We have to forgive Current TV for being a little confused in announcing the Radiohead show happening at the end of the month. Will it be live or not? Current isn’t certain, judging by their statement (emphasis added):

Radiohead will join us to play an exclusive live US TV performance of their new album "In Rainbows" on Current TV, all commercial free. The pre-recorded performance will include all of the tracks from "In Rainbows" plus some "other bits" as Thom says. The Daily Fix tells you when to tune in.

C’mon, Al Gore, is it Live or is it Memorex, as the commercials used to ask? Pre-recorded is cool, we understand if the band have plans for New Year’s Eve themselves.

Silicon Alley Insider seems to have the truth, straight from Thom Yorke via Radiohead’s website. Said Yorke:

As you may now have heard we will be broadcasting a pre-recording of some songs and other bits on New Years Eve..
you will be able to view it online from here at midnight new years eve, uk time that is…

radiohead.tv

as well as other places that i am not sure about.

this is a wee celebration of the release of the physical manifestation of ‘in rainbows’.

Pre-recorded it is.

Radiohead shook up the music industry this fall when they released In Rainbows through the Internet. Some fans paid to download the new album, while others took the cheap route and named their price as zero.

The band said they were pleased with how the experiment performed, though they have unfortunately chosen not to share actual figures from the downloading period.

According to NewTeeVee Current will losing the TV and will be called Current. Recent Nobel Peace Prize winner and backer of the company Al Gore has been promoting Current.com and said the relaunch will take interactivity to a new level.

The new Current.com will encourage users to submit stories, videos and links as well allow users to submit their own articles, link to outside sources and their own video opinions.

Users will be able to vote for stories or videos but will not be able to see the number of votes for a particular story but instead will see a percentage of up and down votes. Users can also references videos and paste the link into the comment field.

Current will also offer users a "Viewpoints" area where users can record their video opinions on topics ranging from climate change to stem cells or Iraq. Current appears to be offering more social features and allowing users to connect with others with similar tastes. These new features will help the site compete with the likes of YouTube and Joost and set itself apart from the many other social news oriented sites.

DoubleClick neatly covers that vulnerability like a set of thick leather boots. That has the groups concerned. They want the Federal Trade Commission to block or modify the multi-billion dollar proposal Google has on the table to acquire the company.

The three groups submitted a second supplement to the FTC, claiming that without safeguards for consumer information in place, that data could be abused by government or commercial entities.

Google’s current stance on privacy calls for a global standard based on the APEC framework. Melissa Ngo of EPIC blasted that proposal as “feeble” during a conference call.

Amina Fazlullah of US PIRG thinks information collection centralized in this merger, with Google in its dominant position, will affect the consumer’s position in the marketplace. Pricing and item availability could be impacted by what Google would know with its aggregated information.

“Content producers would be stuck with very few choices,” Fazlullah said of advertising opportunities for that blanket group of industries, should the deal go through.

CDD executive director Jeff Chester said the “overwhelming share of control” possible from the deal poses a “profound threat to privacy at home and abroad.”

That seems to be the case for Canada, today, as the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic filed a request for an audit of the merger with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Google has posted an early response to the FTC’s concerns at its Public Policy blog.

Pablo Chavez, Google Policy Counsel, said in the post his company is “glad to see” the FTC readying its town hall meeting about online advertising on November 1 and 2.

“Late last week we sent comments recommending that the Town Hall address two additional topics,” said Chavez. “We did so in response to the FTC’s request for suggested Town Hall topics in addition to the very timely questions it already plans to pursue.”

Google has asked the FTC to consider “the rapidly changing business landscape of online advertising, and the role it plays in providing free, accessible, user-friendly, and high-quality content to consumers,” and “the ways in which online advertising is contributing to a healthy and vibrant small business community.”

There has been a lot of opinions being bantered around online regarding the recent post Matt Cutts did about “How to report Paid Links”. The majority of the opinions fall into one of three categories: those for it (the ability to tattle tell), those vehemently against it (probably from those that over abuse it…just my opinion) and those that worry that their competitors will sabotage them by buying a bunch of blogs, reviews etc…

But what I am not seeing anyone write about is the fact that Google seems to be “pouting” a little bit and basically threatening to “take its bat and ball and go home”. 

As the current owner (more on that comment in the coming weeks) of a search engine optimization company, I certainly do not want our client’s sites having to compete with other websites that have no business ranking in the top 10 organic spots. But if the sites that are ranking in the top 10 are relevant, and as long as they are not using black hat SEO tactics, why would Google want to possible “penalize” or in anyway take away that particular sites top 10 listing?

What’s that you say? Paid links is now considered “Black Hat”? Well, I would agree that some paid text links should be considered black hat…Having run of site text links where one website that has 3,000 pages and offers links for sale in the footer and is not on topic should not be an acceptable tactic and I think Google has done the right thing by modifying their algorithm to detect and then ignore (meaning the link is neither good or bad for the site…it’s just a waste of money for the site owner unless of course they are getting quality traffic out of it).

However, now that just about everybody in the world knows that anchor text links are an important part to Google’s ranking algorithm, and being that most business websites do not freely (or very visibly) link to other websites (how many other websites do you link to or promote on your business site? Didn’t think so) site owners are going to push the envelope as much as possible and with good reason. They have a lot to gain by getting top rankings for quality (relevant) keywords to promote their business.

Google needs to understand (and I think they do or they would not allow the Matt Cutt’s of the Googlesphere to blog like they do) that businesses every day count on the search engines to produce revenue. Google is no different. $465.26 per share at the time of this writing for 1 Google Share? And where does 90% or more of the money Google generates that makes the stock worth that much? A form of a text link ad.

Ok so let me for a moment a self appointed mediator between Google and the Website owners…

First let’s understand Google’s position. Google, the webmasters of the world understand that you can not afford to have your top 10 results be cluttered with non relevant websites. Doing so would only lead to your demise as your own search volume would rapidly decrease, leading to less money made through your primary business model.

Webmaster’s position: Our very existence seems to be connected to how well our search placement is on Google (and Yahoo and MSN) and not having top rankings for relevant keywords seriously effects our bottom line in a bad way.

Mediator:

Webmasters: Agree to follow the webmasters guidelines and understand that getting top placement is more often a marathon and not a sprint. If you truly deserve to be in the top 10 and your company is one of the best companies for your industry, stay at it and do all you can with in the guidelines. Hire outside help if you need to that has the experience to help you.

Google: Keep up the great work of making sure those that are not playing fair, get the boot so that those that are playing by the rules have an equal chance. But please do not punish those who find out a “secret ingredient” to your algorithm and then use that ingredient to benefit their ranking. If the results in the top 10 are relevant, who cares? I don’t ever remember Google crying “foul!” when title tags or h1 tags were discovered as being important.

Getting quality links is hard to do. And maybe that is why it is such an important part to your algorithm. But considering it “spam” when a webmaster or seo or owner of a website pays a blogger to post about their business in order to try and rank better for keywords that are relevant to their site? They are just doing everything they can to make sure they can put food on the table for their families. Instead, if you sense a threat to having this “ingredient” well known, improve the recipe. Chances are you will come out with a better meal for everyone.

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Autobytel’s current site is nice, but it’s not terribly special.  It, Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, and any number of other sites tend to blend together in terms of usefulness, even if their designs set them apart.  MyRide.com should (if it lives up to a recent press release) showcase some true advances.

The site will offer “numerous search-based content features such as community-based blogs, road crash test reports, green car profiles, future car snapshots, and user car summaries in a set of smart, relevant and intuitive results,” Autobytel said.  And in an email to WebProNews, a Kosmix spokesperson also mentioned sections for service and repair, parts and accessories, and racing and performance – on top of all the standard stuff.

Moreover, MyRide.com has been labeled “the world’s first fully-integrated automotive vertical search experience.”  The site will “leverage Kosmix’s sophisticated web categorization technology,” and the result, dubbed Automotive SmartSearch, “aggregates automotive content from across the Internet and integrates it with comprehensive content relevant to consumers’ needs.”

Can MyRide.com live up to expectations and stand out from the crowd of other automotive sites?  I don’t know.  But so long as MyRide.com doesn’t drain cars of 50 horsepower or cause “the left rear wheel and brake drum assembly to separate from the vehicle,” it’ll easily avoid being the worst thing in the auto industry.  Look for MyRide.com to launch next month.

The Wall Street Journal reported how McClatchy will better-deal its fellow newspaper magnates and hook up with Yahoo and a rival group of publishers instead. Hearst Corp is one of the Yahoo ad network participants, who already number a dozen participants.

Their network would place Yahoo’s search on newspaper websites, while news content will be displayed in relevant Yahoo channels. Ad revenue would be shared among all of the partners.

If it comes to fruition, the deal will be a big win for Yahoo. They have long lagged Google in contextual search performance, and only recently took steps to match Google’s formula for ad success. Gaining the support of media publishers for a broad ad network at a time when online advertising, especially local ads, are on the rise should bode well for Yahoo’s numbers.

Yahoo and McClatchy announced a deal in early April that will place McClatchy’s international coverage of events in Yahoo News. That content will be labeled ‘Trusted Voices’ and readers will see accompanying entries from regional blogs with those stories.

eBay offers a Marketplace research service that costs $2 to $25 a month.

Amazon shows which products are the best for last year, current top selling products, movers and shakers, and hot new releases.

In addition to giving away this free conversion information, Amazon lets you see what customers think of the product via review, allows you to bid on keywords related to products via ClickRiver. If you sell your stuff on Amazon.com, you can buy a better together listing with a popular product.

If you are in the info-product market Clickbank’s Marketplace is a goldmine.

Once you find interesting products you can refine your keyword research using general keyword tools, then further refine that data by using a tool like KeyCompete to see what keywords competitors are bidding on.

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A taste:

• The average Gadget is 181 pixels
• 20 or so Gadgets require you to be using Firefox
• Google’s 48 Gadgets account for 44% of all Gadget page views

More stats at this post, too.

Alex Iskold did a look at current mashup/API trends, and he’s got a lot of stats, including that Google Maps is used in 50% of all mashups.

An interesting look by O’Reilly at Google’s philosophy on external data sources. Google doesn’t trust external APIs, and thus just copies and uses the data locally. That has all sorts of implications, including regarding the rights of creators, but also makes me question if there is a problem if Google gives but doesn’t take.

You want more stats? How about the porn industry’s claim to be bigger than Google/Microsoft/Amazon/eBay/Yahoo/Netflix/Earthlink combined. Watch as they claim every vaguely adult-related business falls under the “porn” category.

Oh, and Google Maps was showing an anti-Microsoft image when you searched for Microsoft. “It was an accident!” Sure, sure.

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If you wondering about speed, AOL says the new mobile service will stream at the "appropriate" bitrate for the data connection and format for streaming players. Current users can download the extension and start streaming, while new users will have to first download the Winamp Remote client onto their home PC.

Beta testing will, no doubt, expose how well the application performs. 

The Winamp Remote works on handsets with a data plan, Web browser and any kind of streaming media player: 3gp, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or Flash. There is a catch, though. It does not support DRM-protected files.

"The move into the mobile marketplace underscores our primary objective of providing consumers with the definitive media playback and discovery experience, across multiple platforms," said Matthew Callaway, Product Director for Winamp and SHOUTcast. "Winamp Remote on mobile brings an added level of freedom to our users."

The extension is powered by Orb Networks, which connects the handsets to Internet-connected computers, and allows users to share playlists with friends.

The product is a direct challenge in advance of Apple’s iPhone, which, for around $600, acts as an iPod as well. The Winamp Remote acts, then, as a way of avoiding having to buy new technology to transfer music to the handset.

With AOL’s in-roads to online video recently, the new product is another aggressive move into mobile and file-sharing. The two of them together may be AOL’s answer to a flagging brand, which had no shortage of trouble last year.

The Google Phone brings the power of the internet in your pocket, in a simple and intuitive device. It combines the traditional voice and SMS capabilities of phones with all the exciting Google services from the PC such as Search, Gmail, Maps, Blogger…

The Google Phone, designed by Samsung, is a very thing and stylish handset with a large screen and a QWERTY keypad so that it provides a real internet experience.

Already, you can use a variety of Google services on the phone (and Google partners with Apple for the iPhone), but often they’re a pain to use or install due to the great incompatibility of current mobile phone software.

[Thanks David Hetfield!]

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