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Classic Battle for eBook Reader Market

posted on March 19, 2009

While Amazon makes the big splash with Kindle 2 and fends off potential lawsuit regarding its technology, sony-ereaderSony has cut a deal with Google that is a classic.

As reported at cnet, in a partnership with Sony, Google will provide over 500,000 titles whose copyrights have expired which include literary classics like “Sense and Sensibility” and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. This move takes the number of titles to that the Sony offering has to 600,000 vs. the 250,000 for the Amazon offering. These include German, French, Spanish, Italian and other language translations as well.

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Spring Is In the Air and Browsers Are Refreshed

posted on March 19, 2009

chrome-logoIn the past two days both Google and Microsoft have announced either changes or a new releases for their browser. Both are obviously touting improvements with speed being the main focus of Google and features being that of Microsoft.

As reported in PC Advisor, Google Chrome’s blog announces the latest beta of Chrome. Google had dropped the beta tag back in December but it is back as well as the beta channel that is designed for feedback. No indication why that happened but they are Google after all and they can do what they want. The greatest change according to Google is its increase in speed.

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Nit Twit Juror Fuels Appeal with Tweets

posted on March 18, 2009

Well you know you’ve hit the big time when your service is used by some crafty lawyer to file an appeal. Ok, twitter-birdso maybe it’s not hitting the big time but it is certainly evidence that not everyone on Twitter is a rocket scientist. Shocking I know but hey welcome to the new world order.

It happened in Arkansas as reported by Techdirt when a building company had a judgment against them for $12.6 million. That’s gonna leave a mark for sure. Unless of course one of your jurors tells his Tweeps the following:

“I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money”

“oh and nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they’ll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter”

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Google Will Always Have a Target on It

posted on March 18, 2009

News alert! According to ZDNet apparently Google has been less than perfect and it has drawn the ire of an online privacy bullseyegroup, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). At the heart of this petition is the request to have the Federal Trade Commission open an investigation into Google’s cloud computing services which includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar etc etc.

Last month’s incident where some documents of Google Docs clients were made public is the focal point of this request. The most recent cited event prior to this in the request is January 2007. No typo there. 2007.
Some of the concern is directed at the language in the terms of service that Google claims that one can “rest assured that your documents, spreadsheets and presentations will remain private unless you publish them to the Web or invite collaborators and/or viewers.”

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Adobe Introduces Flash Info Site for SEO’s

posted on March 17, 2009

SEO’s and Flash just can’t seem to get along. For years there has been the clash of the great looking site flashwith all the cool stuff on it and that stodgy old search engine crawler that acts like it doesn’t exist. Designers and clients have had more than a few ‘conversations’ following the development of a site that looks great when you’re there but the only way to get there is through a link or a direct type in. The search engines have not been able to do anything with Flash in forever but there are active attempts from both sides of the fence to change this.

Adobe has rolled out their Search Engine Optimization Technology Center. The introduction to the site explains its purpose very well

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Mobile Internet Usage Doubles for Some Groups

posted on March 17, 2009

While it is no surprise that mobile Internet access and usage is one the rise here in the US some of the percentage increase numbers start to get eye popping pretty quickly. comScore reports that of the people who access news and information the Internet via mobile devices daily has doubled in size from January of 2008 to January of 2009. As with the early days of Internet adoption rates the percentage increases are large because of the smaller sets of users but it’s hard to ignore that kind of growth regardless of where we are on the growth curve.

The shift that is most apparent is the frequency of use. It appears that what was once a more infrequent use of mobile devices to access the web is turning into a daily activity. So what’s driving this? You guessed it; social media. Take a look at the chart below and you’ll see where this is most prevalent.

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E-Mail Marketing Has Marketers’ Attention, What About Yours?

posted on March 16, 2009

With Internet marketers putting the squeeze on budgets the search for the magic bullet to attract new emailcustomers continues. MediaPost gives some insight on a Merkle report that says that e-mail still is attractive to marketers but the perception from those on the receiving end may be changing as well.

The report talks about how inboxes are getting more and more cluttered with marketing messages. After looking over the findings it appears as if the direction that e-mail recipients are heading is toward having had enough of the practice. I know how I react to e-mails that I have opted – in to receive. I take a brief look at the subject line and if it is not something that can make me slow down for a second it’s deleted. Not to say that my behavior is normal but I suspect that the patience level on these techniques is waning.