As users of Google Maps already know, Google has had a coupon option available. Business owners can add coupons to their listings through Google’s Local Business Center.

The addition of GoogleCoupons.com to their nameservers, as ably noticed by our chums at ResourceShelf, could be just a step toward making it easier for business types to get to that service. If Google promotes it more, coupons may help its Business Referral program pull in more AdWords customers.

However, the holiday shopping season is approaching fast. Among Google’s many businesses, it operates Checkout, a payment service for online retailers.

GoogleCoupons.com strikes us as something Google would use to help boost Checkout with its existing and new retail clients. They could direct people performing general searches, like for Blu-Ray or HD DVD players, to retailer offers on a GoogleCoupons.com page.

ResourceShelf noted that the domain still shows Google’s agent, MarkMonitor, as the owner of the domain. If and when that shifts to Google, which it had not as of posting time, we would expect to see a new service debut then.

Google is planning a multi-terabit undersea communications cable across the Pacific Ocean for launch in 2009, Communications Day has learned.

The Unity cable has been under development for several months, with a group of carriers and Google meeting for high-level talks on the plan in Sydney last week. (…)

Communications Day understands that Unity would see Google join with other carriers to build a new multi-terabit cable. Google would get access to a fibre pair at build cost handing it a tremendous cost advantage over rivals such as MSN and Yahoo, and also potentially enabling it to peer with Asia ISPs behind their international gateways – considerably improving the affordability of Internet services across Asia Pacific.

CommsDay says Google didn’t directly deny or conform the rumors, with Google’s Barry Schnitt telling them:

Additional infrastructure for the Internet is good for users and there are a number of proposals to add a Pacific submarine cable. We’re not commenting on any of these plans.

Does this rumor sound crazy? Well, have a look at this Google job position:

Strategic Negotiator, Submarine Cable – Mountain View (…)

Submarine cable Strategic Negotiators are specifically responsible for working with internal technical and business teams to identify, select, and negotiate submarine networking contracts as part of the development of Google’s global backbone. These negotiators will work closely with vendors to identify highly cost-effective solutions under the most favorable commercial and technical terms possible. They will also be involved in new projects or investments in cable systems that Google may contemplate to extend or grow its backbone. Negotiators will need to have in-depth knowledge of the global submarine cabling system and a rock-solid understanding of how terrestrial constraints drive strategic submarine networking decisions.

And it may just be a coincidence, but a while ago Google Blogoscoped co-editor Tony Ruscoe found the Google intranet subdomain “unity.corp.google.com”. John Paczkowski of Digital Daily comments, “It’s clear Google has telecom aspirations, but apparently they’re quite a bit grander than previously thought – undersea-cable grand.”

[Thanks John! Photo source Creative Commons-licensed by Scott.]

Comments

Tag:

Apparently Arizona State University sent out invitations to students that mention a super-secret, sign-an-NDA-or-else, social networking project.

A few teasers have led most to conclude this must be a Google project:

1. “a  major internet company” – yep, that sounds like Google.
2. A questions asking if you have a Gmail account – hmm, I doubt MSFT or Yahoo would be asking that.
3. Google already has Google earth and 3D modeling software.

In case you need further convincing that Google is behind this super-secret project, Google Operating System offers this compelling but circumstantial evidence.

Arizona State University has a very close relation with Google: it’s one of the first large universities in the US that uses Google Apps, the site search is powered by Google Search Appliance, the university uses Google Maps and the ASU campuses already have 3D models in… Google Earth. But there’s actually more than this: the university offered photos for the Google Mars project, Google employees serve as guest speakers or adjunct lecturers at ASU and Google has an office on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University.

Images courtesy GOS.

Comments

Tag:

vnunet.com also stated:

Walker told delegates at the MipTV conference in Cannes that broadcasters have been enthusiastic about creating the ads, and predicted that 2008 will see “real money coming in” from video advertising.

Google “youtube preroll” and you’ll see what we all already know—YouTube users don’t want pre-roll ads. ClickZ reported almost six months ago that most marketers say pre-roll isn’t the best way to monetize online video. At the time, Google was only in the process of buying YouTube and according to Daniel Blackman, strategic partner for development at Google Video, they were shying away from pre-roll ads.

What has taken Google so long to get to this point? Perhaps vnunet.com’s conclusion casts a little light on the matter:

Google’s revenue from YouTube is likely to get yet another boost following the company’s $3.1bn acquisition last week of digital marketing company DoubleClick.

Google will use DoubleClick’s technology to encourage YouTube users to click from one video to another.

Somehow, that strikes me as an awful lot to pay to encourage clicks…

Obviously, pre-roll is the easiest way to monetize online video, but I don’t know if it will work for YouTube. It depends on how they do it, of course. I’d hate to spend as much time watching a pre-roll ad as I do yet another stupid YouTube video. However, for professional or “real” content, 30 seconds is a small price to pay.

Comments

Tag:

The big TechCrunch falling-out was a lively story in the blogosphere late last year when Michael Arrington shut down the UK site. In the four months since then, former TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi and co-editor Mike Butcher have moved on, filling the gap with their own sites focusing on tech start-ups, among other things.

While it will be good to see TechCrunch UK back up and running, there’s no guarantee that the site will re-establish itself as the source for news and information on tech start-ups over here. A great deal will depend on who the new editor is and how the re-invented site will run.

Mind you, TechCrunch is a powerful brand with breadth and depth of influence and reach that makes it comparable to some mainstream media. There are over 377,000 subscribers to the primary site’s RSS feed, for instance.

It all sets the scene for a great positioning battle.

Comments

Tag:

Yeah, I haven’t had a haircut since my wedding. I look ridiculous.

Anyway, SES New York takes place April 10-13 at the Hilton in Manhattan, costs like a billion dollars to attend (okay, $800-$1900), and is a ton of fun and informative. The parties should be fun, and this year I promise not to lose the paper with Yahoo’s party’s address (I felt like such a dope missing that one, especially after a cool Yahoo buy invited me). What sessions am I looking forward to?

• Video Search Optimization – Tuesday, 9-10:30 am
• Ads In A Quality Score World – 11am-12:30pm
• Keynote Conversation with Steve Berkowitz – Wednesday, 9-9:45am
• Web Analytics & Measuring Success – 10:15-11:45am
• Meet The Search Ad Networks – 1:30-2:45pm
• Earning Money From Contextual Ads – 3:15-4:30pm
• Contextual Ads & AdSense Clinic – 4:45-6pm
• Search Arbitrage Issues – Thursday, 9-10:15am
• Search & Privacy – 11am-12:15pm
• The Search Landscape – 2-3:15pm
• Wikipedia & SEO – 4-5:15pm
• Link Baiting & Viral Search Success – Friday, 10:45am-12pm
• CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines – 12:30-1:45

If you are going to be there, or want to suggest somewhere I should be, send me an email or call my cell phone (212.380.7127). Should be a great week!

To prepare for SES, play the Search Engine Smackdown game (via SEL). It tests your knowledge of industry news and events.

Also, Google New York announced the next event in its speaker series. Next Thursday, Luiz Barroso will be talking about “Watts, Faults, and Other Fascinating Dirty Words Computer Architects Can No Longer Afford to Ignore”. Unless I actually pull off the BBQ I’ve been meaning to do, I’ll be there.

Comments

Tag:

Let’s review: nothing; nothing; and nondescript something. That’s the Google news today.

The first piece of nothing is that Google’s not planning to buy or merge with anybody this year. They’re going to, instead, gather up their $11 billion in cash and make it into a giant piñata for Cinco de Mayo filled with Mexican girls and the heavy, sticky molasses hopes of Web journalists. Oh how they’ll laugh as they don’t spend any of that money and take bets (with M&Ms) about what the press will talk about.

Google’s certainly not interested in buying Yahoo, so quit bringing it up.

The second piece of not-news is that Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin will not be getting a raise this year. They’ll be keeping their $1 dollar salary, and their $30 billion in stock. Page and Brin might have said something about this but they were too busy not flying anywhere in their Google Jet and arguing over who gets a turn in the hammock.

Last and certainly not least (because you can’t get less than nothing, plus this is almost something making it slightly more than zero, but not quite one), at an undisclosed technology conference in San Francisco, Schmidt didn’t talk about the rumor that Apple and Google were working on a tablet computer, but did say the companies were "doing more and more things together," like holding hands in the park and smooching discreetly under the prodigious, antediluvian redwoods.

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

How can one equip Logistics to have foresight, be able to sense changes, respond to those changes and be adaptive to changes in the environment? These are hot topics in the Supply chain and Logistics world today. This article does not profess to address all components of creating ‘Intelligent Logistics’. However, it provides an introduction to the logisticians of the current thoughts and trends in the arena and opens avenues for enthusiasts to explore further.

The Four Pillars of Intelligent Logistics

Embedding “intelligence” into Logistics processes and systems involve building four robust pillars of Integrated planning and execution, Visibility, Collaboration and Analytics.
Intelligence in Planning and Execution

The foresight and responsiveness are essentials at all levels of the logistics – strategic planning, tactical planning, operational planning as well as execution. It is equally important to build strong linkages between planning and execution processes and systems to embed “smartness” into Logistics.

The strategic planning addresses such issues as network design in terms of plant, warehouse, partner facility locations and capacity planning based on the customer demand, supplier positions, transportation and other fulfillment costs. The periodicity may range from six months to five years. By its very name, strategic planning is supposed to be intelligent. However, in reality most strategic planning exercises neither embed foresight, nor create responsive networks. In the dynamic world of constantly escalating oil-prices (and hence fuel and transportation costs) and increasing demand-side and supply-side pressures, network planning needs to be almost continual; and create an adaptive network that can quickly respond to market changes.

Tactical planning addresses how best to use the existing facilities and assets for optimal customer service at least cost. It also includes ‘what-if’ sensitivity analysis and simulation techniques to sense the effects of delta changes in demand, supply, or network and helps respond better to changes.

Operational planning generates realistic inventory and shipment plans either based on constrained-optimization or heuristics. Historically, most operational planning engines have been batch-oriented. Then the transactional systems execute the plans generated by the batch engines. However, in the real world, orders keep changing, carriers reject tenders, inventory is not found in the warehouse due to discrepancies, or equipment breaks down on the road and so on. The uncertainties in the Logistics network are increasing both on the demand side and the supply side. On the demand side, orders would change more dynamically based on the real customer demand. On the supply side, Logistics networks are also lengthening with global supply chains.

A key ingredient of “smart” Logistics is to have a tightly integrated planning and execution. Batch-oriented optimization and transaction-oriented execution must be give way to ‘real-time optimization’ and ‘responsive execution’ with a closed loop feedback linking planning and execution.

Visibility

Visibility refers to true understanding of the customer demand, real-time track and trace of inventory at item level, and track and trace of shipments as well as alerting when events deviate from expectations. This visibility into orders (demand), inventory and shipments (supply) help sense the changes in demand and supply in near real-time and respond quickly to these changes. This will help reduce safety stocks and hence costs, improve customer service and make the Logistics network more adaptive. They will also help execute such best practices as cross-docking, in transit inventory merging, and delayed allocation strategies.

The key tools of visibility are:

• Track and trace within the enterprise through event monitoring engines
• Track and trace across partner network by receiving partner messages through EDI, XML or Web.
• Integration Hubs manage connections among heterogeneous systems located in multiple enterprises.
• Exception Detection and Alerting compares status messages with predefined metrics and workflows, sending alerts when pre-defined tolerances are violated.

Collaboration

Intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise Collaboration is closely related to visibility. It also extends beyond visibility into multiple levels of Collaboration, particularly for inter-enterprise collaborations.

At the lowest level of Transaction Automation, inter-enterprise Collaboration involves data and document exchange through EDI or Web. They will help automate no of otherwise manual transactions reducing the administrative costs, errors etc. Coupled with track and trace functions, these can help introduce some intelligence into the network by monitoring events and generating alerts.

At the next level of Collaboration, demand, inventory, schedules etc are shared, enabling better planning. This can help make all the parties “smarter” through better decision making.

True Collaboration involves re-engineered business processes across the partner network with closed loop planning and execution.
The integration of systems, processes and people across the network creates high velocity network that is lean, agile and adaptable to respond quickly to the changes in the environment. The cost of this true collaboration is falling dramatically with the advent of new web-based tools.
Retail and Consumer goods industries undertook a number of initiatives like CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment), QR (Quick Response), ECR (Efficient Consumer Response), CRP (Continuous Replenishment Programs), VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory), CMI (Co-Managed Inventory) etc in the last ten years or so to leverage inter-enterprise collaboration for creating responsive networks.

Analytics

Metrics are critical to an Intelligent Logistics Network. Real-time capturing of logistics metrics enables a performance-driven, responsive logistics network. 360 degree score cards, logistics dashboards, performance reporting, and ad hoc queries are some of the tools in this category. Six Sigma methodologies are also increasingly used in the supply chain and logistics domain creating goal oriented, performance driven, intelligent networks.

Near real-time analytical tools that provide incisive service and cost metrics help intelligent decision making. Analytics combined with six sigma methodologies also enable root cause analyses to address the core issues. Last month’s feature article talked about ‘Information Factory’. The logistics information factory provides an excellent infrastructure to enable Logistics analytics.

Conclusion

Injecting intelligence at all levels of the Logistics network has never been more critical than in today’s Demand-driven, Globalized supply networks. Affordable tools are available today for making the logistics networks “smarter” through Collaboration, Visibility and Analytics. There are still challenges in tightly integrating the planning and execution processes in a closed-loop, but that is clearly the direction for the Logistics industry.

Comments

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Michael Stolarczyk is currently Senior Director, of Business Development for Exel in their Westerville, Ohio General Office for the Americas. He is also on the Board of Advisors for West Virginia Universitys School of Business.

Michael’s Blog: http://blogonlog.blogspot.com

What if Apple were logging everything you do and studying that for marketing information? After all, they would be able to predict what Web 2.0 sites were getting popular before anyone else.

But, even if you don’t log what’s going on, just watching over the shoulders of people tells you a lot about what people do on their computers. I just took a quick tour of the store here and saw Friendster, 123 Greetings, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, some sort of Oracle email app, Google maps, and Yahoo messenger being used.

UPDATE: On second tour I saw two different people using Bebo. I never have used that before. Looks like a nice blogging/social networking tool. Lots of people are using Google and Yahoo to search for travel sites. I saw both Travelocity and Expedia up on screens. Three people here are using MySpace. One guy is surfing YouTube.

I bet if I stayed here all day I’d get a pretty good read on what people are actually using.

If I were planning a new Web product I’d send teams of people to Apple stores all over the world to do market research and just hang out in the stores and watch what people do on their computers.

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

Google’s co-president in China, Dr. Kai-fu Lee, announced the new Shanghai center in a Xinhuanet report.

More importantly for the company, the potential for online advertising profits in China has increased. By the end of the year, Google should see the number of Chinese sites displaying Google advertising double by year’s end.

That’s not a very large number currently. Only a dozen sites display Google ads, and Google expects at least 30 sites to be part of its Chinese AdSense network by the time 2007 begins.

A location for the Shanghai center has not been located yet, according to Lee. Existing centers in Beijing and Taibei employ 100 engineers. Lee said the number of Shanghai staff has not been determined.

“We will hire people who are qualified, without any limit,” Lee said in the report. He also noted that the rollout of services like ones for mobile phones will not happen right away: “The data transfer speed on phones in China is limited as 3G is not available.”

Google search has trailed market leader Baidu in the country. To help combat the company where Google once held a minority stake, Google will increase the number of servers operating in China.

—
Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

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