WebGuild

Microsoft Seeks Partners For a New Run at Yahoo

2008-07-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

Microsoft positioning itself for a new run for Yahoo Inc.'s search business, has approached other media companies in recent days about joining it in a deal that would effectively lead to Yahoo's breakup, say people familiar with the discussions. More>>

Harvard Says The Long Tail Is Really Short

2008-07-02T22:14:00.000-07:00

According to Harvard associate professor Anita Elberse the The Long Tail popularized by Chris Anderson is flawed. It was a compelling idea: In the digitized world, there’s more money to be made in niche offerings than in blockbusters. The data tell a different story. The report analyzes the implications for retailers and marketers and how they can prosper from the phenomenon.

Microsoft Launches Subscription Services For Office

2008-07-02T15:39:00.000-07:00

Microsoft announced the launch an all-in-one security and productivity software subscription service for consumers called Equipt that combines Microsoft Office and Windows Live OneCare. There service will be sold through Circuit City starting in this month. The service will cost $69.99 for a one-year subscription. Each subscription will be good for three home computers.

According to Ina Fried of CNET, the idea behind the subscription service is to convert more new PC buyers into Office buyers. It plays on the fact that although most people don't buy Office at the same time as a computer, many do purchase a security software subscription and Microsoft is trying to tap into the fact that while many people would rather find a copy of Office that they don't have to pay for (either an older version or a pirated copy) they are willing to pay for security software.

Web Usability Video

2008-07-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

Here is the video of the Web Usability Event on June 25 featuring Tom Chi, Senior Director - User Experience, Yahoo!, Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Applications User Experience, Oracle, and David Nelson, Sr. Experience Designer, Adobe Systems.

Cisco To Invest In Web Startups In Russia

2008-07-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

Cisco's chief John Chambers routinely says "Market transitions are built on catching them right, and if you miss them it's almost impossible to recover." Hence Cisco hopes to capitalize on the next market transition by teaming up with Russia's Almaz Capital Partners to create a $60 million fund for the region's technology, media and telecoms sector. "Targets could include communications service providers, media companies, and content development companies," said the company. In April 2007, Cisco made its first Russian investment putting in $18 million in etailer Ozon. "We see a lot of innovation in Russia. It's been developing for quite a while. I think it's the right time, and the right transition in the market for us to participate," said Hilton Romanski, Vice President of Cisco's Global Corporate Development. It's being able to have visibility and insight and learning into new technologies and new markets. In Russia in particular, it's being able to understand what kinds of innovations are going on in the startup community," said Romanski.

Ask.com Drops Maps Switches To Microsoft Earth

2008-07-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

Ask.com has migrated off of their mapping platform and onto Microsoft's Virtual Earth platform. Ask follows suit of many portal sites letting Microsoft make the heavy investments in infrastructure, imagery, photography acquisition, data updates, etc hence allowing them to focus on developing applications that benefit end users. Other portals incorporating Microsoft's Virtual Earth include YellowPages.com, Superpages.com, and WhitePages.com among many.

600 Million Internet Users At Risk Due To Browser

2008-07-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

This diagram shows the Web browser Insecurity Iceberg, which represents the number of Internet users at risk because they don’t use the latest most secure Web browsers and plug-ins to surf the Web. This paper has quantified the visible portion of the Insecurity Iceberg (above the waterline) using passive evaluation techniques - which amounted to more than 600 million users at risk not running the latest most secureWeb browser version in June 2008. More >>

Google Learns To Crawl Flash Files

2008-07-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Google has improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology. In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find. More >>

Jerry Yang's Investor Presentation

2008-06-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

Here is the presentation Jerry Yang will make to shareholders on August 1, 2008. It was filed with the SEC today.

In it, Yang will make the case for:
1) Supporting the current board slate
2) Provides Details of Microsoft Discussions
3) Benefits of Google Agreement
4) Progress on Strategic Plan

View presentation >>

Dell Offers Video Chat Application

2008-06-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Dell has teamed up with SightSpeed to deliver "Dell Video Chat" a communications application now being bundled with Dell's new Studio laptops. The application also includes instant messaging and Internet voice phone capability for a full suite of communications options. Video chat is gaining acceptance as a way to stay in touch with friends and family across the country or the globe.

The application is pre-installed on the systems and is activated with one mouse click. SightSpeed has also made it easy for users to share the application with their friends and family who can simply download the "invitee" client program by visiting http://www.sightspeed.com/dellvideochat.

The video chat will include the following features:
· A completely redesigned and streamlined Dell user interface
· Free, unlimited video chat worldwide
· Free, unlimited voice chat worldwide
· Free, unlimited text chat worldwide
· 4-Way Group Chat (voice, video or text)
· Low-rate worldwide calling to ordinary phones – 2 cents per minute in the United States and Canada
· 5 minutes of free phone calling is included with every Dell system
· The ability to purchase custom phone numbers and area codes
· Presence indicators
· Message Center: All video/voice calls Inbox
· High-quality Video Mail
· Video Mail recording of up to 3 minutes
· Storage of an unlimited number of Video Mail messages
· Notification of missed calls and receipt of Voice/Video mail and e-mail
· Reporting of Video/Voice call history

Because SightSpeed is based completely on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and global standards for setting up and ending voice and video calls over the Internet, it works across a wide variety of computing platforms. As a result, users will be able to conduct video, voice and/or text chat with users of devices on any platform. SightSpeed claims it offers the highest-quality, full-motion, 30-frames-per-second video with clear audio and no delay; it delivers a superior video and audio experience with low to no latency over variable bandwidth conditions; and their patented technology provides superior rate control for any bandwidth, handling of firewalls and video-codec optimization.

Turning The Long Tail To The Big Tail

2008-06-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

In a seminal article titled The Long Tail, published in October 2004 on Wired, Chris Anderson described a new niche strategy where it became possible to sell large numbers of unique items in relatively small quantities.

In fact, what would have been uneconomic in brick and mortar businesses was becoming possible AND profitable thanks to the Internet.

This concept of the “long tail” flourished and now applies to many other situations, such as domain names, for example, as well as (and especially) advertising. In particular since Google’s impressive conceptual – and commercial – innovation with the famous pair AdWords-AdSense.

In an interesting post on this matter, Scott Karp does an excellent job explaining wherein lies the innovation: factoring relevance into the auction model!

Let me explain: from 1999 to 2001, AdWords operated on a CPM basis, or cost per thousand impressions, the fee structure in fashion at the time, where advertisers were billed based on the number of impressions of their ads.

However, as Sergey Brin himself said, “It didn’t generate much money”.

In his book, The Search, John Battelle tells us that income from AdWords rose to about $85 million in 2001, while Overture earned $288 million the same year with its auction model operating on a CPC basis (cost per click, or the amount an advertiser pays for each click on its ad).

An auction system enables the advertiser to determine the cost per click incurred when users visit its site as a sponsored link. The starting bid is set at 0.15 $ per click. When the visitor enters keywords that were bid on, the search engine results page offers sponsored links, with the highest bidder’s site at the top of the list.

But Google couldn’t simply use Overture’s business model, unless they wanted a lawsuit. Even so, the lawsuit still happened and lasted more than two years, until the parties came to an agreement and dropped the suit.

However, it’s the essential difference between the two systems that enabled Google to defend itself and avoid a sentence: where Overture automatically linked the top ranking in the results to the highest bid value, Google introduced the idea of relevance, or rather popularity, with clickthrough rate (CTR), whose official definition is:

the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions).

In other words, the bid value now became just a component, factored by the applicable clickthrough rate. John Battelle explains it the most clearly:

(A)ssume further that Accountant One is willing to pay $1.00 per click, Accountant Two $1.25, and Accountant Three $1.50. On Overture's service, Accountant Three would be listed first, followed by Accountant Two, and so on. The same would be true on Google's service, but only until the service has enough time to monitor clickthrough rates for all three ads. If Accountant One, who paid $1.00 per click, was drawing more clickthroughs than Accountant Three, then Accoun- tant One would graduate to the top spot, despite his lower bid.

A tiny innovation, but it took Google from $85 million in revenue in 2001 to billions just 7 years later!

And that’s not all: since apparently no one as improved upon it, most of the major Internet players are still looking for a decent business model.

In fact, this notion of relevance is also at the source of PageRank, at the heart of Google’s success. They go hand in hand. A search marketer cuts to the chase: If you don't provide the results, you don't get the money...

Now, the other reason for mass adoption of Google’s advertising services is... the long tail, as John Battelle rightly describes (emphasis mine):

You think Amazon's got scale? You think eBay is huge? Mere drops in the bucket. Amazon's 2000 revenues were around $2.76 billion. But the Neil Moncreifs of the world, taken together, drove more than $25 billion across the Net that same year, according to U.S. government figures. That's the power of the Internet: it's a beast with a very, very long tail. The head-eBay, Amazon, Yahoo-may get all the attention, but the real story is in the tail.

The power of the Internet is in the tail!

This is how Google achieved such amazing success. It was the only one to match advertisers’ needs with the fuel they required in abundance on the Internet: RELEVANT content. With an innovative ad server that enables millions of small sites and blogs to monetize their content, or at least to hope to...

But where Yahoo! had a presence since the beginning – since well before Google and before running astray – today Jerry Yang's abdication hands Google 90% of the advertising pie practically on a silver platter (if antitrust authorities accept it... even as advertisers already devote about 70% of their search budgets to Google!). All the other ad servers combined share the remaining 10%.

Even so, in 2008 no one has any illusions anymore (as Emmanuel Parody commented caustically: AdSense paying for content? That’s a joke...) and UGC, even if it continues to be created at full tilt, is no longer monetized like it should be (has it ever been?). Leaving millions of content creators fed up with their content be reused and monetized by the Web giants without any satisfactory form of payment or revenue sharing.

* * *

Turning the tail...

A disruption in this success story is possible, however: it would just require turning the tail, to move from the long tail of UGC to the big tail, represented by the yellow part in the graph:

To illustrate my idea, in a predictable imbalance predicted indeed by Clay Shirky in 2003, the analysis of 433 blogs ranked by number of incoming links illustrated the concept of the long tail nicely, with at the head:

top two sites accounted for fully 5% of the inbound links between them,
top dozen (less than 3% of the total) accounted for 20% of the inbound links, and
top 50 blogs (not quite 12%) accounted for 50% of such links.

Now imagine an analysis of not 433 blogs, but tens of millions of blogs, sites, social network pages, etc.

Then you will understand that the head (the green part), which we will arbitrarily say equals 30% of sites/blogs/pages that would form the network’s core in the good old bow-tie theory (i.e., the core of most interconnected sites where the most links and traffic converge and are shared), no longer cuts it when the UGC mainstream now forms not the long tail, but the big tail of the Web, rather predominant today.

There is the real issue for UGC and the creators behind it: they lack representation: Everyone is mooching off their content to monetize it better than everyone else, but nobody really monetizes it at its fair value.

In fact, currently only the head attracts advertisers, while the tail is left to Google, which takes full advantage of it without fearing the inconsistencies...

My prediction is that the first player who succeeds in doing what Google did five years ago with AdSense, this time adapting relevance and fair revenue sharing for UGC, will introduce an even more formidable break with the past, with the added blessing of content creators, who are obviously the most harmed in and by the current system.

Turning the tail, moving from the long tail to the big tail, is the Internet’s next big challenge. Steve Ballmer himself says nothing less :

At the end of the day, this is about the ad platform. This is not about just any one of the applications. The most important application for the foreseeable future is search.

So we have all the data for the problem, and the first ad server that creates the RELEVANT mix to match advertisers’ needs on one side with the legitimate monetization expectations of content creators on the other side (matching the inventory of the latter based on the message of the former), will win the jackpot. Even if there are still a few unknowns.

Yahoo Exploring Cloud Computing Service

2008-06-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has formed a Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group, to explore getting into the business of selling pay-as-you-go cloud infrastructure to developers and companies. Yahoo has been building massive scale infrastructure for years, but the intent of the new organization is to streamline development by bringing the various people and teams working on the core technologies into a single group, said Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh said to Dan Farber.

Below is the statement Yahoo issued.

In order to expand its cloud computing capabilities, the Company will form a Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group, charged with developing a computing infrastructure that balances scalability with cost effectiveness. It will move all consumer-facing platform teams to the Audience Technology Group, led by Venkat Panchapakesan. In addition, it is putting new leadership in place behind Yahoo!'s search group, naming Prabhakar Raghavan to direct search strategy and Tuoc Luong as the interim leader of the search product team. Both Prabhakar and Tuoc will also continue in their roles as the leaders of Yahoo! Research and Search Engineering respectively. In addition, David Ku will lead the Advertising Technology Group within Search.

Omniture Rolls Out Online Survey Tool

2008-06-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Omniture has introduced a product called Survey that allows organizations to get insights into the attitudes and opinions of not just your customers, but also those of your partners and employees.

Omniture says Survey will help organizations stay connected to the eco-system of the influencers that shape how your business is perceived by quantify the continually evolving qualitative sentiments of their audience—mapping survey responses with customer behavior and other metrics.

What does that mean? Basically, services enables organizations to easily design, create and implement online surveys to accurately measure audience sentiment to take immediate action based on their responses by:

1. Measure Brand Perception - Understand how your customers perceive the different elements of your brand.
2. Improve Survey Design - Real-time survey results provide the insight to immediately enhance survey design to achieve desired outcomes.
3. Establish a Dialogue - Increase interaction and engagement by providing audiences with an opportunity to express their opinions.
4. Enrich Customer Profiles - View survey responses with web analytics data for a better understanding of customer persona.
5. Engage All Audiences - Improve employee motivation and strengthen partner engagement by acting upon perception measurements across all brand influencers.

Should YOU Mobile?

2008-06-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

For anyone interested:

Should YOU Mobile? – Opportunities & Challenges in the Mobile Space

"RainMakers Live!" Conference brought you by The National University of Singapore Entrepreneurs Association (NUSEA).

Date: Friday, June 27
Time: 5:30 – 9:00 p.m
Venue: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, 950 Page Mill Rd, Palo Alto.

Conference Theme:

RainMakers Live! Summer 2008 will bring together the leaders in the mobile applications and wireless space to discuss the topic "Should YOU Mobile? – Opportunities & Challenges in the Mobile Space". It will consist of a keynote speech, a panel discussion and an exhibition of some of the hottest mobile start-up in the Valley.

Speakers:

Sriram Viswanathan, VP of Mobility Solutions, Intel
Tim Danford, Partner, Storm Ventures
Bhaskar Roy, Co-Founder, Qik.com
Lewis Adams, CTO, GainSpan
Purnima Kochikar, Director of Strategy and Business Development, Nokia Enterprise Solutions

For more information on "RainMakers Live!" Conference, please visit: http://www.nusea.org/rainmakers2008/.

Building an All-Star Social Media / Web 2.0 Team

2008-06-27T01:11:00.000-07:00

If you could only bring 6 Social Media Pros to an island to start a Web 2.0 Marketing Department, who would they be?

Making it on Jeremiah's list of 'Social Computing Stategists' got me thinking about my team, what we do, what we want to do and what's next. My team is fairly new and we've been at it for about 9-months now and the various disciplines and skill sets of our team was built trial and error over the past few months. As we plan for the next fiscal year I can't help but think big so I started creating a list of all of the things a 'Social Media and Web 2.0' team should focus on (leaving out the boundaries of resources). Here's what I've come up with:

Social Media Strategist - In 'Alice in Wonderland', Lewis Carroll wrote "if you don't know where you want to be, it hardly matters which direction you take". At the core of every good team there’s a good plan. This is the person who pulls everything together. They build the Social Media Marketing plan and determine what the objective of the campaign is and therefore what tools should be utilized and how.

Community Manager – There are currently two communities that we have an active presence on - Facebook and NetPro having someone actively facilitate conversations in these communities would really take things to the next level.

Social Site Management – The great thing about engaging your customers in social media is that you can tweak your message depending on the audience. The tough thing about engaging your customers in social media is that your message could end up looking different for every audience. At the core of any marketing strategy lies a common message. We now have a presence on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Depending on the campaign we may leverage one or more of these channels and having someone to manage the communications and having it centrally executed is critical.

Blogging (including Micro-blogging) – Blogging is made up of two basic parts: content creation and content distribution. You could be channeling Shakespeare in your daily journal but if nobody knows about it, it won’t ever matter. Offering assistance to our bloggers to help optimize their posts for the search engines helping with suggestions on key or hot topics or sending out Twitters when new posts are live can make all the difference in the world.

Monitoring – If a tree falls in your community and you didn’t hear about it; WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU DOING THAT WAS SO IMPORTANT?!? Whether it's with Google Alerts, Nielson BuzzMetrics or TruCast, it's important to have an ear on what conversations are happening about our solutions so that we can actively participate in those conversations. Web

Innovations – This involves looking at the technolgoy our web pages use and determining if there are new capabilities available to better communicate or present something on our website. For example behavioral targetting, implementing widgets, or something as simple as adding Lightbox treatments can give your entire website a 'web 2.0' feel.

What do you think? What additional superpowers should a Social Media / Web 2.0 all-star team stock up on?

Web Usability Event Wrap-Up

2008-06-26T23:58:00.000-07:00

The Web Usability Event on June 25 was highly informative covering many issues of the day on building the usable web. Speakers Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Applications User Experience, Oracle; Tom Chi, Senior Director of User Experience, Yahoo; and David Nelson, Sr. Experience Designer, Adobe Systems were all very knowledgeable, on the cutting-edge, and offered many unique perspectives. Thank you to everyone who attended and see you at the next event which is a great follow-on to this event on Web Analytics: Measuring The Attention Economy.
Photos of the event.

Tech Executives Use Social Media To Find Cure

2008-06-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

Technology executives and the University of California-San Francisco's have banded together to create a special YouTube channel, a Facebook group and a widget to raise awareness for a degenerative brain diseases called Creutzfeldt-Jakob, after learning that former Apple & Netscape executive Mike Homer had been diagnosed with it.

This partnership seeks to tap into the internet's ability to reach a far larger audience to help spread awareness and get people to seek treatment sooner. It represents a new twist in the tradition model of the typical disease campaign. The campaign is being spearheaded by angel investor Ron Conway and has already raised $7 million for research at UCSF.

The disease tends to affect people in their mid-40s. Creutzfeldt-Jakob patients can live anywhere from three weeks to three years. People afflicted with the disease suffer dramatically different symptoms, depending on which part of the brain it strikes. But often the disease causes severe memory loss, problems controlling limbs, and personality changes.

"It's like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's on fast forward," said Dr. Michael Geschwind of the UCSF. The cause is unknown and it's unclear how or why it strikes any given person.

Google New CFO Starts Job At $4 Million

2008-06-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

Google's new CFO has already taken care of finances (for himself) even before he starts his new job on August 1. Patrick Pichette, who was previously the president of operations at Bell Canada will take over from George Reyes.

Pichette will be getting:
1) Signing bonus $ 500,000
2) Six month bonus $ 500,000
3) Base salary $ 450,000
4) Regular bonus $ 675,000
5) 910 Google shares $ 500,000 ($549 x 910)
6) 910 Google shares $ 500,000 ($549 x 910)
7) 5,556 Restricted shr $3,052,747*
8) 11,112 Stock option $6,105,494*
*based on offer date

As well as Relocation fees and other benefits offered to Google employees.

George Reyes had a total compensation of $5.1 million in 2007. According to Wikipedia Reyes's brother is Greg Reyes former CEO of Brocade. On August 7, 2007 Greg Reyes was convicted of stock manipulation and sent to prison. On August 28, 2007, George announced the resignation from this post at Google.

You can view the entire filing with the SEC here.

Microsoft - Verisign Partner For Online Health

2008-06-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

One area where Microsoft is leaving Google behind is in online health care. Today Microsoft teamed up with Verisign to offer OpenID for users of HealthVault, which is a free service that enables consumers to store and manage their health information online.

"HealthVault is about empowering people to take control of their personal health information, and that means making their Web experience easier while also helping them safeguard their privacy," said George Scriban, senior product manager, Microsoft Health Solutions Group. "That's why we're happy to give our users the option of using a VeriSign OpenID with a VIP credential."

Microsoft is moving very fast in this space because it is doing the opposite of what it traditionally does. The company is partnering with others versus building. Where as Google is doing the opposite building versus partnering. Further there is a hesitancy among some companies to use Google's health solution due to the fact that the company lacks a clear privacy statement on patient information. Online advertising in the health care vertical command some of the juiciest add dollars and given the aging population it will be a long wave to ride.

eBay Buys Social Media Tools Start-Up

2008-06-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

eBay announced that it has acquired a small company called VUVOX (pronounced “view-vox”) to help further develop rich media capabilities in the eBay marketplace. At first glance, the integration of VUVOX into eBay is aimed at creating an enhanced customer experience using the personal media tools and applying them to listings and pages on ebay.com. VUVOX focuses on allowing users to produce and share personal media including video, photos and music. Terms of the deal were not disclosed although EBAY did announce the VUVOX team would be hired as eBay employees and join the design and development teams in San Jose.

Bill Gates: Windows Usability Going Backwards

2008-06-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Post reprinted an email by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates that he sent to his lieutenants in 2003 on the usability of Microsoft products. The article describes him as "chief rabble-rouser", and even the Microsoft co-founder -- who champions the "magic of software" -- isn't immune to the frustrations of everyday computer users.

---- Original Message ----

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

Response

.... Original Message ....

From: Will Poole
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 1:27 PM
To; Amir Majidimehr; Chris Jones (WINDOWS)
Co-" Dave Fester; Rick Thompson
Subject: FW: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

Guess we should start working on a list of things that need to be fixed withe web sites. W1J, and with windows, and identify owners. Bill’s frustration is not unreasonable.

Adobe Acrobat 9 Now Available

2008-06-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

Adobe announced today the launch of Acrobat 9 which includes native support for Flash and new collaboration capabilities. Users can now include Flash Player compatible video and application files into PDF documents.

Acrobat 9 also includes the ability to unify a wide range of content into a single document with the new concept of PDF Portfolios. PDF Portfolios enable users to assemble multiple media types into one, compressed PDF file that can be customized with several professional layouts and specific branding.

In addition, Acrobat 9 provides access to capabilities for collaborating live within a PDF document, enabled by working with Acrobat.com, a suite of hosted services available as public beta. This new capability can enable users to drive a group’s navigation through a PDF document in real-time, helping ensure everyone is literally, and figuratively, on the same page.

Acrobat 9 expected to launch up to twice as fast as earlier versions.

Google's Ad Planner A Game Changer Many Nervous

2008-06-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

Google's new web audience measurement service is intended to help advertisers identify the best places to buy online ads by providing them data on which web sites their target audiences visit. The goal is to connect advertisers and publishers and provide them with demographics and usage patterns of target audiences. The service is available to select parties at the moment but it is expect to be freely available to anyone shortly.

Presently, ad buyers use services such as comScore, Nielson, Hitwise, Compete.com and Quantcast to analyze audience usage patterns to allocate their media spend. Everyone of these services uses a different methodolgy to gauge usage and their results vary greatly. Ad buyers spend alot of money on these services for the data that they provide.

According to the WSJ, some ad executives are leery about placing even more power in the Google's hands. "For an advertiser, the last thing you want to do is to have your adviser be the same person you are spending your money with," says Sarah Fay, chief executive of Aegis North America, the media-buying giant owned by Aegis Group of the U.K.

Some ad executives say they are concerned that Google could use the data it compiles about their campaigns to make a business pitch to a competitor. They imagine a scenario in which the biggest online advertiser in a category is running its campaign through Google's ad-serving systems. Not only would Google be helping that marketer deliver ads to particular web sites; it would also be capturing data about which Web sites and types of ads work best. Advertising executives fear that Google could then resell that same intelligence to competitors.

Google's new tool could bring more efficiency to the process of buying online ads, ad executives say. Google already has one of the dominant systems for online ad-serving, which helps Web publishers manage their advertising sales and serve up ads each time a consumer opens one of their Web pages. The Web-audience data could be combined with the ad-serving system, so that advertisers would be able to find out whether they would reach the right audience before they committed to placing an ad. Existing ad-serving systems don't currently provide detailed Web-audience data about the sites where they place ads. By giving away the new tool, Google could presumably attract more ad business and shake up the web audience measurement business.

Ad executives weren't the only ones nervous. Today comScore's stock dropped 22% on the announcement of Google Ad Planner.

Visa Tries Social Marketing On Facebook

2008-06-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

Visa will be giving away $100 in Facebook ad credits to the first 20,000 small businesses that download the Visa application on Facebook. The goal of the application is to connect small businesses on Facebook. Both Facebook and Visa hope to cash in on the 80,000-plus small business that have already signed up on Facebook.

Facebook hopes that if the businesses receiving the ad credits are impressed enough with the results they will continue marketing on the site. "That's what we certainly are hoping for," said Dan Rose, Facebook's VP of business development.

Google will provides software such as maps, calendars and more — to Visa's small business network. The Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur magazine provide articles to network members.

Visa will promote the effort with an awareness campaign beginning next month.

Start-Up Sues Google Potential $1 Billion In Play

2008-06-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

LimitNone LLC, a tiny start-up that builds a tool for migrating customers off Microsoft's Outlook email software and on to Google’s Gmail as filed a trade secrets lawsuit against Google.

The suit claims that Google had initially promoted the migrating tool. Google then copied the idea and went into competition with LimitNone.

LimitNone is seeking reimbursement from Google of actual damages, attorney’s fees and punitive damages. LimitNone’s case details the company’s meetings starting in March 2007 with Google to build a tool it named, “gMove.” This tool was used to move the e-mail, address books and calendars of corporate customers from Microsoft’s Outlook to Gmail. David Rammelt, lead plaintiff’s attorney said that LimitNone had been told by Google that 50 million subscribers was "just too big to come from someone else." A simple calculation of the lost revenue for LimitNone "very quickly gets you up to about $950 million."

The case hangs on the fact that LimitNone claims it entered into a confidentiality deal with Google to share trade secrets of its e-mail migration tool with the search giant’s engineers, sales people and key Google Apps customers.

The meat of the case is the fact that Google introduced a free, competing e-mail migration tool earlier this year called "Google Email Uploader." The lawsuit alleges that this tool is "almost identical" to gMove and that "both operate under a similar conceptual design."

Following news that Google had decided to compete with it instead of continues its partnership, LimitNone shifted its business to focus on the emerging market for business software designed to run on the Apple's iPhone.