Radio Firefox is a tech-oriented radio show created by Jason Schramm that talks about Google, Apple, Technology, Business and Firefox.
The first show was on January 17th and was followed by another one on January 25th. You can find Radio Firefox on 91.3FM WTSR if you live in Trenton or online, as a podcast.
Some interesting subjects:
Performancing for Firefox - nice Firefox extension for bloggers that integrates Technorati, del.icio.us, ping sites and lets you easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.
Greasemonkey - lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior
Instant Domain Search - Ajax search for domains
and something really misterios: Newsvine. Can you figure out what this site is all about? (Hint: think Digg + del.icio.us + AdSense)
Bad news from Google AdSense
Is Google turning evil? The latest AdSense might make say yes.
AdSense silently adds a 90-day time limit on AdSense referrals. A thread over at DigitalPoint points out that Google AdSense has quietly added a new term to all AdSense referrals generated by a publisher. They have now instituted a 90-day time limit on that referral, meaning a referred publisher must earn the $100 within the first 90 days, before the referring publisher is eligible to earn that $100 for a completed AdSense referral.
Google uses the asterisk trick at the bottom of the Referrals page.
Google AdSense begins rich media beta test. Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting publishers last week to be involved in the rich media limited beta test. Floating ads are ads that either stay on top as the page is scrolled, or ones that "float in" from the side of the page to the center of the page. Expanding ads are those that require user interaction to expand, either with a mouseover or a click. Interstitials appear when you click through to read a page, and before they will show you the page, you are bypassed through to a full page ad that you must view before seeing the actual content you were wanting, often by having to click a link on the interstitial ad page.
AdSense silently adds a 90-day time limit on AdSense referrals. A thread over at DigitalPoint points out that Google AdSense has quietly added a new term to all AdSense referrals generated by a publisher. They have now instituted a 90-day time limit on that referral, meaning a referred publisher must earn the $100 within the first 90 days, before the referring publisher is eligible to earn that $100 for a completed AdSense referral.
Google uses the asterisk trick at the bottom of the Referrals page.
Google AdSense begins rich media beta test. Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting publishers last week to be involved in the rich media limited beta test. Floating ads are ads that either stay on top as the page is scrolled, or ones that "float in" from the side of the page to the center of the page. Expanding ads are those that require user interaction to expand, either with a mouseover or a click. Interstitials appear when you click through to read a page, and before they will show you the page, you are bypassed through to a full page ad that you must view before seeing the actual content you were wanting, often by having to click a link on the interstitial ad page.
Google Blog finally talks about China issue
Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely. Whether our critics agree with our decision or not, due to the severe quality problems faced by users trying to access Google.com from within China, this is precisely the choice we believe we faced. By launching Google.cn and making a major ongoing investment in people and infrastructure within China, we intend to change that.
Obviously, the situation in China is far different than it is in those other countries; while China has made great strides in the past decades, it remains in many ways closed. We aren't happy about what we had to do this week, and we hope that over time everyone in the world will come to enjoy full access to information. But how is that full access most likely to be achieved? We are convinced that the Internet, and its continued development through the efforts of companies like Google, will effectively contribute to openness and prosperity in the world. Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.
Posted on Google Blog by Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel.
Obviously, the situation in China is far different than it is in those other countries; while China has made great strides in the past decades, it remains in many ways closed. We aren't happy about what we had to do this week, and we hope that over time everyone in the world will come to enjoy full access to information. But how is that full access most likely to be achieved? We are convinced that the Internet, and its continued development through the efforts of companies like Google, will effectively contribute to openness and prosperity in the world. Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.
Posted on Google Blog by Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel.
How to make money without doing evil
Rebecca MacKinnon, one of the world's most prominent online rights activists writes on her blog, "Google has caved in," and says the action "contradicts its mission statement: 'don't be evil.'" On Thursday MacKinnon modulated herself somewhat, even noting that on the censored Google one can still find reports describing the recent events at Dong Zhou village, where police shot citizen protesters, as a "blood crime" or "massacre."
If Google made a mistake, it may have been to adopt its famous slogan ("Don't be evil") years ago, long before the possibility ever dawned on founders Brin and Larry Page that the company they were starting might one day have a market cap of $128 billion, as it does now. Evil is a strong word, and to spout such rhetoric rightly raises expectations that are now being disappointed.
But the reality is that no business that aims to make money -- as Google of course does -- can make decisions purely on moral grounds. Morality must be part of the calculus, but so must the interests of shareholders. Managing a modern business is increasingly a matter of juggling competing values and goals. Google continues to do a good job of this, in my opinion.
New motto: Don't be unprofitable. Creating a censored Google for China was a rational and responsible act for a commercial business.
General Motors ad: Just Google Pontiac
Television ads often stimulate Internet search behavior by increasing brand awareness or sparking curiosity, as often demonstrated by Hitwise. But this General Motors spot is significant because it ends with an unusual call to action: "Don't take our word for it. Google Pontiac and discover for yourself." And the ad ends not with a URL or phone number for a local dealer, but an actual Google screenshot with Pontiac typed in.
General Motors’ head of sales and marketing said in Business Week:
"We’re touting Google, frankly, because it stands for credibility and consumer empowerment, and we like the association."
It seems that Mazda also bids for Pontiac keyword in Adwords. Here's a closeup of the Mazda ads showing up, not only are they ads for Mazda they are pointing people to a head to head comparison of the MX 5 vs the Pontiac Solstice.
General Motors’ head of sales and marketing said in Business Week:
"We’re touting Google, frankly, because it stands for credibility and consumer empowerment, and we like the association."
It seems that Mazda also bids for Pontiac keyword in Adwords. Here's a closeup of the Mazda ads showing up, not only are they ads for Mazda they are pointing people to a head to head comparison of the MX 5 vs the Pontiac Solstice.
Students for a Free Tibet protest at Googleplex
About 20 people from Students for a Free Tibet, including Joshua Duncan, right, of Oakland, gather in front of Googleplex, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006, to protest the company’s argeement to censor their Internet search engine results in China. The group has chapters at the Stanford and UC-Berkeley campuses.
Does Google censor search results?
Before the China censorship:
"Does Google censor search results?
Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results. To learn more about Google's search technology, please visit http://www.google.com/technology/index.html."
After the China censorship:
You can still find the original page in Google Cache.
The address in Google Help Center is: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17795&topic=368.
"Does Google censor search results?
Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results. To learn more about Google's search technology, please visit http://www.google.com/technology/index.html."
After the China censorship:
You can still find the original page in Google Cache.
The address in Google Help Center is: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17795&topic=368.
Google admits Video Store launch was a failure
Shows for sale weren't well promoted on the home page of Google Video, which was introduced earlier this month, Vice President Marissa Mayer said in an interview in Munich, Germany. That left customers unable to tap easily into hits such as CBS' top-rated "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and reality show "Survivor."
"We made a big mistake," Marissa Mayer, who oversees all of Google's search products, said Tuesday. "You can't come out and launch a product like Google Video and say 'CSI' and 'Survivor' are there if they're not on the home page."
The video service has "fallen far short" of competitors such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music and video offering, said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. "What Apple has done with the iTunes store sets the bar really high."
Will Google Tune Into MP3 Business
Bear Stearns maintained an "outperform" rating on Google and said the Internet search giant may be looking to expand into the MP3 downloading business.
"We believe that Google is in the midst of creating its own iTunes competitor, which we've dubbed 'Google Tunes'," the analyst wrote in a client note issued today. "We think this is a logical step, now that the nascent Google Video product has been introduced."
Analyst Robert Peck speculated that it makes sense for Google to create a rival for the popular iTunes service by Apple Computer, given the explosive growth of unique visitors to the iTunes' Web site. "Further, Nielsen [Net Ratings] indicates that iTunes users form a distinct target audience with brand preferences along autos, alcohol beverages, magazines, and television," he added.
From Forbes.
That wouldn't be very surprising, but they should do a better job with Google Video Store first.
"We believe that Google is in the midst of creating its own iTunes competitor, which we've dubbed 'Google Tunes'," the analyst wrote in a client note issued today. "We think this is a logical step, now that the nascent Google Video product has been introduced."
Analyst Robert Peck speculated that it makes sense for Google to create a rival for the popular iTunes service by Apple Computer, given the explosive growth of unique visitors to the iTunes' Web site. "Further, Nielsen [Net Ratings] indicates that iTunes users form a distinct target audience with brand preferences along autos, alcohol beverages, magazines, and television," he added.
From Forbes.
That wouldn't be very surprising, but they should do a better job with Google Video Store first.
New Google SERP
Remember the post about the new Google homepage?
It seems like the new Google SERP will look like this. Nice touch.
It seems like the new Google SERP will look like this. Nice touch.
Yahoo Mail Beta Review
Yahoo! Mail Beta is a web-based email application that combines the rich, responsive interface of a desktop program with the available-from-anywhere convenience of your existing Yahoo! Mail account.
Benefits of Yahoo! Mail Beta include:
* Drag and drop messages into folders for better organization
* A preview pane makes it easier to read your messages
* Speedier Ajax-interface
* Keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl-S to save a message
* Navigate from message to message with the arrow keys
* Messages open in tabs or new windows so you can multitask
Yahoo! Mail Beta doesn't work in Opera (GMail does), it's pretty fast, loads faster than GMail, but you don't have the feeling you're using a desktop client. For example, scrolling the list of messages takes some time, you have to wait a couple of seconds after you select a message (you only see: "Loading message...").
The built-in RSS reader works very good, it imports your feeds from My Yahoo, but you can't categorize them or move them, you can't export your subscriptions into OPML.
Yahoo Beta Mail doesn't preview attachments (not even images) and it opens any external link in a new window. The tab functionality is really limited: you can use it for searching, composing messages, but you can't compose two messages simultaneously. I wonder why they implemented the tabs (I know: so you can multitask) if they are so limited.
The shortcuts are really nice:
Check Mail m
New Message n
Reply r
Print Ctrl+p or p
You can finally attach files easily, but they could remove the Browse and Attach buttons and instead use a Add button to make the interface more user-friendly. It would be one single step, a very intuitive list UI, that could be integrated into the Compose tab.
Spell checking has some flaws.
Overall, the new Yahoo Mail is much better than the previous version, you can't see (too many) ads, but it doesn't have many features included in GMail (label, fast reply, POP3, forwarding, automatic mail saving, attachment preview). Still, it outperforms GMail with is Outlook-ish design.
Classic Yahoo rating: 4/10
Beta Yahoo rating: 7/10
GMail rating: 8.5/10
Related:
Google Toolbar vs Yahoo Toolbar
How to switch to GMail from Yahoo Mail or Hotmail
Yahoo and the evolution of search
www.miibeian.gov.cn
The red link in the screenshot points to www.miibeian.gov.cn.
Here is the list of the most visited sites in China:
1 www.mofcom.gov.cn 1301.84
2 www.cofortune.com.cn 1007.39
3 www.miibeian.gov.cn 670.901
www.miibeian.gov.cn is the website of a special management system of the Ministry of Information Industry, which decided to close down all web sites that failed to register with local telecommunications authorities before June 30 2005. The registration aimed to control domestic Internet information services.
The Chinese government is using a new internet content management system named the "Night Crawler System" (pa chong) to block access to websites that have not been registered with authorities.
Google's dilemma
"Google's dilemma with China is a near-textbook case study on the deep question of how much assistance, if any, companies chartered in free societies should render to regimes that censor political and cultural expression," said Jon Zittrain, a Harvard Law School scholar who has studied Chinese censorship.
"V.I. Lenin gloated that western businessmen would greedily sell Communists the very rope they would later be hanged with. He was right about the greed. But history has found that the market economies that efficiently produced rope, and all other inputs and outputs, continue to prosper.
Google may regret its embarrassing moment. But I suspect the reverse. Chinese autocrats will one day look back fondly on a world before global communications networks, when searching the internet was difficult and the masses knew their place."
(Thomas Hazlett: Google’s beautiful China paradox)
"V.I. Lenin gloated that western businessmen would greedily sell Communists the very rope they would later be hanged with. He was right about the greed. But history has found that the market economies that efficiently produced rope, and all other inputs and outputs, continue to prosper.
Google may regret its embarrassing moment. But I suspect the reverse. Chinese autocrats will one day look back fondly on a world before global communications networks, when searching the internet was difficult and the masses knew their place."
(Thomas Hazlett: Google’s beautiful China paradox)
Google censors the Web in China
To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country’s government finds objectionable. Google will base its censorship decisions on guidance provided by Chinese government officials.A Chinese-language version of Google's search engine has previously been available through the company's dot-com address, but now can be found at Google.cn. By creating a unique address for China, Google hopes to make its search engine more widely available and easier to use in the world's most populous country.
In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy. While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission.was the response from Google.
Although many people seemed to be shocked, this isn't the first time Google censors the web. In Google France and Google Germany, many Nazi and hate sites are removed.
In a compromise that trades off Google's desire to provide universal access to information in order to exist within local laws, Google will not offer its Gmail e-mail service, Web log publishing services or chat rooms -- tools of self-expression that could be used for political or social protest.
Let the machines write
My world is full of Love. We should Share fruits of Contemplation with unfortunate results.
This weird phrase was created with Internet Autotyper, a site that uses Google to determine some of the most common words that might make sense to complete your sentence. It looks at the last few words of what you typed to determine some words that should come next.
This weird phrase was created with Internet Autotyper, a site that uses Google to determine some of the most common words that might make sense to complete your sentence. It looks at the last few words of what you typed to determine some words that should come next.
EPIC - how Google might reinvent media
In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline. What happened to the news? And what is EPIC?
Find out from EPIC 2014, a brilliant Flash journey into the future.
In the year 2014 people have access to a breadth and depth of information unimaginable in an earlier age.
Everyone contributes in some way. Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape. However, the Press, as you know it, has ceased to exist.
The ‘Evolving Personalized Information Construct’ is the system by which our sprawling, chaotic mediascape is filtered, ordered and delivered. EPIC produces a custom contents package for each user, using his choices, his consumption habits, his interests, his demographics, his social network – to shape the product.
Freeware collection: SmartFTP - FTP client
SmartFTP is my favourite FTP client. It's free for personal use, has a very nice Explorer-like interface (now with tabs), you can use drag and drop, secure connections (TLS and SSL). SmartFTP also offers support for Unicode/UTF8/MBCS, IPv6, and UPnP. Multiple FTP connections can be opened at the same time, and you can copy files from one remote host to another (FXP). Remote-host directory information is cached for future viewing, and FTP URLs are supported.
Pretty impressive for just 2.3 MB. This is arguably the most developed FTP client. You can even download a native x64 version.
SmartFTP homepage
BBC: World according to Google
The internet search engine Google is the fastest growing company in history.
Created just seven years ago it is now worth about $140bn (£80bn) and receives more than a quarter of a billion queries every day.
This BBC documentary has interviews with Google staff (Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Craig Silverstein) and people who dislike the company or some of its services (for example, Google Book Search).
Google News Out Of Beta
We're taking Google News out of beta! When we launched the English-language edition in September 2002, we entered untested waters with a grand experiment in news browsing - using computers to organize the world's news in real time and providing a bird's eye view of what's being reported on virtually any topic. By presenting news "clusters" (related articles in a group), we thought it would encourage readers to get a broader perspective by digging deeper into the news -- reading ten articles instead of one, perhaps -- and then gain a better understanding of the issues, which could ultimately benefit society. A bit more than three years later, we offer 22 regional editions in 10 languages, and have a better sense of how people use Google News.
From Google Blog we also find about the new features of Google News: automatic personalization (news stories that many other users have read, especially when you and they have read similar stories in the past) and most popular news.
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