As reported on Mercury News.

Google amended its proxy Monday to update information about one of the directors on its board and chair of it audit committee, Ann Mather (pictured below), who joined its board in November 2005, which might be of interest to its shareholders in advance of their meeting.It seems Mather was “advised” by the SEC office in L.A. that it “intends to recommend that the SEC initiate a civil proceeding against her, alleging violation of federal securities laws related to certain stock option transactions involving her former employer, Pixar Animation Studios.” Pixar was acquired by Disney in 2006.

The Google filing hastened to add that the action “arises out of Ann’s prior employment as Chief Financial Officer of Pixar, and not her service as a director of Google.”

The SEC’s interest in Mather begs the question: what about Pixar’s chief executive, Steve Jobs? What did he know, and when did he know it?

When John Lasseter, Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated-film director, signed a 10-year employment contract in 2001, he received 1 million stock options that carried a strike price equivalent to the lowest price of Pixar’s stock the previous year. Jobs reportedly helped negotiate the contract.

But an internal investigation conducted by Disney’s board, on which Jobs sits, concluded that Pixar backdated stock options before Walt Disney acquired the film studio, but “no one currently associated with the Company engaged in any intentional or deliberate acts of misconduct,” according to a statement issued by Disney last year.

Mather, who was Pixar’s CFO from September 1999 through May 2004, netted $7.2 million in 2002 exercising options for 375,000 shares, according to Pixar filings.
She also serves on the board of Glu Mobile, the San Mateo publisher of games for mobile devices, and chairs its audit committee too, and serves on the board of two private companies: Zappos.com, an retailer, and Ariat International, a maker of footwear for “equestrian athletes.”

We just got a statement from Mather’s attorney, Timothy Coleman with Dewey & LeBoeuf, sent our way, which we include for the record:

“Ms. Mather acted diligently and responsibly at all times in her position as CFO at Pixar. There is no basis for any legal action against her.”

[via Mercury News]

TayKrOn Games just sent me this news bit about their new Demo, Space Bugs for Android.

SpaceBugs is a shoot’em up with perspective on you move 2 ships at the same time. The game with a OLD School gfx is a mix of Gyrus/Tempest and Xenon 2/Tyrian 2000.

Taykron Games (www.taykron.com) has released Space Bugs Demo 1.0.

Are two version, for Android SO experts(only the .apk) and the “Ready to Run” version with the SDK and .bat files, in 3 clicks are playing

DEMO Version Features:
3 Final Bosses
3 Planets and over 20 levels
2 Gameplay modes : History and Survival Mode
Move Two Ships at the same time with an intuitive control
About 1 hour of gameplay in History mode
Buy/Shell items and weapons and improve your ship(Only 4 weapons)
Submit your records online!

Enjoy!

[via TayKrOn Games]

As reported on eFluxMedia.

Google is already very successful due to its PageRank technology for web pages, and now the company has taken a further step by unveiling a cutting-edge image ranking technology called VisualRank. At the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, two Google scientists have presented an algorithm which manages to perform image recognition and comparison of similar images to determine a ranking which will push to the first search results those pictures which are considered most relevant to a specific search.

Currently, images are ranked by analyzing the text near the image and the image’s file name. “We wanted to incorporate all of the stuff that is happening in computer vision and put it in a Web framework,” said Shumeet Baluja, a senior staff researcher at Google. He was joined in presenting the new technology by fellow Google expert Yushi Jing.

The new search method, VisualRank, cannot be used in the same manner in which traditional searches are performed. Analyzing a tremendous amount of images in depth requires, quite logically, incredible computing power. To overcome this problem Google has decided for now to perform analysis of the 2,000 most popular product queries on Google’s product search.

The New York Times has interviewed an image analysis expert, Munjal Shah, the chief executive of Riya. Riya is a start-up company which has launched Like.com, a website that manages to aid web users to shop online by searching for images of products similar to one the user likes. Shah has told NYT that he is skeptical of Google’s technology, arguing that large-scale use of such techniques has been problematic.

The paper presented by the two Google experts is called “PageRank for Product Image Search.”

[via eFluxMedia]

Posted by Jess, Google Apps Team

IT infrastructure is hard work for any organization. Having worked at a non-profit prior to coming to Google, I know that the combination of long-standing legacy systems and limited resources certainly doesn’t make things any easier. Now that I’m member of the Google Apps team, I spend my time working on simple but powerful communication and collaboration tools for organizations.

Since we first launched it in August 2006, Google Apps has become one of our most flexible offerings. It’s helping to meet the needs of family domains, businesses of all sizes, Internet Service Providers and universities. And starting last summer, we extended the Education Edition of Google Apps to registered 501(c)3s.

You may already be familiar with Google’s standard suite of free hosted services, including private-label email, calendaring, and online-document sharing. But the Education Edition offers a number of value-added admin features at no additional cost, including e-mail migration tools, phone support for critical issues, and extensibility APIs. (Ads are also optional, in case you’re curious.)

There’s no need to take my word for it, though: check out our success stories from organizations that have already made the switch, including the Nonprofit Technology Network, Mercy Corps, Idealist.org, and the East Bay Community Recovery Project.

At the end of the day, enabling good works through Google Apps — in any capacity — both inspires and humbles us. We’re excited to offer this worthy sector a low-investment, feature-rich IT choice. Find out more or apply for an account.

[via Google Grants Blog]

As reported on PC World.

Spammers are using an automated method to create bogus pages on Google’s Blogger service, again highlighting the diminishing effectiveness of a security system intended to stop mass account registrations, according to security vendor Websense.

The spammers are sending coded instructions to PCs in their botnets, or networks of computers that have been infected with malicious software, wrote Sumeet Prasad, a threat analyst, on Websense’s blog.

Those sophisticated instructions tell PCs how to register a free account on Blogger. The spammers also figured out a way to solve the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart), the warped text that has to be deciphered in order to complete an account registration.

The compromised PC sends a request to an external host that tries to solve the CAPTCHA and then sends the answer back to the PC. Websense estimates the process has an 8 to 13 percent success rate.

It’s unknown how exactly the CAPTCHA gets solved. It’s been theorized the process has been outsourced to real humans who get paid for every one deciphered. But researchers have successfully developed methods that enable computers to increase their success rate at solving the puzzles, indicating that hackers have also figured out how to do it.

Security vendors and researchers have seen a rapid rise in accounts used for spam on free e-mail services from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, indicating current CAPTCHA technology has reached the end its usefulness.

In this case, the Blogger pages created by the spammers are then used to promote the usual line of spammer goods. But many of those sites are rigged with JavaScript that redirects the browser to another spammy Web site.

“Spammers include these redirecting accounts in different spam campaigns rather than including their actual spam domains,” Prasad wrote. “Spammers use this tactic to defeat a range of antispam services.”

In effect, they’re using Google’s Blogger domain as a shield, as it’s unlikely to be blocked by other security software products for being a suspicious domain.

The latest methods means a potential increase in the number of garbage pages on Blogger. But the sheer number of Blogger sites on the whole helps the spammy ones stay under the radar a bit longer, Prasad wrote.

Google has been fighting spam for a long time on Blogger. It uses automated spam classifying algorithms to keep blogs full of spam links out of its featured content. Users can also use a reporting tool to alert Google to spam blogs, but the fight continues.

[via PC World]

As reported on SFGate.

Justice Department officials are examining an advertising deal between Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. amid concerns that the alliance violates antitrust laws.

The inquiry is focused on a two-week test Yahoo started this month to outsource some of its search-engine advertising to Google.

Yahoo is hoping that the agreement may offer an alternative to an unsolicited takeover bid by Microsoft Corp., which has engaged in an aggressive three-month campaign to acquire the Sunnyvale Web portal. If the partnership helps boost its profit, Yahoo may be able to elicit a higher price in a merger or be more viable as an independent company.

But analysts have raised doubts about the possibility of a long-term deal between Yahoo and Google, saying that regulators would be unlikely to approve an alliance between the two biggest Internet search engines. Together, they would control nearly 80 percent of the U.S. search market.

So far, Yahoo hasn’t disclosed whether it plans to extend the agreement.

Both Yahoo and Google said Wednesday in statements that they gave the Justice Department a heads-up about their partnership before it was announced two weeks ago.

Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman, said, “We informed the Justice Department before we launched this test and we have been responsive to their questions about it.”

Tracy Schmaler, a Yahoo spokeswoman, said, “Yahoo proactively kept the Department of Justice informed of its intention to conduct this limited test with Google and has provided information … on the nature of the test.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment other than to say that the agency is “aware of the collaboration.” As part its review, officials are looking into a phone call from Google CEO Eric Schmidt to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang during which he is said to have offered to help torpedo Microsoft’s takeover bid, according to a Reuters news service report, which citied an unnamed source.

Yahoo’s test of Google’s search ads is limited to the United States and to no more than 3 percent of Yahoo search queries. As part of the test, Google places its ads next to Yahoo’s search results, with the two companies probably splitting the revenue generated when users click on the ads.

Pairing up with Google is just one of the options that Yahoo is considering. During the course of its takeover battle with Microsoft, Yahoo has held talks with News Corp. and with Time Warner Inc. about its AOL unit.

Microsoft has said that if Yahoo doesn’t agree to a merger by Saturday, it will initiate a hostile bid in which it would ask shareholders to replace Yahoo’s board with a more merger-friendly slate of directors. Microsoft reports its third-quarter earnings today.

[via SFGate]

While chances are good that someone will beat them to the punch, it looks like T-Mobile intends to come out swinging in the Android race. The company has just announced that it plans to ship its first Android-based handsets by the end of 2008. T-Mobile revealed precious few details about the actual device, but did say that the initial launch will be used as a way to gauge consumer product needs, and that they are committed to responding to user feedback. They also emphasized the need for carriers to focus on keeping Android handsets safe and secure. Following the initial launch, the company expects to implement the Linux-based OS across their product line, offering multiple Android handsets, each with a specific target audience.

[Via Boy Genius]

read more | digg story

This is just ridiculous.  Apparently you can sue an organization if you’re dumb enough to think blank=zero.

As reported on KATU.

NEW YORK (AP) - An advertiser sued Google Inc. in federal court Tuesday claiming the company deceived him and charged for ads displayed on third-party Web sites, even though he left blank an “optional” box that seemed to address the issue.

The dispute is over Google’s popular AdSense program, which targets ads to keywords in articles and other content at participating sites. The program complements the traditional AdWords program, which runs targeted ads alongside Google’s search results. Ads under both programs generate the bulk of Google’s revenues.

The lawsuit accuses Google of defrauding advertisers out of millions of dollars collectively by “redefining the universally understood meaning of an input form left blank.”

The plaintiff in the case, David Almeida, had signed up for Google ads to promote his private investigation business in Massachusetts. Because he did not want to buy AdSense ads, Almeida said he left the maximum per-click bid blank, believing “optional” meant he could opt out of the AdSense program by doing so.

Instead, it turned out the AdWords bid applied when he did not exercise that option, and he should have put “zero” into the box to opt out, said his attorney, Brian Kabateck.

“Most of the customers that actually fall victim to this scam are the unsophisticated advertisers,” Kabateck said. “The sophisticated advertisers will know better, will know how to do it. These are the little guys that don’t have money to lose on a program like this.”

Google declined comment, saying it had not yet received the complaint.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., by Kabateck, Brown and Kellner, a law firm that has frequently filed consumer-protection lawsuits that seek multimillion dollar judgments or settlements. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and class-action status.

Kabateck estimated the unwanted advertising involved brings hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to Google, though he could not immediately say how much Almeida specifically lost.

Kabateck has tussled with Google before and ultimately joined in a $90 million settlement in 2006 over “click fraud,” in which merchants are billed for fruitless traffic generated by someone who repeatedly clicks on an advertiser’s Web link with no intention of ever buying anything.

Kabateck also reached a multimillion dollar settlement with Yahoo Inc. over similar complaints.

[via KATU]

Posted by Alexandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads Google

The mobile ads team is happy to announce the launch of mobile image ads. These look like standard image ads for desktop web pages but they are smaller to fit on mobile screens and they run on the mobile content network. Take a look at the mobile image ads example page to see samples. Also, watch the video below to see my interview with Sanjay Agarwal, a mobile ads engineer, and his demo. Note that all mobile image ads are keyword-targeted, are priced on a cost-per-click basis, and must link to a mobile web page.

For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good clickthrough rates. Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page. For publishers, mobile image ads provide added flexibility. They can now choose to show text ads, image ads, or a mix of both and Google will dynamically return the ad that we expect will perform best at the time the ad is shown. Publishers who are already using AdSense for mobile content just need to update their AdSense code to start displaying mobile ads on their site.

For those of you who are mobile web surfers, mobile image ads provide a new way to interact with mobile content. Contextual targeting keeps ads relevant, and with only one mobile image ad shown per page, you can uninhibitedly browse mobile websites while clicking only on the ads that interest you.

Mobile image ads are currently available in Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the UK, and the US. As always, leave questions and comments below or on our YouTube channel.

[via Official Google Mobile Blog]

As reported on Money Online.

Now that you have figured out what the market is that you are aiming for and which products or services you wish to sell or market, you need to understand the search engines in general. There are essentially 3 search engines in use today. They are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are other search engines however as their user base is much smaller or either very unique, they are of lesser importance than the 3 large engines. Localised search engines such as the Chinese search engine Bandu would be of critical importance if you are selling in the Chinese market however the Chinese are unique in that the engine is specifically built for Chinese users due to its unique search ability of the Chinese language. Getting listed on Ananzi for a South African specific website would help you in your traffic building arena however in my view mainly for its directory services.

(more…)