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Friday, December 31, 2004

Why There's No Escaping the Blog

fortune.com

Article relates the story of Scobleizer, a low profile microsoft employee who just happens to have a blog reckoning that he: " has given the Microsoft monolith something it has long lacked: an approachable human face." He agrees with the criticism of MSN Spaces saying "isn't the blogging service for me"

The feedback to his posts seems to have warmed the attitude of some Microsoft critics: "I get comments on my blog saying, 'I didn't like Microsoft before, but at least they're listening to us,'" says Scoble. "The blog is the best relationship generator you've ever seen." His famous boss agrees. "It's all about openness," says chairman Bill Gates of Microsoft's public blogs like Scobleizer. "People see them as a reflection of an open, communicative culture that isn't afraid to be self-critical."

The article goes on to emphasise the power of blogs and why they cannot be ignored whatever your personal attitude towards them.

"If you fudge or lie on a blog, you are biting the karmic weenie," says Steve Hayden, vice chairman of advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather, which creates blogs for clients. "The negative reaction will be so great that, whatever your intention was, it will be overwhelmed and crushed like a bug. You're fighting with very powerful forces because it's real people's opinions."

A must read is the example of the Voltaic Backpack... "Overnight what was supposed to be laying a little groundwork became my launch," he says. "This is the ultimate word-of-mouth marketing channel."

Note that "Google's public relations, quality control, and advertising departments all have blogs, some of them public. When Google redesigned its search home page, a staffer blogged notes from every brainstorm session. "With a company like Google that's growing this fast, the verbal history can't be passed along fast enough," says Marissa Mayer, who oversees the search site and all of Google's consumer web products. "Our legal department loves the blogs, because it basically is a written-down, backed-up, permanent time-stamped version of the scientist's notebook. When you want to file a patent, you can now show in blogs where this idea happened."









Google

Microsoft drop Passport service

cbs.marketwatch
"Microsoft Corp. is to stop marketing its Passport service, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday."

Google

Friday, December 24, 2004

Where The Real Internet Money Is Made

businessweek.com

"Where The Real Internet Money Is Made "

Advertising...especially specialist agencies... "Beneath the twin peaks of Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ) and Google -- both pricey after sharp runups during the past year -- a prosperous industry is taking shape."

Google

Opera browser finds a voice

CBS Internet Daily: "Opera Software released a new version of its Internet browser that reads Web pages and e-mail aloud. "

Google

Thursday, December 23, 2004

AOL gets ready to launch free Web e-mail | CNET News.com

AOL gets ready to launch free Web e-mail | CNET News.com: "America Online is testing a Web-based e-mail service that will compete with Yahoo Mail, Microsoft's Hotmail and Google's Gmail"

Google

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Things Google knows about you, and you, and you........

HubLog one for all you paranoids androids out there....btw substitute any major SE inc. Microsoft, Email provider inc. Yahoo ad infinitum....

Google

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Affiliate Pitfalls

MediaDailyNews

"Affiliate marketers generally take an optimistic view of their business, but a recent report from MarketingSherpa suggests that affiliate marketers should pay more attention to the potential pitfalls."

the industry has not yet resolved several of the high-profile hiccups that appeared in 2004--widespread reports of illegal cookie stuffing, adware and spyware companies' use of duplicate pages and invisible redirect tags, compliance problems with the Can-Spam Act, and click-fraud

Another potential problem area for affiliate marketers is paid search, especially if Google decides to crack down on affiliate marketers for bidding on trademarked terms

The report states that between 30 and 40 percent of affiliates depend almost entirely on search engine marketing to drive referral commissions

However after all the doom and gloom the article ends optimistically "according to new figures from the upcoming Jupiter report, 78 percent of merchants with affiliate marketing programs expect to increase their total number of affiliates in 2005--and 38 percent plan to increase the number by 25 percent or more."

Google

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Is eBay buying in at the top of the housing bubble?

Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com

"EBay buys Rent.com" BF reckons this is based on "thesis that rental activity will pick up in 2005" and follows Ebays "acquisition of Rent follows eBay's purchase of a 25 percent stake in Craigslist, a popular classified Web site. See prior Net stocks. Unlike Rent.com, Craigslist's list of rental properties can be advertised for free.

"It's too early to say how this is all is going to work together, we believe they serve two different types of apartment listers," said Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesperson. Rent.com targets large property owners whereas Craigslist targets landlords with one or two units to rent. Additionally, Rent.com charges a transaction fee based on successful listings whereas Craigslist is free"

Google

Friday, December 17, 2004

What's Your Involvement With Blogs?

Forbes.com poll...already blogged by many so 1st answer is likely to be the winner...

And yes indeed ...the results so far:
Results

"Have my own and update it daily. 620 votes (98%)
Check somebody else's every day. 2 votes (0%)
Have seen one, but don’t read regularly. 5 votes (1%)
Have never seen one, but have heard of them. 2 votes (0%)
What’s a blog? 5 votes (1%)

634 people have voted so far"

Of those most would probably choose options 1 & 2 if possible, as it is not they go for the shameless self promotion in hope of a link...

Google

Thursday, December 16, 2004

GEICO and Google - Gates Buffett connection?

MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory

Wonder whether there are hidden motives propelling the Geico - Google dispute... "Is there more to the Riff, er rift, between GEICO and Google? We can't help wondering. Especially now that Warren Buffet has tapped old friend Bill Gates to join the board of Berkshire Hathaway, a company run by Buffet that just so happens to own GEICO."

They add that if Geico had won the case Google would have been forced to make huge changes to the hugely profitable Adwords system.

The article concludes "GEICO said it pursued the legal action to protect its own trademark, but given Microsoft's apparent connection to GEICO, and the software giant's own designs on Google's search market dominance, we're just not sure..."

Google

Age 55 plus main growth age group

Center for Media Research - Daily Brief

"According to a recent release by The Media Audit, though the younger age groups were the first to embrace the Internet, most of today's growth is being driven by the older age groups, starting at age 55. "

Google

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

2004 Weblog Award Winners

Winners

Frank Barnako, CBS.MarketWatch.com reports: "Based on 366,187 votes cast in all categories over 10 days in early December 2004, here are the winners of the of The 2004 Weblog Awards"

Google

We're paying Bloggers to blog

Marqui

Interesting 3 month "expriment, widely blogged including at WebProNews, ReveNews.com and other affiliate marketing blogs and sites.

Marqui will pay approximately twenty bloggers $800 per month to write about the company and has signed three-month contracts with each of them. The bloggers are required to write about the company once a week and display a logo on their site indicating that they are paid by Marqui. In order to preserve the bloggers' integrity

Summary of terms with bloggers. See contract for details.

- Mention Marqui and link to our site - once a week.
- Put our mark/emblem on your site.
- Three month contracts will be honored.
- No 'gotchas.' None.
Want to know more? Read our FAQ...

Another one to watch...


Google

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

How To Build Traffic To Your Blog

webpronews.com

"How To Build Traffic To Your Blog by Priya Shah "

With a few additions the process is much like optimising web pages and websites. The advice includes:

Tips for writing posts people will read
How to optimise posts for search engines
Recomendations for submitting blogs to directories
About pinging blog services
How to create blog buzz
Emails to engage subscribers


Google

How to Measure a Blog's Influence

Micro Persuasion

Discusses and links to tools to "Measure a Blog's Influence" including PubSub LinkRanks where "LinkRanks are a measure of how many pages link to each particular site, with more weight given to fresher links and to links from a wider variety of pages"

Google

Microsoft Releases Desktop Search Tool

DMNews.com

"Microsoft Corp. released its long-awaited desktop search technology yesterday, entering a crowded race to dominate information access on Windows-based PCs...

The new MSN Toolbar Suite includes an updated version of a toolbar plug-in for Internet Explorer, and new toolbars for the MSN Deskbar, Windows Explorer and Outlook. It can be downloaded at beta.toolbar.msn.com. It is expected to be available globally next year"

Google

ScienCentral: Your Brain on Meth

ScienCentral: Your Brain on Meth

"If anyone doubted that drug use can damage the brain, new studies using brain scans show methamphetamine abusers' brains have damage similar to dementia, as well as considerable brain inflammation. This ScienCentral news video has more."

Google

'Easy' shares shenanigans

Forbes.com: Haji-Ioannou: 'Easy' Win Versus Stelmar Board

"The first company he founded, Stelmar announced Monday that it was being sold to Overseas Shipholding Group for $48 per share in cash. Just three weeks ago, Stelios succeeded in killing an earlier deal that would have valued the company at $40 per share. The 20% premium is quite a nice appreciation, particularly given that rival shipping stocks have flatlined in that time, down 4% as a group. Unsurprisingly, Stelios left the door ajar for yet another potential board room brawl, when he added that he�d be 'evaluating the deal in relation to market conditions closer to the vote date.' He also got in a dig at top leadership who'd pushed for the earlier deal, when he thanked middle management for their hard work and success--despite the leaders' failure. Should the deal finally go through, Stelios personally stands to gain some $60 million. That, combined with nearly $85 million of EasyJet shares he sold in the past two years, will likely be ploughed back into one of his dozen Easy-branded ventures, such as his EasyCruise or EasyHotel, both of which launch next year. "

Google

Monday, December 13, 2004

Yahoo Slashes Domain prices to $4.98

Netcraft

"Yahoo has slashed its domain name pricing to $4.98 a year through Dec. 31, continuing a pricing war among major hosting companies."

Google

AOL Abandons Exclusivity in Favor of Ads

Forbes.com

AOl is depicted as being an also ran behind Yahoo as a portal and Google as search in it's attempts to grab a share of online advertising.
"AOL is abandoning its strategy of exclusivity and will free much of its music, sports and other programming to non-subscribers in hopes of boosting ad sales.The decision could help the company counter declining subscriptions as Internet users move to high-speed connections. At least that's the plan"

Historically AOL thrived on selling Internet access plus exclusive programming, mainly attracting newbies but as users matured they dumped AOl packages and although AOL moved to pushing broadband they never regained the lost users...

"The company now has nearly 5 million broadband subscribers, up from about 3 million a year ago. But overall the number of U.S. subscribers dropped to 23 million in September, down from a peak of 27 million two years earlier."

The article points out that the shift to an advertising model could not have been launched any earlier due to the following:

"AOL wasn't in the business of producing content until a few years ago. It used to subcontract that work to outside companies like iVillage, which sold the ads. Since then, AOL has built not only an in-house content-development team but also an advertising sales network to capitalize on it.

AOL has also upgraded its technology to make it more compatible with the outside world. It has gradually switched from a proprietary programming language, known as "Rainman," to the hypertext markup language that powers the Web at large. It also has standardized ad formats; no longer would Moviefone and Netscape, say, have different rules on how big ads were and where they were placed."


The future user offerings are to be a mutant hybrid with some free and some paid for services although they remain upbeat:

Chief executive Jonathan Miller said "because advertising has a higher profit margin than subscriptions the company's profitability can grow even if revenues don't.

Jonathan Gaw, research manager at IDC, said AOL has strong assets to work with, but remains in a bind. The latest reincarnation, he said, shows all signs of "a company that is struggling to stay on top of a rolling log."

Google

Friday, December 10, 2004

Surfing the Web at work

MediaDailyNews 12-10-04: " BURST! Media survey released yesterday found that 32.3 percent of employed men, and 24.9 percent of employed women, ages 25 to 34, say they spend three or more hours each day surfing the Web at work.

What do workers do online? Most popular among various types of Web activities is e-mail and instant messaging -- 60 percent of respondents say they have, over the past three months, used the Web at work to connect with others.

Other popular online activities at work include checking local or national news, done by about 54 percent of respondents; researching the weather, done by 41 percent; and looking up information about products, which 35 percent of respondents did. "

Google

"The Rule of Three"

MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory:

In their landmark 2002 book, "The Rule of Three," authors Jagdish Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia make the point that just three major players eventually emerge in all markets.

Name any industry and, more likely than not, you will find that the three strongest, most efficient companies control 70 to 90 percent of the market. Examples of this are abundant and include "Big Threes" such as McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's; General Mills, Kellogg, Post; and Nike, Adidas, Reebok.

Article applies this theory to search but can be applied to any sector...

Google

Travelocity and Lodgings.com Dreadful user experiences....

thetravelinsider comes down hard on Travelocity and Lodgings.com: David M Rowell aka The Travel Insider" writes " almost feel sorry for Travelocity. I'm sure they wish I didn't occasionally try and use their service; because so often I have problems, and then write about it!

This week's Travelocity problem : I booked a couple of flights - Seattle to Las Vegas and back, with Travelocity suggesting an Alaska Airlines flight down and an America West flight back, with a total cost of $302 plus a $5 Travelocity fee (in addition to the airline commissions they receive). But when I went to pay for the ticket, the website tells me that it will cost another $19.95 to have a paper ticket issued and couriered second day air to me (even though I'm not flying for almost a month).
I simply want the $302 ticket, same as they quoted, but which actually appears to be impossible to obtain. If they know they can't issue an electronic ticket for this itinerary, and if they know they'll be adding a mandatory extra $19.95 to the price, they should adjust their pricing to reflect the truth of the situation up front. Whether this is bait and switch, or just stupidity; the bottom line, and ill-will generated, is the same.

I then used Sidestep to find a Vegas hotel. It reported an average nightly rate of $59.99/nt at Harrahs through Lodging.com. I clicked to book and was taken to the Lodging.com site, which confirmed that, for the four nights I'd be staying at Harrahs, the average nightly rate would be $59.99. I clicked to confirm my reservation, and was told the total cost of the four night stay came to $1315.72, not the $239.96 I was expecting.
As a former travel agent, I know there's no way in the world a client would let me get away with telling them 'yes, your hotel will be $59.99 a night' in one breath and then saying 'which makes a total of $1315.72 for the four night stay' in the next breath."

Google

Article - What Search Engines Want From Webmasters

Clickfire

What Search Engines Want From Webmasters by Dennis Gaskill

Self-proclaimed search engine experts have, over the years, touted all kinds of methods for ranking higher in search engines. This has included things such as hidden text, hidden links, meta tag stuffing, double meta tags, page stuffing, cloaking, redirect pages, bulk-quantity doorway pages, and other "secrets" of dubious quality.

Those techniques, and newer techniques that still amount to trickery, can result in lower rankings just for using them. In a worst case scenario they can even result in your domain being banned. Once banned, it's hard to get back in. Let's look at search engines from the search engine perspective instead of a selfish perspective.

My site, www.boogiejack.com, has consistently been ranking high in search engines since it opened in 1997. The ranking will fluctuate from time to time with each search engine, but I usually enjoy a few front page and number one links at any given time. Try a search for "left border backgrounds" now (one of my specialties), and see how it ranks at several search engines.

What's my secret? It's quite simple, I know how search engines want us to behave, and I have always followed the rules. I do everything I legally can to optimize my pages, but always play within the rules using only legitimately recognized (read that search engine approved) methods. When a search engine catches on to new trickery, you can be dropped or banned without warning.

So what do the search engines really want? They want to be able to help their web site visitors find what they are looking for, and they want to give them the best and most logical matches first. They can't do that easily with webmasters trying to manipulate their ranking by artificial means.

They want webmasters to show the search engine the same content you show your visitors, so anything like hidden text and links, cloaking, redirects and other tactics that show the search engine one thing and visitors another are high risk tricks that often result in being banned.

Your web site's content is the search engine's content, so they want sites with high quality content above all else. They want to show the best sites available for a search return, because if their content is helpful to the searcher, the searcher will be more likely to use their site for searches time and time again.

It's hard to get search engine employee's to comment on how their engines rank sites, but speaking on conditions of anonymity, here are the words of a technology specialist from one search engine (...and I won't knowingly betray a trust, so don't ask who the specialist is or what engine he works for, I won't tell):

"Design your site so that your text accurately reflects your content, products, and services. We penalize sites that make obvious attempts at manipulating our engine. No tricks, no misleading verbage designed for placement.

Link popularity is very important, so make sure the sites that should link to you are linked to you, and you to them. This is more than the latest buzz, this is reality. So if your site is about MP3's, you should have links with music sites, MP3 software sites, band fan sites, and so on.

At the very least you should be exchanging links with non-competitor sites whose content complements your own, and if you're not afraid to link directly to competitors and they'll exchange links with you, all the better. We give a little boost to sites that link directly to competitors.

One of the things we're after with this is to have your site "pre-judged" for us by your fellow webmasters. All links help, because it shows others find your site valuable enough to link to you, but links from relative content sites help your ranking even more.

I'll admit that sometimes people find ways to manipulate results for a short time, but sooner or later we catch on to these techniques (nobody studies our search engine harder than we do), and we'll penalize or ban sites for obvious manipulation attempts. Whether we ban a site or just penalize them, is partly determined by the degree of cheating and partly by the mood of the reviewer!

Once we've flagged your site, you'll have a hard time getting a top ranking again no matter how well you clean up your act. You've heard the expression, "once a cheater, always a cheater?" So have we. And here's a dirty little secret for you: if we catch you once, we may check other domains you own with a fine-toothed comb to see if you're spamming or cheating us with them too.


We don't place quite as much emphasis on themed sites as some engines do, but a themed site will give you a boost with us too. That's not to say your MP3 site can't talk about your love of dogs, just that if you cover many topics within a particular theme, you'll get a boost in rankings. You're not penalized for addressing many diverse or unrelated topics."

So there you have it, search engines want the same things surfers want. Quality content presented accurately and honestly, links to and from sites with complementary content, at least one major theme, and no dirty tricks.

Gosh, that isn't a great revelation is it? It shouldn't be, it's the way we should all be doing business in the first place - honestly and accurately. It is what works best in the long term with search engines and in life, and your site will never be penalized or banned by playing fairly.

Dennis Gaskill is the creator and owner of Boogie Jack's Web Depot at http://www.boogiejack.com - a popular webmasters resource site ranking in the top 1% of the most linked to sites on the Internet. He is also author of the new book Web Site Design Made Easy and publishes Almost a Newsletter, named the Best Ezine of 2000

Google

Yahoo Adds Tool to Search Hard Drives

Forbes.com

Announced yesterday, to be launched in January, "Yahoo Inc. is adding a tool to search computer hard drives as it scrambles to catch up with Google Inc. and stay a step ahead of Microsoft Corp. in the battle to help users sort through gobs of information on the Internet and the desktop...

Unlike Google's desktop search tool, Yahoo's won't operate within a browser. The distinction means that Yahoo's desktop searches won't be co-mingled with online searches conducted at its Web site.

The product, licensed from a pioneering startup named X1 Technologies, seeks to cure a common computer-induced headache by making it as quick and easy to find digital information offline as it has become online. With just 20 employees, X1 has established itself as a trailblazer in desktop search since starting three years ago...

Both Yahoo and X1 contend it makes sense to maintain a dividing line between hard-drive search and Web search because one quest focuses on recovering old information while the other strives to discover new information."

Google

Can People Really Program 80+ Hours a Week?

Interesting debate at Slashdot with masses of pros and cons that you may all want to comment on:

"In my 35 years of coding experience, any time I try to work on a complex program for more than, say, 60 hours a week (coding, not just showing up) for a couple weeks at a time, I'm just asking for trouble: I generate buggy code and debugging it only makes it buggier. Numerous studies in other fields (law firms, hospitals) have shown that mistakes rise exponentially after anyone works about 50 hours per week... This whole 'death march' mentality seems absolutely crazy to me as a programmer, but appears to be common. Honestly, can someone enlighten me as to how these 80+ hour weeks ever accomplish anything?" "

Google

What now for internet companies - Hoberman (Lastminute) interview

Times Online - Industry sectors

"What now for internet companies which survived the sector's collapse? Brent Hoberman, the chief executive of lastminute.com, talks to Mike Verdin " the article charts Lastminutes progress through it's "darkest post-crash days, and to expand, through organic growth and 14 takeovers, to a business employing 2,000 people and with annual sales of nearly £1 billion"

"Brent Hoberman, the lastminute chief executive, Britain's most iconic dot.com survivor, received a pasting two weeks ago when announcing an annual pre-tax loss of £77.2 million, taking the total the company has lost since its launch in 1998 to more than £250 million."

Hoberman "quotes Mary Meeker, the Morgan Stanley analyst whose reputation faded with the fortunes of the dot.coms she championed. "If you look at what she actually said, it was that 90 per cent of internet companies are going to fail, but the 10 per cent that win will win big.

He also reckons Lastminnute is close to tipping point ( he call sit critical mass) saying that the US is "three years ahead of that in Europe, and where, in online travel, more than half of customers seek deals online."

Mr Hoberman famously champions emerging technologies. "Lastminute is exploiting interactive television through a deal with Sky Active - run by BSkyB, an associate company of News International - and mobile telephone developments through tie-ups with Orange and Vodafone." He is quoted as saying " "For me it is all promise. Gartner is saying that by 2009, mobile commerce will be a $50 billion industry. "I do not necessarily agree with that, but it is a pretty huge number. Even if the (travel) market reaches only 20 per cent of that, it is pretty good."

He laments the "American suprecamy over global commerce on the worldwide web. "It is disappointing that there are so few European e-commerce players that are truly pan-European. European e-commerce looks like it is going to be dominated by US players."

He attributes this situation to the fact that "In Europe a lot of great companies that would have been European leaders did not get funding because the bubble burst. But US companies did get funding because they were ahead of us."

Can this situation be changed?






Google

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Blog Software Breakdown

Blog Software Breakdown: "weblog CMS packages"

Google

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Yahoo! News - The Business Of Blogging

Yahoo! News

Time to start a blogging blog perhaps? News, articles and posts about blogging are increasing daily:

"Just a year ago, blogs were viewed as a collection of off-the-cuff ramblings in cyberspace read mainly by online devotees... A new medium, though still a work in progress, is coming into being...

Now advertisers are realizing there is a market emerging in the blogosphere. Already, the growth in regular online advertising, estimated to be about 35% this year, will far outpace the spending increases for any other sector of the media world. Add to all this the fact that about 11% of Internet users today are inveterate blog readers, and the blogging scene starts to get mighty compelling for marketers."

Key points:

An estimated 4.8 million blogs now exist in cyberspace, up from just 100,000 two years ago, according to blog search engine Technorati
Depending on the approach, bloggers can earn anywhere from a pittance to more than $10,000 a month
Google's AdSense: Individual bloggers sign up, ads are delivered to their sites, and they get a share of revenue based on click-through rates.
Companies are constructing similar models to entice bloggers to come on board (PLM see legal example)

Article asks "can marketers, looking to push products online, and bloggers, treasuring their independent voices, co-exist?"

Google

Social networks

CBS Marketwatch

"Social networking sites are just like hot new restaurants: They're the place to be seen until the next in-vogue destination comes along....MySpace surged to 3.4 million users in October, up from 1 million in June, according to comScore Networks. By comparison, Friendster has fewer than 1 million unique visitors each month since June. This compares with 1.75 million unique visitors in October 2003."

Google

MSN lags in online radio ratings - Advertising "tantalizing opportunity"

Internet Daily

"Streaming radio services from America Online and Yahoo dominated the market for Internet radio in October...The report, which is the first in a monthly series, also estimated that 384,000 people age 12 and older, were listening during an average 15-minute period during the week.

Internet radio and its advertising potential were called a "tantalizing opportunity" in another research report issued Monday. Borrell Associates Inc. said radio operators could exploit Webcasts to "increase listener loyalty, broaden their audience, and grow non-traditional revenue." But, said the firm's founder, Gordon Borrell, that's not likely to happen. "The likelier scenario is ... start-up companies may swipe this audience from local broadcast stations altogether."

Google

Monday, December 06, 2004

How To Blog 101

How To Blog For Fun & Profit great resource for basics and some more advanced blogging info...

Google

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Blogs have come a long way

Internet Daily

CBS article reviews stats for blog reach, criticises stats methodology but agrees with the conclusion that "blogs are still much bigger than they were six months ago."

Google

Thursday, December 02, 2004

The magic that makes Google tick

ZDNet UK Insight

Google's vice-president of engineering was in London this week to talk to potential recruits about just what lies behind that search page. ZDNet UK snuck in to listen:

"It is one of the largest computing projects on the planet, arguably employing more computers than any other single, fully managed system (we're not counting distributed computing projects here), some 200 computer science PhDs, and 600 other computer scientists...

"Over four billion Web pages, each an average of 10KB, all fully indexed
Up to 2,000 PCs in a cluster
Over 30 clusters
104 interface languages including Klingon and Tagalog
One petabyte of data in a cluster -- so much that hard disk error rates of 10-15 begin to be a real issue
Sustained transfer rates of 2Gbps in a cluster
An expectation that two machines will fail every day in each of the larger clusters
No complete system failure since February 2000


The problem

Google indexes over four billion Web pages, using an average of 10KB per page, which comes to about 40TB. Google is asked to search this data over 1,000 times every second of every day, and typically comes back with sub-second response rates. If anything goes wrong, said Hölzle, "you can't just switch the system off and switch it back on again."

The job is not helped by the nature of the Web. "In academia," said Hölzle, "the information retrieval field has been around for years, but that is for books in libraries. On the Web, content is not nicely written -- there are many different grades of quality."

Some, he noted, may not even have text. "You may think we don't need to know about those but that’s not true -- it may be the home page of a very large company where the Webmaster decided to have everything graphical. The company name may not even appear on the page."

Google deals with such pages by regarding the Web not as a collection of text documents, but a collection of linked text documents, with each link containing valuable information.

The rest of the article covers:

1. The process
Obviously it would be impractical to run the algorithm once every page for every query, so Google splits the problem down.

The hardware
"Even though it is a big problem", said Hölzle, "it is tractable, and not just technically but economically too. You can use very cheap hardware, but to do this you have to have the right software."

The scalability
Google has two crucial factors in its favour. First, the whole problem is what Hölzle refers to as embarrassingly parallel, which means that if you double the amount of hardware, you can double performance (or capacity if you prefer -- the important point is that there are no diminishing returns as there would be with less parallel problems).

The second factor in Google's favour is the falling cost of hardware.

Other technical challenges

Quality of results: One big area of complaints for Google is connected to the growing prominence of commercial search results -- in particular price comparison engines and e-commerce sites. Hölzle is quick to defend Google's performance "on every metric", but admits there is a problem with the Web getting, as he puts it, "more commercial". Even three years ago, he said, the Web had much more of a grass roots feeling to it. "We have thought of having a button saying 'give me less commercial results'," but the company has shied away from implementing this yet.

Google

E-TRAVEL SELF-SERVICE ENGINE (Airlines)

E-TRAVEL SELF-SERVICE ENGINE
"Convenient for end-users, profitable for airlines"

Features:

An attractive pre-sales display using Flex Pricer [Calendar]
An interactive after-sales solution with our newly developed re-booking functionality

End-user benefits:

Quickly find the best price for a desired amount of flexibility
Get a broad choice of fares:
Visibility over a week and up to 200 recommendations
Simple and easy fare rules written in plain language
Convenient online servicing
Modify, cancel and review the fare online

Airline benefits:

Generate additional Profits
Significantly offload call-centers by servicing a majority of queries online
Increase revenues by applying a service fee for modifying and canceling
Up-sell higher flexible and serviceable fares online
Compete against other online players
Display full inventory as well as lowest prices over a date range
Offer a full online post-booking experience exclusive to the airline
Growing the online distribution channel
Benefit from a scalable ASP platform and adaptable resources when needed most
Rely on the number one global IBE technology partner
Develop customer loyalty by increasing post-booking interaction

Google

Finding The Sweet Spot

Digital Web Magazine

D. Keith Robinson defines: "The sweet spot" as "designing in a space and having a process in place that supports as many goals as possible. It’s bridging that (mostly artificial) gap between user and business goals.

Posts about using the notion of "the “Golden Triangle” (as opposed to some boring old Venn diagram) to express how different goals are related to a Web project.
organizational goals, and things like ease of maintenance, ego and designer vanity. Don’t laugh--these things can have a huge effect on a project, as you’ll see. (They’re really more like requirements than goals, but I don’t want to wreck my triangle metaphor just yet. I hope that’s cool with y’all.)

And then we’ve got business goals and user goals.

When you’ve addressed and balanced all three of these sets of goals, you’ve created the Golden Triangle
....

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Blogs are powerful: Blogs are disruptive

Netcoms

The now infamous iPod battery saga owes it's high profile to blogs...

Joel Cere, EMEA Vice President, Netcoms writes: "Since the power to reach and influence is no longer confined to the broadcaster, the press release or the journalist, blogs can have a disruptive effect on the way companies communicate. Armed with a well linked blog and a RSS feed, any consumer has now all the necessary firepower to instantaneously broadcast views on a planetary scale. More and more companies are finding out that bloggers can help make or break a reputation.

The iPod’s controversy on battery life was brought up by two brothers who were frustrated by Apple’s customer service answers. They vented their anger on a video clip and posted it on their blog. It acted as a firestarter for a raging debate among iPod owners until Apple issued a formal clarification statement, extended its product’s battery life and introduced a replacement program. (http://www.iPodsdirtysecret.com/)

Blogs are becoming too big and powerful to be ignored. They put consumer satisfaction under increased scrutiny yet provide an opportunity to engage at a deeper level with consumers."


His main tips are:

1. Know your audience

Include blogs in your communication mix, if only to listen to what consumers say about you and your competitors.

2. Breach the trust gap

Bloggers will be naturally suspicious of any sales pitch. If you want to work with established blogs, make sure you are open and honest about who you are, why you are contacting them, what type of relationship you are looking for and why you value their opinion. Do not take bloggers for granted. Heavy handed or sneaky tactics will backfire and you will turn an advocate into a fiery opponent.

3. Engage in genuine partnership

If your brand is fortunate enough to have bloggers praising its merits, treat them like you would treat journalists. After all, your devoted blogger may have a bigger following than your favourite daily paper.

4. DIY with caution

A blog could help give a personal dimension to some activities your company is engaged in. Think CSR for example with a diary of your teams’ efforts in a developing country or generating buzz around product release with your engineers reporting their progress and sharing some insights with aficionados (Microsoft’ employees write more than 700 blogs on these topics).

Equally, blogs can be effective in strengthening or raising an executive’s profile (http://prplanet.typepad.com/ceobloggers/) or helping assess authority in a sector

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Microsoft Debuts MSN Spaces for Bloggers

Any offers to test this?

Forbes.com

"Hoping to keep more Internet users in its branded universe, Microsoft Corp. has become the latest company to offer blogging to the masses.

MSN Spaces, which debuts in test form Thursday, makes it easy to set up Web journals without needing highly technical skills. It is targeted at home users who want to share vacation pictures, text journals or a list of favorite songs.

It is free to anyone with a Hotmail e-mail or MSN Messenger account, both of which also are free. MSN Spaces will be supported by banner ads.

Noting that Microsoft has initially missed the boat on some technologies, such as Web search, Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg said companies must offer these products early, or risk losing them to rival services permanently.

Although Microsoft trails Google and AOL, Gartenberg said it's not too late because blogging is only just catching on with mainstream users.

According to a February report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, only 2 percent of Americans have created blogs, while 11 percent have read those of others"

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Barnako.com on blogs and inspirational resources

Barnako.com Frank Barnako blogs about Seth Godin's blog where "found a truckload of provocative, exciting and, yes, even helpful PDFs" and other resources "written by stars like Godin, Tom Peters and Guy Kawasaki."

He is most impressed with ChangeThis :: manifestos and in particular recommends ChangeThis :: This I Believe! - Tom's 60 TIBs to serial entrepreneurs...

In Big Ideas for your job, your company, and your life. Tom Peters, "the marketing and strategy guru holds forth on why audacity matters, why women are the future of leadership, and why diversity is crucial to business success."

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Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Ebay bid for blogger hits $1,500

Investor's Business Daily: Breaking News

CBS F Barnako reports "There's a price on Jeremy Wright's head. Tuesday morning, it was $1,500, as half a dozen bidders indicated their interest in the Winnipeg, Manitoba, blogger's assistance".

Jeremy Wright states "Blogging is really about three things

1) Information aggregation, getting information where you need it
2) Knowledge management, so consolidating things like industry news
3) Establishing a feedback loop - whether that's through comments or e-mail, it's about telling your customers what you're doing and getting that information out in real time

Blogs mentioned in the article:

Ensight.org: www.ensight.org
Google corporate blog: www.google.com/googleblog
Monster corporate blog: monster.typepad.com/monsterblog.
Sun Microsystems' COO Jonathan Schwartz: blogs.sun.com/jonathan
Microsoft: blogs.msdn.com"

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Blog - Merriam-Webster's Top Word of the Year 2004

Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2004
Based on your online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2004 was

Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer

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