cancersurgeries.net

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

“With one click, users can opt out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick ad serving and the Google content network,” Google said. “If a user has already opted out of the DoubleClick cookie, that opt-out will also automatically apply to the Google content network.”

The cookie helps unify operations from Google’s earlier advertising work and technology gained from its acquisition of DoubleClick. It also simplifies things for people who don’t want to receive the cookies.

Google makes the vast majority of its revenue and profit through search ads that are shown alongside search results. The new features are designed to improve the company’s position with display ads, the more traditional, typically graphical ads built into ordinary Web pages.

Google also is letting advertisers see “view-through conversion” statistics, which measure when a person who’s been shown an ad visits the advertiser’s Web site. This is significant because advertisers want to know how influential their ads are without having to rely solely on click-through statistics. Especially in today’s iffy economy, being able to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign is crucial to advertisers’ decision to run the ads.

Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Google provides a privacy site where people can opt out of the cookies.

Advertisers now can keep an ad from being shown too frequently to each user, Google said on its corporate blog Thursday. Advertisers also can see data about how many people have seen an ad campaign and the average number of times people have seen the ads.

Google also updated its ad-related privacy policy as a result of the new cookie.

The new features come through use of a new cookie, a small text file stored on a Web browser’s computer, according to Google’s AdWords blog.

Google has added some abilities for advertisers to control and track their display advertisements.

“Ideally, Microsoft would follow our direction and implement and distribute the same Mopen functionality (the mechanism for creating stand-alone Moonlight desklets) that we have for Windows and
Mac. This would ensure maximum adoption of standalone Silverlight-applications,” de Icaza wrote in his blog.

That’s not something Microsoft offers right now. Many people expect the company to do that to compete with Adobe’s AIR, which lets people use Web tools to write desktop applications.

The “Moonlight desklets” from Mono run standalone outside the browser, too. But de Icaza made it clear that there’s quite a bit of work to make it easier to write them for all Mono-supported operating systems.

Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .Net framework. It lets developers use Microsoft tools and languages, like C#, to write applications that run on Windows, Linux, or MacOS.

De Icaza said that some of the Moonlight work aims to let people write Silverlight applications that run standalone, outside the browser.

He said once Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0 later this year, the task of writing standalone Silverlight applications will get easier. He also said that it would be a feature in Moonlight 2.0 while they are still working on the 1.0 version.

“We as a team can certainly create a Linux-only platform for these controls, and live happily with Mopen, but we would miss an opportunity of having something cross platform like AIR is.

Miguel de Icaza, who heads up the open-source Mono project, has provided an update on a project to create Silverlight applications that run out of the browser, moving a small step toward what Adobe Systems offers with AIR.

Part of the Mono project is Moonlight, an implementation of Silverlight that runs on Linux. Silverlight is a browser plug-in for rich Internet applications.

Representatives from eBay did not immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment on the report.

TOM-Skype, eBay’s joint venture in China, is recording customer text chats and censoring them if they contain certain keywords related to topics the government deems objectionable, according to a report released on Wednesday (PDF) by researchers in Canada.

The service also routinely logs and captures millions of records that include
personal information and contact details for any text chat and voice calls placed to TOM-Skype users, including calls from Skype users, the researchers found.

“This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,” Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told The New York Times. “It’s X-Files without the aliens.”

Not only is the data collection suspect, but there are inadequate safeguards to protect the privacy of the TOM-Skype users, according to the report. The records and information needed to decrypt the log files are kept on servers that are accessible by the public.

“TOM-Skype is censoring and logging text chat messages that contain specific, sensitive keywords and may be engaged in more targeted surveillance,” the report concludes. “What is clear is that TOM-Skype is engaging in extensive surveillance with seemingly little regard for the security and privacy of Skype users. This is in direct contradiction of Skype’s public statements regarding their policies in China.”

The keywords that trigger action include words related to Taiwanese independence, the banned religious group Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, says the report from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

• Microsoft has been attracted to Yahoo for more than its search business. It has engineering talent, 500 million members, and some compelling services that would work across the MSN and Yahoo brands.

Here’s some of the logic trail that could lead Microsoft to the conclusion that it could end up with deals for both Yahoo and Facebook. This can be viewed in the context of the four pillars of Microsoft’s online strategy:

• Microsoft seriously needs to ramp up its search ad business. It has a deal with Facebook, but it lost out to Google on AOL and MySpace.com. How about taking over Yahoo’s text search ads business as a way to gain inventory and to continue the tough love for Yahoo, which could then lead to a full acquisition, especially in light of Icahn’s machinations and the shareholder meeting coming up July 3?

The latest wild rumor circulating is that after doing a search ad deal with Yahoo, Microsoft will spend its cash acquiring Facebook for $15 billion to $20 billion.

At a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about Facebook’s future as a standalone company. “You can tell, from our history and what we’ve done, that we really wanted to keep the company independent, by focusing on building and focusing on the long term,” Reuters reported.

• However, times have changed. Facebook has found that selling ads on social networks isn’t as profitable as selling search ads. The company has reduced its revenue forecast for the year. The growth curve for bringing in new users has slowed somewhat, though Facebook is expanding outside the United States. Competitors such as Google, AOL’s Bebo, and MySpace have not gone away, and the notion of data portability means that the walled gardens that keep people fenced into a social network are becoming porous.

• There is the chance that Microsoft will cool to a Yahoo acquisition–too many bad memories during the unfulfilled courtship–and just settle for a search ad deal to keep Google at bay. A joint venture for search covering both the search and advertising technology, as well as sales, would be a stronger play versus Google, but that might be hard to execute.

• Now for the ideal scenario for Microsoft: acquire both Yahoo and Facebook. First, do the search ad deal with Yahoo to pre-empt Google on that front. Over the summer, acquire Yahoo as the pressure builds from shareholders such as Icahn. Finally, as Facebook realizes that its dreams of becoming the next Google are less certain, acquire the social-networking giant.

• As the summer gets into gear, Microsoft will talk to Yahoo shareholders such as Icahn, various intermediaries, and eventually Yahoo, about a union at $33.50 per share.

• Thus, Zuckerberg & Co. might be more open to taking $15 billion to $20 billion now for their four years of work, rather than taking a chance on an uncertain market. I suspect that is what the elders are telling the Facebook management team.

• If this scenario were to occur, Microsoft would have a lot of online territory. It’s not as cheap as the Louisiana Purchase, and it’s not clear how Microsoft would integrate and leverage the various platforms and audiences.

Zuckerberg declined to comment on a follow-up question regarding the prospect of a sale. Microsoft invested $240 million to acquire 1.5 percent of Facebook at a $15 billion valuation. After walking away from the negotiating table with Yahoo, Microsoft’s bankers supposedly had some conversations with Facebook about an acquisition.

• Turning off Microsoft by getting in bed with Google would give those influential Yahoo shareholders–as well as disgruntled employees who view an acquisition by Microsoft as the right ending to the saga–more ammunition to fry Yahoo’s board. So, it’s wiser to keep the door open to Microsoft than to embrace Google to keep Microsoft out of the picture.

• Doing a deal for Google to sell text search ads on Yahoo’s sites would not only bring up possible antitrust issues, but it would also turn off Microsoft.

Consolidate ad platform and win in display

Innovate and disrupt in search

Deliver end-to-end user experiences across the PC, the phone, and the Web

Reinvent portal and social-media experiences

• Yahoo was surprised when Microsoft walked away from the table. Yahoo wanted $37 per share, and it threw the Google ad deal in Microsoft’s face, so CEO Steve Ballmer withdrew his $33-per-share offer. Miscalculation on Yahoo’s part.

• Since then, Yahoo shareholder lawsuits, plus Carl Icahn’s buying up of shares and proposing a complete new board of directors for the July 3 shareholder meeting, have put serious pressure on Yahoo to rethink its stance.

Microsoft has not lost its lust for Facebook, which would be a much cleaner acquisition than Yahoo and provide a lot of ad inventory, though social-network advertising isn’t as lucrative as search.

• As a bonus, announce the search ad transaction at Microsoft’s Advance08 Advertising Leadership Forum this week.

The 35-year-old Microsoft has a long-term view, and has been known to be persistent and tenacious. However, it’s not clear that by cobbling together and integrating different services, Microsoft can lead the way to Web 3.0.

• If Microsoft doesn’t acquire Yahoo outright, Facebook becomes more enticing. Zuckerberg has said many times that he plans on going public when the time is right.

The funding will be used to help VideoIQ expand to new markets and continue product development of its IP video surveillance and video analytics products, the company says.

Video surveillance firm VideoIQ is set to announce on Wednesday morning a $10 million Series B funding round.

Bedford, Mass.-based VideoIQ was spun out of GE Security in 2007 and is headed by Scott Schnell, a former RSA executive.

Lehman Brothers Venture Partners is leading the round, and current investors Matrix Partners and Atlas Venture are participating.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

The partnership, which is expected to go into effect in early October, is “good news for consumers and for advertisers,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of Yahoo U.S., speaking here to reporters at an event to discuss Yahoo’s strategy to open its technology foundation.

Yahoo expects $800 million in revenue and $250 million to $450 million in incremental cash flow from the first year of the deal.

SUNNYVALE, Calif–Yahoo is on a campaign trail of its own, taking an opportunity Thursday to plug a search-ad partnership with rival Google that could bring new profits to the company but that also faces possible antitrust hurdles.

She showed a specific example to bolster her case. A search for “red roses in Birmingham Alabama” yields no advertisements on Yahoo’s search engine and 11 on Google’s. Under the deal, Yahoo can show Google’s ads when is chooses, sharing the resulting revenue.

Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of Yahoo U.S.

“We didn’t have depth of coverage in that search query in that marketplace,” Schneider said. “By enabling Google to have access to that query term, we are able to create more access, better return on investment for the advertiser, and the ability, we think, to satisfy the user by giving them the most complete set of results against that query term.”

The company is clearly convinced of the deal’s merits. Now Yahoo must convince antitrust authorities and try to reverse Association of National Advertisers’ opposition to the Yahoo-Google ad deal.

While there were some good comments here or there from the audience, overall, it felt a bit like a committee examining open source from the outside looking in. We spent two hours talking about various themes and models and sociological implications but when the moderator asked the panelists to comment on what they learned, there wasn’t much to say. It felt like an academic discussion to me.

No, I’m not suggesting that it open-source Windows. But just as Novell once started with its UDDI server (which no one cared about, including those of us then at Novell), Microsoft needs to start somewhere. IIS might be a good place, as it’s integral to its business but doesn’t drive revenue.

This could be because the primary currency of open source is code. Microsoft has done a decent job of opening up to open-source code with Codeplex, but it has yet to engage with open source at the code level from a corporate standpoint.

Due to demands at work, I wasn’t able to attend OSCON (Open Source Convention) this year. I was particularly wanting to attend Microsoft’s Participate08 day. I like to see what Bill Hilf, Sam Ramji, Robert Duffner, and others there are working on, to get a sense of any outbreaks of rage against the Microsoft machine.

commentary

My friend and blogging peer Zack Urlocker attended Monday and, based on his comments, I worry that I didn’t miss much. I say “worry” because I expect and we need more from Microsoft than this:

Regardless of where, and despite the lack of a near-term revenue impact on the company, Microsoft does need to figure out open source. The Web is open source (and/or open standards/protocols). For Microsoft to effectively engage the Web, it can’t avoid engaging with open source. Might as well start now.

Microsoft says that there isn’t anything in
Windows Vista Media Center that would have stopped users from recording two NBC Universal shows earlier this month.

This set off warning bells to some because it looked like Microsoft was obeying an FCC proposal that would have required software and hardware makers honor restrictions on recording digital broadcasts–or flags–issued by TV networks. The courts threw out the FCC’s plan in 2005 so Microsoft wasn’t required to adhere to such restrictions.

So where does this leave us? Right back to where we started, with a major media company and the world’s premiere software maker denying blame. On the bright side, if you can call it that, the situation has illuminated just how much control over home recording broadcasters have as the country moves from analogue to digital broadcasting.

Is there a glitch that Microsoft doesn’t know about that can be triggered by a CGMS-A flag that prevents the recording of digital broadcasts? Why has Microsoft chosen to adhere to CGMS-A flags?

A controversy began on May 12, when people who attempted to use Windows Vista Media Center to record digital broadcasts of NBC Universal shows American Gladiators and Medium
received a message saying the copyright holder had blocked recording of the shows.

“Windows Media Center currently supports and adheres to CGMS-A,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said in the e-mail. “Content distributors use CGMS-A in very limited circumstances, such as to protect programs intended for video on demand. Please note that Windows Media Center does not support Broadcast Flag, sometimes referred to as Digital Broadcast Television Redistribution Control, on ATSC and clear QAM.”

More than a week later, Microsoft says what it meant was that Vista Media Centers adheres to flags for analog broadcasts. CGMS-A is copy protection for analog TV signals and they aren’t supposed to be able to block digital signals. But If nothing in Windows Media Centers was designed to block digital broadcasts and NBC Universal never sent a flag to block digital recording, then how were the shows blocked?

This isn’t supposed to happen. Television viewers have the right to record shows (that aren’t pay per view or video on demand) for personal use. NBC Universal later acknowledged that it accidentally flagged the shows, but what irked some Vista users is that the block couldn’t have been carried out unless Windows adhered to the flag.

EFF staffer Danny O’Brien wrote on the group’s blog:”We’re looking to obtain raw data dumps of the ATSC stream next time your copy of Vista chokes on an over-the-air digital TV feed.”

“It was a CGMS-A flag, not a broadcast flag, that was inadvertently set on those programs,” wrote an NBC spokeswoman. “We’re not aware of any other issues since then, and the flags were simply mistakes, not a change in policy here.”

Microsoft’s response comes a week after saying it had built technology into Vista that adhered to “flags used by broadcasters” that allowed them to “determine how their content is distributed and consumed.”

Microsoft said in an e-mail to CNET News.com on Wednesday that Media Center honors flags sent to protect against the recording of pay-per-view channels or video on demand (VOD). The company said that it doesn’t prevent the recording of over-the-air digital or QAM digital broadcasts.

NBC Universal also said Wednesday that it had discovered that the flag it sent out was CGMS-A.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation isn’t waiting for NBC Universal or Microsoft to hand over information. The group that advocates for Internet users has has begun looking for the causes of the block and has asked for help from Vista users to shed light on what’s happening.

“This shows the dangers of having these technologies baked into your devices,” said someone who deals with such issues and who asked for anonymity due to potential dealings with the companies involved.

It was actually quite odd. Sometimes, it would go for days and take me everywhere I needed to go with perfect precision. Other days, it would seem to really struggle.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

SAN FRANCISCO–I was sitting in a Costco here Wednesday night, waiting to have four new tires put on my 2001 Subaru Outback–after literally having just spent $900 on a tune-up and several other items. Paradoxically, I was thinking that Subaru makes a pretty good
car.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Now, I know that any car navigation system is going to have some hiccups. But the Subaru’s system seemed a little bit more hit and miss than I would have liked.

When I first picked the vehicle up, I noticed the automatic gear shift didn’t have a label for a first gear. So for the first day I had the car, I was running it in what I thought was drive, but it was revving extremely high. Only on the second day did I realize that I had been driving in first gear. If I hadn’t figured that out, it could have been a very short trip. On my car, the first gear is shown on the gear shift, and so this was a little confusing to me.

In many ways, the car was extremely familiar to me, given my own Outback. Many things, such as switches for moving the seats and opening the gas cap, as well as the general layout of the interior, were just like in my car.

This is the 2008 Subaru Outback 2.5 XT that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove on Road Trip 2008. Here, the car is parked in front of the Hank Williams Sr. boyhood home and museum in Georgiana, Ala.

Similarly, on my car, using cruise control, there is a button that allows you to decelerate. This car didn’t allow that. Perhaps there’s a practical reason for that, but I’m not sure what it would be.

It was this very Subaru that I spent 16 days in two summers ago on Road Trip 2006, when I drove 3,279 miles around the Pacific Northwest. That year, CNET News let me try a driving trip in search of stories, but I had to take my own car and pay all my own expenses.

On the whole, I would heartily recommend this car, and it’s only because my own Subaru is still in fine shape that I’m not about to run out and try to get a new one.

The trip was successful, though, and after my return, CNET suggested I should do it again the next summer–and that they’d pay my way the next time. Even better, we decided I should seek out a car company interested in providing a loaner vehicle to use on the trip.

And if you’ve been following Road Trip 2008, you’ll know that’s just what happened. For the next several weeks, I drove that Subaru all over the South, covering 8 states, 4,593 miles and at least 25 different destinations.

I’m no professional car reviewer, so my approach to sharing thoughts on the vehicle is likely very unlike that of someone who does this regularly would write. But having spent nearly a month in the car, and driven far enough to cross the United States and come halfway back, I certainly formed some impressions about it.

But when I was planning Road Trip 2008, we decided I should reach out to Subaru again. To my surprise, and pleasure, they said they were interested in getting involved this year, despite our having gone with Infiniti in the end last year.

Without going into detail, we ended up going a different direction last year, with Infiniti as a sponsor. For Road Trip 2007, I took one of that company’s SUVs as I drove for 25 days around the Southwest.

But other things, such as the stereo, the cruise control system, and of course, the navigation system–there is none on my 2001 Outback–were quite different.

On one leg of the journey, from Memphis, Tenn., to Clarksdale, Miss., the navigator took me on a route that turned out to be fairly well out of the way, and a longer drive. I had been in a real hurry to get out of town, so I hadn’t checked the route on a map and so I didn’t even realize.

Of course, you’re always supposed to reality-check any route a car navigator gets you, so part of the blame is mine for not making sure it was sending me to the right place.

Another time, when driving into Pensacola, Fla., instead of having me get off the freeway at the exit where my hotel was, it had me do a seven-mile circuit on back roads to arrive at the hotel. I couldn’t even begin to explain that one.

And to be sure, it got me where I needed to go much more often than it didn’t.

If I had any complaints, it would have to do with the car’s navigation system. I hadn’t planned on using this very much, since I brought another one with me. But in the interest of simplicity and because I was so busy I never was able to get around to using the other one, I relied strictly on the Subaru’s onboard system.

I always felt safe driving this car. It felt solid and in control, even at high speeds, and a couple of times when I needed to slam the brakes, it came quickly to a stop.

But these are little things. As I mentioned above, this was a great car, and I really loved it. It was hard to lock it up for the last time and leave it in the parking lot at Tampa International Airport, where I flew home from.

Still, after a rough beginning with the navigator–I was one more false route from “firing” it after a day or two–I came to expect it to steer me wrong, but still trusted it enough to use it. A contradiction, I know, but there you have it.

Well, having taken my beloved Subaru with me in 2006, I thought the company might like to get involved for Road Trip 2007. I wrote Subaru, explained that I had taken my own 2001 Outback on Road Trip 2006, and asked if they were interested in giving me a loaner. The answer was an enthusiastic yes–particularly, it seemed, because they appreciated that I had done this project the first time in my own Subaru.

My wife worried that after driving this brand new version of our own car, I would come home and demand that we trade it in. It’s an understandable fear, given that the new Subaru was a pleasure to drive and a very nice piece of automotive design.

The Subaru sits across from the power station at the Thurmond Dam in South Carolina.

Being a Subaru, of course, it handled extremely well even in wet conditions and on rough roads. Occasionally, it did seem a little sluggish, but that was definitely the exception. For the most part, I always expected, and mostly got, a strong boost of acceleration when I needed it.

This turned out to be a mixed bag.

I hope that when I do Road Trip 2009, Subaru will consider its involvement with Road Trip 2008 worth it and lend me another car for my next long journey.

I also had a couple of other small quibbles with the car, particularly in comparison to my own Subaru.

During Road Trip 2008, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove the Subaru Outback 2.5 XT a total of 4,593.8 miles.

I think, in the end, that built-in car navigators are simply not as good as the ones you can buy on the aftermarket. I haven’t used them enough to prove that theory, but that’s my sense. So it might have nothing at all to do with this particular model.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

All in all, I really enjoyed the 2008 Outback. It is a very strong car that has an extremely smooth engine that is capable of quick acceleration at highway speeds or a nimble zig-zag around stopped traffic or a bottleneck in the road.

So on June 8, just after I touched down at Orlando International Airport, I went to a nearby parking lot. There, waiting for me, was a brand new Subaru Outback 2.5 XT, just waiting to be taken off on a grand adventure.

A handful of Massachusetts researchers on Monday published a paper detailing a technique for using water-carrying pipes to convert the built-up heat in asphalt roads into usable energy.

Also, wicking heat away from roads could reduce the “heat island” effect in densely populated areas where temperatures rise when buildings and pavement release heat accumulated during the day.

“Our preliminary results provide a promising proof of concept for what could be a very important future source of renewable, pollution-free energy for our nation. And it has been there all along, right under our feet,” Mallick said.

Researchers measure ways to transfer heat from a source, such as this lamp shining over asphalt, to water.

Pavement, it turns out, is a pretty good place to look for free energy.

(Credit:
Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

“The significance of this concept lies in the fact that the massive installed base of
parking lots and roadways creates a low-cost solar collector an order of magnitude more productive than traditional solar cells. The significantly high surface area can offset the expected lower efficiency (compared to traditional solar cells) by several orders of magnitude, and hence result in significantly lower cost per unit of power produced,” according to the paper.

The researchers used computer modeling and small-scale prototypes to test alternatives to pipes for transferring asphalt heat to water.

It found that the depth of the heat exchanger was critical and that a material with higher heat conductivity, such as quartzite, can be added to asphalt to improve heat transfer.

The hot water from the roads could be used in neighboring buildings, something that has already been done in the Netherlands. A more sophisticated approach would be to convert the heat into electricity using thermoelectric modules.

Blacktops can continue to generate energy after the sun goes down, and upgrades with heat exchangers could be fit into road constructions, which are done every 10 to 12 years, Rajib Mallick, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said in a statement.

Released at the International Symposium on Asphalt Pavements and Environment in Zurich, Switzerland, the paper argues that asphalt roads have a number of advantages over solar-electric panels as a source of distributed energy.