Google’s Departed Godfather of AdSense Joins the Tumri Project

After Gokul Rajaram, the “Godfather of AdSense,” left Google at a seemingly inopportune time for the search company, no plans were indicated on Rajaram’s part as to what direction his new solo career would head. Today, however, we’ve learned that Rajaram is indeed sticking with his expertise in consumer and business ads, and has joined the board of directors at Tumri, a one-to-one online display marketing solution. Tumri works as a consolidated, one-stop-shop for brands to create their online campaigns to be delivered across platforms, media types, etc. It is one of several companies looking to provide a centralized service that does some of the heavy lifting for the brands that bcome their clients, extending certain projections and other data to form a targeted display ad campaign that will reach end users and consumers. Tumri has in fact spend quite some time building up its staff of notable veterans in the field, including Calvin Lui. From the looks of it, Rajaram is attracted to Tumri because of its technology, which is central to its service as a differentiating factor. Dubbed the AdPod, Tumri constructs a brand’s online ad campaign as a platform, combining existing creatives and marketing messages with offers and listings, turning it into a dynamic ad widget. Rajaram’s presence on Tumri’s board of directors helps solidify not only Tumri as a company, but dynamic ad widgets as an effective and scalable form of targeting advertisements. The way I see it, widgets incorporate reporting and an ability to change, which are primary reasons for why they are being experimented with so heavily at this time.

Digg Joins DataPortability, Will Support OpenID

Digg has just announced that they have also joined the DataPortability Workgroup, adding to a laundry list of companies in the Web industry who have signed on to work together towards allowing you to own your data and take it with you to other sites.

In a blog post this morning, the company writes:

“Want to sync your Digg friends network with another service? We want to help you do that. Want to use your Digg activity to get recommendations from another web site? We’re working on that, too.”

Additionally, the post indicates that the company will soon support OpenID, though it’s unclear if that means you’ll be able to login to Digg using OpenID, or if they’ll simply join a long list of companies including Yahoo and AOL that are allowing you to use your credentials from their respective services to login on other sites.

All of this sounds good to me. As we now know, most of the main players are already in on DataPortability, including Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn. Mashable readers were fairly split in a recent poll where we asked whether DataPortability was all hype or the next big thing:

Welcome, Digg. Now let’s see what happens.

The killer Twitter-tracker just arrived and its name is Tweetmeme

It had to happen sooner or later. We’ve had Technorati. We’ve had TechMeme. Now we have Tweetmeme, which will track what’s hot on micro-blogging platform Twitter. The business of tracking the online conversation just a got shot in the arm a big hit with the tech equivalent of crack cocaine.

Built by the makers Fav.or.it, a yet-to-launch blog commenting system, and based on an idea by Marjolein Hoekstra, Tweetmeme looks for new content and tracks who else is talking about it. It ranks the content based upon who and how much a particular item is being discussed. As anyone knows, the number of URLs which spread virally through Twitter each day must run into the millions, so tracking where that viral trail starts and gains momentum is going to be fascinating. It also categorizes the content into blogs / videos / images and audio. Sure there are other Twitter aggregators like Politweets (politics), TweeterBoard (conversation analytics) and many others.

But Tweetmeme has a few other features including a ‘river’ of new content and RSS feeds for the river (or categorized feeds for blogs / videos / images / audio). In addition Fav.or.it will integrate Tweetmeme into its API so you’ll be able to comment on blog posts through Tweetmeme. [For an explanation of how Fav.or.it will work see here and here].

The knockout punch is that Tweetmeme will Twitter the original person who first mentioned the item if it makes it onto Tweetmeme. This is going to be fun…

SmugMug’s Private Photos Aren’t Really Private

Photo hosting site SmugMug apparently has a huge security hole which allows anyone to easily access other users’ photos which have been marked as “private,” reports Google Blogoscoped. What’s worse, the folks at SmugMug are aware of the issue, but claim this is intended behavior, separating the notions of “privacy” and “security.”

In a nutshell, the problem is this: if you set your photos as “private”, they can still be accessed simply by URL manipulation; for example, I randomly typed in this URL “http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1021″ in my browser and got someone’s gallery that, perhaps, was not intended for the whole world to see. It is possible to prevent this behavior by setting a special password for your image/gallery, but how many people understand this?

Here’s an excerpt from SmugMug’s CEO Don MacAskill’s long conversation with Google Blogoscoped:

“…we view security and privacy as two separate, but related, issues. Security is like locking your front door (no-one can get in with out a key) and privacy is like closing your window drapes (no-one can look in from the outside, but you can tell people where you live and they can visit without a key).

At SmugMug, the feature you’re talking about, private galleries, falls under the privacy umbrella, not security. It’s intentionally designed so that you can “tell other people” about your photos (share a URL in an email, embed or hyperlink on your blog or message forum, etc) without having to share something like a password. Only people you’ve shared this URL with can find the gallery and/or photos in question.

The problem here, of course, is the fact that most people don’t care about semantics in cases such as this; if they set a photo to “private,” most of them probably expect that no one else can see this photo, period. A similar discussion arose recently when it was discovered that Google Reader shares your “shared” items with everyone in your Gmail account, but this is a far worse problem, because private photos are at stake. As usual, it will probably just take some media attention (such as this article) for the folks at SmugMug to get to their senses, but why does it always have to be so?

Blist: Making Spreadsheets Fun?

The latest to tackle online database and spreadsheet creations: Blist. Launching today at DEMO, blist is a more flexible way in which to create those dreadful spreadsheets we all have to do for one reason or another. The company’s aim is to simplify the process by tailoring the application according to your needs, as opposed to your having to configure your data according to the existing parameters of a spreadsheet.

It does so by offering an array of templates that can be selected for a variety of purposes, from wedding guest lists to fantasy football stats. Data can be viewed in multiple formats, like tables, calendars or widgets. Incorporating multimedia items like photos or videos means that users can do with these spreadsheets whatever they like, for any purpose they see fit.

With an intuitive interface, the target user is the non-technical folks out there that don’t really like the complications of a spreadsheet. Blist spreadsheets are collaborative, web-based tools, so the social aspect of sharing data is built into this application. From the looks of it, blist’s offerings also extend to the construction of queries, meaning this tool has the potential for enabling non-technical users to create tables and perhaps even mashups.

There is a handful of applications out there that are taking on the challenge of creating an easy-to-use, web-based mashup tool that will translate into a high user adoption rate based on a simplified and intuitive process, like Strata. As web surfers find more ways in which to control and use their own information (or third-party information for their own purposes), mashup tools will become an increasingly integrated aspect of our every day use, so tools that help us towards this direction will become more valuable.

Print Screens Without the Paper: Iterasi

Iterasi is a new company launching its service at DEMO today. The product of serial entrepreneur Pete Grillo, who sold his previous company WeSync to Palm in 2000, Iterasi is another way to organize your web. While the premise of the service is very straightforward, Iterasi pulls from so many schemas that we already have applied to the organization of the web that I’m having trouble figuring out the best way to describe how it all works in comparison to what we already have. But here goes:

Iterasi is a bookmarking tool that lets you take a snapshot of a website in its native format. That means that whether the site is dynamic or static, these web pages can be bookmarked, saved, searched, retrieved, shared, and tagged. This is handy for saving online receipts, submission/application forms, content and images, to name a few. Think of it as a web-based print screen function  without the paper.

As with other bookmarking tools, Iterasi comes complete with a browser bookmark so you can amass websites as you surf the web. Similar to StumbleUpon, Iterasi will let you “notarize” your saved site, adding in tags, showing tags that others have applied to the same site, and providing your own title. These saved items will display in your Iterasi account as thumbnail images, similar to JigJak or Hyperigo.

But if Iterasi is anything like a bookmarking site, it’s main point of differentiation is the personalized ways in which you can organize all your bookmarks. Think of a glorified version of the browser sidebar that lets you place all your bookmarks into various folders. There’s also an option to set a timer for notarizing a webpage at a specified time. If you do this regularly, then you’ve got a time-lapsed glimpse at how a website changes over time, kinda like archive.org.

Now that we’ve taken a look at Iterasi’s main features and likened it to pieces of several existing tools out there, what can Iterasi be used for?

The searchability of Iterasi is very key to the overall value of this service, as this enables users to truly create their own web. Should this data be gathered as an aggregated look at web behavior, multiple things can be inferred, from shopping habits to new perspectives on web search, or a combination of several of these things. It could also be used in conjunction with other tools out there like Shoeboxed that collect your receipts to help you with your own budgeting.

Given the outlook for personalized web experiences, data portability, and a number of other customized tools for mashing up varied parts of your own Internet, Iterasi offers a compellingly simple look at the potential for the tailored web. Is this a better way to handle personal bookmarks than Clipmarks‘ social attempt at sharing items?

[Source: Mashable.com]

eBay Acquires Fraud Sciences For $169 Million

eBay through Paypal has acquired fraud detection provider Fraud Sciences Ltd for $169 million.

Israel and Palo Alto based Fraud Sciences offers automated anti-fraud systems including SpotLight VFX and SpotLight T2T, merchant solutions the provide transaction verification with fraud prevention. In an October 2007 profile, Israelplug said that Fraud Sciences products “help online retailers verify the identity of buyers and accept orders that they would have seen as suspicious in the past - thus enabling them to increase their sales.”

eBay said the acquisition will assist them in significantly improving trust and safety across its sites in 2008. Fraud Sciences’ risk tools will be integrated with PayPal’s fraud management system.

Personnel from Fraud Sciences, including Yossi Barak, Fraud Sciences’ COO, and founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf, will join PayPal’s technology and fraud management teams.

This acquisition is expected to be completed within 30 days.

Globally, Baidu Beats Microsoft in Search; Yandex Creeping Up On Ask

While Google dominates the top slot in search both in the U.S. and worldwide, with a global search market share of 62 percent, there is still a lot of elbowing going on below, especially when you look beyond the U.S.

In a comScore ranking of the top-10 global search engines as measured by number of searches during the month of December, 2007, Yahoo comes in at a distant No. 2 with only 13 percent of global share. (Although, in the U.S., Yahoo actually gained a half-point of share in December, whereas Google dipped 0.2 percent).

The big surprise, though, is the strength of local search engines in countries that don’t use the Roman alphabet. No. 3 on the list is not Microsoft, but Chinese search engine Baidu (with 5 percent share, versus Microsoft’s 3 percent). No. 5 is Korea’s NHN Corporation, which operates the Naver portal and search engine. Creeping up on Ask’s No. 8 spot, is Russian search engine Yandex. And Alibaba (which may include Yahoo China) brings up the rear at No. 10.

Shouldn’t the best search technology win no matter what the language? These market share figures suggest that culture and marketing play a big role as well—unless, of course, you are Google.

Pay Per Play: Break Internet Style Rules, Make Lots of Money

We’re solicited, on average, by about two or three different ad networks of varying types on a weekly basis here at Mashable. Some of them are great ideas, and some of them are downright stinkers. I’m not in the business side of things here at the blog, so I’m generally not privvy to where those conversations lead, so I can’t speak to exactly who does what in terms of sponsorship for this site. I do get to see most of the offers on the way in through the editorial mailbox, though, and one that’s slid past us a few times is an outfit called Pay Per Play.

Subject: Get paid for every visitor to your site

Body: This is a brand new program called Pay Per Play. It’s a bit like Google Adsense except that it’s a 5 second audio ad. Like Adsense, it’s totally free … just a small piece of code and you get paid for every visitor. No one has to click on anything. There is a time limit and also a limit to the number of people who will get to promote it. If it takes off, as I expect it to, someone is going to do well as a result.

Due to the stigma associated with autoplaying audio ads, I’ve been assured that we won’t be taking advantage of that program here at Mashable. I have to wonder, based on my own experience, whether or not that stigmas is deserved or not. Conventional wisdom says that one of the biggest screw-ups a webmaster can make is to throw an advertising program on their site that will autoplay an audio clip. Surfers will complain louder and quicker about autoplaying audio ads than if you were to change the algorithm on Digg.

The debate as to whether this is acceptable practice ranges to many different circles. MySpace and Digg have both been called out before in the comments and emails we’ve recieved here at Mashable for occasionally letting an advertisement slip by that has autoplaying advertisements. The podcasting world also goes back and forth on whether it is kosher to have your podcast or video episodes autoplay on pageload. On my own personal blog and video ventures over the years, I’ve been experimenting with the benefits and negatives of autoplaying for years, and have generally come to the conclusion that if I have audio or video that I want to showcase in a website, I will make it autoplay.

Back when Art and I were doing the RizWords podcast, it typically ran between forty five minutes to a little over an hour each daily episode. We found that the growth of the podcast was a bit slow in the beginning, in terms of both downloads and subscribers. We chatted over it and came to the conclusion that we should give autoplay a shot.  Within weeks, our downloads shot predictably up, and our subscribes shot through the roof (and an unintended consequence occurred - a large portion of the long term podcast subscribers ended up being from China, Iran and the United Arab Emirates).

How did it affect our site viewership, though?  Well, we monitored everything pretty closely before and after the switchover, and the bounce rate has only shifted unfavorably by 2%.  Interestingly enough, the average length of visit went up substantially (by around six minutes or so). So what was my tradeoff for all the extra listens? Weeding out a few finicky visitors, and Tom Merritt and Molly Wood telling me I should change it to not autoplay on an episode of Buzz Out Loud.

Granted, there is a significant difference between an autoplaying advertisement, and a fifteen second autoplaying advertisement followed by a podcast full of relevant content, but having said that, the Pay Per Play concept isn’t so aesthetically repugnant as the design snobs among us might originally think. Certainly the thought of it is counter-intuitive at first, but aren’t most revolutionary new concepts that way?

WebMynd Could Change the Way You Bookmark Websites

A new YCombinator startup called WebMynd launched today. It’s a Firefox add-on that records every website you visit and saves a virtual copy on your hard drive.

The service doesn’t save just an image of the page or the URL, but the full text site. That means you can also search those virtual pages later when you are looking for something.

Users can turn off recording at any time, and can delete saved pages that they don’t want to have around for any reason. To see saved pages, you click on an icon at the top of the browser and the local saved copies pop up, along with a search bar.

The idea is that, like Gmail, good search means you don’t have to spend a lot of time bookmarking and tagging websites to find them later. WebMynd records everything in the background, and a quick search will locate the page.

One thing I’d love to see added is a text box somewhere on the browser where you can type in tags to describe any page you are on, and to have that data saved along with the virtual page. The result could make searching easier down the road.

The basic add-on is free and keeps pages for a week. Users pay $10 for six months of history or $20 for a full year. After testing this I can tell it’s a service I’ll continue to use to quickly find sites I visited. Simple service, basic business model, and useful. Classic YCombinator stuff.