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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Nov. 4, 2005:

Archived blogs for the week of October 31, 2005

1031 - November 3, 2005 - 8.40 AM EST

The AAP sues Google

The Association of American Publishers has sued Google over its initial plans to scan and digitize the entire texts of large university library collections. The AAP says the project will seriously violate copyright laws.

This case is significant because it could provide an insight into how intellectual property can be protected in the digital age, when making perfect copies of digitized material is a matter of pressing a few buttons.

This might not be the ideal time for such a case, given that few people have thought the matter through and new laws addressing the problem have yet to be written. But technology is moving faster than the law, and sometimes you just have to muddle through.

It has been obvious for some time that traditional copyright law, designed for books and other publications printed on paper, was likely to be insufficient in the age of digital technology.

It took decades for copyright practices and then laws to evolve after the invention of printing with moveable type, so it’s not surprising that the situation has not yet been addressed by laws in the digital age.

This and other cases could force the issue.

Posted on Businessblog™

1030 - November 2, 2005 - 9.01 AM EST

Apparel shopper habits and behaviors

According to a new study performed by Yahoo, apparel shoppers spent about 33 percent more time when visiting retail Web sites than non-search visitors. Yahoo's survey also reveals that apparel searchers were more likely to directly engage in site activities such as interacting with a specific product.

Yahoo is quick to point out that such behavior has a lot to do with the apparel sites themselves, rather than the search engine by which visitors arrived to any given site. Yahoo looked across 49 apparel retailer sites which may have balanced out the differences site usability can have on how visitors interact with an apparel site.

The research report observed both generic search and sponsored search activity across Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN, Lycos and Hotbot.

Posted on Businessblog™

1029 - November 1, 2005 - 2.06 PM EST

IBM will use the Google Appliance on WebSphere

Google has struck a deal with IBM to have its Google Appliance (enterprise-grade desktop search) integrated into IBM tools that search vast corporate networks.

Under the agreement (terms were not disclosed) customers using IBM WebSphere's OmniFind will be able to use a plug-in version of Google Desktop for Enterprise interface to access corporate database search results.

The desktop plug-in will be available for free download from Google and IBM. The WebSphere tool searches information in databases and other applications and enables users to retrieve information on demand.

The tighter integration with the desktop tool will add additional information to that store of data, including e-mail and files such as presentation and documents that are stored locally on a desktop.

Dave Girouard, general manager of Google Enterprise, said the single tool will combine multiple software solutions to help users "reach a broader set of enterprise data sources."

The integration is an expansion of an earlier partnership between Google and IBM -- one that many analysts view as a direct challenge to Microsoft's place in the enterprise desktop environment.

Earlier, the two companies announced that Google's enterprise desktop could be configured to search the full text of IBM Lotus Notes mail messages stored on a user's PC. The new integration will enable a search of an entire Notes database as well as messages stored on mail servers instead of a desktop.

Posted on Businessblog™

1028 - November 1, 2005 - 9.24 AM EST

Just when you thought you've seen it all...

If you need to know what is Google up to next, its whole patent portfolio is now being made available on CD!

Online searchers seeking to divine the future of "Google The Company" are often frustrated by ineffectual and incomplete online searches, but as of Monday, the search colossus' patent portfolio -- representing important clues to its future plans -- are being made available on CD.

Arnold Information Technology (ArnoldIT) said Monday that it is offering a CD-ROM with more than 120 patents of Google's future. "This compilation is designed to provide a starting point for understanding Google's technology," said Stephen E. Arnold, president of ArnoldIT, in a statement.

"Among the important patents included in this collection are the Google patent for individualizing search results, the patent for the use of time as a factor in PageRank relevance, and a 'de-duplication' patent for eliminating redundancy."

Posted on Businessblog™

1027 - October 31, 2005 - 4.01 PM EST

Google working on OpenOffice

Google wants to improve various functionalities of OpenOffice.org and at the same time, this demonstrates its excitement for new open source initiatives.

Google also wishes to reduce the memory requirements of OpenOffice and its rather large 80 Mb download file, in what could very well be the first step in the GoogleOffice.org project.

Posted on Businessblog™

1026 - October 31, 2005 - 11.05 AM EST

Google accidently reveals a few things on AdSense

Reports of a Google representative spilling the beans to an AdSense publisher on how a lower-conversion website can drastically and negatively affect that publisher’s AdSense revenues has created some controversy in a few circles.

“While AdSense was attempting to get a publisher back from the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), one support team member disclosed more details than perhaps he or she should have,“ said a Google rep.

Here's the gist of the story:

* Smart pricing affects an entire account. It is not on a per page or per site basis.

* One poorly converting site can result in smart pricing impacting an entire account, even sites completely unrelated to the poorly converting one.

* Smart pricing is evaluated each week. So removing ads from sites you suspect are converting poorly could result in seeing an adjustment to a higher smart pricing percent in as little as a week.

* Smart pricing is tracked with a 30 day cookie, so you could be rewarded for new conversions that saw the initial click from your site up to 29 days earlier.

* Image ads are also affected by smart pricing.

Read the whole story here.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2005. All rights reserved.

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