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October 27, 2004

Google Adsense Changes Terms and Conditions

Google announced to Adsense advertisers today that they are changing their Terms and Conditions. Accoring to the email:

As a result of publisher feedback, we will not be paying out all accounts at the end of the year. We'll continue to pay publishers on a regular schedule, and will send payments to qualifying publishers with earnings balances over $100. In addition, cancelled accounts will only be paid out if their account has earned a minimum of $10. Please take the time to read the updated Google AdSense Terms & Conditions thoroughly the next time you log in.

Actually, I can be anything but happy to receive this news, and I am sure that there are plenty of small publishers that are much less happy than I am. The combined amount that is accumulated from all cancelled (or non-active for that matter) accounts must sum up to a massive amount of money.

Without having any data in front of me but with pure reasoning on the 'self organized' system of adsense I can guess that it is governed by a power law (so you have few advertisers that make make a lot of money and many advertisers that make very little money). This law is very common in nature - known as Zipf's law - and governs things like the frequency of words in a book, the populations of cities around the world, earthquakes extinctions, comsic rays etc etc. I would be willing to bet that it applies here too.

What is the result of this? The result is that there must be thousands of small time web owners and advertisers that have 'donated' sums of the order of a few dollars to Google and quite a few advertisers that will need many years to sum up $100 in order to get their money - if they ever do get it.

Does this sound like a 'good guys company' to you?

Posted by Basileios at 03:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2004

Sparse Blogging Ahead

Things are very busy down in 'Rugles county' so blogging will be sparse over the next ten days.

Posted by Basileios at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sparse Blogging Ahead

Things are very busy down in 'Rugles county' so blogging will be sparse over the next ten days.

Posted by Basileios at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 22, 2004

Google Up 24 Points

John Battelle is not the only one that feels this has the characteristics of a bubble...

Posted by Basileios at 02:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 21, 2004

Yahoo! Images gets an Upgrade

Yahoo! Images gets an upgrade and now will carry 1 billion images.

Posted by Basileios at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2004

Clusty. More than a Small Search Engine

I know there are hundreds of 'small' search engines out there and I know that there are special reasons why each of them is unique and different. I recently came upon a new addition to the search engine collection which is definitely worth a second glance. Clusty uses thematic clustering technology (made by Vivisimo) for... clustering the serach results and the outcome offers relevant and easily customized results. The services also include a News search (in afffiliation with Reuters, NY Times, CNN BBC News - and I am sure we will see the list growing).

Interested? Give it a try: (They provide a linking code for including in your website so I hope this works from here...)

Posted by Basileios at 07:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2004

Gmail fights span using Yahoo!?

Cnet reports on Gmail using a Yahoo! backed service in order to fight spam.

Messages from Gmail sent Monday indicated that they were encoded with DomainKeys technology, as evidenced by logs in the message headers. When an e-mail header from a Gmail message was opened, a code reading "DomainKey-Signature" appeared.

DomainKeys is a technology backed by Yahoo that tries to cross-check e-mail messages to verify their origination. The idea is to thwart e-mail "spoofers," which are spam messages that pretend to be from legitimate Internet addresses. These spoofed e-mails often pass through spam filters and fool recipients into opening the messages.

"We are encouraged by the adoption of DomainKeys and believe it is a key step in furthering the industry's fight against spam and e-mail forgery," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said. "Spam is an industry issue, and we believe collaboration with the Internet community is vital in solving the authentication issue."

Yahoo is not the only Web giant to propose an antispam system. Microsoft has been pushing Sender ID, which verifies the authenticity of the sender's "@" address by checking the message's numeric Web address. Sender ID blends Microsoft's proprietary "Caller ID for E-mail" with another technology, called Sender Policy Framework, or SPF.

America Online has put its weight behind SPF and has begun installing the system into its e-mail servers. The online giant recently stopped testing SenderID after standards bodies and the open-source community pulled their support and criticized Microsoft for keeping the technology under a shroud of secrecy. AOL is still testing DomainKeys, which works in concert with SPF or SenderID.

All three companies are standing behind separate technologies and have each filed proposals to the Internet Engineering Task Force for standardization.

Posted by Basileios at 05:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2004

IS GIM next?

After Gmail and Google Desktop search rumors are circulating on a Google Instant Messaging Application. I would not be surprised at all if Google actualy does spread in Instant messaging since it seems that there are ambitions for Google to be part of everybody's desktop and part of everybody's way of communication.

Microsoft, Yahoo!, ICQ and AIM may have been there a long time and are well established brands in instant messaging but there are gaps in the service that Google will definitely try and fill.

On the other hand it should be noticed that by enetering the IM world Google is opening another front, but again based on the same source of income (advertising). This is definitely far from an ideal situation for any business.

Posted by Basileios at 06:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 15, 2004

Google Desktop Impressions

I have to say I am very impressed with the new toy. Google Desktop is fast, it crawled my 150Gb disk in nearly no time (it crawls when the PC is idle) gives me instant and pretty relevant results (they have to work on discarding common words like 'the' though since they interfere with some of the seraches) is integrated with Google web searches very nicely and is definitely a lot better than that awful system that Microsoft has for searching on your PC.

The downsides? I somehow believed that it would have a Gmail integration since after all Gmail is a Google product - ok, I don't want to talk about Orkut at all at this stage...

As for privacy issues? Google's FAQ tells us that everything is normal and that they do not receive any information unless we tell them they can. I am sure there will be a lot about this within the next few months as Google is an 'easy' and 'obvious' target in privacy issues.

Posted by Basileios at 05:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2004

Google Desktop is Here!

The BIG news of the day is that Google attacks your desktops with Google Desktop. Google desktop will use the Google brand name to help you find files and documents on your PC.

Some may view this as a natural extension of Google into your desktop and some may call it an open 'attack' on Microsoft.

The truth is that with the standard Microsoft search being as bad as it was in the last Windows versions Google noticed the opportunity and simply jumped in. Whatever their little tool is it can't possibly be as bad as the standard windows search...

Posted by Basileios at 07:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2004

An evening with Jacques Derrida

Meeting Jacques Derrida was an event of my life I will never forget. I think it must have been 1993 and I think he was in London for a seminar. I was lucky enough to be in a group of 6-7 people that had coffee with him at his hotel (my supervisor at the time had written a book about him and Althousser and they were in communication at the time). I think we exchanged something like five sentences - they were about Wittgenstein and some aspects of history of science if I can remember correctly - and I have to say that I was out of my depth in that group of philosophers but the dark skinned old man with the white hair, the kind face and the authority in every sentence he uttered made me just sit back in awe and enjoy the two hours I spent with him.

I am now about ten years older, I have read Derrida (had never read any of his books or articles before I met him), I know my deconstructionism and I am in a completely different profession than I would ever thought I would be back then. I consider myself so lucky to have known him even for these two hours.

Jacques Derrida died on Saturday in Paris.

Posted by Basileios at 04:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 08, 2004

Yahoo! to Google: Enjoy it....

Jerry Young co-founder of Yahoo! had some advice for the Google guys Brin and Page: Enjoy it.

Speaking during the Web 2.0 conference, the Yahoo co-founder said he told Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to relish their success. While his company and Google are in an escalating war to control the commercial search business, Yang still gave them kudos for making an impact on the Internet.

Young also commented on taking Yahoo! public one year after its launch: "I don't know if I would have taken Yahoo public as early as we did," Yang said. "I would have waited if (I) could."

Posted by Basileios at 04:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 07, 2004

Google SMS

John Battelle brings in the news of a mobile serach facility launched by Google in beta form. Here is the announcement from his weblog:

Greetings...

Today, Google announced the beta release of Google SMS, a new offering that enables people who are away from their computers to quickly and easily get instant, accurate answers to specialized queries through text messaging. Using a cell phone or handheld device such as a Blackberry, users can obtain local business listings, dictionary definitions, product prices and more--all available through Google.

Google SMS returns specific information related to a user's query as a text message to their mobile device. For example, to find a pizza joint in a specific neighborhood, users can send a text message to the 5-digit U.S. shortcode 46645 (also GOOGL on most mobile phones) with the query and city or query and zip code, i.e. [pizza 94043], and immediately receive the name, address, and phone number of local pizzerias in that area. This type of concise information can help mobile users find exactly what they're looking for anywhere and any time.

Using Google SMS, people can:
. Find names, addresses and phone numbers for local businesses and residences
. Look up dictionary terms to get definitions, expand their vocabularies, or even settle bets
. Compare online product prices with those they find in retail stores, i.e. to find the price of an iPod, users can enter the message [price ipod 20gb]

Google SMS, currently in beta on Google Labs at http://sms.google.com, extends the reach of Google's search services to mobile phones and devices, while staying true to Google's mission to bring more of the world's information directly to users. Google SMS currently works with wireless providers in the U.S. only, including AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint PCS.

Google is continually developing innovative ideas to improve our users' search experience, and as always, we welcome your feedback. For instructions on how to get started, users may send a text message to 46645 with the word [help]. More information about Google SMS can be found at http://sms.google.com.

Posted by Basileios at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Book Search

Google has quitely launched a 'Book search' service. Publishers can send their books to Google, where they will be scanned and added to Google's search index for free. Google Print gives publishers a new promotion tool, the company said in an announcement at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The official announcment will probably be made within the day.

As the FAQ in print.google.com the service works simply 'by doing your usual searches on Google and whenever a book contains content that matches your search terms, we'll show that book in your search results. Click on the book title and you'll see the page of the book containing your search terms and other information about the book. Click on the "Buy this Book" link and you'll go straight to an online bookstore where you can purchase the book.'

Well, I bet Amazon will be pleased with this.... (NOT!). This is definitely a big step forward on Google's part and I can do nothing but applaud their idea on this. I am not happy that Google will become an information monopoly throught this, but I am sure that others will also follow.

Posted by Basileios at 06:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 05, 2004

My Yahoo! Search Preview

Busy days for Yahoo! as they have just launched a beta previw of their Personal Search. According to the announcement on their weblog:

The shift from analog to digital technology is reshaping much of the world around us, perhaps most noticeably in the realm of media. It seems like some of the most profound and transformative product introductions over the last few years are technologies that empower users to consume media how and when they want to, e.g., Tivo (tv), Netflix (home video), ipod (music) and of course blogs (news and information). In the world of search, this means that you should be able to define your own search experience. Today, the Web is a read-only source of information for most users; our vision is of a very individual Web a "My Web", if you will which each user creates by searching, browsing, navigating, and generally doing the things they always do. My Yahoo! Search is our first step in that direction.

But getting back to the here and now... vision aside, our user research has shown that My Yahoo! Search addresses a whole host of everyday search problems. If you've ever experienced the tedium of searching again for something you found before but can't quite remember, if you've ever been annoyed by search results you don't like but show up again and again, if you ever wanted to share something you found in search but were forced to cut-and-paste... give My Yahoo! Search a shot.

Posted by Basileios at 05:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Gmail Features

Nathan Weinberg reports on a set of new Gmail features that have appeared in his account. These inlclude:

The Atom RSS feed is a wonderful idea for getting warnings and summaries of the emails on your RSS reader. It is certainly an email/RSS integration that can hardly go unnoticed.

Sadly, in my Gmail account the new changes have not appeared yet - so it seems that things will take a while to propagate. The new features explain somehow the long delay of the proper launch of Gmail.

Posted by Basileios at 05:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gmail Invitations

We have more Gmail invitations for anyone interested. Just drop us a line...

Posted by Basileios at 05:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack