With a virtual drum roll, online video-sharing Web site YouTube on Monday announced the winners of its inaugural awards, paying tribute to the wannabe stars who have used the site as a launching pad to fast fame.

The winners ranged from the Chicago band OK Go dancing across treadmills, to a Sydney man who hugged strangers in the street, to an animated video about a kiwi bird trying to fly.

YouTube, which has dominated the user-generated online video market since it was founded in February last year, said the winners of its 2007 Video Awards helped to foster the online video phenomenon.

“They saw an opportunity for worldwide visibility and through their success have changed the landscape of how a ’star’ is defined,” Jamie Byrne, head of YouTube product marketing, said in a statement. “As the masses learned about online video, many of the creators of these videos established themselves as personalities, going from the seemingly unknown to international celebrity, overnight.”

Byrne said these YouTube pioneers had laid the foundation for a new medium that was influencing how people are entertained and informed, with a new generation of viewers as likely to spend their time in front of computers as television screens.

YouTube, which was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion last year, had seven categories for awards with the winners as follows (http://www.youtube.com/ytawards):

• Most Creative: OK Go. The Chicago-born band’s four members danced over eight moving treadmills to the song “Here It Goes Again.” More than 13 million people watched it.
• Most Inspirational: Free Hugs. Australian Juan Mann won after setting out to brighten strangers’ lives in Sydney by offering hugging them.
• Best Series: Ask a Ninja. Created by Los Angeles comedians Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, it featured a black-clad ninja answering e-mails in unique ninja lingo with his signature sign-off, “I look forward to killing you soon.”
• Best Comedy: Smosh. Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, aka Smosh, have the No. 2 most-subscribed channel on YouTube. The college students have nearly 70,000 fans who watch their every move, whether it’s music videos or comedy sketches.
• Best Music: Terranaomi. Los Angeles-based Terra Naomi went from struggling singer-songwriter to being signed to Island Records due to exposure on YouTube.
• Best Commentary: The Winekone. The Canadian offers a random, rambling monologue on a range of topics.
• Most Adorable Video: Kiwi. This short film by Dony Permedi is about a flightless kiwi bird who spends his life trying to achieve his dream of flying.

YouTube’s success in the past year has prompted some rivals to look at ways to compete, with media analysts predicting the Internet video market will be key to the future of media.

News Corp. and NBC Universal last week unveiled plans to launch a free online video site this summer, featuring full-length movies and television shows.

Another media company, Viacom, has sued Google for $1 billion over unauthorized use of its videos on YouTube.

ZDNet

Channel 4 is to launch a mobile blogging web site with the aim of creating the UK’s first comprehensive map of public art.

The “Big Art Mob” aims to build the resource before next year’s Big Art Project TV series by inviting people to use their mobile phones to send in photos, text, video and audio to do with any public art form.

Users upload images with the name of the artist and the artwork (if they know) as well as the location. Visitors to the site can also add and edit tags to help complete any missing information.

It will be up to the public to decide what ‘art’ is - whether things like graffiti count - and should make for an interesting collection.

Adam Gee, Channel 4’s commissioning editor, New Media, says: “There’s no comprehensive map of the UK’s public art, simply because there’s so much of it. But now, with a combination of networked media and people power, for the first time it’s an achievable public challenge. As well as documenting the richness and diversity of our public art, the Big Art Mob will highlight the fun of moblogging and provide the base for a lively, visually-oriented, UK-centred arts community.’

The new project uses moblogUK technology, who already run Europe’s leading moblogging community site.

Big Art Project, Tech Digest

When the OpenAjax Alliance was created Microsoft was invited, but didn’t take up the offer. They were noticeably absent from the early meetings.Well, now Bertrand Le Roy of the Atlas team will be at the meetings as the OpenAjax Alliance Welcomes Microsoft and Other New Members and Announces Interoperability Awards:

“Microsoft is joining the OpenAJAX Alliance to collaborate with other industry leaders to help evolve AJAX-style development by ensuring a high degree of interoperability,” said Keith Smith, group product manager of the Core Web Platform & Tools to UX Web/Client Platform & Tools team at Microsoft Corp. “By joining OpenAJAX, Microsoft is continuing its commitment to empower Web developers with technology that works cross-browser and cross-platform.”

The newest OpenAjax Alliance members include: 24SevenOffice, ActiveGrid, ActiveState, Appeon, Aptana, Arimaan Global Consulting, Custom Credit Systems (Thinwire), ESRI, Getahead (DWR), Global Computer Enterprises, GoETC, Helmi Technologies, HR-XML, iPolipo, Isomorphic Software, JSSL, Lightstreamer, Microsoft, MobileAware, NetScript Technologies, OpenSpot, OpenSymphony (OpenQA), OpSource, OS3.IT, Redmonk, Tealeaf Technology, Teleca Mobile, Transmend, Visible Measures, Visual WebGui and Volantis Systems.

The Alliance is also announcing that the following members have all been awarded OpenAjax Interoperability certificates: Apache XAP, Dojo Foundation, ICEsoft, ILOG, Isomorphic, IT Mill, Lightstreamer, Open Link, Open Spot, Nexaweb, Software AG and TIBCO. The interoperability certificates represent progress by both OpenAjax Alliance and its members towards defining and achieving industry support for OpenAjax Conformance.

Ajaxian

Yahoo Widgets 4 is live NOW! In Yahoo’s latest round of widgetry, there will be an improved widget dock that can be attached to any corner of your monitor, and offer a nice view of your widgets and offer easy access for more.

Most useful for the consumer is the Flickr desktop widget, where you are able to drag-and-drop images into the widget for automatic upload into your Flickr account. While other services such as Cellblock or Pickle offer desktop drag-and-drop applications that function in similar ways, none have offered such direct access to Yahoo’s own Flickr (although upcoming Apollo contender Dekoh may eventually do the trick).

Other anticipated features that will be useful for developers are better authoring tools, and less memory usage for widgets built on Yahoo’s platform. As widgets reign in 2007, these new tools will be key for the further deployment of widgets. Considering the current status of widgets and the power of Yahoo, it is only right to expect their widgets to be highly integrated with desktop functions, and minimize the need for a single browser application.

Widgets Lab wrote a good summary of the features ahead of launch.

VIA Mashable!

Google AdSense is probably one of the most popular revenue generators in the Web. We hear the stories about bloggers-genies, who manage to turn their blogs into cash machines overnight. However, it’s not that simple to find the actual tips, which stick to Google policies, might increase your revenues and don’t try to trick out the readers of your weblog.

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz spent several hours, trying to find out, what might increase your Google AdSense income and which tools you can use to observe and track your revenues. They selected the key-points of successful stories and useful tips as well as Google AdSense sites and services you can use on a daily basis.

Things You Probably Don’t Know About Google AdSense

• “AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor. Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads. However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned. Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.” [100 Google Adsense Tips]
• “First impressions count: make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page. Keep in mind that the first ad unit in the source code is not always the first ad unit that your users will see when the page finishes loading in their browser.” [Inside AdSense: First impressions count]
• “Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page. on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well.”[Where should I place Google ads on my pages?]
• “Format is important for multiple ad units, display your ad units where repeat users will notice them, place a leaderboard immediately after the last post.” [Six AdSense optimization tips for forums]
• “The middle, above the fold location performs the best. Best performing ad format is the large rectangle, 336×280. So the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user. So the wider formats do best so specifically, the top three formats are the 336×280 that you see on the page; the 300×250 medium rectangle; and then the 160×600 wide skyscraper. We have a feature in the AdSense account where you are able to multi-select different color palettes that blend with your site to add some variety and freshness to the ads. And that also will help decrease ad blindness.” [Google AdSense Optimization Webinar]
• “The second most active placement in terms of click-throughs tends to be the right-hand rail or margin”. “Skyscrapers” and vertical banners do well when placed next to the content in the main body. Square and rectangle ads placed within the center column also do well, provided they are placed in context to the content. Ads placed below the fold tend to perform least well, although that isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.” [Yahoo! Publisher Network: Location, location, location…]
• “I found the most success in placing the Google Adsense medium rectangle either right in the middle of the page or in a middle right column as long as it has content above and below the ad unit. Its is fine to use Adsense Ads on a forum however expect a very low CTR.” [Google Adsense Tips for Webmasters]
• “Post Adsense ads on text rich pages, avoid titles like the approved ‘Sponsored Links’ and ‘Advertisements’, place Ads above the fold, Match the colors of your ads with the colour scheme of your site, Blend ads with your page - remove the borders by having a similar color as your background.” [How to Increase Google Adsense CTR]
• “To remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense develop sufficient good content with keywords, Ensure that META tags like ‘title’ & ‘description’ and the headings tags like h1, h2 etc. have content which matches the rest of your site.” [How to Remove Public Service Ads (PSA) in Google Adsense]
• “You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs.” [It's official! You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs]
• “Google AdSense Policy: We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads.” [ Inside AdSense: Ad and image placement: a policy clarification ]
• “Section targeting uses certain html tweaks to force the google adsense bot to focus on specific content. Section targeting is the latest and most effective addition to AdSense”. [Display Relevant Adsense Ads Using Section Targeting]
• “Over the weekend, I decided to change the number of ads units on my blog based upon where the traffic is coming from. I have a small PHP function that checks to see if the referrer is a search engine, and if it is, I display and additional 2 ad units. My Adsense revenue increasing by 284% on Saturday, Sunday and Monday!” [Positive Adsense Experiment]
• “Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. Never change the Adsense code. Do not run competitive contextual text ad or search services on the same site. Do not mask ad elements. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing.” [ 15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS ]
• “Putting ads on your site won’t hurt your traffic. There are 6 sorts of bloggers’ income:
• Google Adsense, Donations (e.g. PayPal), Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month),
  Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click), affiliate programs like Amazon, Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer) [How to Make Money From Your Blog - a VERY extensive article]
• “A number of factors come into play when AdSense tries to determine what the page is about: The URL of the page, the page title, the anchor text of links, the keywords that appear most frequently within the page, search engine queries that lead to the page or to another page that links to the page”. [How to Get Relevant AdSense Ads (Especially For Bloggers)]
• “Ask yourself if you are willing to compromise your blog’s layout and over-all feel by adding ads in them. Look at your traffic and see if it’s enough to draw the crowd. Make good use of the Ad Channels. Give it time.” [Tips on Blog Adsensification]
• “You can put upto 3 AdSense units on a page. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content. For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in middle of the content. Go Wide - the large rectangle 336×280 is the best paying adsense format.” [Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for HigherCTR]
• “Google AdSense folks have unveiled another useful feature for Adsense publishers - Section Targeting. The concept is simple but the advantages and possibilities are endless.” [Display relevant Ads in Blogs: Just suggest Google]

Google AdSense: Google’s Information and Tools

• Google AdSense FAQ: the Adsense support for official guidelines.
• Google AdSense Help Page provides a very detailed FAQ about Google AdSense. Learn optimization essentials, how to design successful ads, savvy ad placement and how to use features wisely.
• Google Adsense Program Policies.
• Google AdSense Ad Formats: an overview.
• Google AdSense Success Stories provided by Google itself. Many interesting insights in concrete decisions, which helped to increase Google AdSense revenues.
• Google AdWords: Keyword-Tool: The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Start your search by entering your own keyword phrases or a specific URL. You can then add new keywords to the green box at the right.

Google AdSense Tools, Services

• Getting The Most Out Of Adsense: Top 10 Adsense Tools: Contextual Ads Preview/Comparison Tool (for Google Adsense, Yahoo YPN, Chitika eMiniMalls), AdSense Calculator, AdSense SandBox, AdWords Bidding Tool/Traffic Estimator.
• List of AdSense Trackers: 15 AdSense trackers.
• AdWords and AdSense tools directory: 1200 tools and services for Google AdWords and Google AdSense.
• Google Adsense Tips and Tools Collection: a compilation of common Google tips and tools to make more money from Google Adsense. Among them dozens of AdSense Tools.
• AdLogger » Open-Source Click Fraud Prevention and Click Monitoring intends to prevent click-fraud on your websites by tracking visitors clicks and limiting the number of clicks one may make. AdLogger tracks AdSense clicks in real time and compiles the data for you to review.
• AdsBlackList.com - Filter them and increase your revenue !: increase your adsense revenue up to 50%, increase the reputation of your website by NOT linking to Made for Adsense sites, save the quality of contextual advertising in global.
• Adsense Notifier displays your Adsense earnings on the Firefox statusbar.
• AdSense Tracking Software | The Cutting-Edge Ad Tracking Solution reveals the precise AdSense Ads that are being clicked most frequently on your site, the exact pages that your AdSense Ads are being clicked on, the actual Ad Formats that are bringing you the most clicks and more.
• Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports: Charts include: total earnings, clickthru-rate, earnings per click, number of clicks, earnings per impression, number of page impressions, earnings by day of week and earnings by day of month. Most of charts include 7-day moving averages which allow you to spot trends within your results.
• Using The Competitive Ad Filter To Increase AdSense Earnings: The purpose of the Competitive Ad Filter is to enable you to block specific ads, such as competitor’s ads, from appearing on your pages.

Google AdSense Tips, Resources

• Adsense Tips for Bloggers: an extensive series of articles on how to make money from the Google Adsense Program. By Problogger Darren Rowse.
• 16 Adsense Optimized Wordpress Themes to Maximize your Contextual Ad Earnings: Ads Minded, Typo XP Reloaded, Seo AdSense and Problogger Clean.
• 10 Best Wordpress Plugins for Google Adsense: among them AdSense Deluxe, AdRotator Wordpress Plugin.
• Monetizing WordPress Plugins: an overview of 8 AdSense-Plugins you can use with Wordpress blog engine. AdSense Widget Wordpress Sidebar, AdSense Paster, AdSense Injection and more.
• What are alternatives to Google AdSense?: 46 alternatives, among them Yahoo Publisher Network, Chitika. Over 70 more services can be found on Other Advertising Networks Besides Google AdSense
• AdSense Forum is one of the most popular AdSense-related forums in the Web with thousands of questions and answers.
• How To Market Your Blog in 2007: 41 ways to kickstart your marketing efforts.
• AdSense Niches: If you want to make money with Adsense, NicheGeek’s free AdSense niches will show you exactly what niche you need to be in if you want to make 20, 30, 50, 70 cents per click or even more.

by Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz

We just published 613 nice avatars for your convenience.

Just go here and use whatever you like!

Below you may find 8 valuable colour resources on the Web. By motives of inspiration bit

1. Palette Grabber
   This is a very useful Firefox Add-on. It installs a Palette Grabber icon in Firefox status bar. Once you click on this icon it grabs the colours from the website in your browser window and you can export the site’s colour palette to Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, or Flash
2. Color Palette Generator
   This is an indispensable resource if you want to come up with a website colour palette that matches a key image that you want to use on that site. All you need to do is enter the URL of that image and it will generate a colour palette that matches the image - on fly. As an extra bonus you get two palettes - “dull” and “vibrant”, 5 colours each, in hexadecimal colour codes.
3. Color Schemer Gallery
   This website alone contains several practical resources:
   • Scheme Gallery - full of beautiful colour schemes (unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to browse the gallery by Categories);
   • Colour Forums where you can participate in interesting colour-related discussions and learn from experts;
   • Colour Schemer Blog
   • If you’re a Mac user, then you can install a great Widget for your Mac’s Dashboard: ColourSchemer Galleria. I’ve installed it on my Mac - and absolutely love it.
4. ColorBlender.com
   This online tool allows you to choose a colour using an online colour picker (in RGB format) and it automatically generated 5 colours that blend well together. The generated palette can be downloaded to Photoshop or Illustrator.
5. Colors on the Web
   This is another website with helpful colour and inspirational colour resources (note that it’s a new site so some pages are still work in progress):
   • Colour Schemes that you can browse by Categories (Corporate, Elegant, Fun, Kid, Monochromatic, Modern, Retro)
   • Colour Info, Colour Meaning, Colour Tools< , Colour Forum/li>
6. Color Blender
   Here you can pick two colours of your choice, specify the number of midpoints you’d like to see. The palette will generate a palette that contains the colors you input as well as the requested number of midpoint colors, and the hexadecimal values of those colors.
7. COLOUR lovers
   I’ve already talked about this site in my How to Get Inspired post, but it’s a must see site that had to be included in this list
8. Daily Colour Scheme
   This site sports a shiny new web 2.0 look, and is still beta. So far it’s collected 14 colour themes, but they are worth checking

“We’ve seen concept phones galore over the years, but a recent prototype spotted at the If Design Awards at this year’s CeBIT convention piqued our interest a bit more than usual. Purportedly envisioned by Teague, the sure-to-be-renamed “Data Center Communications Vision of the Future Server” for HP looks to be a Pocket PC / rugged handheld hybrid with a slideout QWERTY keyboard, oversized touchscreen display, and quite a chunky motif. Of course, we doubt this will turn out to be your average PDA / phone, as it reportedly boasts “integrated hardware / software mobile technology to allow IT personnel to monitor data center equipment, diagnose and track problems, and perform system services” as well.”

Pocket PC Thougts

We just published 24 high resolution posters of upcoming mega buster SHREK 3! Hurry to see!

New poster gallery available (33 images) from this famous awaited movie ! Hurry to see!

Source: lordtime.com