With its launch of its Snap Shot ads, you’ll be able to buy ads that will use content from the page a user is on, plus content from the link a user mouses over, to present contextually relevant ads.

Advertisers will be able to tap into the 2 million sites that currently use Snap Shots. Ads are available in just 3 formats–simple banners, text, rich media–and will be served using DoubleClick’s Dart platform.

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Snap is the specific company that’s behind the SearchMash redesign.  Often associated with pop-up-style previews, Snap has taken a less intrusive approach on SearchMash, and merely fills the right-hand column of results pages with screenshots.  That’s not to say Snap and SearchMash have made a popular move, however.



Complaints about the pop-ups persist, and there are also concerns that Snap’s Flash technology will increase load times.  When I mentioned the subject of this article, a fellow WebProNews staffer even said something about “despising Snap with a passion.”

Still, Snap does have its adherents – Paul Angles mentioned “[t]he 2 million websites and blogs that use Snap.com’s Snap Shots technology” before announcing the deal with SearchMash and Google.

What we’re all waiting to see, though, is if this stays between Snap and SearchMash, or if Google.com gets a preview column, as well.

News of this deal first came courtesy of Valleywag, the well-known “tech gossip rag.”  Nick Denton writes that “[t]he photo sharing service . . . may announce the deal as early as this [Monday] morning.”  Also, “After final negotiations at the end of last week, Photobucket has called an all-hands staff meeting for 10am PST this morning.”

A number of onlookers have already said that they believe this is the “real deal” (forgive the pun); 108 people (out of 280 voters) on Mashable thought the two companies are a “perfect match.”  And Hitwise’s LeeAnn Prescott, among other notable figures, might agree – just last month she wrote an article titled, “Photobucket Accounts for 73% of MySpace’s Photo-Related Traffic.”

On a more practical level, that 10 AM meeting would still leave plenty of time in the business day for all the usual speech-making and press release-writing.

Yet a point against the deal’s reality also exists: Photobucket already updated its press page once today, and the single new post merely announces a partnership with Snap.  (The result: “What used to be an ordinary link now has a nifty thumbnail ‘SnapShot’ that lets people browse through your Photobucket album.”)

So did MySpace buy Photobucket or not?  How about Microsoft and Yahoo?  Or Google and Dow Jones?  These past few days have been filled with acquisition-related rumors, but in respect to the MySpace-Photobucket deal, at least, we may soon receive a definitive answer.

UPDATE: The acquisition has been confirmed.

While the in-text ads like the one IntelliTXT offers and Google appears to be offering look similar in format to Snap‘s preview bubbles, Paul Angles, Snap’s marketing director, points out that there are no ads in those little pop-ups.

These content previews have been met by the blogosphere with mixed reactions. Bloggers such as Michael Arrington and Guy Kawasaki both use Snap on their sites. Robert Scoble tried it out, but the flurry of negative comments about it may have moved him to quit.

"Yes, some people still don’t like us," said Angles. "But a lot more people tell us that they’re frustrated with sites that don’t have it."

Regardless, Snap is not the same as IntelliTXT. "Snap.com does not deliver in-content ads," he said. "Our preview bubbles give users valuable information about what a link points to. That’s it. No ads."

Angles was also sure to let us know that Snap would be releasing a major upgrade to its product at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco next month and that Snap.com has offered Pay-Per-Action search since May of last year. 

“Our users have really embraced Snap Previews," said Bob Hiler, VP of Advertising at Xanga.com. "The response has been tremendous – less than 0.1% of our millions of users have opted-out of having Snap Previews on their Xanga sites."

The preview feature allows site owners, bloggers and Web publishers to use Snap.com’s visual search technology and library of webpage images for use on their own sites. By moving over any link on a site, users can see a floating window with a visual preview of the webpage. Users can then decide if they wish to visit a site before clicking on the link.

“We’re thrilled that Xanga has chosen to provide their users with the visual benefits of Snap Preview Anywhere,” said Tom McGovern, CEO of Perfect Market. “We hear from many users daily who have become completely dependent on being able to roll over links to see site previews, adding another dimension to the web browsing experience.”

 Recently, Snap.com has added improvements to its preview service that are a result of the feedback the company has received from its community of users. The improvements include tools that indicate if a link is Snap Preview Anywhere enabled, the ability of site owners to customize a preview bubble and options that allow users to opt in to the preview service.

 Snap has also launched the Snap Preview Anywhere Extreme makeover Contest where users can submit ideas on how to improve the preview service and have the chance to win up to $2,500.

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Zeroconf is a lightweight, fairly simple set of cross-platform protocols that can work on any system- Linux, Unix, Macintosh or Windows. But currently Windows is the odd one out, as Microsoft is showing little inclination to play with the rest of us, and are more interested in its own service discovery protocol, uPNP. But it works great on Apple devices and services, so someday this could be a good tool for easily integrating Macintosh hosts with your Linux machines, and leaving the unsociable Windows hosts to mutter amongst themselves in a damp corner.

For obvious reasons, that reminded me of Ms. Mac OS X

But it was an earlier paragraph that gave me pause:

Gnarly old network admins who are accustomed to keeping a tight grip on their realms tend to be resistant to the whole idea – why, it’s as free-for-all as ad-hoc wireless networking or NetBIOS, with users running rampant and sharing everything and no one is in charge. The security implications are obvious; Zeroconf is not suitable for sites that need tight controls, or to use over untrusted networks. But it’s great for home and small business users, small groups inside the enterprise, and get-togethers like business meetings and trade shows. Some consumer devices like Tivo already use it, as well as a whole world of Apple printers and network devices.

Well, sheesh: I’m certainly gnarly and grumpy and set in my ways. Y’all just wait until I’m old enough to need a cane: I’ll be banging that thing on the floor and complaining about the young’uns every chance I get. In my day, we wire-wrapped our first computers and we hand coded in machine language. Harrumph and so there, you dern whippersnapper!

But.. I’m not against zeroconf.

Oh, I know people who still are. I have customers who won’t use DHCP. Personally, I think that boat sailed long ago, and it’s just automatic with me now. If you need to control a few machines, assign ip’s to specific MAC addresses, heck even assign every MAC address if you must, but use DHCP.

Sure, I always want the ability to do this stuff manually, just like I want the ability to set the timing on my car distributor manually. What’s that, sonny? My car doesn’t have a distributor any more? Well, then what am I supposed to do with this old timing light?

Actually, I just tossed that timing light out a couple of years ago. I wasn’t really hanging on to it, it just hadn’t been in my way enough to get thrown away. Or maybe I had the idea in the back of my mind that someday I might get bit by the antique car bug and need it again. That’s what we’re heading for with computers: you aren’t going to need to manually config anything and you won’t be able to anyway, at least not the way we do it now. In theory, I can still set the timing on my car, though I need access to the car’s computer to do so. The computers of the not so distant future will likely have their configuration details equally inaccessible to all but the most determined.

But we’re still a bit off from that. Carla’s article has quite a lot of dark humor in it: the title is “Run Zeroconf for Linux in a Snap”, but the steps she outlines for that “Snap” are far from it. And there are still the security and control issues to be dealt with: even the small businesses that Carla says zeroconf is so perfect for sometimes have “control” issues.

Do you suppose anyone would mind if I bought a cane just so I could thump it now and then?

*Originally published at APLawrence.com

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A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com

At the end of the video, text read “Samsung handset, easy to break at one try!”

Samsung was none too pleased about it, and when YouTube learned that the copyright owner of the video was Motorola, Samsung fired off a few choice words like “unthinkable” and “unethical.”

The video was pulled, according to the notice on YouTube, by Motorola because the content was used without the copyright owner’s permission.

The company said the video was created as a spoof, not as an official Motorola video and was not intended for distribution. The video was leaked without Motorola’s knowledge.

Samsung claimed that the phone in the video was doctored before recording and would not break that easy because of the new material of the phone. Because the company feels damage was to done its reputation, they are considering taking legal action.

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GoTo.com inventor Bill Gross, whose site became Overture and later a part of Yahoo, has a reworked Snap.com online for users to try.

Unlike other search engines that break paid search results into separate sections, Snap includes them with the organic results. Those results that are paid have the words “Sponsored Result” next to them in orange letters.

Snap tries to anticipate the query the user wants to make by suggesting potential queries based on what the user types in the search box. It works similar to Instant Search from Yahoo, but seemed to be working very slowly when we tested it.

Search results appear on the left side of the screen, and clicking on a result brings up a snapshot of the homepage for that result. From there the user can continue to that page, or scroll further through the results for other results.

The Washington Times noted a complaint from Ralph Nader’s Commercial Alert office about Snap’s sponsored result labels:

“It might take a few years for it to catch on, but we think we are establishing a new paradigm for search,” Gross said in the report. They have a lot of room to move up, as figures from Nielsen//NetRatings show only about 700,000 monthly users for Snap.

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

One post from Dan Perry, offers a good fundamental list of recommendations. And yes, I asked Dan for permission to post.

Dan says he likes to use Snap Names for domain name purchases.

First, find the PR of the domain. This can be found at any PR checker. It lets you put in 20 at a time. The value of PR is in the fact that there is some.

Second, Alexa Rating. Obviously, the lower the better. Less than a million = $??, 1-2 million = $??, and so on.

Third, the incoming links. I use MarketLeap’s tool and value the Google links at about 4-5x any other links. Be sure to check for link spam here. Some domains with a PR of 5 or 6 will have a huge Google number. It’s worth digging to see if they are related, valid links, or just spam. If the latter, pass on the domain.

Fourth, the age of the domain, and what it was previously used for (if anything) via the Wayback Machine. Obviously, the older the better, and it’s always valuable to see what was on the site before, what the navigation sections were, etc.

Other resources (I know there are many more) for buying domain names include:

Stuntdubl

SEO Book

Oldie but goodie from WMW

What other suggestions do you have for evaluating domain names?

Lee Odden is President and Founder of
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