China�s search engine censoring continues: "China's search engine censorship continues
Google and Yahoo in unholy alliances.
For several years the Chinese regime has been oppressing their citizens by censoring what they get to access online. Now internet giants like Google and Yahoo help facilitate this oppression in order to gain access to the Chinese market.
By Lars V�ge, InternetBrus
Search engine censorship
(February 27 2005) One of the strategies of the Chinese regime has been to cut off access to international search engines like Google and Altavista from time to time.
Now they also censor in a way that makes it impossible to get results for certain search phrases. This is not only the case with government approved search engines like the popular Baidu.com.
The scary thing is that the regime has succeeded in putting such pressure on global search engines like Google and Yahoo that they have conceded to make certain information inaccessible in some of their Chinese versions.
The organization Reporters Without Frontiers (RSF) has reported about this on at least three occasions during the last six months. RSF has demanded that Google clean up its act, but this has not been heeded in any way.
The case of Zhao Ziyang
The latest �victim� of this search engine censoring is the recently deceased Zhao Ziyang, who was China�s leader from 1980 to 1987.
Perhaps you do not remember him and you are not meant to either. He was arrested and placed under house arrest. This was because he had, though admittedly too late, tried to stop the Chinese military�s intervention on the Tiananmen Square in 1989. The intervention resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Chinese students.
When Zhao passed away after almost 16 years of house arrest, the Chinese regime didn�t want his death to cause any commotion like demonstrations at his funer"

Well, don't forget that it's Western Tech Companies who are instituting this technology. It won't be long before the war on terror will enable governments to censor pages that insite violence and hatred. Of course there's pages that are just pure hate, others of pages that might tell a different version of the truth. But of course ban these pages - they are bad and anti-Bush/Blair. Shameful!

ClickZ Experts on Paid Search Strategies: "www.clickz.com/experts/search/strat/article.php/3483981

Click Fraud: What It Is, How to Fight It
By Kevin Lee
February 18, 2005

There's a crisis brewing in this industry. Poor click quality has the potential to hit marketers hard and to negatively affect search engines. It manifests itself in many ways, including as network click fraud, competitive click fraud, and mislabeled traffic.

Competitive Click Fraud

Competitive click fraud is a big problem for smaller businesses, particularly when the service provided is of great value (or great lifetime value), resulting in high CPCs (define). Lawyers, doctors, accountants, IT consultants, and, of course, search engine marketing (SEM)/SEO (define) firms all bid in high CPC marketplaces. The higher the CPC, the greater the effect a competitor can have on a specific budget.

Impression Fraud

Impression fraud is the newest threat. Google and other engines rely on an AdRank method of determining an ad's relevance. A competitor pauses his campaign while a sudden fraudulent surge in impressions on your keywords occurs. All these impressions occur with zero clicks. AdRanks for competing ads, including yours, drop through the floor. The competitor waits a bit, then swoops in with a normal ad with a high CTR. Your campaign is entrenched with keywords that are disabled or seriously crippled. So, Google makes an ad position decision based on fake data."

Very interesting points raised - I think the Impression Fraud area will get bigger and bigger in Q2 this year. how to combat this? Better tracking and I also think the Search Engines should also have named contacts to resolve this issue. At present the sole onus is on the web-master or company. Thus iff you have a bad SEO/emarketing agency wrecking your online PoP, forms of redress especially for small online retailers has not been addressed.

Young people and mobile phones - a report

Little Britain - in little britain people from all backgrounds come together and speak via mobile phone. Even the youngsters at age 11 - "buy me a Beano - I want that one"

Free Keyword Suggestion Tool (Wordtracker Suggestion Tool & Overture Bid Tool Combined) & Keyword Generator: "Keyword Suggestion Tool
"

Excellent place to start researching keywords

MarketingSherpa.com : Practical News & Case Studies on Internet Advertising, Marketing & PR: "CAMPAIGN: First Howard and his marketing team reviewed their home page (which was also their main landing page) from the point of view of the typical pop ad clickthrough.

Let's face it, shopping for print ink is not a highly engaging process. It's something you want to get done and over with quickly. Plus, anyone clicking from a pop-ad isn't a highly engaged shopper. It's an impulse click, and it's just as easy to impulsively click away again. Which is exactly what 72% of visitors were doing."

An excellent idea to convert - navigation, content, refine, checkout - grat throwback to websites post the dotcom boom. Enjoyable reading - could be a little more detailed

ClickZ Experts on Online Advertising Technology: "Reaching the cyborg consumer means recognizing the realities of their lives: always on, always connected, socially engaged, networked, multitasking, consuming multiple media, and actively controlling their lifestyles and connection to information. For marketers, reaching these folks means paying attention to a few key areas:

* Networks. These folks are hooked in to other people. The image of the lone, socially disconnected computer geek is wrong. From eBay and Google Groups to blogs and discussion boards, they're connected. And because they're connected, news travels fast, often through networks that are tough for marketers to control.

Viral marketing taps into this reality (for some great examples, check out ViralMeister ). Recognizing new forms of that communication such as blogs and podcasting have as much effect as 'official' publications is important to tap into this mindset. Don't think of blogs just as a communications outlet for your company. Recognize bloggers in your space are major influencers and should be treated as such. Also recognize that PR efforts are even tougher to control than ever, now that anyone with a Blogger account can become a 'media outlet.' Bad companies have nowhere to hide anymore.

* Lifestyle. The genius of Apple's strategy is it isn't about a product, but a lifestyle. The point of entry may be the iPod, but soon the iPod users uses Apple's iTunes to manage their music, buys music on the iTunes Store (over 1 million songs per day at last count), and, Apple hopes, eventually uses Macs to hook everything together. Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but figuring out how to create a product or service that fits into the cyborg consumer's lifestyle definitely seems to work. Heck, you don't need to be a technology to use this method. Consider the marketing of the Atkins diet if you want another example.

* Control. Connected consumers are partially defined by an ability to control their world. From the music they listen to and the games they play to videos they watch, news they read, and people they talk to, cyborg consumers use technology for control. They like control, and anything that interferes with their sense of control is viewed as bad and dangerous. Just look at spam and spyware if you need examples of how consumers react to marketing efforts that try to take control away. Respecting the need for control and fitting into their lifestyle pays dividends.

* Who, not where. The explosion of mobile connectivity and (as Giesler puts it) 'technotrancendance' through immersive technologies means we need to market to the person, not the place where she happens to be. The Internet blurs the line between work and home, allowing us to conduct personal errands at work and ensuring we're never really away from work. Mobile technology such as cell phones and messaging devices mean we're always connected to our social and business lives, no matter where we are. For marketers, paying attention to targeting the person rather than the person's location (home, work, school, etc.) is increasingly important now that consumers can connect to media pretty much anywhere they want."

I think good marketing departments undertake the above points. Personally, i think the lifestyle factor is the hardest to engage as it is influenced by control, who and not where and networks. Well, we'll see eh!

ClickZ Experts on Strategic Advertising Issues: "Have you been to an urban caf� lately? It's not uncommon for a third of the occupants to be sitting in front of their laptops, completely engrossed, day and night. Ever wonder what they're doing? They're being virtual. We all know nobody knows you're a 'dog' on the Internet. What's equally important is nobody knows where that 'dog' is."

Is the food in the dog? Nice intro, goes on the describe the attributes of the virtual world.. come on neuromancer

http://www.shmoo.com/idn/: "




This works in everything except IE (ha!)


Click here to enter paypal

Click here to enter paypal via ssl




IDN advisory
"

Nice - this shows the state of homograph attacks interesting but anti mozilla.. booo hiss. I hope they do something for it.

A

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2 free pieces of marketing software - they have some benefits and look interesting @ least. If you like - give em a try.. and they're free

InfoWorld: Symbian aims downmarket with smart phone software: February 02, 2005: By : NETWORKING : PLATFORMS: "Symbian aims downmarket with smart phone software
Symbian puts renewed emphasis on security with low-cost phones

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service
February 02, 2005

Symbian is taking its operating software for smart phones downmarket with a new focus on high-volume, low-cost phones for the mass market, and a renewed emphasis on security, it said Wednesday."

Excellent news, Symbian rocks in Europe, as stated in previous posts it's had it's ups and downs recently. Pity. But this is cool, smart phones will start to be picked up - lowering the costs of OS's and development. I can't wait for open source OS on mobiles, but I guess overriding something the SIM does may complicate open source with the network operators (especially if it connects via highspeed bluetooth to a local Wireless Network for free VOIP or text (via ICQ or SMS post for free portals).

Symbian Targets Mass Market Smartphones With New Operating System: "Symbian Targets Mass Market Smartphones With New Operating System

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Symbian PLC (SYN.YY), the mobile phone operating system developer, Wednesday launched version 9 of its operating system.

Symbian OSv9 will target the mass market for smartphones, the company said, with the aim of producing the advanced phones in higher volumes and a lower cost.

The system will lower licensee development costs and accelerate the time to market for smaller, less expensive and even more capable Symbian-based smartphones. It said the platform is suited to music playing and other digital content, as well as mega-pixel camera phones.

Symbian OSv9 phones are already in development, with product launches anticipated during the second half of 2005, the company said.

Symbian is majority owned by Nokia Corp. (NOK), while Siemens AG (SI), LM Ericsson Telephone Co. AS (ERICY), Sony Corp. (SNE), Samsung Electronics Ltd. (000830.SE) and Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co. (MC) all have minority stakes.

Company Web site: Http://www..com"

Good idea, I personally think Symbian is the way to go with cellphones, its customisable and you can edit things yourself with little programs that give it real value. probably upgrading the OS to be more resistant to the BT viruses that are hitting the industry - which is a shame.

The heart pacemaker that sends an SMS: "The heart pacemaker that sends an SMS

The medical supplies firm, Biotronik has announced the first implantation of the Stratos LV-T - a heart pacemaker that comes with a GSM phone built inside. The pacemaker system with Home Monitoring function was implanted in a 42-year-old male patient with severe congestive heart failure on January 10, 2005 at the Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. The operation was performed under the direction of Dr. Carel de Cock, the Director of Cardiology."

Wow.. really good idea... as long as it don't interfere with the device. No good if you have a heart attack in a hospital or on a plane :-D There again, who needs a doctor in flight @-D

Revisiting Google Censorship In Germany & France: "Revisiting Google Censorship In Germany & France

Google Blogoscope updates sites previously identified as censored by Google in Germany and France in its Sites Google Censors post. You can see how many pages are shown in Google.com then compare to what's isn't showing at Google Germany or Google France.

The sites are all removed due to national laws in those countries, I believe. Google Blogoscope asks for Google to tell people when material has been removed, in the way they do for copyright reasons. John Battelle and I both asked for the same thing, in the past.

For John's views, check out Google News And China. From me, Got To Censor Search Listings? Why Not Disclose? explains how Google disclosure of copyright-driven removals in the US works, how no disclosure of spam removals is noted and how Google and all search engines have removed material for various reasons and should come up with a way to identify this. My China Blocks Google News -- So Bring On The Disclosure also coves the issue."

Well, it was about to come about soon, i thinik it's sad of Google to not add a disclosure policy saying who or why stuff is being removed. Well, seeing as most of the UK's international Internet access is fed through GCHQ (spy center for America - I mean the UK), soon pages from international sources will just have 404 errors or redirects to other sources.