YouTube is finally monetizing their videos

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

YouTube is finally monetizing their video clips – and the adverts are not bad at all.   Not really obtrusive or “in your face” as many users had feared they would be.

I was looking at the current Chad Vader video (which wasn’t that funny so I didn’t bother posting it on GAS) and right away, you will see an “Ads by Google” strip along the bottom of the video screen.

As you can see, this is easily closed by a small X box on the right hand side so no big deal.  But if you close it, the thin black bar still remains with an option to reopen the advert if you want to.

Then at the end, you have the Adsense adverts, related to what you have just been watching :

When Google started making noises some time back about monetizing YouTube, rumours starting leaking out that adverts would inserted in front of the video clips and users would be forced to watch those adverts before the video clips began.  Stories like this began to make YouTube users uneasy about Google’s exact plans for making a profit on YouTube and although anything can happen in the future, Google has proven that they can advertise and make a profit using subtle advertising like this.



Classmates user sues as no-one was really looking for him

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I’m not sure whether to mark this one down as a ridiculous WTF lawsuit or to think that maybe the plaintiff might have a point here.   So I thought I would write this one up for GAS and let you, the readers, decide.

A user of Classmates.com, Anthony Michaels, was told by the site that former school friends were trying to contact him and that he should spend $15 and upgrade to the premium membership to collect those messages.  But, and you guessed it boys and girls, when he upgraded, there were no messages!   The “your old school buddies are trying to contact you” line was just all one big marketing ploy to get Anthony to upgrade.

Now some people like you and me would fume for a little while, maybe fire off an angry email to Classmates, then after a while, settle down and write the money off.   After all, it is only $15! It’s not a staggeringly huge amount that will bankrupt you (it costs more these days for a pizza or a cinema ticket).   But Anthony decided instead to turn into the legal caped crusader and filed a class action lawsuit (pdf file) alleging that Classmates deceived him and lots of other people – they’re mad and they want their money back!

The lawsuit is going after Classmates for deceptive advertising which is where I think Michaels has a point.   But on the other hand, it makes Michaels look a bit….how can I put this….silly?   He loses a mere $15 and he responds with a class action lawsuit on behalf of other people he doesn’t even know of?   He kind of comes out of this looking like Tony No-Pals.  “Nobody sent me an email so I think I’ll sue”

An extreme over-reaction or standing on a legal principle?   GAS readers, over to you.

[Via Wired]



Robots Should Be Seen and Not Heard?

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

You know what’s cooler than a robot that can play the violin? A robot that can play the flute. Watch as this anthropomorphic flutist robot owns Flight of the Bumblebee:

Of course, what good is a robot that just sits around and plays music all day? You may as well get an iPod; they take up a lot less room. However, if you’re lonely and just want someone to talk to…

Creepy, right? . . . but kind of neat. This anthropomorphic talking robot models the functional parts of speech–vocal chords, tongue, lips, airway, etc. Of course, in this video he just sounds like the teacher from Peanuts. Wa-wa-wa.

Also, I think that while the little hat on the first guy is jaunty, the glasses on the floating head just make him creepier since he never blinks.

Firefox 3.0.4 update now available

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

If you go to Help and then Check For Updates in your Firefox browser, you will find that the Firefox 3.0.4 update is now available for downloading and installation.

But 30 minutes after clicking on it, I am still waiting for it to be downloaded. It seems like the Mozilla servers are getting quite a hammering at the moment so be prepared to wait a while!

According to the release notes, there’s nothing to get excited about with this new update. It’s mostly patching up security and stability issues. But they have also now brought out Firefox in some new languages including Icelandic, Thai, Esperanto, Occitan, and Welsh!

OK, is there a big demand for Occitan and Esperanto or is Mozilla just showing off?   Will the next version be in Ye Olde Englishe? Klingon perhaps? Maybe Steve Ballmer should be dispatched immediately to the Klingon High Council to offer some tasty discounts to persuade them to stay with Internet Explorer?

New Toyota Corolla Ad Features Ninja Kittens

I’m not exactly sure what Toyota had in mind by featuring ninja kittens in a Corolla ad, but one thing is for sure; it grabbed my attention. Maybe the the company is looking to pimp up the image people have of their medium-sized sedan. After all, in my mind, the Corolla has always been a rather unremarkable vehicle, even though it’s one of the most dependable ones out there.

[Via Neatorama]

Will Geeks Be the Next Poker Stars?

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

So 22-year-old Peter Eastgate has become the youngest World Series of Poker champion ever. It was also the longest final table in the history of the series, 274 hands in 15 hours and 28 minutes. Though a $9.1 million payday isn’t bad for 15 hours of work.

Like most younger poker players coming onto the scene these days, he got his start online; he decided to make money playing Internet poker rather than going to college. A gutsy choice… or maybe he just knew how good he was. Still, the Internet has become a popular training round ever since the Cinderella story of Chris Moneymaker, who turned a $39 online satellite into a $2.5 million World Series win… his first live and in person tournament ever.

So what I’m wondering is–with these younger, Internet-poker-playing competitors swooping in and stealing the pot from the seasoned pros–does the training of online poker actually give you an advantage? I imagine that to some degree it’s an issue of scale; you can play a heck of a lot more hands from your computer than you can if you have to wait until you can get to Atlantic City on the weekends.

But here’s the geeky rub: if you learn to play online, where there are no tells or body language, do you learn to play the numbers better? Do you get a better feel for the uncluttered probabilities? And if so, could this actually make you a better player? Could geeks take over this sport? How much of poker can you learn, and how much is instinct?

I will add one caveat, though: the difference between playing Internet poker for real money, and playing for “play” money or in a computer game. Computers don’t play like real people, and people playing for peanuts don’t play like real people, either. Though that can be a great way to learn the game, if you sit down at a table with players who have something to lose, you’ll notice the difference very quickly.

Image Source: flickr

What if Google Were Built by Librarians?

Google’s PageRank algotrithm certainly has its detractors, among them people who feel that using links as ‘votes’ for a site’s importance isn’t the smartest way to get the best content. Unsurprisingly, librarians fit within this group, and they set out to determine what Google would look like if the weight of search results were powered by the expertise and credibility judgements of actual people. Namely, themselves.

The “Reference Extract” is currently being developed by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) along with the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington. OCLC is an international cooperative that pools resources among over 69,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories.

The Reference Extract won’t be a simple online directory; instead, it will focus on answering questions. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted toward sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions like the Library of Congress. The idea is that you’re getting the “natural” intelligence of librarians to help you find a credible source of information.

Wired Campus says it’s a case of librarians trying to ‘out-Google Google’, but Google hardly needs to be concerned about the competition. Reference Extract has a $100,000 grant to get started – up against a $150-billion company – and they’re not trying to do quite the same thing.

But, Reference Extract sounds like it may very well provide a useful service. After all, the internet is huge and full of inaccurate information. The Dewey Decimal system may be a dinosaur, but librarians still have a place in the world of research.