Diary Of An x264 Developer � Flash, Google, VP8, and the future of internet video

Diary Of An x264 Developer � Flash, Google, VP8, and the future of internet video:

Very interesting discussion of the issues facing video over the web, the future of Flash and the meaning of Google's acquistion of On2 and its VP8 codec.

"The internet has been filled for quite some time with an enormous number of blog posts complaining about how Flash sucks–so much that it’s sounding as if the entire internet is crying wolf.� But, of course, despite the incessant complaining, they’re right: Flash has terrible performance on anything other than Windows x86 and Adobe doesn’t seem to care at all.� But rather than repeat this ad nauseum, let’s be a bit more intellectual and try to figure out what happened."

Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web | Magazine

Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web | Magazine: "That’s where the contextual signals come in. All search engines incorporate them, but none has added as many or made use of them as skillfully as Google has. PageRank itself is a signal, an attribute of a Web page (in this case, its importance relative to the rest of the Web) that can be used to help determine relevance. Some of the signals now seem obvious. Early on, Google’s algorithm gave special consideration to the title on a Web page — clearly an important signal for determining relevance. Another key technique exploited anchor text, the words that make up the actual hyperlink connecting one page to another. As a result, “when you did a search, the right page would come up, even if the page didn’t include the actual words you were searching for,” says Scott Hassan, an early Google architect who worked with Page and Brin at Stanford. “That was pretty cool.” Later signals included attributes like freshness (for certain queries, pages created more recently may be more valuable than older ones) and location (Google knows the rough geographic coordinates of searchers and favors local results). The search engine currently uses more than 200 signals to help rank its results."

Google's DoubleClick for Publishers API - Google Code

Google's DoubleClick for Publishers API - Google Code: "Google's DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) API lets developers build applications that interact directly with Google's next-generation display advertising platform. With these applications, publishers and third parties can manage inventory, create orders, pull reports, and more. Here are some possible applications you could build with the API:
Create a self-service ad ordering page on your site where advertisers can come to create an order and upload creatives.
Integrate your content management system with your inventory structure so updates in your content management system update your inventory.
Connect your billing system with our reporting data to automate invoicing of your advertisers."

Google Ad Manager Blog: The next generation of Google Ad Manager

Google Ad Manager Blog: The next generation of Google Ad Manager: "Since Google's acquisition of DoubleClick in March of 2008, we've been focused on combining the knowledge and resources of our companies, as well as your feedback, to improve ad serving for publishers of all sizes. Over the past year, you may have noticed some early fruits of this labor in Google Ad Manager, including the new Inventory and Admin tabs. Today, we announced the launch of our next generation publisher ad serving platform, the new DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) from Google, which further leverages the combined strengths of Google and DoubleClick."

Report: Malicious PDF files comprised 80 percent of all exploits for 2009 | Zero Day | ZDNet.com

Report: Malicious PDF files comprised 80 percent of all exploits for 2009 | Zero Day
| ZDNet.com: "A newly released report shows that based on more than a trillion Web requests processed in 2009, the use of malicious PDF files exploiting flaws in Adobe Reader/Adobe Acrobat not only outpaced the use of Flash exploits, but also, grew to 80% of all exploits the company encountered throughout the year."

Google Points At WebFinger. Your Gmail Address Could Soon Be Your ID.

Google Points At WebFinger. Your Gmail Address Could Soon Be Your ID.: "...something everyone on the web knows is their email address. And they’re conditioned by services like Google and Facebook to use it as their identifier. The problem with it has been that it’s just a string of text, nothing more. You cannot attach information to it to let others know a bit more about you — something vital for true identification. Then idea behind WebFinger is that you should be able to attach any information you choose to your email address."

EOF - The Google Exposure | Linux Journal

EOF - The Google Exposure | Linux Journal: "Advertising is a bubble. If that's a true statement, Google is a bubble too. And if that's true, many of the goods we take for granted on the Web are at risk."