The Good NET Guide

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Editor’s note: In the following guest post, Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne reveals some of the secrets of using video to help boost the search results rankings of your website. Fliqz is an online video platform.

As most search engine optimization (SEO) experts are aware, getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever. Not only do Google’s search and indexing algorithms continue to evolve in complexity, but Google has given over more and more of its search results real estate to “blended” search results, displaying videos and images towards the top of the first page, and pushing down—and sometimes off the page—traditional web results that would have otherwise competed for top rankings.

But where problems arise, so do opportunities. Although Google’s newfound enthusiasm for video has created more competition for fewer traditional search results, it has enabled sites with video assets—even sites that would otherwise score poorly in the Google index—to successfully achieve first-page rankings. In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 53 times more likely than traditional web pages to receive an organic first-page ranking.

Here’s what a blended search result looks like for the search query “777 built in 4 minutes“:

Those images at the top of the search results are video thumbnails, and today, there’s only two ways to get there:

1. Upload your video to YouTube.

The advantage of this is that you are 100% certain to be indexed into Google’s search engine. This does not guarantee you’ll get a first-page result, but at least it ensures that Google knows your content exists.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone who clicks on a YouTube result will be taken to YouTube, which may be fine if your goal is branding (i.e., you only care that people watch your video). If your goal is driving traffic, as is typically the case with SEO, this won’t be a successful strategy.

Your other alternative is:

2. Video SEO

Video SEO is a set of techniques designed to make sure that:

• Google finds your video content
• Google successfully indexes your video content
• Google will display your video content when specific keywords are entered as search terms

Here’s how to make it work:

You Need Video Content

Google is fairly flexible in what it considers to be video content. You can use actual video footage, but screen captures, slide shows, animated PowerPoint slides, and other content will work just as well. Google can’t actually “see” what’s inside the video content, so it relies on title and other meta-data to determine what content your video actually contains.

Submission, Not Discovery

With traditional web pages, Google utilizes crawlers to discover and index web content. Unfortunately, Google can’t read Flash very well (although it is trying), and as a result, most video content is invisible to Google’s search crawlers. Therefore, the best way to appear in Google’s blended search results is to submit your video to Google using a Video Sitemap. This is similar to an XML sitemap, but is formatted specifically for video, and only contains information about your video content. It is submitted using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

The most common error in Video SEO is to assume that because you have submitted the web page on which a video resides, that the video content itself is being indexed.

You’ll also need to make sure that you have a robots.txt file on all video pages, to ensure that Google can easily verify that the locations on the Web you’ve submitted do in fact exist, and that they contain embed codes which indicate the presence of a video.

Title and Title Tags

When ranking videos, Google primarily considers the match between search keywords and the video title. Although Google allows you to submit other meta-data such as description and keywords, these currently don’t have much influence on your search ranking. Google likes it when the title tag of the page matches the title of the video, and will give a higher weighting for results where this is the case.

Video SEO is Long Tail

Like traditional SEO, you’re much more likely to see results with Video SEO if you target more specific, or longer tail, search terms. A video titled “Dog” is unlikely to produce a first-page ranking, while a video titled “German Shepherd Police Dog” will be more likely to score well in Google’s algorithm. Since Google can’t determine the actual content of the video, you might consider submitting the same video multiple times with different titles that match potential search terms.

New and Small Don’t Matter

With traditional SEO, the age of a website is an important consideration for Google in deciding its ranking. Google also considers things like the number of pages on the site, and the number of links to the site, along with the importance of the places those links originate.

In Video SEO, none of this matters. This means that even new sites and small sites can compete on equal footing with larger and more established players. Publishers who are too small or too new to even consider traditional SEO can still be taking advantage of Video SEO opportunities.

For the Foreseeable Future, Video SEO is a Winning Strategy

As time goes by, Google’s discovery and indexing of video content will no doubt become more sophisticated, and as competition for video results increases, it will become harder for sites to achieve these first-page rankings. However, the number of web pages still massively outnumbers indexed video assets, and for as long as that continues, publishers will have an opportunity to jump to the top of Google’s search results through Video SEO.

Sony has filed a patent for a new type of video game demo that’s worth mentioning here. Rather than your typical demo, where they give you level to mess around with, they essentially give you the whole game . As you play the demo, the game “disappears.” So, let’s say you’re playing a racing game demo—you have all the cars and tracks available to your

Read the original here: 
Sony files patent for degradable video game demo

Yesss. [via Reddit ]

Go here to see the original:
Sir, we who are about to enter sixth grade salute you

I need to move to Europe for several reasons, but the one that’s relevant right now ? 3D broadcasts of top-tier football (“soccer”) leagues

See the rest here:
Germany’s 1st 3D broadcast happens next week. It’s a soccer match, as it should be.

As part of a “digital classroom” roadshow currently underway in Germany, Samsung is showing off it’s new “e-board”. This e-board, in 65″ and 82″ sizes, is a really interesting convergence of e-book reader, smartboard, and classroom display solution. In addition to typical smartboard functionality, it can also display the desktop of a connected PC or laptop, as well as display contents from Samsung ebook readers using their new “emoLink” technology.

Read more from the original source: 
The Samsung 650TS is a gigantic e-board

The wording in the headline may not be, you know, exactly what HTC said – but it might as well be. After the folks over at Crave UK woke up to a broken screen — which they swear isn’t their fault, as the device had just been sitting on a desk charging — full of inky purple rage on their Nexus One , they shot a call over to HTC support.

Go here to read the rest:
HTC: Don’t put the Nexus One in your hipster jeans

In the months following the iPhone App Store’s launch in July 2008, it became clear that the platform was turning into a gold rush.  Success stories of one-man companies earning $250,000 in a few months became common. And even though the odds of striking it rich were clearly much lower than the media portrayed, a huge surge of developers started building iPhone applications. Android Market, where meager sales have been the norm, was left in the dust.

Now Android Market is getting its own glimmers of hope. Edward Kim, who built the application “Car Locator” around five months ago, has just announced that he’s pulling in $13,000 a month from the application, which “started as a little side-project while [he] was vacationing with [his] family”.

Kim writes that the free version of the application has been downloaded around 70,000 times, while the paid application has been downloaded 6,590 times. The price was initially $1.99, but he moved it up to $3.99 (he notes that despite doubling the price, the number of downloads didn’t decrease too much).

So what was Kim’s secret to success? Well, a big part of it seems to have come from the fact that Car Locator is now a featured app on Android Market, which means Google more prominently displays it to users than ‘normal’ applications. Getting featured increased the app’s revenue by over four fold. This probably comes as bittersweet news to developers (you can’t exactly count on being featured by Google), but Kim says that he’s ranked between 100 and 200th place in the Market’s ‘Paid’ category, which means that there are probably at least 100 other applications seeing similar success.  Android Market is still far behind the App Store in many respects (except for openness), but it looks like it’s finally starting to mature.

Kim is very optimistic about the future of the platform, telling me “Android appears to have grown enough that developers can make some money off of it, but there’s not SO many developers that you’ll never get noticed.”

Here are some of Kim’s other observations:

• The application was netting an average of about $80-$100/day, until it became a featured app on the Marketplace. Since then, sales have been phenomenal, netting an average of $435/day, with a one day record of $772 on Valentine’s Day. Too bad I didn’t have a Valentines date this year — we would’ve gone somewhere real special!
• There appears to be clear peaks on the weekends and during holidays. This was always my hunch, but I think I can finally say this with certainty since the signal-to-noise ratio is much better now.
• Some may be quick to point out that a featured Android application is only able to net $400/day, while top iPhone apps make thousands. But the Android market appears to rotate applications in and out of the featured apps list in some psedo-random fashion. Every time I open the Marketplace app, the featured list is different and most of the time, I don’t even see my app on there.
• The price of the application was increased from $1.99 to $3.99. I ran a few price experiments and was surprised to see that though I doubled the price of the app, the number of purchases decreased by much less than half. Android users appear to have a willingness to pay more than a couple dollars for apps.
• Piracy appears to be an increasing problem. A quick search for Car Locator on Twitter reveals links where people can download the .apk file without paying. I tend to have the same attitude on piracy as Balsamiq, so I’m not too worried about it, but I would love to hear some typical statistics on Android piracy.

Last month, Google announced plans to sell 1 gigabit-per-second fiber optic broadband to consumers. The plan called for it to be rolled out to no fewer than 50,000 homes in the initial test, and maybe as many as 500,000, but didn’t specify where it would be rolled-out. Topeka, Kansas wants in. Bad.

The city’s mayor today signed a proclamation that for the rest of the month, Topeka will be known as “Google, Kansas.” Yes, you’re reading that correctly — Topeka is now “Google.”

Now, to be clear, this isn’t a legal name change. Lawyers advised the mayor and the city council that they wouldn’t be able to change the name for just the month and then change it back (no word on if they also advised them that it would be well, stupid) — so instead their going with this proclamation asking people to simply call the city “Google.”

While this is a silly way to get Google’s attention, the benefit could be huge. The 1Gb/sec fiber is roughly 100 times faster than what most Americans get today for Internet speeds. That’s especially true in rural areas. And while Topeka may not be the most rural city in the country (it is the state capital and has over 120,000 citizens), they could undoubtedly make good use of this ultra fast connection. Google’s fiber connection is still more than 20 times faster than even most fast broadband connections.

Humorously, this isn’t the first time Topeka has tried something like this. Apparently, in August 1998, the city has a proclamation to change its name to “ToPikachu” — yes, after the Pokemon character. So this move seems roughly 100 times more sane than that one.

Also funny — apparently this special city council meeting lead to the postponement of another one, where they were actually going to talk about real issues. Ah, local governments.

Online music service Grooveshark is today announcing the launch of a native app for devices running Palm webOS, or in other words the Palm Pre and Pixi phones.

With the app, Grooveshark users gain access to its vast on-demand song catalog - the number of tracks in there runs in the millions - but also to the personal playlists and favorites they and other users have cultivated on the kick-ass music service.

The app should be available ‘very soon’, according to the startup, although VIP users (who pay $3/month) can get early access.

If you’ve ever tried to use Twitter Search, you know that it’s got some pretty serious problems. First, the site only lets you search back through a couple weeks of tweets. Even worse, the service doesn’t seem to employ any relevancy algorithm to speak of — you just see the most recent tweets that contain your query’s keywords, regardless of who said them (which oftentimes yields junk and spam). Today Topsy, the startup that views tweets as the currency of the web, is launching a handful of new features that improve on the official Twitter search in almost every way.

Up until now, Topsy has been based entirely around links. When you visited the site, it would prompt you to enter a search query, and then would display a list of links most relevant to whatever you searched for. The links are ranked by the number of times they’ve been retweeted, and also by the influence of the people who have tweeted them;  the site actually keeps track of the number of retweets each user typically gets to establish their overall reputation. Now, Topsy is taking this reputation system and extending it beyond just links, allowing you to search for both photos and tweets that don’t contain links at all.

So what does that mean? Before now, if you ran a search for “Google Buzz”, the site would return links to articles and videos about the new service. Now, it will also surface tweets from influential Twitter users, even if they don’t include a link. That’s important for breaking news when a story may not have already been covered by a publication, or when there’s a tweet that’s important in and of itself (say, Bill Gates’ first tweet). You can view just these tweets using the navigation menu at the top of the screen, and important tweets will also be included in the site’s flagship web search, alongside links and photos (more on that later). You can filter these results by time, sorting by Hour, Day, Week, Month, and All Time (which represents 18 months of data).

This new search functionality for linkless tweets comes with one big caveat — it will only count retweets that use the native Twitter retweet functionality, which has been pretty controversial. Native retweets don’t allow users to append their own comments to a retweet, and they’re still only used around 10% as often as the “old school” retweet functionality. That said, the Topsy team says they will eventually be tracking all retweets, though it may take a while.

The other big addition to the site today is support for photo search. This searches the text of any tweet that contains a link to a photo, and then presents all matching photos in a thumbnail view similar to Google Images (as with links and tweets, these are all ranked according to Topsy’s reputation system). Because these are pulled in in realtime, the results can be more useful and timely than what you’d find on other image search engines. That said, they can also be pretty quirky. For example, I ran a query for “airplane” and got results of a guy hiding his head in a sweatshirt (on an airplane), a photo of an airplane safety manual, and a photo of a guy wearing a banana suit (again, on an airplane). Queries appear to work better if they’re related to a current event. But even if the results aren’t always perfectly on point, you can definitely have a lot of fun with them.

Finally, you can see the top trending items for all three search categories — web, photos, and tweets — in the “Trending” section, which sort of serves as a Digg for Twitter. And, for those who were asking for it, Topsy now supports RSS feeds.

This is a big improvement for Topsy, and I’ll definitely be using it as an alternative to Twitter’s official search. My concern, though, is that Twitter will probably be launching something similar in the future — its own search engine really hasn’t changed in years, and is ripe for an overhaul (especially since it’s now featured on the Twitter homepage). That said, Topsy has its search indexing over 18 months of tweets (search.twitter.com only has around two weeks of content), so that may help differentiate it from whatever Twitter releases.