sense

Google offers 'Insights for Search'

Google has taken its popular Google Trends and launched a spin-off product called Google Insights for Search. Geared toward advertisers, it's a tool to track a particular search term's popularity across the Web and geographic regions of the world.

For Google, this can help boost advertiser confidence and potentially win its program some new converts who would've otherwise been skeptical regarding how effectively they could target an online ad campaign.

With Google Insights for Search, you can search for a term to track how much it's been googled over time, where on a "heat map&… Read more

Circuit City: What, me no laugh at parody?

MAD Magazine is getting the last laugh now that Circuit City has issued a mea culpa for telling employees to destroy issues of MAD that contain a parody of the retailer's advertising.

The Consumerist pointed us to a copy of a letter of it received from a Circuit City corporate communicator after the site wrote about the alleged search-and-destroy mission. In the letter, Circuit City apologizes for its "knee-jerk reaction," and says its has issued a retraction order and directed affected stores to put the magazines back on sale.

The magazine's August issue contains a (pretty darn amusing) four-page "Sucker City" circular with announcements like: "Believe it or not, $3,599.99 is the sale price," and "Wii Gaming System Guaranteed In Stock...if you're friends with an employee who hid it in the back for you. Otherwise, oh, sorry, all sold out." Sucker City also sells products including a self-editing Web cam that "stops embarrassing YouTube videos before they're made."

The good news is that at least one member of Circuit City's PR team appears to appreciate the value of a good ribbing--or at least appreciate the value of pretending to have a sense of humor. This is the letter: … Read more

Lawyer sues Google over unfruitful ads

Update at 10:44 a.m. PDT: I added Google's "no comment." Update at 9:50 a.m. PDT: I added more details from the complaint.

AttorneyHal K. Levitte has sued Google over ads that cost $136.11 but that allegedly didn't yield any useful results.

The suit was first reported by InformationWeek.

Google placed 202,528 Levitte International ads shown in relation to parked domain pages--Internet addresses that have been registered but that have no Web pages--and 1,009 ads on error pages that can be shown when people type invalid URLs into their … Read more

Google taps 'Family Guy' guy for Web series

Google has enlisted Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to create an original animated series that it will distribute on the Web via its AdSense advertising system, according to The New York Times.

Google plans to use AdSense to syndicate the program--called Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy--to thousands of Web sites that are popular with MacFarlane's target audience, according to the newspaper. Advertising will be incorporated via "preroll" ads, banner ads, or "brought to you by" ads, according to the report.

MacFarlane is also reportedly working with advertisers to create original advertising to run … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 741: 3Gasm

All the iPhone and App Store news you can shake a stick at. Plus, RIM and Palm say they're thrilled about the new iPhone. Huh. Us, too! But it's a delayed, uh, 3Gasm, since the phone won't be coming out until July 11. In other news, Amazon broke itself, the MPAA wants to break your movie recording, and SanDisk kills the TakeTV and Fanfare less than a year after it was born. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 741

Live blog: Steve Jobs at WWDC 2008 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9960064-37.html

What’s good for … Read more

Meet Sense Networks, the latest player in the hot 'geo' market

What if your nightlife agenda was dictated not by text messages, phone calls, or your city edition of Time Out, but by a shifting pattern of dots on a Google Map?

As absurd as it may sound, a New York company called Sense Networks thinks that's the solution. On Monday, the company emerged from stealth mode and simultaneously released an "experimental" product called CitySense, an urban navigation product that puts a new spin on the hot market of location-based mobile networking.

Backed by hedge funds rather than the venture firms that typically fuel tech start-ups, Sense Networks … Read more

Baby offered on eBay now in state custody

Anyone who trolls eBay with regularity has probably gotten used to seeing the odd object up for sale now and again. But the Saturday story of a German pair offering their 8-month-old for purchase on the site may end up topping more than a few creepiest-ever-on-eBay lists.

A police spokesperson in the Bavarian town of Krumbach said law enforcement is investigating the couple for possible child trafficking, even though the 23-year-old woman of the duo insists the post was a joke. Authorities, not appreciating the parents' apparently twisted sense of humor, have also put the unnamed baby into state custody. … Read more

OMG! InterActiveCorp buys teen fashion site

Sprawling new-media conglomerate InterActiveCorp on Tuesday announced that it has acquired StarNet Interactive, an Israel-based company that operates GirlSense, a social site for teen girls. More specifically, GirlSense describes itself as "online dress-up games for girls with fashion sense."

Terms of the deal, which is part of IAC's Consumer Applications and Portals division, were not disclosed.

Other teen-oriented properties in IAC's arsenal, with which GirlSense will likely be intertwined, include virtual world Zwinky and profile customization site Webfetti. GirlSense counts its registered users at 13 million.

"Part of our growth strategy includes acquisition of products … Read more

Google brings display ads to mobile devices

Google is expanding its advertising business into a new domain: graphical ads that appear on mobile devices.

As with the company's text-based mobile ads, the Google image ads are displayed on the basis of keywords that appear on Web sites that people visit with their mobile phones, Google said Wednesday.

Mobile devices are a new frontier for the Internet in general and for the advertising business that Google and many others are building atop it. The mobile Web has been hobbled by tiny screens, slow and unreliable connections, and carriers' data-access fees, but a new era is arriving.

Apple'… Read more