TOP BANGKOK

We seem to have by and large gotten past the period in which investors lived in constant fear of crashes; people no longer use terms like “double dip” and “depression” on an everyday basis.  There will never come a time when investors won’t want quick access to financial info, though, and so Google’s made some changes to its mobile search results that should meet with their approval.

English-speaking folks with Android devices (running at least Android 2.1) or iPhones are the targets here.  There aren’t any hoops to jump through or tricks beyond that; users just have to search for a stock symbol to get started.

Next, a post on the Google Mobile Blog explained, “The first thing you’ll see is an interactive graph shown on a card – you can switch views to different date ranges by tapping on the buttons below the graph.”

Then the post continued, “If you swipe the card from right to left, you’ll get the latest financial news for the company.”

Finally, it stated, “Swipe again for a market overview, and if you’re logged in to your Google account and have created a Google Finance portfolio, a further swipe will show a summary of your stock portfolio.”

That’s a smart series of readouts to provide.  We imagine this upgrade might cause some confusion every now and then when people were just looking up acronyms, but those problems should be far outweighed by the upgrade’s usefulness to investors.

Now just cross your fingers that the average individual doesn’t find it necessary to look up falling stock prices too often.

GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons may need a lesson in online reputation management. Lesson 1: Don’t kill elephants. Lesson 2: If you do kill an elephant, don’t post a video about it on the web. 3: If you do kill an elephant and post a video about it on the web, and then tweet it out to 33,000 followers. Really lesson 1 solves them all, but now he’s learning the hard way as the controversy has taken the web by storm.

GoDaddy is no stranger to controversy. That’s for sure. This is a whole new kind of controversy though. The following video says it all (warning: it’s graphic):

The video begins with the text, “Of everything I do this is the most rewarding. This video shows one typical night and day.”

“Damage is extensive. Unless elephant are stopped entire crop may be lost,” the captions in the video say. “When crops are lost subsistence farmers risk starvation.”

“Bob Parsons fires first,” they later proclaim. “Bob Parsons fires again. Both shots hit home. “One bull is killed. The rest stampede out of the field unhurt.”

Then it goes to a series of still photos of Parsons posing proudly with the dead elephant. “Early the next morning hungry villagers butcher the elephant,” it then reads, before cutting to footage of the villagers butchering the animal while AC/DC plays over it. Some villagers wear GoDaddy hats.

He even tweeted it. Brilliant.

The video currently has over 20,000 views, with many more sure to come. You can wade through pages of comments here. Many people say they will be pulling their sites from GoDaddy. Even PETA was using GoDaddy, and is obviously putting a stop to that. PETA, points out that Parsons has also killed a leopard, pointing to the following video:

PETA added:

It has been well established that elephants are capable of experiencing emotions, including joy, anger, grief, and sympathy. They play with each other and can reason and use tools; they have exceptional memories and form enduring bonds with other elephants. They work together and comfort and protect each other. Elephant offspring stay with their mothers for many years—males for up to 15 years and females for their entire lives. Killing a single elephant can devastate a family, and their mourning ritual over the death of a family member rivals any that we humans have developed.

Parsons is hiding behind the lame claim that killing elephants helps farmers in Africa whose crops are damaged by the animals. In fact, there are ample effective and nonlethal methods to deter elephants from crops, including using chili-infused string and beehives on poles to create low-cost “fences.” Instead of coming up with flimsy excuses for killing these highly intelligent and social animals, Parsons should use his wealth to fund humane solutions to human/elephant conflicts.

Oh yeah, and lesson 4: don’t post videos of leopard killing to the web. And lesson 5: Issue a company press release following the uproar. So far there hasn’t been one posted to the GoDaddy news center since 03/23.

Is this guy the real Mr. Burns?

Update: Parsons has been talking since this article originally ran.

Twitter has announced that Direct Messages of 140 characters and longer sent via UberSocial and Twidroyd are currently visible to the public.

They are currently working on a fix.

In February, Twitter suspended UberTwitter and Twidroyd but later reinstated the two apps.

Over at the Google Webmaster Central blog, they’ve announced “Page Speed Online,” which allows users to check out the performance of any page on the internet, at any time.  Users will receive a page performance score calculated out of 100 and will be given prioritized suggestions upon which to improve.

When you run a test for a particular page, you will receive a score.

That score will be accompanied on the left hand side by suggestions for improving the page.
Google ranks these suggestions either high, medium or low priority.  The high priority suggestions are the ones that will give you the most improvement for the most minimal effort.  The medium priority suggestion will not give you as much improvement and may require much more work.  The low priority suggestions are to be concerned with only when you take care of the higher priority ones.

As you can see above, on the bottom right of where you see the number score, there is an option for a mobile analysis.  Google has added support for mobile pages to this new tool:

Due to the relatively limited CPU capabilities of mobile devices, the high round-trip times of mobile networks, and rapid growth of mobile usage, understanding and optimizing for mobile performance is even more critical than for the desktop.

The mobile recommendations are tuned for the unique characteristics of mobile devices, and contain several best practices that go beyond the recommendations for desktop browsers, in order to create a faster mobile experience. New mobile-targeted best practices include eliminating uncacheable landing page redirects and reducing the amount of JavaScript parsed during the page load, two common issues that slow down mobile pages today.

Google also notes that Page Speed Online is powered in the same way as many Chrome and Firefox extensions as well as webpagetest.org.

About a year ago, Google introduced preliminary designs for Google Cloud Print. Today, Google and HP announced that all HP ePrint-enabled printers are now Cloud Print-friendly.

Google Cloud Print can actually be used with any printer, but the new printers are “Google Cloud Print Ready,” which makes for a more “seamless” experience, according to Google.

“Imagine printing an important email from your Chrome notebook on your train ride to work, then finding the completed printout in the printer tray when you reach the office. Or printing your airline boarding pass from your smartphone to your home printer, so you can grab the printout on your way out the door,” says Google software engineer Abhijit Kalamkar. “Today, we are one big step closer to this vision.”

“Simply associate your printers with a Google Account—preexisting or new—to start printing,” says HP. “You can add your HP ePrint-enabled printer (HP Photosmart, HP Officejet, HP Officejet Pro, HP LaserJet Pro) to your Google Account with the printer’s unique email address. When you’re ready to print, simply select from the list of printers associated with your account.”

“You can send a print job to the printer you’ve chosen when you want—whether the printer is in front of you, in another room or across the country,” the company adds. “And you’ll have virtually the same experience as if you were physically connected to the printer. Print your favorite vacation photo to the closest printer to you for quick-and-easy sharing. Or, send your business presentation to the printer at your desk.”

Earlier this year, Google launched Cloud print for mobile documents and Gmail for Mobile. It also works with Chrome OS notebooks.

“We’re also continuing to release enhancements to the Google Cloud Print service,” says  Kalamkar. “We’ve released a Mac version of the Google Cloud Print connector for non-cloud printers in the Chrome beta channel. And over the next few days we’ll be enabling printer sharing for current Google Cloud Print users, so your family, friends and colleagues can print their documents from anywhere to anywhere.”

The first Chrome OS devices for consumers are expected to ship in the middle of the year.

Citizens of Iraq and Tunisia who are lucky enough to have Internet connections may now find it easier to conduct Web searches.  Today, Google announced the launch of the local search domains google.iq and google.tn for the two countries.

This is in many ways an interesting development.  For starters, it’s almost impossible not to think about the political and military turmoil in both countries (and in Tunisia in particular) and what effects Google’s move might have.

Perhaps the company’s trying to show its commitment to the free flow of information, hoping it can help locals make better decisions.  Or the timing could be coincidental, part of Google’s regularly scheduled efforts to reach more potential users.

Either way, the move does represent a milestone of sorts in terms of growth.  A post on the Google Arabia Blog noted, “This recent launch brings the number of local Google search domains worldwide to 184 with 15 domains in Arab countries.”

The post also pointed out, “Up until recently, users in Iraq and Tunisia had to visit other domains in order to use the search user interface in their language of choice.  With this launch, the new domains will enable users to access Google search in local languages like Arabic and Kurdish in Iraq and Arabic and French in Tunisia.  Eventually, this will lead to access to more locally-relevant content.”

Additional local search domains are supposed to launch this year, too, so keep an eye out for them.  Hat tip goes to Ahmad Al-Shagra.

At the MIX10 conference, Microsoft released its platform and free tools to app developers and told them to get started.  A year later, Windows Phone 7 Director Brandon Watson seems quite excited about some statistics detailed at the Windows Developer Blog.

When considering the various measures of progress over the last year, we tend to focus on the third party developers who have built so many amazing apps and games for the platform. Given the one year anniversary of the tool set, I also want to acknowledge the engineering work that began long before any of us knew what the Windows Phone developer platform would be…Instead of talking about those points one-by-one, we thought it would be more fun to take a look at some of the numbers that illustrate our commitment to those principles over the course of our first year

Okay, let’s hear the numbers:

• The Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools have been downloaded over 1.5 millions times


• AppHub, the Windows Phone official developers community has amassed 36,000 paid members.  They are currently added 1,200 members to that list weekly


• 11,500 unique apps have been generated.  According to Watson, this is a true un-fluffed up number.  This figure does not include competitor’s apps, as he states they aren’t interested in accumulating “tonnage.”  This figure does not include “Lite” versions of apps.  The figure also does not count apps in different languages as separate apps.


• Watson reports that the Windows Phone offers 7,500 paid apps.  He boasts that although they cannot compete with other companies in terms of handset volume, some app developers have told him that they are able to generate more revenue on the Windows Phone platform.


• Windows Phone users on average download 12 apps per month.


• The average time between app submission and certification is 1.8 days.  Watson says that this is much to the delight of developers, who hate to have their apps sit in limbo.


• In a testament to the thorough instruction given to developers, 62% of apps pass certification on the first try.


• 44% of all paid apps offer a trial version


• Out of the entire list of registered developers, only 40% have produced an app.  Watson is particularly giddy about this stat because it shows they may in fact have up to 60% left to come.

It looks like they believe things are on the up swing over at Microsoft.  They aren’t the only ones who think it might be a good couple of years for the Windows Phone.  Recent projections put the phone squarely in 2nd place of market share, behind the Android OS in 2015.

Amazon made huge waves when it unveiled its new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player offerings, which give users 5GB of free storage for their music. One of the companies immediately impacted by this, would be mSpot, which offers a very similar service.

In fact, soon after Amazon’s announcement hit the airwaves, the company also announced that it would be giving users 5GB of free space.

“We are breaking down the barriers to mainstream adoption of cloud music, so that it makes sense for anyone with a music collection to store it in the cloud, where it will be easily accessible on all kinds of connected devices,” mSpot CEO Daren Tsui tells WebProNews.

“Why?” continues Tsui. “Music collections are personal. People have already invested a lot in their existing collections and want to continue to build them – if its easy for them to listen on both mobile and their computers, their music collections will become more valuable and enjoyable.”

The immediate expansion of mSpot storage is nice, but how can mSpot expect to continue to contend with major players in this space, such as Amazon, Google, and Apple? They’re getting that question a lot, no doubt, which is why they’ve prepared a lengthy statement to answer it. Here it is in its entirety:

How does mSpot plan to compete against Amazon Cloud Drive and then Apple and Google?

Firstly, Amazon is offering a music in the cloud storage locker and player – and this is just one component of mSpot. We’ve had this feature out for almost a year, and in this time, we’ve learned a lot about our customers and what they really want. We’re gearing up to roll out our second phase very soon – including a new music discovery that will be completely unique to the market.

We’re in a multi-device world. While Amazon has done a decent job of their Web player – this is obviously the easiest half of the offering. We don’t think they can compete with us on mobile for the following reasons:

- We’re on both iPhone and Android; when people store their collections online, they don’t want to feel they’re locking down their choice of phone as well.

- Leading mobile carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have been offering our mobile entertainment services to millions of their subscribers for years, under ourwhite label.

- Why? Our technology is truly optimized for the mobile, which has different requirements than the Web. We offer music playback that feels local to the handset, (which is very hard to do); faster syncing and streaming; continuous connectivity to your music, even when you don’t have a connection; choice in how much music to store on your phone – all are not just nice to have, they’re essential. We also offer unique features like lyrics, album art and artists bios right on the handset.

- We believe our proven industry experience on the mobile gives us a big edge over Amazon, or even Google or Apple.

On that note: We would welcome an opportunity to challenge Amazon’s service on mobile usability – any time.

We’ve been out for almost a year on Android, and since December for iPhone. We have a significant lead with over 1 million downloads on Android alone. People have already taken the time to upload their collections into our service, and they love it.

mSpot’s position related to Amazon’s pricing model in comparison to our own.

We think we have a better service and in order to remove any price barriers we’re going to offer 5 GB free storage. Going forward, we expect that the market for storage will be very commoditized and price-driven; but unique music services like mSpot will appeal more to music listeners looking for a complete experience on both Web and mobile.

Amazon gives you 5GB for free, then offers yearly plans at a dollar per GB at 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1,000. Google Music is expected very soon.

The political debate in Wisconsin continues to heat up, and we’re provided with another story which looks to stoke the flame. Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy (R), a newly appointed U.S Representative from Wisconsin’s 7th district has caught the attention of the online world for a YouTube clip of a Polk County town hall meeting. Duffy was asked questions concerning his salary, and his answers have raised the eyebrows of many who have seen it.

See for yourself:

The story is of particular interest because after the clip was posted on YouTube, the Polk County GOP looked to take it down. They were too late and the clip has been making rounds across the internet. The first major site to release the news was The Washington Post. A site called TPM.com also posted the video. Their video provider, blip.tv, received a demand from the Polk County GOP to take the video down. TPM.com’s response was an article titled – “GOPers Demand Sean Duffy Salary Tape Be Pulled From The Internet (VIDEO)“. An article which still has the video posted.

Since Duffy’s remarks, democrats from the state have been sending criticism towards his way. In typical back-and-forth political fashion, Duffy’s office has called the criticism “a misleading attack“.

Another interesting part of the story is Sean Duffy himself. He was a reality TV star, who appeared on The Real Word: Boston in 1997. He became a district attorney, who eventually worked his way to his appointment as U.S Representative. This is his first year in office, and the video debacle certainly provides an early challenge for Duffy.

Real estate website Zillow said today it has launched a free app for Reasearch in Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones.

Zillow said the addition of the BlackBerry app, along with its existing apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad, means more than 90 percent of smartphone users can now access real estate information on more than 100 million properties.

*Multiple search filters that include price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and other home-related information.

*Homes viewable on a map with high-resolution satellite and street view.

*Home search by location or by typing in a city, ZIP code or address.

*Full-screen color photos of homes.

“With this launch, real estate agents will also have access to the app used by so many of their clients,” said Spencer Rascoff, chief executive officer of Zillow.

“Fifty-nine percent of agents tells us they use their smartphone to preview for-sale and for-rent properties with clients on the go.  Among real estate agents, the BlackBerry (36%) and iPhone (22%) are the top two smartphone brands.”

Remember how eHow launched its big redesign after the Panda update hit? They put a great deal more focus on feedback and social media. eHow told us Google’s changes didn’t influence the redesign, which has been in the works since well before Panda hit, but much of Demand Media’s focus these days does seem to be on becoming less and less dependent on Google (or search in general).

Well, clearly E-Commerce shop owners should have a similar goal.  This may mean some redesigning.

Rob Snell, author of Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies, notes that while 1% of Yahoo Stores were impacted by Google’s Panda update, several large Yahoo Stores were on the widely publicized list of hardest-hit sites, published by Sistrix.

Snell listed the following as ten common mistakes that retailers are making in terms of SEO, or as he puts it, issues they “need to address” now to “protect themselves from major algorithm changes like Panda”:

1.  Little Or No Original Product Text Content
2.  Little Or No Original Category / Section Page Content
3.  Same Template. Page After Page After Page
4.  Really, Really, Really Big Boilerplate Text
5.  Same Run Of Site Links On Every Single Page
6.  Writing Unique Content But Giving It Away
7.  Great Unique Content Buried On Pages Not In The Index
8.  Unique Content Hidden From Spiders
9.  Multiple Pages On The Same Domain With The Same Content
10.  Competing against yourself with multiple sub-domains

Snell elaborates on each of these in his original post.

While these are things that certainly extend well beyond retailers using Yahoo Stores, Yahoo itself made an announcement this week that may help, to some extent, in the way that eHow is trying to decrease Google dependence. It’s simply an increased emphasis on social.

It’s a social media sharing feature that lets retailers add “share to Twitter and Facebook “Like” options to their stores’ product pages. This was announced before the big news from Google (the +1 button), so I wouldn’t be surprised to see the new button make an appearance too.

Jennifer Farwell of Yahoo Small Business says, “Enabling this feature allows your customers to easily spread the word about your products to their social media networks. This boost to your marketing efforts can help you reach a wider audience, which in turn can help to generate more quality traffic for your store.”

If they add the +1 button, it could help in search, as well. Google has already come out and said that the data will be taken into consideration as a ranking factor, and Bing uses clickstream data from Google results, apparently, so there’s that too.

E-commerce store-owners should consider adding these types of buttons, regardless of whether or not they’re using Yahoo Stores. There’s a good chance you’re already doing this, but the fallout from the Google Panda update, simply drives home the point of just how important it really is.

Even if you’re still showing up in search results today, you never know when a Google change is going to hit you. They happen every day – not all as big as Panda – but they happen.

UPDATE: WebProNews has spoken to a Google spokesperson about any upcoming plans for the use of facial recognition technology.  Here is their official statement:

“As we’ve said for more than a year, we will not add facial recognition to Goggles unless we have strong privacy protections in place. We’re still working on them. We have nothing to announce at this time.”

Ever get yourself involved in a conversation with an old acquaintance and suddenly realize you don’t remember their name? Awkward. Well, there might be an app for that, depending on how sly you are with snapping photos.

At least that’s a more optimistic use for the new app being developed by Google. The app would use face recognition technology to search for matches through the Google profile database, and would then be able to display a person’s name, contact information and whatever else was included in their profile. Let’s ask the more sinister question now.

Have you ever been ignored by the hottest girl at the bar and really wanted to find out where she lived so you can make a proper impression? There might be an app for that. But not yet, a Google engineering director told CNN. The most obvious problem surrounding the app is its privacy implications.

“We recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues. Before the app launches, Google plans to have acceptable privacy models in place,” said Hartmut Neven to CNN.

Google and privacy concerns are words that seem to be linked together quite often as of late. Yesterday, Google announced that it had settled with the FTC over publicly released email contacts associated with the launch of Google Buzz. There has also been plenty of privacy concerns involving street-view, both here and across the pond.

Obviously, if people have to opt-in to letting their information be shared via this app, the database for photos able to be recognized will be relatively small. What if the app could comb through billions more photos online for a match? An app like this could expand far beyond Google profiles to involve Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Could this in-development app handle that kind of task? “That, we could do today,” says Neven.

Neat/Creepy.

But obviously, that won’t be happening any time soon. There are way too many privacy concerns.

“I think we are taking a sort of cautious route with this. It’s a sensitive area, and it’s kind of a subjective call on how you would do it.”

Greenpeace is putting more pressure on Facebook to persuade the company to stop using coal to power its data centers.

Greenpeace is calling on Facebook to “unfriend” coal by Earth Day on April 22. The Greenpeace Unfriend Coal Facebook page has over 98,000 likes.

“Just as Facebook has revolutionised the way the world communicates, so it can revolutionise the IT sector’s current reliance on coal,” Greenpeace said in a blog post. “Facebook’s reputation for innovation means that wherever it goes, other IT companies will follow.”

Greenpeace is asking Facebook to develop a plan by 2021 to be entirely coal free. It is also calling on Facebook to educate its users about how it powers its services and its carbon footprint.

“At current growth rates, data centers and telecommunication networks – two key components of ‘the cloud’ that Facebook depends on – will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020,” Greenpeace says on its Unfriend Coal Facebook page.

“That’s more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined. Facebook has a real opportunity to lead by example by extending this spirit of innovation to the environment.”

It’s a good bet that Googlers who believed the corporation should leave China are now saying “I told you so” to those who argued it should stay.  Today, there’s word of yet another problem in the country, as three local companies owned by Google have been accused of violating tax laws.

Indeed, according to a report that appeared in the Economic Times (a state-run newspaper), the companies have in fact been found guilty of violating laws and penalized for it.  “Tax authorities have recovered the funds and collected fines,” according to Owen Fletcher, who’s based in Beijing and saw the original claims.

More investigations are supposed to be taking place, though, and it looks like the claims don’t just revolve around a simple miscalculation or two.

For starters: over $6.1 million is supposedly at stake.  Also, Fletcher wrote, “The problems at the ‘Google enterprises in China’ included using fake receipts and reporting unrelated spending as costs, such as for massages.”

Those allegations could damage Google’s reputation even if they’re proven untrue.  It’s no secret that random claims can hurt corporations, and Google’s stance on censorship has already put it in a controversial position.

Anyway, this counts as the latest in a long string of incidents indicating that Google isn’t too welcome in China.  Other recent problems for the company include Gmail accessibility issues and the loss of a partnership with Sina.

It should be interesting if Larry Page adopts a new approach to China when he replaces Eric Schmidt as Google’s CEO next month.

At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed co-founder Jonah Peretti detailed his philosophy on viral content.  After years of testing how and why things to go viral, Peretti decided that the key is “thinking of content and media as an excuse for social action.”

Simply, stuff that has the best opportunity to spread is stuff that people want to share with others.    If this sounds incredibly intuitive, that’s because it is.  The way Peretti highlights this is through differentiating the two internet giants, Google and Facebook.

The world view of Google, he says, is that media is about pure content.  They value access to information such as “How do I get rid of my slice” and “What temperature do I cook a Turkey.”  This is much different from the Facebook world view.  For Facebook, media is a way to show the world who you are – to put yourself out there in a favorable way.  It is “a way to do something with your friends,” says Peretti.  He says that on Facebook, people like to share things that define them.  Sharing a FAIL picture has little informational value to Google, but in the Facebook model, it is something to be shared with friends for a laugh.  Guess which model wins out?

This all makes perfect sense in the context of viral media.  Sharing pictures, videos and interesting stories is very similar to making an iPod mix for your friends.  In both cases, you feel proud to have found the media.  Of course you didn’t create the video or song, but the joy is not in authorship.  The joy is in the sharing. Being able to provide something new to your friends gives you a sense of accomplishment,  as it serves as validation for your tastes.  Josh picks good music.  “Perfect mix for our road trip, Josh!”

Just think of how often you hear “Did you see that video I posted on my wall” as opposed to “Did you see that video of the <specific subject of video>?”

The second part of Peretti’s presentation applied his philosophy to the structure of his site, Buzzfeed.  He describes the site as “a hub for viral content and social distribution.”  He explains that site traffic is being shifted these days to “viral lift,” which describes traffic that is generated through content being shared on sites like Facebook and StumbleUpon.  Because of this fact, Buzzfeed groups content into categories like “lol” “wtf” and “win.”

The important conclusion to the presentation details how the “viral lift” strategy is also used with ads.  On Buzzfeed, visitors can makes their own viral pictures using the “add yours” feature and can also add personalized badges to content.  It works the same way with paid content as with editorial content, and sometimes is is so seamless that it is hard to tell a difference.  An example Peretti uses is a trailer for Sarah Palin’s Alaska on TLC.  This type of paid content will be shared by millions of people because it has they ability to generate “social action.”

With this philosophy, its no surprise that something like Rebecca Black blew up the internet.  The social vs. information distinction is something that is probably not lost on the folks at Google, as they just unveiled the new part of their social layer.  See the slides from Peretti’s presentation below.

Web 2.0 Peretti

Google said today it is previewing five new templates in Blogger and they will soon be available in a wider launch.

Google said its new template views use the latest web technology, including AJAX, HTML5, and CSS3. The new template views include Mosaic, Flipcard, sidebar, and Timeslide.

*Infinite scrolling: read more posts without having to reload or click to a second page

*New layouts: different views suited to different types of blogs

*Speed: download images as you view them, not all at once in advance

*Interactivity: there are now more ways to experience and engage with blog content

The Google Blog provides further details. “To try these views on your own blog, simply add ‘/view’ to the end of the blog URL—for example, http://buzz.blogspot.com/view.”

“These new views are available on all public Blogger blogs with feeds fully enabled—to learn more, including how to disable these views for your blog if you wish, please see our help center article.”

With YouTube as the second largest search engine on the Web, it’s apparent that Web TV is growing in value and usage. Although trends also show that the quality of the content has moved beyond the infamous silly cat videos, the quality of Web TV still has room for improvement. But, what should it look like?

Should the quality of Web TV be just like the quality of traditional television? Please share your thoughts.

According to Dina Kaplan, the Co-founder of blip.tv, “Content [Web TV] that does well shouldn’t just look like television production made with less money.”

She went on to say that people should not embrace Web TV as a last resort to not having the budget for traditional TV. There is actually a big difference between the two and each option has its own advantages and disadvantages.

For instance, Web TV has more freedom than traditional television has. (Kevin Pollak addressed this aspect in an interview here.) Traditional television, on the other hand, typically has more resources than Web productions have.

But again, these advantages and disadvantages are a result of the differences between the two offerings. For example, both Web TV and traditional TV serve two completely different audiences.  Web TV shows serve a very specific audience and can establish personal connections with its viewers.

Fans that watch Web shows have the ability to write comments that provide immediate influence on the plot of a series. However, by the time a traditional television show reaches its audience, the next several shows have already been filmed.

Because traditional television and Web TV are so different, Kaplan said they “should look different.”

“I think we’ll see over the next year Web shows really emerge as their own form of media… and it will look, act, feel, smell very different from television,” she added.

Do you agree with her and believe that Web TV will evolve into its own form of media within the next year?

We don’t cover every doodle that Google does. There are so many of them that it seems almost pointless, but sometimes certain ones that stand out to us we deem worthy of more attention.

The PAC-MAN Doodle for example, was particularly noteworthy. Last year, for PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, Google provided a playable PAC-MAN game with the Google logo embedded in the maze. It included all of the original sounds and graphics from the original game (and even a Ms. PAC-MAN Easter egg).

Today’s doodle celebrates the 200th birthday of Robert Bunsen, co-inventor of the Bunsen Burner, and is another example of an interactive doodle. I’m not going to say it’s as entertaining as the PAC-MAN doodle, but it’s still pretty cool. It does different things as you mouse over different parts.

Someone uploaded the following clip to YouTube, showing the animation in effect:

What’s more impressive to me, is how Google continues to come up with these interesting ways to present the actual letters of the logo, and have it still make sense and look like the letters. Admittedly, I had to look at this one for a moment, before I could confirm that the letters “G-o-o-g-l-e” are really there.

Some of us would still like to see the interactive doodles appear more often, but one can’t help but admire the art of the doodle itself – a practice Google has been employing since its early days as a search engine.

What’s your favorite doodle that the company has displayed?

Gianfranco Lanci, President and CEO of Acer has stepped down immediately according to a statement released today.  The Taiwan-based multinational PC maker announced that Chairman J.T. Wang has immediately taken over the role for the interim.

Lanci, a former employee at Texas Instruments, went to Acer when they acquired the TravelMate laptop business from TI in 1997.  He became president of the company in 2005, and was named CEO in 2008.

Acer has recently overtaken Dell as the 2nd largest maker of PCs, but has hit a rough patch as of late.  According to Bloomberg:

The resignation comes less than a week after the company lowered its sales forecast, which led to a four-day, 18 percent rout of the stock. Analysts at 10 brokerages including Daiwa Securities Group Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) have lowered their investment ratings on Acer since March 25, citing concerns about earnings.

Lanci’s resignation passed a Board of Directors today, as they explain that they held different views about the direction the company was taking.  From the press release:

On the company’s future development, Lanci held different views from a majority of the board members, and could not reach a consensus following several months’ of dialog. They placed different levels of importance on scale, growth, customer value creation, brand position enhancement, and on resource allocation and methods of implementation.

While the company assures that this change will not affect business as usual, interim CEO J.T. Wang expresses that the company will be moving into the mobile device market.  “Acer needs a period of time for adjustment,” he says.

“In his role as President and CEO, Lanci has contributed significantly toward Acer’s growth. The company expresses its true appreciation for Lanci’s efforts and wishes him all the best in his future endeavors,” said Wang