"We have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have seen for the Places API, and the innovative ways in which developers would like to use it," says Google Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell. "We have seen applications that offer check-in to places and need to identify an individual place at which a user is currently located, applications looking to show a user Places around them, and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps."

"We are going to focus initially on check-in applications," says Mitchell. "These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience."

Google says it has been reaching out to developers who have expressed interest in building check-in apps using the Places API. This includes developers working on client apps for the Buzz API.

Check-in services are gaining a lot of attention, and are creating new and interesting opportunities for brick and mortar businesses that just weren’t available before. Combine that with the power of Google Maps and Google’s increasingly heavy push of Google Places, and this has the potential to be very powerful. With Google’s APIs, the consumers are going to have many more access points, particularly from their mobile devices.

It would also not be surprising if this was heavily tied to that "Google Me" project that has been speculated on so heavily in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, Google updated its Maps for Mobile on Android devices, making a Places icon available. This essentially turns Places into its own app for all intents and purposes.
 

Google is placing a great deal of emphasis on check-in services, with regards to Google Places. This could mean some interesting things for businesses.

"We have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have seen for the Places API, and the innovative ways in which developers would like to use it," says Google Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell. "We have seen applications that offer check-in to places and need to identify an individual place at which a user is currently located, applications looking to show a user Places around them, and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps."

"We are going to focus initially on check-in applications," says Mitchell. "These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience."

Google says it has been reaching out to developers who have expressed interest in building check-in apps using the Places API. This includes developers working on client apps for the Buzz API.

Check-in services are gaining a lot of attention, and are creating new and interesting opportunities for brick and mortar businesses that just weren't available before. Combine that with the power of Google Maps and Google's increasingly heavy push of Google Places, and this has the potential to be very powerful. With Google's APIs, the consumers are going to have many more access points, particularly from their mobile devices.

It would also not be surprising if this was heavily tied to that "Google Me" project that has been speculated on so heavily in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, Google updated its Maps for Mobile on Android devices, making a Places icon available. This essentially turns Places into its own app for all intents and purposes.
 

"Opera Mini has experienced tremendous page view growth in recent years," the company says. "In June 2008, Opera Mini servers processed 100 million page views per day for the first time. In June 2010, Opera Mini users viewed more than 910 million pages on average every day, an increase of more than 161% since June 2009."

"Each day is different in the fast-growing mobile Web. Every day more people around the world choose Opera Mini and view more pages through this browser," said Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner. "Crossing one billion pages views in a day is further proof that people desire the best Internet experience, no matter where they live or what device they use."

Opera Mini is available on over 3,000 different phone models. Version 5.1 was just launched for Android a couple weeks ago. This may pad opera’s numbers even more as Android growth continues.

Yesterday, Opera released its State of the Mobile Web report, looking at the mobile web explosion in Africa.

Opera has announced that its Opera Mini users viewed over a billion pages on July 25. On that day, every second, Opera Mini servers compressed over 11,500 pages before sending that content to phones around the world.

"Opera Mini has experienced tremendous page view growth in recent years," the company says. "In June 2008, Opera Mini servers processed 100 million page views per day for the first time. In June 2010, Opera Mini users viewed more than 910 million pages on average every day, an increase of more than 161% since June 2009."

"Each day is different in the fast-growing mobile Web. Every day more people around the world choose Opera Mini and view more pages through this browser," said Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner. "Crossing one billion pages views in a day is further proof that people desire the best Internet experience, no matter where they live or what device they use."

Opera Mini is available on over 3,000 different phone models. Version 5.1 was just launched for Android a couple weeks ago. This may pad opera's numbers even more as Android growth continues.

Yesterday, Opera released its State of the Mobile Web report, looking at the mobile web explosion in Africa.

Google was recently reported to have invested a significant amount of money into Zynga, and CEO Eric Schmidt told the WSJ to expect a partnership with the game company. Yesterday, Disney announced that it has agreed to acquire Playdom.

Any efforts in gaming that Google is making are expected to be part of the broader social networking service the company is rumored to be working on (often referred to as "Google Me"). Google Me is supposed to be Google’s answer to Facebook, though Schmidt told the WSJ, "the world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing." Interestingly, Schmidt also said, "Facebook users use more Google products than any other users."

Gaming isn’t the only factor in Facebook’s success, but it is certainly a factor. Hitwise recently pointed out the status of the "games" category when it comes to downstream traffic from Google:

  ImageCredit: Hitwise

It makes perfect sense that Google would go after gaming. Integration with Google’s "social network" would have implications for a number of other Google products. For example, as the WSJ suggests, Google Checkout could be heavily involved (in terms of virtual goods payments). Obviously Google has numerous advertising options that could come into play. Google accounts in general could get a boost (YouTube users will also be required to have one). Google profiles, which have become more heavily featured in search results.

On a related note, Bing has also introduced some new games.

Google has been expected to get into gaming for sometime, but now it looks like the wheels are really in motion. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is in talks with Playdom, EA's Playfish, and Zynga.

Google was recently reported to have invested a significant amount of money into Zynga, and CEO Eric Schmidt told the WSJ to expect a partnership with the game company. Yesterday, Disney announced that it has agreed to acquire Playdom.

Any efforts in gaming that Google is making are expected to be part of the broader social networking service the company is rumored to be working on (often referred to as "Google Me"). Google Me is supposed to be Google's answer to Facebook, though Schmidt told the WSJ, "the world doesn't need a copy of the same thing." Interestingly, Schmidt also said, "Facebook users use more Google products than any other users."

Gaming isn't the only factor in Facebook's success, but it is certainly a factor. Hitwise recently pointed out the status of the "games" category when it comes to downstream traffic from Google:

  ImageCredit: Hitwise

It makes perfect sense that Google would go after gaming. Integration with Google's "social network" would have implications for a number of other Google products. For example, as the WSJ suggests, Google Checkout could be heavily involved (in terms of virtual goods payments). Obviously Google has numerous advertising options that could come into play. Google accounts in general could get a boost (YouTube users will also be required to have one). Google profiles, which have become more heavily featured in search results.

On a related note, Bing has also introduced some new games.

According to Kara Swisher at Boomtown who broke the news, Yahoo only holds a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan, while SoftBankCorp, a Japanese ISP and cell phone provider controls 40%. Yahoo has made the following statement on the matter:

Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

Last week, Yahoo announced that it has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft, with up to 25% of its U.S. search traffic seeing Bing and adCenter results.

Yahoo will be integrating Microsoft’s mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. The company anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September.

Yahoo Japan is turning to Google to power its paid and organic search engine listings. This comes as something of a surprise as Yahoo has a huge deal in place with Bing that is just getting started, but Yahoo doesn't actually own the majority of Yahoo Japan, so that version of Yahoo gets to do its own thing.

According to Kara Swisher at Boomtown who broke the news, Yahoo only holds a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan, while SoftBankCorp, a Japanese ISP and cell phone provider controls 40%. Yahoo has made the following statement on the matter:

Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

Last week, Yahoo announced that it has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft, with up to 25% of its U.S. search traffic seeing Bing and adCenter results.

Yahoo will be integrating Microsoft's mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. The company anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September.

Rackspace is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products, and NASA is contributing its Nebula Cloud Platform. From there, the two will actively collaborate on joint technology development.

"Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand" said Chris Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. "To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source"

"We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies" said Lew Moorman, president, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. "We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort. Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres"

Rackspace says that using the components of the OpenStack initiative, organizations will be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code that is currently in production, serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

Rackspace and NASA are collaborating on an open source cloud platform aimed at "fostering the emergence of standards and cloud interoperability." The platform is called OpenStack.

Rackspace is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products, and NASA is contributing its Nebula Cloud Platform. From there, the two will actively collaborate on joint technology development.

"Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand" said Chris Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. "To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source"

"We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies" said Lew Moorman, president, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. "We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort. Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres"

Rackspace says that using the components of the OpenStack initiative, organizations will be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code that is currently in production, serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

"With season four debuting on Sunday, July 25th, Mad Men fans are buzzing with excitement," says Neha Mandal, Product Marketing Manager for Google TV Ads. "For advertisers, this is a great opportunity to reach an upscale and educated audience. Target Mad Men across DISH Network’s 14M homes and align your message with this high caliber show by creating a Google TV Ads campaign today."

AMC also has a new series called Rubicon, which starts August 1st (a preview was shown after Breaking Bad’s season finale). "The show promises to ‘tap into our collective paranoia’ by chronicling an intelligence analyst who cracks codes for a living," says Mandal. "This show is a great chance to target adults 21+ who are interested in sci-fi and thrillers."

Of course Google TV ads aren’t limited to AMC shows, but the channel is developing a reputation for high quality original programming, and Google clearly sees the upcoming premeires as a good chance to push them.

Google also mentions Real Housewives of DC and the Rachel Zoe Proejct on Bravo, as well as the US Open as potential ad targeting opportunities.

Popular TV show Mad Men returns to AMC tomorrow night, and Google is taking the opportunity to get advertisers interested in targeting viewers through Google TV Ads.

"With season four debuting on Sunday, July 25th, Mad Men fans are buzzing with excitement," says Neha Mandal, Product Marketing Manager for Google TV Ads. "For advertisers, this is a great opportunity to reach an upscale and educated audience. Target Mad Men across DISH Network's 14M homes and align your message with this high caliber show by creating a Google TV Ads campaign today."

AMC also has a new series called Rubicon, which starts August 1st (a preview was shown after Breaking Bad's season finale). "The show promises to 'tap into our collective paranoia' by chronicling an intelligence analyst who cracks codes for a living," says Mandal. "This show is a great chance to target adults 21+ who are interested in sci-fi and thrillers."

Of course Google TV ads aren't limited to AMC shows, but the channel is developing a reputation for high quality original programming, and Google clearly sees the upcoming premeires as a good chance to push them.

Google also mentions Real Housewives of DC and the Rachel Zoe Proejct on Bravo, as well as the US Open as potential ad targeting opportunities.

The jury includes musician Laurie Anderson, the group Animal Collective, visual artists Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter and Takashi Murakami, artists and filmmakers Shirin Neshat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Darren Aronofsky, and graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. Guggenheim Chief Curator and Deputy Director Nancy Spector is serving as jury chairperson.

"Already, this campaign has drawn some remarkable talent, and we’re looking forward to seeing more of your submissions in our quest to find the most creative video art in the world and showcase it alongside van Gogh and Picasso," writes Senior Marketing Manager Ed Sanders on the YouTube blog.

The deadline for submission is July 31. Over the next few months, the jurors will watch the videos and select the "most creative and inspiring" ones to showcase at the Guggenheim museums in October.

YouTube has just unveiled the jury for YouTube Play, which was announced last month. The project features over 6,000 videos from 69 countries. The YouTube Play Channel had had over 2 million views.

The jury includes musician Laurie Anderson, the group Animal Collective, visual artists Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter and Takashi Murakami, artists and filmmakers Shirin Neshat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Darren Aronofsky, and graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. Guggenheim Chief Curator and Deputy Director Nancy Spector is serving as jury chairperson.

"Already, this campaign has drawn some remarkable talent, and we’re looking forward to seeing more of your submissions in our quest to find the most creative video art in the world and showcase it alongside van Gogh and Picasso," writes Senior Marketing Manager Ed Sanders on the YouTube blog.

The deadline for submission is July 31. Over the next few months, the jurors will watch the videos and select the "most creative and inspiring" ones to showcase at the Guggenheim museums in October.

The company also points out that this is the first eReader software to feature its new "NOOK-centric" branding. The app will soon be followed up with updated apps for the iPhone, iPad, and other devices.

"NOOK for Android is customizable, fun and easy to use and we’re excited to deliver the most-requested version of our free eReading software to the growing number of mobile customers using Android-based devices," said Douglas Gottlieb, Vice President, Digital Products for Barnes & Noble.com. "Android customers can enjoy the great NOOK eReading experience on their mobile device, including access to our vast digital catalog and their personal B&N digital library at their finger tips. And, of course, Android users can now enjoy Barnes & Noble’s unique eBook lending feature to share their favorite eBooks with friends."

"With NOOK for Android, and the other renamed software to follow, customers can also easily recognize and have confidence in Barnes & Noble’s NOOK brand to provide them with a fun and easy-to-use eReading experience on any device of their choosing," he says.

The new Nook app is available for Android versions 1.6 and higher. It can be downloaded from the Android Market.

Barnes & Noble has introduced Nook for Android. This comes in the form of a free app that lets users read eBooks with customizable font styles. The company says this is the first Android eReader app that lets users share eBooks with friends.

The company also points out that this is the first eReader software to feature its new "NOOK-centric" branding. The app will soon be followed up with updated apps for the iPhone, iPad, and other devices.

"NOOK for Android is customizable, fun and easy to use and we’re excited to deliver the most-requested version of our free eReading software to the growing number of mobile customers using Android-based devices," said Douglas Gottlieb, Vice President, Digital Products for Barnes & Noble.com. "Android customers can enjoy the great NOOK eReading experience on their mobile device, including access to our vast digital catalog and their personal B&N digital library at their finger tips. And, of course, Android users can now enjoy Barnes & Noble’s unique eBook lending feature to share their favorite eBooks with friends."

"With NOOK for Android, and the other renamed software to follow, customers can also easily recognize and have confidence in Barnes & Noble’s NOOK brand to provide them with a fun and easy-to-use eReading experience on any device of their choosing," he says.

The new Nook app is available for Android versions 1.6 and higher. It can be downloaded from the Android Market.

Bing Webmaster Tools Senior Product Manager Anthony M. Garcia summarizes the changes:

The redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features, such as Index Explorer and Submit URLs, provide a more comprehensive view as well as better control over how Bing crawls and indexes your sites. Index Explorer gives you unprecedented access to browse through the Bing index in order to verify which of your directories and pages have been included. Submit URLs gives you the ability to signal which URLs Bing should add to the index. Other new features include: Crawl Issues to view details on redirects, malware, and exclusions encountered while crawling sites; and Block URLs to prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search engine results pages. In addition, the new tools take advantage of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to deliver rich charting functionality that will help you quickly analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data. That means more transparency and more control to help you make decisions, which optimize your sites for Bing.

WebProNews also spoke with Bing’s Eric Gilmore about the changes at SMX Advanced:

More WebProNews Videos

Users of Bing Webmaster Tools will find their accounts have been automatically upgraded with the new features. The company says it intends to release many more features in the coming months.

The new Bing Webmaster Tools comes just as Yahoo has begun testing Microsoft-powered results in its own search results. Bing’s tools stand to become more important to SEO as Microsoft takes over Yahoo, who expects to show all Microsoft-powered results in the U.S. and Canada by August or September.

At SMX Advanced last month, Microsoft announced that Bing would redesign its Webmaster Tools this summer. The new version is now available.

Bing Webmaster Tools Senior Product Manager Anthony M. Garcia summarizes the changes:

The redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features, such as Index Explorer and Submit URLs, provide a more comprehensive view as well as better control over how Bing crawls and indexes your sites. Index Explorer gives you unprecedented access to browse through the Bing index in order to verify which of your directories and pages have been included. Submit URLs gives you the ability to signal which URLs Bing should add to the index. Other new features include: Crawl Issues to view details on redirects, malware, and exclusions encountered while crawling sites; and Block URLs to prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search engine results pages. In addition, the new tools take advantage of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to deliver rich charting functionality that will help you quickly analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data. That means more transparency and more control to help you make decisions, which optimize your sites for Bing.

WebProNews also spoke with Bing's Eric Gilmore about the changes at SMX Advanced:

More WebProNews Videos

Users of Bing Webmaster Tools will find their accounts have been automatically upgraded with the new features. The company says it intends to release many more features in the coming months.

The new Bing Webmaster Tools comes just as Yahoo has begun testing Microsoft-powered results in its own search results. Bing's tools stand to become more important to SEO as Microsoft takes over Yahoo, who expects to show all Microsoft-powered results in the U.S. and Canada by August or September.

The research centered on measuring an iPhone app campaign led by Maxus Global and M80, involving the Powermat brand. Powermat rewarded Booyah’s MyTown users with virtual goods when checking in at a Powermat retailer, such as Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, or Target.

Appssavvy says virtual goods increased all brand metrics, beating out mobile advertising "norms". Aided brand awareness increased 44.5%, mobile ad awareness increased 60.1% and, purchase intent increased 31.5%.

"There is a tremendous amount of buzz in the advertising community around virtual goods. Today’s research should significantly raise that as the results of delivering branded items proved to drive metrics through the roof," said Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of Appssavvy. "The key to virtual goods marketing is, first and foremost, understanding the social activity taking place and then adding value to that experience, which the Powermat campaign did to perfection."

The full study can be found here.

A new report from Appssavvy claims that "virtual goods may be bringing the largest disruption entertainment, communication and e-commerce infrastructure companies have seen for a long time." The company's research found that leveraging social activity around virtual goods has been successful in building brand awareness, influencing positive opinion about products, and even driving purchase intent.

The research centered on measuring an iPhone app campaign led by Maxus Global and M80, involving the Powermat brand. Powermat rewarded Booyah's MyTown users with virtual goods when checking in at a Powermat retailer, such as Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, or Target.

Appssavvy says virtual goods increased all brand metrics, beating out mobile advertising "norms". Aided brand awareness increased 44.5%, mobile ad awareness increased 60.1% and, purchase intent increased 31.5%.



"There is a tremendous amount of buzz in the advertising community around virtual goods. Today's research should significantly raise that as the results of delivering branded items proved to drive metrics through the roof," said Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of Appssavvy. "The key to virtual goods marketing is, first and foremost, understanding the social activity taking place and then adding value to that experience, which the Powermat campaign did to perfection."

The full study can be found here.