Platinax Internet News

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April 26, 2005

Google are bringing major new changes to their AdWords/AdSense program, which recently pushed Google's Q1 earnings 6 times above last year's.

The first changes empower AdWords advertisers to control which sites their ads are displayed on. The change - known as Site Targeting - which will allow advertisers to aim their bids at sites that convert better into clicks to their own sites.

The Site Targeted advertising will be CPM based, so rather than be paid for clicks directly, AdSense publishers will instead be paid on the basis of ads displayed.

Additionally, new ad formats are being tested out, with Google pushing on AdSense publishers to give more ground for image ads, especially new Flash ads, which will be restricted to a 50kb ceiling.

Additionally, in response to Kanoodle, Google have already been spotted experimenting with AdSense in RSS feeds.

Overall, the movements are very much a part of the company's attempt to dig itself in as the inimitable market leader, in an a lucrative text advertising market that Yahoo! and Microsoft have stated their intention to join.

By providing key features and expanding its services now, Google is creating an even greater ground for any competitors to cover before being able to provide any kind of real competition in the same market.

Posted at 02:02 PM
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April 21, 2005

In something of a surprise move, Toshiba and Sony - the lead developers of opposing next generation DVD technologies - are reported to have sat down together to begin talks on how to bring their ideas together to launch a joint standard DVD format.

The move comes as pressure mounts from the technology and film industries that a repeat of the format wars of the 1980's - then between VHS and Betamax recording - could be damaging to the consumer industry.

At the moment the HD-DVD and Blu-ray DVD formats work in different ways, with HD-DVD allowing for backwards compatability - ie, HD-DVD players should be able to play existing DVDs - while Sony's Blu-ray DVD format offers a greater amount of storage on a single DVD disc.

Both companies are vying to have their core technology for disc structure at the heart of any hybrid format, with additional software processing coming from the other company.

Negotiations between the industry giants could therefore be difficult, but with the accessibility of the new standard becoming an ever more important issue, the DVD industry at large invites a solution sooner, rather than later.

Posted at 10:36 PM
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Repercussions from the failure of Rover to avoid going into administration continue, as 28,000 workers reliant on the company attempt to save their jobs.

Hopes that the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) would bail out the company appear to be fading, as news has emerged that SAIC already own the rights to produce the Rover 25 and Rover 75 models.

The intellectual rights to producing these models was apparently nogetiated in 2004.

Although it remains uncertain as to whether SAIC can still call these cars "Rovers", as the trademark still belongs to BMW, SAIC has allegedly been chasing up parts suppliers for a Chinese production line for the models.

This leads to the possibility of Rover cars being manufactured in China, but possibly under a different branding.

Meanwhile, as the industry adjusts to the news of the Rover collapse, Jaguar has announced that it is now scaling back production of its X-type model.

The company announced that it is aiming to produce lower volume for higher revenues in the higher class markets.

Jaguar is owned by Ford, which has already been forced to restructure after disappointing profits on the previous tax year.

Posted at 08:30 PM
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High Street sales showed a surprise decline in March, with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reporting a 0.1% drop in overall sales volume between February and March.

The figures for January to March of this year still show a stronger retail sales growth than the the previous 3 months, but are now dropping to the lowest levels for 2 years.

Of potential concern is that inflation is reported up to a seven year high of 1.9%, which will put pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates.

However, consumer spending will be of principal concern for the bank, whose minutes suggest this as currently prioritised.

WHSmith was one company that managed to defeat the general decline in consumer spending - it posted profits of over £60 million for the six months to the end of February. This follows disastrously losses in 2003, before starting a program of cost cuts and restructuring.

Posted at 07:30 PM
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April 11, 2005

A Munich court has ruled that linking to some websites is illegal.

The ruling comes after German IT site Heise Online included a link to Slysoft, a company alleged to be involved in providing tools that help online music piracy.

A body representing the German music industry had taken Heise to court and sued for €500,000, to reflect profit losses argued to have arisen from helping users find the site.

According to the Register report, the link broke German civil law, because:

Heise intentionally provided "assistance in the fulfillment of unlawful acts" and is therefore liable as "an aider and abettor", as described in Section 830 of the German Civil Code.

The ruling sets an awkward precendent on the issues of freedom of the press when applied to the internet. This is an area already under scrutiny in America, after a group of media companies launched a legal challenge against Apple after a US court ruling determined that websites are not granted press protection under the US Consitution.

Posted at 05:52 PM
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April 09, 2005

Californian publishers, media, and journalism groups have bandied together to launch an unprecedented legal attack on Apple.

It comes in the form of an appeal, after a judge ruled on March 4th that Apple can force a website to reveal its sources of information.

The groups involved include a string of Californian publishers, which are behind newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union-Tribune, Sacramento Bee, and the Orange County Register.

Additionally, media and journalism groups such as the Associated Press, Society for Professional Journalists, Student Press Law Center, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the California First Amendment Coalition, and the California Newspaper Publishers Association, are all named in an amicus brief.

The media groups have all converged in support of Apple industry websites - Apple Insider, PowerPage and ThinkSecret - which leaked details on new Apple products earlier this year.

The action argues that the websites are journalistic bodies, and therefore protected under First Amendment rights of Freedom of Press. This includes protecting media from revealing sources in public interest cases, even if the leak is itself illegal.

Although Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg originally disagreed that the websites could be protected under the US Constitution, the sudden appearance of media giants squaring up against Apple dramatically ups the stakes in what could be a very acrimonious - and potentially damaging case for Apple.

Posted at 06:29 PM
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April 08, 2005

VeriSign have responded angrily to recent complaints about a recent Telcordia report, which recommended the company to continue administrating the .net domain names.

VeriSign have effectively been handed a continued administration of the .net domain names, after the contract came up for renewal. However, the report that recommended them over other competing companies continue a string of factual errors and inconsistencies, some of which apparently artificially mark up VeriSign services, while down-playing rival bidders with exaggerated claims.

After three of the companies made public their complaints and criticisms of the report, VeriSign released a strong condemnation of the otherwise silent runner-up, Sentan, a company some critics claim is the only one capable of truly challenging VeriSign's dominance and administrative capability.

ICANN has meanwhile attempted to take the debate out of public while - though there remains strong public criticism for the role of ICANN in the matter, which has also been criticised for its allocation of the .travel domain name.

ICANN have especially suffered a bad run of public relations, with the furore over the .net and .travel domain allocations being added to by accusations of not properly addressing abuse of .pro domain names.

Posted at 09:30 PM
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Haaretz reports that sites belonging to the Palestinian Authority are now using a national TLD suffix - .ps - even though Palestine is not recongised as an individual country.

The move was announced by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, and is part of the Palestinian Authority's electronic government program, which seeks to better connect government operations with public awareness.

According to research last year, nearly 10% of Palestinian homes have fixed access to the internet, with nearly two-thirds of respondents having an e-mail address.

There are over 40 telecoms providers in the Palestinina territories, with Paltel covering about one-third of internet traffic from the areas.

Posted at 09:00 PM
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After a long financial struggle, iconic British car manufacturer, MG Rover, has been forced to call in administrators.

The company had been struggling financially for years, and had been desperately trying to reach agreement on a partnership with Chinese car manufacturer Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp this week, before that fell apart last night.

BMW had owned Rover until 2000, when it sold the heavily indebted company for £10 to a consortiumm, the Phoenix Venture Holdings, led by former chairman John Towers.

Although they were able to reduce the company's debts from £800m in 1999, to £77m in 2003, Rover faced a fiercely competitive car market that analysts suggest they simply did not have the financial muscle to become profitable in.

Critics claimed that Rover was essentially rebuilding old models as new cars, and failed to invest in developing the new models required to take the company forward. Others have suggested that the company needed to focus on a niche, rather attempt a general range of vehicles it could not fully promote in the world market.

Falling sales over the past few years had forced Rover to look at alternative backing - a deal with Shanghai motors promised an ideal of shared production and reduced costs for Rover, while offering a stepping ground in European car markers.

After months of negotiations that deal collapsed.

Now Rover has called in administrators, who will try and determine which parts of the company are viable, and protect it against creditor actions.

There is also speculation that Shanghai motors may return to the table in return for a larger stake in Rover.

However, if administrators fail to find a credit window for the company, and no other car manufacturers move to buy it, then Rover will not simply sink as a brand name, but it will also threaten to bring down a whole chain of suppliers attached to the company.

Posted at 08:38 PM
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April 06, 2005

The Pension Protection Fund comes into force today, which aims to protect pension funds.

The scheme is a form of insurance protection, that every pension scheme will have to pay into. In the event that the pension scheme is unable to make agreed pension payments, the PPF will try and take over.

The scheme aims to protect 100% of retired people's pensions, and as much as 90% of the funds being paid into by existing workers.

As reported by the BBC, the scheme has immediate consequences, not least in that its implementation could see workers of already collapsed companies protected - such as at Allders.

Reuters also reports of notable changes in the investment market's approach to pensions after high profile pension fund failures, with fund managers returning to buy into bonds and commodities as opposed to equities.

Posted at 02:12 PM
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Microsoft today launched a report claiming that Windows offered a more stable platform than Linux.

As described by Ina Fried at CNet:

Microsoft commissioned Veritest to create a scenario in which Linux and Windows administrators had to undertake a variety of tasks, such as provisioning servers and replicating data while responding to various failures and outages.

The Windows administrators completed 21 percent more of the proactive tasks, according to the study

However, the findings are controversial because the research was paid for by Microsoft, rather than an impartial third-party.

Also, the report fails to address whether the conditions of outages and failures would affect each operating system equally.

This is important, because anecdotal evidence suggests that Microsoft Windows provides a less stable environment to work with for online development.

Also, Windows machines are more likely to suffer security breaches, not least because of the much larger number of incompletely patched systems.

Also there are are a larger number of exploits against Windows machines, with nearly 250 trojans, viruses and worms already released against Windows this year to mid-March, and none reported for Unix operating systems.

Research by the Yankee Group, released earlier this month, found a faster recovery time for Windows servers after a security breach - at 13 hours recovery as opposed to 17.5 for Linux.

However, the study does not compare actual downtime of Windows and Linux machines in a live environment, which would be a more reliable basis for making comparisons.

Nevertheless, a report by the Register found that although a large number of smaller firms are turning to Linux and open source solutions for their businesses, the better development of Windows applications - not least graphics packages - was seen as a winning feature for Windows desktop machines.

Microsoft also today announced the delay of a planned version of Windows, intended to work with high performance server clusters, and emulate existing high performance computing requirements that Linux already handles. The launch of Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition is now expected in the second half of this year.

Posted at 01:38 PM
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ICANN, the internet body in charge of administrating how domain structures work on the internet, has been accused of flouting its own regulations, so as to award a potentially lucrative contract to a front company.

The criticisms are chiefly leveled by Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami School of Law, who details his concerns at ICANN Watch.

They also coincide with a damning report on ICANN's allocation of the .net registration process to Verisign, after reasons for the award decision being made were omitted from a public report.

Techdirt additionally criticises ICANN by reporting that the body is asking for more money from the US Congress, without explaining where it is to be allocated. Techdirt also claims that the few members of the ICANN board voted there by the public, have been dismissed for asking to see detailed ICANN records of the body's decisions.

Posted at 01:18 PM
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Google Adsense has brought in major changes, including live tracking of channels.

AdSense is a way of publishing simple advertising, and is especially popular with webmasters as a way of covering costs or even developing a profit.

However, until now, statistics on the page impressions and revenues earned were always two days out of date.

Now such statistics can be observed in real-time.

Other changes include the ablity to delete old channels, and better selection of channels for stats tracking.

The details are published here: Improved channels functionality: better tools to help you optimize, and popular AdSense commentator Jensense makes a more detailed summary.

AdSense publishing on third-party webmaster sites forms a significant part of Google's revenues, accounting for up to two-thirds.

Yahoo! and MSN have yet to release for public use their own advertising networks, though these are both expected over the coming year.

Posted at 12:55 PM
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April 05, 2005

A group of online advertisers have begun what they hope will be a class action suit against search engine companies, who stand accused of turning a blind eye to clickfraud because it benefits them.

The suit was reportedly filed in February, and companies such as Yahoo!, Google, AOL, Ask, Lycos, and LookSmart are all named as accused.

Leading of this assault on internet giants is named as Lane's Gifts & Collectibles, who alleges that the "companies knowingly overcharged for advertisements they sold and conspired with each other to continue doing so".

The plaintiffs are trying to turn this into a class action suit, which could prove extremely challenging for the companies named - none of which has yet made any public comment on the matter.

Clickfraud is an issue that has been gaining a lot of attention within the internet press.

Online communities have frequently seen discussions involving small businesses raising concerns that clickfraud is not being taken seriously enough, with some implementing their own clickfraud tracking.

The implications are serious - Robin Good detailed concerns last year, and industry commentator John Battelle has also warned of the dangers of clickfraud biting search engine reputation, profits, and online business.

SiliconValleyWatcher even showed a glimpse of how employed for the purposes of clickfraud was being advertised for on the web.

Posted at 09:01 PM
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Internet advertising has increased dramatically over 2004, and now takes a larger part of advertising spend than radio.

The report was made in the Guardian's Broadband helps online advertising to overtake radio feature.

The Internet Advertising Bureau is reported to have stated that online advertising in Britain for 2004 was £653.3 million, with radio advertising revenues of £637.4 million.

Additionally, the Advertising Association is predicting an increase spend of over 30% on internet advertising for 2005 - making it the fastest growing advertising medium.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre both list spending on press advertising as the largest single advertising market, accounting for 41.5% of advertising revenues, followed by television with 23.9% and direct mail with 14.6%.

A big reason for the push is squared up to broadband use, which shows a high level of internet penetration across commercial markets. According to the BBC, BT have now signed up more than 5 million broadband users, while NTL claims to be the biggest broadband ISP.

Posted at 04:19 PM
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