People more receptive to ads during search?
on
Speculating About Gmail
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I'd question whether people would be as receptive to targeted ads in their email, however. I often search with the aim of making a purchase, and will happily click on the Google ads if they are relevant. This is not so often the case with email, however - the only situations that I can think of where I'd be responsive to targeted ads would be pre-sales query responses from merchants, or the one or two price bulletins I'm subscribed to (e.g. if they can mention somewhere I can get X cheaper.) But these types of emails would not be half as common as my use of search.
So to me, GMail looks like a service that will be massively more expensive per user for Google, with a lower return from click-throughs.
Anyone have any ideas of other situations where these ads might be successful (e.g. clicked on)?
...but rather (all this according to the article) their own distributed, fault-tolerant Google Filesystem (GFS) [PDF]. Apparently each of their 1/2 depth 1U servers has only one or two drives. If a server fails (which happens routinely with 100k servers) then it's simply left in place and the data is automatically replicated onto another server from one of the redundant copies.
The first poster obviously didn't read the article. It has *nothing* to do with using spreadsheets as databases. It covers two things. Firstly, it covers the inability of spreadsheets to deal with probability in projections, and our tendency to optimistically adjust some figures up and others down until we get the result we want. The problem is that a spreadsheet can only show a single 'snapshot' state:
It's not too hard to appreciate the difference between products that incorporate uncertainty and those that don't: On the one hand, you've got, "We predict a $1 million profit in the first year"; on the other, "The expected Year 1 profit is $1 million, but there's a 30 percent chance of losses for the first two years." These different statements will lead to quite different discussions.
The second point made is simply how what-if tools such as spreadsheets lead users to think they are making better forecasts while in fact their forecasts do not improve.
If you need to use a computer while standing up and walking around for example - I can completely understand why your building inspectors would want one. It's also a lot easier (read more respectful and less distracting to everyone) to use a flat computer in a meeting. It's better for reading the Web while sitting on a sofa.
You don't want one to code on however, (in tablet mode at least) or use it for writing a novel. That doesn't mean that they aren't very useful for certain tasks.
...which is seen as a special case. Far fewer ship futher afield (Europe for example). Next to none do this without exorbitant shipping fees, and then there are the taxes and duties that the customer will be assessed at the point of entry in their country. Frankly, it's not generally worth it for the consumer - even with the weak dollar, it worked out more or less the same price for me to get a Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) from Germany, and without all the hassle of trying to deal with a US merchant (most of whom don't even reply to emails asking if they ship abroad).
"We are back in a mini-bubble era in terms of people expecting a lot of these valuations but I don't think we'll see the same amount of exits the way we did..."
- quote from this Silicon.com article. He was speaking at an MSN online advertising conference, so a lot on the future of ads; besides that he also seems to be very interested in wireless technology.
There used to be a code in NY Times URLs that allowed entry without registration. Google News included this code for NY Times links. This code was specific to each story, probably some sort of hash. The whole 'you can add partner=SLASHDOT' thing was a joke - the point being that the reg-free entry mechanism didn't look at the partner parameter at all, but only considered the code. The upside was that once you had this URL you could paste it anywhere and it would work.
Now it appears that they are just checking the HTTP referer (sic) header against an approved list - which means no more 'reg-free' links for/. On the other hand, they might very well add slashdot.org to the approved referer list if asked, which would get rid of the whole problem.
Seriously, parent was referring to fire drills *in schools*. I don't think it hurts to be clear in these things - it's entirely possible that a young child would find 9-1-1 clearer than 9-11. We're not born with these skills, you know.
...on their CD and Minidisc players - for exactly the same purpose as Apple do on the iPod, to move quickly between songs. The implementation is different (generally like a volume knob) but Apple's innovation here is just a combination of two things with some industrial design; it's not so great that it should patentable. I can scroll through things on my notebook's touchpad by dragging my finger down one side; this has been standard on notebooks ever since I had one.
Incidentally the 'scroll wheel' in some form or other is pretty much universal on any Sony product, including their Vaio notebooks and Clie PDAs. My last Vaio had one on the side; they've now moved it to between the mouse buttons and it is effectively now just a mouse scroll wheel. AFAIK, Sony never tried to patent the idea.
Seriously though, there is no need to fly out
on
Microdrone Spy Planes
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· Score: 2, Insightful
All the drones can fly for an hour while transmitting pictures back to their operators
After being submerged for more then several years wood does not float. So after you cut the tree it will happily fall on the bottom.
From the article:
After grasping the base of the tree in pincer-like arms, it attaches an inflatable flotation bag, which it then fills from its compressed air supply. Finally, it uses its 1.5-metre chainsaw to cut the tree, and lets go of the trunk, allowing the flotation bag to carry it to the surface for retrieval.
No-one is stopping people selling their Parmesan equivalents - they just can't use the name Parmesan, as that is protected. Just like third parties can't make 'Pepsi' or 'Coca-Cola'. You believe that only corporations should be accorded such protection; the EU has a different viewpoint, believing that producers in these areas have invested in their brand over many years, before the advent of trademark protection, and that this deserves protection equivalent to trademarks.
There is absolutely nothing to stop a third party coming in and making a cheese like Parmesan, which tastes like Parmesan, and for them to build up that brand independently. They just can't use the name 'Parmesan'. And indeed, this happens - for example in Ireland there is a local cheese called 'Regato' which is a Parmesan clone - pre-1992 it used to be marketed as 'the Irish Parmesan'. And it's nice, but it is different, and not Parmesan. In a fit of irony, it is now itself apparently Ireland's only PDO cheese and is apparently doing well in Greece.
My laptop does XGA on a 12" screen; this works out at around 105dpi. Sub-pixel rendering, however, raises this to slightly over 300dpi on the horizontal axis. I'm using XP with Cleartype, but that's certainly not the only option. Text looks very very nice indeed, (and no colour artifacts); the only issue is that it's not reflective (or bendable - but I can live with that;-).
E-ink isn't colour, so this wouldn't be an issue for it, but I'd still say 170dpi 'paper-style' reflective would be very nice indeed; probably superior.
From the start of the article:
The Electronic Paper Display is reflective
As a previous poster pointed out, this is more like paper out of a printer than a screen. The article actually focuses more on the quality than the convenience:
an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper.
...or mechanical rights, which is the same system applying to radio stations in many countries. Radio stations do *not* need to negotiate the rights everything they play individually, but simply pay a certain amount per song. Allofmp3 has a radio-station style deal with the copyright organisation in Russia (ROMS) - note that these are generally the author/composer societies (e.g. ASCAP/BMI in the US); permission from the actual record companies associations (e.g. RIAA) is not required.
There is a Spanish site, WebListen, which has been operating freely within the EU for over 6 years, under the same business model - they pay the Spanish author/composer societies. I believe that they have been sued by the Spanish equivalent of the RIAA, but won, suggesting that such an operation is legal in at least one EU state.
Unless of course the quasi registrars have trademarked them
See this CA district court judgement regarding.web. I don't know if this has been upheld by a higher court but the judgement references several sources as support including 9th Circuit judgements and the USPTO.
...so there is every chance that domain registration could actually stay the same price. Computers are cheaper (in actual dollar values) now than they were fifty years ago. How much did telephone service cost in 1904?
if NS goes under, you can just transfer administration of your domain name to another registrar
If you read the linked page from Netsol, you would see that this works by Network Solutions registering your name for ten years (the maximum possible), and then re-registering at the end of each ten year period. They specifically state that if you transfer your domain name, you will only have the unexpired registration period (a maximum of ten years) and will not be eligible for any refund.
That 25% is only on a few very specific search phrases, but we honestly do get that high on those phrases. The reason is that for those phrases we are more relevant than the actual search results *in our geographic area*.
We get 10%+ click-through on the most completely generic term for the site. It could possibly be higher, but we also rank first in the normal search results for that term, if you limit your search to one particular country or use the country name as part of the search. Being able to limit AdWords to individual countries is one of the great things about Google - Overture isn't half as good in this regard.
Our *average* click-through over all phrases is much lower, at 3%, largely because with a lot of the other product words we use, people *would* be just searching for information on the product, rather than with a view to purchase. We could raise the click-through by only displaying ad if the search term included words such as 'buy', 'purchase', etc. but 3% is well above Google's cut-off and we aren't paying for the extra impressions, only the clicks, so this suits us fine. We still rank first on most of these search terms (e.g. competing AdWords are seen as less relevant).
As the parent poster mentions, these are often the people who have actually directly paid for them. This is nothing new. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie was not universally popular in his day, but we remember him today for his bequests, not for example his smashing of the union during the 1892 Homestead strike.
...But unfotunately the RIAA record companies are not working in a free market, but are a cartel successfully sued for conspiring to fix prices. All the music stores are pricing around $1/song, and it's common knowledge that the stores, such as iTunes, aren't making any money at that price. So I wouldn't hold out for further discounts.
Now how do you suppose he's going to make any money at that?
Google have a programme called AdSense in which they put Google AdWords on other websites - I'm sure you've seen them around the net. He could have set up a website, signed up with AdSense, and then had his clicking program click away on those ads on his own website. Result? A cheque from Google for the clicks.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd question whether people would be as receptive to targeted ads in their email, however. I often search with the aim of making a purchase, and will happily click on the Google ads if they are relevant. This is not so often the case with email, however - the only situations that I can think of where I'd be responsive to targeted ads would be pre-sales query responses from merchants, or the one or two price bulletins I'm subscribed to (e.g. if they can mention somewhere I can get X cheaper.) But these types of emails would not be half as common as my use of search.
So to me, GMail looks like a service that will be massively more expensive per user for Google, with a lower return from click-throughs.
Anyone have any ideas of other situations where these ads might be successful (e.g. clicked on)?
...but rather (all this according to the article) their own distributed, fault-tolerant Google Filesystem (GFS) [PDF]. Apparently each of their 1/2 depth 1U servers has only one or two drives. If a server fails (which happens routinely with 100k servers) then it's simply left in place and the data is automatically replicated onto another server from one of the redundant copies.
That's what you think.
It's not too hard to appreciate the difference between products that incorporate uncertainty and those that don't: On the one hand, you've got, "We predict a $1 million profit in the first year"; on the other, "The expected Year 1 profit is $1 million, but there's a 30 percent chance of losses for the first two years." These different statements will lead to quite different discussions.
The second point made is simply how what-if tools such as spreadsheets lead users to think they are making better forecasts while in fact their forecasts do not improve.
If you need to use a computer while standing up and walking around for example - I can completely understand why your building inspectors would want one. It's also a lot easier (read more respectful and less distracting to everyone) to use a flat computer in a meeting. It's better for reading the Web while sitting on a sofa. You don't want one to code on however, (in tablet mode at least) or use it for writing a novel. That doesn't mean that they aren't very useful for certain tasks.
...which is seen as a special case. Far fewer ship futher afield (Europe for example). Next to none do this without exorbitant shipping fees, and then there are the taxes and duties that the customer will be assessed at the point of entry in their country. Frankly, it's not generally worth it for the consumer - even with the weak dollar, it worked out more or less the same price for me to get a Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) from Germany, and without all the hassle of trying to deal with a US merchant (most of whom don't even reply to emails asking if they ship abroad).
"We are back in a mini-bubble era in terms of people expecting a lot of these valuations but I don't think we'll see the same amount of exits the way we did..."
- quote from this Silicon.com article. He was speaking at an MSN online advertising conference, so a lot on the future of ads; besides that he also seems to be very interested in wireless technology.
...and in any case, it's now obsolete.
/. On the other hand, they might very well add slashdot.org to the approved referer list if asked, which would get rid of the whole problem.
There used to be a code in NY Times URLs that allowed entry without registration. Google News included this code for NY Times links. This code was specific to each story, probably some sort of hash. The whole 'you can add partner=SLASHDOT' thing was a joke - the point being that the reg-free entry mechanism didn't look at the partner parameter at all, but only considered the code. The upside was that once you had this URL you could paste it anywhere and it would work.
Now it appears that they are just checking the HTTP referer (sic) header against an approved list - which means no more 'reg-free' links for
Seriously, parent was referring to fire drills *in schools*. I don't think it hurts to be clear in these things - it's entirely possible that a young child would find 9-1-1 clearer than 9-11. We're not born with these skills, you know.
...on their CD and Minidisc players - for exactly the same purpose as Apple do on the iPod, to move quickly between songs. The implementation is different (generally like a volume knob) but Apple's innovation here is just a combination of two things with some industrial design; it's not so great that it should patentable. I can scroll through things on my notebook's touchpad by dragging my finger down one side; this has been standard on notebooks ever since I had one.
Incidentally the 'scroll wheel' in some form or other is pretty much universal on any Sony product, including their Vaio notebooks and Clie PDAs. My last Vaio had one on the side; they've now moved it to between the mouse buttons and it is effectively now just a mouse scroll wheel. AFAIK, Sony never tried to patent the idea.
All the drones can fly for an hour while transmitting pictures back to their operators
From the article:
After grasping the base of the tree in pincer-like arms, it attaches an inflatable flotation bag, which it then fills from its compressed air supply. Finally, it uses its 1.5-metre chainsaw to cut the tree, and lets go of the trunk, allowing the flotation bag to carry it to the surface for retrieval.
There is absolutely nothing to stop a third party coming in and making a cheese like Parmesan, which tastes like Parmesan, and for them to build up that brand independently. They just can't use the name 'Parmesan'. And indeed, this happens - for example in Ireland there is a local cheese called 'Regato' which is a Parmesan clone - pre-1992 it used to be marketed as 'the Irish Parmesan'. And it's nice, but it is different, and not Parmesan. In a fit of irony, it is now itself apparently Ireland's only PDO cheese and is apparently doing well in Greece.
AOL are the largest ISP in the US, in the world if you discount DoCoMo as a mobile ISP. Most businesses can't just disregard AOL's members.
E-ink isn't colour, so this wouldn't be an issue for it, but I'd still say 170dpi 'paper-style' reflective would be very nice indeed; probably superior.
Now you don't have to go to the store to pick up your newspaper.
As a previous poster pointed out, this is more like paper out of a printer than a screen. The article actually focuses more on the quality than the convenience:
an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper.
There is a Spanish site, WebListen, which has been operating freely within the EU for over 6 years, under the same business model - they pay the Spanish author/composer societies. I believe that they have been sued by the Spanish equivalent of the RIAA, but won, suggesting that such an operation is legal in at least one EU state.
See this CA district court judgement regarding .web. I don't know if this has been upheld by a higher court but the judgement references several sources as support including 9th Circuit judgements and the USPTO.
...so there is every chance that domain registration could actually stay the same price. Computers are cheaper (in actual dollar values) now than they were fifty years ago. How much did telephone service cost in 1904?
If you read the linked page from Netsol, you would see that this works by Network Solutions registering your name for ten years (the maximum possible), and then re-registering at the end of each ten year period. They specifically state that if you transfer your domain name, you will only have the unexpired registration period (a maximum of ten years) and will not be eligible for any refund.
That 25% is only on a few very specific search phrases, but we honestly do get that high on those phrases. The reason is that for those phrases we are more relevant than the actual search results *in our geographic area*.
We get 10%+ click-through on the most completely generic term for the site. It could possibly be higher, but we also rank first in the normal search results for that term, if you limit your search to one particular country or use the country name as part of the search. Being able to limit AdWords to individual countries is one of the great things about Google - Overture isn't half as good in this regard.
Our *average* click-through over all phrases is much lower, at 3%, largely because with a lot of the other product words we use, people *would* be just searching for information on the product, rather than with a view to purchase. We could raise the click-through by only displaying ad if the search term included words such as 'buy', 'purchase', etc. but 3% is well above Google's cut-off and we aren't paying for the extra impressions, only the clicks, so this suits us fine. We still rank first on most of these search terms (e.g. competing AdWords are seen as less relevant).
As the parent poster mentions, these are often the people who have actually directly paid for them. This is nothing new. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie was not universally popular in his day, but we remember him today for his bequests, not for example his smashing of the union during the 1892 Homestead strike.
...But unfotunately the RIAA record companies are not working in a free market, but are a cartel successfully sued for conspiring to fix prices. All the music stores are pricing around $1/song, and it's common knowledge that the stores, such as iTunes, aren't making any money at that price. So I wouldn't hold out for further discounts.
Google have a programme called AdSense in which they put Google AdWords on other websites - I'm sure you've seen them around the net. He could have set up a website, signed up with AdSense, and then had his clicking program click away on those ads on his own website. Result? A cheque from Google for the clicks.