Google Street View in Google Maps is a good service to explore just about any location.

Most of Street View is focused on landmarks and roads that are accessible to Google with its Street View car. Now Google has officially introduced its Street View trike, which is aimed at photographing pedestrian only locations.

The Street View trike is a bicycle with three wheels, a mounted camera and a specially decorated unit with imaging and GPS technology.

Google is inviting users to give it suggestions of places they would like to see added to Street View that are off the beaten path. Locations can be nominated within six categories:

• Parks & Trails
• University Campuses
• Theme Parks & Zoos
• Pedestrian Malls (ie: outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks)
• Landmarks
• Sports Venues (ie: golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds)

Nominations will be open until October 28 and can be submitted here. Google will go through all the suggestions and allow the public to cast their final votes on a winner from each category for the Street view trike to visit.

In August more than 25 billion videos were viewed, with Google sites accounting for more than 10 billion.

Google sites remained as the top U.S. video property in August as it surpassed the 10 billion videos viewed threshold, representing 40 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube accounted for 99 percent of all videos viewed on Google sites.

Microsoft sites ranked second with 547 million (2.2%) followed by Viacom Digital with 539 million videos viewed (2.1%) and Hulu with 488 million (1.9%).

More than 161 million viewers watched an average of 157 million videos per viewer during the month of August. Google sites pulled in 121.4 million unique viewers during the month (82.8 videos per viewer) followed by Microsoft sites with 54.9 million viewers (10 videos per viewer) and Yahoo sites with 51. 6 million viewers (6.9 videos per viewer).

Tremor Media ranked as the top video ad network during the month with a potenial reach of 68 million viewers, or 42.2 percent of the total viewing audience. YuMe Video Netowrk ranked second with a potential reach of 59.1 million viewers (36.7 % reach) followed by ScanScout Network with 57. 6 million viewers (35.7%).

Other highlights from the report include:

The top video ad networks in terms of their actual delivered reach were: Tremor Media Video Network (19.5 percent penetration of all online video viewers), BrightRoll Video Network (16.2 percent penetration), and BroadbandEnterprises.com (14.8 percent penetration).

• 81.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

• The average online video viewer watched 582 minutes of video, or 9.7 hours.

• 120.5 million viewers watched nearly 10 billion videos on YouTube.com (82.6 videos per viewer).

• 44.9 million viewers watched 340 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).

• The average Hulu viewer watched 12.7 videos, totaling 1 hour and 17 minutes of videos per viewer.

• The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes.

Google sites ranked as the most visited Internet property globally with 854 million unique visitors in July, an increase of 18 percent during the past year.

Google usage is more common in certain global markets than others. In July, 29. 8 percent of total time spent online in Brazil was spent on Google sites, with India only slightly lower at 28.9 percent. The next highest global market was Ireland at 15.9 percent.

“It’s interesting that the dynamics of Google usage would be so similar in Brazil and India given that the two markets are on opposite sides of the world and quite different culturally from one another,” said Alex Banks, managing director of comScore Latin America. “As it turns out, there are interesting similarities between Brazil and India as emerging Internet markets.

Google’s prevalence in these markets can perhaps best be explained by the fact that the time at which these markets really began to develop and flourish was around the same time that Google was becoming a major player in the search landscape. As a result, Google became the dominant Internet brand in these markets and its success appears to have bled from search into other areas of the web like social networking.”

In Brazil, Google sites account for 88.4 percent of all searches conducted, and had a commanding share of time spent in social networking with Orkut (68.2%), maps with Google Maps (63.9%), multimedia with YouTube (82.9%). Google also had nearly half of all time spent in the blogs category with Blogger (47.6%) and email with Gmail (46.8%).

In India, Google sites accounted for 88.4 percent of all searches conducted, and had commanding share of time spent in social networking with Orkut (68.2%), Google Maps (63.9%), multimedia with YouTube (82.8%). It also had nearly half of the time spent in the blogs category with Blogger (47.6%) and email with Gmail (46.8%).

High-definition televisions (HDTVs) and home networks were two of the fastest-growing consumer technologies in 2008. Over the next five years, 39 million U.S. households will get their first high-definition set and more than 30 million homes will add network connectivity. Forty-four percent of U.S. households have a laptop, and the average American family owns two personal computers.

While media consumption among all Americans is split evenly between new and traditional media, on average, consumers younger than 40 spend almost 2 hours a week more with new media they do with traditional media.

Four in five U.S. households now have a mobile phone and families with older children have nearly three mobile phones per household, the most of any age segment. Eight percent of consumers own a smartphone.

“The Internet pervades all aspects of Americans’ lives, from how we shop and buy, how we communicate, how we entertain ourselves, and how we seek out information to how we manage our personal relationships,” said Charles S. Golvin, Forrester Research Principal Analyst.

“While today these digital activities are constrained to the home and the office, in the next several years consumers will increasingly rely on a ubiquitous Net that is instantaneously accessible on a wide variety of devices, from mobile phones to laptops to new form factors such as eReaders.”

Forty-three percent of U.S. companies surveyed had investigated an email-based leak of confidential information in the past year. Nearly a third of them, 31 percent, fired an employee for violation email policies in the same period.

Eighteen percent had investigated a data loss event via a blog or message board in the past 12 months. Seventeen percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly nine percent fired an employee for such a violation.

Social networks are also creating problems for companies with 17 percent reporting some type of privacy breach and eight percent firing an employee for such an action.

As the global economic recession forced many US companies to downsize and reduce spending, the results of Proofpoint’s survey show that those actions have often put them at greater risk for several reasons:

• 18 percent of US companies investigated a suspected leak or theft of confidential or proprietary information associated with an employee leaving the company (e.g., through voluntary or involuntary termination) in the past 12 months.
• 42 percent of respondents say that increasing numbers of layoffs at their organizations in the past 12 months have created an increased risk of data leakage. 47 percent of respondents report that layoffs of IT staff have negatively impacted their organization’s ability to protect confidential, proprietary and sensitive information in the past 12 months.
• 50 percent of respondents say that budget constraints have negatively impacted their organization’s ability to protect confidential, proprietary or sensitive information in the past 12 months.

Bing has helped Microsoft to modestly increase its search market share by 1 percent in the U.S. according to an analysis for June conducted by measurement firm StatCounter.

Microsoft had 8.23 percent market share in June, behind Yahoo at 11.04 percent according to the analysis. Unsurprisingly Google still dominates the U.S. market but has fallen back slightly from 79.07 percent in April to 78.48 percent in June.

Microsoft U.S. market share has gone from 7.21 percent in April to 8.23 percent in June.

“At first sight, a 1% increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date.”

Looking at weekly trends for June, Microsoft (Bing, Live Search and MSN Search in total) had peaked post launch at 9.21 percent in week 1st – 7th June. But after falling away in the following two weeks it has made a comeback in the last week in June to 8.45 percent.

Microsoft market share, May/June - US
18th to 24th May: 7.41%
25th to 31st May: 9.11%
1st to 7th June: 9.21%
8th to 14th June: 7.47%
14th to 21st June: 7.6%
22nd to 28th June: 8.45%

Overall, Bing is a big improvement over Microsoft’s Live Search. The company has done a good job initially promoting Bing, but a $100 million in marketing tends to help such efforts.

Bing is unlikely to be a “Google killer” but it is showing it has the potential to compete in search at least initially. The long term results for Bing will be the real test, until then you can still expect to see Google remain the dominate search engine.

People are exposed to a variety of types of ads on a daily basis from television ads to online ads and more than half (55%) of Americans say they find current advertising to be interesting while 41 percent say it is not interesting, according to a new survey by Harris Interactive.

Younger adults and those with higher incomes are more likely to consider ads interesting. Sixty-six percent of adults aged 18-34 and 60 percent of adults aged 35-44 think ads are interesting as do 62 percent of Americans with a household income of $75,000 or more.

The opposite is true of adults 55 and older with 52 percent saying that current advertising is not interesting and 46 percent of those aged 45-54 and those who have a household income between $35,000 and $74, 999.

When buying products and/or services, over half of Americans (54%) say advertisements they had seen or heard were not influential when then made their last large purchase, with one-quarter (25%) saying they were not at all influential. One-third (35%) of Americans say the ads they saw or heard were influential.

The United States continues to be the leader in spam, relaying 15 percent of the world’s spam messages, according to a recent report from Sophos that examines the top 12 spamming countries.

The United Kingdom has disappeared from the “Dirty Dozen” for the first time in two years, coming in at 14^th overall, and sending 2.1 percent of the globe’s spam.

Brazil has seen the biggest increase in spam, jumping from fourth to second place since last quarter. The country is now the source of 10.2 percent of spam emails, compared to 4.3 percent during the same period last year.

The top 12 spam relaying countries for January to March 2009 are as follows:

1. United States 15.8%
2. Brazil 10.2%
3. China (incl Hong Kong) 7.7%
4. India 5.1%
5. Turkey 4.1%
6. South Korea 3.8%
6. Russia 3.8%
8. Spain 3.0%
9. Argentina 2.8%
10. Poland 2.6%
10. Colombia 2.6%
12. Italy 2.3%

“The U.S. has gone some way towards reducing levels of spam since last quarter, when the country relayed almost a fifth of all the spam messages,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“What’s less encouraging is that Brazil has shot up the ranks. It’s no secret that the country has long been associated with cybercrime – in particular the spread of banking Trojans – however, a surge like this could also be a by-product of China’s slip down the charts. In any case, it’s certainly a trend to keep a close eye on.”

Spam accounts for 97 percent of all email received by business email servers, putting both a strain on resources and wasting a huge amount of time to lost productivity.

“Of course, the real cause of the spam problem is that not everyone will automatically delete these emails on sight,” continued Cluley.

“People out there must be buying products from spam, after all - the criminals behind the botnets would soon give up if they weren’t making any money out of it. Computer users should know by now that buying from spam is contributing to the problem, as well as putting their personal information into the hands of criminals – everyone should pledge to never ever buy via spam.”

]]> http://www.money007.com/2009/06/top-12-spam-countries/feed/ http://www.money007.com/2009/05/microsoft-set-to-launch-new-search-service-bing/ http://www.money007.com/2009/05/microsoft-set-to-launch-new-search-service-bing/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 19:26:48 +0000 Mike Sachoff http://www.money007.com/?p=106

Microsoft has previewed its new search engine called Bing, formerly known as Kumo and is set to launch it on Wednesday June 3.

Microsoft calls Bing a “Decision Engine” that initially will focus on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business.

Microsoft says it developed Bing as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the “information overload” that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences.

A comScore study focused on search engines found that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The study also found that about two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.

“When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

Almost half (49%) of internet users say they have used online classified sites, compared with 22 percent of online adults who had done so in 2005.

On any given day about 9 percent of Internet users visit online classified sites, up from 4 percent in 2005.

Craigslist is by far the most used online classified website in the United States. In March 2009, classified sites averaged 53.8 million visitors, up from 7 percent in February. Craigslist had 42.2 million unique visitors in the month of March.

Craigslist has launched in over 500 cities in 50 different countries since April 2009.