Wednesday, June 28, 2006

GBuy or GPal or GPC

The much anticipated Google e-commerce solution is set to be rolled out tomorrow despite rumours that it was happening today. Apparently senior Google staff were annoyed about the release date leak - though given the large contact Google has with all areas of business this is a little too much to expect.

Actually if you go and try and buy something over at the Google Store you will see it at work right now.

The terms and conditions calls it GPC - Google Payment Corp. They are asking you to add a credit card to your gmail/Google account when you try and buy something.....

Whether it is GBuy or Google Wallet or GPC or my favorite -GPal - let the games begin!

Gee Pal can I have some money?

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

MSN AdCenter Upgrade Pushed back over a Month

Earlier this month MSN announced they were coming out with more upgrades to the AdCenter - June 22 was the date given but according to a conversation today when nothing was noticed changed - MSN has pushed this off until the end of July.... I think odds are good it goes over that until SES San Jose.

Guess the new AdLabs has taken a little more attention than they thought.

I received this today as well - announcing the new AdLabs.

I want to share some exciting news with you. On June 22, at the Hitwise Search Essentials Seminar, Microsoft announced the launch of Microsoft adCenter Labs, or adLabs, to the public.

AdLabs has developed technology that’s at the forefront of innovation for paid search, contextual advertising, behaviorial advertising, and local advertising. Witness the power of adLabs today at http://adlab.microsoft.com.

Learn about the newest technologies
• Search Funnels: Customers tend to search by entering related keywords in certain sequences. You can use the adCenter Search Funnels tool to help you visualize and analyze these search behaviors through incoming and outgoing queries.
• Search Clustering: Microsoft adCenter’s Search Result Clustering (SRC) technology can cluster search results into semantically related groups in real time and then help your customers browse through the long list of search results. SRC can:
o Disambiguate queries that may produce contradictory results
o Display subtopics for search queries
o Display facts about people
o Show relationships among people
o Return answers when the query is a question
• Forecasting Search Volume Seasonality: Some keywords are searched more frequently at certain times of the year. Use this tool to help forecast the seasonal patterns of customers’ search queries.
• Content-Based Acronym Resolution: When a query contains an acronym or abbreviation, Microsoft adCenter technology can predict and display the most likely result based on the keyword’s context.
• Keyword Group Detection: This essential tool helps you find groups of words that are related or similar to your input keywords. Expand your keyword lists to maximize exposure to searchers.
• Keyword Mutation Detection: Based on Keyword Group Detection technology, this tool displays common misspellings or alternative representations of keywords that are frequently found in search query logs. This technology can help you broaden your keyword lists and then reach more customers.

Other notable technologies
Visit the adLabs site to explore: Content and Keyword Categorization, which enables Contextual Advertising; Demographic Prediction, which enables Behavioral Targeting; and Local Ads by PC Address technology, which enables automatic detection of a customer’s location.

About Microsoft adCenter Labs
AdLabs, a joint effort of Microsoft adCenter and Microsoft Research, is a state-of-the-art lab in Beijing with a mission to research and incubate advanced technologies for Microsoft adCenter. AdLabs is designed to provide you, the advertiser, with rich targeting capabilities and to give your customers a more relevant online experience.

Interesting Affiliate Forum

Okay I joined this from a referral from Aaron Wall and from the little I have read I think it could be an informative forum.
Like the name Wicked Fire.
Use AussieWebmaster as your referrer if you join... they are giving away a website if you get 30 referrers.... would like to get one just to see what it is.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Social Networks: Online Communities By Other Names Seem to Smell Sweeter

It never ceases to amaze me how the web seems to constantly reinvent the name of the basic online community. There have been many 'One Hit Wonders' in the evolution of the web but the basic building block of communities is one that predates the web.

Online communities were in existence back when teenagers would join a bank of modems to allow people to access there BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems). At first there were 'elite' boards that required a test of your knowledge and references from members - hacker and gamer boards with the latest demos and leaked prerelease version of games and software - or adult sites where you could buy your way in for access to pics that took hours to download on the old 2400 baud modems.

When the web established itself many of these people were the first to push the envelope for monetizing sites, creating tools and populating this new road on the super information highway.

ICQ, IRC and AOL pushed ahead with chat rooms before the WWW - though some limited numbers allowed on at any given time and others had too many so that the text messages scrolled by in a blink of an eye. This immediate system pushed many of the message boards back into obscurity or isolated them to small groups of hardcore members.

The news groups were still there but they tended to get flooded with spam and total garbage.

Then the message boards regained popularity under things like Yahoo groups and fledgling web-based BBS software. But the true popularity of such communities to reach a large global audience was always the brass ring just out of reach.

The systems would name themselves something flashy and try to suggest they were new or different. Blogs with comments was a recent version that seemed to take off - most of the conversations that take place in the comments section of the blog entry are a meeting of old cronies or the introduction of like minded niched readers.

MySpace seemed to capture a number of new elements but used the old community approach to develop the most popular social network.

And again it was the teenagers that pushed this to the next level. It was their perception of this being cool - or maybe their use of it that made it cool - but MySpace reached the top of this technology in terms of use and popularity and hype.

The latest entry into the area is MOG.com - a music themed version of the social network and they are looking to become the next MySpace.

What everyone is missing is that the 'global village' finally has the methods to communicate and create itself. The village is really a large collection of smaller social groups talking to each other about the things they are most passionate about. It can be music, technology, industry knowledge or any of a million topics.

Niched portals or forums, networked websites, email groups and all the other forms all strive for community. What is happening now is another human reaction - we want our community to be the best - the hippest, cutting edge thing out there - at least how we perceive it ourselves.

The name and the wrapping does distract and influence. But underneath it all is the basic human need for company. No man is an island and with access to the web you will never have to be!

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Robert Scoble Leaves Microsoft for Startup

Well-known Microsoft employee and blogger, Robert Scoble is leaving Gates' employ to join a podcast startup. Hopefully he will continue blogging - as his insights have been a joy to read.

EBay Selling PPC keywords

Guess everyone wants to arbitrage their traffic. Even Ebay has finally succumbed... though with the shotgun approach they use for their AdWords account - they may find themselves selling their own ads to themselves!

Reuters gives details here.

EBay Selling PPC keywords

Guess everyone wants to arbitrage their traffic. Even Ebay has finally succumbed... though with the shotgun approach they use for their AdWords account - they may find themselves selling their own ads to themselves!

Reuters gives details here.

Monday, June 5, 2006

MSN AdCenter Upgrading June 8th

I received the following notice of changes to the AdCenter at MSN coming on June 8th:

I am pleased to inform you about an upcoming Microsoft adCenter upgrade that offers new features to improve your online advertising experience.

Some upgrade highlights:

• Schedule and run reports in the background while you are working within adCenter
• API upgrades:
o API customers will now have access to enhanced reporting features.
o Upgraded API code will coexist with the previous version of the code to improve transition.

Your keywords and ads will remain live during the upgrade
The adCenter upgrade should be complete on June 8 between 4 P.M. and 8P.M. Pacific Time. During this period, your current keywords and ads will continue to run, however, you won’t be able to access adCenter to make changes.

Thursday, June 1, 2006

Ask Starting Blog and RSS Search

Ask announced today they are adding Blog and RSS Feed search to the mix.

AIG acquired BlogLines earlier this year and seem to be gearing up to maintain that number 4 spot.

While I miss the butler, it does seem this streamlined version is moving quickly.

AdSense Revenue Sharing Program

RateItAll.com has come out with a widget to share AdSense revenue generated by various content providers. The press release makes for interesting reading.

I had heard this idea a year ago.... nice to see someone has it done.

MSN Has New Toys

Though this has been around for a little while, the AdLab has some cool toys to play with.

If I get the time I may have to go through them all thoroughly and give reviews.... anyone lese want to jump in and offer some opinions feel free to leave comments.