Monday, November 19, 2007

Newsgator Puts OpenSocial to Use

Latest NewsGator social application taps into a programming model developed by Google to deliver and enable discussion about the best video and image content for Google users

Nov. 2, 2007 — NewsGator Technologies, Inc., a pioneer in RSS and Enterprise 2.0, today announced the release of Didja Hear!?, the latest NewsGator social application that will give Google users the ability to easily share and discuss video and image content.

Didja Hear!? leverages OpenSocial, a programming model developed by Google in which developers are provided with a set of common APIs enabling distribution of their applications across multiple sites all with the aim to help the Web become more social and to make sharing great content easy. Didja Hear!? and its participation in OpenSocial reinforces NewsGator’s continued commitment to innovation and highlights the power and flexibility of NewsGator’s RSS platform to deliver compelling, social and useful applications.

Didja Hear!? leverages NewsGator’s database of nearly two million feeds and the editorial controls of NewsGator’s Widget Framework to present the images and videos that are most compelling and enjoyable for users to pass on to their friends. With Didja Hear!?:

• NewsGator automatically recommends the top video and graphic content from nearly two million RSS feeds – more than seven million articles per day;

• The NewsGator Widget Framework divides those videos and images into categories including movies, sports, celebrities, television and more; and,

• Users can easily send a cool video to their friends along with comments – and reply back with comments on any videos they get – as well as see existing comments on anything they have sent.

“Didja Hear!? and our early participation in OpenSocial exemplify our mission of getting the right content to the right people. We developed Didja Hear!? to filter and deliver the best video and graphical content from across the Web to the users who want to interact with it,” said Brian Kellner, vice president of products at NewsGator. “Didja Hear!? is like a Web 2.0 mashup of a greeting card store and a coffee shop – it’s a fun way for people to communicate, interact and socialize around quality content.”
For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Quantifying your Feeds, Casts with Quantcast.

I just joined Quantcast free service to checkout their services. I only added one of my blogs and it is yet to get any meaningful data from my site. (It is not a very busy site but I using it to verify accuracy of the services as I have other systems from Google to tiny startups providing similar services. I have looked at reports on sites that Quantcast has collected enough data and seem to be interesting. You can follow the link in the following News release by QuantCast.

San Francisco, CA - September 25, 2007 - Quantcast, the world's only open internet ratings service, today announced that it has launched a robust suite of media measurement services for publishers in its Quantified Publisher program. The program, which is free to join at Quantcast.com empowers publishers to demonstrate the unique value of their audiences by tagging their websites, videos, widgets and games for direct measurement.

Available today, Quantcast's enhanced suite of free media measurement services includes:

  • Tabbed Quantified Publisher Profiles for individual media properties including a rich traffic overview that provides greater depth and insight on key audience metrics.
  • The Quantified Publisher Network View, providing measurement of unduplicated reach and aggregated traffic statistics as well as a single point of control for publishers with multiple sites and services.
  • Secure Quantcast Measurement Tags to measure transactional pages on e-commerce sites of all kinds.
  • Video and Widget Measurement Services to track impressions and interaction with Flash-based videos, widgets, games and more.
"The response has been overwhelming. More than 15,000 publishers with several million web media assets, including sites, blogs, widgets and videos, have joined our free program," said Konrad Feldman, co-founder and CEO, Quantcast Corporation. "Today, we are pleased to continue the drive for transparency and accuracy by providing a robust suite of media measurement services that help publishers better understand and monetize their properties."With millions of 'Quantified' web destinations and services, Quantcast measures more than a billion page views per day. Quantcast's models are derived from visits by more than 350 million Internet users every month, including more than 80 percent of all U.S. Internet users. "Quantcast's Network View helps us demonstrate our unduplicated network reach and highlight the popularity of our sites - which net 50 million visits per month," said Christopher Batty, Vice President, Sales, Gawker Media. "And the new traffic tab makes it easy for advertisers to see the power in the network - complete with daily, weekly and monthly statistics on all of our sites combined and individually - from Gizmodo and Valleywag to Wonkette and Defamer."Details on Quantcast's enhanced suite of media measurement services follow: Tabbed Quantified Publisher Profiles: Quantcast profiles will always feature the popular summary view for each online property. But now they include an enhanced traffic tab that provides greater depth and insight on key audience reach, engagement and frequency metrics.Key metrics, including unique visitors, visits and page-views, are presented in dynamic daily, seven-day and trailing 30-day charts. In addition, a traffic summary automatically calculates average visits per unique visitor and page views per visit. Coming soon, this tab will include time-on-site metrics. The Quantified Publisher Network View: This new interface enables publishers to track their portfolio of properties, including websites, videos, widgets and games, in a single dashboard. It also provides one-click access and a single point of control for the Quantcast profile for each media property. The network view features the new traffic tab with the same easy-to-use dynamic charts to provide a rich overview of network metrics. Unique visitors ("uniques") are reported as unduplicated network reach, and the other network metrics are shown in the aggregate. The network view is automatically created when a Quantified Publisher tags a second website or media element such as a video, widget or game. As always, Quantified Publishers can adjust their Quantcast profile settings to control which elements the world can see. Secure Quantcast Measurement Tags: Paired with conventional Quantcast measurement tags for content pages, new secure Quantcast tags enable online retailers and e-commerce providers of all kinds to measure the traffic on their transactional 'https' pages with no interruption to check-out, and no affect on the shopping experience.The secure tags are available free of charge to all Quantified Publishers. They can be found by logging-in to Quantcast.com and going to the 'My Quantified Sites' page. Video and Widget Measurement: As announced in July, Quantcast now offers free video and widget measurement services with the ability to track any Flash-based file. These new capabilities help publishers track the web-wide distribution of their media elements to demonstrate their true network reach. Visit http://www.quantcast.com/quantified-video.jsp.

Pricing and Availability: Quantcast's enhanced suite of media measurement services is available free of charge to any web publisher, site or service that joins the free Quantified Publisher program http://www.quantcast.com/quantified-publisher.jsp.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

PRWeb Webinar Series, Orientation for New Users and Avanced Features Training for Current Users

PRWeb would like to welcome you and provide you with the basics of how PRWeb works, press release tips, and show how easy the submission process truly is. They also will show you how to get the most out of what has become the most advanced and robust system for distributing news releases to reporters, search engines and thousands of web sites that download news via PRWeb's daily XML/RSS feeds.
I am a member and it has been a smooth news feed for me!
Mario Bonilla of PRWeb will be conducting the series and you will be able to enroll here.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

News Feed On Your PS3


The 2.00 Firmware Update for the PS3, which was just released, will add the Information Board to your XMB. Once it's activated, headlines will begin scrolling in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. Sony plans to use the Information Board to release information on games, hardware, Store updates, and so forth, but you can choose not to display it if you'd rather not be bothered.
PS3 News Release

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Microsoft's web analytics tool, Gatineau, Introduced


After getting exposed by a attendee of ADChamps about Gatineau, screenshots and all, Ian Thomas, who is "responsible for bringing Microsoft's new web analytics solution, codenamed Gatineau, to market", decided to provide his own informative report and also about the beta program with that anyone interested could apply to be included.
He also provided some screenshots (one above) of his own; according to LiveSide, Microsoft's official news blog.
The Gatineau is not much different from Google Analytics but LiveSide says that it will be able to leverage Live ID to provide to offer demographic information. But I have already seen these information on other Analytics product, not only Google Analytics.
Of course as with any product that links user to the web, privacy concerns have come up regarding Live ID usage.
But Ian has replied the querry;
"the answer is that we do get this information from users’ Live ID (formerly known as Microsoft Passport) profiles, but I would stress that we get this information anonymously, and there is no use of PII (Personally Identifiable Information, such as name or e-mail address) in the product."

LiveSide Article

To request an invitation to Gatineau: http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoft-adcenter-gatineau.

Lies Damn Lies (Ian's Website)

Are you aware That You are Being Tracked on the Internet

I know I am!
Geemodo: Most People are Unaware That They are Being Tracked on the Internet

Friday, November 02, 2007

Future of News Media, and Tom Curley Yes....

Associated Press Head Tom Curley seem to have got it all right. (To borrow from Blodget at SAI);

We -- the news industry -- have come to that fork in the road. We must take bold, decisive steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism’s essential role in both our economy and democracy, or find ourselves on an ugly path to obscurity.
Yes...