A new Google Analytics feature may take a few weeks to get rolling. Once it catches on, though, the benchmarking service should give users the ability to compare their properties to other sites within an industry.
National Park Service Unveils Old Faithful Webcam
Those of you who are stuck in windowless cubicles might enjoy this, and actually, unless you’re already in a national park, it could prove interesting, regardless. The news: there’s a live video feed of Old Faithful.
Yahoo Unveils Mobile Developer Platform
OK, forget what we said about 2007 being the year for mobile content. 2008 is where the mobile action is at! Hot on the heels of Google’s Android initiative, Yahoo is announcing its own developer platform. The Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform will provide tools for developers to code and launch mobile widgets for a wide range of cell phones. Here are the details from Yahoo:
Paypal Unveils Virtual Credit Card
PayPal has partnered with MasterCard to release the PayPal Secure Card. It’s a virtual credit card that generates a unique credit card number for each online transaction. Nothing new here, except as of tomorrow you can download software so you can easily use the service on any site, regardless if they accept Paypal or not. PayPal has been testing the feature with 3 million of its customers this past year.
Obama Visits Google, Unveils “Innovation Agenda”
Barack Obama, one of the top Democrat candidates for President in next year’s election, visited Google yesterday and talked about his technology industry platform, among other things. Here’s video of his speech:
Google Unveils SketchUp Blog
Google SketchUp enthusiasts, rejoice! An official blog for SketchUp is now up and running, and if the posts on it are any indication, this will not be one of Google’s sites that sit stagnant for a month (or more) at a time.
Microsoft Unveils Mediaroom IPTV Platform
Microsoft is taking the veil off of its Mediaroom platform this week, an all-in-one IPTV and digital media platform. The new product integrates digital television, music and photo-sharing, picture-in-picture and developer tools.
Google Unveils Public Policy Blog
With the new Google Public Policy Blog, transparency’s the name of the game; Googlers will explain the company’s position on issues that could affect us all.
Nielsen Unveils Video Measurement Tool
Nielsen//NetRatings has introduced VideoCensus, a syndicated online video measurement service that combines panel and census research along with data on audience size, demographics, engagement as well as competitive activity.
Amazon Unveils New Indie Store
Amazon evidently wants you to “Go Indie”; a new music store of that name has been launched, and it features some tempting price cuts over regular items.
Amazon got 30 different music companies to work with it on this project. To be honest, I didn’t recognize any of them (guess I’m not indie enough), but some of the more interesting names are Alligator Records, Bloodshot Records, Epitaph, Fat Possum, Hellcat, Matador, Smithsonian Folkways, Vagrant, and Yep Roc.