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How many times do we have to see this?

“Twitter is over capacity.
Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.”

Okay, I have seen our favorite whale too many times now to not blog about this.  Twitter, move over the Media Temple or Amazon or somewhere that is scalable.  There may be a small cult following for the whale of delay, but come on…

Continuing its venture evolution, Google is announcing today a new venture capital arm — Google Ventures — aimed at adding profits to Google’s portfolio.  It already has two ventures (source: NYTimes) that relate to potential future core businesses: “Silver Spring Networks, a company that makes technology to help manage electric grids, and Pixazza, which links online images with related products that can be purchased. Google declined to say how much it invested in those companies.”  It is reported that Google Ventures will invest $100 million over the next 12 months.

With Google having brought a new sophistication and efficiency to managing the world’s information, it seems fitting that they could diversify toward managing an emerging re-engineered and sophisticated electrical grid. 15 years from now, will Google be known for information search, advertising networks, SaaS applications, grid computing, and energy (green technology, energy network management,…)? It would seem so. (Just don’t hire the Enron folks.)  With this view, it sure makes GOOG look cheap. Nice strategic growth move, Google.

A word from the source:

What is the focus of the fund?
Google Ventures is broadly interested in startups in industries including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and others. First and foremost, we’re looking for entrepreneurs who are tackling problems in creative and innovative ways. As a venture fund, however, we’re also looking for investments with the potential for significant financial return.

Update:

A note about Google Ventures on the Google Blog:

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet.

It felt like I was missing something in my list above — Health Care/Life Sciences. Google already has a health initiative, and I can’t help wonder if they will invest in or buy companies like QSII or MDRX (disclaimer: I own shares of each, and GOOG).

Google has come out with its new Google AdWords Interface (still in beta).  I played around with it a bit and am liking it better than the current/main interface — it allows you to bounce between more data in less time and lays out the data well.

Here is the note they sent out…

Try a New Google AdWords Interface Now in Your Account

Hello,

We’re beta-testing a new web interface for AdWords, designed to make campaign management faster and easier. You can try it now in your AdWords account using the “New Interface (Beta)” link in the top corner of the page.

Don’t worry about the new interface disrupting your normal account management work. You can switch back and forth between the new and previous interfaces at any time during the test. And the new interface won’t change how your ads run; we’re only testing changes to the way you see and manage the data in your account.

You can visit our microsite to get a quick overview of the changes and watch videos demonstrating the improvements to campaign management: http://www.google.com/adwords/newinterface/resources.html

We hope you find that the new interface increases your advertising efficiency and makes it easier for you to improve your results. If you have any feedback on the new interface, please let us know using the Feedback link in the top corner of your account. Thanks for advertising with AdWords!

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Colorado (Denver Metro area) is having a big snow storm today, somewhere between 6″ and 2′ (probably a foot).  And while most people would know this from looking out the window or watching the weather radar map, it is showing up in an interesting place: Google Trends.

20 of the top 100 Google Trend keywords are related to the Colorado snow storm.  Interestingly, only 6 entities are associated with these key words: DIA (airport), CDOT (government transportation dept.), 9News (local TV) and three schools.  Wonder what their web traffic was like today?  It is interesting that only one media property showed up, and multiple times; they clearly own the weather brand in the market.

The trends below (and screenshot) were captured at 12:30 pm MST, when about 4-8″ of snow had fallen on the Denver Metro area.  At 9am, there was only 1-2″.

It looks like Colorado’s only other real competition was President Obama (had speech today) and weather in Texas and Mississippi.

Here is a screenshot (link to view full size):

Here are the 20 keywords, in bold:

1.     angela lansbury
2.     rue la la
3.     denver international airport
4.     thea vidale
5.     dan seals
6.     whitehouse.gov
7.     kyocera ecopro c170n
8.     sonya hamm
9.     kyocera ecopro c170n 17ppm color laser printer
10.     online town hall
11.     jennifer hepner
12.     one second after
13.     cdot
14.     ryan moats
15.     ruelala.com
16.     white house easter egg roll 2009
17.     poudre school district
18.     obama town hall meeting
19.     magee ms
20.     magee mississippi
21.     kim kardashian cellulite pictures
22.     colorado department of transportation
23.     mile high music festival 2009
24.     tammy leitner
25.     cdot colorado
26.     obama online
27.     colorado road conditions
28.     9 news
29.     ksat 12 weather
30.     denver weather
31.     lisa persdotter
32.     robert o ryan
33.     kim kardashian complex magazine
34.     valerie bertinelli in a bikini
35.     www.whitehouse.gov
36.     woai weather
37.     9news
38.     ibm layoffs
39.     sarah l. tolzien
40.     whitehouse.gov government
41.     shawn johnson stalker
42.     miss montana jennifer hepner
43.     mk89 strikemaster
44.     willie aames
45.     www.whitehouse.gov/eastereggroll
46.     dancing with the stars stalker
47.     three stooges movie
48.     cheryl hines
49.     cdot camera
50.     cherry creek school district
51.     whitehouse.gov/eastereggroll
52.     colorado weather
53.     amalia tabata
54.     billy gillispie
55.     dia airport
56.     9news.com
57.     the brighter side column
58.     joy behar age
59.     mississippi tornado
60.     tommy bahama
61.     kelly clarkson on oprah
62.     denver news
63.     st vrain valley school district
64.     leon czolgosz
65.     mysa.com
66.     baby bangs
67.     julius shulman
68.     jose tabata
69.     bby
70.     zbt industries incorporated
71.     9news weather
72.     kens 5
73.     ctic
74.     san antonio weather
75.     flesh eating fish
76.     kim kardashian untouched photo
77.     magee miss
78.     storks footprint
79.     wlbt
80.     denver traffic cameras
81.     charles simonyi
82.     colorado school closures
83.     white house town hall
84.     09wheggroll.frontgatetickets.com
85.     american idol motown
86.     wild dunes resort charleston sc
87.     california safari
88.     cotrip.org
89.     arnold palmer invitational
90.     pat oliphant
91.     jocelyn wildenstein
92.     oliphant gaza cartoon
93.     forecastle festival
94.     bay hill invitational 2009
95.     university of missouri
96.     faraday cage
97.     magee tornado
98.     elliot in the morning
99.     prince on jay leno
100.     map of mississippi

The E.W. Scripps Co. shut down the Rocky Mountain News on Feb 27th 2009 after nearly 150 years as a Denver newspaper. It may live on in an independent online-only form as InDenverTimes.com if it can attract 50,000 subscribers.  Read more here: “Ex-Rocky Mountain News staffers plan news Web site” …and on YouTube here and here.

Hearst Corp shut down the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s print operations today, March 17th 2009.  It will continue on as an online-only edition at www.seattlepi.com.  Read more here: “Seattle P-I to publish last edition Tuesday“

 Here is the note Google sent out to AdSense users. I’ll let you know more about it once it is up and running.

Hi,

We’re writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site’s privacy policies. You’ll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”).  To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network.  As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category.  To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557 to ensure that your site’s privacy policies are up-to-date, and make any necessary changes by April 8, 2009.  Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we’re unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html.

We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Disney.com has a new website design today.  If you want to see where the web is heading…check it out.  It is very multimedia and interactive.  In a nut, it’s an experience.  If you are soley into news websites you may not like it, but if you are looking for an experience — like the one you get when you go to a movie or watch TV — you’ll probably dig it.  If you are keeping an eye on innovation in online media…keep visiting Disney.com; it says a lot that a large organization has redesigned its high profile site twice in 18 months.  nytimes.com has a good article.

MySpace has a new redesign coming.

Here are some screenshots of the new design.

The “karaoke splash page”…

A “People Search” page…

A view of the “profile page” and the improved “profile editor” (right column)

Firefox is on a mission to break a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours, June 17th.
Take part here – http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

Update (6/18/08):

Amazing… I go to Firefox.com yesterday to take part in download day…and they have a link to the old version. I wish I had a screenshot of the site (it displayed v2.0.0.14); although, I do have a bit of a papertrail in my download window… v2.0.0.14 was done on 6/17 and v3 was done on 6/18:

Forbes and Silicon Alley Insider have insight into YouTube’s revenue.

A quick overview:

• Google may be making $200 million from YouTube this year and $350 million next year.
• A front page ad on YouTube goes for about $175,000 per day plus a commitment to spend at least $50,000 more on YouTube or Google.
• A branded YouTube channel goes for about $200,000.
• YouTube is the undiputed leader in online video.
• Google’s position gives them great insight into user habits and is allowing them to fine tune the ad experience and model (that will likely become the industry standard).