The Slanket

" The Slanket is a HUGE 100% polyester polar fleece blanket with oversized sleeves. They are made and tested in Maine. The Slanket is approximately 60 inches wide by 102 inches in length, with 13 inch wide sleeves, that are so large and loose that you never feel constricted and you have total control in how you use them. The Slanket is great on a couch, a chair, in a hammock, on your bed or anywhere else you care to take it ..."

http://www.theslanket.com

Advertising on Google Maps

" Google is experimenting with plotting local advertisers' locations on its Maps product, giving marketers a visual and spatial accompaniment to their locally targeted ads ..."

Rocket Scientist seeks job

" Hello, I am seeking an employer for my engineering services. I am a recent graduate of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering. I graduated in June 2005 with a GPA of 3.021.

After a summer of job hunting to such places as Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon as well as Callaway Golf and Taylor Made Golf I was only contacted for one interview and it was not at any of the above locations ... "

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5657560984&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1

Fantasy Stock Market

This is pretty cool!

BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by incoming links.

http://blogshares.com/index.php

Apple Integrated Sensing display

" An integrated sensing display is disclosed. The sensing display includes display elements integrated with image sensing elements. As a result, the integrated sensing device can not only output images (e.g., as a display) but also input images (e.g., as a camera) ..."

http://hrmpf.com/wordpress/38/apple-integrated-sensing-display

Television: Counting The Eyeballs

" In the TiVo Age, Mad Ave is turning to services that explain which ads work

By some estimates two-thirds of TV viewers cut the sound during commercials, channel-surf, or skip them altogether because they are annoying or irrelevant. In fact, if TV commercials were subjected to ratings the way TV programs are, most would be canceled faster than Martha Stewart's The Apprentice ..."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_03/b3967116.htm?chan=db

Integrating Google Maps into Your Web Applications

Great article about integrating Google Maps on your website:

" Sci-fi author Duncan Munro's 1950 short story "U-Turn" includes a well-known passage that reads, "May you live in interesting times." I haven't actually read the story, therefore can't say whether it was meant as a blessing or a curse. Regardless, it seems particularly applicable to those of us steeped in Web development, as the last ten years have truly proved to be a whirlwind of excitement. And as the Web platform continues to mature, we're seeing an increasing number of amazing technologies that will take our applications to new levels of power and usability.

The most recent development to catch the eye of developers worldwide is the so-called Ajax model, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. This notion seems to have revitalized the Web development community's goal of creating applications that are as rich and responsive as any desktop-based application, but with the added advantage of accessibility via the ubiquitous web browser.

Perhaps the most famous applications embracing the Ajax model is Google Maps. Surely you've played around with this website, perhaps entering your or other addresses of interest, and marveled as how the site responded to zooming and dragging around on the map in seeming real-time. Wouldn't it be great to incorporate Google's mapping capabilities into your applications, taking advantage of not only its enormous database, but also the eminently cool interface that comes with it? ..."

http://www.developer.com/java/web/article.php/3528381

Yahoo admits it let White House access its databases

" Yahoo has admitted that it granted the US Government access to its search engine's databases this summer, as a battle develops over the right to privacy in cyberspace.

Google, by contrast, promised last night to fight vigorously the Bush Administrations demand to know what millions of people have been looking up on the internet.

It emerged this week that the White House issued subpoenas to a number of US-based search engines this summer, asking to see what information the public had accessed in a two-month period. It said that it needed the information in order to help create online child protection laws.

But Google refused to comply with its subpoena - prompting the US Attorney General this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records. Details of the confrontation emerged after the San Jose Mercury News reported seeing the court papers on Wednesday.

At the heart of the battle is the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.

Yahoo has stressed that it didn’t reveal any personal information. "We are rigorous defenders of our users’ privacy," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said last night. "In our opinion, this is not a privacy issue."

The Google court papers show that the US Government originally asked for a list of all requests entered into Google’s search engine between June 1 and July 31 last year. When Google argued, the request was whittled down to a week's worth of search terms - a breakdown that could nonetheless span tens of millions of queries. In addition, the White House has asked for one million randomly selected Web addresses from various Google databases ..."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2002169,00.html

Google tops Apple in brand poll

" GOOGLE has retaken first place in a 2005 global poll of the world's most influential brands, while the eBay-owned Skype makes its debut at No.3.

The annual survey, compiled by online branding magazine brandchannel.com, often throws up controversial results, such as in 2004, when Arabic TV station Al Jazeera was voted the world's fifth most influential brand (down to 25th place this year).
But this year, the 2,528 branding professionals and students who voted came up with more conventional and - perhaps unsurprisingly for an online poll - tech-heavy answers when asked "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2005?".

Google last topped the poll in 2003 and in 2005 reclaimed the top slot from Apple Computer, which came second.

Skype took third place in the global list, while coffee chain Starbucks and Swedish furniture chain Ikea took fourth and fifth place respectively.

The poll did not take account of economic value of a brand, which regularly puts Coca-Cola in first place.

Brandchannel's North American top three - Apple, Google and Starbucks - were strikingly similar to the global outcome, with retailer Target taking fourth place, and cyclist Lance Armstrong in fifth ..."

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17907226%5E15317%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html

eBay goes fee-free in China

" EBAY has scrapped all sellers' transaction fees in China in an effort to compete with local outfits offering free services.

The online auctioneer announced the changes on its China website, saying transaction fees would be waived, but small fees would continue to be charged for listing products on the site's webspace and for "feature" products.
eBay's China unit, Eachnet, would also require all sellers to provide authorised online payment mechanisms to improve its credit environment, including PayPal and other escrow services.

The move means that sellers will not be paid until the buyers receive and are satisfied with the products, it said.

The fee cut matches the free services that have been offered by rival Alibaba's online auctioneer Taobao, and highlights the stiff competition the US company faces in China ..."

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17907223%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

Internet Explorer 7 Screenshots

" The first stage of the beta process for Internet Explorer 7 has begun—developer testing! The latest version of the world’s most popular Web browser has been released for technical evaluation, feedback, and testing by software and Web site developers.

The Beta 1 release signals that Internet Explorer 7 has reached an important milestone, with a number of key new features and improvements, and is ready for website and application compatibility testing. This release is specifically intended for developers to confirm that existing applications and websites will work well with Internet Explorer 7, and provides an opportunity for developers to give feedback directly to the development team. There will be further refinement between Beta 1 and the final version.

Beta 1 is not intended for broad consumer trial and evaluation but it does offer a preview of some of the benefits that Internet Explorer 7 will offer customers including:

Dynamic security protection through a simplified architecture that defends against malware, and new dynamic ways to protect against personal data theft from fraudulent Web sites (a practice known as “phishing”).

Improved design to make everyday tasks easier and faster, with better navigation through tabbed browsing; inline search right from the toolbar; shrink-to-fit Web page printing; and a streamlined, redesigned user interface (currently in its early stages in Beta 1).

New tools to take you directly to the information you want through support for Web feeds (RSS) that includes automatic discovery of web feeds (RSS) on Web pages, basic Web Feed (RSS) reading capabilities, and basic support for saving Web feeds (RSS) as a new kind of favorite.

Platform enhancements for developers to improve compatibility and manageability, including improved support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as well as transparent PNG support ..."

Internet Explorer 7 Screenshots availabe here:
http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=4499

Cool Honda Commercial

This is pretty cool ... http://84.40.3.164

What Is Web 2.0

" The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions. Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage. The pretenders are given the bum's rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other.

The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O'Reilly VP, noted that far from having "crashed", the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What's more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as "Web 2.0" might make sense? We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born ..."

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Google On Mobile

How does your website look on a mobile?

http://www.google.com/gwt/n

Search Ad Auction Models Flawed, Economists Say

" Paid search advertisers who bid what they're actually willing to pay end up paying more than they need to, according to research by economics scholars at Stanford Business School.

The research paper by Michael Ostrovsky, assistant professor of economics at Stanford; Benjamin Edelman, doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard; and Michael Schwarz, RWFJ Scholar at UC Berkeley, blames both the naivete of bidders and the “generalized second price” (GSP) auction mechanisms used by Google and Yahoo!

"We want to educate advertisers about the fact that in some sense they are being taken advantage of," Ostrovsky said in a statement. "Under the current mechanism, if they don't think carefully about their bidding strategies, they can end up paying a lot more to the search engines than they need to."

Search marketers have long intuitively known getting the top position isn't always necessary. Often, it's not even the best strategy. To further quantify that belief, Atlas undertook a research project called the Atlas Rank Report, looked at how a paid search ad's rank affects traffic in July 2004, and how rank affects conversion in October 2004 ..."

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3578811

Amazon to Develop Online Talk Show

" Authors, actors and musicians frequently hit the talk show circuit when they're promoting their latest endeavor, so why not put the program inside the store? That's the thinking behind a 12-part video talk show series in development by Amazon.com, which the retailer will stream live on its home page every Thursday starting June 1.

"Amazon has always tried to look at innovative ways to help our customers discover new music, new artists, and this is a way to help them do that," said Andrew Herdener, a spokesperson for Amazon.

The 30-minute program, "Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher," will be hosted by the comedian, and guests will include various artists and entertainers. The show's sponsor, UPS, will receive a Publishers Clearing House-style segment in each program, in which customers will be surprised by a celebrity who shows up along with their UPS delivery. The companies did a similar "Special Deliveries" promotion last summer for Amazon's 10th anniversary, featuring stars like Harrison Ford, Michael J. Fox, Nick Lachey and Jeff Bridges.

Besides serving as a vehicle for the UPS sponsorship, Fishbowl will showcase the talent behind books, music and videos, sales of which still make up the lion's share of Amazon's revenues. On the page beside the video window, Amazon will place products related to the show's guests.

"We want to make it very easy for customers who see the Stephen King interview to go ahead and click and buy his new book, or the new Rob Thomas CD, or whatever it is," said Jani Strand, an Amazon spokesperson ..."

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3578551

Google, Yahoo Stocks Fall Amid Privacy Concerns

" Google, Yahoo Stocks Fall Amid Privacy Concerns

Google shares fell 8.5% today as a recent dip search search stocks has affected the GOOG empire. The disturbing search engine stock trend has been reflective of recent tech stocks which have not met Wall Street expectations, which may be a bit inflated themselves.

* Google posted its largest single day loss on Friday, sinking to $399.46 a share, a one day loss of $36.98.

* Over the past week, Yahoo has also experienced losses, dropping from over $40 per share to $33.74 on Friday.

* InterActiveCorp, the parent company of Ask Jeeves, showed a small dip over the week from reaching almost $30 per share, now down to $28.60.

* Apple, and its music download search iTunes store, also fell from $85 a share on monday to $76.09 per share on Friday.

* Additionally Microsoft, with its MSN and MSN Search divisions, also showed a dip in value, of about $1 over the week.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2807

Sun-Times nets Google ad deal

" In a quiet and small-scale experiment, Google is running classified-like ads in the pages of the Sun-Times, which so far is the only newspaper participating in the Web-search behemoth's test.

The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, allows Google to fill what's known as "remnant space" in the Sun-Times — unsold space where the paper would normally run in-house ads. Google fills those spots with its own ads. The Google connection is hardly trumpeted: "Ads by Google" appears at the top of each box of ads in very small type.

Google is best-known as an Internet search engine, of course, but nearly all of its revenue comes from ads. Through the first three quarters of 2005, the California-based company posted $4.2 billion in advertising revenue, up 96% from the year-earlier period. Most ads on Google's site are keyed to its users' search terms ..."

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=19053

How to Foil Search Engine Snoops

" On Thursday, The Mercury News reported that the Justice Department has subpoenaed search-engine records in its defense of the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA. Google, whose corporate credo famously includes the admonishment "Don't Be Evil," is fighting the request for a week's worth of search engine queries. Other search engines have already complied.

The government isn't asking for search engine users' identifying data -- at least not yet. But for those worried about what companies or federal investigators might do with such records in the future, here's a primer on how search logs work, and how to avoid being writ large within them ..."

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70051-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_3