AME Info Corporate Blog

Internet Advertising up 26% to almost $5bn in Q1

2007-06-08T12:54:00.000+04:00

Revenue from online advertising grew sharply in the first quarter of this year, according to data released Wednesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Internet advertising revenue rose to $4.9 billion in the quarter, a 26% increase over the first quarter of 2006. The IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers' survey covered advertising on Web sites, email, and other online services, the IAB said in a statement posted online.

Source: IAB.net

Microsoft Surface

2007-05-30T09:39:00.000+04:00

I guess Microsoft really are innovative after all - check this out:

The launch of Microsoft Surface marks the beginning of a new technology category and a user-interface revolution. Surface, Microsoft’s first surface computer, provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural hand gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface computing breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology, changing the way people interact with all kinds of everyday information — from photos to maps to menus.

More info from:
www.microsoft.com/surface/

Internet ad revenue up 35% to $16.9 billion

2007-05-25T13:50:00.000+04:00

The online ad segment last year soared 35% to set a record $16.9 billion in revenue, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. Strong fourth-quarter sales of $4.8 billion helped to push 2006 over the top, the IAB said.

You can read more on the SmartBrief site .

What is the name of that song ...

2007-04-20T12:55:00.000+04:00

We have probably all tried it - got this song in your head but don't know the name of it. Now, for the first time, you can use your voice to instantly connect to your favorite music, and to a community of people that share your musical interests. You can also listen to voices, see pictures, rate singers, send messages, buy music, and more.

Try it out at http://www.midomi.com/ - you don't even have to be any good at singing for Midomi to recognize the song.

Microsoft only sold 244 copies of genuine Windows Vista in China

2007-04-19T21:42:00.000+04:00

Microsoft spent millions of dollars advertising its next generation OS 'Windows Vista' in China, in fact the IT juggernaut threw up the biggest Vista Ad on the 421 meter high Jin Mao tower in Shanghai China.

However after 2 weeks (Jan 19 to Feb 2) from launch Microsoft managed to sell a mere 244 copies of Windows Vista. Software piracy is rampant in the middle kingdom and a pirated version of Vista sells for a mere $1 on the streets. The following numbers are quoted by Windows Vista chief distributor in Beijing.

- They could at least have spelled "Ultimate" correctly on the right-hand side!

Source: Newlaunches.com

Google to acquire Doubleclick with $3.1bn

2007-04-14T07:33:00.000+04:00

Google announced on Friday that it is buying online advertising firm DoubleClick for 3.1 billion dollars.

The Mountain View, California-based Internet search colossus will combine DoubleClick's technology with its proven advertising platform.

Google and DoubleClick, which is based in New York City, will provide an efficient way to manage both search and display ads online, according to Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.

"We've come to an agreement to purchase DoubleClick," Schmidt said in a conference call from Argentina, where Google is opening a new office.

"It is something we have thought about for a very long time."

Source: AFP

DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store

2007-04-03T07:51:00.000+04:00

Apple has announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song.

In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today—128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.

More at source

$1B YouTube lawsuit

2007-03-13T20:47:00.000+04:00

According to MacWorld Viacom has sued Google, alleging copyright infringement from video-sharing site YouTube and seeking $1 billion in damages.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, follows a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request Viacom sent to Google last month related to the unauthorized posting of Viacom videos to YouTube.

At the time, Viacom demanded that Google remove over 100,000 of its clips from YouTube, which Google acquired last year for $1.65 billion. Google said it would comply with the request.

Yahoo! Pipes

2007-03-08T09:58:00.000+04:00

Pipes is an advanced tool for manipulating web data. A simple example would be fetching an RSS feed and returning the articles about a certain subject or written by a particular author. But Pipes can do much more. You can create a pipe that searches for pizza places in a zip code, automatically excludes the Dominos, and displays pictures of nearby parks (where you can eat the pizza) from Flickr.

There is an excellent little demo of Pipes at MurphyMac's - after watching that - go ahead and take Pipes for a spin or check out what other users are doing.

Why Viacom demanded its videos be removed from YouTube

2007-02-21T13:36:00.000+04:00

Turns out Viacom had other plans for its videos and films: tons of its content was on its way to another Internet video service: the hi-buzz peer-to-peer service called Joost. Suspicions arose when beta testers noticed a plethora of Viacom clips on the nascent Joost, the beta project with more clips than users thus far.

More at source

Windows Live Messenger ads serve up malware

2007-02-21T12:36:00.000+04:00

Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger client for several days has displayed banner ads that attempted to install malware on user's systems.

Microsoft has acknowledged the incident and has removed the offending advertisements.

"We apologize for the inconvenience and are reviewing our ad approval process to reduce the chance of an occurrence such as this happening again," Whitney Burk, a PR manager with Microsoft said in an emailed statement.

More at source

When you really want to pitch your idea

2007-02-17T09:42:00.000+04:00

Aaron has this great idea that he would like to pitch to Google - but how do you get a meeting with someone at Google?

On February 11th, 2007 I'm getting on a plane to fly to Mountain View, California, headquarters of Google, Inc. Once there, I'm going to try to pitch an idea to them that I think fits right in with the Google spirit and business model; catch is, I don't have an appointment, they don't know I'm coming, and I'm literally going to be showing up at their door and hoping they give me a meeting.

And if they don't give me one? Then I'm going to sit in their lobby like a spoiled child in hopes that they'll change their mind. :) Every once in a while you have to give an idea a shot, or you spend your entire life passing up ideas that seem just beyond your reach.

The story is really amazing - and you can follow it from Aaron's site - we wish him the best of luck with his venture.

Google Reader reveals number of subscribers

2007-02-16T23:22:00.000+04:00

Google now shows you the number of Google Reader subscribers to your RSS feed. They do that by adding a value to the HTTP user agent field when fetching your feed. You can find the number in your raw logs - it looks something like this:

72.14.199.72 - - [16/Feb/2007:08:44:34 -0600] "GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 304 0 "-" "Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 7 subscribers; feed-id=5769402134728990362)"

Microsoft's YouTube rival now in public beta

2007-02-16T10:05:00.000+04:00

Microsoft has unveiled a public beta of its MSN Soapbox video-upload service, its competitor to Google’s popular YouTube service.

The service, which Microsoft unveiled last September, has been available to beta testers only by invitation for several months. But now anyone can test out the service by going to this Web site, reports the the LiveSide blog, which tracks Microsoft’s Windows Live Internet services.

Here is an example (very cool advert by the way):

Video: Amazingly Cool Ad

Check out more video from MSN Soapbox - this story was found on MacWorld

Microsoft Windows 'Vienna' in two years

2007-02-14T16:25:00.000+04:00

Ben Fathi, corporate VP of Microsoft’s Windows Core Operating System Division, is the suit with the wagging tongue and he says we can expect to see Windows ‘Vienna’ released by the summer of 2009.

“You can think roughly two, two-and-a-half years is a reasonable time frame that our partners can depend on and can work with" he said when pushed on the question by US publication (not store) PC World.

He went on to say the monstrous five year gap from XP to Vista had also changed Microsoft strategies for producing operating systems. “We realized that there were incremental things that we wanted to do, and significant improvements that we wanted to make in Vista that we couldn't deliver in one release," he explained saying that a shift to a more Apple-like incremental OS update system is on the horizon.

More at source

Podcasting to Generate $400 Mil. in Ads by 2011

2007-02-13T23:12:00.000+04:00

That’s according to a report to be released by eMarketer this week, which finds that spending on podcasting advertising will quintuple over the next five years, from a paltry $80 million base in 2006 to a $400 million market in 2011. (Granted, this is still on the small side, considering the $20 billion interactive ad market expected this year.)

eMarketer analyst James Belcher is betting that a familiar Web power player will spark much of that growth: Google.

Belcher expects that by 2008, the 800-pound algorithm gorilla will develop a version of AdSense that can be easily adapted to podcasts, theoretically allowing any Joe Schmoe podcaster to implement advertising. “That should help grow the market,” he said.

More at source

Adobe to Release PDF for Industry Standardization

2007-01-31T15:07:00.000+04:00

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

PDF has become a de facto global standard for more secure and dependable information exchange since Adobe published the complete PDF specification in 1993. Both government and private industry have come to rely on PDF for the volumes of electronic records that need to be more securely and reliably shared, managed, and in some cases preserved for generations.

Full story

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Limited Numbered Signature Edition

2007-01-21T09:43:00.000+04:00

According to Engadget Microsoft is releasing a special edition of Windows Vista for die-hard fans:

You have to be seriously freaking into Vista if you're even thinking about the Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Limited Numbered Signature Edition (seriously, we didn't even think Microsoft was capable of a title like that), but at least the price is on target ($259) and they claim it's signed by the man himself, Billy G. Something tells us it's just an embossed signature print or something along those lines, but either way it's down to you and 19,999 others prepared to get their fanboy on with the latest, greatest version of Windows.

Trouble accessing some sites in the UAE

2007-01-14T14:06:00.000+04:00

As many of you have probably noticed, a number of sites (including ameinfo.com) are not reachable from the UAE (outside the freezones) including at the moment due to the earthquake near Japan.

For some reason the problem seems to sort of solved by entering the proxy information into your browser as follows:

Internet Explorer 7
Tools > Internet Options > Connections > LAN settings
- and enter "proxy1.emirates.net.ae" and port "8080"

Safari
Safari > Preferences > Advanced > click Proxies: "Change Settings..."
- Tick "Web Proxy (HTTP)" and enter "proxy1.emirates.net.ae" and port "8080"

iPhone euPhoria

2007-01-10T04:03:00.000+04:00

Well, Apple finally unveiled its iPhone at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. For some odd reason Steve Jobs won't allow a video stream of his keynote (even through paid subscription), so "watching" the keynote has to be done via an irc chat channel or auto-updating website. Sharing in the sense of international buzz is still a real trip, perhaps more so as watchers are effectively "blind" - though rapid photo uploading by sites such as MacRumors and Engadget made the experience considerably more visual.

As AME Info readers will know, Klaus our CEO recently switched to Mac, so like me he is salivating over the iPhone to the point of hijacking Apple HQ, kidnapping Steve Jobs, and demanding the prototypes in exchange for his release. So why are we so excited? In brief, because among its many features, which you can read about on Apple's site, I won't go into full detail here, the iPhone:

1. Is unbelievably tiny and beautiful in its form
2. Has a fully functional version of Safari to browse the web
3. Runs widgets, meaning it will have loads of applications
4. Will play videos
5. Has an inbuilt camera
6. Amazing bluetooth headset

On the downside, the American version isn't out until June, and the European one (which should include the Middle East, seeing as Apple Middle East is run under Europe) in Q4 2007. The rest of Asia has to wait until 2008 - though doubtless they won't, and there will be grey market ones coming out of Hong Kong all over eBay by May.

But for a few months at least, the world will have to sit and wait. Hopefully over time more details will emerge, as I have many questions about the device:

- what processor will it have?
- how will it handle Flash-heavy websites that cause Safari to chug in my 800mhz TiBook?
- will the camera have macrofocus so it can be used as an emergency "scanner", like my old Palm Zire 71?
- can the camera record video or just stills?
- will video chat be possible, either in future models or via peripherals?
- will it easily accommodate peripherals, particularly a dock-with-proper-keyboard?
- how much will the Euro-model be, for those buying it without a mobile phone contract?
- as well as syncing, will it be mountable as an external Flash drive?
- will the Bluetooth headset allow listening to music, unlike on the Motorola iTunes RAZR where this function has been deliberately crippled?
- and how useable will it be for people with really fat, clumsy fingers?

Test Windows Vista - without installing it

2007-01-07T09:29:00.000+04:00

The test drive requires IE 6.0 or better.

Try it out here

Just ask Ms Dewey

2006-12-31T14:26:00.000+04:00

In yet another attempt to compete with Google - Microsoft has launched www.msdewey.com - quite entertaining results sometimes - although way slow for notmal search use.

Try for example: "about ms. dewey"

Let us know if you find some interesting or surprising results

PayPal Virtual Debit Card - Beta

2006-12-25T09:53:00.000+04:00

Paypal has launched a beta version of a new Virtual Debit Card. It generates a virtual card number every time you shop, everywhere you shop – so you never have to give out your credit or debit card number again!

You get all the convenience and security of PayPal, with a special advantage: Now, you can pay with PayPal anywhere MasterCard® is accepted online.

Check out all the benefits:
Fraud Site Alert: Warns you if you land on known or potentially fraudulent websites.

Privacy and 100% Protection: Financial information you provide is never shared with any merchant. And you get 100% protection against unauthorized payments sent from your account.

Faster checkout: The Form Fill feature automatically completes shipping and billing details.

The service currently only works with Windows and Internet Explorer (version requirements does not appear)

Check it out (you have to be logged in to view the page)

Pluggd to make podcasts chunkier, searchable

2006-12-19T12:19:00.000+04:00

Seattle based podcast discovery and management service Pluggd is unveiling a major new feature at DEMO this weekend that combines speech recognition and semantic analysis to let users search for and skip to parts of an audio file that are related to topics of interest to them. It’s more than just speech recognition.

This is one of the most compelling examples I’ve seen lately of a growing trend: making multimedia content more granular and letting users take even greater control over the media we consume. We don’t just want to consume what we wish, we want to consume it in the way we wish.

Try it out

Skype founders to launch P2P IPTV

2006-12-18T13:33:00.000+04:00

According to the Financial Times report, Janus Friis and our man Niklas Zennstrom -- whom you may know from a little company called Skype -- are supposedly developing a peer-to-peer IPTV service with the intention of distributing video online the same way Skype and its P2P approach distributed VoIP calling online. Supposedly some six thousand users have already been in on beta testing (what, none of you thought to ping your old pals at Engadget?) this service, aptly codenamed the Venice Project probably after the community of streams.

The system is intended for use by copyright-holding content owners who no doubt intend to advertise on this new network; their video data is encrypted so the P2P here isn't the same kind of P2P you might be thinking of. Friis apparently demonstrated full quality full motion video to the FT at a local Starbucks -- where all new internet projects shown off before launch -- but there's no way of knowing how real world use will clog the proverbial tubes; right now P2P video TV might not work the smoothest considering that no matter what upstream bandwidth will never equal the downstream bandwidth necessary to sustain millions of viewers, but that will begin to change in the coming years.

Source: Engadget