UK sales of games will outstrip music and video for the first time in 2008, says a report from Verdict Research. The report predicts spending on games will rise by 42% to £4.64bn in 2008, with sales on music and video at £4.46bn.

“A huge shift in consumer attitudes has turned video games into the UK’s most popular form of entertainment, say the retail analysts. The BBC has more details

The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Google blog has just posted that now in 2008 they have crawled 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLS with several billion pages being added each day.

The top 10 British brands have been publish by YouGov in their Brand Index Survey today 

  1. Google
  2. Microsoft
  3. Mercedes-Benz
  4. BBC
  5. British Airways
  6. Royal Doulton
  7. BMW
  8. Bosch
  9. Nike
10. Sony

The British Guardian has more details

Reuters.com has an intersting article on networking between small businesses

“Raisecapital.com is another specialized social networking site. It matches entrepreneurs seeking financing with potential investors. Guru.com links freelancers with companies in need of their services.

“Many small businesses use social networks almost exclusively to market their products, finding they offer a quick and inexpensive way to get the word out to large groups of existing and potential customers

Reuters article here

A while ago we noted Google’s ambition to be able to offer real time stock quotes for free. Today The Offical Googlel Blog has a post that real time stock quotes  on NASDAQ securities are now available at Google Finance

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has confirmed that it is in talks to buy the information technology provider Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal, which indicated that HP was close to a deal to buy EDS for between $12billion and $13billion.

Byteandswitch.com has more details 

A very cool world wide near real time mapping of Wikipedia edits.

The London Times investigates  how the internet is transforming Britain

Google have announced a new tool for publishers Google Ad Manager beta. Designed for ad management and serving needs of smaller publishers.

” Google Ad Manager is a free, hosted ad and inventory management tool that can help publishers sell, schedule, deliver and measure their directly-sold and network-based ad inventory.” More details at The Official Google Blog.

Today at Apple’s iPhone-for-Business Event Steve Jobs announced figures for the iPhones market penetration

28% of the smartphone market and incredibly represents
71% of U.S. mobile Internet usage.

Source WSJ Live Blogging at the iPhone-for-Business Event

Apple also annouced it’s iPhone SDK (Software Developers Kit) as part of the new iPhone Enterprise Beta Program.

Added:Engadget has a great slide show of the iPhone SDK Press conference.

Digital Trends is reporting on a Google philanthropic project to provide phone numbers and voice mail to the homeless.

Google partnered with Project Homeless Connect to make the program happen. Although only San Francisco homeless shelters are currently able to set up accounts, Google eventually hopes to push the service nationwide.

Heritage.org have compiled their 2008 Index of Economic Freedom

1 - Hong Kong - [90.3]
2 - Singapore - [87.4]
3 - Ireland - [82.4]
4 - Australia - [82.0]
5 - United States - [80.6]
6 - New Zealand - [80.2]
7 - Canada - [80.2]
8 - Chile - [79.8]      
9 - Switzerland - [79.7]
10 - United Kingdom - [79.5]

The Freedoms assessed were

Business Freedom, Trade Freedom, Fiscal Freedom,
Freedom from Government, Investment Freedom,
Financial Freedom, Property Rights,
Freedom from Corruption and Labor Freedom.

The Economic Times is reporting the State run telecom operator BSNL and the US based WiMax solutions firm Soma Networks are to deploy a new network covering 4 states (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Goa) and 200, 000,000 people.  The network should complete by 2010 with the first stage going live in June or July this year.

The London Times is reporting “Internet shopping could account for half of Britain’s £300 billion-a-year retail market by as early as 2018 after coming of age this Christmas, it was predicted yesterday”  [Christmas Day E-Sales were up 269%]

“James Roper, the chief executive of Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), the internet retail monitor, said that the pace of change would be unprecedented over the next decade, as stores have been left with little choice but to improve significantly their online offering to protect sales. 

The Queen’s Christmas Day speech will be posted on YouTube for the first time as the 81-year-old Sovereign keeps up with modern technology.   The Royal Channel  has been created on youtube.com featuring clips of The Queen and other Royals from both archive and recent footage.

The Queen’s Christmas Day speech is to be uploaded on the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s first ever televised Christmas speech, which she delivered live to the nation in 1957.

Microsoft has agreed to buy Multimap, the privately-owned British company that is second place in the UK Online mapping services market with around 4.000,000 unique visitors last month compared with Google Maps 11,000,000.

Multimap is different from many other mapping solutions because at 3 scales (resolutions) it uses the Ordinance Survey mapping data the use of which is Crown Copyright and as such restricted by the OS.

Multimap is expected to post revenues of around $24,000,00 this year, and made a profit of just under $1,800,000 in 2006.

Set to be 50% higher than last year Deloitte’s report expects the increased online spending to continue into 2008. 

“The Internet is now a genuine shopping destination, sixty one percent of households in Great Britain have access to the internet from home in 2007, over half the UK population have shopped online in the last year and the number of consumers doing most of their Christmas gift shopping is set to double this year.”

“The internet is this year’s rising star, doubling its share of consumers to 14% from 2006. Verdict research (2007) reports that 31 million people in the UK now shop on the internet and our research indicates that 7 million of them will be doing most of their shopping online.”

From the Delloitte Christmas Retail Survey 2007 (.pdf)

Worldwide mobile telephone subscriptions have reached 3.3 billion, equivalent to half the global population, 26 years after the first cellular network was launched, research firm Informa said. Reuters has more.

The BBC has a short article looking at studies from uSwitch & Forrester Research

The uSwitch study says the Online shopping in the UK is due to hit £40bn this year. It predicts that the UK’s online spending will further rise to £162bn by 2020, when it will make up 40% of total retail sales.

While Forrester Research predicts that online Christmas shopping will reach £13.8bn this year, a 42% increase on 2006.

Google has unveiled software it hopes will become the “operating system” for a variety of future mobile phones.

The software aims to make it easy to use the web on a phone and to target consumers with mobile adverts.

The BBC has more

Peter Dengate Thrush is to take over from Vint Cerf as the new chairman of the ICANN board. Vint Cerf is leaving because of Term limits, having first been elected to the position in 2000.

Vint Cerf said before stepping down.

“To those who now guide its path into the future comes the challenge to fashion an enduring institution on this solid foundation,I am confident that this goal is not only attainable, it is now also necessary. The opportunity is there: Make it so.”

Under Vint Cerf’s tenure ICANN has grown from around 12 staff members in 2001 to around 100 staff members and a $41.6 million budget for the coming year.

Vint’s inclusiveness, vision and understanding of not only the technical issues but also the nature of both individual and business interests will be a exceptionally hard act to surpass.

Added:
ICANN Press release

Just announced

Microsoft is to take a $240 million stake in Facebook which values Facebook at $15 billion.

Added: The London Times has more & the BBC has 15 reasons why Facebook may be worth $15 billion

ICANN IDN test  “My Name, My Language, My Internet” goes live

more details at ICANN

From the Internet2 press release

“Internet2 announced the completion of its new nationwide network infrastructure. With an initial capacity of 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) nationwide and revolutionary bandwidth-on-demand capabilities, the new Internet2 infrastructure provides researchers and educators the potential to transform disciplines across the board from science, to telemedicine, to network research, to the performing arts.”

 For more information: http://www.internet2.edu

Recognising the extraordinary growth of internet activity in India, ICANN has chosen to host their first meeting for 2008 in New Delhi, India.

 ICANN has a few more details here

Google has anounced it has acquired the startup company Zingku
Zingku says its technology makes it easy to share messages, pictures, “mobile flyers,” or other creations using mobile devices, according to the firm.

“Our service integrates your mobile phone with a personalized web site so that you can easily move (zing) things back and forth between the web and your mobile as well as…connect with friends,” Zingku’s website says

Tesco the largest British supermarket (Groceries) is to sell clothes online from November in time for the Christmas trading period. The DailyMail has more.

More Tesco online stores.

Zillow.com, the real-estate Web site, announced yesterday it has raised an additional $30 million which comes on top of the $57 million raised since its launch 18 months ago. Zillow Chief Executive Rich Barton (Expedia founder) said

“Zillow will use the new cash to continue improving its Web site and augment its advertising sales force. The company, which offers estimates of home values called “Zestimates,” has 155 employees, including 20 national ad sales representatives. It also now lets people post homes for sale on the site and ask questions about specific properties.

“The company is trying a localized advertising program. Businesses such as plumbers, architects or real-estate agents use the program to deliver targeted ads to people searching for home information within specific ZIP codes. About 6,000 businesses have participated.

Google has a beta test for Google Gadget Ads which allows Adsense publishers to add Rich Media advertisments to their websites like the major players.

The New York Times will stop charging for access to the subscription parts of its Web site, [midnight Tuesday], recognising that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.

“In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.

More details in this article on the Times website

Patrik Faltstrom has created a Google map of root servers. Patrik has more info here

The Google Public Policy Blog has an interesting post on the economic value of “fair use” summarizing a study (.pdf) by the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

Shoemoney.com has a very interesting post on using a brand to migrate users to a new domain. The post shows how successful Bodog have been moving from bodog.com to newbodog.com after the unexpected and unforseen loss of their name for legal reasons.

“Talking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Vint Cerf - one of the handful of researchers who helped build the internet in the 1970s - said that the television industry would change rapidly as it approached its “iPod moment”.

The British Guardian newspaper has more details

From the London Times

“YouTube will introduce advertising into video clips today for the first time as the world’s most popular video- sharing website tries to justify its $1.65 billion (£832 million) purchase price.

“Twenty seconds after a clip begins, a transparent advert appears in the bottom fifth of the video for a further 15 seconds. Clicking on the image overlay plays the advert, but if ignored it simply disappears.

Google has announced new functionality for Google Maps - Emdedded maps, which allows blogs and websites to embed the funcionality of Google Maps by simply copying a snippet of html in the same way YouTube does for videos.

The Silicon Alley insider is reporting  

US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies–Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN- grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.

While

US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, News Corp., CBS Radio, Citadel, Disney, Entercom, Clear Channel, Clear Channel Outdoor, Time Inc., New York Times Company, McClatchy, Dow Jones, and Gannett) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%.

Spending in internet advertising will  reach $61.98 billion, and will surpass newspapers to become the nation’s leading ad medium in 2011, projects private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson in its 21st Communications Industry Forecast released today.

VSS Forcast

“Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. The set of web services APIs allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on top of Amazon’s reliable and scalable payment infrastructure.

Interbrand.com has published its annual ranking of the 100 best global brands. Coca-Cola retains the No. 1 spot and Google outpaces the pack for the second straight year.

The BBC’s online TV service (iPlayer)  is being launched, offering viewers the chance to download their favourite programmes from the last seven days.

At its annual meeting Microsoft announced its acquisition of AdECN, a stock market for buyers and sellers of web advertising.

CNN has brief details - (terms not disclosed)

The BBC is reporting Google has purchased Postini for $625m. “The search engine giant said the deal would allow it to provide more companies with web-based services similar to its Google Apps package.

“Postini sells encryption and archiving software to more than 35,000 businesses and 10m users across the globe.

China is set to become the nation with the most Broadband connections by 2008.

 ”China added 4.5 million high-speed connections in the first three months of 2007 to 56.3 million, says research firm point 15pic. The U.S. ended the first quarter with 60.4 million.

“China still lags the U.S. and many other countries in broadband “penetration.” Just 4.3% of its 1.3 billion people and 14.3% of households have speedy Internet connections, says point 15pic.

“In America, 52.7% of households have broadband, less than most other rich nations and well below South Korea’s 90% penetration.  via CNNMoney.com

The London Times takes a look at state of play for mobile access of the web.

Guy Kawasaki has an interesting post on his blog - How to build a Web 2.0 site with user-generated content, citizen journalism, long-tail and social media for $12,107.09. Even includes an overview by numbers so you can check you’re on target.

Check out the Web 2.0 site at Truemors.com

Apple has launched a Windows (XP) version of Safari. BBC has more here

Download Safari 3 (Public Beta) 

Internet display ad spending in the US jumped 17% in the first quarter while total ad spending fell.

CNNMoney.com reports “Online advertising is once again the brightest spot in an otherwise moribund advertising market, according to first-quarter figures reported by two prominent media research firms.

“TNS Media Intelligence said Tuesday that spending on online display advertising - which does not include search - jumped 16.7 percent in the first quarter from a year ago to $2.7 billion. By way of comparison, overall ad spending fell 0.7 percent. 

Veni Markovski (ICANN Board Director) and Paul Twomey (ICANN CEO & President) are to attend and speak at the XIth St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Other participents include Russian president Vladimir Putin, US vice-president Al Gore and former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. More details in the ICANN Blog

In an interesting post on the Feedburner blogs.feedburner.com Feedburner outlines some of the synergies and thinking behind the acquisition. There is also an acqusition Feedburner FAQ

The BBC is reporting  spending on UK television adverts fell last year fo the first time since 2001.

“I believe online spend could overtake TV within the next three to four years,” said Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade association for the internet marketing industry.

A handy plugin has been released by VeriSign which implements the Extended Validation (EV) Certificate features available in Microsoft IE 7.  - The address bar turns green and displays certificate owner and CA issuer information when the browser receives an EV certificate.

Mozilla download here.

ZDNet is reporting Microsoft has agreed to acquire European mobile phone ad company ScreenTonic to try to gain a foothold in that rapidly growing market. Terms were not disclosed.

“Internet sales have exploded over the past six years, growing by 3,553% between April 2000 and December 2006.

“SHOPPERS will spend £78 billion a year online by 2010 – doubling the web’s share of retail sales to 20%.  

The London Sunday Times has more in their Online sales ‘will hit £78bn’ article

The EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit)  & IBM have ranked e-readiness of 69 counties 

Here are the top 20  in terms of infrastructure and the ability of their consumers, businesses and governments to use ICT.

1….Denmark
=2…US
=2…Sweden
4….Hong Kong
5….Switzerland
6….Singapore
7….UK
8….Netherlands
9….Austrailia
10…Finland
11…Austria
12…Norway
13…Canada
14…New Zealand
15…Bermuda
16…South Korea
17…Taiwan
18…Japan
19…Germany
20…Belgium

Download the full report  (.pdf)

Microsoft wants to bring computing to a further one billion people by 2015.  

The Microsoft initiative was launched by Bill Gates in Beijing under the banner of its Unlimited Potential scheme, a program aimed at bridging the digital divide.

Five million of the laptops will be start to be delivered this summer to countries including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Rwanda, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.

BBC News has more details about Xo & Microsoft here 

The BBC is reporting Google has launched its payament service in the UK just less than a year after its launch in the US in June 2006.

Google checkout differs from Paypal as it works using debit card and credit card transactions, whereas  Paypal can also transfer money directly to and from buyrers and sellers bank accounts.

Google is to hold a developer day around the world on the 31st of May 2007

Mountain View, California
Sao Paulo, Brazil
London, United Kingdom
Paris, France
Madrid, Spain
Hamburg, Germany
Moscow, Russia
Tokyo, Japan
Sydney, Australia
Beijing, China

From the press release 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - On May 31st, Google offices in ten countries will host Google Developer Day™, a global event featuring workshops, keynotes and breakout discussions on Google’s APIs and developer tools.

Focusing on the theme “Building Blocks for Better Web Applications,” Google Developer Day will explore innovative uses of Google developer products to create and enhance applications, integrate with Google services and reach millions of users on Google and beyond

Predicted percentage growth from 2005 to 2009
Qatar 304.2
Egypt 220.7
Moldova 185.7
Romania 160.4
UAE 154.8
Pan Arab 146.8
Russia 143.2
Saudi Arabia 113.5
Kuwait 113.2
Slovakia 106.4

Source: ZenithOptimedia via the  London Times

The BBC is reporting from May, EMI is to offer music downloads free from DRM (Digital Rights Management) . This is a major shift of policy and will allow users who are prepared to pay a premium the ability to play downloaded tracks on any player.

The London Times is reporting that Record companies agreed a deal with the UK’s commercial radio stations yesterday that will allow music clips in podcasts for the first time.”Stations such as Capital 95.8, Heart and Magic FM can include up to 30 seconds of music tracks from leading recording artists in podcasts, in a move that the industry hopes will create a new trend of music podcast downloads among listeners.

The BBC is reporting internet advertising in the UK during 2006 surged 41.2% to £2 billion to pass national newspaper advertising for the first time.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–News Corporation and NBC Universal will launch the largest Internet video distribution network ever assembled with the most sought-after content from television and film…

The video-rich site will debut this summer with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips, representing premium content from at least a dozen networks and two major film studios.

AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo! will be the new site’s initial distribution partners. Their users, who represent 96 percent of the monthly U.S. unique users on the Internet, will have unlimited access to the site’s vast library of content.

This media alliance will offer consumers free long- and short-form video and create a compelling platform for advertisers, targeting the rapidly growing audience of online video consumers.

Charter advertisers include Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco, Esurance, Intel and General Motors.

Full press release here 

The Nokia Ad Service is launching this week in Europe and will be available globally in the second half of 2007.

The Nokia Ad service

“As advertisers struggle to reach personalized targeting with traditional media such as print and TV, mobile advertising is becoming an increasingly attractive channel for brands,” said Tom Henriksson, Director of Nokia Ad Service at Nokia Emerging Business Unit. “We have completed a number of pilot campaigns with advertisers and mobile publishers for testing the Nokia ad serving technology and consumer experience. The feedback has been very positive from all parties.”

Nokia Advertising Connector

“With Nokia Advertising Connector we are partnering with newspaper publishers, other traditional media companies, aggregators, platform companies, operators and internet companies to help them serve their current advertisers by offering easy access to a mobile audience” says Matthew Snyder, Head of Business Development, Nokia Multimedia, Advertising Business Program. “We have an aggregator interface for plugging partners’ platforms into the Connector - Nokia being in the role of platform service provider. Think of the Connector as a one-stop delivery point with intelligence”.

Google Maps has teamed up with BMW to allow their customers in Germany to send business listings found on Google Maps Deutschland directly to cars enabled with the BMW Assist service.

The Times of London is reporting ”Google will launch an assault on one of Microsoft’s biggest earners today when it unveils its first suite of paid-for office tools.

“For $50 (£26) a year per user, Google Apps Premier Edition will offer corporate customers a bundle of web-based applications including e-mail, a word processor and a spreadsheet. It will compete with Microsoft’s Office, which includes the software stalwarts Word and Excel.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets        Google Apps

Compare free and paid editions

On the 14th February new rules from Ofcom (the industry regulator in the UK) require all ISPs to provide the Migration Authorisation Codes (Mac).  Some ISPs have been making getting the Mac very difficult, from the 14th they can be fined upto 10% of their annual turnover should they fail to comply with the new rules and not supply the mac code within 5 days of a request.

Uswitch.com has a lot of infomation about switching within many service industries including broadband, insurance, credit cards, loans and utilities. 

After signing a deal with six major Hollywood Studios Walmart has become the first leading supermarket to launch a cut price film and TV download service [beta].  This is going to put serious pressure on the highstreet DVD and video stores.

Pretty soon broadband is going to be in a lot of UK living rooms as the various on-demand TV packages launch. The BBC has provided a  list of the services (including their own) that are currently available or are to be shortly launched.