Having used Photoshop Express for a short time, I can say that it is simple to use. It's attractive, too. The use of Flash animation makes for a dynamic page and smooth transitions between operations.
Adobe is hoping that people who use Picasa, Google's free downloadable application, will be tempted by Photoshop Express.
As someone who uses Picasa for both work and personal photo editing, I'd say that Photoshop Express is indeed tempting because it's slick yet easy to use. You can get edits done quickly, particularly using the thumbnail preview feature.
However, launching the editor and actually saving changes is far slower than Picasa. That's not surprising, given that Photoshop Express has to download photos and upload changes, while Picasa doesn't. By design, Photoshop Express also has a broader range of options for sharing photos on other sites.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Yahoo and MySpace join with Google
by Bloomberg News
Yahoo, Google and MySpace said Tuesday that they would create the OpenSocial Foundation to maintain a neutral, community-governed forum for developing applications for social networks.
Google presented its OpenSocial network in November to lure developers who were already creating popular Web applications on social networks like Facebook.
Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, said the support of its rival Yahoo for the OpenSocial software would allow developers to put their programs on a broader range of social networking sites.
Teaming with Yahoo gives the alliance the backing of the most visited U.S. Web site. Google and sites like MySpace, the most popular online social network, have sought more programs to appeal to users as they compete for advertising revenue in a market that some analysts estimate could grow 69 percent over the next three years.
Internet users have flocked to social sites where they can keep up with their friends, show pictures, share music and play games. Visitors to Facebook grew fourfold to 100.7 million in January from a year earlier, while uses of MySpace rose 15 percent to 109.3 million in that period, according to ComScore, a research company in Reston, Virginia.
The increased popularity is luring advertisers, who are eager to target Web users based on their age, location and hobbies. Ad spending on social networks in the United States may jump to $2.7 billion by 2011, according to EMarketer in New York.
The alliance may help Yahoo make headway in the social networking market, where Facebook and MySpace have won an increasing share of graphical banner ads. Spending on social networking sites more than doubled last year, while sales growth at Yahoo slowed to 8 percent, down from 22 percent in 2006.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, recruited networking sites like LinkedIn, Friendster and Ning as early OpenSocial supporters, as well as makers of business software like Oracle and Salesforce.com.
Google shares fell $6.50 to $454.06 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, while Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, rose 82 cents to $28.34. Class A shares of News Corp., based in New York, advanced 19 cents to $19.15.
Assets will be allocated to the nonprofit foundation by July 1, the companies said.
Facebook hires from Google
Facebook, the most popular social networking site after MySpace, hired Ethan Beard away from Google to help run its business development, Bloomberg News reported from San Francisco.
Beard had served as director of social media at Google, said Erin Zeitler, a Facebook spokeswoman.
Facebook also hired Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, to become its chief operating officer this month.
Yahoo, Google and MySpace said Tuesday that they would create the OpenSocial Foundation to maintain a neutral, community-governed forum for developing applications for social networks.
Google presented its OpenSocial network in November to lure developers who were already creating popular Web applications on social networks like Facebook.
Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, said the support of its rival Yahoo for the OpenSocial software would allow developers to put their programs on a broader range of social networking sites.
Teaming with Yahoo gives the alliance the backing of the most visited U.S. Web site. Google and sites like MySpace, the most popular online social network, have sought more programs to appeal to users as they compete for advertising revenue in a market that some analysts estimate could grow 69 percent over the next three years.
Internet users have flocked to social sites where they can keep up with their friends, show pictures, share music and play games. Visitors to Facebook grew fourfold to 100.7 million in January from a year earlier, while uses of MySpace rose 15 percent to 109.3 million in that period, according to ComScore, a research company in Reston, Virginia.
The increased popularity is luring advertisers, who are eager to target Web users based on their age, location and hobbies. Ad spending on social networks in the United States may jump to $2.7 billion by 2011, according to EMarketer in New York.
The alliance may help Yahoo make headway in the social networking market, where Facebook and MySpace have won an increasing share of graphical banner ads. Spending on social networking sites more than doubled last year, while sales growth at Yahoo slowed to 8 percent, down from 22 percent in 2006.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, recruited networking sites like LinkedIn, Friendster and Ning as early OpenSocial supporters, as well as makers of business software like Oracle and Salesforce.com.
Google shares fell $6.50 to $454.06 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, while Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, rose 82 cents to $28.34. Class A shares of News Corp., based in New York, advanced 19 cents to $19.15.
Assets will be allocated to the nonprofit foundation by July 1, the companies said.
Facebook hires from Google
Facebook, the most popular social networking site after MySpace, hired Ethan Beard away from Google to help run its business development, Bloomberg News reported from San Francisco.
Beard had served as director of social media at Google, said Erin Zeitler, a Facebook spokeswoman.
Facebook also hired Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, to become its chief operating officer this month.
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Net Impact Announces the Search Engine Optimization of the Ardent Website
The Net Impact, a St. Louis search engine optimization firm, is proud to announce that it will be working with Ardent on an Internet marketing and website maximization project for the Ardent website. Ardent contracted with The Net Impact to develop their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to improve visibility of their website on the Internet through SEO techniques.
Michael J. Brooks, President and CEO of Ardent, said, "As a rapidly growing business, Ardent desired to maximize customer contact and facilitate product availability through its expanding dealer network, and after researching a number of firms Ardent felt The Net Impact was best able to help Ardent achieve our objectives."
As a rapidly growing business, Ardent desired to maximize customer contact and facilitate product availability through its expanding dealer network, and after researching a number of firms Ardent felt The Net Impact was best able to help Ardent achieve our objectives.
Steve Thomas, President of The Net Impact, said, "We are very excited to have the opportunity to work with Ardent on search engine marketing and enhancing its presence on the Internet."
Ardent is an American owned manufacturer of high performance fishing reels and accessories with administrative offices in St. Louis and manufacturing facilities in Macon, Missouri. Ardent has been in business for four years and distributes reels and accessories through a nationwide distributor relationship with Big Rock Sports who serves independent dealers and national accounts. Ardent's website address is www.ardentoutdoors.com.
The Net Impact, an Internet marketing and web design firm, is a division of Unidev. Since 1997, The Net Impact has been a St Louis web design leader, empowering clients with highly creative and search engine friendly websites. Professional services encompass search engine and internet marketing solutions, Internet strategy development, training and seminars and web site design. For more information, please visit www.thenetimpact.com.
Michael J. Brooks, President and CEO of Ardent, said, "As a rapidly growing business, Ardent desired to maximize customer contact and facilitate product availability through its expanding dealer network, and after researching a number of firms Ardent felt The Net Impact was best able to help Ardent achieve our objectives."
As a rapidly growing business, Ardent desired to maximize customer contact and facilitate product availability through its expanding dealer network, and after researching a number of firms Ardent felt The Net Impact was best able to help Ardent achieve our objectives.
Steve Thomas, President of The Net Impact, said, "We are very excited to have the opportunity to work with Ardent on search engine marketing and enhancing its presence on the Internet."
Ardent is an American owned manufacturer of high performance fishing reels and accessories with administrative offices in St. Louis and manufacturing facilities in Macon, Missouri. Ardent has been in business for four years and distributes reels and accessories through a nationwide distributor relationship with Big Rock Sports who serves independent dealers and national accounts. Ardent's website address is www.ardentoutdoors.com.
The Net Impact, an Internet marketing and web design firm, is a division of Unidev. Since 1997, The Net Impact has been a St Louis web design leader, empowering clients with highly creative and search engine friendly websites. Professional services encompass search engine and internet marketing solutions, Internet strategy development, training and seminars and web site design. For more information, please visit www.thenetimpact.com.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Smartphone Prospects Are Encouraging New Handset Makers To Enter The Market
by Tricia Duryee
Apple must be making the cellphone business look too easy. With the company on track to sell 10 million iPhones this year?after only launching the device in July?it seems a number of other companies are willing to give it a shot. This week, two new companies are rumored to be entering the market with details about two other handset manufacturers making phones based on the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system.
-- Dell is planning to develop a Windows Mobile handset with the help of Foxconn Electronics, according DigiTimes. The report said Dell has been reorganizing its team for handheld devices since it hired Ron Garriques, Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) former mobile devices EVP last year. Foxconn is also reportedly recruiting talent from other Taiwan-based handset makers in preparation for accepting orders from Dell.
-- Velocity Mobile, based in Seattle and London, and backed by Inventec, a Taiwanese original design manufacturer, is expected to launch a new smartphone at CTIA in a couple of weeks, reports RCR. Inventec reported more than $11 billion in revenue in 2007 and claims to be the world's third-largest notebook manufacturer.
-- Details on HTC's first Google Android phone were leaked this week. InfoWorld reported that the phone will be called "Dream," and it will have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad, and could be the first Android phone to hit the market later this year. The phone sounds similar to other HTC devices?it is expected to be about 5 inches long and 3 inches wide, with a keypad underneath a screen that either slides or swivels out.
-- In the same InfoWorld report, it said that Samsung is speeding up the development of its own Android phone, although no details were available.
Apple must be making the cellphone business look too easy. With the company on track to sell 10 million iPhones this year?after only launching the device in July?it seems a number of other companies are willing to give it a shot. This week, two new companies are rumored to be entering the market with details about two other handset manufacturers making phones based on the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system.
-- Dell is planning to develop a Windows Mobile handset with the help of Foxconn Electronics, according DigiTimes. The report said Dell has been reorganizing its team for handheld devices since it hired Ron Garriques, Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) former mobile devices EVP last year. Foxconn is also reportedly recruiting talent from other Taiwan-based handset makers in preparation for accepting orders from Dell.
-- Velocity Mobile, based in Seattle and London, and backed by Inventec, a Taiwanese original design manufacturer, is expected to launch a new smartphone at CTIA in a couple of weeks, reports RCR. Inventec reported more than $11 billion in revenue in 2007 and claims to be the world's third-largest notebook manufacturer.
-- Details on HTC's first Google Android phone were leaked this week. InfoWorld reported that the phone will be called "Dream," and it will have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad, and could be the first Android phone to hit the market later this year. The phone sounds similar to other HTC devices?it is expected to be about 5 inches long and 3 inches wide, with a keypad underneath a screen that either slides or swivels out.
-- In the same InfoWorld report, it said that Samsung is speeding up the development of its own Android phone, although no details were available.
Friday, March 21, 2008
X Prize Rolls Out $10M Prize for 100MPG Car
By Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides
Yesterday, prize experts at the X Prize Foundation joined with title sponsor Progressive Insurance to announce the long anticipated $10M Automotive X Prize. Competition, saving the planet, sleek lines, 100 mpg and a cross country race -- what more do you need in the latest Foundation prize?
Cars competing in the "mainstream" category must be able to fit four passengers, luggage, have four wheels, air conditioning, play tunes, go from zero to 60 in 12 seconds, hit 100 mph and have a range of 200 miles. "Alternative" class vehicles (such as above) have less design constraints. It's all going according to plan over at X Prize...
The Foundation gave away the $10M Ansari X Prize to Burt Rutan for his private suborbital space flights in 2004, announced the launch of the Archon Genomics prize for rapid low cost sequencing of genomes in 2006, the $30M Google Lunar X Prize in 2007 and now the Progressive Automotive X Prize in 2008.
So what is next for the foundation that is seeking to cause radical breakthroughs for humanity through competition? Well, their five lines of interest are exploration, education, life-science, energy and the environment, and global development. X Prize CEO Dr. Peter H. Diamandis said to look out for that prizes that promote energy production, storage and transmission, deep sea exploration, longevity and cancer, and poverty and the needs of the developing world.
I would just be happy with the 100 mpg car. But hey, why not dream big.
Yesterday, prize experts at the X Prize Foundation joined with title sponsor Progressive Insurance to announce the long anticipated $10M Automotive X Prize. Competition, saving the planet, sleek lines, 100 mpg and a cross country race -- what more do you need in the latest Foundation prize?
Cars competing in the "mainstream" category must be able to fit four passengers, luggage, have four wheels, air conditioning, play tunes, go from zero to 60 in 12 seconds, hit 100 mph and have a range of 200 miles. "Alternative" class vehicles (such as above) have less design constraints. It's all going according to plan over at X Prize...
The Foundation gave away the $10M Ansari X Prize to Burt Rutan for his private suborbital space flights in 2004, announced the launch of the Archon Genomics prize for rapid low cost sequencing of genomes in 2006, the $30M Google Lunar X Prize in 2007 and now the Progressive Automotive X Prize in 2008.
So what is next for the foundation that is seeking to cause radical breakthroughs for humanity through competition? Well, their five lines of interest are exploration, education, life-science, energy and the environment, and global development. X Prize CEO Dr. Peter H. Diamandis said to look out for that prizes that promote energy production, storage and transmission, deep sea exploration, longevity and cancer, and poverty and the needs of the developing world.
I would just be happy with the 100 mpg car. But hey, why not dream big.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Start a Web business in an extra few minutes
By Anupreeta Das
When David Pangelinan isn't logging 14-hour days driving a fuel tanker, he's at his computer indulging his latest hobby: building a succession of online stores in minutes.
Pangelinan has built four online stores offering hundreds of products for sale, from Bulova watches to Betty Boop pillows, using the Web site Zlio.com.
"It was real easy," said Pangelinan, 43, who lives in Columbus, Georgia.
Pangelinan said he's still learning the finer points of e-commerce, and spends time browsing through thousands of products on Zlio.com's catalogue that he could sell.
"I just went in there and started jotting down the products that were interesting and caught my eye," said Pangelinan, who spends six to 10 hours a week tending to his shops.
Zlio.com, which launched in France in 2006 and in January in the United States, allows people to form online stores for free. Users can choose a name, address and template for the store they want to create and then begin displaying wares, say an iPod or a T-shirt.
It's a simple tool, with none of the typical hassle of designing a site, setting up a payment gateway and keeping stock of merchandise and shipping.
Once signed up, a new shopkeeper can choose from more than 3 million products offered by 120 merchants, including Barnes & Noble Inc, Zappos, Gap Inc and Apple Inc. They can then invite friends and relatives to shop.
"It's the Tupperware party concept gone online," said Zlio.com founder and Chief Executive Jeremie Berrebi. "But people are defining the concept of the shop."
Berrebi, an Internet journalist-turned-entrepreneur, said he meshed the idea of a Tupperware party with social recommendation features in which users turn to friends for shopping suggestions to create Zlio.
The notion of helping people create online stores is nearly as old as the commercial Web itself. Major e-commerce players eBay Inc and Amazon.com Inc have helped Web entrepreneurs set up hundreds of thousands of independent online stores.
Sites such as CafePress.com have been around since 1999, allowing Web users to create stores to sell personalized accessories like coffee mugs. Zlio offers a far wider range of goods for sale and takes more of a social networking approach.
Zlio also provides some marketing help. They can put a widget on their Facebook or other social networking page, or use Google Inc's AdSense software to direct traffic to their sites.
So far, people have created more than 250,000 stores, many organized around themes. One was devoted to all things red, another sold only hot sauce, a third focuses on The Beatles.
John Holsen, who runs a small publishing business in Kansas City, Missouri, recently started a shop with his wife, a yoga teacher, to sell yoga gear.
"It started as an experiment to see if I could build an e-commerce site in five minutes," Holsen said. "And you can."
He said his site gets up to 5,000 hits a month and makes about $300-$400 on monthly revenue of $3,000. "You won't get wealthy off of it, but if you built enough sites, you can probably make a decent income," he said.
On average, shopkeepers make about $300 a month, but top sellers can make as much as $3,000, Zlio spokeswoman Rachel Bremer said.
Merchants share the revenue with Zlio and the seller based on the number of clicks and sales. Shopkeepers display wares and can earn up to 10 percent commission through eBay's PayPal online payment service, either on every sale or on every click generated. They don't have to worry about shipping orders because the companies take care of it.
Last year, Zlio generated $12 million in sales for the companies with which it has tie-ups, Berrebi said. He refused to disclose how much money the site makes. He also has seen some business interest in the site. Mangrove Capital, which was an early investor in eBay's popular Skype Internet phone service, is backing Zlio, too.
As for the name Zlio itself, Berrebi said it doesn't mean anything. "It's just a four-letter word."
When David Pangelinan isn't logging 14-hour days driving a fuel tanker, he's at his computer indulging his latest hobby: building a succession of online stores in minutes.
Pangelinan has built four online stores offering hundreds of products for sale, from Bulova watches to Betty Boop pillows, using the Web site Zlio.com.
"It was real easy," said Pangelinan, 43, who lives in Columbus, Georgia.
Pangelinan said he's still learning the finer points of e-commerce, and spends time browsing through thousands of products on Zlio.com's catalogue that he could sell.
"I just went in there and started jotting down the products that were interesting and caught my eye," said Pangelinan, who spends six to 10 hours a week tending to his shops.
Zlio.com, which launched in France in 2006 and in January in the United States, allows people to form online stores for free. Users can choose a name, address and template for the store they want to create and then begin displaying wares, say an iPod or a T-shirt.
It's a simple tool, with none of the typical hassle of designing a site, setting up a payment gateway and keeping stock of merchandise and shipping.
Once signed up, a new shopkeeper can choose from more than 3 million products offered by 120 merchants, including Barnes & Noble Inc, Zappos, Gap Inc and Apple Inc. They can then invite friends and relatives to shop.
"It's the Tupperware party concept gone online," said Zlio.com founder and Chief Executive Jeremie Berrebi. "But people are defining the concept of the shop."
Berrebi, an Internet journalist-turned-entrepreneur, said he meshed the idea of a Tupperware party with social recommendation features in which users turn to friends for shopping suggestions to create Zlio.
The notion of helping people create online stores is nearly as old as the commercial Web itself. Major e-commerce players eBay Inc and Amazon.com Inc have helped Web entrepreneurs set up hundreds of thousands of independent online stores.
Sites such as CafePress.com have been around since 1999, allowing Web users to create stores to sell personalized accessories like coffee mugs. Zlio offers a far wider range of goods for sale and takes more of a social networking approach.
Zlio also provides some marketing help. They can put a widget on their Facebook or other social networking page, or use Google Inc's AdSense software to direct traffic to their sites.
So far, people have created more than 250,000 stores, many organized around themes. One was devoted to all things red, another sold only hot sauce, a third focuses on The Beatles.
John Holsen, who runs a small publishing business in Kansas City, Missouri, recently started a shop with his wife, a yoga teacher, to sell yoga gear.
"It started as an experiment to see if I could build an e-commerce site in five minutes," Holsen said. "And you can."
He said his site gets up to 5,000 hits a month and makes about $300-$400 on monthly revenue of $3,000. "You won't get wealthy off of it, but if you built enough sites, you can probably make a decent income," he said.
On average, shopkeepers make about $300 a month, but top sellers can make as much as $3,000, Zlio spokeswoman Rachel Bremer said.
Merchants share the revenue with Zlio and the seller based on the number of clicks and sales. Shopkeepers display wares and can earn up to 10 percent commission through eBay's PayPal online payment service, either on every sale or on every click generated. They don't have to worry about shipping orders because the companies take care of it.
Last year, Zlio generated $12 million in sales for the companies with which it has tie-ups, Berrebi said. He refused to disclose how much money the site makes. He also has seen some business interest in the site. Mangrove Capital, which was an early investor in eBay's popular Skype Internet phone service, is backing Zlio, too.
As for the name Zlio itself, Berrebi said it doesn't mean anything. "It's just a four-letter word."
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Google Reports Jump in Mobile Search
by Mikael Ricknäs
Google's search tool for mobile phones has increased searches by 20 percent, according to the company.
The software for Nokia, BlackBerry and now also Windows Mobile phones, makes searching 40 percent quicker, because it needs fewer clicks and there's no waiting for a browser to download the search engine's Web page, Google said.
Ease of use has become a mantra for the mobile phone sector, the success of Apple's iPhone being one of the primary motivating factors. Making services simpler to use will lead to increased use of mobile Internet in all shapes and forms.
But it is also proving to be true, as in the case of search, according to Google.
"Faster is proving to be much better on the mobile phone," said Google spokesman Anthony House.
But ease of use isn't the only reason for increased usage. Flat rate data plans also help.
As mobile search grows in popularity so will ad revenues, something that isn't lost on Google.
"We always say get the users first, then worry about the money," said House.
But mobile will increase in importance over the next five years as a means to make more money from search, according to House.
Revenue generated from mobile search will reach US$4.8 billion by 2013, according to a study from Juniper Research, published on Tuesday.
Just like Google, Juniper sees ease of use and flat rate data tariffs as driving factors.
But Windsor Holden, principal analyst with Juniper, also has a warning for carriers and search companies: advertising overload might turn users off and limit adoption.
Google thinks there still is work to be done: The challenge is put ads on the small screen in a way that isn't annoying to users, House said.
Google's search tool for mobile phones has increased searches by 20 percent, according to the company.
The software for Nokia, BlackBerry and now also Windows Mobile phones, makes searching 40 percent quicker, because it needs fewer clicks and there's no waiting for a browser to download the search engine's Web page, Google said.
Ease of use has become a mantra for the mobile phone sector, the success of Apple's iPhone being one of the primary motivating factors. Making services simpler to use will lead to increased use of mobile Internet in all shapes and forms.
But it is also proving to be true, as in the case of search, according to Google.
"Faster is proving to be much better on the mobile phone," said Google spokesman Anthony House.
But ease of use isn't the only reason for increased usage. Flat rate data plans also help.
As mobile search grows in popularity so will ad revenues, something that isn't lost on Google.
"We always say get the users first, then worry about the money," said House.
But mobile will increase in importance over the next five years as a means to make more money from search, according to House.
Revenue generated from mobile search will reach US$4.8 billion by 2013, according to a study from Juniper Research, published on Tuesday.
Just like Google, Juniper sees ease of use and flat rate data tariffs as driving factors.
But Windsor Holden, principal analyst with Juniper, also has a warning for carriers and search companies: advertising overload might turn users off and limit adoption.
Google thinks there still is work to be done: The challenge is put ads on the small screen in a way that isn't annoying to users, House said.
Monday, March 17, 2008
eBay to take over affiliate program's management
by Juan Carlos Perez
San Francisco - eBay will soon take over management of the affiliate programs for its core marketplace and for its Half.com site from ValueClick in the hopes that it can operate them more efficiently.
In early April, eBay will begin to migrate the roughly 100,000 affiliates away from ValueClick's Commission Junction to the new in-house platform, the company was due to announce Monday.
One affiliate looking forward to the change is GetItNext, a search engine for eBay listings that gets a commission every time its visitors click over to eBay and buy a product.
"ValueClick's Commission Junction does a fairly good job, but the product over the years has grown a bit stagnant and hasn't been keeping up with the demands affiliates have had," said Ron Stewart, GetItNext's CEO.
For example, GetItNext routinely has to manually "dig out" data it feels is essential about its referrals, sales, and commissions from the ValueClick reports, Stewart said.
In addition, the company has encountered data integrity problems with the information it receives from ValueClick, forcing GetItNext to engage in very time-consuming data reconciliation efforts, Stewart said.
GetItNext has been beta testing the eBay system and is encouraged by its tests so far, and in particular by the development road map, which promises a significant improvement over the ValueClick tools, he said.
From eBay's perspective, a key goal is to establish a closer relationship with its affiliates, which are an important part of the company's marketing and sales operation, said Matt Ackley, eBay's vice president of Internet marketing.
By eliminating the inherent latency of having a third party involved in the process, eBay hopes to be able to more quickly analyze affiliate data and make more effective decisions about the program, Ackley said.
Migrating to the eBay affiliate platform will involve what Ackley described as a simple process of swapping listing tags, but how manual or automated the process is on the affiliates' end will depend on how they have set up their systems, he said.
GetItNow's Stewart expects the migration will be smooth for his company. "Because of the way we built the site, changing the parameters will be very simple, with a slight change of code," Stewart said.
Later this year, eBay might take over other of its affiliate programs that ValueClick manages, which include the ones for StubHub, ProStores, and eBay Stores, Ackley said.
Affiliates come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including Web publishers that carry sellers' listings, merchants that market their products on their own Web sites, Web sites that display eBay banner ads, and firms that do e-mail marketing, he said.
ValueClick, which has managed the eBay and Half.com affiliate programs since 2001, didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.
San Francisco - eBay will soon take over management of the affiliate programs for its core marketplace and for its Half.com site from ValueClick in the hopes that it can operate them more efficiently.
In early April, eBay will begin to migrate the roughly 100,000 affiliates away from ValueClick's Commission Junction to the new in-house platform, the company was due to announce Monday.
One affiliate looking forward to the change is GetItNext, a search engine for eBay listings that gets a commission every time its visitors click over to eBay and buy a product.
"ValueClick's Commission Junction does a fairly good job, but the product over the years has grown a bit stagnant and hasn't been keeping up with the demands affiliates have had," said Ron Stewart, GetItNext's CEO.
For example, GetItNext routinely has to manually "dig out" data it feels is essential about its referrals, sales, and commissions from the ValueClick reports, Stewart said.
In addition, the company has encountered data integrity problems with the information it receives from ValueClick, forcing GetItNext to engage in very time-consuming data reconciliation efforts, Stewart said.
GetItNext has been beta testing the eBay system and is encouraged by its tests so far, and in particular by the development road map, which promises a significant improvement over the ValueClick tools, he said.
From eBay's perspective, a key goal is to establish a closer relationship with its affiliates, which are an important part of the company's marketing and sales operation, said Matt Ackley, eBay's vice president of Internet marketing.
By eliminating the inherent latency of having a third party involved in the process, eBay hopes to be able to more quickly analyze affiliate data and make more effective decisions about the program, Ackley said.
Migrating to the eBay affiliate platform will involve what Ackley described as a simple process of swapping listing tags, but how manual or automated the process is on the affiliates' end will depend on how they have set up their systems, he said.
GetItNow's Stewart expects the migration will be smooth for his company. "Because of the way we built the site, changing the parameters will be very simple, with a slight change of code," Stewart said.
Later this year, eBay might take over other of its affiliate programs that ValueClick manages, which include the ones for StubHub, ProStores, and eBay Stores, Ackley said.
Affiliates come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including Web publishers that carry sellers' listings, merchants that market their products on their own Web sites, Web sites that display eBay banner ads, and firms that do e-mail marketing, he said.
ValueClick, which has managed the eBay and Half.com affiliate programs since 2001, didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Google confident Android will beat iPhones
Google executives say they are confident the company's forthcoming phones armed with the Android operating system will overtake the U.S. market from the iPhone.
Rich Miner, manager of Google's mobile platforms group, says the new Android-based mobile phones are more flexible than the proprietary Apple phones since the so-called open system allows applications from other software makers, The Times of London reported Saturday.
Miner said the first Android phones are due out late this year.
"It's great that people are finally building tools so all of these third-party applications can be built and get out there, (but) there are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone -- at least at the moment," Miner said.
The Times said the Android SDK was made available online last November and Google officials say it has already been downloaded more than 750,000 times.
Rich Miner, manager of Google's mobile platforms group, says the new Android-based mobile phones are more flexible than the proprietary Apple phones since the so-called open system allows applications from other software makers, The Times of London reported Saturday.
Miner said the first Android phones are due out late this year.
"It's great that people are finally building tools so all of these third-party applications can be built and get out there, (but) there are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone -- at least at the moment," Miner said.
The Times said the Android SDK was made available online last November and Google officials say it has already been downloaded more than 750,000 times.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Ultimate gaming experience
The ultimate in video gaming has arrived - but at more than £15,000 it comes in a bit dearer than a PS3 or Xbox.
The VirtuSphere is like an oversized hamster's exercise ball that immerses the user in a 3D virtual reality world.
Players don a motion-tracking headset to project the visuals and then they are ready to begin virtual exploration.
They can run, jump, roll, or crawl over virtually unlimited distances without encountering real world obstacles.
The large hollow sphere sits on rollers allowing it to rotate through 360 degrees and move freely in any direction - without actually going anywhere at all.
The Washington-based manufacturers describe it as the ultimate computer games peripheral, but say it could also be used as a unique exercise treadmill or for simulation exercises.
Systems are made to client specifications, with customers so far including military and law enforcement organisations, as well as entertainment companies.
VirtuSphere has already been used by the Russian Tourism Authorities to let people walk through the Red Square and the Kremlin.
The VirtuSphere is like an oversized hamster's exercise ball that immerses the user in a 3D virtual reality world.
Players don a motion-tracking headset to project the visuals and then they are ready to begin virtual exploration.
They can run, jump, roll, or crawl over virtually unlimited distances without encountering real world obstacles.
The large hollow sphere sits on rollers allowing it to rotate through 360 degrees and move freely in any direction - without actually going anywhere at all.
The Washington-based manufacturers describe it as the ultimate computer games peripheral, but say it could also be used as a unique exercise treadmill or for simulation exercises.
Systems are made to client specifications, with customers so far including military and law enforcement organisations, as well as entertainment companies.
VirtuSphere has already been used by the Russian Tourism Authorities to let people walk through the Red Square and the Kremlin.
Search engine competition to get aggressive
Gillian Shaw, Vancouver Sun
Martin Byrne has a simple Internet test for Canadian banks: The search engine guru suggests typing "savings accounts, Canada" into a search engine and see what comes up.
If you're expecting to see Canada's major financial institutions appear on the first page, you'll be disappointed.
TD Canada Trust is the only one of the majors that appears in the top 10. Aggressive cyberbank ING Direct is at the top of the search listings -- winner of that particular search-engine optimization contest. And HSBCdirect.ca occupies the top paid listing, giving it winning points for paid placement.
Winning the online search game is a growing competition, and one that is expected to result in more than $1 billion being spent on search-engine marketing (SEM) in Canada by 2010.
And it is a fast-moving competition. What tops the list one minute might be deposed by a contender the next.
It has spawned a whole new category of marketing, with British Columbia enjoying high status in the new and growing generation of SEM specialists.
Byrne, the national director of Yahoo Search Marketing Canada, was in Vancouver recently as part of a Yahoo team hosting and taking part in events focusing on this lucrative and growing segment. It's a field in which Canadian businesses are lagging behind their U.S. counterparts.
"Compared to all the other major developed economies [Yahoo is] in, Canada has been the slowest to adopt search marketing," said Byrne.
SEM promotes websites by pushing them up to the top of the search engine results, through a variety of means that can include search engine optimization (SEO) -- which is getting search engines to choose your site as the most relevant and freshest for any particular search request -- to paid placement.
There are a number of popular search engines, led of course by Google, which, according to Hitwise.com, accounted for 66.44 per cent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending Feb. 23. Google was followed by Yahoo! Search at 20.59 per cent, MSN Search at 6.95 per cent, and Ask.com at 4.16 per cent.
In 2007, $410 million was spent in Canada on search-engine marketing, and that number is expected to climb to more than $1 billion by 2010. U.S. companies spend a much higher proportion of their online budgets on search marketing. North American-wide advertisers spent $9.4 billion US in 2006, representing a 750-per-cent increase over 2002.
It's an important pipeline to potential buyers and customers. According to Yahoo research, 43 per cent of consumers rate the Internet as the best source for price comparisons, and 37 per cent turn to it most often in their consumer research. The Internet ties with word-of-mouth as being seen as the most reliable source of information for 24 per cent of users.
Martin Byrne has a simple Internet test for Canadian banks: The search engine guru suggests typing "savings accounts, Canada" into a search engine and see what comes up.
If you're expecting to see Canada's major financial institutions appear on the first page, you'll be disappointed.
TD Canada Trust is the only one of the majors that appears in the top 10. Aggressive cyberbank ING Direct is at the top of the search listings -- winner of that particular search-engine optimization contest. And HSBCdirect.ca occupies the top paid listing, giving it winning points for paid placement.
Winning the online search game is a growing competition, and one that is expected to result in more than $1 billion being spent on search-engine marketing (SEM) in Canada by 2010.
And it is a fast-moving competition. What tops the list one minute might be deposed by a contender the next.
It has spawned a whole new category of marketing, with British Columbia enjoying high status in the new and growing generation of SEM specialists.
Byrne, the national director of Yahoo Search Marketing Canada, was in Vancouver recently as part of a Yahoo team hosting and taking part in events focusing on this lucrative and growing segment. It's a field in which Canadian businesses are lagging behind their U.S. counterparts.
"Compared to all the other major developed economies [Yahoo is] in, Canada has been the slowest to adopt search marketing," said Byrne.
SEM promotes websites by pushing them up to the top of the search engine results, through a variety of means that can include search engine optimization (SEO) -- which is getting search engines to choose your site as the most relevant and freshest for any particular search request -- to paid placement.
There are a number of popular search engines, led of course by Google, which, according to Hitwise.com, accounted for 66.44 per cent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending Feb. 23. Google was followed by Yahoo! Search at 20.59 per cent, MSN Search at 6.95 per cent, and Ask.com at 4.16 per cent.
In 2007, $410 million was spent in Canada on search-engine marketing, and that number is expected to climb to more than $1 billion by 2010. U.S. companies spend a much higher proportion of their online budgets on search marketing. North American-wide advertisers spent $9.4 billion US in 2006, representing a 750-per-cent increase over 2002.
It's an important pipeline to potential buyers and customers. According to Yahoo research, 43 per cent of consumers rate the Internet as the best source for price comparisons, and 37 per cent turn to it most often in their consumer research. The Internet ties with word-of-mouth as being seen as the most reliable source of information for 24 per cent of users.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Microsoft, Yahoo meet for merger talks
Senior executives from Microsoft and Yahoo met for the first time this week to discuss Microsoft's takeover offer for the internet company, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The meeting reportedly took place Monday near Yahoo's headquarters in Silicon Valley and was the first face-to-face talks between the companies since Microsoft tabled its unsolicited bid for Yahoo on January 31.
Yahoo's board last month rejected Microsoft's 41-billion-dollar ($A44.12 billion) offer as undervalued, and took steps to prevent Microsoft from going straight to shareholders via a proxy battle.
The cash-and-stock offer was initially valued at $US44.6 billion ($A47.99 billion), a 62-per-cent premium over where Yahoo shares traded the day before the announcement.
Since then, a 12-per-cent decline in Microsoft shares has reduced the total value of the offer to $US41.9 billion, or $US29.11 a share. The meeting was not categorised as a formal negotiation session and no bankers were present.
It was also unclear whether company chief executives Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer participated.
The report said the session marked a breakthrough in communications between the two camps and was intended to allow Microsoft to present its vision of a combined company.
The meeting reportedly took place Monday near Yahoo's headquarters in Silicon Valley and was the first face-to-face talks between the companies since Microsoft tabled its unsolicited bid for Yahoo on January 31.
Yahoo's board last month rejected Microsoft's 41-billion-dollar ($A44.12 billion) offer as undervalued, and took steps to prevent Microsoft from going straight to shareholders via a proxy battle.
The cash-and-stock offer was initially valued at $US44.6 billion ($A47.99 billion), a 62-per-cent premium over where Yahoo shares traded the day before the announcement.
Since then, a 12-per-cent decline in Microsoft shares has reduced the total value of the offer to $US41.9 billion, or $US29.11 a share. The meeting was not categorised as a formal negotiation session and no bankers were present.
It was also unclear whether company chief executives Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer participated.
The report said the session marked a breakthrough in communications between the two camps and was intended to allow Microsoft to present its vision of a combined company.
Fed Pledges to Supply Cash
By Martin Crutsinger
The Federal Reserve invoked a rarely used Depression-era procedure Friday to bolster troubled Bear Stearns Cos. and said it will provide even more help to combat a serious credit crisis.
The action won praise from the administration, with President Bush saying that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was "doing a good job under tough circumstances."
The Fed announcement came in a brief two-sentence statement that was issued as stocks were plunging on Wall Street over worries that a plan to ease a liquidity crisis at Bear Stearns Cos. might not work.
"The Federal Reserve is monitoring market developments closely and will continue to provide liquidity as necessary to promote the orderly functioning of the financial system," the board said. It said members had voted unanimously to approve the arrangement, announced by JP Morgan Chase and Bear Stearns earlier.
Delivering a speech on the economy in New York, Bush voiced confidence in the Fed's actions to aggressively cut interest rates and the Fed announcement last week that it would supply up to $200 billion in loans to cash-strapped financial institutions.
"It was a strong action by the Fed and they did so because some financial institutions that borrowed money to buy securities in the housing industry must now repair their balance sheets before they can make further loans," Bush said. "Today's actions are fasting moving, but the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the secretary of the treasury are on top of them and will take the appropriate steps to promote stability in our markets."
The plan announced Friday will supply secured funding to Bear Stearns for an initial period of 28 days, seeking to provide short-term relief for Bear Stearns.
Senior Federal Reserve staffers said the arrangement allows JP Morgan Chase to borrow from the Fed's discount window and put up collateral from Bear Stearns to back up the loans. JP Morgan, a bank, has access to the discount window to obtain direct loans from the Fed, but Bear Stearns, an investment house, does not.
This type of procedure, Fed officials said, dates back to the Great Depression of the 1930s but has rarely been used since that time.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson praised the Fed's leadership and said that the country's financial system would be able to weather the problems.
"As we have been saying for some time, there are challenges in our financial markets and we continue to address them," Paulson said in a statement. "This is another challenge that market participants and regulators are addressing. We are working closely with the Federal Reserve" and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Paulson said he appreciated the leadership of the Fed "in enhancing the stability and orderliness of our markets."
The action by the Fed board in Washington represented an endorsement of a rescue effort for Bear Stearns that had already been arranged by JPMorgan and the Federal Reserve's New York regional bank.
It was seen as a last-ditch effort to save the investment bank, which on Friday acknowledged its serious financial problems after a week of denials.
JPMorgan Chase is providing an undisclosed amount of secured funding to Bear for 28 days, backstopped by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement saying it has been "in close contact" with Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during discussions concerning an agreement by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to provide a secured loan facility to The Bear Stearns Companies.
"We will continue to work closely together in a way that contributes to orderly and liquid markets," the SEC said.
Last week, the Fed announced an industry-wide rescue package that would provide as much as $200 billion in loans to banks and investment houses and allow them to put up risky home-loan packages as collateral. It was the Fed's latest effort to stem a global credit crisis that began last August with rising loan defaults for subprime mortgages, loans provided to borrowers with weak credit histories.
Associated Press reporters Jeannine Aversa, Terence Hunt, Stephen Bernard, Madlen Read and Joe Del Bruno contributed to this report.
The Federal Reserve invoked a rarely used Depression-era procedure Friday to bolster troubled Bear Stearns Cos. and said it will provide even more help to combat a serious credit crisis.
The action won praise from the administration, with President Bush saying that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was "doing a good job under tough circumstances."
The Fed announcement came in a brief two-sentence statement that was issued as stocks were plunging on Wall Street over worries that a plan to ease a liquidity crisis at Bear Stearns Cos. might not work.
"The Federal Reserve is monitoring market developments closely and will continue to provide liquidity as necessary to promote the orderly functioning of the financial system," the board said. It said members had voted unanimously to approve the arrangement, announced by JP Morgan Chase and Bear Stearns earlier.
Delivering a speech on the economy in New York, Bush voiced confidence in the Fed's actions to aggressively cut interest rates and the Fed announcement last week that it would supply up to $200 billion in loans to cash-strapped financial institutions.
"It was a strong action by the Fed and they did so because some financial institutions that borrowed money to buy securities in the housing industry must now repair their balance sheets before they can make further loans," Bush said. "Today's actions are fasting moving, but the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the secretary of the treasury are on top of them and will take the appropriate steps to promote stability in our markets."
The plan announced Friday will supply secured funding to Bear Stearns for an initial period of 28 days, seeking to provide short-term relief for Bear Stearns.
Senior Federal Reserve staffers said the arrangement allows JP Morgan Chase to borrow from the Fed's discount window and put up collateral from Bear Stearns to back up the loans. JP Morgan, a bank, has access to the discount window to obtain direct loans from the Fed, but Bear Stearns, an investment house, does not.
This type of procedure, Fed officials said, dates back to the Great Depression of the 1930s but has rarely been used since that time.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson praised the Fed's leadership and said that the country's financial system would be able to weather the problems.
"As we have been saying for some time, there are challenges in our financial markets and we continue to address them," Paulson said in a statement. "This is another challenge that market participants and regulators are addressing. We are working closely with the Federal Reserve" and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Paulson said he appreciated the leadership of the Fed "in enhancing the stability and orderliness of our markets."
The action by the Fed board in Washington represented an endorsement of a rescue effort for Bear Stearns that had already been arranged by JPMorgan and the Federal Reserve's New York regional bank.
It was seen as a last-ditch effort to save the investment bank, which on Friday acknowledged its serious financial problems after a week of denials.
JPMorgan Chase is providing an undisclosed amount of secured funding to Bear for 28 days, backstopped by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement saying it has been "in close contact" with Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during discussions concerning an agreement by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to provide a secured loan facility to The Bear Stearns Companies.
"We will continue to work closely together in a way that contributes to orderly and liquid markets," the SEC said.
Last week, the Fed announced an industry-wide rescue package that would provide as much as $200 billion in loans to banks and investment houses and allow them to put up risky home-loan packages as collateral. It was the Fed's latest effort to stem a global credit crisis that began last August with rising loan defaults for subprime mortgages, loans provided to borrowers with weak credit histories.
Associated Press reporters Jeannine Aversa, Terence Hunt, Stephen Bernard, Madlen Read and Joe Del Bruno contributed to this report.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam
By STEVE LOHR
Caution: Heavy Internet traffic ahead. Delays possible.
For months there has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat, according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games.
Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits as they traverse the Internet’s pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.
In a widely cited report published last November, a research firm projected that user demand for the Internet could outpace network capacity by 2011. The title of a debate scheduled next month at a technology conference in Boston sums up the angst: “The End of the Internet?”
But the Internet traffic surge represents more a looming challenge than an impending catastrophe. Even those most concerned are not predicting a lights-out Internet crash. An individual user, they say, would experience Internet clogging in the form of sluggish download speeds and frustration with data-heavy services that become much less useful or enjoyable.
“The Internet doesn’t collapse, but there would be a growing class of stuff you just can’t do online,” said Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research, which predicted the bandwidth squeeze by 2011, anticipating that demand will grow by 100 percent or more a year.
Others are less worried — at least in the short term. Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota, estimates that digital traffic on the global network is growing about 50 percent a year, in line with a recent analysis by Cisco Systems, the big network equipment maker.
That sounds like a daunting rate of growth. Yet the technology for handling Internet traffic is advancing at an impressive pace as well. The router computers for relaying data get faster, fiber optic transmission gets better and software for juggling data packets gets smarter.
“The 50 percent growth is high. It’s huge, but it basically corresponds to the improvements that technology is giving us,” said Professor Odlyzko, a former AT&T Labs researcher. Demand is not likely to overwhelm the Internet, he said.
The question of the problem’s severity is more than a technical one, since it will affect the shape and cost of the nation’s policy on broadband infrastructure, a matter that is expected to attract political attention after a new administration takes over in Washington.
While experts debate the immediacy of the challenge, they agree that it points to a larger issue. In the Internet era, they say, high-speed networks are increasingly the economic and scientific petri dishes of innovation, spawning new businesses, markets and jobs. If American investment lags behind, they warn, the nation risks losing competitiveness to countries that are making the move to higher-speed Internet access a priority.
“The long-term issue is where innovation happens,” Professor Odlyzko said. “Where will the next Google, YouTube, eBay or Amazon come from?”
The Internet, though a global network, is in many ways surprisingly local. It is a vast amalgam of smaller networks, all linked together. The worries about digital traffic congestion are not really about the Internet’s main trunk lines, the equivalent of network superhighways. Instead, the problem is close to home — the capacity of neighborhood switches, routers and pipes into a house. The cost of stringing high-speed optical fiber to a home, analysts estimate, can be $1,000 or more.
That is why Internet access speeds vary so much country by country. They depend on local patterns of corporate investment and government subsidy. Frederick J. Baker, a research fellow at Cisco, was attending a professional conference last month in Taiwan where Internet access is more than twice as fast and costs far less than his premium “high speed” service in California.
“When I mention my own service, people here shake their heads in disbelief,” said Mr. Baker, who is a board member of the Internet Society, a nonprofit organization that helps guide Internet standards and policy.
In the United States, the investment required to cope with rising Internet traffic will need to be made at several levels, not just cable and telecommunications carriers. Tim Pozar, an engineer and a co-owner of the Internet services company UnitedLayer in San Francisco, said a number of forces were combining: the surge in bandwidth-hungry video applications on Web sites, the need to handle traffic from more Internet-enabled devices like cellphones, and shortages of electrical power for data centers in places like San Francisco.
“We’re running out of horsepower to accommodate the demand,” said Mr. Pozar, whose company’s data centers support Web sites for customers ranging from museums to social networks. “And upgrades needed in data centers are going to be a lot more expensive than in the past, now that all the excess capacity left over after the dot-com bubble burst has been gobbled up.” The pace of future demand is the big uncertainty surrounding the Internet traffic challenge, and how fast people will adopt emerging technologies is notoriously difficult to foresee.
In the aftermath of the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000, there was a glut of capacity — so-called dark fiber, strung around the world and then left dormant. Now demand is catching up with that supply. In its prediction of more than 100 percent annual growth, Nemertes, a telecommunications research firm, assumes brisk use of new innovations like high-end videoconferencing, known as telepresence, which corporations are beginning to embrace as an alternative to costly, time-consuming travel.
If this technology becomes a consumer product in the next few years, as some analysts predict, Internet traffic could spike even more sharply.
Slick video chats are something that William Bentley, a 13-year-old New Yorker, would like to see. He is fairly representative of the next generation of digital consumer: He has made and posted his own YouTube videos, subscribes to YouTube channels, enjoys multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament, and downloads music and videos.
Asked what he would want next from the Internet, he replied, “It would be nice to have everybody always right there — just click and you could see them clearly and talk to them.”
That sort of service is certainly going to require more bandwidth and more investment, with higher costs across the spectrum of the Internet ecosystem that includes cable and telecommunications carriers, Internet companies, media Web sites and even consumers. AT&T, for one, said last week that it would spend $1 billion this year — double its 2006 expenditures — to expand its overseas infrastructure.
But even if investment lags behind, there will be no Internet blackout. Indeed, the Internet has survived predictions of collapse in the past, most notably by Robert M. Metcalfe, a networking pioneer and entrepreneur, who in a 1995 magazine column warned of a “catastrophic collapse” of the Internet in 1996. There were service problems, but nothing like Mr. Metcalfe predicted, and on stage at a conference in 1997 he ate his words.
“The Internet has proven to be wonderfully resilient,” said Mr. Metcalfe, who is now a venture capitalist. “But the Internet is vulnerable today. It’s not that it will collapse, but that opportunities will be lost.”
Caution: Heavy Internet traffic ahead. Delays possible.
For months there has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat, according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games.
Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits as they traverse the Internet’s pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.
In a widely cited report published last November, a research firm projected that user demand for the Internet could outpace network capacity by 2011. The title of a debate scheduled next month at a technology conference in Boston sums up the angst: “The End of the Internet?”
But the Internet traffic surge represents more a looming challenge than an impending catastrophe. Even those most concerned are not predicting a lights-out Internet crash. An individual user, they say, would experience Internet clogging in the form of sluggish download speeds and frustration with data-heavy services that become much less useful or enjoyable.
“The Internet doesn’t collapse, but there would be a growing class of stuff you just can’t do online,” said Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research, which predicted the bandwidth squeeze by 2011, anticipating that demand will grow by 100 percent or more a year.
Others are less worried — at least in the short term. Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota, estimates that digital traffic on the global network is growing about 50 percent a year, in line with a recent analysis by Cisco Systems, the big network equipment maker.
That sounds like a daunting rate of growth. Yet the technology for handling Internet traffic is advancing at an impressive pace as well. The router computers for relaying data get faster, fiber optic transmission gets better and software for juggling data packets gets smarter.
“The 50 percent growth is high. It’s huge, but it basically corresponds to the improvements that technology is giving us,” said Professor Odlyzko, a former AT&T Labs researcher. Demand is not likely to overwhelm the Internet, he said.
The question of the problem’s severity is more than a technical one, since it will affect the shape and cost of the nation’s policy on broadband infrastructure, a matter that is expected to attract political attention after a new administration takes over in Washington.
While experts debate the immediacy of the challenge, they agree that it points to a larger issue. In the Internet era, they say, high-speed networks are increasingly the economic and scientific petri dishes of innovation, spawning new businesses, markets and jobs. If American investment lags behind, they warn, the nation risks losing competitiveness to countries that are making the move to higher-speed Internet access a priority.
“The long-term issue is where innovation happens,” Professor Odlyzko said. “Where will the next Google, YouTube, eBay or Amazon come from?”
The Internet, though a global network, is in many ways surprisingly local. It is a vast amalgam of smaller networks, all linked together. The worries about digital traffic congestion are not really about the Internet’s main trunk lines, the equivalent of network superhighways. Instead, the problem is close to home — the capacity of neighborhood switches, routers and pipes into a house. The cost of stringing high-speed optical fiber to a home, analysts estimate, can be $1,000 or more.
That is why Internet access speeds vary so much country by country. They depend on local patterns of corporate investment and government subsidy. Frederick J. Baker, a research fellow at Cisco, was attending a professional conference last month in Taiwan where Internet access is more than twice as fast and costs far less than his premium “high speed” service in California.
“When I mention my own service, people here shake their heads in disbelief,” said Mr. Baker, who is a board member of the Internet Society, a nonprofit organization that helps guide Internet standards and policy.
In the United States, the investment required to cope with rising Internet traffic will need to be made at several levels, not just cable and telecommunications carriers. Tim Pozar, an engineer and a co-owner of the Internet services company UnitedLayer in San Francisco, said a number of forces were combining: the surge in bandwidth-hungry video applications on Web sites, the need to handle traffic from more Internet-enabled devices like cellphones, and shortages of electrical power for data centers in places like San Francisco.
“We’re running out of horsepower to accommodate the demand,” said Mr. Pozar, whose company’s data centers support Web sites for customers ranging from museums to social networks. “And upgrades needed in data centers are going to be a lot more expensive than in the past, now that all the excess capacity left over after the dot-com bubble burst has been gobbled up.” The pace of future demand is the big uncertainty surrounding the Internet traffic challenge, and how fast people will adopt emerging technologies is notoriously difficult to foresee.
In the aftermath of the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000, there was a glut of capacity — so-called dark fiber, strung around the world and then left dormant. Now demand is catching up with that supply. In its prediction of more than 100 percent annual growth, Nemertes, a telecommunications research firm, assumes brisk use of new innovations like high-end videoconferencing, known as telepresence, which corporations are beginning to embrace as an alternative to costly, time-consuming travel.
If this technology becomes a consumer product in the next few years, as some analysts predict, Internet traffic could spike even more sharply.
Slick video chats are something that William Bentley, a 13-year-old New Yorker, would like to see. He is fairly representative of the next generation of digital consumer: He has made and posted his own YouTube videos, subscribes to YouTube channels, enjoys multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament, and downloads music and videos.
Asked what he would want next from the Internet, he replied, “It would be nice to have everybody always right there — just click and you could see them clearly and talk to them.”
That sort of service is certainly going to require more bandwidth and more investment, with higher costs across the spectrum of the Internet ecosystem that includes cable and telecommunications carriers, Internet companies, media Web sites and even consumers. AT&T, for one, said last week that it would spend $1 billion this year — double its 2006 expenditures — to expand its overseas infrastructure.
But even if investment lags behind, there will be no Internet blackout. Indeed, the Internet has survived predictions of collapse in the past, most notably by Robert M. Metcalfe, a networking pioneer and entrepreneur, who in a 1995 magazine column warned of a “catastrophic collapse” of the Internet in 1996. There were service problems, but nothing like Mr. Metcalfe predicted, and on stage at a conference in 1997 he ate his words.
“The Internet has proven to be wonderfully resilient,” said Mr. Metcalfe, who is now a venture capitalist. “But the Internet is vulnerable today. It’s not that it will collapse, but that opportunities will be lost.”
Fed takes boldest action since the Depression to rescue US mortgage industry
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The US Federal Reserve has taken the boldest action since the 1930s, accepting $200bn of housing debt as collateral to prevent an implosion of the mortgage finance industry and head off a full-blown economic crisis.
The Fed's in a desperate race with spectre of collapse
The latest news and analysis of the UK and world economy
Read more by Ambrose Evans Pritchard
The Bank of England, the key European central banks, and the Bank of Canada all joined in a co-ordinated move with a mix of policies to halt the dowward spiral in the credit markets, expanding on the "shock and awe" tactics used late last year.
The Fed's dramatic step came after an emergency conference call by governors on Monday night. It followed the melt-down of the US chartered agencies -- Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other lenders -- which together guarantee 60pc of the entire US home loan market. Fannie Mae's share price fell 19pc in panic trading on Monday after Barron's magazine said it may need a rescue package.
"The agency crisis was a Tsunami event," said Tim Bond, global strategist at Barclays Capital.
"The market was starting to question the solvency of bodies that stand at the top of the credit pile. These agencies together wrap or insure $6 trillion of mortgages. They cannot be allowed to fail because it would cause a financial disaster. The fact that this sector has blown up has caught everybody's attention in Washington," he said.
The Fed action set off a powerful relief rally, lifting the Dow Jones index over 340 points in early trading. Both US and European equities have been hovering on key support lines in recent days, threatening to break down through 18-month lows in a second, brutal leg to the bear market.
Stress indicators across almost all parts of the global credit system fell from extreme levels on the Fed news. The CDX and iTraxx Europe indexes that serve as a default barometer for corporate bonds retreated from record highs, although it is too early to judge whether the latest action will start to thaw the credit freeze. The stock market rally after the last central bank intervention in December fizzled out after just one day.
"This is not going to be enough," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.
"The Fed is doing absolutely the right thing by soaking up mortgage debt that nobody else wants. This will have an impact on spreads, but we're seeing the deflation of a major bubble. The Fed is still going to have to cut interest rates by 75 basis points next week," he said.
It is a ground-breaking move for the Fed to accept mortgage collateral, even if the debt is theoretically 'AAA-grade' debt. The Fed is not allowed to buy mortgage bonds outright, but it can achieve a similar effect by letting banks roll over collateral indefinitely. The European Central Bank is already doing this, shielding Dutch, Spanish, German, and some British banks from the full impact of the credit crunch.
The Fed is to create a new facility that allows banks to swap their mortgage bonds for US Treasuries. It is a well-targeted "sterilized" move to avoid adding fuel to inflationary fire. It follows the Fed's separate pledge last Friday to add up to $200bn in liquidity.
The Bank of England also announced that it was widening the range of elligible collateral as it offers £10bn of three-month loans, saying pressures in the money markets "have recently increased again." The ECB and the Swiss have boosted swap agreements with the Fed to provide $30bn and $6bn respectively in dollar liquidity to their own lenders.
Bernard Connolly, global strategist at Banque AIG, said the Fed action may help calm the markets for now, but it cannot solve the root problem of eroded of bank capital.
"There is the risk of a very damaging credit contraction. We face the most serious global crisis since the Great Depression. But this time at least the North American central banks are doing their best to stop it spreading to the real economy," he said.
The emergency actions appear to have been co-ordinated by the Fed's top two figures, Ben Bernanke and Donald Kohn, working closely with the Bank of Canada's Mark Carney. "We should be thankful that we have people in charge who appreciate the gravity of the situation," said Mr Connolly.
The travails at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- once rock-solid institutions -- had combined in a deadly cocktail with a fresh wave of panic over the solvency of the investment banks with heavy exposure to sub-prime debt.
Bear Stearns was forced to deny reports that it was running out of capital and may seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The spreads measuring default risk on its debt rocketed from 246 to 792 on Monday.
Mr Bond said the mortgage agencies may ultimately need to be nationalized. Fannie Mae has already seen its stock price drop 70pc since October at a cost of $50bn in market value, even though it has an implicit federal guarantee. "There is going to have to be a very big bail-out," he said.
The US Federal Reserve has taken the boldest action since the 1930s, accepting $200bn of housing debt as collateral to prevent an implosion of the mortgage finance industry and head off a full-blown economic crisis.
The Fed's in a desperate race with spectre of collapse
The latest news and analysis of the UK and world economy
Read more by Ambrose Evans Pritchard
The Bank of England, the key European central banks, and the Bank of Canada all joined in a co-ordinated move with a mix of policies to halt the dowward spiral in the credit markets, expanding on the "shock and awe" tactics used late last year.
The Fed's dramatic step came after an emergency conference call by governors on Monday night. It followed the melt-down of the US chartered agencies -- Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other lenders -- which together guarantee 60pc of the entire US home loan market. Fannie Mae's share price fell 19pc in panic trading on Monday after Barron's magazine said it may need a rescue package.
"The agency crisis was a Tsunami event," said Tim Bond, global strategist at Barclays Capital.
"The market was starting to question the solvency of bodies that stand at the top of the credit pile. These agencies together wrap or insure $6 trillion of mortgages. They cannot be allowed to fail because it would cause a financial disaster. The fact that this sector has blown up has caught everybody's attention in Washington," he said.
The Fed action set off a powerful relief rally, lifting the Dow Jones index over 340 points in early trading. Both US and European equities have been hovering on key support lines in recent days, threatening to break down through 18-month lows in a second, brutal leg to the bear market.
Stress indicators across almost all parts of the global credit system fell from extreme levels on the Fed news. The CDX and iTraxx Europe indexes that serve as a default barometer for corporate bonds retreated from record highs, although it is too early to judge whether the latest action will start to thaw the credit freeze. The stock market rally after the last central bank intervention in December fizzled out after just one day.
"This is not going to be enough," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.
"The Fed is doing absolutely the right thing by soaking up mortgage debt that nobody else wants. This will have an impact on spreads, but we're seeing the deflation of a major bubble. The Fed is still going to have to cut interest rates by 75 basis points next week," he said.
It is a ground-breaking move for the Fed to accept mortgage collateral, even if the debt is theoretically 'AAA-grade' debt. The Fed is not allowed to buy mortgage bonds outright, but it can achieve a similar effect by letting banks roll over collateral indefinitely. The European Central Bank is already doing this, shielding Dutch, Spanish, German, and some British banks from the full impact of the credit crunch.
The Fed is to create a new facility that allows banks to swap their mortgage bonds for US Treasuries. It is a well-targeted "sterilized" move to avoid adding fuel to inflationary fire. It follows the Fed's separate pledge last Friday to add up to $200bn in liquidity.
The Bank of England also announced that it was widening the range of elligible collateral as it offers £10bn of three-month loans, saying pressures in the money markets "have recently increased again." The ECB and the Swiss have boosted swap agreements with the Fed to provide $30bn and $6bn respectively in dollar liquidity to their own lenders.
Bernard Connolly, global strategist at Banque AIG, said the Fed action may help calm the markets for now, but it cannot solve the root problem of eroded of bank capital.
"There is the risk of a very damaging credit contraction. We face the most serious global crisis since the Great Depression. But this time at least the North American central banks are doing their best to stop it spreading to the real economy," he said.
The emergency actions appear to have been co-ordinated by the Fed's top two figures, Ben Bernanke and Donald Kohn, working closely with the Bank of Canada's Mark Carney. "We should be thankful that we have people in charge who appreciate the gravity of the situation," said Mr Connolly.
The travails at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- once rock-solid institutions -- had combined in a deadly cocktail with a fresh wave of panic over the solvency of the investment banks with heavy exposure to sub-prime debt.
Bear Stearns was forced to deny reports that it was running out of capital and may seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The spreads measuring default risk on its debt rocketed from 246 to 792 on Monday.
Mr Bond said the mortgage agencies may ultimately need to be nationalized. Fannie Mae has already seen its stock price drop 70pc since October at a cost of $50bn in market value, even though it has an implicit federal guarantee. "There is going to have to be a very big bail-out," he said.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Google could be superseded, says web inventor
by Jonathan Richards
The next generation of web technology is likely to be far more powerful than the current crop, Tim Berners-Lee said
Google may eventually be displaced as the pre-eminent brand on the internet by a company that harnesses the power of next-generation web technology, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said.
The search giant had developed an extremely effective way of searching for pages on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee said, but that ability paled in comparison to what could be achieved on the "web of the future", which he said would allow any piece of information — such as a photo or a bank statement — to be linked to any other.
Mr Berners-Lee said that in the same way, the "current craze" for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace would eventually be superseded by networks that connected all types of things — not just people — thanks to a ground-breaking technology known as the "semantic web".
The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web's development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can "communicate" with other information.
Whereas the existing web is a collection of pages with links between them that Google and other search engines help the user to navigate, the "semantic web" will enable direct connectivity between much more low-level pieces of information — a written street address and a map, for instance — which in turn will give rise to new services.
"Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web," Mr Berners-Lee said. "Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.
"If you still weren't sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you wouldd know not to claim it as a tax deduction.
"It's about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life."
One example frequently given is of typing a street address which, if it had "semantic data" built into it, would link directly to a map showing its location, dispensing with the need to go to a site like Google `maps, type in the address, get the link and paste it into a document or e-mail.
The challenge, experts say, is in finding a way to represent all data so that when it is connected to the web, links to other relevant information can be recognised and established — a bit like the process known as "tagging". One expected application is in the pharmaceutical industry, where previously unconnected pieces of research into a drug or disease, say, could be brought together and assimilated.
Mr Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while a fellow at CERN, the European Organsation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, would not be drawn on the type of application that the "Google of the future" would develop, but said it would likely be a type of "mega-mash-up", where information is taken from one place and made useful in another context using the web.
Existing "mash-ups", such as progams that plotted the location of every Starbucks in a city using Google maps, were a start, he said in an interview with Times Online, but they were limited because a separate application had to be built each time a new service was imagined.
"In the semantic web, it's like every piece of data is given a longitude and latitute on a map, and anyone can 'mash' them together and use them for different things."
Mr Berners-Lee, who is now a director of the Web Science Research Initiative, a collaborative project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton, sought to put into context the rapid growth of social networking sites in recent years, saying that once the semantic web was rolled out they would be thought of as one of many types of network available.
"At the moment, people are very excited about all these connections being made between people — for obvious reasons, because people are important — but I think after a while people will realise that there are many other things you can connect to via the web."
He also spoke about what he described as one of the key challenges of the web today — confronting the security risks associated with large databases of information that were attractive to criminals and identity fraudsters.
"There are definitely better ways of managing that threat. I think we're soon going to see a new tipping point where different types of crimes become possible and lucrative, and it's something we constantly have to be aware of.
"One option is to build systems which more effectively track what information you've used to perform a particular task, and make sure people aren't using their authority to do things that they shouldn't be doing."
The next generation of web technology is likely to be far more powerful than the current crop, Tim Berners-Lee said
Google may eventually be displaced as the pre-eminent brand on the internet by a company that harnesses the power of next-generation web technology, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said.
The search giant had developed an extremely effective way of searching for pages on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee said, but that ability paled in comparison to what could be achieved on the "web of the future", which he said would allow any piece of information — such as a photo or a bank statement — to be linked to any other.
Mr Berners-Lee said that in the same way, the "current craze" for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace would eventually be superseded by networks that connected all types of things — not just people — thanks to a ground-breaking technology known as the "semantic web".
The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web's development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can "communicate" with other information.
Whereas the existing web is a collection of pages with links between them that Google and other search engines help the user to navigate, the "semantic web" will enable direct connectivity between much more low-level pieces of information — a written street address and a map, for instance — which in turn will give rise to new services.
"Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web," Mr Berners-Lee said. "Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.
"If you still weren't sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you wouldd know not to claim it as a tax deduction.
"It's about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life."
One example frequently given is of typing a street address which, if it had "semantic data" built into it, would link directly to a map showing its location, dispensing with the need to go to a site like Google `maps, type in the address, get the link and paste it into a document or e-mail.
The challenge, experts say, is in finding a way to represent all data so that when it is connected to the web, links to other relevant information can be recognised and established — a bit like the process known as "tagging". One expected application is in the pharmaceutical industry, where previously unconnected pieces of research into a drug or disease, say, could be brought together and assimilated.
Mr Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while a fellow at CERN, the European Organsation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, would not be drawn on the type of application that the "Google of the future" would develop, but said it would likely be a type of "mega-mash-up", where information is taken from one place and made useful in another context using the web.
Existing "mash-ups", such as progams that plotted the location of every Starbucks in a city using Google maps, were a start, he said in an interview with Times Online, but they were limited because a separate application had to be built each time a new service was imagined.
"In the semantic web, it's like every piece of data is given a longitude and latitute on a map, and anyone can 'mash' them together and use them for different things."
Mr Berners-Lee, who is now a director of the Web Science Research Initiative, a collaborative project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton, sought to put into context the rapid growth of social networking sites in recent years, saying that once the semantic web was rolled out they would be thought of as one of many types of network available.
"At the moment, people are very excited about all these connections being made between people — for obvious reasons, because people are important — but I think after a while people will realise that there are many other things you can connect to via the web."
He also spoke about what he described as one of the key challenges of the web today — confronting the security risks associated with large databases of information that were attractive to criminals and identity fraudsters.
"There are definitely better ways of managing that threat. I think we're soon going to see a new tipping point where different types of crimes become possible and lucrative, and it's something we constantly have to be aware of.
"One option is to build systems which more effectively track what information you've used to perform a particular task, and make sure people aren't using their authority to do things that they shouldn't be doing."
Ad Wars: Google's Green Light
by Robert Hof
The official marriage of search- and display-ad titans Google and DoubleClick may take a while to pay off, but it deals a blow to Microsoft now
The long-awaited completion of Google's $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick will kick off a new online advertising battle that may rage for years to come. Yet it may also take years for the search giant to gain a foothold in what's shaping up as the next front in the $20 billion online ad industry: the resurgence of display ads, those colorful but oft-ignored "banners" and videos that run along the tops and sides of Web pages.
On Mar. 11 the European Commission blessed the deal with no restrictions despite opposition from rivals and privacy advocates worried about one company having too much data about people's online activities. The green light from the European Union's executive arm came nearly three months after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission gave its go-ahead and nearly a year after the deal was first announced.
With the final regulatory hurdle removed, Google closed the deal immediately, taking over the company that places billions of ads per day on thousands of Web sites worldwide—further concentrating the online ad industry into fewer powerful hands. Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), and Time Warner's (TWX) AOL have spent billions to snap up a variety of ad companies in the past year or so.
Targeting for Banner Ads, Too
Google's purchase of DoubleClick joins two ends of the online ad spectrum at a critical time. Search ads, those columns of tiny text that run alongside Internet search results, have come to dominate the industry's growth as Google has perfected its technology for targeting the right users with the right ads. That shift has come at the expense of display ads, whose share of the online market has fallen from 58% in 2001 to just 21% today.
But new technologies are starting to offer the same kind of targeting potential for banner and video ads as well. And with more users switching the focal point of their Web surfing from search engines to social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, banners and boxes may gain new appeal among advertisers. "We're in the midst of the third chapter of online advertising, and it's all about display ads," says Paul Levine, vice-president for marketing at ad network AdBrite.
The DoubleClick purchase will deal a double whammy to Microsoft. More than ever, the software giant will be pressured to prevail in its unsolicited $45 billion bid to buy Yahoo, the acknowledged leader in online display advertising. And Microsoft's struggle to wrestle that deal to the ground—which could last until Yahoo's next board meeting, possibly not until June or July—will distract the two Google rivals for months. That will give Google precious time to integrate DoubleClick into its business.
The official marriage of search- and display-ad titans Google and DoubleClick may take a while to pay off, but it deals a blow to Microsoft now
The long-awaited completion of Google's $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick will kick off a new online advertising battle that may rage for years to come. Yet it may also take years for the search giant to gain a foothold in what's shaping up as the next front in the $20 billion online ad industry: the resurgence of display ads, those colorful but oft-ignored "banners" and videos that run along the tops and sides of Web pages.
On Mar. 11 the European Commission blessed the deal with no restrictions despite opposition from rivals and privacy advocates worried about one company having too much data about people's online activities. The green light from the European Union's executive arm came nearly three months after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission gave its go-ahead and nearly a year after the deal was first announced.
With the final regulatory hurdle removed, Google closed the deal immediately, taking over the company that places billions of ads per day on thousands of Web sites worldwide—further concentrating the online ad industry into fewer powerful hands. Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), and Time Warner's (TWX) AOL have spent billions to snap up a variety of ad companies in the past year or so.
Targeting for Banner Ads, Too
Google's purchase of DoubleClick joins two ends of the online ad spectrum at a critical time. Search ads, those columns of tiny text that run alongside Internet search results, have come to dominate the industry's growth as Google has perfected its technology for targeting the right users with the right ads. That shift has come at the expense of display ads, whose share of the online market has fallen from 58% in 2001 to just 21% today.
But new technologies are starting to offer the same kind of targeting potential for banner and video ads as well. And with more users switching the focal point of their Web surfing from search engines to social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, banners and boxes may gain new appeal among advertisers. "We're in the midst of the third chapter of online advertising, and it's all about display ads," says Paul Levine, vice-president for marketing at ad network AdBrite.
The DoubleClick purchase will deal a double whammy to Microsoft. More than ever, the software giant will be pressured to prevail in its unsolicited $45 billion bid to buy Yahoo, the acknowledged leader in online display advertising. And Microsoft's struggle to wrestle that deal to the ground—which could last until Yahoo's next board meeting, possibly not until June or July—will distract the two Google rivals for months. That will give Google precious time to integrate DoubleClick into its business.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Creating Synergy in Your SEO Efforts
By Mark Jackson
In a tug-of-war, you're much better off if your team pulls in the same direction. Success in SEO (define) is very much the same.
There's no one single thing that can make your Web page show up in the top of the search results. But there are several little things that can. Taking the time to consider small Web site structure details and ensuring that all these details are working in tandem will reap benefits for years to come. Pay attention to the key components of SEO and synergize your optimization efforts, and you'll find it much easier to succeed.
Disclaimer: I'm openly admitting to not having researched the proper keywords. What I'm sharing is an example only. So, if you own a sporting goods store, don't assume that you've just received free keyword research. There could easily be better ways to refer to these products.
Key Components of SEO
Let's begin by breaking down some of the key elements to SEO: the title tag, URL, header tag, content, internal links, and external links.
Title Tag
The bar at the top of your browser -- which many "typical" users of the Web don't even know exists -- happens to be the single most important component to SEO. Most sites that you come across will say "Company Name -- Home" in this area. That's terrific if you're very well branded and only want to be found for your company's name. In that instance, visitors searching for your company would find your site anyway.
Instead, put your most important keywords in this area, within reason. Try to keep the total character length to less than 68 characters, including spaces. For the purpose of this article, let's make up a page. Let's say this is a Web site that sells sporting goods, and we're going to focus specifically on the soccer jersey page.
An optimized title tag for this page would be "Soccer Jersey | Team Uniforms | Soccer Jerseys." The total character length is 46. That's pretty short, but it's concise, and it's all the keywords I want to focus on for this page.
URL
Google is beginning to pay a little more attention to keywords in the URL. Keep in mind that too many keywords in a URL will appear spammy to a user. If you don't already have rankings, if your site is new, or if you're redesigning your site and will be creating new URLs anyway, consider adding some keywords here. Using our example, the best choice is www.yoursite.com/soccer-jersey/.
Header Tag
The H1 tag is another key element that must be in synergy with the rest. This appears to most Web visitors as the "title" of the page, usually set apart in a heading above the body copy. This header is usually bold and describes exactly what is on the page. Some Web sites don't have a headline or title above the copy at all, but having an H1 tag is another key element to proper SEO. Using our example, the H1 of this page would be "Soccer Jersey."
Are you starting to see a pattern? Synergy, remember?
Content
Obvious to most of us, but missing completely on many Web sites, is content. Write 250 words or so of copy that is relevant to that page. Make sure that you're using the same wording as the title tag, URL, and H1. It's a good idea to use the words "soccer jersey" here, too.
Internal Links
If you're going to link from www.yoursite.com to the "soccer jersey" page, be sure that you use the words "soccer jersey" in the anchor text on that link.
External Links
Be really careful here. Don't get "all spammy" on me. If you can find relevant Web sites that would link to product/services pages that are relevant for inclusion, that's terrific.
Don't -- I repeat, don't -- get too focused on one keyword. Get some links to your internal pages from external sites that have "soccer jersey" in the anchor text and have these sites link to your /soccer-jersey/ page. Then, go get some other links for the /soccer-ball/ page that have the "soccer ball" anchor text. For more information on linking, be sure to read the Search Engine Watch Experts columns on link building and social media.
The Devil Is in the Details
It's not especially difficult, but taking a little extra time to create synergy with your title tag, content, headers, and linking is the "secret sauce" to successful SEO. As they say, "the devil is in the details."
Certainly, this isn't everything you need to know to be successful in SEO. There are probably around 250 criteria that a search engine might consider to determine which Web site to rank for a given search phrase.
As always, if you're unsure of a major change that you're about to make, please consult with a SEO professional. Reckless changes to a Web site can have major effects on rankings and your bottom line.
In a tug-of-war, you're much better off if your team pulls in the same direction. Success in SEO (define) is very much the same.
There's no one single thing that can make your Web page show up in the top of the search results. But there are several little things that can. Taking the time to consider small Web site structure details and ensuring that all these details are working in tandem will reap benefits for years to come. Pay attention to the key components of SEO and synergize your optimization efforts, and you'll find it much easier to succeed.
Disclaimer: I'm openly admitting to not having researched the proper keywords. What I'm sharing is an example only. So, if you own a sporting goods store, don't assume that you've just received free keyword research. There could easily be better ways to refer to these products.
Key Components of SEO
Let's begin by breaking down some of the key elements to SEO: the title tag, URL, header tag, content, internal links, and external links.
Title Tag
The bar at the top of your browser -- which many "typical" users of the Web don't even know exists -- happens to be the single most important component to SEO. Most sites that you come across will say "Company Name -- Home" in this area. That's terrific if you're very well branded and only want to be found for your company's name. In that instance, visitors searching for your company would find your site anyway.
Instead, put your most important keywords in this area, within reason. Try to keep the total character length to less than 68 characters, including spaces. For the purpose of this article, let's make up a page. Let's say this is a Web site that sells sporting goods, and we're going to focus specifically on the soccer jersey page.
An optimized title tag for this page would be "Soccer Jersey | Team Uniforms | Soccer Jerseys." The total character length is 46. That's pretty short, but it's concise, and it's all the keywords I want to focus on for this page.
URL
Google is beginning to pay a little more attention to keywords in the URL. Keep in mind that too many keywords in a URL will appear spammy to a user. If you don't already have rankings, if your site is new, or if you're redesigning your site and will be creating new URLs anyway, consider adding some keywords here. Using our example, the best choice is www.yoursite.com/soccer-jersey/.
Header Tag
The H1 tag is another key element that must be in synergy with the rest. This appears to most Web visitors as the "title" of the page, usually set apart in a heading above the body copy. This header is usually bold and describes exactly what is on the page. Some Web sites don't have a headline or title above the copy at all, but having an H1 tag is another key element to proper SEO. Using our example, the H1 of this page would be "Soccer Jersey."
Are you starting to see a pattern? Synergy, remember?
Content
Obvious to most of us, but missing completely on many Web sites, is content. Write 250 words or so of copy that is relevant to that page. Make sure that you're using the same wording as the title tag, URL, and H1. It's a good idea to use the words "soccer jersey" here, too.
Internal Links
If you're going to link from www.yoursite.com to the "soccer jersey" page, be sure that you use the words "soccer jersey" in the anchor text on that link.
External Links
Be really careful here. Don't get "all spammy" on me. If you can find relevant Web sites that would link to product/services pages that are relevant for inclusion, that's terrific.
Don't -- I repeat, don't -- get too focused on one keyword. Get some links to your internal pages from external sites that have "soccer jersey" in the anchor text and have these sites link to your /soccer-jersey/ page. Then, go get some other links for the /soccer-ball/ page that have the "soccer ball" anchor text. For more information on linking, be sure to read the Search Engine Watch Experts columns on link building and social media.
The Devil Is in the Details
It's not especially difficult, but taking a little extra time to create synergy with your title tag, content, headers, and linking is the "secret sauce" to successful SEO. As they say, "the devil is in the details."
Certainly, this isn't everything you need to know to be successful in SEO. There are probably around 250 criteria that a search engine might consider to determine which Web site to rank for a given search phrase.
As always, if you're unsure of a major change that you're about to make, please consult with a SEO professional. Reckless changes to a Web site can have major effects on rankings and your bottom line.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
A few minor changes in store for iPhone v2.0
by Will Park
It's not like there isn't already enough to get excited about with the next revision of the iPhone firmware. We've got the iPhone SDK going final, enterprise support (Microsoft Exchange), and the Apple AppStore to look forward to. What more could Apple possibly have in store for us?
Well, Doc over at Macenstein put his freakishly sharp eyes to work and spotted a couple minor changes to the iPhone UI. Pictures from the iPhone Software Roadmap indicate that Apple will be going "square" on the iPhone's calculator. The iPhone Calculator currently rocks round buttons, with the "equals" button in orange. But, if the image that Apple presented a couple days ago is any indication, Apple will be revising the iPhone Calculator buttons to a square shape. Don't Apple designers have better things to do than tweak the iPhone Caculator's buttons?
There seems to also be a likewise minor change to the iPhone's iTunes Store icon. What we see is an iTunes Store icon with a musical note graphic, as opposed to the current "download arrow" graphic. I agree with Doc when he says that the new iTunes Store icon may be a misguided move. The iTunes Store represents Music, TV shows, and movies - not just music. A "download arrow" is better suited to the iTunes Store's function than a musical note.
And, the iPhones homescreen dock could be getting a minor refresh. It's hard to tell from the fuzzy screen-capture, but the iPhone v2.0 could end up sporting a homescreen dock adorned with lines, rather than the mesh/perforated aluminum look that it currently sports.
Like I said, the changes to the UI seem to be minor at this point. We also have the AppStore icon to look forward to, but other than that, we'll just have to wait until we get more info on the iPhone v2.0's changelog.
Of course, nothing beats having access to all those promising iPhone developers' applications right on the iPhone. That and some wireless GPS love with locoGPS - at least until Apple decides to integrate GPS into the iPhone.
It's not like there isn't already enough to get excited about with the next revision of the iPhone firmware. We've got the iPhone SDK going final, enterprise support (Microsoft Exchange), and the Apple AppStore to look forward to. What more could Apple possibly have in store for us?
Well, Doc over at Macenstein put his freakishly sharp eyes to work and spotted a couple minor changes to the iPhone UI. Pictures from the iPhone Software Roadmap indicate that Apple will be going "square" on the iPhone's calculator. The iPhone Calculator currently rocks round buttons, with the "equals" button in orange. But, if the image that Apple presented a couple days ago is any indication, Apple will be revising the iPhone Calculator buttons to a square shape. Don't Apple designers have better things to do than tweak the iPhone Caculator's buttons?
There seems to also be a likewise minor change to the iPhone's iTunes Store icon. What we see is an iTunes Store icon with a musical note graphic, as opposed to the current "download arrow" graphic. I agree with Doc when he says that the new iTunes Store icon may be a misguided move. The iTunes Store represents Music, TV shows, and movies - not just music. A "download arrow" is better suited to the iTunes Store's function than a musical note.
And, the iPhones homescreen dock could be getting a minor refresh. It's hard to tell from the fuzzy screen-capture, but the iPhone v2.0 could end up sporting a homescreen dock adorned with lines, rather than the mesh/perforated aluminum look that it currently sports.
Like I said, the changes to the UI seem to be minor at this point. We also have the AppStore icon to look forward to, but other than that, we'll just have to wait until we get more info on the iPhone v2.0's changelog.
Of course, nothing beats having access to all those promising iPhone developers' applications right on the iPhone. That and some wireless GPS love with locoGPS - at least until Apple decides to integrate GPS into the iPhone.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Ask.com gets a makeover, lays off 40
In a dramatic about-face, Ask.com is abandoning its effort to outshine Internet search leader Google Inc. and will instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives.
As part of the new direction outlined Tuesday, Ask will lay off about 40 employees, or 8 percent of its work force.
With the shift, the Oakland-based company will return to its roots by concentrating on finding answers to basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children's homework, entertainment and health.
The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google.
The quest intensified after Internet conglomerate InterActiveCorp bought Ask and its affiliated Web sites for $2.3 billion in 2005. But Ask.com remained an also-ran, despite spending tens of millions of dollars on an advertising blitz about dozens of new products that impressed many industry analysts.
Through January, Ask ran the Internet's fifth largest search engine in the United States with a 4.5 percent market share, according to comScore Media Metrix. Google dominates the industry with a 58.5 percent share.
"No matter what (Ask) did, it just wasn't enough to get people to leave Google," said Chris Winfield, who runs a search engine consulting firm, 10e20. "This looks they are raising the white flag."
Jim Safka, who became Ask's chief executive two months ago, predicted the retooling will breathe new life into the search engine.
"Everyone at Ask is excited about our clear focus and the trajectory-changing results it will deliver," he said in a statement.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said Ask's new strategy could help boost the company's profits because married women -- particularly mothers -- dictate many household spending decisions, making them a prime advertising target.
"It's a smart move," she said. "I still think Ask has great technology, but it's just really hard to fight against Google."
With Ask scaling back, the online search market could winnow to two dominant players, Google and Microsoft Corp. Now third in the market, Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo Inc., which runs the second largest search engine, for about $40 billion.
Ask's inability to increase its market share had spurred widespread speculation that Barry Diller, InterActiveCorp's chief executive, might hire Google to run the search engine's results to save money. Google already posts text-based ads on Ask and InterActiveCorp's other Web sites in a five-year deal that Diller expects to generate about $3.5 billion.
New York-based InterActiveCorp plans to break itself into five separate companies later this year. Ask will remain under Diller's control at InterActiveCorp.
When it first started out in 1996, Ask positioned itself as a search engine that could spit out answers to requests that were posed as natural-language questions instead of being entered as a string of loosely related words.
But the search engine, then known as AskJeeves, frequently misinterpreted requests and produced nonsensical answers that triggered widespread ridicule.
After investing in more sophisticated technology, Ask tried to reposition itself as a cutting-edge alternative to Google and even dropped its cartoonish mascot -- a genteel butler named Jeeves -- in an effort to be taken more seriously.
Even after adding more bells and whistles, Ask still primarily appealed to women who used the search engine primarily to get simple answers. Women are also a familiar demographic for Safka, who was chief executive of InterActiveCorp's online dating site, Match.com, before taking the reins at Ask.
Li predicted many married women and mothers will be thrilled to have a search engine focusing on their interests. "It's not so much that these women have simple questions," she said. "It's just that they are so busy that they need fast answers."
As part of the new direction outlined Tuesday, Ask will lay off about 40 employees, or 8 percent of its work force.
With the shift, the Oakland-based company will return to its roots by concentrating on finding answers to basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children's homework, entertainment and health.
The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google.
The quest intensified after Internet conglomerate InterActiveCorp bought Ask and its affiliated Web sites for $2.3 billion in 2005. But Ask.com remained an also-ran, despite spending tens of millions of dollars on an advertising blitz about dozens of new products that impressed many industry analysts.
Through January, Ask ran the Internet's fifth largest search engine in the United States with a 4.5 percent market share, according to comScore Media Metrix. Google dominates the industry with a 58.5 percent share.
"No matter what (Ask) did, it just wasn't enough to get people to leave Google," said Chris Winfield, who runs a search engine consulting firm, 10e20. "This looks they are raising the white flag."
Jim Safka, who became Ask's chief executive two months ago, predicted the retooling will breathe new life into the search engine.
"Everyone at Ask is excited about our clear focus and the trajectory-changing results it will deliver," he said in a statement.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said Ask's new strategy could help boost the company's profits because married women -- particularly mothers -- dictate many household spending decisions, making them a prime advertising target.
"It's a smart move," she said. "I still think Ask has great technology, but it's just really hard to fight against Google."
With Ask scaling back, the online search market could winnow to two dominant players, Google and Microsoft Corp. Now third in the market, Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo Inc., which runs the second largest search engine, for about $40 billion.
Ask's inability to increase its market share had spurred widespread speculation that Barry Diller, InterActiveCorp's chief executive, might hire Google to run the search engine's results to save money. Google already posts text-based ads on Ask and InterActiveCorp's other Web sites in a five-year deal that Diller expects to generate about $3.5 billion.
New York-based InterActiveCorp plans to break itself into five separate companies later this year. Ask will remain under Diller's control at InterActiveCorp.
When it first started out in 1996, Ask positioned itself as a search engine that could spit out answers to requests that were posed as natural-language questions instead of being entered as a string of loosely related words.
But the search engine, then known as AskJeeves, frequently misinterpreted requests and produced nonsensical answers that triggered widespread ridicule.
After investing in more sophisticated technology, Ask tried to reposition itself as a cutting-edge alternative to Google and even dropped its cartoonish mascot -- a genteel butler named Jeeves -- in an effort to be taken more seriously.
Even after adding more bells and whistles, Ask still primarily appealed to women who used the search engine primarily to get simple answers. Women are also a familiar demographic for Safka, who was chief executive of InterActiveCorp's online dating site, Match.com, before taking the reins at Ask.
Li predicted many married women and mothers will be thrilled to have a search engine focusing on their interests. "It's not so much that these women have simple questions," she said. "It's just that they are so busy that they need fast answers."
Friday, March 7, 2008
Chinese hackers break into Pentagon
By John Vause
They operate from a bare apartment on a Chinese island. They are intelligent 20-somethings who seem harmless. But they are hard-core hackers who claim to have gained access to the world's most sensitive sites, including the Pentagon.
The leader of these Chinese hackers says there "is always a weakness" on networks that allows cyber break-ins.
1 of 2 In fact, they say they are sometimes paid secretly by the Chinese government -- a claim the Beijing government denies.
"No Web site is one hundred percent safe. There are Web sites with high-level security, but there is always a weakness," says Xiao Chen, the leader of this group.
"Xiao Chen" is his online name. Along with his two colleagues, he does not want to reveal his true identity. The three belong to what some Western experts say is a civilian cyber militia in China, launching attacks on government and private Web sites around the world. Watch hackers' clandestine Chinese operation »
If there is a profile of a cyber hacker, these three are straight from central casting -- young and thin, with skin pale from spending too many long nights in front of a computer.
One hacker says he is a former computer operator in the People's Liberation Army; another is a marketing graduate; and Xiao Chen says he is a self-taught programmer.
"First, you must know about the Web site you want to attack. You must know what program it is written with," says Xiao Chen. "There is a saying, 'Know about both yourself and the enemy, and you will be invincible.'"
CNN decided to withhold the address of these hackers' Web site, but Xiao Chen says it has been operating for more than three years, with 10,000 registered users. The site offers tools, articles, news and flash tutorials about hacking.
Private computer experts in the United States from iDefense Security Intelligence, which provides cybersecurity advice to governments and Fortune 500 companies, say the group's site "appears to be an important site in the broader Chinese hacking community."
Arranging a meeting with the hackers took weeks of on-again, off-again e-mail exchanges. When they finally agreed, CNN was told to meet them on the island of Zhoushan, just south of Shanghai and a major port for China's navy.
The apartment has cement floors and almost no furniture. What they do have are three of the latest computers. They are cautious when it comes to naming the Web sites they have hacked.
But eventually Xiao Chen claims two of his colleagues -- not the ones with him in the room -- have hacked into the Pentagon and downloaded information, although he wouldn't specify what was gleaned. CNN has no way to confirm if his claim is true.
"They would not publicize this," he says of someone who hacks the U.S. Defense Department. "It is very sensitive."
This week, the Pentagon said computer networks in the United States, Germany, Britain and France were hit last year by what they call "multiple intrusions," many of them originating from China.
At a congressional hearing in Washington last week, administration officials testified that the government's cyber initiative has fallen far short of what is required. Most alarming, the officials said, there has never been a full damage assessment of federal agency networks. Watch Pentagon bans Google from bases »
"We are here today because we must do more," said Robert Jamison, a top official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "Defending the federal system in its current configuration is a significant challenge."
U.S. officials have been cautious not to directly accuse the Chinese military or its government of hacking into its network.
But David Sedney, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, says, "The way these intrusions are conducted are certainly consistent with what you would need if you were going to actually carry out cyber warfare."
Beijing hit back at that, denying such an allegation and calling on the United States to provide proof. "If they have any evidence, I hope they would provide it. Then, we can cooperate on this issue," Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said during a regular press briefing this week.
But Xiao Chen says after the alleged Pentagon attack, his colleagues were paid by the Chinese government. Again, CNN has no way to independently confirm if that is true.
His allegations brought strenuous denials from Beijing. "I am telling you honestly, the Chinese government does not do such a thing," Qin said.
But if Xiao Chen is telling the truth, it appears his colleagues launched a freelance attack -- not initiated by Beijing, but paid for after the fact. "These hacker groups in my opinion are not agents of the Chinese state," says James Mulvenon from the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, which works with the U.S. intelligence community.
"They are sort of useful idiots for the Beijing regime."
He adds, "These young hackers are tolerated by the regime provided that they do not conduct attacks inside of China."
One of the biggest problems experts say is trying to prove where a cyber attack originates from, and that they say allows hackers like Xiao Chen to operate in a virtual world of deniability.
And across China, there could be thousands just like him, all trying to prove themselves against some of the most secure Web sites in the world.
They operate from a bare apartment on a Chinese island. They are intelligent 20-somethings who seem harmless. But they are hard-core hackers who claim to have gained access to the world's most sensitive sites, including the Pentagon.
The leader of these Chinese hackers says there "is always a weakness" on networks that allows cyber break-ins.
1 of 2 In fact, they say they are sometimes paid secretly by the Chinese government -- a claim the Beijing government denies.
"No Web site is one hundred percent safe. There are Web sites with high-level security, but there is always a weakness," says Xiao Chen, the leader of this group.
"Xiao Chen" is his online name. Along with his two colleagues, he does not want to reveal his true identity. The three belong to what some Western experts say is a civilian cyber militia in China, launching attacks on government and private Web sites around the world. Watch hackers' clandestine Chinese operation »
If there is a profile of a cyber hacker, these three are straight from central casting -- young and thin, with skin pale from spending too many long nights in front of a computer.
One hacker says he is a former computer operator in the People's Liberation Army; another is a marketing graduate; and Xiao Chen says he is a self-taught programmer.
"First, you must know about the Web site you want to attack. You must know what program it is written with," says Xiao Chen. "There is a saying, 'Know about both yourself and the enemy, and you will be invincible.'"
CNN decided to withhold the address of these hackers' Web site, but Xiao Chen says it has been operating for more than three years, with 10,000 registered users. The site offers tools, articles, news and flash tutorials about hacking.
Private computer experts in the United States from iDefense Security Intelligence, which provides cybersecurity advice to governments and Fortune 500 companies, say the group's site "appears to be an important site in the broader Chinese hacking community."
Arranging a meeting with the hackers took weeks of on-again, off-again e-mail exchanges. When they finally agreed, CNN was told to meet them on the island of Zhoushan, just south of Shanghai and a major port for China's navy.
The apartment has cement floors and almost no furniture. What they do have are three of the latest computers. They are cautious when it comes to naming the Web sites they have hacked.
But eventually Xiao Chen claims two of his colleagues -- not the ones with him in the room -- have hacked into the Pentagon and downloaded information, although he wouldn't specify what was gleaned. CNN has no way to confirm if his claim is true.
"They would not publicize this," he says of someone who hacks the U.S. Defense Department. "It is very sensitive."
This week, the Pentagon said computer networks in the United States, Germany, Britain and France were hit last year by what they call "multiple intrusions," many of them originating from China.
At a congressional hearing in Washington last week, administration officials testified that the government's cyber initiative has fallen far short of what is required. Most alarming, the officials said, there has never been a full damage assessment of federal agency networks. Watch Pentagon bans Google from bases »
"We are here today because we must do more," said Robert Jamison, a top official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "Defending the federal system in its current configuration is a significant challenge."
U.S. officials have been cautious not to directly accuse the Chinese military or its government of hacking into its network.
But David Sedney, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, says, "The way these intrusions are conducted are certainly consistent with what you would need if you were going to actually carry out cyber warfare."
Beijing hit back at that, denying such an allegation and calling on the United States to provide proof. "If they have any evidence, I hope they would provide it. Then, we can cooperate on this issue," Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said during a regular press briefing this week.
But Xiao Chen says after the alleged Pentagon attack, his colleagues were paid by the Chinese government. Again, CNN has no way to independently confirm if that is true.
His allegations brought strenuous denials from Beijing. "I am telling you honestly, the Chinese government does not do such a thing," Qin said.
But if Xiao Chen is telling the truth, it appears his colleagues launched a freelance attack -- not initiated by Beijing, but paid for after the fact. "These hacker groups in my opinion are not agents of the Chinese state," says James Mulvenon from the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, which works with the U.S. intelligence community.
"They are sort of useful idiots for the Beijing regime."
He adds, "These young hackers are tolerated by the regime provided that they do not conduct attacks inside of China."
One of the biggest problems experts say is trying to prove where a cyber attack originates from, and that they say allows hackers like Xiao Chen to operate in a virtual world of deniability.
And across China, there could be thousands just like him, all trying to prove themselves against some of the most secure Web sites in the world.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Scary or sensational? A machine that can look into the mind
by James Randerson
Scientists have developed a computerised mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity.
The breakthrough by American scientists took MRI scanning equipment normally used in hospital diagnosis to observe patterns of brain activity when a subject examined a range of black and white photographs. Then a computer was able to correctly predict in nine out of 10 cases which image people were focused on. Guesswork would have been accurate only eight times in every 1,000 attempts.
The study raises the possibility in the future of the technology being harnessed to visualise scenes from a person's dreams or memory.
Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley, said: "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time."
It will inevitably also raise fears that a suspect's brain could be interrogated against their will, raising the nightmarish possibility of interrogation for "thought crimes". The researchers say this is currently firmly in the realm of science fiction because the technique can only be applied to visual images and, to date, the experiments rely on cumbersome MRI scanning equipment and extremely powerful magnets. The software decoder itself has to be adapted to each individual during hours of training while in the scanner.
However the team have warned about potential privacy issues in the future when scanning techniques improve. "It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30 to 50-year time frame," said Prof Gallant. "[We] believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent."
The technique relies on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a standard technique that creates images of brain activity based on changes in blood flow to different brain regions. The first step is to train the software decoder by scanning a subject's visual cortex while they view thousands of images over five hours. This teaches the decoder how that person's brain codes visual information. The next stage is to take a new set of images and use the decoder to predict the brain activity it would expect if the subject was viewing each of them. Finally, the subject views images from this second set while in the scanner. "We simply look through the list of predicted activities to see which one is most similar to the observed activity, and that's our guess," said Gallant.
The software matched their observed brain activity with the predicted activity from the decoder. When using a set of 120 images, the software got it right nine out of 10 times. With 1,000 images, the accuracy was eight out of 10. For 120 images, if the software were to simply make random predictions, its success rate would be just 0.8%.
The team estimate that if they used 1bn images (roughly the number on Google) it would have a success rate of 20%. With that many images, Gallant said, the software is close to doing true image reconstruction - working out what you are seeing from scratch. "There is no reason we shouldn't be able to solve this problem ... That's what we are working on now."
Gallant said it might be possible in future to apply the technology to visual memories or dreams. "Probably the visual hardware is engaged and stuff from memory is sort of downloaded into your visual hardware and then replayed," he said. "To the extent that that is true, we should be able to reconstruct imagery in dreams."
However, tests using moving images are not possible because MRI scanners are only able to take a new scan every three to four seconds. Other scientists say the advance should be welcomed as a major leap in understanding brain function.
"I think it's a significant advance," said Prof Marcel Just, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "It's much more exciting than mind reading and police interrogation ... These people are finding how the brain codes naturalistic scenes. They understand what the brain is saying."
"It's definitely an impressive result. It's pushing still further on how we can make inferences about mental states from looking at fMRI activity," said neurologist Dr Steven Laureys at the University of Liège in Belgium. He said the technique could be useful for understanding the mental state of a person who is in a coma.
Scientists have developed a computerised mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity.
The breakthrough by American scientists took MRI scanning equipment normally used in hospital diagnosis to observe patterns of brain activity when a subject examined a range of black and white photographs. Then a computer was able to correctly predict in nine out of 10 cases which image people were focused on. Guesswork would have been accurate only eight times in every 1,000 attempts.
The study raises the possibility in the future of the technology being harnessed to visualise scenes from a person's dreams or memory.
Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley, said: "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time."
It will inevitably also raise fears that a suspect's brain could be interrogated against their will, raising the nightmarish possibility of interrogation for "thought crimes". The researchers say this is currently firmly in the realm of science fiction because the technique can only be applied to visual images and, to date, the experiments rely on cumbersome MRI scanning equipment and extremely powerful magnets. The software decoder itself has to be adapted to each individual during hours of training while in the scanner.
However the team have warned about potential privacy issues in the future when scanning techniques improve. "It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30 to 50-year time frame," said Prof Gallant. "[We] believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent."
The technique relies on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a standard technique that creates images of brain activity based on changes in blood flow to different brain regions. The first step is to train the software decoder by scanning a subject's visual cortex while they view thousands of images over five hours. This teaches the decoder how that person's brain codes visual information. The next stage is to take a new set of images and use the decoder to predict the brain activity it would expect if the subject was viewing each of them. Finally, the subject views images from this second set while in the scanner. "We simply look through the list of predicted activities to see which one is most similar to the observed activity, and that's our guess," said Gallant.
The software matched their observed brain activity with the predicted activity from the decoder. When using a set of 120 images, the software got it right nine out of 10 times. With 1,000 images, the accuracy was eight out of 10. For 120 images, if the software were to simply make random predictions, its success rate would be just 0.8%.
The team estimate that if they used 1bn images (roughly the number on Google) it would have a success rate of 20%. With that many images, Gallant said, the software is close to doing true image reconstruction - working out what you are seeing from scratch. "There is no reason we shouldn't be able to solve this problem ... That's what we are working on now."
Gallant said it might be possible in future to apply the technology to visual memories or dreams. "Probably the visual hardware is engaged and stuff from memory is sort of downloaded into your visual hardware and then replayed," he said. "To the extent that that is true, we should be able to reconstruct imagery in dreams."
However, tests using moving images are not possible because MRI scanners are only able to take a new scan every three to four seconds. Other scientists say the advance should be welcomed as a major leap in understanding brain function.
"I think it's a significant advance," said Prof Marcel Just, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "It's much more exciting than mind reading and police interrogation ... These people are finding how the brain codes naturalistic scenes. They understand what the brain is saying."
"It's definitely an impressive result. It's pushing still further on how we can make inferences about mental states from looking at fMRI activity," said neurologist Dr Steven Laureys at the University of Liège in Belgium. He said the technique could be useful for understanding the mental state of a person who is in a coma.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
A Simple Guide on How to Effectively Talk to Clients
Everyone needs a website made, but not everyone can talk “tech” like we can. From the farm owner in Indiana to the brain surgeon in Malaysia, we quickly see that employers can come from all walks of life. Learning how to carry on a compelling conversation about web development is a paramount skill that all web developers should possess if you want to keep the checks coming in. Maintaining your audience’s interest and gaining an accurate picture of what they truly need to get done can prove to be a challenging part of any web development project, but here’s a few tips that might help a bit.
Get an estimate of their computing/technological expertise.
So that you know how in-depth you have to explain certain concepts or ideas, you should first try to determine the individual’s computing/technology knowledge. This can be accomplished indirectly with, what I’d like to call, fishing questions (similar to “fishing for compliments“).
For example, you can ask in passing, “Hey, what operating system do you have on your home computer?” or “What’s your preferred web browser?”. What you’re really trying to learn is: (1) if they know the basic terminologies like operating systems and web browsers, (2) if they have any experience with computers and the internet, (3) their tech savvy-ness, (4) how and why they use IT. A person using Linux probably knows a thing or two about computers and Mac’s are generally appealing to artists, designers, and musicians.
Other fishing questions are:
What do you already know about search engine optimization?
Do you use Adobe Photoshop (or a similar digital-image editing software)?
What are some websites you frequent on your spare time?
Do you subscribe to any RSS feeds?
Don’t underestimate a person’s knowledge.
You know that colleague who insists on explaining to you the difference between HTML and (X)HTML when you’ve just finished a strict-doctype XHTML website? Don’t be that guy. People don’t like to be treated like they’re stupid, and not being able to understand a person’s knowledge is a sure-fire way of landing yourself on his or her bad side. If you’re unsure of their grasp on a particular subject, don’t assume they don’t know anything, ask fishing questions and judge by their reactions whether or not you’ve explained enough.
Use actual examples.
When talking about a web project, it helps to have a computer with an internet connection nearby so that you can both communicate look at stuff that’s on the internet. For instance, if you’re trying to determine what look-and-feel a client wants for their website (i.e. “web 2.0″, dark, clean, etc.) you’d get a more precise answer if you were to show examples of websites that may have a similar theme that they described.
Keep an emphasis on the bottom-line.
People may not understand what SEO is, or how it’s accomplished, or why valid mark-up matters when trying to achieve a search engine optimized site, but if you talk in terms of results, they’ll be inclined to keep listening. For example, trying to describe the importance of standards-compliant XHTML, you can say: “standards-compliant XHTML ensures that the website’s mark-up is valid and supported by most modern web browsers which in the end means less maintenance and fewer customer support due to browser-rendering issues“.
Keep it simple.
Sometimes we have a tendency to overwhelm employers with technical jargon and over-explanation because we want to show them our knowledge and expertise. There’s no need to explain how you’re going to mock-up the web design in Photoshop (layer by layer, in excruciating detail). Most probably, they don’t care and you’ll only risk complicating things and adding to the client’s anxieties about a topic they’re not well-versed in.
Encourage questions.
It’s always good to figure out any questions or needs for clarification as early as you can to avoid dissatisfaction at the end. Give off the attitude that you’re always willing to answer questions and that no question is too simple or silly. If you have the luxury to meet with a client in person, you can do this by judging their facial reactions to the things you say. If they seem confused, ask: “should I explain further?”. If you’re meeting remotely (emails or phone calls), regularly say things like: “I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have”.
Talk using familiar analogies.
A great way to relate information to employers is by using scenarios and situations that are pertinent with their background. Be creative, make analogies funny, and most of all, use it to relay complex concepts. To illustrate with a satirical example: if you were talking to a basketball fan, you could say “using tables instead of div’s for page layout is as bad of a decision as picking Michael Olowokandi over Michael Jordan on your fantasy basketball roster because…“.
Be yourself.
Don’t pretend like you’ve worked on hundreds of websites and that you’ve been doing this for 15+ years… if you really haven’t. If you look uncomfortable or unsure of yourself, it gives off the impression that your trying too hard to impress or appear knowledgeable in the subject. A lot of web designers and developers nowadays don’t hide the fact that they are small, young, and playful. When working in an industry that’s complex and intimidating to outsiders, it’s a welcoming relief to find people that are normal. It can prove to be a plus when you don’t obfuscate the fact that you’re just starting out in the business. It’s easier to talk to a person who’s honest, sincere, and up-front then someone who appears to be B.S.’ing you all the time.
Get an estimate of their computing/technological expertise.
So that you know how in-depth you have to explain certain concepts or ideas, you should first try to determine the individual’s computing/technology knowledge. This can be accomplished indirectly with, what I’d like to call, fishing questions (similar to “fishing for compliments“).
For example, you can ask in passing, “Hey, what operating system do you have on your home computer?” or “What’s your preferred web browser?”. What you’re really trying to learn is: (1) if they know the basic terminologies like operating systems and web browsers, (2) if they have any experience with computers and the internet, (3) their tech savvy-ness, (4) how and why they use IT. A person using Linux probably knows a thing or two about computers and Mac’s are generally appealing to artists, designers, and musicians.
Other fishing questions are:
What do you already know about search engine optimization?
Do you use Adobe Photoshop (or a similar digital-image editing software)?
What are some websites you frequent on your spare time?
Do you subscribe to any RSS feeds?
Don’t underestimate a person’s knowledge.
You know that colleague who insists on explaining to you the difference between HTML and (X)HTML when you’ve just finished a strict-doctype XHTML website? Don’t be that guy. People don’t like to be treated like they’re stupid, and not being able to understand a person’s knowledge is a sure-fire way of landing yourself on his or her bad side. If you’re unsure of their grasp on a particular subject, don’t assume they don’t know anything, ask fishing questions and judge by their reactions whether or not you’ve explained enough.
Use actual examples.
When talking about a web project, it helps to have a computer with an internet connection nearby so that you can both communicate look at stuff that’s on the internet. For instance, if you’re trying to determine what look-and-feel a client wants for their website (i.e. “web 2.0″, dark, clean, etc.) you’d get a more precise answer if you were to show examples of websites that may have a similar theme that they described.
Keep an emphasis on the bottom-line.
People may not understand what SEO is, or how it’s accomplished, or why valid mark-up matters when trying to achieve a search engine optimized site, but if you talk in terms of results, they’ll be inclined to keep listening. For example, trying to describe the importance of standards-compliant XHTML, you can say: “standards-compliant XHTML ensures that the website’s mark-up is valid and supported by most modern web browsers which in the end means less maintenance and fewer customer support due to browser-rendering issues“.
Keep it simple.
Sometimes we have a tendency to overwhelm employers with technical jargon and over-explanation because we want to show them our knowledge and expertise. There’s no need to explain how you’re going to mock-up the web design in Photoshop (layer by layer, in excruciating detail). Most probably, they don’t care and you’ll only risk complicating things and adding to the client’s anxieties about a topic they’re not well-versed in.
Encourage questions.
It’s always good to figure out any questions or needs for clarification as early as you can to avoid dissatisfaction at the end. Give off the attitude that you’re always willing to answer questions and that no question is too simple or silly. If you have the luxury to meet with a client in person, you can do this by judging their facial reactions to the things you say. If they seem confused, ask: “should I explain further?”. If you’re meeting remotely (emails or phone calls), regularly say things like: “I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have”.
Talk using familiar analogies.
A great way to relate information to employers is by using scenarios and situations that are pertinent with their background. Be creative, make analogies funny, and most of all, use it to relay complex concepts. To illustrate with a satirical example: if you were talking to a basketball fan, you could say “using tables instead of div’s for page layout is as bad of a decision as picking Michael Olowokandi over Michael Jordan on your fantasy basketball roster because…“.
Be yourself.
Don’t pretend like you’ve worked on hundreds of websites and that you’ve been doing this for 15+ years… if you really haven’t. If you look uncomfortable or unsure of yourself, it gives off the impression that your trying too hard to impress or appear knowledgeable in the subject. A lot of web designers and developers nowadays don’t hide the fact that they are small, young, and playful. When working in an industry that’s complex and intimidating to outsiders, it’s a welcoming relief to find people that are normal. It can prove to be a plus when you don’t obfuscate the fact that you’re just starting out in the business. It’s easier to talk to a person who’s honest, sincere, and up-front then someone who appears to be B.S.’ing you all the time.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Intel To Push New Categories With Atom Brand
Intel (NSDQ:INTC) has announced a new brand, Atom, for a family of low-power processors set to ship in the coming months. Atom, comprising the processors codenamed Silverthorne and Diamondville, represents the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker's biggest push yet in the familiar mobile Internet device (MID) and ultra-mobile personal computer (UMPC) space, but also the beginning of the hype for two new, cheap, Internet-centric categories Intel hopes capture the imagination -- the "netbook" and the "nettop."
"The Atom processor family covers MIDs, UMPCs, nettops and netbooks. That means that even very inexpensive desktop machines by the end of this year may feature Atom processors," an Intel spokesman said Monday.
The development of the Atom family proceeded counter to the traditional path that processor technology follows at Intel, where new architectures are first designed for the most expensive, powerful chips then trickle down to low-cost, less powerful devices, Intel spokesman Bill Calder said.
"Typically, it flows from the top of food chain. But in this case, here's an architecture that has been designed from the ground up for these specific devices," Calder said.
The "specific devices" include "a new class of simple and affordable Internet-centric computers" that Intel defines as "low-cost, Internet-centric mobile computing devices dubbed 'netbooks' and basic Internet-centric desktop PCs dubbed 'nettops.'"
The chip giant believes that netbooks in particular will have a huge impact on both mature and developing markets, Calder said, adding that system builder and reseller channels should benefit.
"We think netbooks are a tens-of-millions of units opportunity by 2011," he said, noting that Intel CEO Paul Otellini planned to say as much at Wednesday's Financial Analyst Day.
The Atom brand also ties in with a new MID platform initiative announced by Intel Sunday. Intel Centrino Atom is essentially the platform codenamed Menlow, which includes the newly branded Atom processors and the chipset codenamed Poulsbo. To qualify for the Centrino Atom brand, builders of MIDs must include a low-power integrated graphics chip and wireless connectivity in "a thinner and lighter" form factor" -- or "one that fits in your pocket," Calder said.
Intel Atom processors, manufactured on the chipmaker's latest 45nm process, maintain the Core 2 Duo instruction set to include support for multi-threading, according to Intel. The chips are "Intel's smallest and lowest power processor yet," with thermals in the 0.6-2.5 watt range. Clock speeds will reach 1.8GHz at the top end, Intel said in a statement.
Pricing is not yet available, Calder said. He tipped Q2 for the first shipments of MIDs built on Atom, with the first of the new netbook- and nettop-class products hitting shelves in Q3.
Intel's main competition in the ultra-low voltage CPU space is VIA Technologies.
"The Atom processor family covers MIDs, UMPCs, nettops and netbooks. That means that even very inexpensive desktop machines by the end of this year may feature Atom processors," an Intel spokesman said Monday.
The development of the Atom family proceeded counter to the traditional path that processor technology follows at Intel, where new architectures are first designed for the most expensive, powerful chips then trickle down to low-cost, less powerful devices, Intel spokesman Bill Calder said.
"Typically, it flows from the top of food chain. But in this case, here's an architecture that has been designed from the ground up for these specific devices," Calder said.
The "specific devices" include "a new class of simple and affordable Internet-centric computers" that Intel defines as "low-cost, Internet-centric mobile computing devices dubbed 'netbooks' and basic Internet-centric desktop PCs dubbed 'nettops.'"
The chip giant believes that netbooks in particular will have a huge impact on both mature and developing markets, Calder said, adding that system builder and reseller channels should benefit.
"We think netbooks are a tens-of-millions of units opportunity by 2011," he said, noting that Intel CEO Paul Otellini planned to say as much at Wednesday's Financial Analyst Day.
The Atom brand also ties in with a new MID platform initiative announced by Intel Sunday. Intel Centrino Atom is essentially the platform codenamed Menlow, which includes the newly branded Atom processors and the chipset codenamed Poulsbo. To qualify for the Centrino Atom brand, builders of MIDs must include a low-power integrated graphics chip and wireless connectivity in "a thinner and lighter" form factor" -- or "one that fits in your pocket," Calder said.
Intel Atom processors, manufactured on the chipmaker's latest 45nm process, maintain the Core 2 Duo instruction set to include support for multi-threading, according to Intel. The chips are "Intel's smallest and lowest power processor yet," with thermals in the 0.6-2.5 watt range. Clock speeds will reach 1.8GHz at the top end, Intel said in a statement.
Pricing is not yet available, Calder said. He tipped Q2 for the first shipments of MIDs built on Atom, with the first of the new netbook- and nettop-class products hitting shelves in Q3.
Intel's main competition in the ultra-low voltage CPU space is VIA Technologies.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Soaring cost of gold causes jewellery market pandemonium
By Ellen Kelleher
The soaring cost of gold and platinum is causing pandemonium in the UK's jewellery market as retailers and private owners rush to reappraise the value of necklaces, brooches and rings.
Jewellers in London's Hatton Garden - the capital's jewellery quarter - are raising the price of wedding bands on a weekly basis, with less-expensive palladium rings now coming into vogue. And insurers are urging clients to get another assessment of the value of their jewellery collections in response to the rapid rise in the price of precious metals, sparked by investors seeking refuge from volatile stocks.
"The price of platinum has been going up so fast, we're quoting people prices for platinum wedding bands on a Saturday and saying we can't guarantee the same price on Monday.
"Last week, we had to raise the price of all our platinum items by 30 per cent," said Adam Lawrence, a manager at Anthony Gray, a Hatton Garden jeweller.
The rise in prices has made less-expensive palladium wedding rings - which are lighter, but nearly identical in colour to platinum or white gold ones - more popular, London jewellers report.
"In a period of five months, the price of platinum has doubled and the making of a platinum ring which once cost £300 now costs £600, but palladium, only costs about £10 per gramme. It's quite light and doesn't tarnish and you wouldn't notice much of a difference between a palladium ring and a platinum one," said Frank Fajardo, manager at neighbouring Bassange.
Scores of jewellers and private investors have also had expensive articles reappraised to be sure they are not caught out in case of loss or theft.
The soaring cost of gold and platinum is causing pandemonium in the UK's jewellery market as retailers and private owners rush to reappraise the value of necklaces, brooches and rings.
Jewellers in London's Hatton Garden - the capital's jewellery quarter - are raising the price of wedding bands on a weekly basis, with less-expensive palladium rings now coming into vogue. And insurers are urging clients to get another assessment of the value of their jewellery collections in response to the rapid rise in the price of precious metals, sparked by investors seeking refuge from volatile stocks.
"The price of platinum has been going up so fast, we're quoting people prices for platinum wedding bands on a Saturday and saying we can't guarantee the same price on Monday.
"Last week, we had to raise the price of all our platinum items by 30 per cent," said Adam Lawrence, a manager at Anthony Gray, a Hatton Garden jeweller.
The rise in prices has made less-expensive palladium wedding rings - which are lighter, but nearly identical in colour to platinum or white gold ones - more popular, London jewellers report.
"In a period of five months, the price of platinum has doubled and the making of a platinum ring which once cost £300 now costs £600, but palladium, only costs about £10 per gramme. It's quite light and doesn't tarnish and you wouldn't notice much of a difference between a palladium ring and a platinum one," said Frank Fajardo, manager at neighbouring Bassange.
Scores of jewellers and private investors have also had expensive articles reappraised to be sure they are not caught out in case of loss or theft.
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