Google is expanding its video advertising testing with new ads from BMG and Warner.

According to the article, Google announced today that it will work with these two major music labels to embed video advertisements over the next 4 week test period on a select set of websites.

"Over the past few months, we have run tests to figure out how we work with our partners and advertisers to combine high quality video content with ads and then distribute them (over) the Google AdSense network," Google said in statement.

The test with the two music labels follows an earlier public trial of Google’s video advertising system with Viacom’s MTV Networks, which provided music videos to run on a select number of Web sites running Google ads…

As a example, Warner Music has defined multiple video channels along themes like "rock music" or featuring the "Divas of Pop Music." A Web site owner can select a video channel and embed it on a section of the site dedicated to running Google AdSense ads. Visitors then can click to watch ad-supported videos within the video channel on sites running the ads.

Tags: google, bmg, warner, music labels, video, video advertising, google adsense

Google’s blog service, Blogger, now offers support for custom domains. Plus, they’ll host it - free - and redirect your old URL for you.

Blogger added a new feature: Bring your own domain. All you have to do is buy a domain, anywhere, at any price you can find, set up your Blogger account and point your DNS at Google’s server at ghs.google.com, and viola*! Now your Blogger blog appears at its own domain name, and all you had to do was pay less than ten bucks a year for the domain. You don’t need hosting, because Blogger handles all the traffic, you just bring the domain. [InsideGoogle]

Of course, you’d still be stuck with the Blogger platform, which is quite the chore to muck around with. Even free hosting won’t tempt me over to use Blogger. Wordpress is still my choice, hands down.

Via duncan ; Tags: blogger, google, blog software, google news

PubSub is dying…

It’s a sad state of affairs for a service which I will say we all could have loved.

PubSub is like the ‘little train that could’… but didn’t, quite. I’ve always felt that PubSub was just waiting to happen. They had a core technology that had amazing results (some of the most accurate), but they never took off as quickly as they should, and I’m not the one to dig around to tell you why.

Well, the mysteries are partly unraveled by Bob Wyman here:

I believe firmly that the cause of our difficulties is not the team we have built nor is it the technology we’ve developed. Both are great. What has prevented us moving forward is a battle with a group of minority shareholders, some of whom claim to be lead by our ex-CEO Salim Ismail and are, in any case, primarily his "friends and family." This group is using very unusual clauses in our Shareholder’s agreements to block mergers or financings. We’ve found it difficult to determine their motives, however, some have said that they believe that it is in their interest to drive the company into bankruptcy so that they can buy our software and start a new company. Of course, I believe that by the time we go through bankruptcy proceedings, we won’t have any employees and frankly, a software company without the employees that developed its software is worthless. Our assets will have a much higher value if we have the employees available, thus, the best course at this time is to sell our assets, trademarks, etc. to cover the outstanding debt and make our employees available to the purchaser.

So, a shareholder is wielding such power as to stop funding in order to gain assets to the technology. A stumbling block like this would indeed prevent PubSub from getting the funding they need to push PubSub effectively into the market and move the technology forward.

It’s a sad loss for the blogosphere.

Tags: pubsub, sad, blogging, blogosphere

The blogosphere has swelled to 35.3 Million blogs. Impressive. 

The Bloggies Winners 2006 have been announced as:

• Blogger: Best Web Application for Weblogs
• Loobylu: Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog
• Tokyo Girl: Best Asian Weblog
• Baghdad Burning: Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog
• My Boyfriend Is a Twat: Best European Weblog
• Girl With a One-Track Mind: Best British or Irish Weblog
• Cooking Diva: Best Latin American Weblog
• Photojunkie: Best Canadian Weblog
• (5 Awards) PostSecret: Best American Weblog ; Best Topical Weblog ; Best Community Weblog ; Best New Weblog ; Weblog of the Year
• (2 Awards) Joshuaink.com: Best Tagline of a Weblog: "More love than a bus full of hippies" ; Best-Designed Weblog
• The Movie Blog: Best Podcast of a Weblog
• FlickrBlog: Best Photography of a Weblog
• Make Blog: Best Craft Weblog
• Vegan Lunch Box: Best Food Weblog
• Go Fug Yourself: Best Entertainment Weblog ; Best Writing of a Weblog
• Wonkette: Best Weblog About Politics
• ProBlogger: Best Web Development Weblog
• Slashdot: Best Computers or Technology Weblog
• Queerty: Best GLBT Weblog
• It’s Raining Noodles!: Best Teen Weblog
• Overheard in New York: Most Humorous Weblog
• (2 Awards) Boing Boing: Best Group Weblog ; Lifetime Achievement
• NeedCoffee.com: Best-Kept-Secret Weblog

Congratulations to all the winners! Although the list is skewed slightly to very large blogs, I always get a kick out of reading the country-specific winners and all the nominees - lots of great new blog finds in there!

Tags: bloggies, blog awards

Today Technorati launched something called Technorati Favorites which lets you create a list of your favorite blogs. There are several ways of adding a blog to your favorites list:

• On any Technorati page, click on the star icon () next to a blog name.
• Use a bookmarklet to add a blog you are reading.
• Import OPML or XOXO files.
• A blog can include "Add you your favorites" buttons that readers can click on.

So, you’ve added a bunch of sites to your list. What now? You can restrict your searches to only your favorite blogs. You can display recent posts from your favorites on your own blog using the Favorites Widget. And, finally, you can share your favorites list with your friends.

I don’t think I’m going to use this feature much. I already keep a list of the sites I like on my feed reader and I don’t need another list to maintain. But what I would really like to see is a reverse listing. That is, I want to see who has added my blog as a favorite. This would help me better understand my readers, by looking at what other blogs they read I could get a better idea of the type of content they are interested in.

Tags: technorati, favorites

The long-awaited PageRank update is under way. Most of my sites will see an increase, but some may go down. Too early to tell. For the most part, this is fabulous news.

Means the b5 crew will have their hands full this next week with getting new ad programs up, but I bet it’s a big cheer all around.

Catch more from Darren.

Tags: google, pagerank, page rank

Well, I’ve never heard of this happening before. A blog has been stolen. Not the content. The BLOG.

Here is more info from Tris:

someone got into both her GMail accounts and Blogger accounts … and taken over … and has hijacked her blog.

If you know how to help, please contact Tris on his blog.

This is the worst type of blog theft I could imagine. I would be devastated if it happened to me. Since both Gmail and Blogger are online hosted solutions, I guess your control of either is diminished.

Grr. I want my PageRank update. It’s been quite some time now. Since November I believe.

Well, I’m waiting. And all the b5 bloggers are waiting. A PageRank update on b5media is big news for traffic and revenue, and as channel editor I totally want it to happen.

I’m also curious about how my own blogs will change ;)

Anyone want to speculate on when it will be?

I was totally convinced the timing was right in January, but it’s February now, so I was off.

Tags: google, pagerank

Well, proof positive that being a whiny blogger works.

No more massive theft. Obviously, despite not reading their own blog (and our rants about content theft in the posts they were stealing), they did notice my post about it. So, they took down our feeds and made this statement:

"I have now removed http://www.lohangroupie.com/feed/ from my sites syndication links after reading this article. All blog entries linked directly to http://lohangroupie.com using the blog entry title. The Blogroll did include a link to lohangroupie.com which used Lindsay Lohan News as link text."

Yeah, sure. 99% of people would have assumed it to be their content, so I consider that content theft. That, and we do not publish CC. So, phew it’s down but boy people need to learn manners.

Oh, and the comment was left anonymously, of course. So, I have no email to rant back on. Darn.

Tags: theft, copyright, complaining, nag

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The Boston Globe says that bloggers will ‘eventually’ be able to make money. Funny, I thought I was already making money from blogging?

The site, Gather.com, positions itself as a kind of eBay for online writers and their readers — a gathering spot for musings and discussions on everything from wine and computers to fitness and spirituality. And, with a business model that could shake up the writing profession, executives from Gather Inc. are recruiting bloggers by offering them a share of the company’s advertising revenue.

Eventually, popular writers will be able to earn a living by posting their work and attracting eyeballs to advertisements, said Gather’s founder, 35-year-old technology entrepreneur Tom Gerace. That won’t happen right away, though. - Boston Globe

Gather.com sounds very much like a blog network, except it focuses on the writing and not the writers. So, it’s kind of like Digg meets an old fashioned chat room, more than an actual blog network. Why I find this problematic - in many ways, blogging is about creating relationships with audience. And this doesn’t feel at all like blogging. Social networking, yes, but the ‘blogging’ component is post-writing, not the entire process. Key here - to me, blogging is a process of dialogue.

What are your impressions?

Via Jason Calacanis ; Tags: blogging, boston globe, money, ads

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There are a lot of illicit blogging practices out there. One of them in particular annoys me because of the lack of solutions. Content theft.

What do you do when someone, like this, steals your content? Sure, they link back to you, but is it obvious that it’s not their content? In some cases, links are not even included.

Content theft is usually when the content is ripped off without link or attribution, in part or whole. Content theft, IMO, is not someone using your content with a blockquote and link. I am good with that. But I am not good with unclear situations.

So, when you have no way to contact that person - via email or comment - the only extreme choice is to try to get their blog removed from the host. I won’t go that far for one post. If it were every post, you betcha.

Have you experienced content theft? If so, what did you do?

Tags: content theft, copyright, stealing

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Today, our first blog, Blogaholics, turns one. In the year span of time we have grown to 16 blogs - our own, network blogs, and paid blogs.

It’s been a year of growth, and will be a year of additional ‘Blogiversaries’, soon even for this blog.

We started more blogs very quickly after our first, which I think goes against the usual growth pattern. We made the decision to invest in long term growth and potential early on - and have continued to do so.

Usually when we start a blog, we start many at once. And this early and mass growth has defined our investment in the blogosphere, one we are clearly starting to reap benefits from on all fronts - not just monetary, but also career wise and in our personal relationships.

So, many surveys find that bloggers don’t stick with just one blog, especially if they focus on topic-specific blogs. So, has this held true for you?

How long have you had your blog, and how quickly have you grown from one to more?

Tags: blog growth, blogiversary, multiblog, professional blogging

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Today Ponzi sent a message to the Gnomedex mailing list announcing that the official dates for 6.0 are June 29 to July 1, 2006.

Arieanna and I had a great time at Gnomedex last year and we are really looking forward to the next one. For a while we were worried that we would not be able to attend because it could have possibly been at the time of our wedding. Now we just need to plan our honeymoon around it :)

Tags: gnomedex, pirillo, ponzi

The Bloggies are open for their 6th year of awards for the Best Blogs, and you determine who the winners will be by nominating your favorite blogs.

Nominations fall into the following categories, and, yes, you can nominate a blog for more than one category!

• Best Web Application for Weblogs
• Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog
• Best Asian Weblog
• Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog
• Best European Weblog
• Best British or Irish Weblog
• Best Latin American Weblog
• Best Canadian Weblog
• Best American Weblog
• Best Tagline of a Weblog
• Best Podcast of a Weblog
• Best Photography of a Weblog
• Best Craft Weblog
• Best Food Weblog
• Best Entertainment Weblog
• Best Weblog About Politics
• Best Web Development Weblog
• Best Computers or Technology Weblog
• Best Topical Weblog
• Best GLBT Weblog
• Best Teen Weblog
• Most Humorous Weblog
• Best Writing of a Weblog
• Best Group Weblog
• Best Community Weblog
• Best-Designed Weblog
• Best-Kept-Secret Weblog
• Best New Weblog
• Weblog of the Year

To be consideed for the final vote, a blog must be one of the top 10 nominated blogs. So, get nominating. I would be very honored if you nominated us! Thanks!

Tags: bloggies, weblog awards

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