Ajax Girl

Are you compatible with your car? A new site set to launch in a few days called CarZen aims to help you find the car that is perfect for you. The main feature of the site is a car consulting tool that asks you basic questions about the qualities you are looking for in a car (price, size, fuel economy, reliability) and then spits back a list with the best matches.

CarZen is extremely detailed. You can narrow your search by brand, options (sunroof, power seats), cargo capacity, safety, or performance characteristics. Looking for a car with a high baby-seat score or on ethat is particularly easy to park in tight city spots? No problem. Once you finish answering the questions, which at times seem more like a personality test, the site generates a list of cars that can be sorted by best match, price, miles per gallon, or brand.

If you are looking for a new car and don’t already know what you want, it is a good way to generate an initial list. You can drill down to get more details for each car. There is even a button to get a price quote, although that doesn’t seem to be working at the moment. (Nevertheless, the business model is to create a trusted research tool for car buyers and generate lead-generation fees). The site is still in private beta, but you can check it out by clicking on the “learn more” button in the widget below and then clicking through to the site.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/yfhtUGZhIBI/

Google turned in healthy third-quarter earnings largely thanks to the fact that Google is finally getting serious about cost containment. But that is only half the story. Going into the expected economic downturn, Google is now turning on every additional source of advertising revenues it can. For instance, so far earlier month it began offering AdSense in Flash games, new AdSense links at the bottom of Google Maps, and introduced click-to-buy buttons on YouTube videos. But there are at least two more ways Google is trying to juice those AdSense revenues: an AdSense search box and AdSense ads that link to syndication pages filled with . . . more AdSense ads!

Google might just be testing these, but these efforts are starting to get noticed. One reader who runs a site about Google Chrome, for instance, runs AdSense. But instead of a regular text ad, Google served up the search box at left, inviting people to search for specific ads. In effect, Google is saying, “We are not 100% sure what ads you’d like to see, so why don’t you just tell us?” An ad-only search box is a departure from Google’s past policy of showing the most relevant results, with ads on the side. Although it is clearly labeled, some people might still confuse the AdSense search box with a regular Web search box. Others might find it more helpful than the regular text ad links. [Update: Some readers say this search box is nothing new, see comments].

More troublesome is Google Syndication. Another reader, Michael Oxley, noticed that the AdSense text links on his golf site are directing readers not to a product page with information about a “Tiger Woods Caddy” or “Golf Wear,” but rather to a Google Syndication landing page filled with more AdSense ads (see screenshot below). These landing pages are run by Google (they take you to a googlesyndication.com URL). These pages basically syndicate a bunch of other AdSense ads triggered by the keywords in the original ad that was clicked on.

If Google starts using its Google Syndication pages more widely (they’ve actually been around for a while, it seems, and are also known as Link Units), it could become controversial. That is because they seem to run counter to Google’s own stated policy for landing page quality, a factor that goes into how Google scores each ad. As this NYT article explains:

Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads.

The lower the quality score, the higher an advertiser has to bid for a given keyword. Google itself provides the following guidelines to advertisers who want to improve the quality score of their AdSense ads (I’ve bolded parts for emphasis):

Relevance:

* Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
* Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful information about the product or service in your ad. For instance, direct users to the page where they can buy the advertised product, rather than to a page with a description of several products.

Originality:

* Feature unique content that can’t be found on another site. This guideline is particularly applicable to affiliates that use the following types of pages:
o Bridge pages: Pages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent company
o Mirror pages: Pages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site; your site should not mirror (be similar or nearly identical in appearance to) your parent company’s or any other advertiser’s site
* Provide substantial information. If your ad does link to a page consisting mostly of ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional, unique content.

The question here is: Why isn’t Google heeding its own advice?

And is it in effect running house ads that it wouldn’t tolerate from an outside advertiser (or at least punish by increasing the minimum bid required to run them)? When times are tough, anything goes.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/gYb5ofqYhuo/

New Paris based startup Iteria, Sarl has released ScreenToaster into private beta. The service is to screen capture software what Tokbox is to Skype - most of the functionality you need, without any downloads.

The demo video below, which was created with the software, shows how easy it is to use. Click start, bring up a different website, and click a Option-S to record. Hit Option-S again to stop recording, and it is instantly uploaded to the site in Flash for review and, if you like it, publishing. You can also set the screen recording size manually with a different key combination. And you aren’t limited to recording web pages, you can move the recording area off browser.

The service is written as a Java web applet and works on any OS that has the Java runtime. Vides can be embedded and viewed with the Flash plugin, like any online video service.

There are some other services like ScreenToaster. Screencast-O-Matic, for example, has similar functionality and also allows the export of videos and audio recording - a glaring omission for ScreenToaster. The ScreenToaster guys are working to add audio, subtitles and other features before launch, though.

And the ease of use is just awesome. It takes literally seconds to create and publish a screencast. I’ve done a lot of these, and I know what a pain they are with client software, editing and uploading.

If you want to be added to the beta, leave your email here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/tKZ-srsf25I/

This is perhaps the most exciting news since the May launch of TomCruise.com: I’d like to welcome Britney Spears to our world. She (or rather her people) have launched both a Twitter account and a bloggy sort of site with near constant updates on her fascinating life.

Her new song Womanizer also jumped from no. 96 to no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s not for me, I’m more of a Disturbia fan myself.

The blog doesn’t appear to have any original content from Britney, other than the teleprompted videos like the one below. It’s also music free, which sort of seems to remove the point of visiting. She should embed some music from Imeem or iLike and get paid for all those streams. And link to Amazon or iTunes for downloads. Maybe a few less of the site visitors would use BitTorrent for all their music needs.

I’ll say this, though. This is solid gold for Twitter. A few more of these and it will be hard to argue that it isn’t going mainstream.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TmbxHFGxBvU/