Online retailers, you have four seconds to get your site loaded before a would-be customer scoots off to a competitor. Add that to what we already know about the time it takes to make a judgment once a page is loaded, and the window of opportunity becomes narrower.

Akamai recently commissioned a report though Jupiter Research to determine the tolerance levels of the online consumers. The results showed that four seconds was the maximum length of time the average customer will wait for a Webpage to load.

Poor site performance in general was ranked just behind high prices and shipping costs as the biggest cause of customer dissatisfaction. Four seconds is significantly longer than the time it takes a visitor to make a visual judgment of the Webpage once it is loaded. A blink, or one twentieth of a second, is all the time it takes to do that.

Surfers take these first impressions quite seriously. The report also found that a third of shoppers with a bad experience said they'd never come back. Three-fourths said it was likely that they'd never come back. Nearly a third said they'd tell their friends.

"The critical takeaway from this research is that online shoppers not only demand quality site performance, they expect it," said Brad Rinklin, vice president of marketing at Akamai. "Four seconds is the new benchmark by which a retail site will be judged, which leaves little room for error for retailers to maintain a loyal online customer base.

Half of shoppers with more than two years online shopping experience, or spend more than $1,500 annually, said page-load time was a top priority. Over half of them (55%) demand a rapid checkout process.

Over two-thirds agreed that they were more likely to return to a site that is easily navigated and has an easy log-in and checkout process.

Tag: Online shopping

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Yahoo and Microsoft have both made advancements in the "mobile" market recently, but Google was nowhere to be seen. This has left some observers feeling a little baffled, and one even asked, "Is Google flubbing mobile search?"

GigaOM's Katie Fehrenbacher posed that question to start off her article on the subject. "If it is up to consumers and brand recognition alone, the company could easily dominate many of the world's mobile search markets," she notes.

But "carriers, and handset makers, still dominate the mobile deck," Fehrenbacher continued (as Yahoo fans pointed towards the Linksys CIT310). "Yeah, mobile web users can just type in any web site in a mobile browser, but the deck still dominates mobile eyeballs and some carriers don't want to do a deal with such a dominant search brand like Google."

Vodafone was more than happy to arrange for a strategic alliance with Yahoo last week, though, and Sprint and Microsoft worked out a similar deal. Fehrenbacher constructed a timeline of "Google's mobile search deals with advertisers" for comparison, and the company seemed to come up a little short.

Google's five most recent deals were with Leap Wireless, SK Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, Celecom, and Optus - names that simply don't carry a lot of weight. Fehrenbacher concluded her article by polling her readers about their mobile search habits, however, and as she predicted at the beginning of the piece, the numbers clearly favor Google.

50% of respondents chose the Mountain View-based company. The only other answer with comparable numbers was "You can search on mobile phones?" with 30% of the vote.

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Tag: Mobile market, Mobile market

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CBS has released results of a poll that indicate viewers who download TV shows watch more TV than the average viewer. The poll shows that half of the users downloaded programs they had never seen and later became fans of those programs.

The data will allow CBS to better monetize their Web content and get better ad rates as well. While the big networks are lagging in their efforts to get more content on the Web they may finally be getting the idea that it is a lucrative area.

CBS Corp. research chief David Poltrack said "We're looking at this as a key change in direction for us now and looking at our programming as dual distribution programming--over the air and on the Internet".

The trend recently with the networks has been to add canceled shows to their Web content. CBS is running the canceled show Smith on its Innertube site while Fox is airing Vanished. NBC also is airing the failed drama Kidnapped.

The convenience factor is a major advantage that the networks are discovering concerning Web content. Being able to have access to a favorite program at your own leisure will continue to drive viewers to the Web.

There seems to be a general frustration with the networks for not paying closer attention to the trend of downloading TV shows from the Web. In a forum about downloading TV shows from the Web said "What a waste. I have downloaded shows for a while and always wondered why the networks haven't gotten into it."

As the old saying goes "better late than never".

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It's snake-eyes for the top ten gambling sites as visits plummet in the wake of US legislation passed and signed into law banning online gambling.

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that traffic to these popular online destinations declined by 56 percent in October, the same month President Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Just before the landmark law was signed on October 13, these same sites enjoyed a spike in traffic as citizens sought out online casinos while they could.

In September, the category grew 17 percent overall, with PartyGaming raking in a 75 percent increase in visitors, and SportingBet PLC jumping 194 percent.

In October, visits to Casino On Net dropped by 72 percent; PartyPoker.com by 67 percent; and Partypoker.net by 38 percent.

While some say the law is a clear infringement upon liberty, the law may have the legislation's desired effect. The intent was to discourage (or criminalize, if you prefer) those who would squander their money online, especially among the poorer communities.

Nielsen reports that it is this group that will most likely be affected. Lower income households, those with an annual income of $25,000 to $35,000, are over 25 percent more likely to gamble online than average. This group makes up 8.1 percent of adults that gamble online.

In contrast, those with a household income of over $150,000, making up 6.9 percent of online gamblers, are 22 percent less likely to gamble online than the average Web users.

Tag: Online gambling

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Search engine giant Yahoo! expands its horizon with an online video contest to find the next great internet star.

Can you sing the alphabet backwards while hula-hooping and painting a replica of Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night"? If you so, you can put your random talents to good use with a talent contest being hosted by Yahoo!.

Yahoo! is hosting an interesting new contest that showcases the talents of the Internet search engine's users. The Yahoo! Talent Show is a "nationwide search to find the next great Internet celebrity", according to Yahoo! representatives.

To enter the contest Yahoo! users must simply upload their original videos using any of the following formats: ASF, AVI, MOV, MPEG, QT, or WMV.

But do not attempt to dance to Kelis's "Milkshake" or impersonate a character from your favorite movie; all material that is submitted must be completely original and contained nothing that has been copyrighted.

Currently some of the most popular categories for user videos are acting, dancing, crazy, spoof, scary, silly, and rock.

The purpose of the talent contest is for judges to find the next great American Internet star and contestants will be judged accordingly on web charisma, talent, and creativity, say representatives.

Entrants to the contest must be entertaining and relatable to the online audience, as Yahoo! is looking for a genuinely talented person to have his or her own Internet show.

If you think you are a truly talented and entertaining person, Yahoo! allows you to submit up to 50 videos and say that the more videos you post, the better chance you will have of winning the cash prize of $50, 000 and a deal to star in or produce your own show on Yahoo!.

Even if you do not wish to enter the contest yourself, you can still play an important role in the final decision of the judges by visiting the site and commenting on your favorite videos.

The last day for video submission is November 27th and the five finalists will be announced on December 4th. With the announcement of the five finalists comes a series of creative challenges to be completed in both the finalist's homes as well as the Yahoo! New York City office.

America must then vote December 12-13 to crown the grand prize winner of the talent show and Yahoo! will announce their identity on December 14th.

Think you have what it takes to be the next big Yahoo! star? Prove it to the rest of the world by submitting your videos.

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Universal Music Group has filed a copyright violation lawsuit against social networking juggernaut MySpace.com. The case, filed in a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleges that MySpace allows its users post to copyrighted soundtracks and music videos on their websites.

It looks like the barrage of copyright litigation targeting social networking websites isn't going to let up anytime soon.

Universal is seeking $150,000 in damages for each copyrighted song found on a MySpace user profile, which is probably more than Universal artist Ashlee Simpson will see in record sales for the foreseeable future.

Of course, one can't really blame Universal for trying to protect its own financial interests by blocking the presentation of the label's content on MySpace pages. After all, I'm sure users are chomping at the bit to feature music from the Brokeback Mountain original motion picture soundtrack on their profiles, right?

Both MySpace and YouTube have come under scrutiny in recent days as distributors are exerting increased legal pressure to negotiate compensation agreements or be faced with the prospect of a long and drawn out litigation process concerning copyrighted content posted by users on these sites.

In this case, however, the issue may not be as much about copyright but perhaps more indicative of the trigger-happy posture that the legal department at Universal Music is taking as of late.

The company has also issued a cease and desist letter to websites that are hosting a video that features Bank of America employees belting out their own rendition of U2's "One" in celebrating the company's recent acquisition of MBNA.

John Murrell of Good Morning Silicon Valley advises fans of the band to "be advised that continued humming of U2 melodies will result in further legal action."

In further news, my legal counsel has informed me that I could be facing potential legal liabilities for my performance of Nelly's "Country Grammar" at a local karaoke establishment this past weekend.

Who knows, maybe getting sued will give me more "street cred" in the long run.

Tags: MySpace, Universal, Copyright

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Media groups in Norway and Denmark have begun, like several others before them, to protest Google News's practices. The Norwegian association objects to the reproduction of certain images and photographs, while the Danish faction is asking Google to make separate arrangements with each publisher.

Google News has already faced opposition in a number of other countries, including France and Belgium. The writers at Pandia (which is based in Oslo, Norway) were quick to point out that there is no unified opposition against the search engine company, however.

"Pandia for one is glad to be included in Google News results, and we believe it benefits both us and Google to have news articles like this one included in news search results," a post on the site declared. A key point followed: "Nor do we think that Google is violating our intellectual property rights by quoting our headlines."

Nathan Stoll, product manager of Google News, spoke to Dagens Naeringsliv about the issue. (Pandia, thankfully, translated part of the conversation.) "I have had more phone calls from people that complain about not being included, than publishers concerned about copyright," Stoll said.

The issue of photographs, however, remains contentious. The Pandia article stated that "a photograph constitutes a complete work of art. To copy that image without paying the photographer or the copyright owner looks like a intellectual property right violation to us."

While it remains to be seen how Google will respond to the Norwegian issue, the company has already reacted to the request for separate publisher arrangements in Denmark. According to Navneet Kaushal, "letters have been sent to the newspapers by Google."

All that ink and paper was probably a lot less costly than another court battle.

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Tag: Google News

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A new website will launch in mid-January and be focused on only commercials. The site will be called adTV. The content will range from new ads to older ads. At launch on January 15,2007 the content will consist of around 3,000 ads.

Think of YouTube for ads. The site will differ from YouTube in that only advertisers will have control of the content. Users will not be able to upload their own content.

The sites founders are Mark Patricof founder of the digital media company KPE and Steven Bochco writer and film producer. According to a variety.com article adTV plans to have around 6 major companies on board for their January launch.

On the site itself Patricof said," ," It's an opportunity for advertisers and consumers to meet". Bochco said "There are commercials that all of us remember or can be moved by, the same way songs can move you. It's an extraordinary form of brief entertainment ... (and) we're looking to create a site that will engage you on an entertainment level."
The launch comes just 3 weeks before Super Bowl XLI on February 4,2007. A day that is considered to be a mammoth day for advertisers.

Users will be able to search the site by theme,product category or company.

The creators of the site noticed the success that YouTube has enjoyed and feel viewer's are comfortable with watching video on the web. Bochco said, "I think we potentially could be catching a wave"

There is no arguing that Super Bowl ads are popular. They create a buzz before their airing and after. People talk about it the next day. Will adTV change the way we view commercials? Will they be able to sustain the enthusisiam that the Super Bowl ads generate for the remainder of the year?

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The "One Laptop Per Child" project hopes to distribute $100 laptops to children in third world countries, and they are incrediby close to achieving that goal.

With the first of many laptops being shipped for $150 US, co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory Nicholas Negroponte is one step closer to achieving the goal of sending out $100 US laptops to children in third world countries.

The first ten hand-built models were produced at a cost of $150 and shipped to children in several third world countries who will be giving them a test run. The US Department also conducted its own tests on the laptop and gave it a stellar review.

Negroponte hopes that the next round of production will see at least 900 more laptops assembled by 2007, as well as millions more in the future. With their numbers in the millions, manufacturers estimate that the cost of the laptops will in fact be down to $100 by 2008.

Designed by a Taiwanese laptop manufacturer, the laptops for children are designed to withstand the harsh conditions of third world terrain.

These "tough machines with a handle" feature a webcam, speaker and microphone, WiFi connection, a screen designed for easy visibility, 128 MB of memory, 512 MB of storage and are run on free Linux OS.

Governments from around the world including Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Libya, and Thailand have signed up for the program that would enable them to distribute the laptops to educational districts in each of their countries.

While the laptop project would appear to most to be an innovative act of humanitarianism, Microsoft creator Bill Gates thinks that the project has created nothing but "gadgets". Gates also stated that people in third world countries want the same technology that we in the United States have, not an inferior version.

Despite criticism from some, other computer manufacturers like Intel are working on their own version of cost-efficient laptops for children in third world countries. Intel's version costs $400 at present, but they are optimistic that the final cost will be much lower.

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Google is testing a new service called Click-to-Call. It allows users to be connected to businesses they are searching for on the results page. When you click on a business you then enter your phone number. Google then connects you to that business.

The business will not see your phone number on their caller ID. The users caller ID will display the business phone number for future reference. The issue becomes what if someone does not enter his or her own phone number but someone else's number as a prank?

Google's response from their Click-to Call FAQ page reads, "Google takes fraud and spamming very seriously. We use technical methods to prevent future prank calls from the same user within a reasonable period of time. You won't be charged for any such calls."

The vague statement about preventing future prank calls from occurring in a reasonable period of time is not very reassuring. Why Google would want to test this service with such a large potential for abuse?

In a blog written by Lauren Weinstein he writes ,"Google's explanation for this caller-ID manipulation is that it would be handy to have the called business number in your caller-ID for future calls. That may be true, but the abuse potential is way too high. Caller-ID should never be falsified."
Weinstein does offer a solution in a later blog posting. He writes ," However, there is indeed a simple solution in this case. If the caller-ID delivered to both sides of the bridged calls is set to indicate the true source of the calls (i.e., Google) the problem goes away. In fact, caller-ID could be used to further enhance the service by providing a true full point of contact."
Depending on the volume of complaints Google may receive during the testing phase of Click-to-Call will determine if they will follow the advice of Weinstein concerning the caller ID issue.

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