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Google’s Eric Schmidt Served Apple for the Schwag

posted on August 7, 2009

Apple-ProductsWe already know how much Arthur Levinson stands to lose, should he give up his seat on the Apple board. But, do you know how much Google’s Eric Schmidt just lost?

Nadda.

Well, that’s not entirely true. You see, Schmidt decided not to take any financial compensation for his time served on Apple’s board of directors, but he did apparently accept all the free Apple gear, the company was willing to throw his way.

As of Apple’s fiscal 2008, directors have been allowed to receive one of each new product the company introduces, free, plus the right to buy more at a discount. In fiscal ’08, Schmidt received $8,712 worth of Apple equipment.

In fact, Schmidt actually spent over $740,000 on Apple stock during his tenure–though don’t feel sorry for him, it’s now worth more than $1.7 million!

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The Winner of the 4th Annual SEM Scholarship Contest is….

posted on August 7, 2009

9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design

by Justin Briggs

Congratulations to Justin who led our five finalists with six votes from our panel of expert judges. While not the most trafficked entry, Justin took search-friendly web design to a new level and impressed our judges. Some of their comments include:

He has a nice keyword laden title, has links and diagrams, breaks it the content so it breathes and wrote with an air of authority and working knowledge.  He also scored points with me for responding to comments in a respectful manner.

…useful information! I especially like the illustration near the top.

I like the graphics and it’s mostly solid information…

…it’s really good content, well written and actionable advice.

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One Third of Internet Videos Are Shared

posted on August 6, 2009

the undead on youtubeJust in case there was any doubt that online video is more popular than ever, a new study says that one third of all videos are shared online. Yahoo, market research firm Interpret LLC, Warner Bros. Media Research, Havas Digital, and Omnicom’s PHD collaborated for the survey results, to be released today.

We marketers should be especially excited about the results from the survey. Ads on television, it appears, were twice as likely to be ignored as online ads. 28% admitted they were more likely to pay attention to online advertising. Engagement was also high—leading to increased satisfaction for users, brand recall for advertisers and tendency to seek product information for consumers.

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Murdoch: Bye Bye Free

posted on August 6, 2009

225px-rupert_murdoch_-_wef_davos_2007Back in May, Rupert Murdoch dispelled rumors that Murdoch-owned sites would devolve into the free ad-supported content model so many newspapers are struggling to make work online. Instead, News Corp’s hundreds of subsidiaries worldwide will all go to a paid subscription model—everything from the Times to the New York Post to the Wall Street Journal.

The announcement comes immediately after News Corp posted a $203M loss for Q2 yesterday, mostly due to a write-down on MySpace. Although you have to have some level of economic savvy to become the 132nd-richest person in the world, it looks like News Corp is trying to defy basic principles of supply and demand. “We’re losing money here, and we’ve got some paying subscribers over there, so let’s just make everyone pay,” seems to be the rationale.

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Updated: Twitter Goes Down After Facing DoS Attack

posted on August 6, 2009

Don’t panic, don’t panic!

Twitter is down and they are working on the issue.

We know you have all kinds of cool things you wanted to tweet today, so feel free to use our comments section instead. :-)

UPDATE: Twitter is back online and apparently suffered at the hands of a denial of service attack:

On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate.

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People Watch Boatloads of Online Video

posted on August 6, 2009

Computer and RootsThank you to Carol Bartz of Yahoo for the new ‘boatloads’ theme. What would we do without it? Back to the news. Of course, we know that lots of people watch online video and SearchEngineWatch tells of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project survey conducted in April of this year and the numbers behind the general statement about online video are pretty interesting. As with any research it’s good to know the source and the group studied so here’s the skinny on the research methodology

The report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the Internet. The results are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research International between March 26 to April 19, 2009, among a sample of 2,253 adults, 18 and older.

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Google Is the Top Brand in the Land (and Beyond)

posted on August 6, 2009

google-logoEver have a moment when you see something and you say” Well, of course, that’s obvious. No surprise there.” Then if you actually take the time to look at the ‘obvious’ thing you practically brushed you have another realization of the real impact of the information? I had that kind of moment his morning after seeing a report at SearchEngineLand regarding the most recognized brands in the world.

Millward Brown released their top “BrandZ” report for 2009 and Google has the top spot again. With a list like this you would expect some serious competition and there is.

Brandz 09