Archive for February, 2009

CBS has released a free mobile application via the app store that allows users of iPhones and iPod Touch’s to watch entire CBS programmes over 3G and WiFi connections via their mobile devices. The App is called TV.com and represents a first for the iPhone, an application from a major US TV studio that that provides whole TV programmes completely for free.

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According to PointTopic, a UK based broadband think-tank, the government is going to have an ‘uphill struggle’ to fulfil its pledge to bring broadband of a minimum speed of 2 Megabytes per second to its Great Britain. The company has produced a breakdown of all the areas in the country that are not yet up to that speed and it makes for troubling reading.

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Google is a strong proponent of self regulation and governments staying out of the affairs of online companies. Except of course where its competitors are concerned, then it couldn’t be more in favour of government imposition and control. That’s why the search engine giant has decided to not only publically support the European Commission’s investigation of Internet Explorer (Google Chrome’s key competitor) but to actively participate in it.

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Late last week a British man claimed to have discovered the lost city of Atlantis using Google Ocean, an add on to Google Earth that allows users to see the terrain of the ocean floor as well as land.  The man claimed that a pattern of lines on the ocean floor about the size of Wales, off the north-west coast of Africa represented an ancient system of roadways. The story gained a surprising amount of traction, making the front page of the Sun and even crossing over to the broadsheets with the Daily Telegraph getting in on the act.

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Times are hard at the Microsoft PR department currently, what with the company demanding money from recently sacked workers after severance miscalculations. However, it’s not all bad news, the department are currently in the process of announcing something that casts Microsoft in an awfully good light indeed – free technology courses.

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For years now online clothing outlet, ASOS has cornered the market in high-end fashions available over the Internet. The company offers clothing and outfits inspired by cutting-edge designers and individual celebrity styles. Their high-brow approach to fashion has always extended to their website as well – they’ve been held up as a paragon of best practice by industry experts and competitors alike for years now. This is why today’s site redesign is sure to be viewed with interest by many.

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One thing you can do is put bullet points in front of each line of your ad. We had a brief go at this, and it gets through, even better, there’s almost nobody else on the Internet doing it. Therefore, obviously the CTR is liable to be much higher with these ads.

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Many people believe that Google explicitly forbids the use of symbols in add text and, it’s true, in some cases, if you use them, you will see a message from Google chastising you for the use of unnecessary punctuation or symbols.  However, there are other symbols that Google will allow its advertisers to use. Used sparingly and appropriately these could make the difference between an ad that gets a click and one that doesn’t even register on a web user’s radar.

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Its official, in 2008, Myspace and Facebook suffered much less downtime than the other main social networking sites. That’s according to a report from Pingdom, an outfit which monitors websites around the world. The group studied 15 of the world’s more popular social networks for the entirety of 2008 and found significant differences in outages and down-time.

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A judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed a lawsuit against Google filed by a couple from Pittsburgh. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary in that, I know, a company Google’s size probably has hundreds of small pending lawsuits from crazies and delusionals, most of which, mercifully, will be dismissed out of hand. What made this particular one interesting though was the precedent it set.

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The British Army have caused consternation amongst troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, after taking steps to curtail the use of Facebook and all other social networking sites. The Army is worried that troops who talk about their exploits in status updates or messages could be breaching the public disclosure of information act. In an order issued to all soldiers entitled, ‘Contact with the Media and communicating in public,’ members of the army were ordered to severely limit what they say on social networking sites.

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Yahoo and Google have received criticism from some of the more patriotic US blogs and elements of the press for neglecting to upload a special logo for president’s day yesterday. The yearly American holiday, which falls near the time of George Washington’s birthday and honours all US presidents, was greeted by the two search engines with absolutely no fanfare.

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Microsoft have announced that they are to open a chain of real-world retail stores around the US. Microsoft hopes that the move will help the software manufacturer compete with Apple, whose glossy shops have done a lot to help bolster their brand over the years.

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In their continuing quest to finally make the massive amounts of money everyone seems to be sure they can, YouTube continues to advance its downloadable videos feature. Selected YouTube partners now have the option to allow downloads, either for a fee via Google checkout, or for free.

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