If you heard a low but annoying groan that seemed to come from all the four corners of the world  during the last week of last April 2012, you probably heard the collective whine of many of the Internet’s website owners and website managers. Google released its Penguin algorithm update at that time and many formerly high-flying websites’ search engine rankings crashed to earth. If this drew a shrug from you, here’s a quick tip, whenever you enter a search term into Google, the search engine ranks the results.

If you own a website, you would, naturally, want to be ranked on the first page and near or at the top. Google’s Penguin upended many sites’ rankings and many have never recovered. The owners of these sites lost more than traffic. They lost money. Less  traffic means less money. It’s that simple.

While Google’s intentions are worth praising, the results of its latest updates have produced well, uneven, results. Many high-quality sites have been knocked to the basement of the rankings while bad low-quality sites rose up or continued to hog the top spots? I can sympathize with Google’s never-ending drive to clean up its results. Can’t argue with that.

After all, it was porn spam and totally unrelated garbage results produced by spam that doomed Altavista, Lycos, Excite, and other early search engines. Google’s just trying to maintain the quality of its service. No problem with that. The problem, however, is that it might be trying to kill ants with a blowtorch.

Penguin’s rationale was there were too many spammy sites enjoying high rankings not because of the sites’ content quality but due to the site owners’ search engine optimization skills. Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has been telegraphing for several months before Penguin that Big G will be cracking down on ‘over optimization.’

In other words, if the only reason your site is ranked #1 on Google for a keyword phrase is because of your mad SEO skills, Google was going to take you down a notch or two. It did that and then some. The Penguin update launched a brave new world in search engine optimization.

Google is now looking at sites’ backlinks to see if they are ‘over optimized’- in this case, if there are ‘unnatural’ patterns in the backlinks to a website.  The problem with this is it now opened the door to ‘negative SEO’ where your competitors can make tons of ‘unnatural’ backlinks to your site. Google will think this is you trying to pull off some SEO shenanigans and bowl you off the rankings.

This is every search engine optimization specialist’s nightmare. And it has come true. Google later released a ‘disavow’ tool people can use to disavow backlinks so their rankings can recover. Sadly, this is too little too late.

Moreover, it seems less a move to help webmasters clean up their backlinks and more like a crowdsourcing attempt at getting a huge list of ‘bad’ link sources. What if your site is on the disavow list? What if a site on the list linked to you or you linked to it? See where I am going with this.

Penguin represents Google’s new direction against web spam and it looks overbroad and doesn’t really factor in websites’ overall quality. By being too focused on backlinks ‘overoptimization’, Google stands to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am not so sure if this is a good direction for Big G to take considering that its search results are still peppered with Buy Viagra spam.

I remember when Gmail was first announced by Google. I don’t think I was the only who rolled his eyes at the news. After all, Hotmail and Yahoo mail already dominated the online mail market. In between these two were almost a hundred other public email providers. Did I really need another email account Boy, was I wrong.

After getting in on the ‘invite only’ round of Gmail recruitment, I quickly found out that this was not your typical @DOMAIN email service. I knew I was dealing with a  superior product when Gmail succeeded where my other public email addresses failed-spam detection and clean up. Spam truly is a hardy pest. While Yahoo and other mail services tried to crack down on it, it was like playing whack a mole. It seemed almost impossible to kill. Gmail was able to do it. I hardly get spam now. I can count the incidents with the fingers of one hand. That’s how effective Gmail is.

In fact, fact, I am so happy with this service, I use it for all my POP mail addresses. I don’t use hotmail anymore and I barely touch Yahoo mail. Gmail’s persistence and evolution from a mere ‘me too’ product to a service standard contains three key lessons the rest of the tech world can learn.

Leverage Your Brand

Before gmail, Google was primarily a search engine company. It is a highly respected brand because it succeeded where other search engines failed-producing actually useful results. Google’s brand grew and grew since people associated it with trustworthiness and reliability. Google wisely leveraged its brand to roll out Gmail.

Make no mistake about it, while Gmail embodied many new innovative technologies, it would not have made much of a dent in the market if it did not carry the Google label. Google’s massive brand and huge user base made more people open minded about trying out Gmail.

Integrate With Your Other Services

Get it through your head: Google is not search engine or online services company. What is it then? It is an ad company. That’s right-all its activities online are aimed at getting you to identify your interests and show you ads that are geared towards those interests. That’s why Google racks up billions every year. Gmail, far from being an experiment that makes no money or a vanity project whose existence depends on the whim of a top executive, was quickly integrated into Google’s ad serving infrastructure. Brilliant move.

Now, advertisers can market to people based on what they are thinking. Sounds far-fetched? Not really. When you write an email and someone responds, Gmail’s ad system picks up the context and keywords and serves up relevant ads. Google ads hit you when you are thinking about a specific subject. Genius.

Continuously Innovate

Google could have easily rested on its laurels when it became clear Gmail is going to overtake Hotmail. But it didn’t stop. It kept rolling out new updates and new service innovations. Sure, some of these experiments have to be later abandoned or dialed back but, on the whole, the drive to innovate continuously increases the chances that Gmail will remain the free web-based email industry’s top dog.

Considering how much World of Warcraft revolutionized the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) entertainment space, it seems almost awkward to ask if The Elder Scrolls Online will revive the MMORP space.

But, sadly, that’s a question we’re forced to ask. You see, the MMORPG space has hit a hard wall. I am not talking about graphics. New MMORPG games boast of downright awesome graphics and fine attention to detail. World of Warcraft (WOW), if it wanted to, could just ‘re-skin’ itself and look as up to date and sleek as its recent competitors.

I am not talking about story and game lore. Indeed, if anything, the MMORPG space has been quite amazing in the variety of themes it can assume. From pirates to Jedi to different fantasy eras, MMORPGs exist for almost any theme. No, it’s not a failure of theme or game lore I am talking about. The hard wall is the underlying game play behind most MMORPGs. Sadly, they are all the same.

They all follow the same predictable sequence of: talk to NPC, get quest, quest is either fetch or kill, fetch item or kill bad guy, go back to NPC and claim your reward. Ho hum. So boring. Sure, WOW spices it up by stringing up a chain of NPCs giving you the same fetch or kill type quest which takes you from one corner of Azeroth to another but, at the end of the day, it all still uses the same tired formula.

This is the rot that threatens to neuter MMORPG gaming and permanently transform it, in terms of gaming hierarchy and marketing, into a ‘kids’ game’.

Can We Place Our Hope On The Elder Scrolls Online?

A lot of MMORPG fans are excited about The Elder Scrolls Online (TESO) because, after all, it carries the well-respected and well-loved The Elder Scrolls brand. Few people who have played Morrowind and Skyrim did  not get impressed by the game’s breadth, game lore, graphics, and game play. TESO was all about story, story, and story. It truly is an immersive game that made players wade waist deep into the lore of the game. It truly sucks you in.

The problem is, is this enough to fix the problem I mentioned above? If you played The Elder Scrolls in the fast, the game follows the standard RPG rote of  get quest, fetch or kill, come back to claim reward, rinse and repeat. TESO needs to fix this. Sexy graphics and deep storylines can only go so far.

Unless it solves the dead end and predictable gameplay fundamentals described above, after all the hoopla and hype die down, TESO might just be yet another ‘me too’ MMORPG trying to nick off some of WOW’s juicy monthly subscriber revenues like Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Is TESO even a good fit for the MMORPG format?

Another unsettling question I can’t get off my mind is the fact that the pacing of a standard Elder Scrolls quest is slower, more deliberate, and more intimate than the pacing of standard MMORPG fare. Take WOW for example, the pacing for that game is fast. You zip through instances, you quickly fight through quests. The focus, after all, is leveling and getting items. You just don’t have the time to stop and smell the murloc scales you just scraped off.

Considering this is the pace many MMORPG fans have grown to love and expect, it will be very interesting how TESO manages to change the core of The Elder Scrolls game to fit with expectations. If it does this would it effectively make TESO another WOW wannabe with better graphics?

Imagine it is 1999. While I am sure you’d be shaking your booty to the Prince song of the same name as the year, there was a lot of booty shaking in the stock market and tech industry as well. Ruling the roost were the giants of Web 1.0: Amazon, Ebay, AOL, and Yahoo.

Yahoo stood out from the roster of early dominant Internet brands because it was a purely content play. Positioning itself as a ‘portal’ the company sought to be the ‘start page’ of the Internet. For a while, it worked. Yahoo had the Yahoo directory and users used this technology to trawl through the huge amount of web pages available.

Interestingly enough, for a technology that wasn’t very scalable, it worked-until Google came along. Ever since the rise of Google, the renaissance of Apple, and the flowering of Web 2.0 and social networks and media, Yahoo has remained on the sidelines. A former high flyer stuck in neutral.

Far from setting trends, Yahoo, like Microsoft, is forced to play defense and catch up. Hardly a dignified role for a once highly respected online property that set the rules of the Internet game. Here are some key lessons the tech industry can learn from Yahoo.

Acquisitions Don’t Mean Success

Throughout its corporate life, Yahoo made a whole lot of acquisitions. A lot of them didn’t amount to much. In fact, being acquired by Yahoo seemed to ensure the acquired companies will stagnate then eventually die. Broadcast.com, founded by famed NBA impresario Mark Cuban, was acquired by Yahoo amidst market hopes for Yahoo domination of streamed media.

The grand vision didn’t become reality because Yahoo didn’t integrate this service quite deep enough nor did it seriously convert it into an independent revenue base. Cuban walked away with a huge pile of Yahoo stock which he had the good sense to cash in before the Dot Com crash torpedoed Yahoo shares.

If that white elephant purchase made your head spin, just check out Yahoo’s blunder with GeoCities. Yes, Geocities-the pioneer of free user-created web space. I have to admit, at the time, the value proposition Geocities offered was quite compelling. You have to remember that hosting was quite expensive back then and website making tools were not as easy, intuitive as now. Outsourcing was also relatively expensive. Yahoo paid billions (that’s with a capital B). Several years later, Yahoo pulled the plug on the last Geocities page.

What went wrong? Again, Yahoo’s failure to incorporate deeply. Moreover, Jerry Yang and company failed to produce solid ad value for Geocities despite the huge ad space inventory it offered. What a flame out. Finally, GoTo.Com pioneered the pay per click technology Google’s ad platforms use to generate billions every year. Yahoo bought the company out and it continues to languish to this day.

Focus On Depth Not Width

Another key lesson all these sad acquisitions teach is that if you want to have a truly competitive service line, you have to dig deep into what you already offer and broaden incrementally. You can’t acquire your way into innovation. You have to master your current offerings and listen to your user base on how to improve it.

You can’t just throw cash at the problem of slow growth by buying a fast-growing property, you might not have the expertise to run it. Even if you keep the acquired companies’ personnel, they might not stick around.

Trailblazing companies need passion to maintain. It’s better to start a project in-house which aims to fix problems posed and identified by your main property’s current user base.

It’s been many years since the current console generation started, and most gamers would agree that the PlayStation 3 is now obsolete, with old hardware which needs to be updated. Thankfully this week Sony held an event that caught the attention of the media worldwide where they introduced the new PlayStation 4. While the actual console itself was not shown, many interesting tidbits of information were let out, including some hardware components and games that would be available at launch.

This new console will be coming this holiday 2013 season and will bring a lot of innovations. Here are just a few of them:

• The controller was redesigned and is now called a DualShock 4 with a dedicated share button which points at this console being much more social than before.
• Players will be able to start streaming their games with the press of a button, along with watching their friends play or send messages in real time.
• The hardware itself will also be highly improved with an x86 processor architecture, 8GB of DDR5 memory, and a new graphics processor.
• The PlayStation 4 will also have a secondary chip which will handle background tasks such as downloading games. This means you will be able to play a game while it is still downloading in the background.

There is no pricing available yet, but many game developers showed up at the event to announce their upcoming game for the next-gen console. This included The Witcher 3, inFamous 4, and Watch Dogs.

One of the interesting new feature of the PlayStation 4 is that it will be able to communicate with other devices such as the Vita. This means a lot of the new games will be able to use dual screen technologies to improve the gaming experience. So far Sony has had a very low success with the Vita, where developers are simply not making games for it and players are not buying in great numbers, so this might help the struggling mobile platform.

Of course, not all is good news with the PlayStation 4. They did confirm that PS3 games would not work at all on the PS4 since it uses another architecture, but did promise a streaming option for these games coming down the road.

Are you excited about the new PS4 and will you be purchasing one this coming holiday season?

Whenever the fall season rolls around, gamers the world over knows it means two things: the Holiday shopping season and yet another Call of Duty release. Yes, Call of Duty’s annual release schedule has become so predictable, so automatic, and so assured that you can almost use it as an annual benchmark for things that happen in your life. Kid’s birthdays and school recitals can be remembered in relations to a Call of Duty release date.

If a high caliber (pun intended) first-person shooter’s release has become so frequent and so predictable, you know something is wrong. What is wrong with this picture? First of all, you only need to ask the guys behind the Bioshock series how much work, attention to detail, and story telling goes into a high-quality first person shooter (FPS) game. Sadly, it seems Activision, the megagame studio behind the yearly Call of Duty onslaughts have totally missed out on the memo that you should only release a game if there is something completely new in the game.

The annual releases make it clear to many FPS veterans who instead of filling a genuine need, Activision is just out to milk the huge installed base of FPS fans Call of Duty commands. Indeed, the series itself manages to squeeze hundreds of millions of dollars from its fan base every year. And this is not counting the online Call of Duty gaming components. Maybe the question critics should ask themselves: if I had a money machine that barfs out money every year, would I unplug it?

Still, you couldn’t fault some FPS fans for shaking their head when there doesn’t seem to be any deep difference between one COD installment and another. Sure, there are some minor tweaks, but given the huge amount of cash fans are expected to pay, shouldn’t there be more? In fact, the tweaks and changes seem so shallow that many critics are saying that the games are mere re-skins.  In other words, Activision has a platform and just applies different skins to it on an annual basis.

This critique might seem to be taking things a bit too far and it might be a bit too harsh but it does have a ring of truth to it. No wonder there was such bitterness on the blogosphere against COD when it was caught in a marketing war with Battlefield 2.

Activision should reconsider their annual rollouts. You can only go to the well so much before it starts drying up. Game fans are not dumb. After all, it was the wave after wave of crappy games in the mid 80s that resulted in the industry crash that brought Atari down to Earth. Don’t think for a second that the same market dynamics that were at play back then aren’t in play now. Consumers aren’t dumb. You can only milk them for so long before they move on or give up.

When World of Warcraft first broke on the scene, all hell broke loose in the world of online gaming. Prior to WOW, most online games were small time and small-scale affairs. Little worlds with limited action. Not only was the action limited, the story line and game lore were anemic. WOW changed the rules forever.

It brought to life the ‘massive’ in massively multiplayer online role-playing games. We’re talking about a huge expanse online with thousands of characters per server. As for game lore, its story line meshes well and is modular enough to handle many different outcomes and progressions.

WOW was so successfully that it quickly gained millions of monthly subscribers and the game racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales. Indeed, it hit the ball so far out of the park, many MMO gamers are hard-pressed to name another MMO before it. For the record, there is a good one called Ultima Online. Naturally, where there is money, there is competition-many WOW imitators and knockoffs popped up, covering all sorts of genres. Still, WOW remains the king of the roost.

Now for the sad news. It appears that after WOW pioneered the MMORP’s modern story architecture and gameplay, not much has changed in terms of core MMORP story components. It appears the industry hasn’t evolved much past the groundwork laid by WOW.

Sure, the front end changes-now you have MMORPGs about pirates, space aliens, etc. But the underlying story flow and game mechanics haven’t evolved. They still involve the same basic ‘go to NPC, get quest, fetch or kill, come back to the NPC, get reward or next instruction, repeat until you get bored’ sequence. This would not be a problem if player expectations and maturity don’t evolve with time but they do and the old system is, well, looking worse with time.

If Blizzard, the maker of WOW, wants to protect its nearly billion-dollar cash cow, it has to come up with a new game dynamic that engages players on a whole new level. The problem is not one of technology but creativity and imagination. WOW has to dig deep or else it risks further branding as a ‘kids’ game’. I have to admit that this is not going to be an easy problem to solve.

You can only improvise and build on a pre-existing pattern so much and for so long. What Blizzard needs to do is to conduct a lot of in-game and out of game focus groups and actual in-play studies to see where the roadblocks are and which segments can be improved upon.

Instagram is a good photo editing app for Android but it is not the only app out there that you can use to edit your photos. As a matter of fact, there are a bunch of interesting alternatives. You just have to know how to pick the most suitable app for your Android tablet or smartphone. If you don’t want to waste your time on those useless apps, better read on.

StreamZoo

If Instagram has this unique way of liking and sharing photos, StreamZoo knows how to appreciate the talent of its creative users. Aside from the usual features that you can see on most photo apps, StreamZoo rewards its users with badges for every significant progress that they make such as uploading at least five photos to a particular tag. It’s fun to be part of the app’s community because the members there are very appreciative and friendly. You also get to use its massive collection of filters and borders.

Flickr App

Who doesn’t know about Flickr? Of course, it is one of the most popular sites in the web that’s solely dedicated to photographers and photo enthusiasts. Now with the growing popularity of Instagram, Yahoo won’t simply step back. It finally launched its own Flickr App for Android. You can follow friends and use its available list of filters to creatively enhance your photos. Just like Instagram’s photo map, you can also geo-tag your photos before you get to share them to your friends on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Pixlr-o-Matic

Almost every Android user adores Pixlr-o-Matic. Well, who wouldn’t? It has a lot of amazing filters, frames and cool effects. The app may lack the social feature but it does allow its users to share the photos to any site or social app. Now, imagine if Pixlr-o-Matic would launch its own community, there’s a possibility that it would be as popular as Instagram.

Photo Editor

The Photo Editor app is ideal for people who are eyeing to do more to their photos. If you’re not satisfied with filters, the app will give you the ability to adjust the brightness, contrast, angle and a whole lot more. If you want to personalize your photos using your own drawings, you’re always free to do so.

PicsArt

With PicsArt, everyone has the chance to become a great artist. It features a community of creative people and you are free to explore its vast gallery of interesting photos. Just like Instagram, the app provides tags for easy search and there are lots of photo filters. Plus, there are a bunch of easy to use tools such as Grid, Draw, Frame and Doodles.

All of these apps are free and won’t cost you a single penny. You just have to pick the one that you think would be the best alternative for Instagram for Android.

Buying music these days is not necessary, even if you are trying to go the legal route. Thanks to the music industry losing billions of dollars to piracy, many execs are starting to realize that charging people $10 and $15 for a CD may be a bad idea after all when consumers have wide tastes in music.

With streaming music, most of it is add supported and the songs music can be carried around with you wherever you have an internet connection. What follows is a list of some of the best free streaming music options available currently.

Pandora

It’s the veteran in the music streaming world and with a recent HTML5 player update, it’s one of the best internet radio and music streaming options available. The ability to create a radio based on an artist, song or genre is great and thanks to the Music Genome Project, it’s pretty accurate.

Slacker Radio

Slacker Radio is another internet music streaming service that we have fallen in love with. While it does not carry as wide a selection of music as Pandora, it is still great and for the most part has been very accurate in playing music associated with our tastes and likes. It excels in mainstream music though, something Pandora is lacking.

Grooveshark

One of our favorites, Grooveshark allows you to create custom playlists and you can add almost any song you want. It also allows you to upload songs from your personal collection that can be played by other users. While the legality has been questioned in recent times with its app being pulled from both the App Store and Google Play, it still remains one of the most popular online music streaming options.

MOG

MOG is like Grooveshark except it also has paid options and it is 100% legal as well. With free access you can create playlist and music libraries that can be listened to in your browser. They have paid options that take away the ads as well as gives mobile access and unlimited download options. According to MOG, they have 15 million songs. Based on what we have seen and heard, except for the Beetles, most of your favorite bands and artists are there.

Spotify

Out of all, Spotify is our favorite. Not only does it offer a streaming music option that allows you to create playlists. You also have free internet radio for both desktop and mobile (Android and iOS). Spotify has well over 16 million songs in its library, and if you’re willing to pay, you can get unlimited streaming as well as offline listening for the right price. But even without the paid option, Spotify remains our favorite online streaming music option. Couple that with the social media integration that allows you to share your music with your Facebook friends, and you have the perfect tool for enjoying and discovering new music with your friends. They even have a 30-day free trial for the paid version.

Although 2012 brought us additions to Halo, Assassins Creed, Forza and Call of Duty, 2013 will herald some of the most anticipated titles in the video game sector. Here is the Techvide.com list of the most highly anticipated game releases of 2013.

Grand Theft Auto V

While much isn’t known about the storyline, and even the release date has yet to be confirmed, GTA V is gearing up to be the biggest release of 2013. Not only has Take Two Interactive gotten the media abuzz with some of the authentic screenshots from the title, but we’re hearing that the game may be returning to a very familiar location.

Gears of War: Judgment

With the franchise netting Microsoft well over $1 billion in sales, it’s hard to imagine the company killing such a successful franchise. Thankfully they’re not! What makes Gears of War: Judgment so epic is the fact that it could well be the last game for the Xbox 360, before Microsoft releases the rumored Xbox 720. Of course, only time will tell.

Bungie’s Destiny

Nothing is known about the game as of yet, but this would be the first non-Halo Game Bungie studios has released in ten years. According to the rumor mill, the game will be released in 2013 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft’s next gaming console, the Xbox 720. Other rumors claim that the game will go multiplatform in 2014 when the PS4 is released. Of course, everything is just rumors, but the existence of the game is definitely real.

Watch Dogs

Set in the very near future, Watch Dogs centers around your ability to hack and control electronic devices in order to find out who is the one controlling the digital information. The 9 minute demo that was released at E3 has done nothing but build hype for the video game and with a 2013 release date, we don’t have long to wait to find out how awesome, or not, the game will be.

Tomb Raider

She’s back and she’s sexier than before. The latest version of Tomb Raider centers on her younger years and explains what she did to get to where she is today. Needless to say, the game is being talked about by fans and critics alike as the last couple of Tomb Raider games have missed their mark, this one is expected to bring back Square Enix back to its former glory.

Sim City

After a decade of absence, Sim City is finally back and it’s better than ever. While we’re not getting much out of EA and Maxis about the game’s many features, we do know that it will be a simulator. But instead of taking a micro perspective of society, the family, Sim City will be looking at the bigger picture, a macro image if you will. The game has already garnered a lot of press and the E3 trailer did hint at the great improvement in game physics, as well as overall graphics. Needless to say, this may be the biggest PC game release of the year.