After months of consultations with Israeli security officials, Google has launched its popular Street View service in the country's three largest cities.

The new Street View provides images of ordinary life, contested areas and religious sites in the Holy Land. Due to security issues, areas around several sensitive sites, such as the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem, are blurred out.

Google Street View is available in more than 30 countries. It was held up in Israel by concerns that images of its streets could be used by terrorists. The Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza, for instance, has boasted that it used Google Earth, which gives birds-eye views and some street-level pictures of sites around the world, to aim rockets at Israel.

Last August, after a panel of government ministers met for six months to draft security guidelines, Israel announced it had reached an agreement with Google.

The service was quietly launched late last week and officially unveiled Sunday. The images are obtained by specialized cameras mounted on vehicles.

Israel is the first Middle Eastern nation to display its cities and streets online. Iraq's National Museum is also available on Street View.

Pictures online Sunday showed typical street scenes -- bicycles chained to the gates of apartment gardens in Tel Aviv, tourists sunbathing on Haifa's beaches, and the crowded cobblestone Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus is said to have walked before his crucifixion in Jerusalem's Old City.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai brushed off security concerns about Tel Aviv, a city that was hit hard by suicide bombings on buses and in restaurants during the Palestinian uprising a decade ago.

He said militants know the city well enough without the Google service. "Tel Aviv-Jaffa is a target anyway," Huldai said Sunday.

He noted that other urban military installations, like the Pentagon...

Whether marketing a website through search engine optimization (“SEO”), local services through direct mail or even your own talents through a resume and networking, good marketing principles are somewhat universal.  Those developing Internet marketing solutions that have to be “sold” to senior executives should be open to learning new tactics from other channels but they should also learn to communicate the value of search marketing in ways that are more personal and accessible to their audience.  That includes both proof of value presentations by outside agencies and internal stakeholders like Directors of eCommerce or Chief Marketing Officers.  Enter football coach Marty Shottenheimer. While watching Sportscenter last weekend, the discussion turned to prospective NFL coaches and the argument for each team to consider the major candidates.  Former San Diego Chargers coach Marty Shottenheimer was featured as a good choice for a certain team, but the reason for suggesting him was particularly interesting.   It wasn’t for his strong coaching resume or his impressive list of Coach of the Year awards… it wasn’t even his win/loss record.  Schottenheimer's positive impact on ticket sales & attendance was one of ESPN’s statistical reasons for why an Owner or General Manager should choose Shottenheimer to lead their... Read more

The Google Drive rumors are a reality. Google just rolled out its cloud-based service that lets you create, share, collaborate and otherwise store all your digital stuff.

Google Drive is a direct competitor to Dropbox. You can upload and access all your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond. With Google Docs built into Google Drive, you can work on documents in real-time.

Google Drive is also pushing search features. You can search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and other designations. There's even Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, technology.

"Let's say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article," explained Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome & Apps, in a blog post. "We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up."

Is Cloud Backup Secure?

We caught up with Tom Gelson, a cloud strategist at Imation Scalable Storage, to get his thoughts on the potential impact of Google Drive. He told us interest in Google Drive reinforces growing demand for online or cloud backup.

"While Drive is primarily targeted at consumers, some companies will consider the solution for backup, and IT departments will have to contend with employees using Drive on their own for corporate data storage," Gelson said. "Cloud backup is certainly a practical and cost-effective storage tier, but security of data stored in Google Drive -- or any other cloud -- is essential.

To address cloud backup security, Gelson said IT departments should carefully evaluate vendors' data encryption strategy. As he sees it, an ideal security policy would dictate that data is encrypted on-premise at...

Google first introduced its social network, Google+, in June 2011. Just six months later it reportedly had 62 million users and is on track for 400 million users by the end of 2012. That will be half of Facebook’s total current user base in a fraction of the time, and double Twitter’s! Just recently, Google announced Search, plus Your World, which is Google+ content appearing with traditional organic search results. This is proof that the lines between social networking, social media and SEO are indeed thinning and that social networking and social signals are becoming more important to the practice of SEO. Google+ is a social networking force to be reckoned with and it is forcing marketers’ hands. I guarantee you that Google+ is not a fad. It is here to stay. So why is it important to incorporate Google+ into your web presence, how do you do it, and how will it positively impact your organic search strategy? With the introduction of Search, plus Your World, when your prospects search in Google for the keywords you want to be found for, relevant results will be returned in that searcher’s “Personal Results” from their “Google+ Circles”, as well as related “People and Pages from... Read more

Citing "multiple sources close to the company," a popular technology blog has reported that Facebook Inc. officials have chosen May 17 as the date to launch their eagerly awaited initial public offering.

But a source told the San Jose Mercury News that the actual date is not set in stone and could be a few days earlier.

The social network's IPO is easily the most-anticipated tech stock debut in a decade. The company, founded in 2004 in a Harvard University dorm room, is looking to raise $5 billion in the offering. That easily outpoints the $1.9 billion Google raked in through its 2004 IPO -- the largest to date for an Internet company.

A Facebook spokesman declined to comment to the Mercury News on the TechCrunch report about the IPO date. As is typical when companies are in the pre-IPO "quiet period" mandated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook has generally declined to answer any questions related to the stock offering.

A person close to the company, however, told the Mercury News that while May 17 falls within the general range Facebook has been targeting for its Wall Street debut, "nobody really knows what the date is. It's going to depend on the SEC."

If the IPO is indeed set for the third week of May, Facebook likely would begin its two-week "road show," during which it would tout the stock to institutional investors, the week of April 30.

Sam Hamadeh, a New York analyst who has been closely following the Facebook IPO, said people close to the deal have told him the stock launch actually may come a day or two before TechCrunch's target.

"We've verified that the road show is targeted to begin by April 30 and wrap by May 11," said Hamadeh, a former investment banker who is now CEO of PrivCo....

The Facebook marketing challenge has evolved from accumulating to engaging fans. The new success objective is to efficiently and effectively beat the Edgerank algorithm to get the maximum number of posts onto fans walls and trigger the multiplier effect that places brand content in the NewsFeeds of your fans’ friends. On average only 3-7% of fans see any given status updated posted to a brand page. In general, there’s only a 2 percent chance that a given post will get any kind of viral pass-along. Brand pages with a million fans or more generally see 1.1% of fans clicking or sharing content. Effectively using the Facebook platform is the new black. NewsFeed marketing is to Facebook what SEO is to Google. Becoming an effective NewsFeed marketer begins by paying close attention to the content, composition and cadence of posts and then tracking the number of likes, comments, shares and original fan posts you provoke. A consensus is emerging around the definition of engagement – the gross number of interactions (comments, likes and shares) divided by the total number of brand fans. This formula is becoming a new KPI for social media success. Start by understanding the general patterns among your fan base. Keep in... Read more

A German court ruled Friday that YouTube must install filters to prevent users uploading some music videos whose rights are held by a music-royalties collecting body.

Hamburg's state court sided with Germany's GEMA, which had sued Google Inc.'s YouTube unit over 12 temporarily uploaded music videos for which no licensing fees were paid. The organization represents about 60,000 German writers and musicians.

The online video platform has maintained that it bears no legal responsibility for the uploaded content -- saying it checks and sometimes blocks content when users alert the firm about alleged violations of laws.

YouTube currently offers copyright holders software that allows them to identify recordings for which they hold copyright, enabling them to flag the content as infringing their rights.

The Hamburg court ruled that once an alleged violation is flagged YouTube must now apply the software to the recording to prevent further copyright infringements.

The court also told YouTube to install a new program that filters uploaded videos for possible copyright infringements according to key words -- such as musicians' names and song titles -- to catch versions of a song that only sound somewhat different, such as live recordings.

"The platform operator only has the obligation to block the video ... and take appropriate measures to hinder further rights violations after being notified about the copyright violation," the court said. "There is no obligation to control all videos already uploaded to the platform," it added.

Kerstin Becker, a GEMA attorney, said the verdict is "a great success for GEMA" because it made clear that YouTube bears some legal responsibility for videos uploaded by its users, German news agency dapd reported.

But Google spokesman Kay Overbeck said the ruling was only a "partial success" as the court made it clear that YouTube is a platform hosting external content.

In its ruling, the court said it...

Foursquare Explore is a social search engine for the real world, and it can be optimized. Foursquare has made its previously mobile-only Explore recommendation engine available for the web. The feature provides personalized recommendations based on a user's check-in history, the histories of their friends, their current location, and other preferences. Not only does the Explore feature considerably increase Foursquare's value proposition for users by facilitating the discovery of new places, it significantly changes the value equation for brands as well. Indeed, Foursquare Explore is the first SoLoMo search engine. I wrote about this potential in November of 2010 in a post entitled "Why the Hell Would I Do That? Four Reasons to Check-in." "The promise of intelligent recommendations is the feature that gets me most excited. Based on the data I volunteer through checking-in everywhere I go, whether it's a public or private check-in, location-based services can use their aggregate data to accurately recommend other places I'll like." Foursquare Explore is powered by algorithms that intelligently recommend places to consumers based on a broad range of criteria. These recommendations ultimately drive foot traffic (and sales) just as Google Search drives web traffic. As such, brands need to optimize their locations for search, discovery,... Read more

As Samsung gears up to release the latest version of its winning Galaxy smartphones, United Kingdom-based Vodafone announced it will be one of the first carriers lined up to offer the S III to the public.

That makes us wonder if Vodafone's joint subsidiary with Verizon Communications, Verizon Wireless, will carry the device in the United States. The Galaxy S III is expected to be launched May 3 at Samsung's Unpacked 2012 event in London.

Launch Delayed

Samsung in February announced that the S III, widely expected to be launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March, would instead be released closer to the date of availability. Meanwhile, it built anticipation with teaser videos and ads with the familiar theme that the device will help the masses break free from conformity with other popular devices, presumably meaning Apple's iPhone. Such ads were also used to promote the Galaxy Note "phablet."

The Galaxy S III will be the second smartphone to ship with Google's Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich, or ICS) operating system, after the Galaxy Nexus.

The first Galaxy S phone was released in June 2010 and its successor, the S II arrived in February of the following year. The first model had variants on all four major carriers, selling as the T-Mobile Vibrant, AT&T Captivate, Sprint Epic, and Verizon Fascinate.

But Verizon declined to carry the S II for unexplained reasons, perhaps to avoid an overstock of Android-powered devices. The S II is available via AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and a smaller carrier, U.S. Cellular.

No U.S. carrier has been named for the S III. Vodafone stocking the device does not necessarily have any bearing on Verizon's plans, said J.D. Power and Associates wireless analyst Kirk D. Parsons.

"Vodafone pretty much leaves Verizon Wireless alone in the U.S. market," Parsons said.

Leaked screenshots and a video...

Where are we? The digital media world is constantly expanding its possibilities, and unless you keep up-to-date, you’ll get left behind in the virtual dust. Keep your company’s marketing current, efficient and profitable by getting on board with these trends. Stretching your social buzz Social media provides endless marketing opportunities for brands. The area is fairly new, though, that many companies haven’t fully taken advantage of all it has to offer (especially larger brands who have waited for a while to get involved). Creating a Facebook page isn’t enough to keep you on the digital edge in 2012, and you won’t be doing your company any favors if that’s all you do with this new media. Be sure to keep your content fresh on both your Facebook, Twitter and Google+ feeds. Using a conversational tone gets your consumers interacting with you and then with each other. The more people are talking, the more buzz you create. A brand should be monitoring all new start-ups and current networks for what fits best. As we see a more genre-based social network approach, we'll start to see audiences segmented and brands following their customers to their favorite online hang outs. Pinterest is a good example... Read more

In Instagram's early days, in offices in the South Park neighborhood of San Francisco, basking in the blue glow of half a dozen computer screens, sat an old Polaroid camera. It was a Rainbow SX-70 OneStep Land Camera.

Most of Instagram's 30 million users would not recognize the instant film camera -- even though Edwin Land's creation was once a big deal, featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1972 -- but they would recognize the echoes of the camera's design in Instagram's logo.

In fact, Instagram's personality and style were inspired in some way from old film camera companies. The application's filters, which convert pictures to look like snapshots from yesteryear, were inspired by classic Brownie cameras, Instamatics and disposable point-and-shoots.

So why was a small start-up with only 13 employees able to build up Instagram, while a company like Eastman Kodak, which recently filed for bankruptcy protection, was not? It is easy to imagine how things would be different at Kodak had it dreamed up the idea. Canon, Leica, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax -- all of which are still in business, though for how long is yet to be determined -- did not build Instagram, either. (Polaroid disappeared long ago, though its brand name persists in different forms.)

Michael Hawley, who is on the board of Kodak, said the explanation could be summed up in one word: culture.

"It's a little like asking why Hasbro didn't do Farmville, or why McDonald's didn't start Whole Foods," said Mr. Hawley, formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. "Cultural patterns are pretty hard to escape once you get sucked into them. For instance, Apple and Google are diametrical opposites in so many ways, have all the skills, but neither of them did Instagram, either."

Facebook could not build it, either. If it could, it...

Google’s decision to weight its +1 button and display Google+ results has created a very interesting contretemps. On one hand, Google is puting its thumb on the scale they invented. On the other hand they are monetizing their unique IP and stitching together their own technology, ostensibly to serve us better. Google presents and spins these changes as a consumer benefit. Google transforms “into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships,”  they claim. The three new features are: personal results, profiles in search and people and pages. The so-called benefit is that your Google search results will be even more personalized, thanks to information shared on Google+. Predictably Microsoft is crying foul, arguing that Google unfairly weights its own stuff above everyone else’s and in so doing skews the real value of search engine results. They have begun to aggressively use this move to switch pitch users and advertisers. Google streaked to success by offering a different way to categorize and rank search engine results based on inferred popularity and usefulness. They’ve used this mantra to cloak every subsequent move. At the same time, they’ve taught us all how to search. Google is both a verb and an... Read more

You almost can't be a major technology company these days without having a cloud service. Now, new reports indicate that Samsung is getting ready to take that plunge.

According to the South Korea-based Maeil Business publication, Samsung will launch its S-Cloud service on May 3 at a London press event. That date has already been scheduled by the company for press to "come and meet the next Galaxy" smartphone, according to the invitation.

Five Gigabytes?

The event, called Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012, is expected to feature the launch of the Galaxy S III smartphone, and now it appears that the new device will be accompanied by a cloud service. Maeil Business bases its report on a purportedly leaked plan from the company.

The report on Maeil Business indicates that five gigabytes might be offered as an initial free offering, which would match the free storage amount that is expected to be available in the coming Google Drive cloud service. Some observers are suggesting that Samsung might allow unlimited storage for content purchased through its cloud, thus echoing Amazon and Apple in providing storage for media purchased through its channels.

Maeil said that S-Cloud will be available to a wide range of Samsung devices, and will offer access to TV shows, movies, and music on both a paid and a free basis. Samsung is said to have partnered with Microsoft in order to have the infrastructure for offering this service globally.

The report about Samsung's new service comes a few days after reports that Google will launch an online storage platform and service next week, called Google Drive or GDrive.

Other Cloud Services

Those reports were based on allegedly leaked documents, including a screenshot from Lucidchart, a maker of online diagramming tools that is expected to be one of many Google partners in the effort. Other screen shots appear...

Face it, the old ways of marketing are dead and that means you need to be executing expansive online marketing campaigns. With over 1 billion active users on Facebook and Twitter alone, it’s obvious that social media is the new crux of your video game marketing campaigns. To be successful, there are 8 things you need to do. Read this and then go do it. Who’s in charge here? Establish your Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Google+ as the go-to authority for all the information your fans need. First, develop and release creative content on a regular basis. Write and schedule updates well in advance that include events, contests, videos and other content. Be prepared to throw some of that out the window and update on the fly as needed. Second, have a social media manager in place that is engaging and replying to users’ questions, comments and responses in real time. Do (and continue to do) those two simple things and fans will know you’re the boss. Let’s Get Hardcore! Hardcore gamers are fewer than casual gamers but they are the most vocal, and therefore influential in the success or failure of your campaign. Get them on your side fast by gaining public support from... Read more