Thread Title: Vodium: Linking from Google result to a particular point in a video Thread Url: http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/stein/archives/006361.html Thread Description:

This is actually very impressive.

Try this:

Do a search on Google for the phrase "innovation-based cultures"

Now, click on the first result. The listing should be "NICK VALERY Our next session is on the innovators themselves. Who ..."

That should take you to a page, which opens a window. In that window, you'll see a video of a presentation (along with synched-slides and a rolling transcript). The spot in the video to which you are taken is not the beginning of the video, but rather (and this is the cool part), the spot in the video in which the phrase "innovation-based cultures" is said. This trick would work with any phrase in the text. It's just that this result scores #1 for that unique phrase.

his is the handiwork of a company called Vodium and it definitely points to a compelling future. This is not the result of Google's video search. It's the result of Vodium's ability to make the transcript of a speech indexable and linked to the video itself.

I am not sure, however, if Vodium is partnered with Google to do this. Does anyone know?

Thread Title: Rackspace hates Yahoo? Or Vice Versa? Thread Url: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4030 Thread Description:

How funny is THAT? - Well, not very funny at all for anyone hosted on Rackspace i guess..

Yahoo's Tim Mayer said:

A customer of a hosting company like rackspace may have a customer that is being hit by our crawler and not realize who it is so they report the IP to rackspace or another provider and they block the IP at the router level. This would cause other SE to have access and for us not to have access.

Muppets...

via barry

Thread Title: Building Software That Is Interoperable By Design Thread Url: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/02-03interoperability.asp Thread Description:

Bill Gates has issued a letter to Microsoft customers that outlines an intention to design it's software with interoperability in mind, primarily in the form of XML

Simply put, interoperability is a proven approach for dealing with the diversity and heterogeneity of the marketplace. Today I want to focus on two major thrusts of Microsoft’s product interoperability strategy: First, we continue to support customers’ needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of "interoperability by design" across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities.

and from beta news

"I think Microsoft is premature trumpeting the open-format messaging. And to be clear, by any definition typically applied to file formats, Office isn't open," Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox told BetaNews.

But Gates made clear in his letter that interoperability does not equate to open source. He said that interoperability is about how different software systems work together, regardless of licensing and development. Gates claimed that open source could actually have a detrimental effect on making software interoperable.

The comments in the Beta news piece are not kind - much talk of FUD heh...

Thread Title: Time-Warner Owns More than 5 Million Shares of Google Thread Url: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050204-100243 Thread Description:

Bearing in mind all of the talk about Yahoo being a media company and Google being a tech firm and how that relates to predicted market share and growth for both companies it's interesting to note that Time Warner own 5 Million shares in Google.

Find the SEC filing here and see this Cnet report also

Thread Title: Defending the Mistake Thread Url: http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2005/02/defending-mistake.html Thread Description:

When a company makes a mistake, there is almost always one option that is taken: The wrong option.

Defending the mistake, despite everybody knowing a mistake was made is bad news. It breeds mistrust, and creates a serious "them and us" feeling amongst those that have to live with the consequences of the mistake.

The worst part of the defending the error problem is everyone knows that a mistake was made. Well, everyone but the decision maker, who refuses to acknowledge the problem at all.

Since the decision maker is often the business owner, there is little the other people affected by the bad choice can do, to help with the problem. They can try to offer suggestions, advice, and cost effective alternatives, but those ideas are often flatly rejected in many cases.

Personally i've nothing but respect for any company i deal with when, inevitably they make a mistake but, deal with it swiftly, professionally and apologise for it. It just goes to prove that not only are they human, but also that in a crisis, i can depend on them to sort it out.

Dealing with Mistakes Publically

Why not turn a mistake into an opportunity? There really is no need for a mistake (barring loss of life etc..) to be a total disaster - especially online. If you're seen to act upon the problem quickly, professionally and to the injured parties satisfaction publically then IMO it can only do your business good. Some thoughts on ways to do this:

Enable comments on product sections - and monitor them! Intall a forum for customer support - and man it! Issue a public notice on the website about the mistake, and again, enable comments and answer them..

Why don't people get this? To err is human, to admit error and handle it correctly and publically is a marketing & PR opportunity

original post found via Seth

Thread Title: www.threadwatch.net Thread Url: http://www.threadwatch.net Thread Description:

This post has now been altered to reflect subsequent developments.

On Friday, I discovered that Brett Tabke, the owner of WebmasterWord had registered the domain Threadwatch.net

Brett has since posted in the comments of this post as NeoSeo stating that he only registered the domain to pass it along to me:

Were did you want that domain name xfered too Nick?

It was mentioned on wmw that it was not owned - so I imedicatly grabbed it to save for you.

fyi: I've done the same for: searchengineforums.org/net/info/biz searchenginewatch/org/net/biz/co.uk/ wired.au/ and about 50 other top domains names. I've never made a penny off any of them - lost alot of money doing it.

Someone did the same for me about 5 years back and I vowed that if I saw expired domain names come up, I would save them if I knew the person and give them to them. All I ask is that you pass along the idea to someone else.

I also recieved an email to the same affect: Asking me to make a transfer request so that Brett could authorize it. I've attempted to do this twice but the domain is locked.

At present, the whois information reads as follows:

Registrant: WebmasterWorld Inc (THREADWATCH-NET-DOM) 3801 cap tx hwy e240-181 Austin, TX 78746 usa [removed some phone numbers etc]

Domain Name: THREADWATCH.NET Status: PROTECTED

Awaiting the outcome

Although the intention has been said to be simply to pass the domain on to me, this has not happened yet. It shouldn't mean there is anything funny going on, as im sure Brett has other things to do during the weekend than mess around with domain names - which does beg the question, why register it at all however - So, for the moment im waiting for one of several possible outcomes:

Thread Title: JeevesGuy Exposed! Thread Url: http://blog.ask.com/2005/02/jeevesguy_expos.html Thread Description:

Kaushal Kurapati has posted on the Jeeves blog the companies intention to increase their presense in the Search forums - and better yet, to drop the stupid nicknames - Yaay!

I know we have at least one or two of the ASK people registered here so you better come out now and damn well post something useful! heh...

Thread Title: Google Latent Semantic Indexing Technology Thread Url: http://www.seobook.com/archives/000657.shtml Thread Description:

Aaron Wall takes a look at Googles Latent Semantic Indexing technology in light of recent shake ups in the main index. He says that Google have increased the weight of the LSI part of the overall algorithm and that does seem likely as many around the web concur.

A brief definition:

Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant. This simple method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content, might classify a document collection. Although the LSI algorithm doesn't understand anything about what the words mean, the patterns it notices can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.

I've also been told that Using Semantic Analysis to Classify Search Engine Spam - an older stanford document is well worth considering when looking at recent changes...

So, questions for the technically inclined as my eyes start to glass over with this stuff :-)

Is this what is going on at Google? What's the best way of handling it?

Go ahead and thrash out your theories, it's all speculation but it certainly seems likely so getting to grips with it is a must...

Thread Title: MSN Search's RSS Feeds Thread Url: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050203-180553 Thread Description:

As Danny has just pointed out, you can now get your MSN results in RSS in a much simpler manner - just key in whatever it is you want to monitor and check for the orange RSS button at the bottom of the page.

Here's a really dull feed to plug in and try :)

Unfortunately you can't jig the RSS to show results from out of the country you're in like you can with the normal SERPS - they say they're working on that.

Thread Title: Guardian Offers RSS Newsreader for Download Thread Url: http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_02_03.shtml#012132 Thread Description:

There's been a lot of speculation and talk of the printed press' future online in recent months, even including this wonderful movie on the future of media in general but little seems to come out of all of this talk. Particularly from the newspapers themselves.

However, whereas im sure this isn't the killer app newspapers need, it's heartening to read that the Guardian will be pushing an RSS reader as download to help users keep abreast of content. The app is currently being offered to a limited number of users for trial.

The reader itself is called Newspoint and was produced by Cosenda. It comes prefilled with a whole bunch of feeds from the newspaper making it ready to go without fuss or thought.

Overture Providing Ads in the Feeds and Newsreader

Overture will be providing the ads both in the app itself and the feeds, with some room for the newspapers that partner with Cosenda to also provide dedicated ad feeds to the system. Cosenda are also working with the LA Times and courting a whole bunch more media companies as part of their strategy.

Seems like a fine idea to me.

Thread Title: 10 Things Google Could Do as a Domain Name Registrar Thread Url: http://www.circleid.com/article/930_0_1_0_C/ Thread Description:

I love a good conspiracy theory, they're just so much fun... This piece threadlinked above gives, as the title suggests, 10 things Google could do with it's new status of Domain Registar - some of them are rather good, i'll list the main points but check the article for more details:

Organize a Mega Whois database - with G technology, think what they might be able to do with all that data. Blog Hosting - think Blogger Mining link networks (love this one..) no.4 is lame Just so that people don't discover what the next Google product will be? Simply to have more control over thier domains Use with Google Adsense for new domains My personal favorite: To start an ID service - buy a domain from Google and get an ID, they then track your sites via your ID and other registrars would have to interface with it so that you could get into Google - heheh... Sell you the domain, host your site, give you advertising and cut out the SEO's er.. no.10 is pretty much the same - Geocities on steriods...

Ok, the Threadwatch small plastic trumpet award for this week goes to anyone that can top that little lot for "tin foil hattedness" :-)

Added: Ooops, where are my manners? via Andy Beal

Thread Title: The click, the fraud and the ugly side of search Thread Url: http://www.netimperative.com/2005/02/01/click_fraud Thread Description:

Mike Grehan has a great article posted over at NetImperitive linked above - it's an interesting read for sure but what interests me more at the moment is the fact that it seems that at least once a week you see something about click fruad.

This was not the case even a year ago as far as i recall, it's always been a problem, but one usually discussed in the seo forums rather than major newspapers right?

Even investors are looking at it as a reason not to buy Google stock. (i posted this elsewhere but i think it bears repeating..)

Google grew earnings via AdSense which is now close to half of its revenues. AdSense has the highest click fraud rate of any CPC product. In fact, many marketers refuse to use contextual advertising because of publishers clicking on their own ads which leads to low ROI

from always-on Funny how the success of Search and the mainstreaming of Search Marketing suddenly makes all the problems search marketers have been facing for years so much more in yer face...

Thread Title: Help me fix a UK Government website please. Thread Url: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=32918 Thread Description:

Dylan, a poster at SEW asks

Hi Guys,

Please help me!

I am helping out on a webiste www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk and have been told that the homepage contains 124k worth of .NET Viewstate which I am told is effecting the amount of time it takes for the website to upload.

Please could someone take a look at the website and have a look at the viewstate .net Scripting because I am no the best in this area.

Thanks Guys

Dylan

Now if he isn't pulling our legs can you believe a UK government website asking for help in changing their code via a web based forum? Knowing how coders communicate and ask questions and request help via Instant messengers, email etc. then I can believe this.

What makes it worse is the website is for the Information Commissioner in the UK.

We oversee and enforce compliance with both the Data Protection Act 1998 and Freedom Of Information Act 2000.

Anyone, could go along, advice on the problem and drop a link script, a touch of cloaking or worse in the guise of helping.

As a Brit, and if true, I am concerned!

Thread Title: Is this a Google atom bomb? Thread Url: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/02/is_this_a_googl.php Thread Description:

For several months now I’ve been troubled by a nagging and unpleasant thought that there is a potentially large vulnerability in Google’s Adwords business model. I mentioned it for the first time the other day to a couple of friends and they urged me that I should publish it and not sit on it because it is better to get it out earlier than later.

If there is a problem with the business model then it can be dealt with while there are still mostly insiders holding the stock rather than Joe Public.

Okay, this is it:

A billionaire has arranged to give $100m to the first person that clicks on a special link that looks like a Google text ad.

In my opinion, you dont need to give $100m away, it could be $1m every couple weeks. Some company could make a game of this. "Find the lucky ad and win $1m".

Make the contest random. Once the pattern is random, the value of ads gets distorted and keywords lose value.

There would be two conflicts here then. How do I know that the user really clicked on the ad AND how do I know the value of the keywords werent distorted based on this "game".

There is a way where brands can direct traffic by paying a set fee.

Thread Title: Dear AdWords [referer spoofing req'd] Thread Url: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum81/4529.htm Thread Description:

I'm getting reports that something major maybe happening with Adwords - the thread above by BakedJake suggests large and irratic jumps in usually calm, predictable stats for larger advertisers.

It may be that a major shift in the Adwords algorithm is taking place, and then it could have something to do with shifts in datacenters that also appear to be happening right now.

And let's not discount the introduction of the Adwords API as if there wasn't already enough to be paranoid about heh...

So, any Adwords guys want to add fuel to the fire or douse it?