U.S. Border Guards Can Googled You

You should never bullshit with your location on your blog !

Firefox 1.5 : Again a Problem with Extensions

Firefox 1.5 is out of beta and again with some extensions turn-off. Greasemonkey and SearchStatus are no more working but AdBlock and GmailNotifier still working. Hope the first two will update in a day or two, because I gonna have to go back to 1.06 soon :-(

Update : I love it. The SearchStatus extension have been update but you have to go here to get it. Hope the Find Update of the next Extension manager will correct this. Also the GreaseMonkey is almost out. In bin file here.
Update 2 : Here is the GreaseMonkey blog were you have the XPI file.
Update 3 : Some bugs still occurred in GreaseMonkey 0.6.2. You have now to click on the monkey face logo in your status bar to say your installed scripts. Some work and other not :-(

A New Player Soon in the Classified Ads : MSN Fremont

It's here in beta. Other info at Yardley. Seem to be a style of Google Base and Local merged together.

Tags: fremont , msn , classified , ads

Understanding the Goog Boom

According to Forrester Research Inc., households now spend at least 30% of their media time online, while the Internet has just 5% of total ad spending.

Last year U.S. advertising spending was an estimated $300 billion to $400 billion.

Just $10 billion of that was spent online, even less than for ads in the Yellow Pages.

Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online ad revenue grew 34% in the latest quarter, with total 2005 revenue on track to grow by 25%, to at least $12 billion; newspaper ad revenue, by contrast, is slated to grow less than 3% this year.

From Googling for Gold article at Business Week.

Tags: Google , goog , advertising

RSS and Metrics

I totally agree with Jeff Jarvis about statistics and RSS feed.

Tags: rss , statistics

Technorati Mini

Nice little new application in Technorati. After a regular search use the "View in Mini" to open up a small window to follow up each minute what is say on the Blogosphere about a specific keyword or keyphrase. Nice tool to follow a viral marketing campaign or a buzz around something !

Tags: Mini

Google Space

Google UK have found a new way to a test their most-up-to-date products. An Internet cafe-style computing booth in London's Heathrow Airport !
Via ThreadWatch

Tags: Google Space

Goog : 25 Billion $ Increase of the Capitalization in less than a month

If Goog keep that pace, Microsoft will be second at the end of next year ;-)

Tags: goog , capitalization

Google testing Pay-Per-Call Advertising

Google is testing Pay-Per-Call advertising. When you will seen a green phone icons in ads, just type in your phone number and Google will connect you for free and without revealing your phone number to the advertiser.
Screenshots and more information at Greg Yardley's Blog.

Tags: google , pay-per-call , click-to-call

Froogle now for US only ?

A bit weird than in Google Local you can pinpoint the merchants selling a specific item within a designated ZIP code and Postal Code but in Froogle only Zip Code works ?

Tags: froogle , canadian , postal code

Dipsie finally out as a... cloaking service

Dipsie who was supposed to be the next Google killer with 10 billion pages, in summer 2004, as finally put out an... Cloaking service ?!? This new service, starting at $29.99 a month for 50 pages or less - to have their sites crawled and optimized by Dipsie.

When you click on the Dipsie dCloak Beta you are redirect on an new IP address with no privacy policy before to give your email address ?
Before you log in, you should remember this on the Google guidelines :

Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

Via SiliconBeat

Tags: dipsie , cloaking

Jux2 is back

Great news for the searchers. After the sale of Jux2 on Ebay at the end of october, Jux2 is back and seem improved from the last time I use it. You can have sub-site links from a domain and a new Jux2blog . Nice jobs guys !

Technorati Tags: jux2, jux2 blog

GoogleTernet

This remarkable story by Robert Cringely seem to me as a very good prediction. Seem at beginning a big fiction, but nobody 14 month ago have predicted the Google action will sell above $400 today !

Technorati Tags: googleternet, data center, dark fiber, network

Google Sitemaps Security Flaw

Google Sitemaps Stats let open your site traffic statistics to everyone if your 404 handling is badly done.
Funny to see that the word failure is the number one provider (read the comments) of the traffic of the White House site.

22 day later and 10 billion more : Goog at $400

It's a bit incredible that's going so fast !

Google Base : One on Six for the moment

Here is the post of the 25th of last october on Google Base:

Google Base will change de face of the Web if...

* If the upcoming Google Base will allow in a near future the possibility of GUI (graphic template to be add to dataset)
* If the data is well integrated in the SERP's (search engine results page)
* If they avoid major bugs in deployment
* If they can avoid spammers (were the Captcha ?)
* If it include a payment system (Google Purchases or Google Wallet)
* If it have a well developed Google Base API

For now, only the deployment seem to be ok !

Technorati Tags: google base

24/7 Real Media 2006 Predictions

I totally agree and specially on number one, two and ten.
BTW : 24/7 Media should look at their site with Firefox. Remarkably weak !!!

Google Rent-a-Book ?

Seem another way to bring cash in !

Google Analytics Tough Start

Google have release Urchin services for free under the Google Analytics name after the march acquisition by Google. This service who allow free statistics for your Web site. Google Analytics will be integrated with Google AdWords and will offer a new interface within existing accounts.

Analytics is down for the moment !

Google have badly under-estimate the popularity of the new service. This type of application should never been down because of enormous demand. This will worry people to have some blanks in the log files data even if the traffic is still logged in.

After Google Base, Google Print Advertisements

Seem Google want to explore each sectors where he can make some cash of it. A bit funny to see the same week after the Base/Automat plan was release that Google will explore the print advertisements market. Update : Live!

Technorati Tags: Google Base, Google Print Advertisements, Google Automat

2006 will be the Start of the End of Traditionnal Media Piggy Bank

First the fact, and follow closely by the evidence. Who will the first one to change drastically his "old busyness" model ?

Riots, Adwords and Google Bombing

Since at least three days when you make a query on the french term for riots (émeutes en français) you can see an Adwords for a site who promote the Nicolas Sarkozy campaign. Nothing really new here, some canadian politician like Belinda Stronach have done that in the past !

But the funniest part is when you make a query for Nicolas Sarkozy you'll get in first position the site IZNOGOUD (he's no good), a new movie from a french cartoon serie who's about a bad guy who want to take place of a good calife ;-) I'm not sure which one will bring in more traffic ?

Technorati Tags: riots, google bombing, nicolas sarkozy

Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization

Nice reminder for Web designer. Specially this advice of W3C who is ignored by more than 80% of the sites I saw each day !

Technorati Tags: Accessibility, seo, simple

Google Accounts : Google Base is gone

Google Base is no more in the Google Accounts menu.

I was also wondering why the Google Base login page is not off ?
Simply to log you in and track more info on your search behavior !

Technorati Tags: google base, google accounts

China : New Skype Filtering Trial and a new Alibaba promotion of Yahoo! after the bad press of september

Verso Technologies announced a trial of Verso's NetSpective M-Class Solution to filter Skype and other P2P communications with China Telecom.

Alibaba re-launches Yahoo! China as search brand to get on to the leader Baidu.
Note : This move came 2 month after Human rights groups disclosed in September that Yahoo's Hong Kong arm provided information about e-mail that led to a 10-year prison term for a Chinese reporter, convicted under state secrets laws.

Walmart afraid of... Google

"We watch Google very closely at Wal-Mart," said Jim Breyer, a member of Wal-Mart's board.

In Google, Wal-Mart sees both a technology pioneer and the seed of a threat, said Mr. Breyer, who is also a partner in a venture capital firm. The worry is that by making information available everywhere, Google might soon be able to tell Wal-Mart shoppers if better bargains are available nearby.

Wow, even the biggest brick and mortar store seem to wake up !

User Profiling Results at Google ?

Seem Google have filed a new patent for placed content ordering in search results. More on that at this excellent scoop by Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal.

BTW, I'm not sure they haven't start that yet on local domain sites. I saw more and more difference in results ranking between local domain like Google.ca and Google.com.

Technorati Tags: google, user profiling, ranking,

Flashy Yahoo Maps Makeover

Yahoo have release a new version of his mapping service with a new improve interface in Flash. Why Flash while Google and MSN use Ajax ? Where the satellite pictures ? Why no local data in Canada ?

The interface is neat and Google should add the update of local data when you move the map like Yahoo and Virtual Earth does.

But sometimes the road layer is badly placed. There is a tsunami in Charlevoix :)

Pinch me please : Carlyle Group involved in microchip identification of over 1 million dogs in a China province

Not seem to be an hoax ? Not the same Carlyle Group in there ? Seem to be the same ! For dogs, in China ?
Technorati Tags: political, chinese, disaster, carlyle

Maplandia : An Enhanced Google Maps Directory

MapLandia is a kind of Google Maps directory mixed with an travel agency links provider. You can drill down by continent, country, province/state, region and finally alphabetically by cities or little spots name. You can also find Google Earth link to the same spot.

But why I post this site here ?

It's because the Map layer used in the MapLandia site called gazetteer data is way better than Google Maps and even the Google Earth for rural region. You can find specific spot's name you'll never see in other maps (online or even the majority of normal one). The structure of the link is also very good to share with others like :
http://www.maplandia.com/canada/quebec/le-val-saint-francois/valcourt/



Via Philipp

Yahoo pushing his site on some of his international site with the Google keyword

It's not implemented yet on all of the international sites, but in Australia, France, Italia and few others, when you search specifically for the word Google you'll see a new input box to search in Yahoo at the top of organic listing using the same list as Google Suggest: Update : (Was my browser list)

Google Print Back in Scanning Mode

Yes, Google is resuming its controversial project to digitise millions of books and make them searchable on the net. But don't worry too soon. Look what the Google Blog say about the new direction it's taking :

Google's job is to help people find information. Google Print's job is to make it easier for people to find books. When you do a Google search, your results now include pointers to those books whose contents, stored in the Google Print index, contain your search terms. For many books, these results will, like an ordinary card catalog, contain basic bibliographic information and, at most, a few lines of text where your search terms appear.

We show more than this basic information only if a book is in the public domain, or if the copyright owner has explicitly allowed it by adding this title to the Publisher Program (most major U.S. and U.K. publishers have signed up). We refer people who discover books through Google Print to online retailers, but we don't make a penny on referrals. We also don't place ads on Google Print pages for books from our Library Project, and we do so for books in our Publishing Program only with the permission of publishers, who receive the majority of the resulting revenue. Any copyright holder can easily exclude their titles from Google Print -- no lawsuit is required.

Seem not so controversial for me for the moment.