Google has recently announced the release of their new version of Google Adwords Editor 6.5.  This brand new version introduces a cool new tool called Keyword Opportunities which will help you generate ideas for search keywords to target.

What is Adwords Editor?

AdWords Editor is simply a FREE downloadable software from Google that you can use to manage your AdWords campaigns instead of going to the adwords website to make your changes. Its biggest advantage over the Web based version adwords page is that it’s a lot faster. That’s a must have software for people who needs to manage large campaigns with a ton of keywords and lots of ads, landing pages, etc.

If you’re an existing Adwords editor user, you will be prompted to with an auto-update (all your campaigns, ad groups, settings, etc will be retained). If you are user of Google AdWords but never used AdWords Editor before, you can download the AdWords Editor 6.5 here (17 Mb).

Major Highlight of The Adwords Editor 6.5 - Keyword Opportunities tool

Keyword Opportunities tool basically helps you generate ideas for search keywords that you can target in your PPC campaign.

You can use the simply use expansion feature to generate keyword ideas.You’ll get a list of potentially related keywords with a 0-5 score for search volume and advertiser competition. You can also use the multiplier feature to combine 2-3 sets of lists to create new key phrases.

My Two Cents

I personally use Google Adwords Editor and find it pretty useful. However there so called new feature “Keyword Opportunities” isn’t really something new. It works exactly like the Google Keyword Tool (Web based), and in fact the web based tool is more detailed and should be used for extensive research. The only thing new in keyword opportunities tool is probably the multiplier feature; currently they don’t have it in the web based version. But overall i think its a good software to have, so if you haven’t tried it yet - Download Google Adwords Editor 6.5 now! Remember, its a 100% Free software from Google to manage your Adwords Account. Let me know how you find the software in the comments.

Google has always tried to bring the world closer to people. For instance because of services like Google Maps, Google Street View, people now get help with any address, street directions and even traffic information.

Thats not all! ….People now even use Google Maps to find the best route that is faster to reach and has moderately less traffic.

ReadWriteWeb today blogged about Google Maps being able to providing very high resolution images using their GeoEye-1 satellite. Wired Writes:

The 4,300-pound satellite collected the image at noon EDT on October 7 while moving from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, or 4.5 miles per second. The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 centimeters — close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye’s vice president of communications and marketing.

And I must say, I am very surprised to see the image quality that Google maps has produced using this new toy. The pictures are very high resolution and extremely crisp.

Here’s a comparison between the new satellite image and the current resolution (Photo Credit: ReadWriteWeb & Wired):

Google can now begin providing images for Google Maps and Google Earth which will will boast a resolution of 50 cm.

If you are looking for even higher resolution than what is being provided you will need to get a security clearance because the US Federal Government restricts distribution of higher-resolution imagery.

So finally its happening - Google has decided that its going to provide RSS feed of it’s search results! When it happens, the RSS feeds will be an additional feature of Google Alerts, which currently only allow notification by email.

Matt McGee at Search Engine Land has pointed out that Google is the only major search provider that is not offering their search results via RSS.

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb wrote that once this feature is implemented Google web search feeds should include “site:” searches for new mentions of keywords inside particular domains so that they can deliver nice clean direct URLs - which Live.com feed is already doing well.

My Two Cents

I think its an excellent addition to Google Alerts. I personally use it to keep track of my blog - like who is linking to me, where my name gets mentioned etc. But currently I only can receive the alerts via email which sometimes gets really hectic because I have many such ‘alerts’ in place (in both Google + Yahoo) and my inbox often gets jam packed. So if google provides a RSS feed of their results page, it would be very easier to just subscribe to the feed and track it on a daily basis.

Mid of Last year, Andy Beal reported that Google plans to bring AdWords to video games via “AdSense for Games.”

That plan has turned into a reality as Google today announced the official launch of Google Adsense for Games via Google Adsense Blog.

Google has already partnered with some of the major game developers and publishers including Konami, Playfish, Zynga, Demand Media and Mochi Media. They have also got a hand full of on beta advertisers to test their system such as Esurance, Sprint, and Sony Pictures. Basically this new program - Adsense for Games will allow social games and flash-based web games to integrate video, text and image ads into the games.

Official Google Blog writes:

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. 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.

Here’s a quick video that will give everyone a good idea of what kind of games are part of the adsense network and how advertisers can use this medium to reach their target audience:

Publisher’s Eligibility for Google Adsense for Games

• must have a minimum of 500,000 game plays
• 80% of site’s traffic must be from the U.S. or the U.K
• Only Web-Based Flash Games are allowed
• The Publisher must be technically capable of SDK integration
• The Content of the publisher’s site has to be family safe and targeted at users age 13 and up
• Must be able to report embed destination and have control over where games are distributed

Apply for AdSense for Games Beta Publisher

To apply for Google Adsense for Games, simply make sure you meet the above requirements and then submit an online application. You can also find more information on Google games Ad site.

» Click here to continue reading…

Have you ever came across a song on Youtube and wanted to buy it? (Just like how you can in Myspace …) Well YouTube is actually counting on it! YouTube, which is now the world’s most popular online video blogging and sharing community, will start to sell music and video games via their website to grow revenue from its massive audience and eventually hope to justify the massive amount of money ($1.65 billion) they spent to acquire YouTube back in 2006.

The “click to buy” buttons has already started to appear in the U.S. today and it simply connect viewers to the product page on Amazon.com or Apple’s iTunes.

As a start, YouTube initially will receive a commission for each sale of songs from two major labels, EMI Music and Universal Music Group, and video games from Electronic Arts. But I think eventually YouTube will expand its horizon by promoting sales of other products such as movies, television shows and concert tickets.

Google usually does not disclose YouTube’s financials, but analysts at Piper Jaffray Research estimated that YouTube would earn about $200 million in revenue in 2009, compared with estimates of around $27 billion for Google.

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Have you ever regretted sending an email to someone that you shouldn’t have? Like maybe a harsh email to your boss saying ‘you had enough’ and you want to quit? (..But moments later you realized that you don’t have any money to pay the next month’s rental..) or maybe you have emailed some private photos of you and your ex (by accident) to a girl whom you just started dating? (…Probably you were way drunk at that time..!)

Well worry No more! As usual Gmail always comes with awesome solutions for your problems! Previously they made a nice tool that reminds you everytime you forget to “attach” files when sending an email… (That was a big problem for me, at least). Well this time Gmail engineer, Jon Perlow has came up with Gmail Goggles - An extra pair of eye for your email account.

What it does is, by default it activates itself at late night on the weekends (thats the time when weird things starts to happen usually…!). So whenever you would want to send an email during that period of time, Gmail Goggles will try to test you and figure out whether you are in the right state of mind. And How does it do that? Well by giving you some math problem to solve!

So the moment you click on “Send”, Gmail Goggles will automatically give you a hand full of math problems to solve and if you are able to solve the problems in the predefined time, then only you will be able to send the email! Sounds Stupid? Well Think Again! This feature is certainly not a ‘must use’ and can be turned off (in fact its turned off by default). You can activate it from your Settings page > Labs > Mail Goggles.

After activating Mail Goggles you can also change its settings -

So for instance, if you want it to be enabled on particular days (e.g. Sundays) or everyday from a time, you will be able to customize all those from the General Settings page of your Gmail account.

My 2 Cents

Well its a promising new tool that is certainly going to help many Gmail Users. But personally I don’t think I’ll be needing it (i hope~) as I am certain that I’m always in the right frame of mind. (well at least “most” of the time…). Most of the emails I send are very late at night, and solving math problems for every email I send would be a pain.. I hate math btw!

Today the official Google Video Channel in Youtube posted a video in regards to Google Maps.

Once you know where you’re going, use Google Maps to virtually explore the neighborhood with Streetview, get driving and walking directions, check traffic, and send information to your phone and email.

TechCrunch recently reported that Google has started to experiment with advertisement next to their image search results. Well honestly, this isn’t a big surprise, since Google announced back in May that they intend to test display ads in their search engine.

Checkout the screen shot below and notice how a Guinness Logo is appearing next to a Targeted ad where NHL Buffalo merchandise is being sold on a search for buffalo logos. I’m not sure why they are using a Guinness logo as a part of the ad, maybe its a glitch… only time will tell.

Here’s the screen shot:

There are currently different formats and positions for the ads, which combine a small image with a standard text ad. Google Operating System reports that Steve Poland has spotted a blended ad that looked deceivingly similar to an image result.
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A new update of Google Chrome browser, 0.3.154.0 has been released to the Dev channel.

The Dev channel lets you test the latest fixes and get access to new features as they’re being developed. You can learn more about the Dev channel and how to subscribe here: http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/

Google Chrome Release Highlights: Plugin Fixes

This recent release includes several changes and bug fixes that improve the performance of plugins, especially Adobe Flash video. They have addressed the issues with plugins causing 100% CPU usage, locking up Google Chrome, and not playing at all on some pages.

The new release of Google Chrome has also improved the experience with some of the default search engines. It has improved results display with voila.fr (French), enabled search suggestions for voila.fr and daum.net (Korean), and fixed an issue that sometimes prevented importing Windows Live Search as your default from the IE settings.

There were many more minor changes. A more complete list of fixes can be found here: http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/release-notes

In the Honor of Google’s 10th Birthday the company has posted the complete contents of Google’s oldest working archive, in this case from 2001.

So this is a nice way to figure out how Google was in 2001 and how web has advanced in the last couple of years. For instance I did a search for “Student Loan” and they only have 932,000 results..but if you perform the same search in Google’s current index, you would get over - 13,600,000 results!

A lot of the original Web pages that existed back in 2001 has changed and most of the deep links aren’t working anymore. But if you are really interested to see how a website looked in the past you can always use Archive.org.

This is how Yahoo looked like in 1996 -