BenQ S6 Mobile Internet Device

BenQ S6 Mobile Internet Device is powered by 800MHz Intel Atom CPU. It has a 4.8-inch WVGA (800 x 480) display, 512MB DDR2 RAM, a 2GB SSD, Bluetooth 2.0 / WiFi, HSDPA, microSD slot, inbuilt G-sensor and support various multimedia formats, and comes with cool “free-surf” user interface. More pictures and a video after the break.

Vodaphone 3G USB Modem 7.2

Vodafone is offering a 3G modem that run on the speed of 7.2 mbps (theoretical peak speed) that can be connect to your laptop via USB. The USB Modem 7.2 is available in UK with a service contract of 25UKP/month and 49UKP to get the modem. It will work in other countries too with compatible networks but will cost quite a lot per MB.

Mojobaby

Have you been to this site “mojobaby.com”? It is a site that lets you instantly share pictures and video from your cell phone to the web. You can set up a widget in flash or gif to display your nice pictures at your MySpace, Facebook, blog or your websites. The best of all will be the cell phone service. You can actually MMS your picture Mojobaby right after you took them with your cell phone and the picture will appears in your Mojobaby profile after 30-seconds time. It’s a free service, you will only need to pay your cell phone provider for the MMS that you send. Check it out at Mojobaby.com.

IFRA Executive News Service for Friday 14 November 2008

File Format: Microsoft Word - View as HTML

http://plekocot.blogspot.com/2008/11/newspaper-inserts-trending-down.html. - Murdoch emphasises newspaper innovation ...
www.gipp.ru/zip/25425_IFRA_News_14.11.08.doc - Similar pages -

Firefox 3.1 Beta with Multi-Touch Support

Mozilla has released its Firefox 3.1 beta version. This “Beta 2” version features include – Private Browsing Mode, Faster Javascript Engine, Improved rendering and support for new web technologies. It has one unique feature for MacBook too, this browser will support the Apple’s multi-touch trackpad. Supported gestures include:

- Swipe Left: Go back in history (hold Cmd to open it in a tab)
- Swipe Right: Go forward in history
- Swipe Up: Go to the top of the page
- Swipe Down: Go to the end of the page
- Pinch Together: Zoom out
- Pinch Apart: Zoom in
- Twist Right: Next tab
- Twist Left: Previous tab

* “Swipe” refers to 3-finger Swipe

which are even tougher than Safari’s support.

Mozilla warn that this beta version is for testing use only, there’s no release date announced.

Yahoo Prepares To Ask Microsoft for Help

Now that a pivotal advertising partnership with Google is off the table, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is ready to return to the bargaining table with Microsoft if the world's largest software maker remains interested in buying his embattled Internet company."To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said Wednesday evening at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

Although he said there aren't any current talks, Yang stressed he and the rest of Yahoo's board "remain open to everything" after a looming legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department prompted Google to abandon its rival. Google would have sold some of the ads alongside Yahoo's search results had the proposal panned out.

Yahoo had been counting on the Google alliance to boost its sagging profits and stock -- an outcome that might have helped pacify investors still incensed about Yang's handling of a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft six months ago.

Microsoft said it withdrew its $33 per share bid after Yang demanded $37 -- a price that Yahoo's stock hasn't reached since early 2006.

Echoing his previous public comments, Yang said he believes a compromise on the sales price could have been reached if Microsoft hadn't ended the talks so abruptly.

"Did we want to do a deal with Microsoft? Yes," Yang said. "Had we been able to do that, we would have been very happy but it wasn't meant to be."

Microsoft has been giving mixed signals about its interest in Yahoo. Although the company repeatedly issued statements that Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has moved on to other things, Ballmer suggested as recently as last month that buying Yahoo in its entirety or just its search operations could still make sense.

Industry analysts believe Microsoft will make another run at Yahoo within the next few months. The reason: Yahoo's No. 2 search engine and huge audience still remains Microsoft's best chance to gain ground on Google and its industry-leading search engine in the Internet's lucrative advertising market.

Yahoo also looks more vulnerable than ever, having lost the Google partnership. The Sunnyvale-based company's shares closed Wednesday at $13.92 -- nearly 60 percent below Microsoft's last offer.

The stock gained more than 4 percent in Wednesday's depressed market, largely because some investors believe Microsoft eventually will make another bid.

Wednesday's rally was driven, in part, by rumors that Yahoo already was negotiating a sale to Microsoft for $17 to $19 per share -- speculation that both companies denied.

There was also talk that Yang would step down as CEO, but he said he still believes he is the right person to engineer Yahoo's attempted comeback.

"If you are not in the game to win, you shouldn't be in the game," Yang said. "That is how I encourage the whole company to think about it."

Yang said he was disappointed that Google didn't fight to protect their proposed advertising partnership in court, contending the Justice Department's conclusions were flawed.

The Justice Department said it was prepared to attempt to block the alliance because it would have consolidated more than 90 percent of the U.S. search advertising market, turning Google and Yahoo into "collaborators rather than competitors."

"I really thought the government in this case does not understand our industry," Yang said. "They have a market definition that is too narrow."

Yang predicted Yahoo would still prosper without Google's help. "I feel there is a presumption that if we don't have the Google deal, we aren't going to do well in search. That is absolutely not true," he said.

The War for the Web

Microsoft was smart to walk away (for now) from its $44 billion bid for Yahoo. It's never good to overpay. But the software giant – whose stock has flatlined for eight years – was onto the right strategy in looking to the Web for growth.

Can't Microsoft build something on its own? Why the rush to pay billions for Yahoo? The simple (and wrong) answer was that adding Yahoo's 20% Web search market share to Microsoft's 10% meant that it could compete against Google's 60% share. Technology changes too fast for that to make sense except on paper. Programs run anywhere these days – on your desktop computer, on servers in data centers, on your iPod, cellphone, GPS, video game console, digital camera and on and on. It's not just about beating Google at search, it's about tying all these devices together in a new end-to-end computing framework.

With the Microsoft/Yahoo deal breakdown, everyone assumes Google walks away with the prize. Not so fast. This contest is just starting. For Microsoft or Google or anyone else to win, they need four key elements of an end-to-end strategy:

- The Cloud. The desktop computer isn't going away. But as bandwidth speeds increase, more and more computing can be done in the network of computers sitting in data centers – aka the "cloud."

There, search results can be calculated, companies' payrolls processed, even the complex graphics for video games can be drawn. But it's not cheap. These clouds are multibillion-dollar investments. Google spent $842 million in the last three months on servers, data centers and fiber optics.

Today, there are several major clouds: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon and smaller players IBM and Sun. Can there be more? Sure, but it would require a business model that could not only pay for it, but could rip it out every few years and modernize it. Google's $20 billion Web advertising business gives it the cash flow to do so. Advantage Google.

- The Edge. The cloud is nothing without devices, browsers and users to feed it. Book buyers are basically paying for Amazon's data centers. Yahoo is a favorite for finance and sports enthusiasts, who pay for its data centers. Google worked its way into the toolbars of Firefox, and even Microsoft's browser.

And Microsoft? It was stripped of its ability to control Windows desktop real estate during the late '90s Netscape feud. Accused of using its overwhelmingly popular Windows operating system to unfairly dominate other new markets, Microsoft settled the dispute with the Justice Department in 2001.

Now Microsoft scrambles for other advantages. One lies in smart mobile devices, which is the fastest-growing location to launch search requests. Microsoft software runs on about 20% of smart phones in the U.S.

Don't underestimate the value of Microsoft's other market stronghold, its X-Box video game platform. Now you know why Google is scrambling to plant a flag in the cellphone business with its Android technology and bids for wireless spectrum. So far, advantage Microsoft.

- Speed. Once you build the cloud, it's all about network operations. Whoever can deliver search results faster, wins. Users only realize this subconsciously, but it's true: Google's dominant share is as much about speed as it is for relevant results. Compare it to Microsoft or Yahoo and you'll see. Google built data centers next to waterfalls so electricity could be cheap enough to help it win the speed war.

New cloud applications appear every day – backing up files, managing your money, editing photos, running the back end of multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. Now corporate America is evaluating moving its accounting, scheduling, order management and the like into the cloud, and speed will be a top priority. Advantage Google.

- Platform. Yahoo's mistake was relying on expensive workers to update Web pages and sell ads, and especially to run Yahoo Finance, Sports, HotJobs and Travel. Google hates using people for these tasks. The company may love programmers and probably customers as well, but it tries to put absolutely no one in between them. Google's genius was to automate all its Web page creation and to have a market set prices for ads.

But even though Google has more than 10,000 employees, the company doesn't have a lock on brain power – especially since its stock is not climbing as fast as it once did, and with young coders setting their eyes on the next big startup.

Having a fast cloud is nothing if you keep it closed. The trick is to open it up as a platform for every new business idea to run on, charging appropriate fees as necessary.

Microsoft knows this. I sat through a keynote speech by Bill Gates maybe 15 years ago. Asked why Microsoft makes all the money in the software business, he snapped: We don't make all the money. Actually, we only make money because we are a platform for others to use our software to make money themselves.

Only by opening up system internals to thousands of hungry developers can anyone truly create an operating system in the cloud. Google has made open announcements but is still quite closed. Advantage Microsoft.

So with the failure of the Yahoo bid, where does that leave Microsoft? The answer is found in Microsoft's mantra: embrace, extend and innovate. Made famous in a 1994 Microsoft executive memo, this mantra has worked again and again: Windows dominated Apple for decades, the Excel spreadsheet bypassed Lotus 1-2-3, and the Internet Explorer browser destroyed Netscape.

Of course, Microsoft could come back and bid again for Yahoo at $25. But there is a go-it-alone strategy: Embrace the Web search and advertising business. Maybe even do what Craigslist did to newspaper want ads, devaluing search advertising by offering the same thing for free, or really cheap.

The trick is to then extend and innovate. Run code that figures out what users are looking for, not just on servers, but on X-Boxes, Zune music devices and even Apple iPhones. Some of the new markets aren't even twinkles in developers' eyes.

At the moment, neither Google nor Microsoft, or anyone else, has nailed down cloud, edge, speed and platform. All the loosely coupled electronic devices in our pockets need to work together seamlessly with Facebook applications in the cloud. Who will do it? Unclear.

The continuing battle between Microsoft and Google will mean fierce competition – adding features, building data centers, cutting deals and spending money on speed and customer convenience. That's the way to move technology forward. It's great to see Microsoft with some fight left in it. Not only hasn't the Internet yet matured, it's becoming an ever-more high stakes game.

By: Andy Kessler
Wall Street Journal; May 6, 2008

Yahoo Continues to Measure Tie- Up Prospects

Yahoo Inc.'s directors met Friday to weigh the company's strategic options, but remained undecided about which path the Internet portal should pursue.

Yahoo's advisers gave the board their latest assessment of Yahoo's' options. These include deepening negotiations with Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and Google Inc., or engaging with Microsoft Corp. to discuss its unsolicited takeover offer.

Yahoo is in talks with Time Warner about combining with AOL. Under that scenario, Time Warner would fold AOL into Yahoo and make a cash contribution in return for an equity stake of about 20%, according to people familiar with the matter.

The proposed deal would value AOL at about $10 billion. That valuation excludes AOL's fading dial-up Internet-access business, which had complicated negotiations with potential partners in years past.

Yahoo also has been talking with Google. Wednesday, the two companies announced a two-week test in Steve Ballmer which Yahoo will carry Google search advertisements next to a small portion of its Web search results. Yahoo and Google are studying a broader search-advertising pact, which could allow Yahoo to demonstrate that it is worth more than Microsoft has offered, according to people familiar with the matter. Antitrust experts have said such a pact likely would raise regulatory issues.

Friday's meeting capped a tumultuous week for Yahoo. It began with a testy exchange of letters between Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ball-mer and the Yahoo board.

Frustrated that Yahoo hasn't embraced Microsoft's offer, Mr. Ballmer gave the board three weeks to cut a deal or face a proxy fight. He also hinted that Microsoft would cut its bid if Yahoo didn't agree to a friendly deal. Yahoo responded with a letter of its own in which it called his ultimatum "counterproductive."

Yahoo rejected Microsoft's unsolicited $44.6 billion stock-and-cash offer in February, saying that it undervalued the Internet company. Since then, the value of the offer has declined because of a drop in Microsoft's share price. It is currently valued at about $42 billion.

News Corp., owner of Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has held discussions with Microsoft about joining its bid but people close to the software company say it plans to pursue Yahoo on its own.

By: Matthew Karnitschnig
Wall Street Journal; April 11, 2008

How the Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Can Get Done

With Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. firing tense public missives at each other, the real question is whether Microsoft is willing to pay the additional premium Yahoo wants to get a deal done quickly.

Monday, Yahoo's board said in a letter to Microsoft that it wasn't opposed to selling itself as long as the price "fully reflects the value of Yahoo, including any strategic benefits to Microsoft." In the meantime, it again rejected Microsoft's original offer-currently valued at $29.36 a share-as inadequate. The letter from Yahoo followed one from Microsoft on Saturday in which the software maker threatened a hostile takeover, of Yahoo if the Internet company' doesn't'agree to a merger within the next
three weeks.

"We consider your threat to commence an unsolicited offer and proxy contest to displace our independent board members to be counterproductive and inconsistent with your stated objective of a friendly transaction," says the Yahoo letter addressed to Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and signed by Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang.

Despite the sharp exchange, many analysts believe Yahoo wUl eventually fall into Microsoft's grasp. It hasn't revealed any serious alternative deals in the more than two months since Microsoft made its unsolicited offer public. Some investors also question whether Yahoo has lost its leverage to secure a higher price as time has dragged on.

Some in Yahoo's camp believe there is still time for the company to pursue alternatives, say people familiar with the matter. But there's a rough consensus among analysts and investors that two other scenarios are more likely.

In the first, Microsoft would signal to Yahoo that it's prepared to raise its offer and the two would enter friendly negotiations. In the second scenario, Microsoft would decide to wait it out and prepare a hostile effort, hoping that Yahoo will come to the table in the meantime.

Getting into a protracted battle has been a distraction for Microsoft's senior management at a time when the company can ill afford to miss a beat in its competition with Google Inc. and other rivals. Prolonged uncertainty also increases the likelihood that Yahoo's top talent will go elsewhere. A friendly approach could ensure smoother sailing when it comes time for a regulatory review of any deal.

There has been some contact: Senior executives from the companies have met at least twice in recent weeks, though they haven't made any real headway. Some analysts believe Yahoo has little choice over the long run but to enter negotiations in the hopes of securing a higher price.

Some major Yahoo shareholders have suggested they would embrace an offer closer to $35 a share. But because of the passage of time and the deteriorating economic climate, that's probably unrealistic. Supporting a $35 bid would cost Microsoft an additional $8 billion, and Mr. Ballmer would have difficulty justifying that to his own shareholders after publicly suggesting that Yahoo's value has declined since January.

There are no signs Microsoft is willing to raise its offer. People close to the company have said it doesn't want to bid against itself by increasing the offer without negotiations. Mr. Ballmer, in his Saturday letter to Yahoo directors, suggested that worsening' economic conditions have reduced Yahoo's market value.

When extended on Jan. 31, Microsoft's cash-and-stock offer was valued at $31 a share, a 62% premium over the price at which Yahoo was trading. The value is lower now because of a subsequent decline in Microsoft's share price. Each dollar per share that Microsoft raises its offer would sweeten the deal by about $1.4 billion, and the software maker would have to pay more than $2 billion more just to get back to the value of its original bid.

On Monday, Yahoo ended 4 p.m. trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market down 2.3%, or 66 cents, at $27.70, and' Microsoft was unchanged at $29.16.

Some executives at Microsoft have aired their skepticism about the deal in recent weeks, accord-' ingto people farniliarwith the matter. These people don't expect their view to torpe4,o Microsoft's offer but say it coUld limit Microsoft's willingness to raise its offer.

Some bankers not involved in the transaction say Yahoo miscalculated and should have entered negotiations right away to secure a higher price and get a deal done quickly. Instead of sitting down to negotiate with Microsoft, Yahoo decided to explore other options, none of which currently appears likely. Now, any premium over the original value Microsoft offered
will likely be measured in pennies, not dollars, the bankers say.

Meanwhile, there's a chance Microsoft and Yahoo could become embroiled in the second, hostile scenario, analysts say. Microsoft has been assembling a slate of candidates to nominate to Yahoo's board in case a deal isn't reached by the Steve Ballmer three-week deadline it announced. Yahoo has so-called poison pill provisions designed to thwart hostile takeovers, but if shareholders voted in Microsoft's slate of directors at Yahoo's annual meeting, those directors could get rid of the pill provisions and reach an agreement. Microsoft might have to raise its offer at least back to $31 to guarantee shareholder support for its slate. Under the law in Delaware, where Yahoo is incorporated, it could be forced to hold its annual meeting if it hasn't already done so by July.

Yahoo and Microsoft each believe they would prevail in a proxy fight over the current offer, according to people close to them. There's yet another scenario. In this situation, Microsoft could lose patience with Yahoo and decide to drop its pursuit of the company. People close to Microsoft have dismissed that option, saying the company remains committed to a deal.

Yahoo has also been searching for alternatives to a Microsoft sale, something some executives would prefer to the Microsoft option, according to a person familiar with the matter. Discussions with Time Warner Inc., which center on it folding its AOL Internet unit into Yahoo in return for a significant Yahoo stake, have heated up recently. But people familiar with the matter consider such an agreement a long shot because it would be so complex.

Most observers don't see any possibility for Yahoo to escape Microsoft's clutches. Yahoo's only hope is a substantial upturn in the markets, which is unlikely anytime soon, they say. If Microsoft were to abandon the bid, Yahoo's shares might well plunge into the teens, exposing the company to shareholder litigation.

By: Kevin Delaney and Matthew Karnitschnig
Wall Street Journal; April 8, 2008

Yahoo Endorses Social Networks

Yahoo Inc. is joining an effort backed by Google Inc. and News Corp.'s MySpace to spur the creation of applications for social networks, a small but growing area of interest among software developers.

Yahoo said Tuesday it will endorse a technical specification called OpenSocial that was initiated by Google and supported by MySpace and other social- networking sites, a sign the initiative is gaining momentum after a slow start last fall. Yahoo, Google and MySpace also said they are planning an independent, nonprofit foundation to provide technology and intellectual-property guidelines for the evolving standard, while ensuring no one company has too much influence over its future.

Yahoo's move could pressure holdouts like Facebook Inc., which has stuck to its own software standards for developers, to join OpenSocial. Facebook, whose investors include Microsoft Corp., has indicated a willingness to license its platform to other sites. A Facebook representative said the company is evaluating OpenSocial. Microsoft, which has made a bid for Yahoo, hasn't joined OpenSocial, either. It declined to comment on if it would do so or to comment on Yahoo's move.

MySpace and Google's social network, Orkut, have both recently launched developer platforms compatible with OpenSocial. But Facebook, whose platform was announced in May 2007, has a head start and already offers some 20,000 applications to its users. MySpace owner News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Internet companies are initiating the new guidelines to encourage software developers to build a range of entertainment and productivity services to keep users hooked on their sites. Developers, keen to reach the massive audiences, have done so eagerly, building tools like photo-sharing software or games that users can add to their profiles and share with their friends.

OpenSocial was designed to make it easier for developers to create these services across a range of Web sites. Developers can build their applications once and have them run across any site compatible with OpenSocial, with minimal modifications. But in the months after its launch, many developers were disappointed with the technology, which they said had holes and was not widely supported.

On a conference call with reporters, Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google, said developers will potentially be able to reach more than 200 million users through an OpenSocial-based application by next week. He added that the nonprofit will help to drive the effort by formalizing a range of guidelines critical to its success. For instance, the foundation will enable developers and sites to use the OpenSocial specification without fear of patent- infringement suits from contributors.

Wade Chambers, vice president of platforms for Yahoo, said on the call that Yahoo was not yet going to provide details about which Yahoo sites for which developers could build OpenSocial-compatible applications, but he said Yahoo wanted to sign on because it felt the standard was "rapidly maturing."

By Jessica E. Vascellaro
The Wall Street Journal; March 26, 2008

Google Tweaked Search 450 Times in 2007

Google is typically tight-lipped about it the inner workings of its search business, but there are a few nuggets worth looking at in a Popular Mechanics interview with Udi Manber, the Google vice president who oversees search quality. Among them: Google rejiggered its search algorithm 450 times last year.

The job of the algorithm is to best match Web pages with people's search terms. One tweak the company tried last week was increasing the "diversity" of search results so the listed Web pages would cover a broader scope in an attempt to compensate for the ambiguities of search terms, he said.

And while some might see the industry of search engine optimization (SEO), which strives to get Web sites higher placement on search sites, as gaming the system, Manber said that at least a basic amount would make his life easier.

"I wish people would put more effort into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right keywords onto their pages," he said.

He also said Google doesn't adjust search results by hand.

"If we find, for a particular query, that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it," he said. "We have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it's better, and then launch a general solution."

For those interested in the subject, I also recommend the New York Times interview with Manber from last year and another from Eric Enge at SEO firm Stone Temple Consulting. (I can't help but note that the latter piece shows up higher in Google search results.)

Red Hat Gets Solid Start

Red Hat Inc.'s fiscal-first-quarter profit rose 6.6% as the company recorded what Chief Executive Jim Whitehurst called a “solid start to the fiscal year.” Excluding one-time items, the Raleigh, N.C., open-source software company said it earned 18 cents a share in the quarter ended May 31, the second quarter in which Mr. Whitehurst was leading the company. By that measure, the earnings report was in line with the average forecast by analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Analysts' estimates usually exclude one-time items. Shares of Red Hat, which closed in regular New York Stock Exchange trading at over $20 were down after hours. Red Hat's business model revolves around getting companies to adopt free open-source operating systems, such as the popular server operating system Linux, and then selling upgrades and services. In April, Red Hat said it dropped plans to develop a more consumer-friendly open-source operating system. The company's Linux software is widely used for high-end computer servers, and search engine optimization.

Newspaper Inserts Trending Down

Advertisers Not Using As Many Print Inserts

Newspaper Industry experts cite several reasons for a recent slowdown in the retail insert marketplace, among them declining news paper circulations, rising paper and ship ping costs, as well as advertisers' desire to reach younger, text-savvy consumers. Several printers and at least one media company, however, have introduced data-intensive programs designed to convince retailers of the power of print.

“We see a decline in inserts year-over-year, of between 12% to 20% industry wide,” reports a marketing director at Quebecor World Market ing Solutions Group.

Printers point to a decrease in pages as the cause. “Retailers are increasing insert page counts for key events like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day and Father's Day while decreasing pages for other, less key, events,”. Costly gate-folds are also used less often. Newspapers in general are no longer delivering Return on Investment for Advertisers.

“The newspaper home sub scriber has always been one of the retailer's most valued consumers, and advertisers are beginning to walk away from newspaper and insert advertising efforts,” reports a top sales officer at Valassis Communications Livonia Michigan.

There are a few positive signs remaining for Hypermarket Meijer is taking in 10 times the number of paper coupons that it did last year, accord ing to Valassis. “Cash register returns drive circular and preprint behavior.

Targeted marketing, a direct marketing strategy, using demographics, minority demographics are all being applied to retail inserts more often to drive relevance.

Tribune Company, which publishes 10 daily newspapers, has started rolling out a program called PrePrint Optimization. It pairs client customer data with subscriber data to target where and how advertisers can effectively reach consumers.

“We know we're in the age of account ability and that this was a key component missing from newspaper advertising,” says an advertising director for major accounts at The Chicago Tribune, of the Tribune Newspaper's data-oriented market segmentation advertis ing programs. Linking Tribune newspaper household demographic data bases with their own customer databases, advertisers can insure they are get ting the best return on investment from print insert efforts.

PrePrint Optimiza tion is too new for results. Tribune Company said retail advertising revenues were down 26% for the second quarter; preprint revenues dipped 19%.

Sometimes analytics show the best medium for an advertiser to be one of Tribune's non-subscriber publica tions or its shared mail program. By ensur ing that advertisements are more targeted, Tribune hopes to increase the relevance of ads for consumers and advertisers.

“Advertisers test different methods to reach consumers to see what works best,”says a sales manager for Direct Delivery+ at Tribune Media Net, Tribune Company's national sales arm. While no “silver bullet” may exist, “by no means are we sitting back on our laurels, we have to get aggressive to counter internet marketing and the power of Google."

Retail insert printers Quebecor World, Vertis and Valassis have each introduced strategies for print advertising by crunch ing available data. The goal is to assist retailers to effectively reach their audi ence through such vehicles as shared mail, targeted direct mail, in-store on-demand coupons and other print solutions.

Advertising Opportunities are there for retailers to reach consumers via print, offered a SVP of sales at Vertis. “Free-standing inserts are one way to convey a print message. It needs to be part of the total media mix.

By its cross-selling initiatives, Valassis shifted $7.3 million in newspaper preprint business to shared mail in the first half of 2008, giving advertisers a way to reach non newspaper-reading households (not reported is the breach of privacy used to identify and list non-newspaper households.

This month, Quebecor World will launch Store.driver, a new direct-mail piece — designed to drive people into retail stores — that can be printed in-line with a map, paper gift card and fragrance strip.

All of these untested, new print advertising programs appear as desperate efforts by the print and newspaper community to combat the shirt of advertising dollars migrating to online marketing programs.

Rallying Cry for Display Ads

Microsoft, Others Say Online Banners Trump Search Ads

Display ads have fallen on hard times. The graphic ads that border a Web page are among the slowest-growing formats in the online-ad marketplace, and they are seen by many marketers as stodgy and ineffective.

But some ad-technology and Web-measurement companies are trying to engineer a comeback for display ads, offering data that they say show display advertising is more effective than marketers think. Microsoft is the latest company to make this declaration, with new evidence coming next week that it says proves display ads are actually better than searches at triggering consumers.

Microsoft is the latest company to make a case that online display ads are ripe for a comeback, claiming new data proves that they are more effective than search ads.

Companies like Microsoft have a financial interest in pushing online ad formats besides searches. Google has what would appear to be an insurmountable lead in the search business, the biggest online-ad medium. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Yahoo and Time Warner's AOL have invested billions of dollars in new display-advertising technology hoping to lure advertisers that have poured money into search ads.

Still, there is a burgeoning debate about whether display ads have been overlooked amid the euphoria over searches. "Obviously, Microsoft has a motive to shift dollars from search to display advertising because it is getting creamed in the search space," says Ben Winkler, a director of interactive media at the Martin Agency, a unit of Interpublic Group. "But this does help us get a much better picture of how our online advertising is working."

The debate revolves around what leads consumers to take actions on the Web: buying something, printing a coupon or visiting a Web site. Up to now, most advertisers judged the effectiveness of an ad campaign by what consumers did after they clicked on the ad. But some marketers say they are now using research not only from Microsoft, but also independent Web-measurement firms like comScore and Omniture, to figure out what happens before people click on ads -- even in situations where they don't end up actually clicking on the ads.

The major conclusion of this research: By the time consumers search for a product or service, they've often already made up their minds to buy it. And display ads are often an important factor in their reaching that conclusion.

Part of the reason display has fallen out of favor is that it's been hard to prove that the ads work. Skeptics point to low click-through rates -- a fraction of a percent, at best -- and scientists have coined the term "banner blindness" to refer to the way Web surfers ignore display ads.

Nielsen Online on Thursday reported a 6% year-over-year decrease in display advertising during the first half of 2008, including a 27% decline in spending by financial-services companies. Meanwhile, spending on so-called rich-media ads increased 60% overall in the first half of the year, and overall online ad spending -- including search-ad dollars -- increased 11% during the first half of the year, Nielsen says.

ComScore and Omniture work with dozens of marketers to find out which pages customers visit before landing on an advertiser's site. That research shows that the full impact of display advertising isn't always taken into account, says comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman.

Microsoft's research comes from the Atlas Institute, the research arm of its ad-serving unit Atlas, and was started more than two years ago before it was acquired by Microsoft. It has looked at the various components of a marketer's ad spending to see the relative effectiveness of each. (Microsoft sells both search and display ads, but the latter is a much bigger piece of its business.) Atlas's latest round of research was a month-long study of ad campaigns from 500 marketers appearing on 1,000 sites.

One limitation with the research, according to marketers, is that it only takes into account ads that run on Atlas, which is usually a subset of any marketer's total ad spending.

Earlier this year, Atlas conducted a study with Alltel Wireless that it says showed people who were exposed to both search and display ads were 56% more likely to purchase an Alltel phone or wireless plan than those who clicked only on a search term without any exposure to its display ads.

Some digital-ad executives say the new research won't change their trust in searches, but it may help them persuade more marketers to move from traditional advertising to online. "Search is still just as powerful. But things like display that looked really bad before aren't as bad. Now we can prove it," says Jennifer Zola, partner and director of strategy and insights at WPP Group's Mediaedge:cia.

Microsoft plans to use its research as a sales pitch to get more publishers and advertisers to use its ad technologies.

By: Emily Steel
Wall Street Journal; September 19, 2008

U.S. Web Sites Draw Traffic From Abroad But Few Ads

U.S. Web sites are waking up to a sobering reality: A huge share of their traffic now comes from overseas, but they are struggling to make money from it. Now, Internet companies big and small are scrambling their business models to try to cash in on foreign markets they have largely ignored.

The internationalization of online traffic in the U.S. has accelerated at a pace that has surprised even some people in the Internet business. Many U.S. sites now draw more than half of their audiences from international visitors but generate only about 5% of their revenue from that traffic, according to recently compiled figures by Internet tracking firm comScore Inc. and industry analysts.

For example, Web sites published by Condé Nast, such as GQ.com and Style.com, derive 55% of their traffic from overseas, while Facebook's international audience accounts for 73% of its 124 million monthly visitors.

Most of these sites started drawing foreign visitors without any effort on their part. The changing demographics of their users owed in part to the rapid increase in broadband Internet penetration in countries such as Russia, Brazil, India and China in recent years.

U.S. Web content is proving popular with those new Web users, just as American TV and movies have been in those and other countries. Also, technology investments by U.S. Web sites have helped them appear prominently in search results for Web surfers world-wide.

This trend has huge financial implications for big U.S. publishers. Many sites have paid little attention to foreign traffic because it was so small and because, in some cases, marketers in those countries weren't yet buying online ads. As a result, international visitors to U.S. sites still often see ads that are completely irrelevant to them.

A recent visit to CNET.com from Australia, for example, showed an ad for Verizon Communications Inc.'s FiOS TV service, which is available only in select U.S. cities. U.S. marketers know they aren't reaching their intended audience with those ads, so they normally don't pay Web publishers for them.

"Web sites are neglecting a massive opportunity," comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman said.

Now, some sites are moving aggressively to build their international sales operations. Closely held Glam Media, whose properties include fashion and celebrity gossip site Glam.com, recently acquired London digital marketing firm Monetise Ltd., jump-starting its strategy to add several dozen salespeople in countries that include Germany, Japan, India and China. Half of Glam's 77.4 million visitors come from abroad, but only 5% of its revenue is from non-U.S. advertisers.

"We really have a global media company, but we were running it locally," said Samir Arora, chairman and chief executive of Glam, which by visitors is the largest U.S. Web property aimed at women.

Other Web sites are outsourcing ad sales to companies with on-the-ground sales teams. This includes Adconion Media Group, a London firm that sells ads for sites such as the Drudge Report and Sony Corp.'s video site Crackle from 12 international offices. Meanwhile, niche players are cropping up to focus on individual countries, such as Komli Media, a start-up based in Mumbai, India, that sells ads for 250 U.S. Web sites, including CNET Networks Inc.

But selling Internet ads to local advertisers in overseas markets can be a tough feat. While most sites are technologically capable of targeting ads to visitors from different countries, online marketing is still a nascent phenomenon in many places. Amar Goel, who left Microsoft Corp.'s online ad sales group to start Komli, said many Indian brands still view the Internet as an afterthought, partly because there is still such fast growth in traditional media such as newspapers and television.

Mr. Goel said he had tried to pitch the chief executive officer of a large consumer packaged-goods company at a recent conference. "When he heard I was with an Internet marketing company, his eyes just glazed over," Mr. Goel said. "He doesn't yet believe the Internet can significantly impact his brand." Mr. Goel said he has made some headway with companies such as Naukri.com, India's largest job-search site, and MakeMyTrip, a large travel site, as well as multinational banks and software companies with operations in India.

Traditional U.S. media companies such as ESPN, Forbes and CNN have a head start because they already publish and broadcast overseas and have sales teams in place. But even those companies still have to coach local marketers to spur more online ad buying. ESPN, for instance, says it has been showing marketers in Latin America how sports fans are using the Web.

While overall non-U.S. Internet ad spending jumped to $25.1 billion in 2007 from $4.5 billion in 2003, according to Publicis Groupe's ZenithOptimedia, developing markets still aren't providing a huge share. In India, for example, online ad spending will only be about $111 million this year. In Brazil, it will be $453 million, ZenithOptimedia predicts. In comparison, U.S. online ad spending is expected to reach $19.8 billion this year, up 23% from $16.1 billion in 2007.

"It's taken the U.S. Internet 13 years to get to where it is now, these other places are still in years zero through two," said Ross Sandler, an Internet analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

MySpace is trying ramp up its sales teams outside the U.S. and hopes to eventually generate 50% of its revenue from abroad. The company recently announced a campaign by Cartier for its "Love by Cartier" collection, in which the French luxury jeweler is launching MySpace profile pages targeted at users in eight European and Asian countries.

By: Emily Steel and Amol Sharma
Wall Street Journal; July 10, 2008

Internet Says: "Me Want Cookie"

The last time cookies became a matter of public debate was when the "Sesame Street" character Cookie Monster was accused of encouraging poor eating habits among toddlers. Today's controversial cookies are the small text files that track where people go online. Web sites do a poor job of explaining how and why this information is used, even as details about our lives are increasingly knowable online. Risks to privacy make this a race between smarter self-regulation on the Web and threatened new regulation by the Federal Trade Commission.

Most privacy advocates understand that advertising pays for the otherwise free Web, but worry that cookies can be used for more than matching advertising to individual interests. Some want a "do not track" approach on the Web, similar to the "do not call" rules that block unwanted marketing phone calls. This sounds attractive but could undercut much of the marketing power of the Web.

Even those of us who are enthusiastic about using the Web for what it does best, including access to highly customized information, agree there's something potentially creepy about cookies. How are personal data used? Are our names, addresses and financial and health records really secret? Is anonymity permanent? These questions come just as what technology can do is changing our expectations about what information remains personal. We worry about cookies despite many of us voluntarily becoming open books via sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, which are designed to share personal information that until recently would have been considered confidential.

The cookie debate reflects the tension between what technology will allow and what privacy we expect. One problem is that Web sites and marketers have failed to explain why cookies are harmless. Cookies simply indicate where users have been and do not include sensitive information like credit cards or Social Security numbers. When data about Internet usage are tracked, it's in an anonymous, aggregated way. Cookies mean people see personally relevant advertisements. Web sites use cookies automatically to localize news, weather and sports for users, and designers mine tracked data to improve user experiences. Cookies helpfully remember registration and other personalization.

A group called the Center for Digital Democracy urges more privacy protections by arguing that "Our 'virtual' identities may be composed of discrete and disassembled bits of information about ourselves." The group objects that the Web's purpose is "to get individual consumers to behave or act in ways that favor or reflect the marketer's goal."

For some, that's the point. "To paraphrase the famous New Yorker magazine cartoon, when you're surfing the Internet, it's still true that nobody knows you're a dog. But providers can learn that you like dog biscuits, and serve you content and ads accordingly," argues Randall Rothenberg, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. "If politicians restrict it unthinkingly, advertising relevance will diminish, and spam will have a renaissance."

Information that is aggregated offline usually is not seen as threatening. We don't object when marketers track us by ZIP Code, age or sex, or when our cars are counted by traffic surveyors, or when we get benefits once tagged as good customers. And there's at least an implicit bargain in the case of the Web: In exchange for seeing targeted advertising, we get access to Web sites, usually free. Internet advertising was more than $20 billion last year. Some 500 million people around the world got free email, and some 200 million Americans accessed free search engines.

There are efforts to break down cookies into less potentially personally identifiable details – "crumbled cookies" – but this is technically complex. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt put it, "What we've discovered about cookies is that every question leads to a one-hour conversation." What is clear is that intentionally releasing personally identifiable information is unacceptable. When Facebook alerted people about purchases by other members, it quickly had to drop the feature.

Scholar Joseph Turow has identified a "culture of suspicion." People don't understand how the Web works, so fear they are being spied on and manipulated. Many Web sites, however they actually use cookies, contribute to the skepticism by burying disclosure deep inside privacy statements. For a counterexample of full disclosure, take a look at the All Things Digital Web site, from the Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher (http://allthingsd.com/trackingcookies/).

People involved in building the Web are rightly proud of the openness of the digital culture. Most consider that cookies cause no harm and are key to the growth of the Internet, but many Web users feel left in the dark about how information about them is used and not used. Unless people can be reassured, there is a real risk that some day soon we'll find the untested hands of regulators in the cookie jar.

By: L. Gordon Crovitz
Wall Street Journal; May 5, 2008

Internet Sites Arn't Always Immune to Local Laws

A judge in Kentucky seized the Web addresses of more than 140 Internet-gambling sites last week, the latest example of how local governments can affect online businesses with physical operations beyond their jurisdictions.

It is common to think of the Internet as a global network that transcends geography. But online entities are often forced to adhere to laws in the places where they do business. One iconic example is a ruling by a French court in 2000, where the court said a French law banning the sale of Nazi paraphernalia applied to U.S.-based Web site Yahoo Inc.

In the Kentucky case, Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate concluded that gambling Web sites were "virtual keys" that provided access to places where one could play online versions of gambling devices such as slot machines and roulette tables, which are illegal in the state.

None of the online businesses -- such as GoldenPalace.com, PokerStars.com and UltimateBet.com -- are based in Kentucky or rely on technical equipment located in the state. Still, the sites readily accept bets placed by users in Kentucky and process payments from banks based there. That is what triggered Judge Wingate to seize control of the Web addresses.

Seizing," it should be noted, sounds more ominous than it is when applied to the Internet realm. It prevents an Internet registrar that issues Web site names from transferring a Web address to a different registrar, even if the owner of the address, such as a gambling site, requests it. The gambling sites will remain operational until the judge issues a forfeiture order, at which point they will become state property.

The court said it will lift its seizure order for online casinos if they implement technology that would block Kentucky residents from accessing their sites.

Groups affiliated with the online casinos are worried about the precedent the ruling sets. "If you're a business operator, you should be subject to the laws where you do and pursue business, and not have to worry about a state halfway around the world taking away your storefront," says Jeremiah Johnston, president of the Internet Commerce Association, which monitors legal matters for online businesses. He adds that there is no reason that other governments couldn't use the same technique to challenge online businesses for whatever reason they choose.

In the Kentucky case, many of the registrars are based in the U.S. even if the Web sites aren't, meaning that they have to comply with the court's order, says Todd Greene, an attorney for Oversee.net, which has a subsidiary called Moniker Online Services LLC that is the registrar for two of the gambling sites.

J. Michael Brown, secretary of justice and public safety for Kentucky, who brought the lawsuit, says he only wants to stop what he considers an illegal activity.

Chrome secretly love Firefox?

Looks like the Google Chrome is felling in love with Firefox. I’ve just installed the Google Chrome browser and I need that Google toolbar to get me easy browsing but unfortunately, this Google Toolbar installation requires Mozilla Firefox 2.0 at least

Friendster site hacked...?

I log on to friendster.com to check out my account and found out that everything is mess up. So I refreshed, clear cache and those temp files. But it is still the same. I refresh quite a number of times, and there are many strangers’ profiles were shown, even private messages. Luckily I didn’t upload any private pictures. Hope they are fixing it soon. Anyone know what’s happening? Someone just hacked the friendster site?

Firefox logo spotted in Space

The Milky Way upon the heavens is twinkling just for you and Mr. Moon he came by to say goodnight to you. This is an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, an image of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy. Looks like Firefox logo huh.