Virtual Economies is an MMO resource site that includes a directory of online marketplaces dealing in real-money trading of virtual assets. It also has links to services that try to track pricing trends.
Even if you transplant the jobs from elsewhere, the Google employees still need to buy houses and groceries and a million other things in the local economy. Even if Google doesn't pay real estate taxes, its employees do. Their kids go to the schools, etc.
Also, many of these communities are hoping to benefit from data center "clustering" - one company moves in and demonstrates the area's value as a data center environment, and then other companies follow suit. This is definitely what San Antonio has in mind with its incentives to Microsoft.
PG&E, the utility in California, offers rebates to customers who use outside air to cool their data centers. Some data centers in the Northwest use this as a way to lower data AC costs. The tradeoff is that you have to filter the air for contaminants and watch the humidity.
The North Carolina Google jobs are expected to average $48,000 a year in a county where the average is $27,000 a year. That's one reason local officials are willing to offer incentives to Google.
The key is the "unless it's funny" exception. Most gamers have a sense of humor (probably why there's so many game-related web conmics), and advertisers that understand the culture and audience should be able to come up with ads that don't waste the advertisers' money or the gamers' time.
You can advertise whatever you want in Google's online games, so long as its all-text ad with a 35-character headline, two 35-character lines, and a link.
The estimate is supposedly based on web pages in the Google index. To comply with COPPA, most porn sites have a "clickwrap" screen which makes the user verify that they are 18 before proceeding. Does Google see the pages behind this screen? Pages in paid membership areas are also not likely to be indexed (unless you're the New York Times, of course), which also probably limits the porn content in the sampling.
Nonetheless, a Google search for "sex" yields 393 million results, and a search for "porn" yields 82.9 million results. If the percentages of actual porn are as low as the survey suggests, what does that say about the (undisclosed) size of the Google index?
Yes, lawsuits are inevitable. I don't feel any sympathy for those who become consumed by their decision to play WoW instead of spending time in other pursuits. But the tobacco analogy extends to MMos in that the amount of science that goes into reinforcing the addictive behaviors plays poorly in front of a jury. Blizzard's really good at immersive environments and the strategies that keep you immersed. We may not know exactly how they do it, but when the process is uncovered in court and laid out for all to see... well, Jack Thompson (or the MMO equivalent of his FPS ambulance chaser routine) will know make some mileage out it.
This tool is most helpful for companies who buy a lot of AdWords and route the the clicks to optimized "landing pages" that present a focused marketing pitch. From what I've seen, the Optimizer's real value is to help these AdWords buyers figure out which of their landing pages is producing the best performance in routing readers to their product pages. Getting that kind of data in a quick, user-friendly fashion will have value to these folks.
It's about the brand, not just the hardware. Could HP and Dell build and sell similar machines? Sure. But I think the brands matter to gamers, and buying these companies gives Dell and HP "gamer cred" that would be hard for them to acquire on their own. Alienware retains its own brand and web site (although it now has some Dell flourishes), and it appears Voodoo will as well.
The issue is whether gamers continue to support Alienware and Voodoo, or come to believe that they've sold out to soul-less conglomerates and look for another niche player to buy from. Can huge corporations succeed in gaming culture/counterculture? Microsoft would argue that it would. Note that much of its gaming success has been acquired (i.e. Bungie).
Skeptical about Microsoft's survey? Try the Netcraft toolbar, which finished a close second. Washington post security columnist Brian Krebs has written many columns about phishing, and thus surfs to known phishing sites all the time. Here's his take after visiting a malware site for a recent column:
"It's worth noting that Netcraft's anti-phishing toolbar detected this site as malicious and tried to prevent me from visiting it, as it is designed to do. I have to say that I've visited countless phishing sites in the past few months, and Netcraft's toolbar has done its job almost unfailingly."
The big issue on RSS security is Microsoft's integration of RSS into Vista. Given hackers' success targeting e-mail and browsers weaknesses, will Microsoft's implementation of RSS be better? Let's hope so. Netcraft wrote about this more than a year ago, but there's been very little discussion since. It's trivial to spoof and augment a feed. Rather than trying to target weaknesses in individual RSS readers, there's a single Microsoft implementation to test and attack. It's a game changer in terms of RSS' potential usefulness as a malware delivery channel.
Agreed. "BitTorrent Inc." would have been more precise and addressed any confusion. The extra characters would have fit in the headline field as well. I used to write headlines at newspapers, so you learn to use every available character for as much meaning and precision as possible. It's one of those "old school" media skills that's worthy of more attention.
But then again, many newspapers write craptastic and misleading headlines these days anyway. On the Web the headline on an article works more like the nightly TV news teasers - anything to get you to pay attention.
Texas is actually the center of the universe for dedicated servers. You've got The Planet, EV1Servers, Rackspace, VeriCenter, Collocation Solutions, SoftLayer, Layered Technologies... the list goes on. It's pretty amazing.
Most enterprise customers don't have any interest in sharing a facility with 50 other telecom providers and hosting companies in a carrier hotel like The Westin Building. These companies want big, stand-alone data centers where they can have complete control over access and security. The other issue is that space is limited in telecom hotels like Westin. The Equinix project mentioned in TFA is 225,000 square feet, and the Microsoft requirement is for more than 400,000 square feet. Westin is a large facility, but the fifth floor isn't 200,000 square feet.
The way fewer advertisements was a predictor of GMR's doom. In the news business, a publication's health is measured in ad pages. When the magazine or paper starts getting thin, it's never a good sign. Lots of wide-open pages with no ads is great for readers, but only until they have to pay for the newsprint and don't have the ad support to do so.
A lot of small to medium-sized web hosting companies are worried about this (see Netcraft's story). But based on the Page Creator beta, they have nothing to worry about. It's inferior to dozens of web-based page builders already in use at hosting companies. Even Blogger is way easier and has better designs.
Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Economies is an MMO resource site that includes a directory of online marketplaces dealing in real-money trading of virtual assets. It also has links to services that try to track pricing trends.
Also, many of these communities are hoping to benefit from data center "clustering" - one company moves in and demonstrates the area's value as a data center environment, and then other companies follow suit. This is definitely what San Antonio has in mind with its incentives to Microsoft.
PG&E, the utility in California, offers rebates to customers who use outside air to cool their data centers. Some data centers in the Northwest use this as a way to lower data AC costs. The tradeoff is that you have to filter the air for contaminants and watch the humidity.
The North Carolina Google jobs are expected to average $48,000 a year in a county where the average is $27,000 a year. That's one reason local officials are willing to offer incentives to Google.
The key is the "unless it's funny" exception. Most gamers have a sense of humor (probably why there's so many game-related web conmics), and advertisers that understand the culture and audience should be able to come up with ads that don't waste the advertisers' money or the gamers' time.
You can advertise whatever you want in Google's online games, so long as its all-text ad with a 35-character headline, two 35-character lines, and a link.
If Google goes down for 72 hours, the drop in productivity will result from all its data center staff being fired.
Nonetheless, a Google search for "sex" yields 393 million results, and a search for "porn" yields 82.9 million results. If the percentages of actual porn are as low as the survey suggests, what does that say about the (undisclosed) size of the Google index?
Yes, lawsuits are inevitable. I don't feel any sympathy for those who become consumed by their decision to play WoW instead of spending time in other pursuits. But the tobacco analogy extends to MMos in that the amount of science that goes into reinforcing the addictive behaviors plays poorly in front of a jury. Blizzard's really good at immersive environments and the strategies that keep you immersed. We may not know exactly how they do it, but when the process is uncovered in court and laid out for all to see ... well, Jack Thompson (or the MMO equivalent of his FPS ambulance chaser routine) will know make some mileage out it.
This tool is most helpful for companies who buy a lot of AdWords and route the the clicks to optimized "landing pages" that present a focused marketing pitch. From what I've seen, the Optimizer's real value is to help these AdWords buyers figure out which of their landing pages is producing the best performance in routing readers to their product pages. Getting that kind of data in a quick, user-friendly fashion will have value to these folks.
The issue is whether gamers continue to support Alienware and Voodoo, or come to believe that they've sold out to soul-less conglomerates and look for another niche player to buy from. Can huge corporations succeed in gaming culture/counterculture? Microsoft would argue that it would. Note that much of its gaming success has been acquired (i.e. Bungie).
"It's worth noting that Netcraft's anti-phishing toolbar detected this site as malicious and tried to prevent me from visiting it, as it is designed to do. I have to say that I've visited countless phishing sites in the past few months, and Netcraft's toolbar has done its job almost unfailingly."
toolbar.netcraft.com
The big issue on RSS security is Microsoft's integration of RSS into Vista. Given hackers' success targeting e-mail and browsers weaknesses, will Microsoft's implementation of RSS be better? Let's hope so. Netcraft wrote about this more than a year ago, but there's been very little discussion since. It's trivial to spoof and augment a feed. Rather than trying to target weaknesses in individual RSS readers, there's a single Microsoft implementation to test and attack. It's a game changer in terms of RSS' potential usefulness as a malware delivery channel.
But then again, many newspapers write craptastic and misleading headlines these days anyway. On the Web the headline on an article works more like the nightly TV news teasers - anything to get you to pay attention.
Just what we need ... a gun that needs an SSL certificate.
Texas is actually the center of the universe for dedicated servers. You've got The Planet, EV1Servers, Rackspace, VeriCenter, Collocation Solutions, SoftLayer, Layered Technologies ... the list goes on. It's pretty amazing.
Most enterprise customers don't have any interest in sharing a facility with 50 other telecom providers and hosting companies in a carrier hotel like The Westin Building. These companies want big, stand-alone data centers where they can have complete control over access and security. The other issue is that space is limited in telecom hotels like Westin. The Equinix project mentioned in TFA is 225,000 square feet, and the Microsoft requirement is for more than 400,000 square feet. Westin is a large facility, but the fifth floor isn't 200,000 square feet.
The way fewer advertisements was a predictor of GMR's doom. In the news business, a publication's health is measured in ad pages. When the magazine or paper starts getting thin, it's never a good sign. Lots of wide-open pages with no ads is great for readers, but only until they have to pay for the newsprint and don't have the ad support to do so.
Oops. Nevermind.
A lot of small to medium-sized web hosting companies are worried about this (see Netcraft's story). But based on the Page Creator beta, they have nothing to worry about. It's inferior to dozens of web-based page builders already in use at hosting companies. Even Blogger is way easier and has better designs.