emc

Google pushing it too far?

2009-03-01T07:57:00.001-08:00

Google recently launched a new service that is causing some noise: Google adds for news.

Firstly what is Google news?
(http://news.google.com/)

Google news searches a large number of selected news sites to be able to provide internet users with up to date information on what is happening in the last 24h.
The idea was born after 9/11 when a lot of people were looking for up to date info on what was happening, but all search engines just came up with results on tourism in new york.

The launch was controversial as Google provided snippets of text from articles by news papers without any agreement with these providers. A large number of law suits followed but were quickly dropped when Google removed these news sites completely from the Google index. This resulted in much lower traffic for these news papers.

So what is the big deal with adds for Google news?

Google is using content it finds on the internet for free, copies it on it's servers, displays it to their users and earns money with adds without sharing anything with the original publisher.

Is this a step too far?

More info:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Google-News-to-add-ads/1235730510

Can you still read your files from 15 years ago?

2009-02-15T05:42:00.000-08:00

We are all creating new digital content every day: photos, documents, images, videos, etc.
But will we still be able to read them in 10 years time? Will historians be able to read them in 1000 years time?

Believe it or not, but this is already a real problem today:
Britain's National Archive estimates that it holds enough information to fill about 580,000 encyclopaedias in formats that are no longer widely available. And research by the British Library estimates that the delay caused by accessing and preserving old digital files costs European businesses about £2.7bn a year.

That's why the European Union is spending 4 million euros to to create a universal emulator that can open and play obsolete file formats.

Check out the full story on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7886754.stm

Online Video Ads: Nail to the coffin of traditional TV?

2009-02-02T02:27:00.000-08:00

Online Video adds are supposedly the next big thing.
Lots of firms are looking how to properly monetise video content on the Internet. The current models (e.g Youtube+AdSense), give low returns and are not sufficient to fund custom made content.

But where eyeballs are, the money will follow (YouTube is the 3rd most popular site on the Internet). Once this happens, it will all of a sudden be profitable to create professional content for the Internet and make money. The nail to the coffin of traditional tv?

Check out the current advertising model on:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2009/tc20090126_305941.htm

Affiliates help save the world! You buy one book, we plant one tree

2009-01-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

We saw last week how affiliate schemes can help you make some money (e.g. Amazon adds on Dan's blog). However affiliate schemes can do more than this, they can help us focus a groups towards a common goal that makes the world a better place.

A bit to vague? let me give you an example.
Offsetbooks.com is an Amazon affiliate. The site is essentially a store front for Amazon. All product info, pricing, payments, processing and delivery is handled by Amazon. This means you get exactly the same deal on offsetbooks.com as you would get on Amazon. However when you buy a book on offsetbooks.com, Amazon pays them a small referral fee and offsetbooks.com uses that fee to plant trees in Africa.

So next time you buy a book, you can actually make a small difference !

My internet insight of the week - It's not all traffic that counts

2009-01-15T02:39:00.000-08:00

Unique visitors (traffic) is a metric often used to determine the success of a site, but as we can see from the valuation of 2 similarly sized businesses, it is not all traffic that counts.

Digg.com and linkedin.com are roughly the same size.
But digg is valued less than $100m while linkedin is valued around $1 billion (source: businessweek)

so what makes the $900 million difference?
- linkedin relies on more than just online advertising (subscription services)
- linkedin knows alot about their users and can show more targetted, relevant and hence more expensive adds

Back in London - What have I learned over the break?

2009-01-15T02:00:00.000-08:00

Glad to be back in London after a very relaxing holiday.
Key lessons I have learned over the break:
1. After spending a week with a baby, you start speaking baby language as well....
2. Hong Kong is now on my top 10 list of cities I want to live in
3. Uncooked fishballs are a bad bad idea
4. I do not like the cold
5. Falling asleep in a chair is not very sexy
6. Dolphins are weird
7. Korean Airlines is now my most preferred airline!
8. Heathrow still sucks
9. Russian airport security is weird, really weird
10. For a 3 year old, the only thing more fun than building a tower in the sand, is destroying the tower