Hit an embed link in the upper-right hand corner of any city.ask.com page and get an overlay on which you can change the size of the map and get the code for posting it to your website or blog.

Here’s a map on which I shamelessly and horrifically messed up the map of New York:

As you can see, the embedded map is just an image of the map, though with all the notations, drawing, search results and whatever else you add to it. The image links to the full map at Ask.com so users can navigate all of it there. Google’s implementation embeds an actual live map, which means you can use it create full-on mashups, unlike with Ask’s.

I’ve got to ask why Ask has Ask City and Ask Maps? They’re two seperate products, both with maps, one which searches businesses and one which does driving directions (though Ask City does that too, which is even more confusing). The two products share some of the same interface elements and clearly some of the same infrastructure, so why doesn’t Ask just combine them into one? Is there really a need for two products when one would be so less confusing?

Two other new features:

When you have directions, click adjust route and Ask City will insert a new waypoint for you in between the other two, sending you there first. In other words, you choose a start and end point, then you can add any places you want to go to in between, and it’ll send you to those places, then to your final destination. Not as fun to look at as Google Maps’ version of this feature, but more discoverable and more intuitive.

When searching by businesses, if you enter the business type and a zip code, it’ll draw the zip code on the map and show you all of those businesses within that zip code. Very convenient (and also a quick way to see your zip code boundaries.

* – Only an idiot would suggest Ask coded this in the last 20 days, though if they did, that’s impressive. My point is that Google beat them to it, not that they are copying.

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Everyone’s claiming they invented YouTube’s ad style, the overlay ad. VideoEgg ran a banner on their site, saying, “We invented the video overlay ad about a year ago”. Of course, YouTube invented the embedded Flash player VideoEgg puts its videos inside of, Brightcove has been doing it for two years, and everybody takes good ideas from everybody else. After all, if it’s sucha good idea, why wouldn’t everybody use it?

Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley got herself in an embarrassing situation, as she tried to predict YouTube’s future revenue growth and misunderstood the meaning of CPM. By mistaking CPM as “cost per impression” instead of “cost per thousand”, she overstated her analysis by a factor of a thousand, predicting $4.8 billion in revenue for YouTube next year (which, if it happens, I’d eat my hat).

Of course, since the new estimates were a mere $4.5 million, and analysts don’t make their money with tiny numbers, Mary tweaked the estimates so that even though they dropped a factor of a thousand, they were more optimistic than before in terms of percentages. As Henry Blodget explains, that’s called “backing into the numbers”, making them fit your expectations, and it’s why I don’t like analysts.

Anyone can predict anything based on making up numbers. Sure, you can do a lot of math to calculate what your guesses mean in the long term, but if you are still guessing, you aren’t bringing anything of value to the table. Unless analysts hold themselves to a higher level of proof than this, they should just sit back down and stop wasting our time.

A significantly large bunch of stupid YouTubers completely misunderstood the new system, proving once again the immaturity of the YouTube community, and their complete inabillity to RTFA. These users started threatening to boycott or just plain leave YouTube if Google started putting ads on their videos. Problem is, Google is only putting ads on videos it has a partnership with, and the complaining idiots are (a) too stupid to understand that and (b) too unimportant to have been offered partnerships.

If you really hate the ads, TubeStop supposedly never shows the ads, and it has the added bonus of turning off auto-play on YouTube videos. Vunderbar.

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Google Sneaks Embedded Text Link Ads Into PPA

See, according to the conspiratorially minded, while everybody buzzed about PPA, they’d be less apt to notice the Snap-like or Intellitext-like advertising platform that allows publishers to embed ads in hyperlinks appearing within content.

Before, AdSense ads were confined to certain spaces, transparently. But there in Google’s PPA FAQ is this:

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: “Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.” (Mousing over the link will display “Ads by Google” to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

"They’ve crossed a hazy ethical line here," writes TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington. "If this product was announced on its own, it would be heavily debated by the blogs and press. But by burying it in other, bigger news, they’ve mostly avoided the critical analysis that this actually deserves."

What’s the big deal? Well, for the Google purists out there, sneaking in an advertisement rather than there being a clear demarcation between ads and content, is somewhat of a sin. Google seems to have realized this, but perhaps was hoping it was a small sin.

As for what the new model could do to affiliate networks, most outlooks are bleak.

"Commission Junction and LinkShare are screwed," comments Arrington.

Greg Sterling, blogging for Search Engine Journal, disagrees.

"I think that we’ll have to see how widely embraced Google’s program is and what the empirical fallout is accordingly. I’m not ready to proclaim the death of these networks. I think that marketers want alternatives to Google and I’m sure some of these programs are working quite well for them."

• Revver’s player is the worst. It offers no extra features or interesting ways of doing them, while packaging it in a way that seems desperate to look cool.
• Blip’s player is the most boring, ripping off the Quicktime web player.
• Vimeo has something that should be offered as an option by the other players: No interface at all. When the video plays, everything just dissapears. I wouldn’t like it all the time, but it should be an option.
• MyHeavy’s player could be the best, if not for a few mistakes. It has lots of useful stuff, but the buttons are too tiny and the player has a space-wasting frame.
• MetaCafe’s player might have been my favorite simple player, but that top bar is annoyingly tricky, and the animated logo is a stupid distraction.
• YouTube’s player is still the gold standard of simple players, doing everything it needs to, staying out of the way, and being distinct and well-branded. You know you’re dealing with YouTube whenever you see it.
• Google’s player is like YouTube’s, but with a typical Google twist: It’s ugly. Otherwise, easy second place.
• MSN Soapbox’s player is the best advanced feature player, with tons of options that are well-laid out and not annoying, and a great look. I just wish they offered a simple player as an option as well.
• Players that had a functioning seek bar, one that, when I clicked it while the video was playing, moved the video to where I clicked: zero. All eight fail on that function. Wow.

There are good things about each embedded player, but a lot of flaws as well. Players either fall into the simple or advanced camp (and middle of the road attempts are failures), with YouTube and MSN Soapbox the best of each. I want the opportunity to choose from several players, either on the publisher or the user side, since both models have their benefits. While YouTube’s player has its flaws, it is the king of the hill right now, and what it does, just plain works.

I’d love to see some Photoshops of the ideal player, one that preferably included an easy mode switch between simple and advanced. The simple player needs a play button and seek bar, some form of volume control, branding, a full-screen mode switch, and a link to the original video webpage, while the advanced player should have things like (but not necessarilly all) metadata, statistics, playlists, ratings, downloading the video, getting the video embed code, and bookmarking it.

(via Download Squad)

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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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Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun, comments on the announcement, “By open sourcing Sun’s implementation of Java technology, we will inspire a new phase of developer collaboration and innovation using the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and expect the Java platform to be the foundation infrastructure for next generation Internet, desktop, mobile and enterprise applications.”

“With the Java Development Kit (JDK) released as free software under the GPL, Sun will be working closely with distributors of the GNU/Linux operating system, who will soon be able to include the JDK as part of the open source repositories that are commonly included with GNU/Linux distributions.”

To provide support for the project, Sun has launched three open-source Java community websites:

Tim Bray, Director of Web Technologies continues in his blog, “I’m committed to Open Source but not generally a member of the Free Software movement. For Java, though, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“It’s been given away freely for so long, and it’s worked its way into so many places, that it should belong to the community, and if anyone figures out how to make it better, they should just bloody well give that discovery back. So for my money, the GPL’s the only sane choice.”

More information on the launch of open-source Java can be found at http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

Mobile users will get search, as well as instant answers on things like stock quotes, movie times and Encarta information. The Mobile Search application is planned to be available to the Nokia N80 Internet Edition, Nokia N73, Nokia N93, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6680, and Nokia 6681 devices. It is available as a free download to S60 devices at nokia.com/mobilesearch.

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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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The leading search engines’ ranking algorithms have placed much importance on links that it is not possible to achieve a high-ranking based solely on competitive keywords.

Links

There are two basic types of links used in websites. One is the navigational link which connects pages within a site. The other one is the hypertext link which offer parenthetical material, footnotes, digression or parallel themes that can serve to provide relevant information in relation to the main content of the page. Both types of links however, can be disruptive or problematic in the overall site design when not used in its proper context.

Links can distract attention especially if a paragraph or text is filled up with invitations to readers to proceed to other pages or sites. This threatens the smooth flow of content as readers jump from one page or site to another. The context of information can entirely be altered as readers find themselves in an unrelated territory without the benefit of any introduction or proper explanation.

The primary purpose of having links is the reinforcement of an author’s original message by providing a choice of connected materials. Links should be geared towards pointing to other resources within the site which uses related texts or visuals. A reader should be made clearly aware when he/she leaves one website and enters another through a link.

Good hypertext linking aims to maintain a site’s contact with its readers. A simple link will usually work within a single browser window where the original content disappears substituted by the linked page. This can be avoided by adding the TARGET = “main” argument to link tags. Through this, the linked page will appear in a new browser window in front of the original one which allows the reader to access the new material without losing visual contact with the original site. The use of frames is another way to maintain narrative and design context. Frames can be used to split the browser screen between site navigation and the material intended to be brought out.

Website navigational links can be provided through plain text links, JavaScript links, PHP links or graphical links. Plain text links are the easiest to implement and its use is recommended even if other link types are being used as a main navigational structure. All search engines are able to follow them although it can be very difficult to maintain them for websites that have more than 50 pages. Providing careful attention to website design can address problems associated with this. JavaScript navigation is used to build complex drop down menus for large websites. It offers the advantage of an almost effortless change procedure once it is implemented but it requires more knowledge and expertise to implement. However, this type of link is not followed by search engines hence the pages referenced by the said links may not be indexed without some other form of navigation provided.

Linking in Relation to Usability

Usability is the ability to successfully and confidently learn or complete a task with a reasonable amount of comfort provided to the end user. Usability in the eyes of a website designer or application developer is being able to design and build websites that can be understood and easy to use in accomplishing a task. It is essentially about meeting the needs of customers and anticipating their other needs to help them reach their goal through a website that is true to its own goal of providing the right information or at least access to it.

A usable website stands to reap the benefits of conversion and customer satisfaction. A website should be able to tell the reader what it is all about, what product or services are being offered and what procedural steps are being taken that will earn the trust of customers. Most importantly, it should be able to meet the needs of both humans as well as search engines. Both are intent on understanding a web page, knowing how to get to the next relevant page and being able to find that all important link. The information structure of a website should be construed in a way that would enhance the speed and understanding of it.

The priority of SEOs is to get clients’ web pages into search engines and directories as well as to have them ranked good enough to be found by end users. Marketing and usability should come hand in hand so that the site owner does not only have prime spots in search engines but also customer conversion as well. The ultimate challenge of any website developer is to be able to ultimately build sites for people and not for search engines only.

A link has two ends – the source anchor and the destination anchor. The term link however, usually refers to the source anchor while the destination anchor is called the link target. The most common link target is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) used in the World Wide Web which can refer to a document such as a web page, other resource or to a position in a web page which is achieved by means of an HTML element.

Hyperlinks are usually displayed in a web browser by some distinguishing way such as a different color, font or style. The usage of a mouse cursor changing into a hand motif may also indicate a link in a graphical user interface. Links in most graphical web browsers are displayed as underlined blue text when not cached and underlined purple text when cached.

Having the right link in the right place at the right time and page is the dream of any website owner. Most pages have some type of main navigation to access major categories within the site. Another set of links pointing to things like a privacy policy may also be seen. Many sites use secondary navigation on pages within sections of the site. A different section may provide a different set of links in the secondary navigation which can be very helpful to users and search engines. The navigational links are often seen in a content-rich area on a page. It is very common to see links embedded within the text in the content area of web pages which is very advantageous from a search engine optimization point of view. One of the existing dangers of this practice is when these links are missed due to the reader’s natural tendency to just scan the pages due to time constraints. Embedded links should be placed within the content in a way that they can easily be seen. Having too many can make it very difficult to read the text on a page. Confine these kinds of links to the most important and outstanding links. The rest of the links can be placed in other critical parts of the page.

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Last summer, aspiring wizards waited anxiously for the arrival of the sixth volume in JK Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. This summer, aspiring code wizards have the newest version of Dr. Barnett’s Embedded C Programming And The Atmel AVR hit their summer paperback reading lists.

Dr. Barnett has had his hands on microcontrollers for years, and has taught about embedded programming for the past 18 years at Purdue University; he also has a background in the aerospace electronics industry.

The Atmel AVR platform has served well for students entering the world of microcontroller applications. A description of the title cited the popularity and cost-effectiveness of the Atmel AVR embedded controller as making it ideal for use in a learning environment.

The Atmel AVRs are a family of RISC microcontrollers developed by Norwegian students. Later, semiconductor maker Atmel picked up and tweaked the design.

Dr. Barnett’s book takes the student through the basics of the Atmel AVR RISC platform, then enters a tutorial on embedded C, the book description said. Students experiment with variables and constants, operators and expressions, control statements, pointers and arrays, memory types, preprocessor directives, and real-time methods as they progress.

Miniaturization of devices, like smaller mobile phones and compact computers like the UMPC, has led to greater acceptance by end users, and a corresponding demand for more and better functionality in them.

Such demand increases the value of those who can adeptly program in the embedded environment. Dr. Barnett’s updated title looks like an interesting consideration alongside other works like O’Reilly Publishing’s own work on the subject, Programming Embedded Systems: With C and GNU Development Tools, an update of a 1999 title on the topic of embedded C programming coming out in August 2006.

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

First it was Innobase (see Oracle buysInnobase. MySQL between rock and hard place?) and now it’s Sleepycat Software.

The purchase of Sleepycat, which has been rumored for weeks, gives Oracle another open-source product to complement its proprietary database offerings. At an investor conference last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison reiterated the company’s strategy to generate revenue from a combination of open-source and proprietary software.

They produce and support the famed Berkeley DB embedded database engine and have radically improved it’s features since the version 1.x days. Nowadays you get a small, fast, transactional database engine with industrial grade reliability and replication.

It’s interesting to note that MySQL’s first transactional storage engine (BDB) was created on top of Berkeley DB. Their more popular transactional storage engine (InnoDB) is built on top of technology produced by Innobase, which Oracle bought last year.

This leads to the obvious question: What is Oracle up to? Are they trying to do to Open Source Databases what Yahoo appears to be doing to Web 2.0 companies?

There’s been speculation of a master plan at Oracle that involves buying up various bits of the Open Source infrastructure used in building applications. Is JBoss next, as some have suggested?

We’ll see.

Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.