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Viacom’s Big Shift to Digital: Summarised
Viacom have been making further moves to secure their future in digital media. Given all of the moves they’ve made this week, we thought it was worth summarising it.
The first recent deal was the one with Viacom doing a multi-part deal with Google. Viacom will provide Google with video clips and commercials for syndication through Google’s AdSense network, with income being split three ways, Viacom; Google; and the Web site owner. Videos from the Viacom group of companies will also sell their videos on Google Video for $1.99.
The day after this Viacom announced that they were going to buy Atom Entertainment (AtomShockwave as was, made up of Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com, AtomFilms.com and AddictingClips.com). Viacom put $200m on the table for this one.
They’re be adding this to their other recent purchases, XFIRE, Y2M, GameTrailers.com, IFILM and Neopets, placing them all under MTV Networks.
Viacom are experts at delivering messages (TV, films and adverts to you and me) on television and films, and as we can see from the above deals, they’ve caught on that they really ought to be able to do this online too. To try and simplify this, they were looking for a way to smooth the transition of their content to the digital realm.
This brings us to the latest deal, between Viacom and Adobe, where Adobe’s Engagement Platform will be the preferred tool to digitise the content. The two will also ‘work together in developing new media applications,’ which sounds like an interesting idea, sadly no further detail was available.
The upshot of this is pretty bad news for Microsoft and Real as Viacom will be serving all of the online video adverts using Flash Video. Another nail in the coffin for a use of Microsoft’s Windows Media.
Viacom
Google
Atom Entertainment
Adobe
11 August, 2006
Google Adds New Security Features
Search engine giants Google have introduced a new feature which alerts punters about search results that could potentially lead them to dodgy sites with malicious code.
Using data from the Stop Badware Coalition – a non-profit organisation who also enjoy support from Sun Microsystems and Chinese PC maker Lenovo – Google will now flag up sites that could be hosting malicious software.
Whenever a suspect link is clicked on from Google’s search engine results, punters will be whisked off to a warning page which says, “Warning – the site you are about to visit may harm your computer!”
If that hasn’t already scared the bejesus out of surfers, the page suggests that users trot along to StopBadware.org in double quick time and, “learn more about malware and how to protect yourself.”
The ‘interrupt page’ also offers options for users to return to the search page and select a different result, try another search, or – if they’re feeling brave/stupid enough – continue on to the potentially dodgy site.
In time, Google says it will replace the generic “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!” alerts with pages containing more specific information about the iffy Web sites.
285 million dodgy clicks a month
It is hoped that this new initiative will go some way to solving the problem that is partly created by the search engines themselves.
With search engine results routinely displaying links to sites stuffed full of spyware and adware, it is reckoned that US surfers arrive at on malicious sites about 285 million times per month – all from clicking on search results from the five major search engines.
Curtain twitching for surfers
John Palfrey, a professor at the Harvard Law School and one of the main movers behind the scheme, explained the Coalition’s motives: “We’re not going to say don’t do it. What we want to do is basically give people some more information about what might happen to their computer.”
Likening the scheme to a “Neighbourhood Watch” programme, the program is a collaborative effort between Harvard and Oxford University, and invites surfers to report sites that have malicious code on them whenever they find them.
All reported sites are then checked by a human before being flagged as a wrong ‘un.
So far, Google is the only major search engine to sign up to the Stop Badware Coalition, but Palfrey hopes that others will start to use their database of dodgy sites too.
StopBadWare
7 August, 2006
Goggles 0.9 – Google Maps-Powered Flight Sim
We love it when people adapt Google Maps to create fun new applications, and the “Goggles Flight Sim” is one of the best we’ve seen for a while.
Created by London designer Mark Caswell-Daniels as a piece of viral marketing (it’s working, Mark!) for his Flash-scripting talents, the flight sim uses aerial images loaded in from Google’s mapping service.
After selecting your city from a drop down list (which currently offers London, New York, Paris, Toyko and Washington DC), you find yourself in charge of a cartoon biplane flying over a rolling landscape created by seamless Google Maps images.
The controls are pretty rudimentary, with keyboard arrows controlling direction and height, letting you sweep and soar around cities – and plunge earthwards in a kamikaze crash if you feel so inclined.
There are – not surprisingly – some rough edges, the most annoying being the inability to climb very high.
Without an accompanying map overview or sign-posted landmarks, this means it can be hard to work out where you are, which can be rather frustrating (we found that following railway lines or major rivers usually got us to the centre of cities in the end).
Still, as an office timewaster it’s second to none, and well worth a go.
We emailed Mark about his flight sim and he told us that it was still in beta at the moment, and that it wasn’t actually meant to be released quite yet.
He explains, “a mate interpreted ‘don’t tell anybody about it’ as ’email all your friends with a link’ so the cat got out of the bag before I finished it!”
Still, Mark acknowledges that, “all publicity is good publicity,” and we’ll look forward to playing with the finished version soon!
Nice one, Mark!
www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html
7 August, 2006
Google Video: Advertising Sponsorship
Google Video has been serving videos to the Internet population for over a year and a half now, both paid download via their Video Store.
Today, when researching a story, we noticed that they’ve also brought in a third model – sponsored playback, a new one to us. Never let it be said that given an opportunity to raise advertising dollars, Google aren’t at the forefront.
Above the video being played back is a banner containing the logo of the advertiser (in this case HP), a couple of lines of advertising copy and a couple of links.
How the financial on this works isn’t clear, but we’d assume that the owner of the contact will receive some payment from the sponsor, via gogole, for each video that is watched, in a similar way that the record companies get paid a small number of pennies when a people play their artists music on a monthly music subscription service.
One interesting feature is that the video is still available for purchase, as the version that is shown is at a lower quality than the for-sale version. Google call the for-free version Preview, although for our purposes, retrieving information from the programme, this is all that we’d need. You could see that other types of programs would benefit from higher resolution.
Clicking on Watch their Ad link opens a new browser session and plays the video advert from … Google Video. All very neat.
It is interesting to note that the cost from Google, in this case 99c, is significantly less than the price when purchased from Charlie Rose’s own site, which is available on DVD or VHS at at least $30.
What is powerful about this rendition of advertising with video content is that the brand is associated with the content, in our case a well known and respected US journalist, and the viewer is given the opportunity of watching the content. They aren’t forced to watch it, as we commented about at the end of the recent review of GoTuit, and are they given the opportunity to stop watching it whenever they feel like it.
Example of Google Video being sponsored by an advertiser.
26 July, 2006
Live Traffic Updates Added To Google Maps For Mobile
The ever-expanding selection of Google features just grew by one as they announce that they’re providing Live Traffic updates to mobile phones in 30 US cities and partial information in many others.
The traffic-concious will be able to fire their mobile phones up, look at Google Maps For Mobile (or GMM as those in the trade call it) and see the masses of traffic jams appear before their very eyes.
The most up-to-date traffic information will be sent directly to the users’ call phone, showing the severity of the delays on commuter routes using red, yellow, and green overlays. The amount of time the travelers are likely to be delayed is also shown on the mobile.
Google are slightly playing catchup with Yahoo on this one, as they been plotting live traffic on Yahoo Maps since March 2005.
Back in November 2005 we broke the story about the existence of GPS-using code in Google Local For Mobile, but this has yet to be officially enabled.
On the back of the Mobile Maps news, Google also announced that users now have the ability to customize the content that appears on the mobile version of their Personalized Homepage, making it even easier for mobile phone users to quickly get the information they need when away from their computers.
Google Maps For Mobile
25 July, 2006
Google Results: Sales Up 77%, Profits Up 20%
There’s been tons of financial results coming out around now, but we’ve spared you from them – we’re nice like that. Today we felt it was worth an exception.
Always interested in the growth of Google, we thought we’d bring you details on their second-quarter results.
Climbing ever higher, Google reported revenues of $2.46 billion for the quarter ended 30 June 2006.
Their revenues are broadly split to three areas; from their own sites; from partners sites, and International revenues.
Google sites have increased 94% over the same quarter in 2005, to $1.43 billion. Partner sites brought in $997 million, again up 58% from 2nd quarter 2005. International’s account for 42% of their income, up from 39% from the same quarter last year.
Having a dig through their figures reveals some interesting info – honestly, it is interesting.
As is well known, one way Google does so well is by getting other sites (partners) to carry their clients advertising for them (of which Digital-lifestyles is one). In accounting-ese/jargon, they refer to it as Traffic Acquisition Costs or TAC. These increased to $785 million, up from $723 million in its first quarter. The TAC (see how quickly you can get into the swing of this jargon) remains at 32% of their advertising revenue, giving a rough understanding that Google take 68% of these ad earnings – pretty healthy in their favour.
The cost of operating their extensive, world-spread data centers and to a lesser extent, processing credit card charges has increased to $204m. That’s a lot of computers, but remains at 8% of revenue.
For a company that ‘doesn’t advertise,’ they’ve been lashing the cash on promotional work, $49m, or which $24m was ‘related to certain distribution deals,’ which we imagine is their deal with browsers like Firefox.
The other little nugget is the amount of wonga they’ve got sitting around. Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were sitting at $9.82 billion.
It’s telling, that Microsoft announced fourth-quarter profit declines, with plans to buyback $20Bn of their own stock.
21 July, 2006
T-Mobile Adds Microsoft Push Email To Web’n’Walk
T-Mobile is the latest UK mobile service provider to offer its mobile customers Windows Push Email.
The Push Email service is compatible with Microsoft Windows 5.0 devices, which include the MDA Pro, MDA Vario, and MDA Compact handsets carried by T-Mobile.
The system – as the name suggests – works by ‘pushing’ email straight to the user’s portable device from their businesses Exchange Server, and then notifying them that there’s a message in their pocket.
Just like the cost to the little boy in the ghastly Melba Montgomery song, there will be ‘no charge’ for the new service for business users already on the web’n’walk professional tariff.
This certainly adds extra value to the T-Mobile package, which currently costs £17 a month, or £8.50 when added to Flext, Relax, or Business 1-Plan contracts.
The Microsoft Push Email service comes stuffed with security measures for businesses, including centrally controlled password protection, local data wipe, and a remote data wipe feature to clear devices of company-sensitive data if they get in the hands of ne’er do wells, rogues and robbers.
For added security and convenience (in case you’re a bit forgetful/half-cut), the wipe feature lets owners decide how many incorrect logon attempts can be tried before the phone shuts up shop.
Working over GPRS, 3G and Wi-Fi, T-Mobile’s push email service also offers integration with Microsoft Outlook, letting swivel-action besuited types synchronise tasks and search for contacts on the move.
T Mobile
11 July, 2006
Google Mail: Delete All Spam Feature Arrives
Google mail has released a feature that has been long requested by any long term Gmail user – Delete all Spam messages now.
Previously to rid yourself spam within Gmail you had to delete them all screen by screen, by clicking on Select All, then Delete, repeated endlessly until all of the pesky messages had been wiped out.
HowTo
To use the new feature, simply click on your Spam folder link, to find “Delete all spam message now”, sitting on top of your messages. You will then be met by a dialog box confirming that you want to delete them all.
We had great pleasure of wiping 12577 dreaded spam messages this morning and we’d highly recommend it all to you.
Google mail
11 July, 2006
Google Spreadsheets Heads Into Excel Territory
Google is ready to shove its size nines deep into Microsoft territory with the launch of a free Web-based spreadsheet program, Google Spreadsheets.
The new program will allow people to view and simultaneously edit data online while conducting what Google describe as “in-document” chat.
This new spreadsheet product looks sure to put the heat on Microsoft, who have long ruled the roost with their desktop-based, spreadsheet app Excel long being the de facto office tool.
Google’s announcement comes hot on the heels of their purchase of Writely, a Web-based word processor, and puts them in direct competition with the Redmond mob who are busy prepping their new online-focused Windows Live and Office Live services.
Launching in beta form today, Google Spreadsheets supports the import and export of documents in the .xls format used in Excel and the .csv (common separate values) format, although it is not yet compatible with many of Excel’s more powerful features – the program can’t, for example, create charts or serve up control menus by right clicking on the screen.
Jonathan Rochelle, the Google Spreadsheets product manager, explained that the new service will be able to handle several hundred formulas used to manipulate data in Excel, but it won’t be able to handle more complex functions like Excel macros.
He explained that the program’s main goal is to make it easier for family, friends or co-workers to read and work on the same spreadsheet from different computers at different times, letting authorised users add and edit data without having to keep sending e-mail attachments back and forth.
“When people want to share and collaborate, we think this product fits in well,” he added.
Users must have a Google account to use the new service, which will initially only be offered to a limited number of users.
Google
6 June, 2006
Google, The Next Dark Empire? Pt2
Google Earth/Maps
If you haven’t heard of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And Xml) you’re not a techie. It’s the buzzword of the moment and Google Maps uses it brilliantly (Google Mail is another example). It’s pretty old technology that uses the power of the client to locally render information delivered by the server. With Google Maps the browser loads a small Javascript application and sends data/requests back to the server which then delivers the next bit of data which the client then renders i.e. moving around a map.Google Earth is the next step in actually showing satellite data of the area you’re looking at (you can see cars parked in your street). Why would they want to offer these services? More advertising. Do a map search and you can also see information on local services (or restaurants, petrol stations, bars etc).They are both very powerful, easy-to-use apps. Google Calendar
Google’s latest AJAX application, Outlook calendaring but hosted centrally so it can be accessed from anywhere. Of course it’s more than just a calendar as it allows subscription to other calendar/events, sharing of calendaring information and even mobile synchronisation.Privacy
There’s been a lot of media interest in what information Google store about you as they could abuse it and the authorities could request it to see what you’ve been doing. It’s uncertain how much information they do store, but it could be quite considerable. They actually might not know it’s you personally, but your computer. Google uses cookies which are used to track your personalisation settings, but they can store a lot more info, though Google are likely to just use the cookie as the identifier which enables them to quickly personalise things.Just looking at the information they could store when you do a search, it’s the search criteria itself, then which sites you clicked through to. But that can be combined with other info like what Google Map info you looked at, who you emailed through Google Mail and your previous search history. That may lead to a bleak picture if you’re committing illegal acts.The other side to it all is that the processing of all this information is extremely resource hungry and though Google are particularly good at correlating information, they might not bother. They will for some aspects, but most of the time it’s probably not worth it and they’ll keep succinct summarized information.If the authorities want to know what your doing, it’s actually much easier for them to go to your ISP and request the information from them (if they are running caching equipment which speeds up Web access for all users, they don’t just know what searches you’ve been doing, but every Website you’ve accessed and everything you’ve down or uploaded).The Future
Google are encroaching into territory that used to be securely within the MS domain, desktop search and now IM. In the IM market they’re using open protocols which will gather traction from both the open source community and allow interesting applications to spawn from it.With things like Google Maps/Earth, searching has been moved from the electronic (or Internet) world to the real world. Google are already toying with mobile, but you can be sure that’s the space they’ll enter next.Imagine your smartphone or PDA with a local Google application installed. As you move around, it uses location based services and delivers relevant local information straight to the device. Looking for a restaurant? It’s got Google Talk too, so you can chat or really talk to the restaurant and book a table before you get there. Google are going to dominate the desktop and the mobile space and it’ll all happen in the background.Microsoft must be quaking as Google are their biggest threat.Let’s hope the Google Empire is benevolent and doesn’t become an evil behemoth.References
GMail Drive shell extension
2 June, 2006