• Gavin O'Malley, Mar 29, 2011, 11:56 AM
  • DailyCandy Does Deal "Roundup" Paid Content Women's lifestyle publisher DailyCandy recently unveiled The Roundup, which will regularly highlight 75-to-100 daily deals. It's "the latest offering meant to help position it in the current 'quick click deals' landscape, yet set it apart at the same time," writes paidContent. "It's also intended to help buttress DailyCandy's Wb site and remind readers that it's not just an e-newsletter, though that still is where its identity lies."

    According to Beth Ellard, SVP and GM for DailyCandy: "Users love to go through large scale round-ups, which is what the gift guides are, because it's filtered and therefore so easy to navigate through ... Readers are also interested in sharing these picks as well."

    By building up its site, DailyCandy is also facilitating the sharing of its features across sites like NBCU's iVillage, paidContent notes. "It's also preparing to be part of NBCU's lifestyle broadcast and taxi-cab Webcast, LXTV." Readers can customize The Roundup. A warm-weather vacation theme, for example, invites users to refine their searches by region. Read the whole story...
  • What's Google Worth? Tech Crunch What's Google's total economic value to publishers, advertisers, and consumers? Just shy of $120 billion, says the search giant. In order to estimate Google's value to publishers and advertisers ($54 billion), Google's Chief Economist Hal Varian multiplied the value of a click on Google by total clicks, and then subtracted that number by the cost of a click times total clicks.

    To calculate the value of Google to users, Varian cited the "A Day Without A Search Engine" study, which plotted the time spent by students searching for the answers to questions in a library against that spent by those who used Google to get their information, reports TechCrunch. "Students who searched in the library ended up averaging 22 minutes to find what they needed, whereas students using Google took an average of 7 minutes, saving 15 minutes," it writes.

    Varian came to the conclusion that Google saves us 3.75 minutes per day, and then used the average U.S. hourly earnings numbers ($22) to calculate that Google saves users $1.37 a day. That number multiplied by 365 days in a year equals $500. Varian then multiplied that $500 number by 130 million, the number of people employed in the US, to get to $65 billion value in savings for users. Read the whole story...
  • Microsoft Still Bearish On Tablets Sydney Morning Herald Craig Mundie, Microsoft's global chief research and strategy officer, isn't sold on the long-term viability of tablet computers. Rather, the smartphone, "as it emerges more, will become your most personal computer," Mundie said at a conference this week as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald.

    It's fair to call Mundie's forecast wishful thinking given that Microsoft has been left in the dust by Apple, which is experiencing great success with tablets, as well as Google, which is considered to have a bright future in the category. "Mundie's comments about tablets go some way toward explaining why the software giant has only made a half-hearted attempt to enter the tablet space so far," writes The Herald.

    That's despite the fact that "tablets are the fastest-growing category of computers ... but it is largely a two-horse race between Apple and Google's Android." Skeptical though it is, Microsoft is backing several Windows 7-based tablets. Yet, as The Herald notes, "These have been heavily criticized because they do not offer a more modern touch-friendly interface, instead attempting to shoe-horn the regular desktop version of Windows into a tablet form factor." Read the whole story...
  • Google: Gmail Getting "Better Ads" CNET Google says it's about ready to roll out "better ads" in Gmail. As such, the search giant plans to serve fewer -- but more relevant and useful -- ads by better predicting which topics appear to be important to individual users.

    Reports CNet: "One of the tools that Google plans to use to accomplish this is its Priority Inbox, a feature launched last August that is designed to help clear the clutter from users' in-boxes by filtering out e-mail deemed less important." Google said it's planning a gradual rollout of the changes, with only a few users presently noticing the new system. "Using some of the same signals that help predict which messages are likely to be important to you, Gmail will better predict which ads may be useful to you," Google explains. "For example, if you've recently received a lot of messages about photography or cameras, a deal from a local camera store might be interesting. On the other hand if you've reported these messages as spam, you probably don't want to see that deal."

    Despite Google assurances that the system is automated and no personally identifiably information about users is ever shared with advertisers, CNet suggests the new process is likely to ignite privacy concerns. Read the whole story...
  • Google Launches In-App Billing For Android Tech Crunch Adding fuel to the ongoing app boom, Google just launched in-app billing for the Android Market. Until now, "One of the biggest gripes Android developers have about the ecosystem has been ... it's taken ages for it to support in-app payments," reports TechCrunch. Calling the move "a big deal," MobileBeat says it facilitates a "free-to-play business model, where users can use an app for free and then pay real money for virtual goods in small transactions." What's more, "The system basically gives developers equal opportunity to make money, whether they're on Android or Apple's iOS mobile operating system," MobileBeat adds. Computerworld puts the move in the context of Google's broader efforts to improve the Android Market -- as it has "has been seen by many as the weak point in the Android ecosystem, which has opened the door for competing stores from, for example, Amazon, which launched its Appstore for Android." Going forward, "It should be interesting to see whether Android users are as eager to spend their money on game currency and magazines as their iPhone-toting counterparts," writes The Next Web. Either way, "It will ... make Android more competitive with Apple and iOS," eMoney assures. "Previously, the only other way to monetize on Android was to sell an application, or to embed advertising." More broadly, "They're sometimes controversial to parents confronted with huge bills, but in-app purchases done correctly offer users a way to unlock premium content within an application and developers a way to make money while still offering free applications," paidContent explains. Read the whole story...
  • RealNetworks Abruptly Loses CEO The Seattle Times Just about a year into the job, RealNetworks CEO Bob Kimball abruptly resigned on Monday. "Kimball was in the process of restructuring and rebuilding Real, which has zigged, zagged and lurched through several management changes over the last two years," The Seattle Times reports. RealNetworks said Kimball left on his own accord after largely completing the restructuring.

    Yet, as The Seattle Times notes, the move comes as "the company is entering an intense several years that will test its plan to operate as a smaller company that's more focused on phone companies and other business customers, as well as games and consumer services." During Kimball's short reign, the company developed a new online media service that could now compete with upcoming media services from Google and Apple.

    The company's stock, however, has floated below $4 for most of his tenure as chief executive. RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser, who resigned as chief executive in early 2010, tells the newspaper that the transition shouldn't slow the company's rebuilding efforts. Read the whole story...