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Google Goes In-Game
Google yesterday bought Adscape Media, a company that does in-game advertising. Double Fusion is the big player in the space. More on Adscape on Gamasutra. Vallywag puts the price at $23 million.
Our technology, which has been in development for the past four years, allows Adscape Media to provide publishers the added benefit of more than just today’s static and dynamic in-game advertising. Adscape Media’s technology also provides an interactive element – a “gateway” – that provides publishers a variety of new outlets for additional revenue streams above and beyond those currently being used in games today, while at the same time providing advertisers with a unique, customizable approach to reaching gamers in an engaging way.
Gotta love the press release… chuck full of not much information.
2006 Stats
First off, Happy New Year! May it be a wonderful and fulfilling year. Tis the season to summarize last year, so here are my humble stats for last year.
My number of posts per month:
Jan: 12
Feb: 12
Mar: 17
Apr: 7
May: 4
Jun: 7
Jul: 7
Aug: 18
Sep: 14
Oct: 9
Nov: 6
Dec: 11
Average of 10.3 posts per month.
My top traffic is still for my 2005 Banlangen Keli, although my Hoboken category gets more views. My Teak Sushi is generating my top search keywords.
NJ Transit Google Maps
I have yet to see a really good mash-up for NJ Transit on Google Maps like the one for the NYC Metro. The closest is a good site focused on the various routes, TrainsNJ with driving directions to get to stations. I would rather see all the routes on one maps, to get a better idea of the closest station from any location.
Google Landing Pages
For those small and medium sized businesses that don’t have a website, Google is now giving them a free host a webpage that can be created when joining AdSense. All wizard based so people don’t need to know HTML.
So yet again Google is expanding the pool of people that can advertise with them.
Heard about this from MarketingVOX.
Swivel
TechCrunch just mentioned (twice over two days) the launch of Swivel, that aims to be ‘the internet archive for data’. And to keep the hype index high the owners also used the description “YouTube for Data.” With the easy interface and deep data, I see it as Google Trends for the real world.
I especially like the Wine vs Violent Crime comparison… especially relevant after spending some time in vineyards.
Google Image Labeler
Came across an interesting feature of Google Image Search. They have created a game to do user testing as well as labeling/tagging.
You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner’s label, you’ll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.
Google Reader Updates
Google Reader just went through a huge upgrade tonight, that was much needed.
It is now much easier to browse by subscription and get an idea of what is new. The new Expanded View does a much better job stacking posts onto one page, instead of the old way that required loaded a page for each post. It does seem to have some odd behavior that a post will only be marked as read if you click on the post, as well as scroll down past the post, but does not do this consistently. So it doesn’t do a great job of marking a post as read.
A great update overall though.
Personalized Google Tabs
Google just added a nice features to its Personalized Google Page, tabs. So that matches very well to Netvibes, except for some nice modules (I personally like the Meebo one).
But I am very happy that Google added this since it means I can reduce the length of my Personalized page, as well as put like-content together. Thanks to SEO Roundtable for the first read.
Hoboken Sushi – Uptown Sushi House & Teak »« Live Music Social Search
Google NYC
According to the Village Voice, Google: The New Port Authority, Google will be moving into NYC very soon. Birds eye view from Gmaps.
111 Eighth Avenue, designed by Lusby Simpson and completed in 1932 to house the Port Authority of New York, is one of the largest buildings in the city, an architectural marvel, and a landmark. Looming like a 15-story locomotive over Chelsea, the mammoth red-brick structure occupies an entire city block between Eighth and Ninth avenues and 15th and 16th streets—a footprint larger than two football fields.
This came from SEO Roundtable and Webmasterworld.
August Google Rank – Afterthoughts
So in June I got to the top of Google, but I changed my LinkedIn personal URL to my name and I was wondering how that impacted (which it helped on G while it was already high on Y). I have also been looking to get more backlinks, since that is key to SEO.
August 2006: G, M, and Y at 1.
Keyword: adam karas URL Pattern: adamkaras.com
Google: Position: 1
Yahoo: Position: 1 (my linkedin page)
MSN: Position: 1Keyword: “adam karas” URL Pattern: adamkaras.com
Google: Position: 1
Yahoo: Position: 1
MSN: Position: 1Google Page Rank: 2/10
Number of Backlinks: 14
