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Google launches AdSense for Games

This screenshot shows one way Google will place ads in games, including casual Web-based games like PlayFish's Wordplay.

(Credit: Google)

If Google's entry into a field of advertising doesn't legitimize it, nothing can. And that's why the in-game advertising industry just got a huge shot in the arm.

On Tuesday night, Google announced the beta launch of its new AdSense for Games program, the search giant's first foray into the video games market, and the long-awaited answer to the question of what the company planned to do with AdScape Media, which it bought for $23 million in February 2007.

According to Christian Oestlien, the senior product manager for AdSense for Games, the program's beta launch will focus on the placement of a variety of forms of ads in Flash-based casual games and some larger titles.

In the beginning at least, Oestlien said, Google will work with partners like PlayFish, Mochi Media, Demand Media and Konami.

The latter, Oestlien said, would use AdSense for Games to place ads in well-known titles like Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution.

And among the initial advertisers participating in the program are eSurance, Sprint, and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Of course, the in-game advertising field already has several well-established players, including Microsoft's Massive, DoubleFusion, and IGA.

"By (Google) finally launching in the space," said DoubleFusion CEO Jonathan Epstein, "it confirms for all parties...that this space is of interest to one of the largest media companies in the world. Google does not enter into markets that don't have billion dollar-plus potential for them."

To Epstein, having Google plant its flag in the in-game ads space shows everyone that games cannot be taken lightly as an ad platform, no matter what other choices advertisers have for their dollars.

"The battleground here is not between ourselves and Massive and Google," Epstein said. "It's getting games their rightful share of the ad dollars, as opposed to TV, print, and (traditional) online ads."

For its part, Google is well aware that it will have several significant competitors, but still thinks it can set itself apart.

According to Oestlien, Google intends to do so by leveraging its network of thousands of advertiser partners, as well as its proven experience helping those partners with the placement of effective print, image- and Flash-based creative ads.

Google's long-term play
Given that Google announced its AdScape buy more than a year ago, Google's move is by no means a surprise. Some see that it's only natural that the company seeks to repeat the success it has had with AdSense in as many new environments as possible.

And some think that while Google may have its work cut out for it in the games space in the short-term, the AdSense for Games move is really part of a long-term play involving several different media.

"I would argue that Google is not going to be a home run in in-game advertising...any time in the immediate future," said Tim Hanlon, executive vice president of Publicis Groupe's media futures practice, Denuo. "But pay careful attention, (it is trying to build the) foundational building blocks to be an ad server in many environments that could be very attractive to marketers and ad agencies, and I think the place where Google will be successful soonest is in the self-serve marketplace, or the long-tail marketer environment."

"Google does not enter into markets that don't have billion dollar-plus potential for them."

--Jonathan Epstein, CEO, DoubleFusion

Hanlon explained he thinks Google is uniquely positioned to help small, "mom and pop" marketing companies get into media formerly dominated by major advertisers. And games could present just such a golden opportunity for these moms and pops, he said.

"In the short term, this is interesting, but not earth-shaking," Hanlon said. "But in the long term, it's yet another step towards Google ubiquity in ad serving."

For now, Google is not saying exactly what its plans are, but it did say that it plans to bring in revenues through both impressions and click-through models.

To Dorian Benkoil, the founder of Teeming Media, an online business consultancy, Google's success at placing in-game ads, like that of its competitors, will come down to how well it is able to integrate those messages in games.

"What I've seen," said Benkoil," is that the community of gamers tend to be very vocal and emotional about anything that they find that isn't well integrated into a game. So if Google is doing an AdSense initiative, I would hope that they would do it in a seamless way that isn't interruptive of the gaming experience. Because if not, they would face some backlash."

Benkoil said that his research has also indicated that in-game ads may not be as effective as those in other media. That's because, he suggested, gamers spend a lot of time on the sites and in the games where they play, but they are deeply engaged in what they're doing and are not very interested in looking at things, like ads, that may be a distraction.

That dynamic, he added, could be a problem for Google if it focuses too much on the click-through model.

Another question Google will have to find the answer to is how gamers feel about ads in the first place.

For years, there have been studies showing that gamers actually like ads because it makes their playing experience more realistic, given that there's advertising everywhere we go in real life.

Smart ad placement is key
Whether that's generally true or not, Benkoil said the key is how smart the placement of any ads are in games.

"Ads have to be well-integrated into the game," he said, "and usually when they are well-integrated, it's been very carefully done, and the gaming company works very carefully to integrate the advertising message."

Without knowing any specifics of Google's plans, Benkoil said this could pose a problem for the company, since it is known for automated algorithms that place ads, and he said it would be hard to imagine how carefully those ads could be positioned.

"But if they're able to pull that off in an automated sense," he added, "then they've gone to a new generation of in-game advertising."

For now, with financial markets the world over struggling, some may question whether it's a good idea for Google to be diving into a new advertising medium, but Oestlien doesn't see the economic downturn as much of a problem for the AdSense for Games program.

"Given the current economic situation, we think providing a model that reinforces games," Oestlien said, "is a great thing for Google to be able to do. Games are a pretty resilient part of the economy, and game playing continues to grow."

Either way, given that Google paid $23 million for AdScape, it had to launch its in-game ads program sooner or later. And that's good for the industry, even its competitors insist.

"This is nothing that wasn't expected," said Epstein. "It was a question of when. (And) it's another voice saying the TV buy is outdated and (Google's) is a powerful voice in this argument."

Firefox Geode: Web sites know where you are

As expected, Mozilla Labs released a Firefox plug-in Tuesday called Geode that lets Web sites figure out a person's approximate geographic location and use it in online services--as long as you grant the software permission to access the information.

Geode, a preview of technology to arrive in Firefox 3.1, taps into technology called Loki from Skyhook that deduces a computer's location from the signals of nearby wireless networks, according to a Mozilla Labs blog post on Geode.

To show the technology off, Mozilla shared an application called Food Finder that shows the user's approximate location and nearby dining establishments. Others that work with the technology are Pownce, a microblogging site that can record users' locations as they post notes or photos, and Yahoo's Fire Eagle, which lets users govern which applications get access to their location information.

There's one thing I find interesting about the general thrust of this technology. The Internet has broken down geographic barriers, letting people stay in touch with high school buddies, tap into a global market for used books, and find comrades with shared interests such as speaking Latin or photographing mating insects.

But a lot of new work on the Net is trying to unlock the location information. After all, people often need to keep from getting lost or to find their friends at the concert. And of course, plenty of advertisers would like to target ads at people who are likely to walk past a storefront.

Although Geode today uses Skyhook's service, Firefox 3.1 will be configurable to select other options as well, such as a GPS device, Mozilla said.

The Food Finder demonstration application showed my location, almost, with a blue dot, and nearby pastry shops listed at Yelp.

(Credit: CNET News)

Mozilla envisions more than just more intelligent online maps. Its other examples: local news based on where a person actually is located, a Web site log-in process that only works if a person is at a specific location, and an RSS feed reader that changes what subscriptions it shows users depending on whether they're at work or home.

Web designers who want to take advantage of the feature can use the W3C's Geolocation Specification, currently in draft form.

Geode asks permission before letting a Web site use your geographic information.

BitSmash Launches BitTorrent Statistics Tool

BitSmash is a new service that aims to provide statistics on all BitTorrent downloads. The site allows users to search from keywords, just like the average BitTorrent site, and sort the results in various ways. For every torrent, it also shows graphs of changes in various statistics over time.

BitSmash will be launched officially on October 15th, but the website is already fully operational. The project looks promising, and might prove to be a great tool for those who are interested in BitTorrent trends, including ourselves. One of the major downsides at the moment, however, is the accuracy of some of the statistics that are reported by BitSmash.

We’ve gone through the data, and it seems that BitSmash is off on the numbers of seeds and peers. One of the top downloads according to the service is The Incredible Hulk, with 414 peers and 139 seeders. However, Mininova and several other BitTorrent sites report that the torrent has more than 15,000 peers, and a manual scrape of one of the trackers returned close to 18,000 peers.

The service is of course still being developed, so these numbers might be corrected later. Smash, the founder of the project told us: “I’m going to stand by our numbers,” but said he will take a look at the inconsistencies. He encourages everyone to submit feedback while the site is in Beta.

Interestingly, BitSmash has decided to include a link to the .torrent files on their detail pages, which basically makes it a meta-search engine as well. The anti-piracy lobby might not be too happy about that. A few days ago we reported on the Swedish news site Nyheter24, that was criticized for linking to torrents on The Pirate Bay.

The service will officially launch October 15th, and later this year there will also be an API available for other services and websites to access, who can use the data for other purposes. Overall we think that BitSmash could develop into a great research tool. It’s worth checking out.

Motorola's Linux strategy evolves with Android

Reports have emerged indicating that Motorola is hiring developers with Java and Android expertise in preparation for launching a major mobile initiative on top of Google's software platform. This move reflects a new stage n the expansion of Motorola's mobile software strategy, which increasingly emphasizes the open source Linux operating system.

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• Motorola reveals new Linux-based mobile platform
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• 23% of smartphone market to be Linux-powered by 2013
• Qualcomm and Google prepare iPhone competitor

Motorola was one of the first major handset makers to embrace the Linux platform. Its earliest Linux-based phones were popular in China, enabling the company to sell over 5 million of the penguin-powered devices by 2006. Following that initial victory, Motorola brought its Linux phones to the US with its global launch of the Razr2 in 2007. Motorola's current Linux lineup features eight LiMo-compatible handsets and the company boasts that its total sales of Linux-based phones has exceeded 14 million as of this year.

Motorola VP of software Christy Wyatt talked about the company's commitment to Linux last month during a keynote presentation at the Open Source in Mobile conference in Berlin. She says that Motorola is betting big on Linux because the open platform reduces costs and provides a very high level of flexibility. The rapid pace at which the smartphone market is evolving has forced Motorola and its competitors to look for technologies that can shorten their development cycles. Wyatt says that Linux facilitates that kind of agile development and can help device makers stay ahead of the curve.

Motorola has been attempting to cultivate a third-party developer ecosystem around its LiMo-compatible MOTOMAGX platform, which was first unveiled last year. The handset maker's recently-launched MOTODEV SDK is very promising, but still has a long way to go, according to some early reviews by open source enthusiasts who have experience with other Linux mobile platforms.

Diversity or sharpened focus? 

The revelation that Motorola is investing in Android development has gotten a lot of attention in the past week from pundits and industry analysts. Some are wondering if Motorola will leave LiMo behind as it embraces Google's Android platform. That is certainly a possibility, but I think that the question itself extends from a misconception. Contrary to what many seem to assume, each handset maker and mobile carrier isn't necessarily going to choose only one Linux-based mobile platform.

Android and MOTOMAGX are very different kinds of platforms—they aren't redundant—and it's entirely conceivable that Motorola will want to use Android on one kind of device and MOTOMAGX on another. For instance, Motorola's current MOTOMAGX phones strongly focus on multimedia capabilities and don't really compete with the conventional business smartphone market, so it would make sense for the company to continue using MOTOMAGX in that context while adopting Android for new high-end smartphones with touch screens and keyboards.

A glance across all of Motorola's product lines reveals that it already exhibits a very high degree of platform diversity. Practically every major mobile platform, including Windows Mobile on the Moto Q devices, is represented somewhere in Motorola's product landscape. With that in mind, it seems only natural that Motorola would adopt more than one Linux platform, as the company increases its commitment to Linux.

Looking at Motorola's affiliations practically confirms that view. Motorola is a founding member of all three major open-platform initiatives: the LiMo Foundation, the Open Handset Alliance, and the Symbian Foundation. Motorola will likely use all three platforms to help meet consumer demand for different kind of devices and mobile experiences in different markets and regions.

During the OSiM keynote, Wyatt forcefully argued for the importance of diversity in the mobile software industry. Motorola doesn't want to see the emergence of a single dominant mobile software vendor. The challenge, however, is balancing the need for diversity against the cost of fragmentation. To enable development of software applications that can span across a multitude of platforms, she sees web technologies as a potential solution.

Motorola has already taken the first steps in that direction with WebUI, an application runtime for MOTOMAGX devices that is built on top of WebKit and allows application developers to product programs with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. It exposes a lot of handset functionality up through the JavaScript layer, including APIs for location, multimedia, and phonebook technologies.

Motorola is clearly expanding its commitment to Linux and appears to be pursuing a strategy around multiple Linux-based platforms. Motorola hasn't enjoyed a major breakout success with any single product in the handset market since the original RAZR, and the company has been struggling to regain some of its former glory. Producing a diverse range of handsets and experimenting with different platforms could help Motorola find another combination that works.

Shareaza 2.4 Released

First stable release to provide IRC support and the TorrentWizard for easier BitTorrent downloading.

Shareaza is a P2P file-sharing client which supports the Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey Network, BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP network protocols and handles magnet links, ed2k links, Piolet links, and the now deprecated Gnutella links.

Released by developer Michael Stokes into the open source community on June 1, 2004, Shareaza 2.4 celebrates more than 4 years of freedom by presenting almost 900 changes from the previous release. It contains numerous bug fixes and major changes to provide better stability of the client. It is also the first stable release to provide IRC support.

Windows 98/Me support has been discontinued -and Vista enhanced- with multi-generation upgrades in underlying platforms. TorrentWizard is now bundled, new IRC Chat provides easy support and community, and countless new and improved features are both subtly throughout and unseen (ChangeLog).

This latest stable release was done in 9 months of solid dedication under difficult circumstances. If you recall, it was on December 19th, 2007 of last year that the the project's domain name, Shareaza.com, was hijacked and redirected to an unrelated site, promoting the download of a client known as ShareazaV4. As a result, the original project was forced to move their home page to SourceForge.net.

Note: Upgrading from any prior version is safe, however downgrading from 2.4 back to prior releases may lose active downloads. A clean install should clear up any unusual behaviors.

DOWNLOAD SHAREAZA 2.4

Free web tools

Here a list of free services like counters, pagerank button, tagboards  , seo monitor
http://www.smallcounters.com/
http://www.bigcounters.com/
http://www.bestcounters.com/
http://www.fasthitcounter.com/
http://www.litetext.com/
http://www.counters4u.com/

more added soon :)

Yahoo has high hopes for calendar makeover

Yahoo has high hopes for calendar makeover

Different colors represent entries from different calendars.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo plans to begin a beta test of a major overhaul of its online calendar Wednesday, a redesign that brings new advertising and social-networking possibilities.

The new site brings a more polished Web 2.0 interface, with drag-and-drop abilities, color-coded entries, Flickr image backdrops, and a slick "zoom" feature that expands a single day's schedule to a usefully large size when browsing in the monthly view. And picking up an ability from No. 2 rival Google Calendar, the new design finally moves beyond the narrow single-user calendar idea of the earlier design.

For example, people can subscribe to others' calendars, such as schedules for sports teams or college courses, and to share calendars publicly or with others who've been invited, said Scott Dietzen, who took over Yahoo's mail and communications business in June.

And through a later upgrade, Yahoo will build in access to the company's Upcoming service to share and find events, he added. This sidebar will show popular local events and--through the "vitality" information Yahoo users can share as part of the Yahoo Open Strategy--the events on the calendars of a person's top social contacts, Dietzen said.

Yahoo Mail is used by about 278 million people each month, but Yahoo Calendar is relatively unknown with 8 million users, according to ComScore's August statistics. If the company is successful with its calendar push, the calendar will narrow that usage gap, making scheduling a more active and useful part of people's online lives.

Usage has been "relatively flat," he said, but "We think we're going to see some very nice growth...I think it's poised to go mainstream. It's the combination of mobile devices and collaborative authoring in terms of publish and subscribe."

The new Yahoo calendar site lets users zoom into a day's events from the monthly view. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Yahoo)

Of course, Yahoo doesn't just want to be useful to people: it's under financial pressure, and calendars provide at least in theory a better way to make money. Today's calendar shows ordinary banner advertisements, but the new design offers space on the lower left for advertising promotions. Clicking the link can add an event to the user's calendar, and the advertiser will be able to gauge more precisely how successful the ad campaign is.

"With sponsored events in the calendar, you can do very, very narrow targeting," Dietzen said. "We're trying to strive for ways that help Yahoo monetize, but that enhance the user experience as opposed to detract."

The new beta will be available to a gradually larger subset of subscribers in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Taiwan, and Brazil, though users can sign up at the Yahoo Calendar switch site. The company plans to have the beta version in use globally by the end of the year, but Dietzen wouldn't share when it expects to release the final version.

The new Yahoo Calendar is based on the calendar technology of Zimbra, the open-source e-mail, contacts, and calendar start-up Yahoo acquired in 2007. "This is the first wide-scale deployment of Zimbra technology for Yahoo consumer technology. It won't be the last," Dietzen said.

One benefit of the Zimbra technology is the ability to synchronize with calendars stored with Microsoft's Outlook software, though that won't come until a future version, he added. Also coming is iPhone synchronization, he said.

The new Yahoo Calendar can show Flickr images as a background, though not yet a user's own shots. That's planned for a future version. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Yahoo)

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Simply display the BidVertiser text ads on your website and let advertisers bid against each other!

We will always display the highest bidders to maximize your revenue so you will make more money!

AdSense

When I survey website or blogs about the methods that they use to make money from their blogs Google’s AdSense is always the number one response. It is a quick and easy way for bloggers of all sizes to display ads that are relevant to their content.

AdSense is a ‘contextual’ advertising program where publishers simply add a piece of code to their blogs that helps Google analyze what your page is about so they can serve ads on that topic. This increases the chances of your readers clicking the ad which increases the chances that you’ll earn something from them.

AdSense also provide a variety of other income streams to bloggers including a site search tool (you make money by people searching your site) and referral tools (where you can make money by recommending Google products).

AdSense is how I earn around 35% of my income as a full time blogger and I would thoroughly recommend it as a way of monetizing a blog - especially for those just starting out.
If you’re not already an AdSense publisher sign up for it using the following button.

email validation

<?php
/**
Verifies whether the given mail address exists.
@param mail the email address to verify
@return NULL if the address exists, as far as we could check.
an error message if we found a problem with the address
*/
function email_verify_check($mail) {
$host = substr(strchr($mail, '@'), 1);
if (!checkdnsrr($host, 'ANY')) {
return t('Email host %host does not seem valid', array('%host' => "$host"));
}
$mxHosts = array();
if (! getmxrr($host, $mxHosts)) {
$mxHosts[] = $host;
}

// Try to connect to one SMTP server
foreach ($mxHosts as $smtpServer) {

$connect = @fsockopen($smtpServer, 25, $errno, $errstr, 30);

if (!$connect) continue;

if (ereg("^220", $out = fgets($connect, 1024))) {
// OK, we have a SMTP connection
break;
} else {
echo("Could not verify email address at host $host: $out");
return;
}
}

if (! $connect)
return t('Email host %host does not seem valid, it does not answer', array('%host' => "$host"));

$from = "web@hotmail.com";

// Extract the <...> part if there is one
if (preg_match('/<(.*)>/', $from, $match) > 0) {
$from = $match[1];
}

$localhost = $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"];
if (!$localhost) // Happens with HTTP/1.0
//should be good enough for RFC compliant SMTP servers
$localhost = 'localhost';

fputs($connect, "HELO $localhostrn");
$out = fgets($connect, 1024);
fputs($connect, "MAIL FROM: <$from>rn");
$from = fgets($connect, 1024);
fputs($connect, "RCPT TO: <{$mail}>rn");
$to = fgets($connect, 1024);
fputs($connect, "QUITrn");
fclose($connect);

if (!ereg ("^250", $from)) {
// Again, something went wrong before we could really test the address,
// be on the safe side and accept it.
echo ("Could not verify email address at host $host: $from");
return;
}

if (ereg("(Client host|Helo command) rejected", $to)) {
// This server does not like us, accept the email address
// (noos.fr behaves like this for instance)
echo("Could not verify email address at host $host: $to");
return;
}

if (!ereg ("^250", $to )) {
echo("Rejected email address: $mail. Reason: $to");
// return('Email address %mail does not seem valid', array('%mail' => "$mail"));
}

// Everything OK
echo "Valid email";
return;
}


email_verify_check("user@email.com");

?>

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