Douglas L Ross: Web Services

Yahoo Blogs

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 17:08:38 GMT

In the slashdot article they reference this "Yahoo Blog" in Kroea's broadband market. http://kr.blog.yahoo.com/ With both MSN and AOL experimenting with blogs, some kind of Yahoo move was inevitable.

Yahoo Experimenting with Blogs?. Tee Emm writes "Sven Latham reports on his Yet Another Blog that Yahoo is (probably) experimenting with its blog services for its general users. The test bench ... [Slashdot]

Surveillance

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 16:59:13 GMT

Ingram spies potential in surveillance. The giant distributor of information-technology products steps into the surveillance market, in a move to provide one-stop shopping for its resellers and customers. [CNET News.com]

Targeted Advertising

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 17:33:18 GMT

This article is about the expansion of the bid-for-ad-placement concept from strictly the search domain to the general "web-site" browsing context.

If You Liked the Web Page, You'll Love the Ad. Online publishers are beginning to sense the possibilities of having Google or Overture serve ads to their audiences. By Bob Tedeschi. [New York Times: Technology]

The Amazon.com Portal

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 17:47:01 GMT

Amazon is apparently trying to do what the Library of Congress probably should do, that is make archived book content searchable.

Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books. Amazon.com is negotiating with book publishers to assemble a searchable online archive with the texts of thousands of nonfiction books. By David D. Kirkpatrick. [New York Times: Technology]

Trusted Computing

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 17:48:21 GMT

Wave Systems announced their earnings for Q4 2002 today. According to their press release [see exerpt below] they are looking for strategic partners.

"Steven Sprague, Wave's president and CEO, said, "In order to raise the additional capital required to fund Wave's operations, we have engaged an investment banking firm and are exploring a number of financing alternatives which include debt or equity financing (or a combination of both) or one or more commercial or strategic transactions."

"The personal computing industry is now committed to a historic transition to trusted computing. The most influential players -companies including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, National Semiconductor, Infineon and others - have publicly committed to a trusted PC environment secured by a hardware chip. Without a doubt, today's inherently insecure PC is morphing to tomorrow's secure and trusted PC which will offer a range of productive services for users. Wave's long commitment to hardware and services-secured trusted computing has made us influential in the evolution of this huge and evolving market opportunity."

Supreme Court On Spam

Thu, 06 Mar 2003 13:50:26 GMT

Foes lock horns in Web filtering case. The Supreme Court hears arguments to decide whether a law aimed at installing Net filters on public library systems balances free speech with the need to restrict porn. [CNET News.com]

Google and Targeted Advertising

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 20:04:09 GMT

Google announced today (http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/advertising.html) a "content-targeted advertising" service which proposes to replace general website ads with "relevant sponsored links" similar to those displayed in its own search engine, and in the search pages of its affiliates.

Here's how "content-targeted advertising" by Google appears to work:

Google's proprietary classification engines identify "the meaning of a web page"
Based on that, and presuming a 3-way arrangement between Advertisers - Google - Websites, Google then automatically serves "relevant" ads from its stable of participating advertisers
Relevance to a website is [apparently] based on Google's classification scheme, and the order of relevant ads served is [apparently] based on Google-measured click-through response rates [now competing with Double-Click and others].

Here's a link to a Motley Fool article about this: Google's Banner Day. The search king moves into third-party advertising. [The Motley Fool] and another in Wired News: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,57900,00.html

Apple Computer

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 18:17:45 GMT

This is another example of a hardware guy getting into the services business.

Apple gears up to sell music online. Not innovation, necessity [The Register]

Web Services Continues To Go Mainstream

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 14:24:57 GMT

HP creates new Web services unit [InfoWorld: Top News]