Diary of a Bad Golfer

NEW YORK (AP) — Google Inc. has reached a deal with News Corp., owner of MySpace.com, to pay at least $900 million in shared advertising revenue and become the exclusive search provider for the popular online hangout.
The deal, which marries the Internet’s leading search engine with the top social-networking site, means News Corp. will have essentially paid off the bulk of the $1.2 billion it spent last year to acquire both MySpace and the online video-game company IGN Entertainment Inc.
Under the multiyear deal, News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media unit will add Google search boxes to MySpace and other sites, likely by the end of the year, and Google will provide search results and keyword ads targeted to people’s search terms. Google will also get first rights to sell any display ads not sold by Fox directly.
Google’s payments, which are based on Fox achieving certain traffic and other milestones that Google expects Fox to exceed, are expected to start in early 2007 and run through the second quarter of 2010.
Monday’s MySpace deal follows one announced on Sunday under which Google will begin distributing clips from MTV Networks’ shows to other Web sites through its budding video service (Full story).
Word of mouth

Driven largely by word of mouth, MySpace has rapidly risen to become the second-busiest site in the United States, behind Yahoo Inc., according to comScore Media Metrix. It has about 100 million registered users, about 90 percent in the United States.
“We think it’s important that we move Google to where the users are, and the users are moving to user-generated content and particularly the sites of Fox Interactive,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told analysts and reporters Monday.
MySpace offers a mix of features - message boards, games, Web journals - designed to keep its youth-oriented visitors clicking on its advertising-supported pages. Users stay connected by adding others as “friends” and expand their networks by meeting friends of their friends.
Allowing MySpace users to conduct Google searches directly on the site allows it to retain visitors longer and thus boost its advertising potential. Google will also power MySpace’s in-house search, making friends and groups easier to find, said Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media.
Besides MySpace, the deal covers most of Fox’s other sites, including IGN, AmericanIdol.com, Fox.com and Rotten Tomatoes. Fox Sports is not included because News Corp. already has a deal with Microsoft Corp.’s MSN.
News Corp. executives said they had discussions with some of Google’s rivals, which they refused to name, and considered building their own search engine, but quickly concluded that Google was the best partner because the two companies shared similar consumer-centric goals. Negotiators worked nearly round the clock over the past five days.
Both sides said they expected additional deals beyond search, “many of which we can only guess on right now,” Schmidt said.
Similar services

Google and MySpace have been developing similar services, including Web journals, video and instant messaging. MySpace is planning to develop a browser toolbar that will integrate Google searches.
MySpace currently uses search results from Yahoo Inc. under a smaller deal reached before News Corp. bought MySpace and Yahoo acquired search-ad company Overture Services.
In a statement, Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said the Google deal was great for Fox but wasn’t one in which Yahoo had an interest.
“We did not see this opportunity as financially prudent or in the best interest of our advertisers,” she said.
Danny Sullivan, editor of the industry newsletter Search Engine Watch, said the deal lets Google use its abundant cash reserves to block Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN from getting a piece of MySpace.
Google also made the most sense as a partner, he said, because both Yahoo and MSN have competing social-networking services. (Google runs Orkut but does not aggressively promote it. It has a 5 percent ownership in Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, but AOL officials have said they weren’t trying to unseat MySpace with its new AIM Pages service.)
Tim Armstrong, Google’s vice president of advertising sales, said Fox sales representatives will likely target large companies, while Google focuses on small and medium-sized businesses. He said advertisers will have a choice of targeting MySpace specifically or reach Google’s broader ad network.
Shares of Google increased $4.10, or 1.1 percent, to $377.95 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, while shares of News Corp. rose 2 cents to close at $19.76 on the New York Stock Exchange. In late-session trade, Google added 1 percent, while News Corp. gained 1.2 percent.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

100 freakin million videos per day….unbelivable - not bad for a site that started in early 2005.  60% of videos watched online are now served by YouTube.  In April when YouTube was receiving 12.9 million uniques per month Forbes estimated that bandwidth costs were approaching $1 million per month, 3 months later they are approaching 20 million uniques…

Source

Internet Explorer? Old and busted, Firefox? Ok I still use it, but Flock seems pretty sweet so far.  Right now there is a pre-beta release out, which is based on the Firefox code base.  The layout is very similar expect that Flock is labeled as a “social browser” - it can integrate with weblogs, phone sharing and other services on the web.

Some of the benefits that I like are:

• Integrates with del.icio.us to manage bookmarks - they can be browsed directly from Flock without having to visit your del.icio.us page
• Ability to have “collections” of favorites - if you are like me you have a crapload of favorites, being able to have collections for Work, Home etc is nice
• Has support for publishing to WordPress, Movable Type, Typepad and Blogger blogs using a built in blog editor.  If you are browsing a page you want to blog about - Flock has a “Blog This” button
• Built in Search - similar to Firefox but with more options - including IMDB
• Automatically detects RSS feeds in your favorites
• Supports extensions

In my opinion, it’s worth checking out - Click for a tour of Flock

Download Flock

Currently Listening to: Theory of a Deadman - Nothing Could Come Between Us

LONDON (Reuters) - The British music industry’s trade group has been cleared to sue the controversial Russian music download site AllofMP3.com in London’s High Court.AllofMP3.com, which offers album downloads for as little as 1 pound ($1.85), is Britain’s second-most popular online music service behind Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store, according to one survey. The Russian site claims to be in compliance with local copyright laws, but music labels say they have not given permission for AllofMP3 to sell their songs.

The High Court has given its approval to serve legal proceedings against AllofMP3 and its owner Media Services in Russia ahead of a UK court case, the British Phonographic Institute (BPI) said in a statement on Monday.

“The reason AllofMP3.com downloads are cheap is that neither the artists nor the record companies are being paid,” said BPI General Counsel Roz Groome.

Earlier this year, U.S. lawmakers warned against signing a bilateral trade deal with Russia until Moscow moved to reduce intellectual property theft, including the shutdown of AllofMP3. Russian prosecutors are conducting their own investigation of the site.

The music industry has fought back against online piracy by promoting legal online music stores and cracking down on illicit file-sharing services and their users.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Currently Listening to: Stone Sour - Through Glass

Sounds like it is not meant to be a “PayPal replacement” but I really wish it was…

Chances are good that at least once you’ve been ready to make an online purchase, only to abandon it after being thwarted by the Web site’s ordering process. The new Google Checkout service looks to close the sale by making online order placement foolproof.

Although its e-commerce roster is short on big names, Google’s new order-processing service, which started today, makes placing and tracking your online purchases easy.

My first Google Checkout transaction–a purchase from service partner CD Universe–went smoothly, although I wasn’t provided with the shipping options I’ve come to expect from online vendors. I suspect the little green Google Checkout cart will soon be all over the Web.

Universal Checkout

The Web has long needed a universal checkout process. eBay’s PayPal and other online payment services rely on the various “shopping cart” applications of the Web sites they serve. While browser add-ons such as Siber Systems’ RoboForm can complete much of the order-processing information that different sites require, they exhibit little consistency in the type and quantity of data they collect.

Also, as you place your personal information on more Web servers, your security risk grows. Last but not least, the Web forms themselves are often poorly designed: How many times have you had to reenter all the information in an order form because a single field was skipped or included invalid data?

The Process and Passwords

Google Checkout stores your credit card number, mailing address, and other ordering information. You can view all of the orders you place through the service on a single page, and Google limits how much of your information it shares with its vendor partners.

While having a single repository for all your orders makes makes online purchases much faster and simpler (and potentially more secure), Gmail users and other people already registered with a free Google service may have to beef up their security–one log-in name and password opens them all.

Until I signed up for Google Checkout, I didn’t worry much about someone gaining access to my Gmail inbox, because it contains no sensitive data. The first thing I did after adding the Google Checkout information was to change my Google password, and I’ll continue to do so regularly as long as I’m using the service.

The current roster of online stores displaying the green Google Checkout icon and order button includes such big names as Buy.com and RitzCamera.com, but the list is dominated by specialty stores such as All Barstools and Snorkel Bob (the combination of which could make for an interesting Saturday night). Joining the lineup soon, according to Google, will be Ace Hardware, Rockport, and Sports Authority.

My Experience

I placed my first Google Checkout order just minutes after signing up, buying two CDs from CD Universe for just over $10 each, including shipping, after entering a $10-off coupon code provided for Google Checkout users.

Seconds after placing the order, I received confirmation in my Gmail inbox, including a link to follow if I want to cancel the order, and another to track its progress. The only thing missing: an estimated time of arrival, information that Amazon.com and many other Web vendors provide when you place your order. (Okay, so they’re not always so accurate, but at least they try.)

All Google Checkout told me is that I paid $3.99 for “Standard” delivery. In fact, I’ll be curious to see whether the time it takes CD Universe to receive and process my order from Google Checkout delays my order’s arrival. That potential complication will be something for us to test the next time we review online shopping sites (our last look at e-commerce services was Grace Aquino’s “Deal Finders”).

My first impression of Google Checkout: I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful online relationship.

Link

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) — Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it would delay the release of its Office business software suite, citing “product performance” issues.

In a statement released by the company’s Waggener Edstrom public relations firm, Microsoft said it would now release the product to big business customers by the end of the year, instead of in October as planned.

Consumers and other business users are now scheduled to get the product in early 2007. Microsoft had previously said it would be broadly available in January, to coincide with the delayed release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista computer operating system.

“Feedback on quality and performance will ultimately determine the exact dates,” the company said in the statement.

Microsoft has made early versions, or betas, of Office 2007 available for technical experts to download and test. In the statement, Redmond-based Microsoft said the delay was due to “internal testing and the beta 2 feedback around product performance.”

The company declined to comment further.

The release of the next version of Office, which includes popular programs like Outlook, Excel and Word, is important for Microsoft because, despite its expansion into myriad other fields, the company still depends on Office and Windows for the bulk of its profits.

But Microsoft faces a tough challenge in convincing users to upgrade from previous versions of Office, which may seem just fine to many users. The company also is hoping to sell users on a slew of other related products for things like note-taking and advanced communications, as a way to grow revenue amid a more saturated market for the traditional Office software.

The new version of Windows, called Vista, also has faced a number of delays. It is currently scheduled to be released in January, missing the all-important holiday season.

Link

After my expierences with it, I don’t doubt there are “performance issues”

After years of dipping its toe in the waters of unified voice and data communications, Microsoft is ready to dive in headfirst, and will unveil its Unified Communication Product Roadmap and Partner Ecosystem here today.

The product road map calls for changes to product lines to better integrate voice features with Microsoft’s business software. It includes several new capabilities and name changes: Office Communications Server 2007 replaces Live Communications Server and adds presence-based VoIP call management, Web, audio, and videoconferencing to IM features.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, a unified communications client for that server, will have a VoIP softphone and Web, audio, and video conferencing. A product called Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging will offer a unified e-mail and voice-mail inbox, and speech-based access. Microsoft will also update Live Meeting, adding VoIP, video, and e-learning support.

One example of the potential for the new integrated products is Microsoft Office RoundTable, a reference design for an audio/video conference-room device with a 360-degree camera with video switching and beaming technology that can focus on active speakers.

Rather than replacing the corporate phone system or IP PBX, Microsoft is floating a unified communications architecture built on Active Directory and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The company is also moving ahead with efforts to build voice and other communications directly into mainstream applications such as Office, CRM, and supply chain, according to Gartner analyst Bern Elliot.

“Microsoft has some failures behind it and recognizes that unified communications is a difficult area,” Elliot said. “For now, they’re not as much interested in replacing the IP PBX as they are in developing a new way to communicate.”

Exchange server will ship in late 2006 or early in 2007, according to Microsoft. The other pieces will be available in the second quarter of 2007.

A number of major communications and PC makers, including Polycom, Quintum, GN Netcom, Motorola, HP, and Plantronics, issued press releases today announcing their support or involvement in various aspects of the Microsoft effort.

Currently Listening to: Stone Sour - Through Glass

A private security company has found a way to nuke the controversial callback component in Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool.

Firewall Leak Tester, a company that provides tools to test the quality of personal firewall software, has released a utility called RemoveWGA that blocks Microsoft from “phoning home” from Windows PCs on a daily basis.

“Once the WGA Notification tool has checked your OS and has confirmed you had a legit copy, there is no decent point or reason to check it again and again every boot,” the company said in a note explaining its motive for releasing the tool.

The WGA tool, which is a mandatory part of the Redmond, Wash., software maker’s battle to curb Windows piracy, includes two separate components: WGA validation and WGA notifications. Validation determines whether the copy of Windows installed is pirated or not, and Notifications is set up to nag users whom Microsoft believes are not running “genuine Windows” and “suggest” where they can “learn more about the benefits of using genuine Windows software.”

However, Notifications has been “phoning home” to Microsoft’s servers on a daily basis, and Windows users are up in arms over potential privacy and security risks. Microsoft insists the callbacks are a “”safety check” to ensure that WGA can be terminated quickly if things went amok, but this was never communicated to users until the week of June 4.

On June 8, Microsoft announced plans to tweak the WGA to only check for a new settings file every 14 days.