Create a Video For AdSense!

Remember my earlier coverage of the Gmail video? People who reached this blog too late missed the video submission deadlines back in August. Hopefully you're early enough not to miss this AdSense Video submission opportunity.

If you have a website or blog that uses AdSense for monetization (or at least one channel of monetization), make a video for submission to the AdSense Publisher Stories and get featured on the AdSense Blog! For details on what your video should include and how to go about submissions, here's a big chunk of data copied from the AdSense Blog:

Here's how it works:

1. Shoot a video (2 minutes or shorter) about your story with AdSense.
2. Fill out the submission form and submit your video as a video response to Tim’s video on YouTube.
3. We will review your submissions and pick a few videos to be featured on the AdSense blog in the coming weeks.

In your video, you may want to answer some of the questions below, but feel free to include others.

* Where you are from and what you do for a living?
* Why did you create your site, blog, or forum?
* Who is your intended audience?
* How did you hear about AdSense?
* How has AdSense helped you?
* What are some useful AdSense tips you would give to other publishers so that they can see the same success?

I'd rather have you read the terms and conditions at the Blog itself, but please hurry - submission deadline is the 31st of October. If you don't have a YouTube account, get it here. Don't miss this chance to have your blog/website featured on the Google AdSense Blog! You might even be able to pick-up visitors on the way. Look at Tim Carter's video below and try to resist visiting his website..

World In A Blink

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In his book, Gladwell talks about the power of thinking without thinking. Actually, this very sentence is written on the cover of the book.

Here's what Gladwell says about the book on his website -

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

But that's not what this post is about. It's about Zeitgeist, Google's monthly list of 'Search patterns, trends and surprises'. To get a true blink view, I'll just cover the most popular query by country. To view the entire world list, please visit this link, or this link for US specific trends.

People in Afghanistan searched for Afghanistan and Kabul (their capital). With a 2% internet penetration rate and half-a-million subscribers (source), I'm not surprised. Maybe they wanted 'before and after' maps as well!

Argentinians searched for Football and Australians for Kelly Brook and Marilyn Monroe. Again, not surprising. China, the manufacturing behemoth, searched for Carrefour (and not Walmart, donno why). Costa Rica searched for Mathematics and the Czech Republic for 'Love'. Germany and Greece searched for Boom chicka wah wah and Reggae, respectively.

Hong Kong searches for an Indian actor while Iraq searches for Army Knowledge Online (is this dangerous?), Israel for 'Wooden Floors' and Pakistan for the SAT exam. In a way, you can predict the behavior and motivation of people just from what they are looking for. Poland searches for Swimming pools and Puerto Rico for 'Joy' and Russia for Carpets (approaching winters?). Singapore searches for Movie halls, movies and Investment advice. South Africa is looking at electronics, and Vietnam at Che Guevara.

Given all of this, it's not surprising that people in America are looking for Another Universe. We sure live in interesting times eh? Let others know what you think about these trends in the comments.

Google Reader has a lot up its sleeves

If you have been using Google Reader, you would be aware of the 'Shared Items' link. One of the most popular shared items come from scobleizer.com. Recently, Blogoscoped reported a leaked Google Video that details the team's plans for the Reader. It's known that two-thirds of blogs/sites have just one feed subscriber. This is understood, as I'm probably the only subscriber to my own blog. Such feeds are not indexed as frequently as the more popular ones. Some of the important points from the post:

Expect more social features in Google Reader

Reported in TechCrunch earlier, you will soon be able to comment on a person's shared posts (remember, the posts are owned by someone else)

When you search on Google Reader, you might be shown results from your subscribed shared items

ProBlogger reports that the feeds may be more directly monetized, especially when the real publisher has an Adsense account

Although I'm glad Google is thinking of displaying ads from the content owner's Adsense account, it still bothers me that content owners might not be able to get people to visit their pages (specially if a more popular blogger has the full post available on his shared items). Hopefully Google will fix the legal aspect before launching the new features to the public.

Feed Reader Demystified

After a recent comment by an avid reader of this blog, I'm covering Feed Readers today. I will try to explain what a feed reader does and how you can benefit from this great service by popular email providers.

If you like this blog and read it regularly, you can do it two ways. The first way is to visit this blog at a set time everyday (even multiple times) to check if a new post has been published. It's fairly easy to do, all you need is to remember/bookmark the site address and visit at a convenient time. This is okay as long as you are reading only a couple of blogs a day. If you would like to read (let's say) 50 blogs, you'll agree that visiting each blog everyday will soon become a chore. That's why there's a second way - subscribe!

If you use Gmail or Yahoo! or Hotmail, you can easily subscribe to many blogs using their readers. The most popular, of course, is the Google Reader and you can log-in with your existing Google/Gmail id. If you don't have a Google id, I recommend you get one ASAP. No, Google doesn't pay me to advertise for them (I hope they're reading this).

In the left panel you'll see this 'Add Subscription' button. You can use this to type in the URL of the blog you want to track. That's it! The reader will automatically get updated every time a new post is published on the blog. All you need to do is log-in to the reader to access all the blogs you love to read. No wonder it's called 'Really Simple Syndication' or RSS. To read the definition on Wikipedia, click here. Click below to watch a video of RSS explained in plain english:

Leave a comment if you'd like me to explain other web services.

TouchGraph - A New Frontier On Egosurfing

Welcome TouchGraph, the website connectivity finder. Basically, it uses Google Search and data from crosslinks between webpages to display information in a visual manner using circles (spheres?). The area of the circle is proportional to the number of pages linking a particular site. The diagram itself is expandable and all the circles can be clicked to retrieve more data about that particular page. Here's what the team says about visualization -

Visualization goes beyond lists to reveal larger-scale patterns. Results are displayed in context – one can see how they fit into the big picture, how they relate to each other, and how they connect to metadata such as subjects and authors.

Data taken from Google is presented in the Google browser for TouchGraph (the first link). You can also use their Amazon Browser and the Facebook Browser to see how business or people related websites are connected.

This would also make a great place if you are in for some Egosurfing today. Choose one of the browsers and search for your name. The results may surprise you. It's just like Googling yourself, but with a snazzy visual representation of the results.

What you can do with Google Earth

If you're the 'no so much into finding restaurant locations on a world map' kind, here's one reason to get Google Earth - now you can play Flight Simulator on Google Earth! If flying-by your house/school/office was your dream, here's your chance to make it a reality - virtually, of course.

It's not for me though, here's what my screen usually looks like when I'm flying: The STALL sign is missing in this picture though, and I'm happy about that.

The simulation will give you the option to fly either the F-16 Fighting Falcon or the Cirrus SR22. The Wikipedia entry for the SR22 also says the aircraft has the Aircraft Parachute System but I'm not sure why I still kept crashing. Hope you do better than I did.

In time, hopefully, Google will add more airports to the list which currently is at 27 airports from around the world. Hope to see more planes as well and, while I'm at it, how about a map layer with the airline routes across the globe? That way, passengers will be able to better choose which side of the aisle they want to sit during their real flights.

Other blogs who mentioned this easter egg from Google:

Google Earth's Hidden Surprise: A Flight Simulator at TechCrunch

EASTER EGG: Flight Simulator Hidden Within Google Earth at Mashable

Google Earth flight simulator at BoingBoing

Flight Simulator in Google Earth 4.2 at LifeHacker

Google Flight Simulator Lets You fly Big G Style at Gizmodo

Orkut redesigned

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I went into this mad frenzy a few minutes back. It all happened when I logged into my Orkut account to resolve some friend requests. First thing I thought - am I using Safari? After ruling out that possibility, and after scrolling down a little on the page, I was again mystified at the use of the old Google logo. Here's the new one:

And here is the old one found on Orkut:

And here's what I still don't understand after reading all about the Orkut makeover on TechCrunch - why not use the new Google logo?

Overall, not changing too much on this hugely popular social networking site (specially in Brazil and India) was perhaps a good idea. To find comparison pictures of the old and new Orkut, click here to visit pictures on Flickr. Maybe this is Google's way of telling users that they still like Orkut as much as we do and that they're working on getting it out of Beta soon. That's one makeover I've crossed my fingers for.

Gmail video done

I reported here on August 3rd about the Gmail team's invitation to create a video on how you think mail travels around the world. During the 2 weeks that submissions were open, as reported by TechCrunch, the Gmail team received 1100+ video submissions. I'm embedding the final video below:

It's interesting to see how many people participated in the submissions. Surely, many more would have submitted videos if the event received more publicity. Google sure doesn't budge from their current advertising model (or lack of it). I'm not complaining though!

Create a video for Gmail!

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Till 13th August, Google is accepting videos of how you think email messages travel across the world. The videos can be uploaded here. Google will feature your videos on the Gmail homepage and they will be visible to users worldwide.

What you need to do is download the M-velope and print it out (in color). Once that is done, all you need is a camera. The M-velope should enter the screen from the left and exit on the right and it should also be clearly visible throughout the video. The video length needs to be under 10 seconds, so you don't need to have great directorial/story writing skills. Oh, by the way, you don't need to worry about sound quality either - the Gmail team will add a soundtrack to the video.

Here's the video's first few seconds, (by employees and collaborators) -

And here are some of the featured videos -

Hurry! Make and upload yours now!

Talk as long as you want, the call is free

How long before you get to say that to your friends? This Engadget post quotes FCC Chairman Kevin Martin saying users will be able to "use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions." This means we may soon be able to buy phones that operate only on internet telephony over the (soon to be) free 700MHz spectrum. No wonder, then, that the leader of free (read Google) has promised a whopping 4.6 Billion to sweeten the deal for FCC.

Google is already in talks with Wistron NeWeb for development of Wi-Fi phones with Google Talk compatibility. Once the product is available to customers, there'll be no reason to stick with AT&T and their subscription plans. Free is obviously the best subscription plan (yet). Expect a surge in usage as telephony goes free. Also, the services available to cellphone subscribers will fade against the applications Google will encourage users to create.

What services would you like your free phone subscription to provide (besides contextual audio ads)? Leave a comment.

The google umbrella - literally!

The internet giant has been on an acquisition spree since the time it went public back in 2004. Since advertising is the primary revenue generation stream for Google, they have made a lot of acquisitions which will help them make a bigger advertising footprint.

From Google Radio Ads to free 411 Directory Assistance, Google has made investing wisely sound like child's play. Ever wonder what they'll acquire for lunch today? How about an umbrella manufacturer? Pileus is not just any umbrella manufacturer, they're the pioneers in developing the internet umbrella - one that has a built-in Camera, motion sensor, GPS, Digital compass, Photo Sharing, 3-D map navigation, a wireless internet connection and a big, round projection screen. Yes it also protects you from sunlight and rain, though sometimes not together. Sounds like something straight out of a Bond movie, but this one's real.

Here's a video of the umbrella being used:


You can see pictures and youtube videos, take pictures and upload them to your online album, look for directions (and the weather) with the 'wrist flick' motion on the handle.

Now to why Google should be interested in Pileus: To give value to the user (you and me) while getting another ad-delivery platform. Sounds like something on the lines of some of Google's acquisitions? Of course, Google would want to integrate the search function in the umbrella, maybe even add a search button next to the umbrella's open button. But the benefits that Google can derive by going after such ingenious inventions are only limited to their imagination.

Imagine every piece of online information being available under the Google Umbrella!