Entertainment technology explosion

Zuiker said the United States was infatuated with technology and it had become such a permanent part of people's lives that more entertainment choices were needed.

Increasingly, people are reading books on electronic readers like Amazon.com's Kindle and Sony Corp's Reader.

Those devices don't play videos, so "Level 26" readers still need to log on to the Internet on a different device. Apple Inc is said to be developing a touchscreen tablet, which some analysts envision as a multimedia device that could play videos.

Zuiker said people's attention span was becoming shorter and shorter and that it was important to give people more options on how they consumed entertainment and books.

"Every TV show in the next five, 10 years will have a comprehensive microsite or website that continue the experience beyond the one-hour television to keep engaging viewers 24/7," he said. "Just watching television for one specific hour a week ... that's not going to be a sustainable model going forward."

"I wanted to bring all the best in publishing, in a motion picture, in a website and converge all three into one experience," he said.

"And when the book finished and the bridges finished, I wanted the experience to continue online and in a social community.
(Editing by Claudia Parsons and David Storey)

Book Wars

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc joined the opposition to Google Inc's plan to digitize millions of books, saying that the proposed deal would fundamentally change copyright law and violate antitrust law.

Amazon, which scans books after getting permission from the copyright holder, said that the court should reject a settlement between Google and the Authors Guild because the deal would change copyright law by allowing Google to digitize books even if the copyright holder cannot be found, often called "orphan works."

"The proposed settlement usurps the role of Congress in legislating solutions to the complex issues raised by the interplay between new technologies and the nation's copyright laws," Amazon said in its filing, which was dated Tuesday.

Amazon also argued that the book registry envisioned in the settlement could constitute price-fixing.

The proposed settlement would resolve a lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild. The Guild and a group of publishers had alleged copyright infringement.

Google has agreed to pay $125 million to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers could register works and receive compensation.

Under the settlement, authors have until the end of this week to tell Google that they do not want their books digitized. A hearing on approval of the settlement is set for October 7 in Manhattan federal court.

Google rejected the criticisms.

"The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it's understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker in an email.

"It's important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S."

Google's rivals, Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc, also oppose the plan, while the American Library Association and Association of Research Libraries have asked for court oversight. They fear that if the service becomes a necessity for libraries, they would face monopoly pricing.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the deal while European Union antitrust enforcers, prompted by Germany, have said they would study it.

The case is Authors Guild et al v Google Inc 05-08136 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan)

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Richard Chang)

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Last week, Rand published the latest results from his Search Engine Ranking Factors 2009 survey. And fortunately for many – not much has changed.

Taking out the Top 5 most important factors were:

1. Keyword focus in anchor text of external links
2. External link popularity
3. Diversity of link sources
4. Keyword usage in title tags
5. Trustworthiness of the Domain based on Link distance from Trusted domain.

And as we all know, it’s often as important to avoid certain things as to do them for the sake of ranking – and here’s the Top 5 Negative Factors:

1. Cloaking with Malicious/Manipulative intent
2. Link acquisition from known link brokers
3. Outbound links to web spam sites/pages
4. Cloaking by User Agent
5. Frequent Server Downtime & Site Inaccessibility

And given that SEO isn’t an exact science, there were of course some factors that sit in the grey area, and heres the Top 5 contentious factors:

1. Cloaking by cookie detection
2. Cloaking by javascript/rich media support detection
3. Hiding text with same/similar colored text to background
4. Cloaking by IP address
5. Cloaking by user agent.

The actual Top SEO Ranking factors document contains lots more detail and discussion about this years results, so it’s a worthwhile read for any DIY Search Engine Optimizer or curious SEO observer.

View the full Search Engine Ranking Factors 2009

from Rene leMerle