Microsoft have released a new video suggesting they seek to reposition themselves over the next decade. I think they are on to something:
Their vision for the future is evidently very ambitious, but I believe that if anyone can pull this off, it’s them.
Microsoft’s approach has always been to create user experiences that are improved through exclusive use of Microsoft products. Sure, it’s got them in a lot of trouble in the past, but it’s their corporate power and knowledge of how technologies (especially theirs) can work together that will best service the user through Ubiquitous Computing and Augmented Reality.
What’s especially interesting to me is that they really seem to have thought past their next release, Surface. It’s great to see something of their overall strategy. Something Apple, Google & Yahoo! are far less forthcoming with.
We are soon to have a Surface installed in the lobby at work. Really looking forward to it, but I’m concerned it’ll be too prescriptive in what it can be used for. If Surface and any of the featured technologies in the above video suffer the marketing / usability failures of Vista it’ll be years more until these tools become a reality, at the hands of their competitors.
Will feedback on Surface once I’ve had a hands-on.
Whitevector –
Whitevector helps companies to generate consumer insight and to measure the influence of marketing efforts from social media such as blogs and discussion forums.
Onalytica –
Onalytica is a leading supplier of services that transforms online buzz into actionable intelligence.
Attentio –
Attentio is monitoring and analysing social media such as blogs and discussion forums. Learn how online market intelligence can benefit your business.
Google AdWords: Traffic Estimator –
Work out the CPC of a keyword in Google. Apparently quite unreliable, but a fairly good benchmark.
Welcome to Jones Soda –
Gorgeous looking site that make the user feel thirsty just reading it.
Love how they give each of their products equal presence and encourage community.
YouTube – Warp! –
The new visual exploration tool from YouTube, part of TestTube.
Can’t select one’s own videos as a starting point yet, but makes for a good game of 6 degrees of separation.
Grant Robinson : Guess-the-google –
Really simple game with Google Image Search at its core.
Good for about 2 minutes of furious typing, but gets boring after that.
There is also a YouTube “press release” of their announcement here:
And an example of how the in-game ads might look here:
And finally, an article from CasualGaming.biz who broke the story last Friday:
Google unveils its game plan
Oct 8th 2008 at 13:54 by Michael French:
Web giant Google has finally unveiled its long-awaited bid to enter the in-game advertising sector, revealing it is putting a big focus of the strategy on casual games.
In a post on the blog for the firm’s web advertising team Adsense, Google reps said that it is targeting web games in the first instance:
“Do you develop or publish web-based games? If so, you’re contributing to a growing trend – according to comScore, over 25% of Internet users play online games every week, which is over 200 million users worldwide. As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue,” the sales pitch reads.
“You’ll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over. Members of our AdWords team will sell your in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and you’ll also see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information. In addition, you’ll be able to control the ads you see on your pages using our filtering options.”
Google has opened a beta for the service, which is open to publishers with predominantly (over 80 per cent) traffic from the UK or US.
Demonstration videos for the service make reference to a wide variety of games – although both open with footage from Playfish’s Facebook Word Challenge game.
“We’ve built ad technology for games played within a user’s browser, and now we’re looking to expand our publisher network,” the company said.
Google has partnered with Mochi Media and its MochiAds network to add inventory to its available advertising slots.
Jameson Hsu, CEO of Mochi Media commented: “Google AdSense for Games will be able to offer a wide reach for its advertisers, and Mochi Media can better monetize international traffic for our developers and publishers.”
The news comes just hours after the company revealed its YouTube video service would start offering online sales of games as well via links from its relevant videos to online stores such as Amazon and iTunes.
