Let’s compare AdSense and PayPerPost: 

AdSense examines the text/topics on your posts and attempts (sometimes pretty poorly) to display ads that match the text/topics.  The blogger has not “blessed” or approved each of these ads, and they do not endorse them, but they are happy to receive money from someone clicking on one on their site.  If the reader happens to have a bad experience buying or visiting the site from this paid link, they may or may not attribute some ill will to the blogger who showed them the link.

PayPerPost pays bloggers who write a post that matches the requirements of the advertiser.  From looking at the site right now, about half of the opportunities are for only positive reviews/links, while a little less than half simply want a link with any thoughts (positive or negative).  It is still up to the blogger whether to accept an opportunity or not, and any blogger that writes a positive review of a horrible site/service/product is sure to lose creditability with their readers.  Is this really any differently than say CNET?  Cnet, as do many other sites, receives a small payment anytime someone who buys a product after clicking on a link on one of the site’s reviews.  People still visit and trust CNET because they give their honest opinion of products and disclose that they may receive a payment from time to time.  Why should this opportunity only be left for big corporations? 

I haven’t signed up for PayPerPost yet, but it looks like it could be another good souce of revenue for a blogger that only accepts PayPerPost opportunities that do not interfere with his/her ethics (i.e. only give something a positive review if you like the site/product/service).

WiBro is one of the next steps beyond 3G known as mobile WiMax and will provide subscribers up to 10 Mbytes of data transfer per second while driving at 75 miles per hour. Current trials have already shown KT subscribers downloading at 4 Mbytes per second at cruising speeds.

KT said the first deployment will be in the Seoul metropolitan area, with further deployments gradually expanding across the country. Koh, Jong-Seog, vice president of KT’s Mobile Internet Business Group, is quoted in an article on EETimes, stating that the new service is expected to provide KT with additional sales of approximately 10 trillion won ($10 billion) through 2010. As SK Telecom and Hanaro Telecom are providing similar WiBro services, high speed broadband will no doubt expand quickly through the Korean consumer and business market.

Most news organizations are reporting that Yahoo is taking a more cautious step than Google by announcing that it will only scan and digitize texts in the public domain, except where the copyright holder has expressly given permission. However, this leaves open the question of what “in the public domain” actually means.

Google has come under fire for scanning all books and saying that it will release full texts of books with expired or non-claimed copyrights, while offering full searching through all texts. Publishers have been up in arms about this practice, but the legal community (or rather those not affiliated with a publishing house or the publishing industry) has said that this usage likely falls under “fair use”.

Yahoo may not be allowing the searching through full texts of copyrighted books (yet), but the scanning and offering of full texts for books “in the public domain” may match with Google’s announced plans. We will have to wait for the details to see how Yahoo defines this. If Yahoo begins scanning and offering books where the copyright holder is unknown, publishers across the board and the Authors Guild will have another target, and Google may have another ally.

While BitTorrent is widely popular among swappers of videos, cd-rips, and images of installation disks, it was not designed to specifically download illegal content as organizations like the RIAA and MPAA have claimed. The core of BitTorrent’s technology is the ability to easily and cheaply distribute large files.

BitTorrent claims that it will use the funds from DCM-Doll Capital Management to improve its infrastructure further and appeal more to Hollywood (i.e. add some level of copyright protection).

Overall, BitTorrent’s distribution technology is very efficient. If the company can find a way to add some level of protection for content owners, the rewards could be quite large, for it and the industry.

Does this mean that Google now indexes 60 million pages? No! Google has taken issue with Yahoo’s claim of 20 million pages. In addition, Google did not release numbers of pages this time.

Besides the specific number of pages indexed, what are these search engines considering a “page”? While most people view the information contained within a single IE or Firefox window as a page, the industry is less clear. A site composed of tables may be considered 3 or 4 pages even though the user only sees one solid page. How about PDF, PPT and DOC files? Do these each count as a page? In addition, now that each major search engine allows users to search specifically for images and other specific areas, it is possible that they are including these as well.

Do users even care how many pages are in a search engine? Not at all! Users care about finding the information they need quickly.

A search engine may index several pages that include the information I am looking for on NASCAR Nextel Cup Driver Mark Martin or the good restaurants in East Village in Chicago (on two of the major engines it will take you three pages of results to find out that East Ukrainian Village became East Village several years ago, and it will take even longer to find something like Green Ginger off Division and Damen), but if I have to page through 100 pages of results to find the information I am looking for the service is not useful to me.

Search engine users only care about one thing – fast, accurate and safe access to the information that they want. Until their recent revisions, MSN and Google had become overrun with duplicate pages, fake pages and RSS headline consolidators. MSN’s latest revamp has done a fantastic job of removing these many of these pages from results (our current favorite engine, but who knows about next month). Google has also taken steps to combat this, but search engine analysts have seen many quirks as Google has began segmenting its search into regular, news and blog editions. While many of the problem pages have disappeared from Google search results, the recent indexing has received many harsh reviews for its negative effects on sites using blog or CRM platforms (as many non-blogs now use these platforms for managing content) and other dynamic pages.

As we recently reported, Google has the majority of the worldwide search engine traffic, but the search engine war is far from over. While Google is still playing in the “we’re bigger” claims, they have taken the right approach in not releasing specific numbers and encouraging users to try different search engines.

Relevance is true name of the game. Many of us have one of the search engine toolbars installed and use it for our primary searches. In Firefox, this even defaults to Google.

For the next week or two, try to use at least two of the other major search sites (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, Ask, etc.) during your searches. We would also be interested in hearing about your experience with the current search engine, so please comment and let us know what you like, don’t like or want to see out of the major search engines. What have they missed?

This new effort formalizes much of the work of the Game Master, Game Producer (GMGP) community. The GMGP was made up of roughly 1,000 of Korea’s 15,000 game operators that provided assistance to one another. With its new backing and government support, KAGO should reach a large portion of the industry.

Online games are a large part of the Korean game industry and will be a specific focus of the new group.

In the past eight months, Google’s market share has slipped slightly from 57.2% to 56.9% of total global usage. During that same time, MSN Search usage increased from 8.6% to 8.9%, with Yahoo keeping a steady 21.2% and AOL Search 3.2% of global usage.

One interesting point is that, according to this research, all other search engines only account for 9.8% of global internet searches. That may hold for North America and Western Europe, but it seems a little low when considering the rest of the world. It would also be interesting to see someone look into the market share of different search engines/portals/directories for helping people locate information. “Search” is likely the largest part of this, but solid information on the total market for directing users to information online is difficult to come by (any ideas/information would be appreciated; please comment below or drop us a note).

OneStat.com averaged search usage of 2 million visitors, which was comprised of 20,000 visitors from each of 100 countries, per day over the past 2 months to avoid any sudden shifts.

We raised the possibility of sites and businesses being negatively affected by errors in the new anti-phishing toolbar from Microsoft. The biggest question is whether the providers of these new “tools” will be liable for the effects of their errors.

Schabaz acknowledged that Associated Bank-Corp, with 300 locations in the Midwest, was hurt by the mis-reporting. However, Earthlink was immunized from the suite under a section of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that says that an internet service provider cannot be “treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”. Earthlink licensed the database for their ScamBlocker toolbar from a company named Cyota.

It appears that Cyota could and likely is liable for any negative impact itself as it created the database which originally identified Associated Bank-Corp’s website as fraudulent.

As we suggested earlier, owners of small and mid-sized sites should be very concerned by this case. This law was put in place to protect ISPs from the content viewed over their networks. However, it has been interpreted much more broadly. Under this ruling, large companies that increasingly provide (after their own internal review) filters, blocking and warning software to their users for free have no responsibility to make sure that these applications are correct.

False positives, like the one seen in this lawsuit, hurt both the businesses and consumers. Phishing is a huge problem, and it is good to see companies working towards combating the issues, but they must do so within reason.

Key finds from the report include:

• China has over 360MM mobile phone users, 3.6 times more than its Internet users
• The total number of China’s mobile users is equal to the total of the next three nations (US, Japan, and Germany) combined.
• China’s mobile users use mobile data services much more than users in other countries
• ‘Click plus brick” model to dominate ecommerce
• Requirement for foreign companies to localize content and services for Chinese market; simple redistributions will likely not work
• Online gaming industry to grow quickly in scale similar to penetration of online gaming in South Korea
• Mobile value-added services are an overlooked opportunity
• Investment concerns include “economic slowdown, regulatory risks, dearth of innovation, management quality and excessive capital inflow”.

The report takes a thorough look at the market and a number of individual companies.

Downloads:

• Full 118 Page Report
• 75 Page Summary Presentation

White and dark hackers have routinely focused their attention on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer because it is by far the largest browser in use on the internet. While non-IE browsers have always been on the market, it has only been recently that any browser has begun to take significant market share from IE. As Firefox has become more popular, hackers and virus writers have begun to shift their attention.

According to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Volume VIII, 25 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities were disclosed for Mozilla browsers during the first half of 2005, with 18 being classified as high severity. During this same time period, only 13 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities were disclosed for IE, with 8 classified as high severity.

The report continues to point out that both IE and Mozilla browsers are insecure and have had vulnerabilities that compromise the entire system. It is important for internet users to make sure their browsers, OS, anti-virus applications and firewalls are up to date.

The report splits the digital distribution model into digital download and streaming (i.e. Games on Demand services which are generally subscription based).

Many in the industry view current digital distribution as primarily focused on PC gaming, but 11 percent of core download sales in 2004 came from Microsoft’s premium content downloads through Xbox Live. As Xbox Live is only used by a fraction of total console users, this must mean an extremely high penetration of digital sales to the Xbox Live user base.

Skype is expecting to receive revenues of $60 million this year and greater than $200 million in 2006, but the company has not yet reached profitability. Some analyst are predicting that Ebay will use its PayPal online payment systems and Skype to allow members to complete transactions via web phone calls. Others predict that Ebay will use Sky as a new marketing and distribution mechanism.

Ebay shares immediately rose 45 cents, or 1.17%, to $39.07.

On first view, Google’s plan to scan books and make them available through their search engines appears to violate copyrights on these books, and many large publishers have geared for a fight with the search giant. However, at closer inspection, Google only plans to allow searching within these texts and does not plan to make full text or even large sections available to users. This, likely, falls under the terms of fair use.

InternetWeek’s Christopher Heun takes an unbiased and thorough look at the legal hurdles behind the Google Print Library Project in a new article.

A court will generally look at the “character” of the company’s activities, “its adverse economic impact on the copyright holder, and the amount of material it uses in proportion to the whole and if that is key to the work.” Google announced plans for its consumer offering will be the ability to search through the full text of the scanned titles. If a work is copyrighted, Google plans to only provide a few sentences surrounding the search term. For works with expired copyrights, the full text will be available.

Publishers argue that even with this limited viewing of their texts that Google will profit from displaying advertisements on the limited results, thus making the usage commercial. The problem with this argument is that the fair use doctrine only partially considers commercial usage. If Google displays three to five sentences or even a whole paragraph out of 200 page book, this is likely such a small percentage of the total work that any usage will be allowed.

One issue that publishers have yet to quote in their defense is the ability for someone to offer an application that uses smart searching for phrases within these limited results to return the full text of the book. For instance, if you display the first paragraph in the book and can simply search for the exact ten word phrase/sentence at the end of the provided text, multiple iterations could return the entire book. In this example, Google would still only be providing limited usage and a third party add-on or site might be using this offering, perhaps against Google’s terms, to offer full books, which would hurt the publishers’ businesses. Who, if anyone, would be liable is a question for the lawyers.

While not mentioned in the InternetWeek article, publishers may have an ulterior motive in opposing Google’s library project. Many large publishers make millions of dollars every year from issuing single editions and compilations of books with expired copyrights. English literature classes (e.g. Shakespeare) alone provide substantial revenue from this segment.

Publishers have made little noise against the ebook editions that have been available for years, as a lack of standards and availability have not made these viable options for many schools. However, any offering from Google will provide a ready alternative source for these many of these “free” titles.

As authors ourselves, The Technology Suits strongly supports the rights of copyright holders to be compensated for their creations. We also believe in taking an unbiased view on new technologies such as the Google Print Library Project. There are obviously pluses and minuses to new technologies and their ability to make content more readily available. It is important that creators of content stay up to date with these to protect their creations, expand their audience and receive proper compensation.

Microsoft has made good on its statements by releasing a beta of The Microsoft Phishing Filter Add-in. The add-in will “warn” users with a bright yellow bar is it suspects a website is setup for phishing and will “block” users on a site that is confirmed on the online list of reported phishing sites. The add-in also has buttons that allow users to report any websites they suspect of being used for phishing or to inform Microsoft that any website with a “warn” flag is legitimate.

We applaud Microsoft’s initiative to make the internet safer for users, but we reiterate our concern that sites or companies may not be able to appeal the warning directly.

Proponents of free municipal provided WiFi say that it will bring internet access to lower-income households, improve tourism and benefit businesses. There are benefits, but many of these do not pass even the most basic cost-benefit analysis.

Even with free internet access, the cost for a computer and wireless card are still a large barrier for many low-income households, but the “digital divide” is one that does need continued attention. A better program would include a program for providing refurbished computers, training and fixed line broadband at no cost.

General businesses use a tremendous amount of bandwidth and currently pay large fees for these services. If a municipality offers free access WiFi, business will begin to transition to the free service. With the increased load on the municipal network and decreased service provider revenue from the businesses, the service fees the municipality pays will increase drastically. As these costs increase, the general tax base will need to cover these services, which fundamentally spreads the costs among all, even those people and businesses that are not using the internet.

Some municipalities have proposed offering WiFi for a cost and simply providing free services for low-income households, but this still leaves the cost of the initial computer hardware as a barrier to internet access and moves the city into the position of a utility/service provider.

There is a noticeable benefit to tourism, especially business travel, when advertised, but most municipalities have only proposed these all encompassing wireless offerings.

Enter a simple but novel approach from Huntsville, Alabama. Many do not think of Alabama as a technology front mover, but Huntsville is home to 1) one of the country’s two U.S. Space Camps 2) Intergraph Corporation, 3) sizeable offices for Boeing, Northrop Grumman, LG Electronics and Lockheed Martin 4) Redstone Arsenal which houses several military and NASA installations, plus external associate firms 5) many other large technical installations and smaller R&D houses.

Huntsville’s approach to WiFi is to partner with Traveller Internet Solutions to offer a limited free WiFi solution to visitors of the Big Spring International Park, which covers the Von Braun Convention Center (170,000+ square foot center) and much of downtown.

Technicians are still fine tuning the service and will fully activate the links shortly. When completed, each user will be given three free house of service per month, with the ability to pay for extended service.

This three hour free offering will serve the need of most business and personal travelers and are projected to be a great new benefit for the convention center. In exchange for the right to offer and charge for extended services, Traveller provides the WiFi network, under municipal supervision, at no cost to the city. This arrangement also allows businesses and even the convention center the ability to work with Traveller to provide additional complimentary hours.

Other municipalities would do well to copy this arrangement from Huntsville. It provides wireless data access to visitors and residents for basic needs at little cost to tax payers, may even become a revenue stream from commissions on extended plans sold by the service provider and leaves open the possibility of helping low-income households access the internet.

The most recently announced feature for IE7 will be an “antiphishing” monitoring and alert system (also to be available to IE6 via a plug-in). This new version of IE will interrupt and warn a user when they try to go to a site that is known to deceptively try and grab personal information. On sites that are not known scam sites but where server/software behavior look questionable, users will see a warning.

In theory, this new technology / feature sounds very appealing. However, what will be used to identify sites as “scam” site or questionable behavior? What happens if warning or “scam” interruptions come up on legitimate sites? Will site owners have a way to appeal this message / practice?

How big a problem this may be will depend on the software released and the appeals process if there is one. Large company sites like Best Buy, Amazon and Wal-Mart will undoubtingly work but often legitimate small to mid-sized companies feel the impact of technology changes like this.

As an example, Zone Labs’ firewall ZoneAlarm is a great product and the free firewall has been a lifesaver for many users. However, the default settings for the pay version of the software, which most users keep, has been known to reek havoc on the shopping cart software of many small to mid-sized companies web stores.

In the case of the problem with ZoneAlarm, and a few other common firewalls, users simply cannot use a site’s shopping cart. In the case of a false positive for a scam site, the warning and/or interruption goes a step farther into the realm of “liable”. Microsoft has a fleet of lawyers, so they are certain to make sure they are covered at least legally, but we hope that this smaller companies are not stigmatized simply for not using the latest toolset that a multi-million dollar retailer has.

Several reviews on Google Talk have talked about it being “too thin” and without the features of the existing IM powerhouses, but the bulk of consumers have continually asked for an Instant Messenger client without all of the “bells and whistles”. After all, users have calendars in 15 other applications, and do you really need to be able to type an email or share family picture albums through your IM. Google Talk keeps it simple by providing all of the core requirements for IM and leaves open the possibility for a more full-featured version if the community really demands it and integration into other services/aplications.

Google Talk, unlike the messengers by America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft, is based on the XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), an open standard that is also used by Jabber. Jabber has been increasingly accepted by companies looking for a more secure IM offering and is supported by such Jabber-compliant clients as GAIM, Trillian Pro and iChat.

On the VOIP side of things, Google’s not only begins to target companies like Skype and Vonage but also supports the decision by Yahoo to add voice capabilities to its Yahoo Messenger service in May. To continue the open access view, Google said it will soon use the SIP (Session Initation Protocol) which will enable interoperability with several other VOIP services such Earthlinks’s Vling and the Gizmo Project by the SIPphone team. Google is also providing an open API, which was widely speculated would be included and may be one of the reasons Skype has opened their API.

The discussion of a Google IM began last year with an examination of Google’s early desktop search program that contained a protocol named ‘google_im://’. The buzz grew even louder in July of 2005 when Google made public steps into the IM market with the acquisition of Picasa. More recently, a rumor surfaced that Google was considering an acquisition of the location based instant messenger/consolidator Meetro, which has since turned out not to be true.

Google continues to fill out its product portfolio to catch up with and often pass its competitors, and IM has been an obvious whole in its offering. Given the advancement of VOIP and the shopping of Skype for a strong funding source, it quite reasonable that Google would jump into the this area with both feet.

Are consumers willing to create yet another instant messenger account or are they looking for a IM consolidation program such as Trillian? A hybrid approach similar to the one being taken by Meetro that uses both a proprietary network and consolidates other networks is likely the best approach, but Google may not have this luxury given the competitive nature between Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft.