November 4, 2005
November 4, 2005
How About We Meet After ad:tech?
We're booked. Wall-to-wall, end-to-end.
Yet invitations for events, parties, briefings, meetings, announcements and panels keep pouring in. Publicists who have clients who work across the street from our office -- and with whose spouses and children we're on a first name basis -- are begging us to take a meeting.
Calm down, guys. There's life (and a whole lot more appointment blocks) after ad:tech. If you don't have hard news (and if you do, send an advance, we honor embargoes) or a compelling reason to meet next week, does it have to be next week?
We're here all year. Bet you are, too.
Posted by Rebecca Lieb on 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google Offers AdSense Referral Fees
Google has introduced a new program that allows AdSense publishers to garner fees for referring users to Google. Publishers add a referral button to their site that directs users to sign up for AdSense or download the Firefox browser with the Google Toolbar. If a referral signs up for AdSense and earns US $100, Google will credit publishers with a US $100 referral fee. If a referral downloads and runs Firefox, publishers receive up to $1.
More information on the new program can be found here.
Posted by Chris Sherman on 3:12 PM | Permalink
Autonomy Buys Verity
The two largest players in the enterprise search market are now one. Autonomy is purchasing Verity for $500 million, according to this Red Herring story. The combined companies will have 16,000 customers, including those using Inktomi's former Ultraseek platform, which Verity acquired in December 2002.
Posted by Chris Sherman on 3:06 PM | Permalink
Multimedia Searching: Speechbot is No Longer Available
Speechbot is no more.
Speechbot was an experimental web-based tool from HP Labs (and before that Compaq) that used voice-recognition to create seachable keyword transcripts from thousands of hours of audio content and then allowed the searcher to listen to the material online and read the computer generated transcript.
The database went offline last week. We've learned that Speechbot was shutdown after HP closed their Cambridge Research Lab. Some of the researchers have gone on to Intel and Nokia. Here's a screen cap of the site from 2004.
Feel like reminiscing about Speechbot?
Take a look at this public relations story from 2003.
+ Speechbot began in 1999.
+ "By early June 2003, the seven-member group, based at HP's Cambridge Research Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass. (USA) had catalogued more than 17,000 hours of multimedia content."
Thanks to M.A. and Dan G. for their help on this one.
Posted by Gary Price on 3:05 PM | Permalink
Breakfast Conflict
There's plenty of invites from "off-the-show-floor" events coming in from various companies wanting to make more of an impression than a booth visit at next week's AdTech. The latest invite arrived late Friday afternoon.
The event is a breakfast on Tuesday morning, at an event a good distance away from the New York Hilton. The breakfast is interesting, relevant, and topical; though at such a late time, it's hard to work into our schedules.
Posted by Enid Burns on 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Changes to Yahoo Video Search Page; Image Search Adds Results Page Refinements
Yahoo Video Search made a change last week that allows you to view your results in either a "grid" view or a "list" view which also offers some additional description/transcript info if available.
I've also started to notice that Yahoo is placing links to Yahoo Shortcuts on non-web search results pages. Here's an example of a video search for: "baseball" and on an image search results page for the search: Chicago.
Finally, image search results pages now allow the searcher to refine their search after clicking the search button. Look for various refinements at the top of the page below the blue line. For example, by just clicking you can only show only small, black and white images. Since February, Yahoo Images has also allowed the searcher to create "transformed" image queries using natural language.
Posted by Gary Price on 12:34 PM | Permalink
Details Emerge on Google Force One
When Google co-founders Page and Brin purchased a used Boeing 767 earlier this year, details were sketchy. Today the Wall Street Journal has page-one coverage filling in many missing details—and naturally, the plane will feature in-flight internet access.
The plane will hold about 50 passengers when its refit is complete.
People in the aviation industry familiar with the planned interior say it will have a sitting area, two staterooms with adjoining lavatories and a shower. Farther aft will be a large sitting-and-dining area. At the rear will be 12 to 16 first-class seats for guests or employees and a large galley.
Why a used 767 rather than a new business jet?
Mr. Page acknowledges that the purchase might seem ostentatious. But "we tend to have an engineering approach, to be fact-based," he says. "We looked at this and we just did the economics and we said, 'you know, it makes a lot of sense.'"
The jet was bought for personal, not business use. What kinds of trips will it be used for?
As for what they plan to do with it, Mr. Page wouldn't be specific. He says "part of the equation for this sort of machinery is to be able to take large numbers of people to places such as Africa. I think that can only be good for the world."
The full story is available here.
Want to discuss, comment or suggest a name for the plane? Visit our forum thread, Name The Google Jet.
Posted by Chris Sherman on 10:20 AM | Permalink
More Sources For Ebooks & Electronic Text
Further to today's post about Amazon planning to sell electronic books next year, here are some alternative places where you can get them right now:
+ Digital Book Index
"111,000 title records from more than 1800 commercial and non-commercial
publishers, universities, and various private sites. About 72,000 of these
books, texts, and documents are available free, while many others are available
at very modest cost. Registration, also free, is required to access the
database. You will need to give an email address but can make the choice to opt
out of any future mailings. The database can be searched by author and title.
You can also browse by author, title, subject, and publisher.
+ eBooklocator.com
Search for commercially available ebooks from more than 400 publishers. Listings
come from Overdrive's Content Reserve Digital Content Marketplace. Search by:
+ Format
+ Title
+ Author
+ Subject
+ Keyword
+ ISBN/DOI
Also, many fee-based services have been online for years that provide, free, searchable access to thousands of in-copyright books. Often, these services are free from public and university libraries. All you need is a library card and you can access the content outside the library from any computer. In many cases you can print, annotate, share, etc. this material. These services include:
+ Safari from O'Reilly
Access also available for individual purchase.
+ Books 24x7
Access also available for individual purchase.
+ ebrary
Individual access to more than 20,000 full
text books available. Costs just $5.00 to open an account.
FYI, if you're looking for a one-stop shop for public domain books, I can't say enough good things about The Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania. It organizes and lists thousands of books (including Gutenberg content and now some Google Print content) from many digitization projects. It's amazing how much is added each day. Here's the "new listings" page that also offers an RSS feed.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on 1:48 AM | Permalink
Forthcoming "Amazon Pages" & "Amazon Upgrade" Programs To Sell Books In Electronic Format
Amazon.com, proprietors of the wonderful Search Inside the Book (SITB) program, has announced a new Amazon Pages program that builds on SITB to allow consumers to download specific pages, chapters, or the entire book for offline reading.
Elinor Mills reports more in her News.com story, Amazon, Random House throw book at Google:
Amazon's new "Amazon Pages" program will let people purchase online access to anywhere from a few pages of a book to an entire work. The e-commerce company also announced a program called "Amazon Upgrade" that will let customers pay extra to be able to access books electronically that they've had shipped to them in printed form. In what could be the first step toward major publishers offering their works online, Random House said it will negotiate separate agreements with online booksellers, search engines, entertainment portals and others to offer the contents of its books to consumers for online viewing on a pay-per-page basis.
Elinor's article also reports that Amazon.com will begin the program sometime in 2006. However, no specific date was given. Of course, digital books available for purchase are not a new idea but after this announcement, I would plan to see much more of it from many publishers, online book vendors, and databases. Of course, the issue of people wanting to read large portions of books in a non-traditional format is an issue. New technology could change this but many people want to hold the book in their hands. Of course, for reference use, online access can be very useful.
The Amazon press release also mentions that SITB is now available in the UK, Germany, France, Canada and Japan. By the way, I've posted about some of my favorite SITB features, here.
Posted by Gary Price on 1:47 AM | Permalink
Google Print Now Publishing Out-Of-Copyright Works Gained Through Library Scanning Program
Google Print is now publishing the full-text of public domain/out-of-copyright print works it has acquired through the Google Print library scanning project. The official Google Blog provides more information and examples of finding some of this material in this post.
The move comes a couple of days after it was announced that Google was resuming its library scanning project, which includes works that are in and out of copyright. Works that are in copyright are not reprinted online without explicit publisher approval.
Google book scanning still on hold from News.com has more follow up on the resumption of scanning, as well as how well-known quotes from some classic books fail to bring up these books in Google Print's top results.
Remember, some of this "public domain" material might not be available outside the US since Google is using different dates to determine copyright around the globe. It's pre-1922 for the U.S.
The same blog post also points out (in a postscript) that others have been digitizing public domain materials for years. Heck, Project Gutenberg has been around since 1973. This post includes a few comments from its founder, Michael Hart.
If you're looking for a one-stop shop for public domain books, I can't say enough good things about The Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania. It organizes and lists thousands of books (including Gutenberg content and now some Google Print content) from many digitization projects. It's amazing how much is added each day. Here's the "new listings" page that also offers an RSS feed.
Happy reading!
Postscript: The British Library and MSN said the will work together to digitise around 100,000 out-of-copyright books for MSN Boook Search. More in the news release and this News.com story. About a week ago MSN joined the Open Content Alliance.
Postscript 2: Note to Google. I was reviewing a few public domain titles. How about a link to make the page larger? SITB offers this feature. Also, what about being able to access a page by page number after reviewing a table-of-contents or index?
Postscript 3: Let's not forget about other book digitization projects from Europe and a group of German publishers.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on 1:47 AM | Permalink
