Rattleblog: Tales from the blogosphere

18-05-2007

by Damien Mulley

This week in Rattleblog we talk about Google's all-seeing eye, newer ways to be advertised to, and how YouTube is helping whistle blowers.

Not content with monitoring what you search for and click on online, Google is now using a device to monitor how people look at billboard ads and what areas they look at. Engadget reports that this big brother, all-seeing eye will help Google figure out how best to get the attention of the passing public.

Daiti Mac Sithigh notes that Google did not like it at all when the pension managers for New York City -- who are also large shareholders in Google -- wanted Google to respect the privacy of their users. Google voted against the motion at a shareholders meeting. Yet Google still pushes its "Do no evil" motto at the same time.

The Google Blogoscoped blog reports that Google Apps for domains actually works out to be just as expensive as Microsoft Office for a small business, yet Microsoft's offering provides dozens if not hundreds more features than the Google offering.

MicroPersuasion notes that Google has also unveiled more options for its advertising business. It is going to enable companies that have signed up to Google's advertising service to pay to have their widgets displayed on sites and blogs. Widgets are the next step up from ads, allowing new content such as games to be displayed by users, while blog owners are paid by a sponsor to display games on their blogs.

Staying with widgets, eBay itself has unveiled a gadget that allows users to search for and monitor auctions from the comfort of their favourite blog

In news of Yahoo, it seems the search giant has given up trying to compete with eBay and has closed its in-house auction site.

Larry Lessig reports on how CNN has agreed to put a Creative Commons licence on the video of the Presidential Candidate debates. This will allow people to download the videos and put them on their own websites, or edit and remix the videos.

On this side of the Atlantic Neil Grogan and Eoin O'Dell are trying to convince RTE to do the same but RTE has politely declined.

ZDNet reports that you can now get a version of the Google feed reader for the Wii. Even more of a reason to stay glued to the Wiimote.

Staying with the idea of feeds, now you can get feeds of tagged items from Amazon.com.

Via Slashdot is news that the US Military now has its own YouTube channel. It's a bit rich when the same institution has banned all staff from accessing YouTube.

Staying with YouTube, Chase Bank was in big trouble when someone uploaded a video to YouTube of people going through the thrash at the back of Chase bank and finding a large amount of account details of their customers. Lucky for Irish banks that in Ireland our kids spend their times playing hurling and football.

Lastly, forget Nintendogs on the Wii; actual walking in an arcade game is where it really is in Japan. Who needs a real pet Labrador when you can stick some coins in a machine and take a plastic one for a walk around a clunky virtual world. Watch out for that banana skin!

Damien Mulley is an Irish blogger and works as a technical writer in Cork.