Google turns page on news content

Flastflip

The product is designed to mirror the way readers flick through magazines and newspapers.

Google has teamed up with more than 30 providers such as the BBC to provide what it calls a new reading experience.

The search giant was recently called a parasite for making money aggregating content it did not create.

"I don't believe we are part of the problem. I believe we are part of the solution," Google's vice-president of search, Marissa Mayer, told BBC News.

"We have tried to build platforms and tools that build a healthy, rich eco-system online that is supportive of content. This is a new way of looking at content."

Earlier this year, Wall Street Journal chief Robert Thomson called the search company and other aggregators such as Yahoo "parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet".

The news industry has been struggling with how to broaden the size of its online audience and how to make money from content it has long given away free.

Last month, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said he hoped all of his major newspapers would be charging for online content by the end of June next year.

Fast Flip imitates a conventional print publication by offering screenshots of the web pages containing relevant articles.

Newspapers have struggled to make money from online content

The stories are organised following a number of different criteria. For example, readers will be offered articles that have been popular all day, that reflect their personal preference or that have been recommended by friends.

Users who want to dig deeper into the story can click through to the publisher's website.

To make money, Fast Flip also serves up contextual adverts around the screenshots.

Publishers who have signed up to provide content to the service will share in that revenue; that was proof, said Ms Mayer, that Google was keen to help the industry at a time when it was clearly struggling.

"We are excited to team with publishers and look at a new possibility for how people might consume news online and how to monetise it," said Ms Mayer.

Google admitted that there was no "magic bullet" to quickly solve the challenges the publishing industry faced but it added that "we believe encouraging readers to read more news is a necessary part of the solution".

Ms Mayer said the science behind this was simple.

"Advertising responds well when you have engaged users.

"If you have users that stay on the site for a long time and who do a lot of page views, all of those are good measurers because you will have a better chance to engage them with the ads and learn from their behaviour what type of ads to target," explained Ms Mayer.

Hands-on control

Ms Mayer told TechCrunch 50, a conference aimed at start-up companies, that Google co-founder Larry Page had asked why the web was not more like a magazine, allowing users to flip from screen to screen seamlessly.

Delegates were told that one reason had to do with media-rich content that took time to load - five to 10 seconds.

Fast Flip marries the best of the web and publishing, said Google

"Imagine if it took that long to flip a magazine page," said Krishna Bharat, a distinguished engineer at Google who led the creation of the Google news service.

"We wanted to bring the advantages of print media, the speed and hands-on control you get with a newspaper or magazine, and combine that with the technical advantages of the internet. We wanted the best of both worlds," said Mr Bharat.

Ms Mayer revealed that initially they thought a solution to the problem posed by Mr Page was "a decade away".

She explained that Google had long been trying to harness increased speed, "shaving a millisecond here and another millisecond there".

But Ms Mayer said that the success of Fast Flip was down to having a specific problem to solve.

"A big part of innovation is having the right goal and asking the right question," she said.

Initially Fast Flip will concentrate on audiences in the US. The BBC is the only UK-based media outlet to have a presence on the site, due largely to its popularity in America.

Other publishers involved include Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, Popular Mechanics, Slate, Salon, the New York Times, the Washington Post and ProPublica.

Google's search box gets bigger

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Google just got bigger. Not the company, but the search box on its home page, that is.

The Mountain View, California, company has been loathe to tamper with the clean and uncluttered look of its home page but the Internet giant this week increased the size of the search box.

"Our search box is growing in size," Google vice president Marissa Mayer said in a blog post. "The new, larger Google search box features larger text when you type so you can see your query more clearly."

"Google has always been first and foremost about search, and we're committed to building and powering the best search on the web -- now available through a supersized search box," she added.

Google is the overwhelming leader of the lucrative US search and advertising market with a market share of around 65 percent, according to online tracking firm comScore.

Panasonic: New LED bulbs shine for 19 years

Panasonic has launched a new household LED lightbulb in Japan that it says lasts 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

The screw-in bulbs are part of the EverLed line, and they're scheduled to hit stores in Japan on October 21, with monthly production at 50,000 units. No changes to lighting equipment used for incandescents are required.

If used an average of five and a half hours per day, the new bulbs can last up to 19 years, according to Panasonic. That's 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

The bulbs use only an eighth the power of incandescents. That means a 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb would cost only 300 yen (about $3) a year instead of 2,380 yen ($25.80)--a significant savings over a lifetime.

Panasonic hasn't set a price for the new EverLeds, but Nikkei suggests standard versions will cost about 4,000 yen (about $40).

LED bulbs aren't new. Their relatively high cost is one factor keeping them from gaining popularity, but in Japan at least, Panasonic represents about 50 percent of the domestic bulb market. That means EverLeds should raise the LED profile there considerably.

Panasonic is also doing market research to launch EverLeds in the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Online marketing's future in a web-based world

Customers and prospects have taken control of the Internet, dramatically changing the way they find information, search for companies, and make purchasing decisions. Consequently, marketers have less control over and visibility into, how people locate and interact with their brand and business.

It’s difficult to stay on top of ever-changing behavioral patterns, in addition to understanding and mastering the increasing number of online channels such as blogs, RSS feeds, in-game ads and more. At the same time, marketers are still trying to capitalize on the more traditional online mediums such as email and paid search.

Regardless of changing circumstances, the goal remains the same - delivering the right message to customers and prospects at the right time, via the right channel.

So how have marketers responded to the digital revolution? Where will the next breakthroughs be seen?

The industry moved beyond mass marketing tactics quickly when it realized that a little bit of technology went a long way. The discovery of session-based data to get a snapshot of visitor behavior was gold, allowing organizations to send targeted promos for a specific product to particular groups of people: welcome to behavioral marketing.

Behavioral marketing has recently penetrated mainstream companies and marketing departments. Because of increased scrutiny of marketing spend and lead-generation contribution, each time a new technology arrives on the scene, the demands increases for rapid ROI and proof that marketing tactics are effective. Behavioral marketing tools, with the ability to syndicate customer activity data to multiple ad networks simultaneously, eliminates the need to place additional ad network tags on unproven websites.

The future
Contextual marketing, which is the next phase of advanced marketing techniques, requires far more detailed information than session-based data, such as Customer A abandoned buying a shirt. It creates and maintains a detailed profile of the activities of each customer while on your site, noting not only their actions but also the context of those actions in terms of lifetime behaviors.

The context of behavior is what makes the difference in your ability to engage and maintain customers and prospects. It takes into account visitor attributes such as age, gender, or location. For example, Customer A is female, 25-35, is using onsite search with ‘bathing suit’ as a keyword, has looked at sarongs in the past, and is currently in the ‘sale’ section of the site. Such detailed information allows you to then create highly individualized and personalized marketing programs. And it’s only through contextual marketing that you acknowledge that visitors to your site typically have multiple interactions with you and your company over a long period of time.

Here’s another example of the value of contextual marketing: Prospect B found your site by searching for a specific keyword. They view the information about your new software package and then leave. Later that month you decide to send a targeted email campaign to all visitors that looked at the new software package and your behavioral marketing data tells you that Prospect B is in this category. However, if you were taking a contextual marketing approach, you’d know that Prospect B had already returned to your site, purchased your new software package and requested online support. Behavioral marketing does not allow visibility across multiple sessions, so you wouldn’t know that you sent Prospect B the wrong message.

The ability to capture data about all visitors and over their entire lifetime, as well as understand other attributes, addresses these problems. Contextual marketing involves tailoring messages to the specific interests or needs of an individual or group of visitors as evidenced by their onsite behavior and attributes.

When scratching the surface won’t do
By drilling down deeper into visitor behavior and broadening your view of online activity to encompass everyone and every movement, you can achieve multiple perspectives of your data. You can clearly see which links are bringing customers to your site, the campaigns that are driving conversion, the products and categories customers prefer, the onsite search terms used to navigate your site or the revenue visitors generate for you in any given session or over their entire lifetime.

Contextual marketing will also allow businesses to look at the interrelationships of various channels and campaigns to determine the best time to serve a particular ad or landing page. This is where businesses can fine-tune marketing tactics for maximum success - quickly and comprehensively.

Credit where credit’s due
Multiple interfaces come into play in the conversion of a site visitor to a customer. Traditionally, marketers attribute value only to a single influence (the first or last touch) but to truly understand the impact of each campaign you need to attribute conversion across a range of channels and at various times in the customer lifecycle.

With both behavioral marketing now, and contextual marketing in the future, you can accurately measure how these marketing channels and programs contribute to attracting new customers, drive conversions and encourage deep, meaningful sessions. As a result, you can give appropriate credit to all marketing avenues that influence a sale, a registration, a booking or other conversion to get a true picture of the value of each campaign. To offer another example; Prospect Z received an email from you with a link to your website. They followed the prompt, clicked through to your site, looked around for a few minutes and then left. Two weeks later, the same person finds your site again but this time through a keyword search. They spend some time reading your news online and then head to the contact page and email you. To what do you attribute this lead? Most marketers utilizing behavioral marketing data and tactics will attribute this lead generation to the keyword search when in fact the original direct mail played the most important role in getting the prospect’s attention. You can argue that the keyword search was also vital but in fact neither would have succeeded in taking the site visitor to the next stage of the sales cycle in isolation.

Bridging the gap between offline and digital
While many marketers have evolved to take on the digital media world and all its rich opportunities, most continue to operate their offline marketing activities separately.

For many, interaction with your organization and brand takes place offline and online. Facilities such as stores, offices and call centers play a valuable role in driving lead generation and customer satisfaction. But how do you capture offline visitor data and make it meaningful in a contextual marketing capacity? You need to merge online data with offline data sources, such as your CRM database or your customer loyalty database. This is the only way that you can get a clear picture of each and every customer or prospect.

It’s not that difficult to do and by performing analyses across all channels and using data to create customer-centric profiles you can understand behaviors holistically and better target and serve your market.

What’s next?
The adoption of behavioral marketing within mainstream marketing programs and the use of contextual marketing starting to rise, the more sophisticated marketers are acknowledging the value of understanding their customers’ relationship with the brand. Behavioral data in addition to contextual data is what enhances a company’s ability to deliver the right message at the right time in the right way.

As contextual marketing becomes the norm, a new group of thought leaders will emerge. They’ll drive a need for new technology that makes tracking and understanding online visitors even easier. Generating automated but highly personalized marketing campaigns will be a breeze and offline data integration fundamental to day-to-day marketing activity will no longer continue to derail marketing departments.

Microsoft's Windows 7 gets released to manufacturing

Aw snap, one of the final hurdles on the way to October 22nd has been passed: Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2, too) has been released to manufacturing. A post over on The Windows Blog explains that this build (7600) underwent tons of scrutiny and tweaking before being deemed sufficient for release, and considering that we know you're anxious for details on dates, hear this:

"The RTM code will be delivered to our partners within the next few days who will then start preparing to deliver some amazing new products timed to hit at General Availability (GA) of Windows 7 on October 22nd. As always, current Windows Volume License customers, MSDN subscribers and TechNet subscribers will get first customer access, getting Windows 7 on August 6 (MSDN/TechNet) and August 7 (VL), and Windows Server 2008 R2 the second half of August."

So, there you have it -- now, are you prepared to wait until early August to get your download on? Nah, we thought not. The full announcement is posted after the break.

Update: Looks like some Microsoft employees were so excited by the RTM sign-off that they made a celebratory video. See it for yourself just after the break!



Title: Windows 7 Has Been Released to Manufacturing

Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division, has just announced on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog that Windows 7 has reached the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone.

As I mentioned previously, RTM officially happens only after sign-off occurs. What happens is a build gets designated as a RTM contender after going through significant testing and meeting our quality bar for RTM. Then, it goes though all the validation checks required for RTM including having all languages of that build completed. If all the validation checks have passed – sign-off for RTM can occur. Today after all the validation checks were met, we signed off and declared build 7600.16385 as RTM.

Also happening very shortly, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will get on stage for his keynote address to the Microsoft field community at MGX in Atlanta. MGX is an internal Microsoft event held every year. This is where we bring in our folks in the field from around the world and talk about selling Microsoft's latest products. We're a global company and this event is super important to us. As you can imagine, Windows 7 is a hot topic at this year's MGX and we're anxious to hear what Steve has to say, and I will update that here.

Not only is RTM an important milestone for us – it's also an important milestone for our partners. Today's release is the result of hard work and collaboration with our partners in the industry to make Windows 7 a success. We delivered Windows 7 with predictable feature set on a predictable timetable that allowed OEMs to focus on value and differentiation for their customers.

Our customers told us what they want (and expect) and we defined those specific experiences and then built features to support them (like HomeGroup and the Windows Taskbar enhancements). Our customers also told us that "fundamentals" on both the hardware and software side was extremely important. Windows 7 today runs great on the broadest array of hardware types ranging from netbooks to the high end gaming machines. We worked closely with OEMs so that their PCs ignite features in Windows 7 to excite their customers.

Of course, today's release is also the result of the amazing amount of feedback we received from the millions of people who tested Windows 7 – from Beta to RC. We actually had over 10 million people opt-in to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). That's a lot of people opting in to help us make Windows 7 a solid release. Through CEIP, our engineers were guided by customer feedback all the way to RTM. We also have had a great group of beta testers who have dedicated a great deal of their time to testing Windows 7 too. A special thank you goes out to all the people who helped test Windows 7.

I'd also like to give a shout-out to my friends over on the Windows Server Team. Today they are also announcing that Windows Server 2008 R2 has RTM'd. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 together can help businesses cut costs and increase productivity. Click here to read their blog post on Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM.

The RTM code will be delivered to our partners within the next few days who will then start preparing to deliver some amazing new products timed to hit at General Availability (GA) of Windows 7. And going forward, I expect to be showcasing MANY of these new products here on The Windows Blog.

We continue to be overwhelmed at the community's response to Windows 7 and it has been an extremely rewarding experience to witness. We hope the enthusiasm will continue to grow even more as our partners build amazing experiences with their products and Windows 7.

Open source Adobe flash Player

Adobe open sources Flash platforms

On Tuesday Adobe launched the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), a rich media player platform. OSMF was previously part of a project codenamed Strobe.

Adobe also open sourced the Text Layout Framework (TLF), a typography platform for web apps.

"Adobe is committed to providing core Flash platform technologies to the community as open source," said Dave McAllister, director of standards and open source at Adobe, in a statement. "By releasing OSMF and TLF as open source, we are helping facilitate the creation and sharing of best practices for media players and rich text-based web application development."

Adobe announced that it was collaborating with content and application delivery company Akamai on the Open Video Player initiative, which was founded by Akamai. The two companies will also collaborate on OSMF.

Adobe Flash is in direct competition with Microsoft's Silverlight rich-media technology. Microsoft launched Silverlight 3 earlier this month.

Silverlight is based on .NET -- the open source implementation of .NET is Mono. Microsoft has assisted Mono development. The open source version of Silverlight is called Moonlight, which is based on Mono, and sponsored by Novell. Moonlight enables Silverlight content to run on Linux.

This article was originally posted on ZDNet UK

Electromagnetic invisibility a precursor to the real thing?

This could either be that one giant leap, or just another in a long sequence of multidirectional small steps on the Quixotic quest for undetectability. So-called dc metamaterials are the chief culprit for inciting our interest anew, as researchers from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have found a way to use them to render metallic objects invisible to low frequency electromagnetic waves. Composed of irregular networks of superconductors, the metamaterials are capable of granting superpowers altering the magnetic field of materials, and in theory, this advance could aid magnetic imaging in medical settings and also help cloak military vessels from magnetic detection. Of course, there's still the whole "oh, now we need a working prototype" conundrum, but hey, at least we've got the gears turning in the right direction.

[Via PhysOrg]