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Google's share of search for the U.S. market inched up in October to 45.4 percent, from 45.1 percent in September, according to comScore. Yahoo has 28.2 percent, followed by Microsoft ...

Daum Communications could partner with Google on search-related keyword advertising, putting Daum's deal with Yahoo Search Marketing, formerly Overture, at risk, according to ...

Microsoft has upgraded its online mapping service to include three-dimensional tours of 15 U.S. cities, marking another step in its dogged pursuit of Internet search leader Google. With the improvements unveiled Monday, Microsoft is hoping to upstage Google's popular "Earth" software, which enables about one-third of the world's population to obtain an aerial view of their homes and neighborhoods. Google says it has distributed more than 100 million free copies of the Earth software since its June 2005 introduction.

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As ever more reports of e-voting irregularities are coming in from across the country as we head into election day, the producers of the e-voting documentary "Hacking Democracy" have put the entire movie up on Google Video for viewing. A bunch of people submitted it, but I finally had a chance to watch the whole thing. This is the movie that Diebold tried to stop from airing last week -- though, the details showed they were protesting a different movie. The movie is a bit overly melodramatic, and the suspenseful voice-over voice and background suspense music are unnecessary and (if anything) take away from the seriousness of the movie. At times the documentary also wanders a little too far into hinting at conspiracy theories in places they have no proof. However, what you actually see in the movie is a very good summary of many of the stories we've all seen over the past few years about problems with these machines. It shows what a marvelous job Bev Harris and Blackboxvoting.org have done over the past few years to both find out what's going and publicize the matter (a tremendous effort). It also shows how some elections officials stonewall or ignore the issues while a few, such as Ion Sancho, did what was necessary. What the movie leaves out of the Sancho story in Florida is how Diebold first mocked the results of the hack shown in the movie and later caused additional problems as he tried to find replacements. And, of course, now that it's election day, there's not very much that can be done about all of these problems. The movie is worth watching, if only to convince people to stand up and make an effort to make sure these machines are no longer used in future elections.

NTP, which successfully sued the maker of BlackBerry devices for infringement of wireless e-mail patents, said Monday it is suing Palm, maker of the Treo smartphone. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that Palm's products, services, systems and processes have improperly used NTP's wireless e-mail technology. Palm's shares tumbled US$1.17 to $14.24 in Nasdaq trading, the entire 7.6 percent loss coming after news of the suit broke.

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Microsoft hit another milestone on the road to Windows Vista on November 6: The .Net Framework 3.0 has gone to manufacturing. Microsoft announced the completion of .Net Framework 3.0 – the collection of technologies formerly known as WinFX (Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows CardSpace and .Net 2.0) -- at the Microsoft Developer Connections conference in Las Vegas. Microsoft put the finishing touches on the version of .Net Framework 3.0 that is designed to run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 on Monday. Microsoft also announced at DevConnections the RTM of a number of other developer-related tools and technologies. Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office 2007 (VSTO) -- a k a Visual ...

We've been surprised at how often the Supreme Court has been taking patent lawsuits lately. Historically, the Supreme Court felt that they were mere business disputes, and not worth wasting the time of the Justices who could focus on more important "Constitutional" issues. However, with this recent focus on patent disputes, some Supreme Court observers are suggesting that the Court is finally questioning the patent rulings coming out of CAFC, the special federal circuit court that was set up in 1982 to centralize patent case appeals. The wonderful book Innovation and Its Discontents covers the creation of CAFC and how much damage it's done to the patent system over the years by steadily increasing the power of patent holders while widening the scope of what's patentable. So, if the Supreme Court is now questioning CAFC's decisions on a regular basis, who is helping them make those decisions? According to the article, it's the Solicitor General who is currently 10 for 10 in patent cases when asked to give an opinion to the Supreme Court. The theory is that the justices aren't happy with CAFC, but aren't as experienced with patent issues, so they rely very much on the Solicitor General's opinion. With that in mind, can someone send copies of Innovation and Its Discontents, Against Intellectual Monopoly and Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software, among some others to the Solicitor General's office?

Im writing this post from my new and now somewhat infamous laptop. More importantly, Im connected to my LAN wirelessly under Linux. Whoo Hoo! After lots of fussing with ndiswrapper and SUSE this weekend, I pretty well hosed the networking portion of my SUSE install. I have no doubt that someone with more time, patience, and Linux wherewithal could have resurrected my network resources, but I decided to just try another distro. Since I had a desktop running with Ubuntus previous version (Dapper Drake) and had met with some limited success with the various buntus in class (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu), I decided to give Ubuntus latest and greatest a shot. The recently released "Edgy ...

Although sociologists have dubbed the generation born between 1980 and 2000 the "M" (for millennial) generation, perhaps the "G" generation would be more appropriate. "G" for guinea pigs because being available 24/7 and having most of your hundreds of friends be of the virtual kind is one grand experiment. What will be the long-term social impact of all this technology, asks The New York Times. The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently did a study of teens online and found that 87 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds, or 21 million children, are regularly online, 75 percent use instant messaging (82 percent of them by seventh grade) and 84 percent own cellphones and iPods, as well as laptops, ...

Adobe is announcing a very interesting partnership with the Mozilla Foundation today. Adobe has been good about dipping its toes into the open source waters with a lot of their ActionScript 3 API releases and the free Flex 2 SDK. But this time, they seem to think that the water is the right temperature, because they decided to go for the cannonball and are contributing source code from the ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation. Specifically, they are contributing some of the Just In-Time compiler (JIT) code open sourcing the entire ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) that lies at the core of the Flash Player and handles all of the ActionScript interpreting. The resulting splash comes in the form ...

Law students at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society have pulled together a FAQ for bloggers who plan to work the polls on Tuesday, perhaps photographing polling places, interviewing voters, or shooting video. The report on state law affectng bloggers offers some legal perspective on such questions as: Can you photograph or video your vote inside the polling station- either a paper ballot or electronic screen? Can you photograph or video yourself voting inside the polling station? Can you photograph or video others voting or the working of the polling station from within it? Can you photograph or video the polling station from outside it? Can you photograph or video people leaving the voting ...

In September, we related that UC Berkeley and Google had teamed up for some "coursecasting," and that Berkeley would be streaming hundreds of hours of course material on Google Video. The project is now in full swing and, The San Francisco Chronicle reports, the verdict is in. The most popular video course is ... physics professor Richard Mullers "Physics for Future Presidents" class. The video/podcast page is here. Students in 35 states and 43 countries have been watching the 90-minute lectures. "I think were onto something that could play a major role in the advancement of education in the world," Muller said. Still, its a long way from physics to LonelyGirl15. Mullers most popular lecture, on ...

Well, perhaps we need to take some responsibility here. A few years ago, we pointed to an article in Salon from someone saying he was going to open up his WiFi in order to deny any responsibility for anything that was done on the network. We pointed out that this made sense, logically thinking, since the owner of the network could have some plausible deniability over what was done on the network, and just associated an IP address with the account would no longer be enough proof to show that the account's owner was responsible. Of course, we pointed out that this was a legal strategy that was unlikely to work, and you'd probably still find yourself in court, which isn't very much fun. Partly because of this, earlier this year, we posted a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about how the RIAA dropped a case after someone used this defense. Of course, the specifics included the fact that there were many different people using the network on a regular basis, so it actually was plausible, if not probable, that someone else had downloaded music. Mostly, we were just surprised that such a defense actually worked. However, it appears that perhaps our tongue wasn't far enough in our cheek and people thought that it really was a perfectly reasonable defense to say you had an open WiFi access point. That's resulted in a legal website begging people not to rely on this defense, as it's unlikely to get you very far (though, you will still end up in court). That isn't to say it's not useful to be able to point out that an IP address does not identify a person, but you'd better have plenty of other evidence to support why it probably wasn't you on the network doing whatever you're being accused of doing.

A very cool (but for me, almost unusable) version of Virtual Earth was released today by Microsoft called "Virtual Earth 3D". Instead of using a separate application to view 3D imagery, everything can be done in a browser through maps.live.com.Did I say "a" browser? Yep, it only works in Internet Explorer with the help of a plugin -- bad move considering the huge number of people using browsers other than Internet Explorer.Besides the Internet Explorer limitation, the performance of Virtual Earth 3D is incredibly bad on average computers. Having a high-end gaming computer is the only way to truly enjoy what this product offers. Here are the requirements to use Virtual Earth 3D according to Microsoft:A ...

Eric Schmidt, CEO, is Googles biggest cheerleader. Terry Semel, CEO, is Yahoos biggest defender. Steve Ballmer, CEO, is Microsofts indefatigable champion.Which CEO reigns supreme?Eric Schmidt recently was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE):Members are elected to NAE membership by their peers (current NAE members). Election to membership is one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer. Members have distinguished themselves in business and academic management, in technical positions, as university faculty, and as leaders in government and private engineering organizations.How has Schmidt distinguished himself, according to his “peers”?The development of strategies for the worlds most successful Internet search engine company.Terry Semel and Steve Ballmer have apparently not yet "distinguished" themselves to the satisfaction of ...

One cool thing about YouTube is that practically every campaign posts its campaign ads on the site. And of course debate videos and the like are there too. So when you hear about a controversial campaign - like the debate over an attack ad on Democrat Harold Ford in Tennessee, you can go online and view the ads for yourself. The Wall Street Journal has a wrap-up of the meanest debates being played in video this campaign season, complete with links to the vids on YouTube. Of the Tennessee ads, the Journal explains: The most attention to any political ad this season has gone to a Republican National Committee-financed ad featuring a white woman who says ...

This is the last part of a 3-part interview with Greg Stein, one of the folks responsible for project hosting on Google Code. Part 1 covered how license proliferation, and part 2 covered license selection. In this part well discuss Googles role in the open source community. ZDNet: It has been suggested that a big industry player like Google lead an effort on standardizing on something like a "software commons" - the equivalent of "creative commons" for software. This would have the ambitious goal of replacing all existing F/OSS licenses with one framework that explicitly says what is compatible with/can be used with what. Each major existing license steward, like the FSF, would have input and say how their legacy ...

Use of the Internet Explorer browser continues to fall as rivals such as Firefox gain converts, but the release of IE7 may help Microsoft wrest back some of its lost market share, according to a new report. The share of total browser use attributed to Internet Explorer fell in October to 81.3 percent, down from 82.1 percent in September, Net Applications said. Along with other tracking firms, Net Applications has been observing a steady erosion of IE use for some 18 months, with a rash of viruses and other security concerns encouraging the adoption of alternatives.

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A couple years ago, we wrote about some laws being proposed in the US that would require anyone sending a file over the internet to include their real name and address with it. The purpose was to basically make file sharing more illegal, since they could then crack down on anyone who shared a file without including their identifying information. Of course, the side effect would be to destroy online anonymity, while opening up people to pretty serious privacy violations (small side effects to protect Hollywood, of course). It appears that Brazil is now having a very similar debate. Slashdot and Broadband Reports both point us to a proposed law in Brazil that would effectively outlaw online anonymity. It would require anyone participating in any number of standard internet activities, including joining a chat room or writing a blog, to do so while revealing their full name, current address and phone number and the Brazilian equivalent of a social security number. To accomplish this, apparently every internet user would be required to get a special ID certificate, and make use of it every time they got online or participated in any of these activities. This is the natural response of someone who fears the technology and fears anonymity, but gives little thought to the unintended consequences that a loss of privacy entails, including tremendous overhead burdens to manage all of this, while also making the tool much less useful and much less likely to be used for any of the many positive things it provides. It's also unlikely to even accomplish its stated goal of making it harder for cybercriminals to act. Those people already know how to get around such things and appear as someone else entirely online. It's a bad and short-sighted bill -- so hopefully it doesn't get very far.

Microsoft said Monday that it has finalized its new Office 2007 code and released it to manufacturing. The productivity software suite will be available to corporate customers on November 30, along with the Windows Vista operating system and new Exchange e-mail server. Consumer versions of the new Windows products will appear in early 2007. It has been a long path for Microsoft and its partners, who are counting on the new Vista-related products to drive sales. With the code complete, all Redmond has to do now is convince users to buy the products.

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Apparently, the $612.5 million that patent holding firm NTP got out of RIM for its questionable patents wasn't enough. The company (really, a group of lawyers) has filed a lawsuit against Palm as well. Apparently, the firm is claiming patent violations on the same five patents it used against RIM, as well as two additional ones. However, considering that the US Patent Office has given final rejections to two of the patents in the RIM case and indicated it's likely to reject the rest, it would seem like NTP doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. It's unclear what the other two patents are, though they could be from some new deals NTP has cooked up to get its hands on more patents for the sole purpose of squeezing money out of companies. As for the rejected patents, NTP has indicated that it will appeal the patent rejections -- so perhaps they hope to cause enough trouble for Palm while they drag out the process that it's forced to settle as well.

This is a horrible misuse of the patent system, and is simply taking hundreds of millions of dollars away from what should be a developing market and putting it in the hands of a bunch of greedy lawyers who have done nothing to help move the technology forward in the market place. If you don't recall, NTP was a holding company that owned some disputed exceptionally broad patents on a concept that was basically "wireless email." An earlier company had tried to do something with the patents, but failed in the marketplace. RIM came along and successfully innovated in the marketplace (while being a bit of a patent menace itself), and suddenly NTP claimed that no one could do wireless email without paying them for the privilege. The patents were incredibly broad and perfectly obvious and never should have been granted (something the USPTO later would admit in rejecting them). Yet, due to the increasing uncertainty over the lawsuit, and the pressure that put on RIM's stock, the company was forced to settle, taking money away from R&D efforts and sales and handing it over to the lawyers at NTP so they could turn around and sue more companies that were actually successfully innovating and building products and services people wanted.

In a bid to spread its influence to the offline world, Google this week will launch a test of a print-based advertising program. Some 100 of its existing advertisers have been invited to participate in the test, which Google bills as an "alpha version" of Google Print Ads. Google would choose where the ads would appear in newspapers across the country. During the test period, Google-placed ads will appear in 50 metropolitan newspapers, including The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times and several Gannett papers.

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For some time, law enforcement has been trying to put more pressure on ISPs to crack down and monitor the behavior of their customers. In some cases, lawmakers have tried to pin liability on ISPs, which is rather misguided since the ISP is not the culpable party. In Canada, officials are upset at some ISPs for a perceived lack of cooperation when it comes to investigations of sex criminals use the web. What it boils down to is that ISPs don't want to give out personal information on their customers without a warrant. Meanwhile, investigators think it's a ridiculous demand to have to get a warrant every time they need information. Some might wonder why the ISPs are adamant on this issue, particularly since they are in a position to help out in a serious issue, and they're not being asked to shoulder a major burden. But requiring a warrant is a check against abuse; without them it's hard for ISPs to judge the legitimacy and seriousness of a request. By valuing privacy, they better serve their customers, and ensure that law enforcement is only pursuing cases within the scope of the law.

Six Do's & Don'ts for Creating Impact: After choosing the style for your trade show display, the next most important part of creating your signature space is creating trade show graphics that will make prospects stop in their tracks. The graphic elements of your trade show display are as essential to getting results as the paint on an artist's canvas. There are many creative directions you can go with this idea, and many of your competitors will default to using the company logo for their graphic because it's easiest. But this works best when you have...

You probably already do a needs analysis when you begin a new client relationship. You gather information and make recomedations. Why not "package" this process into a Needs Analysis that you can offer as a marketing tool. Learn how a Needs Analysis can give potential clients a reason to contact you and can be on of the most powerful marketing tools you have ever tried.

The actual numbers used in your pricing can have a huge effect on response. One number can increase sales by 10 - 20%. But another can make your sales -- and profits -- implode.

If you're a business owner or corporate executive, but you don't yet publish a blog, I know what you're thinking: "What's the big deal about blogs, already? Aren't they just online diaries?" Well, yes and no. Let me explain.

A panel of three communications pros discusses how to build the support across your organization so critical to launch communications that really help to achieve your nonprofit's or foundation's goal (a.k.a. strategic communications). Great advice from leaders in the field!

When Google launched their online video offering, to so much hype, many people were pretty stunned by how awful it was. Adding yet another incompatible DRM to the mix certainly didn't endear anyone to the product. While most of that early focus from Google was on the paid downloads, it became clear quickly that where Google Video was catching on was with free videos, like YouTube. So, perhaps it's not at all surprising to find out that the NBA seems to have killed their deal to sell basketball videos via Google Video (though, it's not clear if people who already had paid for the downloads still can watch them). Instead, though, the article notes that the NHL is putting up hockey videos online... for free. Even better, if you go to the Google Video page for the NHL, you discover that the NHL is actually encouraging fans to upload their own fan videos, showing that the NHL seems to recognize the importance of fan-created media much more than other sports like football and baseball, who want only authorized (read: big media companies who have paid them millions) partners to create content around the games.

Atlanta's horrendous traffic has inspired two companies that are looking to monitor many more roads and highways than is done today and at a much lower cost. Their approach: Track the signals of cell phones that happen to be inside cars. Both systems rely on wireless companies allowing them to process the data from their towers that calculate the position of each phone about twice a second when it's being used and once every 30 seconds when it's not. Privacy advocates are already raising a red flag, however.

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Wal-Mart has run into some online marketing troubles lately, with their fake MySpace ripoff and then the questions about how open they were with a supposedly independent blog. It looks like they continue to keep making bad choices, however. The latest is that parents are pissed off to find Wal-Mart spam pressuring them to buy certain gifts for their kids this holiday season. It appears that Wal-Mart has created a website for kids (with two elves named "Wally" and "Marty") that shows them various toys and products, and asks the kids whether or not they like the toys. If the kid answers yes, the elves promise to "plead your case" to the kids' parents, and do that in the form of emails telling them what Wal-Mart says the kids want -- even though they weren't able to make their own wishlist, but just go through a series of products clicking the equivalent of "yes" or "no" to what they might want.

Taiwanese entrepreneurs were among the first to learn how to capitalize on China's growth opportunities while managing the risks associated with setting up and operating a business, as well as raising funds in China's fluid business environment. Taiwanese entrepreneur Roger Kung has successfully settled into all three roles: A few years ago, he was president of Motorola's personal communications, Asia Pacific division, earning the nickname "father of the Linux smartphone" among industry insiders.

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When the e-voting companies respond to all of the security holes that people like Avi Rubin and Ed Felten point out, one of the popular claims is that for any of these attacks to work, someone would need to be able to spend a fairly long time examining the machines -- and since they're kept locked up and protected, that would never be an issue. Of course, in years past we've seen reports that the voting machines are often left out in the open for days before an election, and indeed, that's exactly what Ed Felten found. He wasn't even looking for it this weekend when he came upon a bunch of e-voting machines left out in the open in preparation for Tuesday's election. Once again, this doesn't do much to raise the level of trust anyone has with these machines.

A marketing message without relevance is useless. It's a waste of your time and money. But more important than that, it's a wasted opportunity, a wasted chance to communicate effectively with would-be or present buyers of your Stuff, your products or services.

According to Getting Attention survey respondents, the value of a marketing plan serving as the foundation of your daily communications work can't be overstated. The right plan is flexible enough to embrace the changes your organization faces on a regular basis, yet specific enough to guide ongoing implementation. Even so, many nonprofit communicators are working without a marketing plan. This article reviews the top challenges faced by nonprofit communicators.

The best taglines quickly succeed in engaging audiences. These dos and don'ts for strong nonprofit taglines will help you craft a tagline that is a brief and focused call to action, and avoid taglines that try to say too much or are too long or vague

One of the recurring themes we've seen, when looking at the movie business, is that the huge contracts offered to Hollywood stars aren't worth it because very few of them are popular enough to consistently have a strong effect on a movie's receipts. So as the industry faces challenges on many fronts, greater tension is emerging between studios and talent. Not only are the salaries of stars taking a squeeze, but other creative positions, such as writers, have seen hostile negotiations. This is a difficult line for the studios to walk. On the one hand, they know they have to cut salaries, but without good talent, they won't have much of a product to sell. And writers who had formerly been well-paid won't be happy about taking a pay cut. Of course, the actors and writers aren't in the best position to negotiate. There are plenty of people who'd be glad to take their jobs for far less than the current going rate (and don't forget the added dimension of dealing with the powerful writers' and actors' guilds, that have their own weight to throw around). There's probably not an easy solution; these are longstanding problems that the studios were insulated from because their huge profits let them avoid examining inefficiencies with their model. However, since it is a difficult problem, there should be good rewards to companies that can figure things out.

Learn 5 easy and effective ways to market your business for the holidays.

Create public awareness about issues that make people uncomfortable without turning them off is a classic communications dilemma. Follow these guidelines on how to build public awareness of difficult issues and ensure your targeted audience know your organization is there to help.

What percentage of a nonprofit's budget should be spent on marketing and communications? In the for-profit world, it's fairly standard to determine a marketing budget by allocating 10-20% of projected gross revenues to marketing and communications. However, things aren't so black and white in the nonprofit world with our dual bottom line of people and dollars. This article compares the budget percentage approach with the flat dollar approach to help you decide which addresses your nonprofit's needs.

Nonprofit staff and board members spend a lot of time planning and fine-tuning a marketing plan, but once the plan is approved, the pressure is on the nonprofit marketer to carry it out successfully. How can you ensure that board and staff members will continue to support the plan? How do you guarantee that colleagues will agree with your actions going forward and be pleased with results? At times like these, nerves can run as high as expectations. Here are four time-tested tips to keep your plan on track, and your colleagues and management on board.

As marketers, we know that quality matters. But as nonprofit marketers, we have a very specific goal: To motivate our audiences to act - to give, to join, to volunteer or to register. Read here for expert tips on how to tailor your marketing materials' production value to specific goals and audiences, cut production costs without sacrificing quality, and elicit management and board member support for your marketing decisions and products.

You%u2019re making a significant investment in time and dollars when your nonprofit decides to hire a marketing firm or consultant. There's no margin for error. It has to be done right -strategically and realistically - in a way that fits with your nonprofit' s culture. This article guides you to make that happen.

It's all too easy for nonprofit managers and board members to nix marketing expenditures when they don't really understand how vital marketing is to the ongoing health of their organizations. Their reasoning is frequently that programs comes first, followed by vital support functions like fundraising. It's up to nonprofit marketers to build the understanding that there is no program (no participants, no advocacy, etc.) without marketing. This article covers everything you need to get started on a nonprofit marketing plan that will win the support of your leadership and board members.

Apparently, Google still hasn't given up on extending its advertising network to offline media. Last year, the company launched, to much hype, a plan to auction and distribute ads across magazines. But, it didn't take too long before the company and participating advertisers realized that it wasn't working out and wasn't worth it. It's trying again, this time with newspapers. Partnering with several major newspapers, it's launching a three-month trial to auction off unsold ad space over the internet. The thinking is that there's still billions in ad spending across newspapers, and that if the company can make that process more efficient, then it can get a slice of it. But what strength does Google have in this area? It sounds like the only thing the company brings to the table is a website for automating these sales, but that should be pretty easy to set up. Perhaps the company is just looking at the plan as a way to ally itself with newspapers, with whom its relationship has been testy. And of course the company, to its credit, tries out a lot of things just to see what sticks. So if it fails, it shouldn't be much of a blow.

When you are writing articles either for a print publication or for online distribution, you may want to write them yourself. This could be for a number of reasons but if you are a busy professional, chances are that you would be best of hiring an online copywriter or freelance writer. By hiring a professional, you can save money by focusing on what you do best while making sure that you articles are their best. Don't risk your reputation by publishing inferior content under your name. This article will have a few tips on how to find a great freelance writer that you can depend on.

On Friday, we mentioned how the FTC had finally convinced Zango to pay up and settle while promising that they would stop their sneaky install practices. Of course, given the companies earlier similar promises and denials to wrongdoing, this was greeted with plenty of reasonable skepticism. Someone has pointed us to yet another report of Zango's sneaky install practices that seem quite similar to what they've been doing for a while. Now, it's quite likely that this is from before the agreement, but at the very least they haven't done much to clean up their act heading into the settlement, and security researchers should be watching pretty damn closely to see if they live up to their promises.