The Comprehensive option watches for Web, Blogs, News, and Groups mentions. Add Video to those choices, as Google noted on their official blog:

Video Alerts enables you to specify any topics or queries of interest so we can deliver interesting and relevant videos on a daily, weekly, or as-it-happens basis (your choice) to you via email.

To start receiving Video Alerts, you can visit the Google Alerts homepage directly or set up the alert during your normal video searches. Videos may come from Google Video, YouTube, or many other video sources on the web.

There are a couple of ideas we can take away from the announcement. First, ego surfing became a little more complete for those who obsessively track when they receive a mention online.

Second, although we’re pretty certain these Alerts only look at the text associated with a video’s description, the announcement could indicate Google has made inroads into its ongoing quest to develop piracy-detection tools for the entertainment industry.

Even if Alerts just picks up text, it does make it easier to find out when someone has threatened the very fabric of our society by posting two minutes of the latest South Park episode on YouTube.

To the service’s credit, GMail has also identified 1000 other spam messages in the past five days – quite the up-tick, actually, and has promptly removed them to my spam folder.

I didn’t go to my spam folder looking for my Google Alerts. I went there looking for an evaluation from one of my graduate school mentors (Phil Deaver, you rock as a teacher by the way).

While I was digging through the garbage there, I noticed my name, in large comforting letters, staring back at me from an entwinement of male member enlargement promises, banks I don’t go to, and a smattering of foreign alphabets.

(I take no shame in admitting I ego-alert myself. People talk about me online sometimes. Most of the time, it’s good. I also have them set up for several other topics, so there.)

Sure enough, covered in day-old syrupy irony, all of my Google Alerts were landing in my Google-provided email spam folder. And I just laughed and laughed.

I didn’t dig past the 1000 messages to learn just how far back Google tweaked its spam filters so hard it flagged itself. But I missed 61 alerts for "Google" and a few for myself.

If I hadn’t have checked there, I might not have known Meredith Smith’s Top Three Misconceptions of the New Google Analytics Interface, Akbar‘s missive on the Google Salesforce.com deal, or What’s Behind Google’s Sneak Attack Against Microsoft.

But I did know that anyway. I have other ways of gathering information, thank googness.

Most certainly, though, I wouldn’t have known that there’s a Jason Miller who pitches for the Rochester Red Wings, or one that is an executive member of the Meat Industry Action Group.

(There are lots of me’s out there, with every variation of my full name, initials, with middle and without – five writers, one race car driver, one rodeo guy, two actors, and, apparently, a baseball player and meat industry executive. This is why, as soon as I get around to it, I will be Jason Lee Miller, Lord and Baron of Ladonia.)

So anyway, Google, it’s nice you’re tough on spam, but do you need to be so hard on yourself? 

eBay’s platform extension gives its third-party developers a place to build and monetize new applications and put them anywhere from phones, blogs, televisions, Web sites and social networking platforms.

The new services include:

eBay Shopping Web Services: a suite of faster, more responsive APIs that makes searching on eBay up to 16 times faster and allows developers to easily create buying applications

eBay Bidding API: qualified developers can enable bidding on eBay from anywhere

eBay Client Alerts: lightweight, near real-time alerts about platform activity

New JavaScript and Flash Developer Centers: making it easier for JavaScript and Flash developers to access the eBay Web Services platform

New Production Call Plan: access to API calls in the production environment raised from 10,000 per month to 150,000 per month, allowing new developers to rapidly scale up their applications

"eBay’s developer community plays an important role as we pursue our mission to help people all over the world connect through commerce," said John Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces.

"The innovative applications being created by developers help entrepreneurial sellers use our platforms to grow their businesses, thereby expanding the economic opportunity to a wider audience than ever possible."

Other eBay companies also made announcements that extend their platform. They include:

PayPal introduced a new suite of APIs, including Mobile Checkout, which allows developers to integrate any mobile website with the PayPal checkout process.

Skype Extras: Skype Extras are plug-ins written by independent third-party developers that let users expand Skype functionality and enrich their Skype conversations

Shopping.com announced plans for a re-architected API that will be available in Q3 2007, which will have a new easy-to-use interface, detailed documentation, and tools for faster implementations.

Dave says that Technorati though is becoming much more about media search these days that simply blog search.

I use Technorati every day. The Technorati link to my own blog sits on one of the coveted bookmark launch buttons on my browser.

I’ve played around with Google blog search but by and large like Technorati better. I find it more complete. But more than just being complete, Technorati continues to develop really cool tools for bloggers as well.

Do you know what my favorite recent Technorati tool is? It’s the Technorati Link Count Widget. If you haven’t tried it yet you should check it out. Some of you may notice that at the end of some of my blog posts there is a link that says # blog reaction. What these are links to a Technorati page specifically for that permalink. I think this is helpful because it helps me find people that are talking about specific things that I write on my blog, but it also helps my readers if they are interested in a particular post and want to read more about what others think about something.

Does Google have anything like this? Not that I’m aware of. They do have a feature in blogger that is supposed to do something like this (I think), but it doesn’t work very well.

By providing valuable add on features like the link counter, Technorati continues to deliver value to bloggers even beyond the basic blog search.

The other thing I’ve been impressed by is the people that work for Technorati. Of all the tech companies that I’ve dealt with Technorati has some of the most community minded people you’ll ever meet. These are some of the smartest people around as well. I’m sure Google has lots of smart people too, but I don’t see Google doing quite the same community outreach that I see Technorati doing.

Scoble has a post out today on Technorati as well. He says that Technorati does a better job searching for “videobloggingweek2007.”

Thanks for the update Dave and keep up the good work.

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Though they have been proactive in labeling hazardous sites, Google hadn’t been informing site owners about their badware status outside of posting alerts in that site’s Webmaster Tools.

Not every site publisher uses Google’s Webmaster Central, so a badware designation could creep up on a site and be unnoticed unless someone happens to inform the webmaster or he discovers the problem in the search results.

Google announced better badware notifications, and they extend beyond Webmaster Central.

Phil Harton wrote on the Webmaster Central blog that they are providing more information in Webmaster Tools about badware detections. “We’re also showing example URLs that we’ve determined to be dangerous,” Harton wrote. “This can be helpful when the malicious content is hard to find.”

Some sites will also receive email notifications from Google. They will attempt to reach webmasters at typical email addresses for websites, like webmaster@ or admin@.

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The statistics documenting these ups and downs were released by Jim Crane (of the Compete.com Blog). Some of the figures are a little disturbing, but as Crane pointed out, they shouldn’t be surprising. “Did you ever see Michael Jordan play baseball?” he asked. “Long story short, it’s impossible to be good at everything . . . Google is no exception.”

Of course, Michael Jordan gave up on the idea of playing baseball. Should we expect to see any of these “losing” Google search properties meet their doom? Well, yes. Sort of.

One property was Frankenstein-ed together with a proven performer. Crane noted that Google Maps did rather well, with a 77% year-over-year gain, but “[t]his growth comes on the heels of Google essentially merging Local and Maps in late 2005.”

As for Froogle, its loss is probably due to the introduction of Google Base, which should at some point take over entirely. This sort of planned obsolescence won’t hurt the company much – as Jason Lee Miller noted, “the company expects up to 80 percent of Google’s side products to fail.”

I can’t think of a valid excuse for the performance of Google Alerts. A 67% year-over-year loss is just plain bad. Google Alerts did pull out a 9% month-over-month gain, though, so things could be worse.

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While a smaller firm with some time to invest can make a decent go at brand monitoring through the use of Google’s Blog Search, Alerts, and Trends tools, bigger firms need bigger solutions. Your company may be big enough and busy enough where a dedicated solution will be necessary.

If you want to take that step, you should consider the points raised by Forrester. Their report by Peter Kim on Brand Monitoring discussed several major names in that industry, and drilled down to a quartet of considerations for businesspeople for such services.

Data collection comes first. Sources for commentary could be mainstream media outposts, or chatter from bloggers and posters on message boards. A vendor that can handle more data can find much more information for a customer, but that capacity will probably come at a higher cost.

Once they have the data, the brand monitor has to process that information. Kim wrote that the more sophisticated operations will employ methods like Bayesian filtering and natural language processing to accomplish text analysis.

Since not all data has been created with equal relevance to everyone’s analytical needs, a brand monitor may only need to assess a particular subset of data. For example, Fender and Cabela’s may both want to know about discussions on “bass.” Fender probably doesn’t need to have chatter about bass fishing in its reports, while Cabela’s won’t have demand for bass guitar discussions.

Once a company has a brand monitor working for it, the business needs to receive the insights the monitor can provide. Kim wrote how these can be as simple as delivering alerts with email or RSS feeds. Or they could be integrated with applications like ones for customer relationship management.

Problems can come with the influx of information. While having extra intelligence like this can benefit a company, that firm needs to dedicate some resources to implement measures as recommended by the brand monitor. Those have to be put in place rapidly, since news on the Internet can travel very quickly.

I asked Kim what mistake businesspeople might make after receiving insights from the brand monitor. “The most common pitfall I hear about is relying too much on any one data source,” he said. “The information collected from a brand monitoring solution still needs to be validated and compared with other types of data, e.g. sales information, competitive media spend, etc.”

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

VeriSign’s network, which delivers some 3 billion SMS messages per month, will allow eBayers to monitor items during “crucial end-of-listing periods” and receive outbid notifications on the run.

“These time-critical mobile alerts can improve response time to listings that are ending soon,” said Eric Shoup, group product manager, eBay Wireless.

“By using VeriSign’s Intelligent Messaging Network to deliver mobile alerts, our customers can enhance their experience by having key bidding information regardless of location and device.”

eBayers can register for the outbid alerts and end-of-auction alerts on the eBay.com website. The system also allows re-bidding from mobile handsets, complete with highest bid confirmation. Bill Wolfe, senior vice president for VeriSign Communications Services called the service a “loyalty-building experience.”

The VIMN service will be available across all major domestic wireless operators in the United States. For those extra-competitive eBayers who need more vigilant sniping services, just google [ebay sniping] for a complete list of sniper-bot offerings.

News of the partnership may have been overshadowed by eBay’s announcement last week of a slew of new API offerings for webmasters and developers interested in expanding product listings and widgets beyond eBay.com.

That news followed the previous weeks’ bombshells that include an expansive relationship with Yahoo! to expand its search presence while incorporating Yahoo! search advertising into eBay.com itself.

In addition, eBay has added “Skype Me” icons to its auctioneer offerings to link up sellers and buyers via voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) connections. The company also announced the launch of eBay member blogs and wikis to add to product and seller information offerings.

Shares of eBay are up as of 2:30 PM EST to $30.37 (+0.30%) while VeriSign stocks are down 0.95% to $21.84.

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Microsoft has taken to outing software pirates they have discovered via Windows Genuine Advantage. An alerts section of their website reveals 96 enforcement cases Microsoft is taking action in against accused pirates of Microsoft software. Clicking on them reveals more about the crimes they stand accused of. Some are companies, some are individuals; some pirate Office 2003, some are still pirating Windows 98.

If you are stealing Windows, you’d better hope you don’t wind up on this list. This is the internet equivelant of having your check taped to a wall by the register, and you don’t want it showing up in an internet search. I wonder if I recognize any of these names

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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