by
2 Comments

Google to News: Let Us Bleed Your Videos Dry, Too

posted on July 1, 2009

youtube vampire logoYou know how they say “Timing is everything”? Well, apparently so does Google. Less than a week after the head of Dow Jones whines about Google sucking newspapers’ lifeblood like a vampire (no, seriously, he said that), Google helpfully instructs news publishers on how to share their videos with the search giant.

Thankfully, unlike many newspapers, most news video publishers seem to be a little more “with it.” Google is asking them to become YouTube Partners. In exchange for their original, professional content, Google says its partners gain (emphasis added):

  • Featured Premium Placement. YouTube news partners receive featured placement on the YouTube news page, youtube.com/news, where we feature news videos from partners related to the top news stories on Google News. In addition, if you allow your videos to be embedded, they’ll be eligible to appear on Google News, which means additional exposure to all Google News users.

by
0 Comments

Meebo Guarantees Engagement with New Popups

posted on July 1, 2009

Meebo_logo1If you found an ad format that could be up to 900 x 400, feature rich media and guarantee audience engagement for at least 30 seconds—with testing showing average engagement of over a minute—you’d think it was too good to be true, right?

But that’s the newest ad format and promises from Meebo. In addition to on-site chat and free-standing IM (integrated with popular clients), the instant messaging company powers MySpace IM and Facebook Chat and some forty other good-sized networking sites. Their new ad format already has up to 85 interested websites signed up.

Reuters reports that new ad format shows up first as an icon on the chat toolbar on a partner’s page. Interested users can click on the tab to open the full ad as an overlay (although in the image below, it says “rollover,” not “click”).

by
5 Comments

Is Google Taking Steps to Prevent Top Talent from Defecting?

posted on July 1, 2009

What do you do if you no longer need your Chief Technology Officer, but don’t want your rivals to get their grubby mitts on him either? Well, if you’re Google you quietly move him out of that role, give him some other projects to work on, and hope that no one notices.

Unfortunately, All Things Digital noticed:

[YouTube co-founder Steve] Chen left his spot as chief technology officer last fall, though he remains employed at Google, which bought his company for $1.65 billion in 2006. “Steve shifted his focus to help with some Google engineering projects. He’s still involved with YouTube and invested in its success,” says YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes via email.

Still involved with YouTube–except his role of CTO doesn’t actually exist anymore!

by
1 Comment

谷歌的工具栏现在包括自动语言翻译

posted on July 1, 2009

Did you understand the title of this post? Well, if you had installed the new Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, you would have been able to automatically translate it to: “Google’s Toolbar Now Includes Automatic Language Translation.”

translate-pip-3-wider

The official announcement suggest some pretty handy features:

If you go to another page in the same language, you will continue to see translations rather than have to translate one page at a time. And if the page has dynamic content, like Google Reader, you will get translations in real-time. Finally, if you frequently translate pages in the same language, Toolbar will let you translate that language automatically without any extra clicks in the future.

Right now, translation is available for over 40 languages and a Firefox version is coming soon.

by
9 Comments

Twitter Gets ‘Tweet-itorial’

posted on July 1, 2009

twitter-birdLooks like Twitter is not looking the other way as much these days. TechCrunch reports that there is some concern at the social networking company that developers are using the term ‘Tweet’ too much. Twitter, in fact, is claiming that the use of that trademark in the naming of any third party app is something they are ‘uncomfortable’ with. Here is an e-mail that was passed along to the TechCrunch folks relating to the subject.

Hi,

Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?

Thanks,

by
1 Comment

Yahoo’s Branding Push Gets New Blood

posted on July 1, 2009

yahoo-logoFor a while now there has been a lot of talk of the new and improved Yahoo. Since Carol Bartz took over as CEO there has been a more hopeful buzz around the company than back in the days of Jerry Yang.

One nagging question that keeps coming up is “What is Yahoo these days?”. Kara Swisher over at the WSJ’s All Things Digital has been keeping a watchful eye on this process. She has had some interesting conversations with Bartz and now tells of the latest addition to the team that will be leading the Yahoo of the future, Penny Baldwin.

Baldwin became an official Yahoo exec, as SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management.