Swiss hearing aid maker Phonak expects to cash in on people who use MP3 Players. CEO Valentin Chapero said, ""Due to the noise exposure, especially among the young, we are witnessing the creation of a hearing loss bubble in years to come"

What? I wonder if the next generation of iPod's will feature a built in hearing aid? The people at Phonak really are projecting increased growth because of MP3 players. The same concerns about hearing loss were around when Sony's Walkman was introduced decades ago.

There can be little doubt that listening to your music too loudly over time will impact your hearing. The problem is most people will not notice the hearing loss until it has progressed beyond repair.

Pam Mason MEd, Director, Audiology Professional Practices Unit, ASHA the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association said, "After you've worn your MP3 player all day long or a considerable amount during the day you may find that your hearing sounds muffled when you take them off in the evening or that you have ringing in the ear, which is called tinnitus. These are two early warning signs that you may have exposed your hearing to excessively loud noise."

Will politicians push to regulate the volume of MP3 players? Will people pay attention and turn down the volume? What about litigation against the makers of MP3 players?

The phrase "Can you hear me now?" may take on a whole new meaning instead of referring to a wireless phone commercial.

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Strategic alliances seem to be all the rage these days. Yahoo and Vodafone (a telecommunications company that owns a big chunk of Verizon) formed one earlier this week, and now Microsoft has reached a similar agreement with Sprint. The companies plan to "drive new services" together, the first of which will be Windows Live search for mobile phones.

Mark Schweitzer, the chief marketing officer at Sprint, made a statement about the Microsoft-Sprint deal. "Microsoft and Sprint share a vision that mobility is about helping customers access the information they need while on the go. The new alliance will deliver on that vision for consumers and businesses," he said.

"By adding Windows Live Search for mobile to Sprint devices," Schweitzer continued, "customers now carry with them a depth of relevant local search information, in addition to quick and easy access to their favorite Sprint content. Microsoft's innovation in search and advertising makes them a logical choice for us to work with to realize this vision."

As Greg Stirling indicates, the details of the strategic alliance aren't well understood - how Microsoft's relationships with Superpages.com and Ingenio might affect the deal remains unclear, for example. But Stirling, and other spectators, seems to feel that Microsoft has made an important step forward.

A StartupSquad article states that "having the Windows Live search application pre-installed on Sprint phones does give Microsoft an advantage." The Redmond-based company may want to hold off on the celebrations, though, because "user acceptance will be highly dependent on the results provided by Windows Live search."

Susan Nelson, Sprint's vice president of strategic alliances, described what else might come as a result of Microsoft's and Sprint's relationship. "Besides mobile search for the consumer, our business customers are benefiting significantly from the ease and enhanced functionality of Windows Mobile 5.0 as well as robust managed security solutions based on Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services," she said.

Nelson added, "This holistic relationship aligns our companies in joint development, marketing and sales efforts, which allows us to move quickly to combine our expertise and deliver innovative solutions to our customers."

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Technology has allowed criminals to become more creative in their methods of robbery, as a United Kingdom gang member managed to steal credit card secrets of ATM users with an ordinary MP3 player.

United Kingdom gang member Maxwell Parsons had an accomplice in his robbery of credit card information from ATM's around London: an MP3 player. In the aftermath of a robbery using such a common device in a place where we believe money is secure, the question begs: can anyone with an MP3 player do this?

Using any digital music player, criminals can record data from freestanding ATM cash machines. Using a separate computer program, the data is converted into numbers.

Unplugging the bank's phone line from a BT white socket, inserting a two-way adaptor, and placing the device between the output cable and phone socket, enables the MP3 player to receive the credit card information of bank users.

The MP3 player would then record the sounds, which are similar to a dial-up Internet modem or fax machine.

Sound emitted from the line is then interpreted using a modem line tap, or passed through a Ukrainian computer software program which is illegal to purchase.

After the data was converted, Parsons was able to extort more than 200, 000 pounds, or $380, 000 American dollars using credit card information stolen from the ATM.

These steps seem fairly simple; probably anyone with the slightest bit of technological knowledge and an MP3 player could carry them out. There are even websites that offer ATM hacking how-to's and sites which sell ATM skimmers, as well as other devices used in the robbery of the cash machines.

Even using a simple computer program of the ATM's user manual, a Virginia Beach man was able to reprogram ATM's to dispense more money than was debited to him.

Thankfully, to prevent any further illegal acquisition of credit card information or cash from ATM's, several manufacturers like Tranax Technologies, have created a patch that "forces installers to change the default password before it goes into service", says a representative of the company.

The 41-year-old ATM hacker is a well-known criminal in the U.K.; certainly his legend will sail across the pond to the United States, inspiring American criminals to extract credit card information from ATM's using their MP3 player.

After all, Parsons himself learned how to execute the fraud from Malaysian gang members who, using an MP3 player, devastated the Malaysian banking system.

Bank users everywhere can only hope that there is not a rash of ATM hackings before protective software is installed.

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Sitemaps consists of an XML file designed to crawling by allowing webmasters to list all their pages, notify search engines of changes or new pages, and identify unchanged pages to prevent unnecessary crawling and conserve bandwidth.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have announced their common support for Sitemaps 0.90 as a universal method for webmasters to make their sites more search engine friendly. This initiative builds upon the Sitemaps 0.84, which was originally developed as a joint venture between Google and Yahoo.

"At industry conferences, webmasters have asked for open standards just like this," said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Watch. "This is a great development for the whole community and addresses a real need of webmasters in a very convenient fashion. I believe it will lead to greater collaboration in the industry for common standards, including those based around robots.txt, a file that gives Web crawlers direction when they visit a website."

Representatives from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft each weigh in with their take on the announcement.

"Announcing industry supported Sitemaps is an important milestone for all of us because it will help webmasters and search engines get the most relevant information to users faster. Sitemaps address the challenges of a growing and dynamic Web by letting webmasters and search engines talk to each other, enabling a better web crawl and better results," said Narayanan Shivakumar, Distinguished Entrepreneur with Google. "Our initial efforts have provided webmasters with useful information about their sites, and the information we've received in turn has improved the quality of Google's search."

"The launch of Sitemaps is significant because it allows for a single, easy way for websites to provide content and metadata to search engines," said Tim Mayer, senior director of product management, Yahoo Search. "Sitemaps helps webmasters surface content that is typically difficult for crawlers to discover, leading to a more comprehensive search experience for users."

"The quality of your index is predicated by the quality of your sources and Windows Live Search is happy to be working with Google and Yahoo! on Sitemaps to not only help webmasters, but also help consumers by delivering more relevant search results so they can find what they're looking for faster," said Ken Moss, General Manager of Windows Live Search at Microsoft.

The protocol will be available at sitemaps.org, while will be hosted by Yahoo Small Business. Any site owner will be able to create and upload an XML Sitemap and submit the URL of the file to the participating search engines.

Tags: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sitemaps

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A PubCon session entered a place beyond indexing and search traffic: The Duplicate Content Zone, where websites sometimes go and are never seen again. WebProNews tagged along as the session hosts played the Rod Serling role for the audience.

Too much duplicate content on a website will drop it in the SERPs faster than the Tower Of Terror at Disney World plummets its riders. Only you don't have Matt Cutts dressed in a bellhop outfit pulling the lever in Orlando.

Bill Slawski not only makes me envious with his patent coverage, but the fact that he's a short drive from steamed blue crabs when they're in season. He touched on the topic of printer-friendly pages, which many sites make available as a convenience for their visitors.

These pages should go in a separate folder, and protected from spidering by a relevant entry in the site's robots.txt file.

If the same page has different URLs, be sure to use 301 redirects to help visitors along to the desired page.

Slawski noted that duplicate content happens sometimes when one site takes content from another. This infringement could end up costing a site publisher in terms of duplicate content penalties. He recommended contacting the site owner and its host before embarking on more serious legal action or a DMCA notice.

While many dynamically generated sites use session IDs to track a visitor's session, these should not be served to indexes that visit. Some spiders ignore these by default, but if one's site has session ID pages showing up in a search engine then some steps to stop this will need to be taken.

Yahoo's Tim Converse illustrated the point by noting Yahoo won't even index a crawled site if it is determined to be a duplicate.

They look at approximate copies as well, not just word-for-word ones. Being similar does not necessarily mean a site will be excluded from the index.

Not all duplication is evil. Hosting content in HTML and Microsoft Word format for visitor choice would be an example, as would syndication of content. Abusive stuff like scraper sites and weaving content from different pages to make a new page will get one in trouble.

Google's Brian White said his company filters content in a number of pipelines. Anyone hoping for additional insight will be disappointed, as White did not provide details of how this is done.

If other sites showing up in Google are scraping one's content, Google can help under the DMCA law. They provide a contact page with more information about DMCA takedowns.

Using the DMCA can be more perilous than anything in the Duplicate Content Zone. Ask a lawyer for advice before handing out a takedown notice.

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The quest for geographically relevant search marketing has been the labor of many a SEO. This afternoon, a PubCon panel discussed upcoming innovations in local and mobile search, and WebProNews was on the scene.

Yahoo Representative Warren Kay talked about the company's geo-targeting features that launched today.

Geo-targeting works based on the keyword searched and the IP address of the searcher, allowing advertisers to target by region or by city and state.

Companies like Flickr are currently making use of geo-targeting features.

Kay also referenced Yahoo Universal Location Manager, which allows Yahoo to increase listing relevancy thru user-defined areas on Yahoo properties, such as movies.yahoo.com and maps.yahoo.com.

Mobile marketing is also a strong company focus, as Kay notes that there are over 240 million mobile subscribers in the United States. One in five of those subscribers take advantage of advanced services, making them ripe for mobile advertising.

With Yahoo's mobile platform, users can browse or perform a search; and ads are delivered via WAP technology.

Yahoo's mobile advertising mantra says it all: Customize. Connect. Impact. Reach.

Doug Perlson from Seevast (formerly Kanoodle) was next on tap in this afternoon's session.

Perlson believes that context is not the only way to target consumers, noting figures that tout $3.4 billion worth of local marking in 2005 - a figure that is expect to grow to $13 billion by 2010.

According to Perlson, advertisers have enormous opportunities when it comes to local, regional, and national marketing campaigns.

Search sites are best suited to gear ads toward search terms as well as geo-target the user by zip code. Contextual sites, however, should use sponsored links to target local content and users, while implementing a measure of geo-targeting as well.

When it comes to direct navigation, domain names, targeted redirects, domain parking, are all URL functions that can be used to inform users of your location. Consequently, it is important to know where your listings are running in case they are targeting areas that are not beneficial to your local business.

Perlson concludes his presentation by highlighting opportunites on the horizon for advertisers looking to focus local marketing efforts:

• Mobile
• Pay-per-call
• ISP
• GPS
Jake Baillie from TrueLocal.com discusses keyword targeting in terms of local search marketing.

According to Baillie, the best way to exploit local search is keyword expansion, which includes targeted keywords associated to cities, states, and zip codes. Less utilized, put potentially effective methods of geo-targeted keyword expansion also include neighborhoods, area codes, counties, airport codes, and general metropolitan areas.

Other important points that Baillie touched on include:

Word Expansion
• Product Names
• Brand Names
• SKUs
• Slang/well known industry terms
• Government terms
People pitfalls (collaquilisms)
• Differing regional names for products (pop vs. soda)
• Differing names for localities from the user's perspective (downtown Chicago aka "The Loop")
Types of businesses that flourish by advertising locally
• Service based industries
• Golf courses
• Grocery stores
• Gas stations
Steven Stern of Go2.com rounded out the panel, outlining the key elements of mobile and local search:

Trends
• Increased consumer usage is largest among those 35 and older
• 58% of mobile users use their phones for non-voice functions
• 20-25 percent use mobile phones to browse mobile content
• 63% uses phone to find local information
Barriers to overcome
• Carriers are still creating ad revenue models
• Carriers are protective of their customers, and consequently are hesitant to allow advertisers into their networks
• No uniformity of phone types
• Carriers are on different networks
• Small screens
• Poor content sends users away
Stay tuned as WebProNews offers continuing coverage of PubCon throughout the week.

Tags: PubCon, Mobile Marketing, Yahoo, Seevast, True Local, Go2

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Online video-sharing giant YouTube has had it's fair share of challengers for the title of most viewed video-sharing website. Now they must defend their title in Europe against the popular French site Daily Motion.

Daily Motion, a Paris-based online video-sharing site might be giving YouTube a run for it's money. The site receives upwards of 9, 000 new videos daily and are fast approaching the 16 million-viewer mark, giving them international recognition.

Daily Motion was actually created before YouTube and analysts say it should come as no surprise that there is room for the online video-sharing market in Europe. "Any country that has its own language is absolutely ripe for specialized content," says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Jupiter Research in London. "There's a clear opportunity for the competition to steal a chunk of the French market." YouTube, which was acquired by Google only yesterday, wants to be the competitor to steal that chunk.

While there are several other European competitors such as Israel's Metacafe and Germany's MyVideo, Daily Motion has managed to pull ahead in terms of viewers in France with a reach of 10.3%. YouTube's reach is close on their heels with 9.1% reach despite the site's late release to the country. However, across all of Europe YouTube has the greater reach at about 11% while Daily Motion only has 2%.

Attempting to compete with YouTube, Daily Motion is making their content more locally based using local sporting events and politicians to gain views. Daily Motion is also allowing its users to upload content from their own webcams, which YouTube does not.

The site has even signed an agreement with leading French television station TF1 to develop a website called Wat TV, giving users the chance submit their videos to compete for a spot to be broadcast on TF1. YouTube currently has no agreements with television stations in any country to link the website and television stations.

Co-founder Benjamin Bejbaum revealed that he has even bigger plans for Daily Motion, stating, "Our strategy is totally international. We are closer to French content, but I want to see content from every country." The site can currently be viewed in six different languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Daily Motion would also like to extend it's reach to Asia but Piers Stobbs, a ComScore Europe analyst, says that will be difficult to do. "There's going to be scope for local sites," he says, "but certainly to get to a pan-European, pan-Asian level is going to be a challenge."

Online video-sharing site and social-networking site MySpace has also recently embarked on a global tour of Europe and Asia with the launch of sites in Germany and Japan. MySpace was a success in Germany, but Asia proved to extremely loyal to its already-existing video-sharing/social-networking site Mixi.

According to a study conducted by Alexa data, MySpace has garnered even more viewers across Europe than has YouTube, which beat Daily Motion. If online giant MySpace can not break through the barriers in Japan, does Daily Motion stand a chance?

Daily Motion, no doubt, will continue to strive for the highest number of European viewers, but for now they are no danger to YouTube in any country except France.

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Microsoft has admitted that their new anti-virus service, Windows Live OneCare mistakenly labeled Google's Gmail as a virus last week. The mishap occurred last week when Google made adjustments to the Gmail website according to Microsoft.

Microsoft has not explained what the changes were that caused the problem. Users of OneCare who visited the Gmail site were informed they had the BAT/BWG.A.

Suspicision's have been raised that Microsoft may have done this intentionally. In a blog post by Garret Rogers he wrote, "Now, either Gmail is a virus, or Microsoft is generating false positives. Some affected by this "virus" say other anti-virus products do not pick up the infection - to me, this is a bit suspicious.

Microsoft did apologize for the problem and said they were reviewing their processes to prevent this from happening in the future. In a statement Ziv Mador, response coordinator in the Microsoft Antimalware team said, "We will investigate how this false positive happened and take steps to minimize the risks of additional incidents"

Garret Rogers went on to write, "One thing is certain, those who use Windows Live OneCare and Gmail are all worried they have a virus they can't get rid of. Some might even get frustrated enough to either quit using Gmail or Windows Live OneCare depending on which one they think is to blame.

We now know that the mistake was on Microsoft's side. No company seems to be immune from these types of occurrences. Just last week Google accidentally sent out the Kama Sutra worm to 50,000 video email subscribers.

The speculation that this was done intentionally by Microsoft does not make much sense. In the end they would have to know that this kind of incident would damage their reputation more than it would Google's.

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"The Search" author and Federated Media chairman John Battelle delivered today's keynote at WebmasterWorld's PubCon in Las Vegas, and WebProNews was in the room, taking notes and nudging the other participants.

John began by mentioning FORTRAN, which became DOS, as the beginning point (command line interface is how we "touched" computers in the past). He then progressed to the PC and how the workforce adopted it and brought computers to the forefront. It also introduced the computer interface.

The next big wave was to take this technology and offer it customers through the Internet. Technology began "touching" the general public. This progressed to home computers featuring GUI interface.

John believes search is the next big step for the public interacting with technology. Much like DOS was the initial way we interact with computers, John feels search is the web's command line interface (DOS), however, instead of coding, users use natural language.

He equates search to the next phaze of the user interface. Radical changes forthcoming on the search industry as a user interface are coming.

Using mobile devices to search. For instance, when shopping, you will scan your device over the purchasable item and a search will be conducted - price comparisons and any pertinent information available will be returned from the label scan.

Search drives Web 2.0 business and it's the way we interact with others. Search allows you to present your intent. With search, the customer puts their intent in the box. The search results allow us to present our message of intent to the searchers. Intent drives content.

Search drive audiences to social media sites and consumers have started to expect social media content (blogs, forums, RSS) from the resulting companies.

The best business on the web allow customers to help build your business (Amazon's suggestion process was referenced). User feedback plays a prominent role. However, some non-web savvy business are hesitant to give customers that level of control.

John also mentioned larger companies leveraging wikis in order to get useful consumer feedback and this plays into the bigger picture of how the computers, the web, and search have given customers the ability to interact with companies. Savvy business use this feedback to improve their products, marketing campaign and general exposure.

The next portion discussed his company, Federated Media and how it benefits potential clients. This led directly to the Q and A session.

Overall, the way John presented the search industry as a growing method of customer interaction that we haven't seen before. For instance, how many times have you hated a particular television commercial? If you are like me, the answer is millions. However, wheat can do besides change the channel or hit the mute button? Not too much.

But with the way Web 2.0 is evolving, the web, search and other social media aspects, customers have much more control.

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comScore has released a study detailing the habits of online consumers that own digital music players. The devices range from MP3 players to iPods and Microsoft's new Zune music player.

The study found that this group of online consumers had an above average income and were highly sought after by consumer electronic advertisers. 36% of online DMP owners have an annual household income above $75,000.

They are also avid fans of Internet shopping with 49% agreeing that it is the best way to shop. 94% had made online purchases in the past six months.

"With the launch of Zune, Microsoft is targeting a highly desirable audience segment," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. "As Zune gains in popularity, it will be interesting to observe how this segment of DMP owners differs from those who own iPods and other DMPs already in the marketplace."

With Zune being new to the market place it will be interesting to see what kind of impact they will have on this segment of the population.

comScore's study also revealed the TV viewing habits of DMP owners. They are more likely to use the Internet while watching TV and visit program related sites. Also they are 40% more likely to research products advertised than the average Internet user.

No wonder consumer electronic advertisers heavily target them. They know who can and will spend the money. Online consumers who own DMP's are like gold in the electronics' market.

One last interesting thing to note is that this group watches less TV than the average Internet user. 45% watch less than 19 hours of TV per week. As long as they are watching less TV but purchasing more electronics then advertisers will continue to focus on this lucrative audience.

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