According to Juniper’s forecast, the total end-user mobile games revenue will reach $18.3 billion by 2016.

The revenue that is expected to be generated has been broken up into various categories to get a better idea of the capacity of revenue generation. The categories are downloads to tablets, downloads to smartphones, downloads to feature phones in-game purchases on smart phones and in-game purchases on tablets.

Total mobile end-user games revenues predicted for 2016. Source: Juniper Research

Downloads to smartphones, are likely to have the lion’s share of the revenue generated, followed by downloads to tablets and in-game purchases on smartphones, both of which are expected to have nearly equal share of the revenue.

In contrast, the revenue generated from downloads to feature phones and in-game purchases on tablets will be much smaller.

Currently, in-game purchases, which are a small fraction of the revenue generated, account for about $2.1 billion worldwide, and are expected to reach $4.8 billion by 2016.

From 05:00 British Standard Time on Thursday to 05:00 today, three Twitter accounts fed information about each and every call that was dealt with by the Greater Manchester Police force.

Their main Twitter account, @gmpolice, interfaced with the public and retweeted information from the other Twitter accounts that had been set up for the purpose. Calls that were tweeted ranged from mundane complaints being logged for domestic and neighbourhood disputes to more serious matters such as rape, murder and theft.

Follower numbers of the GM Police Twitter account shot up from 3,135 last Friday to over 15,000 today. What caught a lot of people’s attention was the number of ridiculous calls that the police seemed to deal with.

Callers complained about televisions that didn’t work, horses that wouldn’t go where their owners wanted them to and builders showing up two months late!

3,205 incident reports were tweeted during the 24 hour period. 341 arrests were made and 126 people were taken into custody during the same period.

Police forces have used Twitter in the past to monitor and clamp down on criminal activity. This is the first time that a police force has successfully used an online social  medium to raise awareness of the work they do and gotten so many members of the public keenly interested.

Kirsty Cook-Bell, 33, who teaches at a school sponsored by a Christian charity got herself in trouble after some pictures of her on Facebook were discovered by her students.

The pictures, which show her in a bikini and blowing a kiss at the camera with lipstick smeared on her face while she was on vacation, have been described as being “semi-nude” and “inappropriate”.

Some of the tweets she sent out on her Twitter account have also raised eyebrows. One of them said, “Celebrating being able to slack off and get abuse from the public about my low life job!!!”

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers has also issued warnings to members of their union on their own Facebook page, about behaviour that could be deemed as inappropriate. Their advice includes ensuring that any contact with students is kept strictly within an educational context and setting privacy settings on social networks to control who can see private information.

While there will probably be an almost equal number of people who would support the actions of the teacher concerned, as those who will oppose her, the whole controversy could easily have been avoided if she had just taken care to mark her photos as ‘private’ thus ensuring that they were seen only by her friends and not by others such as her students or colleagues.

Facebook could also help ease such situations by publicising privacy controls more and working harder on making  it easy for users to protect their private information rather than driving users to share everything by default.

Google stands to gain a lot by developing an operating system, especially one that is based around their Web browser Chrome, which serves as a direct gateway to the Google search service.

When the Chrome OS was first officially unveiled, 11 months ago, it had been scheduled for release by the end of 2010. In fact, it was expected to be launched before the holiday season began. If current indications are to be believed, the Chrome OS will probably be launched on the 11th of November. Available reports indicate that the operating system is presently in Release Candidate (RC) status, and its current build version is 0.9.78.1. (The product will be ready for release with build version 1.0).

Rumours about the Chrome OS launch date are based on a Google employee referring to the date in the Chromium OS public forum and the fact that the Chrome Web Store is ready to be launched this month, which is expected to be around the time that the OS would be made available.

The 11/11/2010 date could just be the date when another new version (perhaps 0.9.9) of the code might be released or could be the date set for a final code freeze and the official launch could take place a week later on the 19th of November, which is the first anniversary of the unveiling of the Chrome OS.

Google engineers are supposedly working on features such as screen savers and colour highlights at present, which typically are built during the final stages.

A spokesperson for Google told TechCrunch, “We are very happy with the progress of Google Chrome OS and expect devices will be available later this year. We’ll have more details to share at launch.”

Critics say that when the Chrome OS was first announced, the Android OS was not as good as it is now. The Chrome OS development team will therefore have to work even harder to match up to the Android OS.

Application developers will be keen to develop new apps for the system. In fact, unofficial Chrome OS builds have already been available for some time now. Chrome OS powered netbooks and tablets may also be available soon.

The effects of linking to a bad quality site can be disastrous to any website’s organic rankings.

While we’ve made every effort to carefully vet each and every link in each and every comment posted on our site, what we cannot do is continuously monitor the status of the sites these comments link to.

Unfortunately, sites go down, get hacked, turn rogue and change direction all too often. As a result, what was once a good site to link to can turn into a very negative proposition if it gets hacked or turns rogue and starts spamming users or hosting viruses (viri?).

This latter scenario is not just bad for our search rankings but also for any users on our site who happen to click through and visit these rogue sites.

Hence, our decision: from today, all links in comments will include the rel=”nofollow” attribute.

We hope that our genuine readers and commenters will see agree with our reasons and will not be deterred from commenting and interacting with us in the future!

Mobile search volumes have been a long-requested feature that Google representatives have been historically reluctant to share. Speculators always concluded that this was due to the low volume of mobile searches.

The new feature is not immediately obvious in the new keyword tool. Advertisers need to click the “Advanced Options” link and then check the “Show stats for: Mobile search” box.

The network statistics setting allows advertisers to change search volume data to show mobile device statistics only. This setting changes only search performance columns and does not affect traffic estimate columns.

Mobile website owners and mobile search marketing agencies will welcome this new feature as it finally gives them the ability to estimate PPC costs and traffic volumes they can expect from search.

A quick review of the mobile search volumes shows that even in popular mobile search categories such as local information and gaming, the volume of mobile searches is a mere fraction – as low as 0.3% – 0.6% of traditional Web searches for the same 1-word keyword queries.

The bid simulator can be accessed in the new AdWords interface by clicking on a CPC value to adjust it, or clicking on the tiny graph-like icon next to the current bid value, as shown in the screenshot below:

Accessing AdWords’ bid simulator

When the tool opens up in a new layer (on the same page), it shows a simulation of the estimated clicks, cost and impressions that particular keyword will get if the bid values are increased or decreased. The tool also includes a graph to illustrate the change in number of clicks as CPC changes.

AdWords bid simulator in action

Documentation provided by Google describes the function of the Bid Simulator: “It doesn’t predict the future, but it estimates the click, cost and impression data that your ads would have received over the last seven days had you set different keyword-level bids. ”

The tool does not work for all keywords, and the graph does not show up for all keywords that have the bid simulator enabled. Search volumes are the determining factor for whether or not the simulator and the graph within the simulator are enabled or not.

According to Google, “The bid simulator requires historical information in order to provide click and cost data for different bids. If a keyword didn’t receive many clicks in the last seven days, it isn’t possible to simulate clicks and cost.”

Values for the bid simulator only apply to the search network – that is, Google search and other search partners.

Smart idea Facebook!

Users who StumbleUpon a new page and like it click the thumbs up button on the toolbar to vote for that page. If the page has not been Stumbled previously, a submission box comes up.

Submission to StumbleUpon used to be a bit cumbersome, as users had to enter a title, an optional review, select a topic, provide tags and then indicate whether the site contained adult content.

Now submission to StumbleUpon involves merely clicking on the thumbs up button and then indicating whether or not the web page is suitable for viewing in the office.

Old v New StumbleUpon Discovery Page

A second tab allows users to submit an optional review, similar to the fashion of the old submission interface. As seen in the screenshots above and below, the website now provides all users a count of the number of pages they have helped StumbleUpon discover and share with other users.

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, StumbleUpon seems to thrive on growing stealthily. They recently crossed the 7 million user mark, making them bigger than Twitter at the time. Twitter has, of course, since then sky-rocketed in popularity due to the celebrity obsession with the platform.

The new submission system, though, will definitely prompt more user submissions and therefore help StumbleUpon grow and provide more content to its current and new users.

mobile.accuracast.com

Given the recent growth in mobile Internet usage, a number of businesses are now looking to tap into this growth. This new sub-domain allows business owners and marketing professionals to order simple, straight-forward, sleek mobile websites that suit their requirements.

tools.accuracast.com

Our four main tools – the Search Ranking tool, PPC Cost Estimator tool, Monthly Ranking Report and International Search tool – all now have a new home in this sub-domain.

AccuraCast France

The French section of our site has now been moved to its own dedicated .fr domain, and has a slightly different design from the English website. Warning: The website is written only in French (of course!)

AccuraCast India

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Middle East will now be served from our Indian office. The Indian site is markedly different from the UK and French sites, and so are the service bundles we offer in the sub-continent. Please note that the service bundles offered on this site are not available to European and North American customers.

AccuraCast Mobile

Unlike the mobile sub-domain, AccuraCast Mobile is a lone-standing mobile site that provides a quick introduction to our business and our services, in a mobile-friendly format. This is just a (relatively) static, information site targeting our mobile audience. It is also one of the best ways to view the Search Daily News headlines from your mobile phone.

SEO-London.info

Perhaps the least obviously related site, SEO-London.info was launched last year to cater to small businesses and start-ups. The site provides bare-bones SEO and PPC services for companies with extremely limited budgets – sort of like a no-frills SEO / PPC agency.

As always, I welcome any comments and feedback from our regular readers, clients and visitors to the site. You can either drop a note in the comment box below, or tweet me directly @AccuraCast on Twitter.

Best wishes,
Farhad Divecha

In a brief formal announcement Microsoft said have resumed talks with Yahoo! The talks are not about acquiring Yahoo! but rather to find an alternative transaction that would help Microsoft to improve its services, and also help Yahoo! in the bargain.

However, Microsoft have also mentioned that the company reserves the right to reconsider the original option of buying over Yahoo! entirely, depending on the circumstances that may arise in the near future, following talks with Yahoo! or the shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or any other concerned party.

This change of sentiment, following the statements issued earlier by Microsoft on withdrawal of their original offer, may very likely have something to do with the ongoing shareholder unrest following the failure of the original deal, especially the threats issued by Carl Icahn to have the entire board of directors of Yahoo! replaced during the next shareholder meeting.

According to the Financial Times, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, had highlighted Microsoft’s interest in the Yahoo! search business when he abandoned his pursuit of a full acquisition. In a letter to Yahoo at the time, he said Microsoft had dropped its offer partly because of a potential search advertising alliance between Yahoo and Google, which had been under discussion for some weeks.

Yahoo! has also issued statements to the effect that they are willing to consider any option that will maximise their strategic value. As of now nothing has been finalised.

Developers can use the Google App Engine to write new web applications, which will continue to be based on GFS and Bigtable. The Engine will allow creation of scalable applications, that is, developers can first build their applications on a small scale and then expand them as they gain in popularity.

Each application built using the Google App Engine will be allotted a quota of 5 million free page views per month. Bandwidth, storage and CPU use will be free. It is expected that this capacity will increase in the near future, and its users will then be able to buy additional resources as per their requirements.

The App Engine from Google will compete wiith Amazon’s S3 service. According to the InsideGoogle blog, it may also compete with social networks such as Facebook since now anything that can be done on any social network will also be possible without using a social network.

According to some, Google’s App Engine may come to be viewed as one of Google’s most revolutionary products because it will be a web host that will be well configured, well connected and well tested without being phenomenally expensive. The preview will be available to the first 10,000 people who sign up for it and download the SDK. The product is still in its trial stages and further improvements will be made on it based on feedback received from its initial applications developers.

If the ease of use of Google’s Gadget builder is anything to go by, the App Engine may well change the way information gets organised and delivered to users in the future. However, it is one of the many Google products that will never be popular with the masses due to its technical nature and specific functionality.

appengine.google.com/

Google acquired GreenBorder on 11 May 2007. Yet, word of the acquisition has only got out since yesterday, and that too, amid much speculation about Google’s actual intentions with the new acquisition. It is safe to say that Google will either use the software to enable its users to browse the Internet safely, or will bundle it with other Google software, such as the Google Desktop Search to safeguard user information.
The entire acquisition has been very muted. The GreenBorder website only recently posted a little note that said:

“GreenBorder Technologies, Inc. has been acquired by Google, Inc. We will continue to support our existing customers through the end of their current subscriptions.”

While some speculate that Google might move into the field of Internet security, this seems rather unlikely but not impossible. What’s more likely is that Google will just use the security product to enhance its other offerings, but nevertheless there will be ramifications on the IT security market, just as Google’s purchase of Urchin ruffled quite a few feathers in the Web Analytics industry.

The service that was launched just last month aims to mimic the functionality of StumbleUpon, from the convenience of the Google Personalised homepage. However, at present it seems to have a long way to go before it gets anywhere near as interesting as StumbleUpon is.

Admittedly the service is in it’s early stages and they will improve as they collect more and more website visit information from users. That still does not explain how the algorithm that hopes to bring together all the world’s information can liken fashion clothing with homegrown marijuana!

http://better.yahoo.com/

For a company spending huge amounts of advertising dollars on promoting their mobile search products, Yahoo! has been unusually quiet on the mobile industry frontlines, especially with its conspicuous absence at the mobile search conference and their lack of interest in the upcoming mobile marketing conference.

[poll=2]

Thank you for sharing your opinions!

This new piece of technology could let them enter the web conferencing market currently dominated by WebEx as well as make a dent into Yahoo! and MSN Messsenger’s user base by integrating the video conference facility into Google Talk.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, StumbleUpon should be blushing crimson! Google have launched a new feature on their toolbar which works very similarly to StumbleUpon.

The latest version of the Google Toolbar includes a button that looks like a pair of dice. When a user presses the button they will be taken to a website that may be of interest based on their search history (provided the search history feature is enabled).

Alternatively, the Google blog post, Searching Without a Query, provides instructions for users to add a recommendations tab to their Google Personalized homepage.

Read the full article on Firefox Use in Europe

Within Europe, Firefox enjoys over 40% market penetration in Slovenia and Finland and over 35% in Germany, Croatia and Slovakia. These numbers should cause some alarm to Microsoft as well as webmasters who don’t test their sites for accessibility compliance across multiple browser types.

Many websites render horribly wrongly on Firefox, even though they seem to be perfect on Internet Explorer. This means as much as 40% of a site’s visitors could be unable to use or even view the site correctly.

Google Voice Local Search

The new service is currently in beta and can be accessed from the Google Labs site. It provides toll-free voice-activated search functionality for local business listings in the USA only.

Users can call the toll free number 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-4664-411). An operator asks for the location (city and state) and then category of business or business name. Users need to just speak what they are searching for. A rather sophisticated voice recognition system then mines results.

For category searches, the first 8 results are read out. Users can be connected to the businesses for free by just saying the number of the listing. For business names, the system offers to connect the user directly or to provide address and phone number details. Results can also be sent by SMS for free.

At present, the system does not include sponsored links, and so it doesnt need to differentiate organic listings from paid.

• 3D mapping on Firefox
• Ratings and reviews for business listings. The reviews are fed from partner sites that already have lots of reviews.
• “Find Nearby” suggested queries on a business listing’s details page
• RSS feeds for user Collections (lists)
• Area calculations for regions marked out on the map with drawing tools
• Automatic display of traffic information when users create a route
• Drag and drop reording of items on the Scratchpad
• Once within a city map, users only need to enter an address name, without needing to re-enter city, state
• 3D mapping in Outlook and support for Outlook 2007 , Vista

The full release note can be read on the Live Maps / Virtual Earth blog.

TV Guide is widely recognised in the USA as the most popular magazine helping readers find timings for their favourite shows on television and cable. The magazine has run successfully and ranked among the top publications since its launch way back in 1953.

The online video search tool from TV Guide will complement its offline function of leading viewers to their favourite programmes on the tele. It is expected to launch formally in September 2007.

Jubii.dk is currently available to Danish users. The US version will bear the same logo and offer the same services, namely search and directory; email, chat, skype and mobile communication; lifestyle portals, blogs and personal sites, photo and file storage and other services.

The parent company, owned by Telefonica and Bertelsmann cannot trade under the Lycos name in the USA any longer, as it sold that trademark and company to a South Korean conglomerate after it’s near dot.com death. The launch is receiving more than its fair share of press, but is more likely than not to go sour, as the company has not made any real profit to date!

http://tools.google.com/gapminder/

The USA, Bahrain and Trinidad are some of the world’s biggest polluters with the highest amount of C02 emmissions per capita. This is just one of the “fun” facts that users can view on the site.

An obvious result of this acquisition will be the availability of more information and improved usability of Google Maps. In the near future, we might even see an interactive map in the OneBox, similar to the local search results currently being displayed in the Google OneBox.

Google stores all user information with the aim of mining the data and providing users results that are personalised to their individual preferences. In order to do so, Google tracks data not only via logs from users that have signed in, but also through cookies, IP addresses and usage data from Google software such as the toolbar.

After discussions with Privacy stakeholders in Europe and the U.S., Google have announced that they will now anonymize server logs after 18-24 months so that they can still provide more personalised results, uphold quality of their search index whilst protecting user privacy.

Critics are still worried that this might not be enough, especially with some of the other services such as Google Mail, where emails get scanned without the users’ permission and ads delivered according to the contents of the email.

This is the most severe measure ever taken against spammers. According to both the the Chairman of the SEC and the Director of their Enforcement Division, the move has been made to protect investors from fraudulent spam emails that hype company stocks with the hope of boosting share prices.

35 companies whose trading was suspended included Apparel Manufacturing Associates, Inc. (APPM), Biogenerics Ltd. (BIGN), China Gold Corp. (CGDC), Equitable Mining Corp. (EQBM), Goldmark Industries, Inc. (GDKI), Healtheuniverse, Inc. (HLUN), Presidents Financial Corp. (PZFC), Software Effective Solutions Corp. (SFWJ), Sports-stuff.com Inc. (SSUF), UBA Technology, Inc. (UBTG) and Wineco Productions Inc. (WNCP).

A second gadget provides users traffic updates in a Vista desktop gadget, courtesy of Live Search Maps. Both of these new gadgets are in direct competition with recent updates provided by Google Search and Google Desktop.

The new release of Google Desktop 5 beta was announced yesterday. The latest version comes with improvements in the gadgets and sidebar user interfaces as well as improvements in security – an area where Google Desktop has received much scrutiny and criticism.

Security improvements in the new beta version, though, do not address concerns about security of the system itself. Instead, it helps enhance user security by warning them if external links in the Desktop Search results lead to malicious sites.

Whereas YouTube has been built on user generated content, Joost is relying on partnerships with large media companies that generate copyright protected content for television and video, which is an area that YouTube seems to face continued problems due to copyright infringements and lack of structured agreements with high-end content providers.

Joost’s most recent victory in their quest to dominate the premium video content market came yesterday in the form of a a distribution deal with JumpTV, who own the rights to 270 TV stations in 70 countries. This follows previous deals that give Joost access to content from MTV, Comedy Central, Paramount and more.

Traffic information can be viewed by clicking on the “Traffic” button on the top right of the map. Google Maps provides a colour coded traffic indication for both ways on most major routes, with red indicating serious traffic, yellow for slight delays and green for clear roads.

Google has been promoting their Maps product a lot in recent times, by including local map-based results in the One Box for Local Searches and now by improving the features available to users on Google Maps.

For EuroSport, this is an excellent way to capitalise on Yahoo!’s experience at building a strong online portal and community. For Yahoo! this is a great way to get more content and attract users, which will eventually attract more advertisers to use their advertising services and platform.

In descending order, the Sun Online, Guardian.co.uk, MSN News AOL News and Times Online followed, with 1.9 million – 2.6 million visitors each.

Nielsen//NetRatings rankings for Online Current Events and Global News Destinations during December 2006 also ranked BBC News at the top, with 6.2 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo News, Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, The Sun Online, Google News, MSN News & Weather and AOL News in descending order.

Yahoo!’s search volume dropped slightly to 21.4% but they still have a comfortable lead in the overall visitor traffic ratings when traffic volumes to all their properties were combined. Yahoo! mail and the Yahoo! portal get significantly more traffic than Yahoo! search, as was discussed in the article comparing marketishare of Yahoo! v Google properties.

MSN Search finally got a break and gained some market share. Ask and AOL search volumes continued to fall. Click here to view U.S. search engine ratings

Click here to view the net marketshare of all sites.

All in all, this growth towards convergence or interlinking of their various properties, including yesterday’s announcement about showing more local results in the OneBox, shows the potential media dominance they could achieve and the value this would provide to their advertisers and search users in the long run.

Yahoo! have also recognised the benefit of allowing users to enter any search query and delivering results accordingly. Their mobile search offering with Go 2.0, called the oneSearch is supposed to recognise when a user searches for local, image, video etc type queries and deliver search results accordingly.
Read Official Google Blog notice titled “Action! Roll Orkut videos!“

When users click on YouTube thumbnails in the Google Video Search results, they will be taken to YouTube.com to view the videos. Google announced that over time, they intend to make Google Video even more comprehensive and evolve it into a service where users can search for the world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted.

• Search results will start to include text (sponsored ads and organic listings), images, rich media and even user generated content e.g. answers from Yahoo! Answers, which is already happening.
• Advertisers will start cautiously advertising on social media sites
• Semantic search or natural language search will come to the forefront
• Mobile data tariffs will be lowered and mobile search advertising will rise.