Google has launched a new feature for Google Checkout, which allows merchants based in the US to create and run their own Checkout promotions at any time.
Users simply need to sign in to their Checkout merchant account, go to the "Tools" tab, and click the "Promotions" link to create a promotion. Google says the process takes less than a minute. Users can specify the date and time they'd like the promotion to run, and choose from different dollar-off discounts to offer their buyers.
When you run a Google Checkout promotion, the standard Checkout button on your site will automatically update to display the discount amount and cart minimum. AdWords advertisers will also have their standard Checkout badge that appears on their ads change to show the same information.
"These promotional badges have been introduced to enable shoppers who search on Google.com to easily identify and take advantage of promotional offers," says Google Checkout Specialist Gina Del Vecchio.
"Checkout promotions are a great way to attract new buyers, and we're excited to make this functionality more widely available," she adds.
Google recently made changes to its content restrictions for Google Checkout. The service now allows the sale of real estate rentals, timeshares, and day sight-seeing tours. Google has just announced a couple of other things that people in real estate might find particularly useful. For one, they have expanded upon their real estate features on Google Maps. Secondly, they are now offering a new type of ad to allow for comparisons between offers.
In an interview, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri said his energy agenda remains on track and he is confident that choosing Deepwater Wind as the state’s “preferred developer” of an offshore wind farm was the right decision.
Redirects a user to the page based on their language. For example, English language user browsers, which report the language as 'en' in most cases, can be redirected to an English page, while Spanish language user browser, which report the language as 'es' in most cases, can be sent to a separate Spanish page. This method works well for redirecting users in all the languages that you set up. Instructions on adding more languages are included in the source code.
Update: Starting today, all StumbleUpon users can access the new interface, according to the company.
Original Article: StubmleUpon launched a big redesign today. The new version of the site comes with a variety of new features, which the company says are designed to make it simpler, searchable, and more social.
"Our vision for StumbleUpon was simple--create a site where you could click a button and discover interesting, personalized and highly relevant websites," said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon CEO. "We are now combining the power of discovery with search--and offering another way for people to access over 35 million user-endorsed websites."
With the new version of StumbleUpon, anyone can receive personalized recommendations directly from the StumbleUpon homepage, from any computer, without any registration or installation. The company says the new design makes it easier for new users to discover interesting content.
The company says the personal preferences and collaborative human opinions that go into making "stumbles" personalized applies to search as well.. The result is personalized and relevant search results, according to StumbleUpon. Search is available from every StumbleUpon page, so users can search through their favorites, others' favorites, or just through friends' favorites.
There is also a new and improved friend search feature, making it easier for users to find people they know and meet others with similar interests. In addition, users can see recommendations from people they know highlighted in search results, and easily stumble or search within their favorite sites.
"It's great to see the original founders' vision reflected in this release, StumbleUpon's first major product release since its independence from eBay," said Ram Shriram, StumbleUpon investor and board member.
StumbleUpon can provide a tremendous source of traffic. Read this for information on how to get that.
PROVIDENCE – Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse remains deeply engaged in the American Locomotive Works project in Providence, its CEO told Providence Business News Wednesday, and despite published reports, is committed to the Dynamo House …
Storage and data backup for small businesses just keeps getting easier and more affordable. Iomega’s StorCenter offers big capacity, features and peace of mind at great price.
Don't be surprised if Google's sites and services become inaccessible to people within China. The search giant has gotten in trouble with a newspaper called the People's Daily, and said publication just happens to be the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.
Not too long ago, the People's Daily ran articles that were critical of the Google Books scanning project. They touched on some of the same issues other people have raised, alleging copyright infringement and the like. The trouble was that Google then stopped allowing searchers to access a portion of the newspaper's website.
According to Liang Chen, searchers could just see a warning that stated, "This website may have malicious software, which might damage your computer."
The People's Daily did not take kindly to this. Chen continued, "[T]he channel posted a news story at the top of its Web page Monday, quoting a person in charge of the channel as saying that 'Google has maliciously blocked the channel in retaliation.'" A special, separate page was created, too.
Now, access has been restored, and Google's chalked the malicious software warning up to an automated mistake on the part of StopBadware.org. Still, this episode could hurt Google's reputation in China, and it's not at all unimaginable that the government would take action and do a little (more) censorship of its own. Related Articles: > French Case Over Google Books Begins > Kai-Fu Lee Talks About Quitting Google > Top Google China Exec To Leave
PROVIDENCE – Brown University’s Division of Biology and Medicine (BioMed), which includes the Warren Alpert Medical School, has proposed a $138 million budget for fiscal 2011.
Adding to its e-mail marketing and online surveys offerings, Constant Contact launches what it claims is the first event-marketing tool designed specifically for small businesses.
Never mind swine flu - it may in fact be time to start watching out for flying oinkers. Social networking archrivals Facebook and MySpace are discussing the idea of sharing content, according to people at the highest levels of both organizations.
On Facebook's side of things, Sheryl Sandberg, the company's COO, told Emma Barnett, "Facebook is focussing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focussing on more a content-led strategy. We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users."
Then, sure enough, Owen Van Natta, the CEO of MySpace, also contributed a quote. "We are in talks with Facebook, and other sites, about how we could partner with them," he said. "Partnerships are going to be a big part of our strategy moving forward as a lot of value can be derived from them."
So, although nothing's been agreed upon, this isn't scuttlebutt being circulated by the mail guy and an intern.
In fact, this is a fairly major development that could be taken as weakness on either side's part - either Facebook worrying that people will jump ship to MySpace, or MySpace thinking that this is its best chance to get eyeballs - but a properly implemented partnership should benefit everyone.
PROVIDENCE – Textron Inc. got a public show of support on Monday as Barron’s magazine published an interview with an investor who predicted the company is on track to boost earnings after dealing with last year’s liquidity crisis.
The Motorola Droid advertising campaign is in full swing, and I'm sure by now you've seen the commercials, if not you can see the commercial below. Basically, the campaign is all about taking digs at the iPhone while showing Motorola's support for the Android OS.
If you're un-familiar with the Droid, it's the first Android-based smartphone that will be sold exclusively by Verizon Wireless. Why is this fact important? Verizon currently has more than 86 million wireless subscribers, and will be the largest wireless carrier to date to support an Android-based device.
Some Apple fans aren't taking the "Droid Does" campaign very well, as they've created their own take/spoof of the commercial, you can see it below.
Can the Droid succeed, by knocking off the iPhone, where so many other smartphones have failed (I'm looking at you Blackberry Storm and Palm Pre)? Let us know what you think.
MooBella Inc. in Taunton is preparing to launch a machine roughly the size of a refrigerator that makes a scoop of instant ice cream – not soft-serve, but traditional hard ice cream – in just 40 seconds. At left, MooBella CEO Bruce Ginsberg …
Play even the classic game of Blackjack in JavaScript! (You might also know it as "21") The object of the game is to get the closest to 21. If you get higher than the dealer without going over, you win! Good luck, and don't gamble. ;-)
Not all big brands are using social media tools to the potential they could be. For this reason, it really sticks out when they do. There are plenty of small businesses you can learn a lot about ways to use social media from, but it is the big brands that have the truly wide reach. These are the ones that are easier to find, just because they're brands that you know.
Look at Ford. They utilize all kinds of different social media channels. They go where the people are, and they interact with them in different ways. They keep it at a human level. They look for trends and try to determine what people want. They use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, Delicious, etc.
Mattel is the latest big brand to make headlines with social media efforts. The company just announced a new e-commerce site with social shopping features. WebProNews reported on that here.
You probably interact in some capacity with big brands on a daily basis, whether that is something as simple as getting a Coke out of the vending machine or running around the neighborhood in your Nikes. Find products you use. Find products you like and are interested in. Then see how they are using social media (if they are). This way you are placing yourself directly in the role of the customer, and you can evaluate exactly what you are getting out of their social media experience.
Since you can look at this from the customer's perspective, you can use that to determine strategies that you feel work, and those that you feel don't. It's not a bad way to find concepts you can apply to your own business or at least some that you can test.
The phone has always been a critical tool for sales people, but M5 Networks takes it to the next level by integrating hosted PBX with customer relationship software. Can you say sales efficiency?
LINCOLN – A proposed agreement filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court would end Twin River’s association with the Rhode Island Greyhound Owners Association, saving the cash-strapped gambling facility money while it completes a restructuring.
Will you stick with XP and Vista or will you roll the dice on Microsoft’s latest, and some say greatest, operating system? We offer our take on the pros and cons of a Windows 7 upgrade.
Microsoft unleashed Windows 7 onto the public today, and the company's Bing team has released some downloadable wallpaper things for the operating system. The themes are based on the images that the search engine uses on its homepage.
"A lot of people ask us for desktop versions of our images," says Stephanie Horstmanshof of Bing. "And now you (and your friends, and your family, and your casual acquaintances) can get them!"
Whether or not you are a fan of Bing as a search engine, there's no denying that there are some visually pleasing images that appear there. Here are some of the wallpaper options:
The themes are more than just wallpaper images though. The themes are a combination of pictures, colors, and sounds for the computer. They include desktop backgrounds, screen savers, window border colors, and sound schemes. Some include icons and mouse pointers.
Microsoft reminds users that they can also integrate Bing right into the operating system by:
PROVIDENCE – The Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau (PWCVB) took a bow Thursday at its annual meeting, honoring its members and recapping 2009’s highlights.
Bing has already made a beta version of its Twitter search available to users at bing.com/twitter. The most interesting aspect of Bing's Twitter search is that it offers something plain old Twitter Search (formerly Summize) doesn't. That is a relevancy factor (or at least an attempted relevancy factor).
Twitter Search only shows you results displayed chronologically, which has really always seemed to be the essence of real-time search to me anyway. But Bing has a "Best Match" option, which attempts to give certain tweets more weight than others.
How do you put relevancy on "real-time" results though? "Real-time" is based on time (obviously). The phrase even has the word "time" in it. A search for "WebProNews" on Bing's Twitter Search gives me different results for "most recent" and for "best match". I can't see that the "best match" results are any better than the "most recent" results, however.
The answer is: Bing weighs tweets by follower counts. "If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher," says Bing. "If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower."
This is of course the earliest stage for any kind of algorithm Bing may have in place for its Twitter search feature. The feature is still in beta after all. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes more details available for how it ranks tweets moving forward. This could be a whole new nut to crack for SEOs. Then just wait until Google makes similar deals.
I'll go out on a limb here either way, and suggest that providing good content will be the way to go moving forward. That will bring in followers, and probably do better for your relevancy rankings in the future. That said, defining good content may be considered a little harder at 140 characters or less.
PHILADELPHIA – Banco Santander S.A., the Spanish banking giant that bought Sovereign Bancorp in January, may consider buying another midsize U.S. bank in a few years but is not looking to expand at the moment, CEO Alfredo Senz, left, said in an …
Coinciding with the launch of Windows 7 this month, HP unveiled a bevy of small business and SOHO PCs for just about any need and budget. Several even take advantage of Windows 7’s advanced touch-screen capabilities.
Although Yahoo's last few months have been defined by its deal with Microsoft and a trimming of nonessential units, the company proved today that it has a little life in a yet. Plenty of the stuff, really, as Yahoo's third quarter earnings report beat analyst's expectations.
Analysts thought Yahoo would reel in $1.5 billion in revenue. The company managed to find an extra $75 million. It then did even better in terms of net income and earnings per share, reporting $0.13 against a forecast $0.07. This represents a 225 percent year-over-year improvement, and would appear to show that the cost-cutting measures have paid off. Carol Bartz stated as a result, "[W]e had a solid third quarter that signals our major businesses have stabilized. With new products like Yahoo! homepage, our brand revitalization campaign and expansion in the Middle East through Maktoob.com, our execution is improving and we're focused on what we do best - being the center of people's online lives." As for the future, Yahoo thinks things will be better still in the fourth quarter, forecasting $1.6 to $1.7 billion in revenue. Investors have responded well to all of this news, sending Yahoo's stock up an impressive 5.42 percent so far in after-hours trading.
WESTERLY – Washington Trust Bancorp Inc., parent of The Washington Trust Co., Tuesday posted a third-quarter profit of $4.91 million, down 18.66 percent from the year-ago period’s $6.04 million. The result beat the consensus estimate from …
Epson's claim that this $200 inkjet all-in-one produces laser quality at up to 15 ppm is no lie — plus Wi-Fi, an automatic document feeder and photo printing from flash memory cards make it a tempting small-office solution.
A recent study found that 54% of businesses prohibit employee social media use completely. There are valid arguments supporting both sides of this debate. We've seen quite a few news stories in recent months about social media policies coming to light. We've seen the topic discussed with regards to the news industry, sports leagues, and more recently, movie studios.
Fears exist. Questions. "How are my employees going to screw things up out there?" The result often ends up coming in the form of strict social media policies that severely limit interactions and engagement. "Here are the things that you can't do."
What fears do you have involving employee social media use?Share your thoughts.
In many cases, these rules are very justified. Amber Naslund made a very good point in an interview with WebProNews at BlogWorld this past weekend though. If you're going to give employees guidelines and tell them how they should not be using social media, you should try balancing that by giving them some ways that they should use it.
In the long run it comes down to what your goals are for social media use, and those goals should influence your policies. When you figure your goals out, you should be able to figure out how you want employees to proceed.
You should also use those goals to influence the tools you use to accomplish them. Wasted time is one of the most common reasons companies prohibit employee social media use. Wasted time can be minimized when you plan for specific goals. There are tons of social networks and related tools available, but that doesn't mean that you have to use them all. Try to determine which ones will most effectively help you accomplish what you are trying to do, whether that be push out information, drive traffic, provide customer service, etc.
When you can clearly establish your goals and the tools you want to use to accomplish them, it should be easier to clearly tell employees what they can be doing with those tools to help accomplish those goals. If you've picked a tool, you must have a reason for doing so. Share that reason in the policy. Make employees understand. "If you CAN use this tool this way, we CAN meet our goal of ____."
If this sounds vague, that's because different industries have different goals. Different businesses within the same industry have different goals. What are your goals for business social media? Discuss here.
SMITHFIELD – A team of Bryant University sophomores recently took first place in a business plan contest at Babson College, earning $27,500 to develop their idea for a water purification business.
Digital advertising association argues that new endorsement guidelines would create a double standard for new and old media and challenges their constitutionality.
If you want to 'protect' a site and don't have CGI access, you can try this JavaScript. Visitors get three tries to enter the correct password then they are refused entry.
To some people, social media's a shiny, happy, ball o' fun. Or at least an invaluable marketing tool. There are dangers, however, and during a session at BlogWorld titled "Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly," four experts outlined six of them. (Coverage of the BlogWorld conference continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.) The first is the unforgiving nature of the loud minority. Wayne Sutton, who runs the blog SocialWayne and is a partner at OurHashtag, recommended addressing it by thinking about the long term when you post online. Amber Naslund, Radian6's director of community, also advised doing your own research and being careful before reacting. Robert Scoble, who founded Building43 not too long ago, then added that you should think about your brand and what you want it to be known for. The second dangerous trend of social media is, according to the speakers, the mob mentality. Naslund echoed Scoble's tip about representing your brand, and pointed out that we must be responsible and accountable if we demand respect. Next, be wary of unreasonable time expectations. Patrick O'Keefe, the founder and owner of the iFroggy Network, said it's important to remember that everyone has time constraints. Naslund suggested being humble and honest. And Scoble took that a step further by recommending that you not assume everyone knows who you are. The fourth dangerous trend then relates to self-entitlement. The fifth is forcing everyone to use all tools and communities in the same way. Finally, the sixth is all about sock puppets. O'Keefe stressed that social media users need to build trust, with Sutton explicitly saying that you should disclose things and be open with the community. WebProNews Video reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this report.
PROVIDENCE – Textron Inc. and its fellow business-jet manufacturers got more bad news over the weekend as an annual industry forecast projected aircraft sales will decline again next year before starting to turn around in 2011.
This week, unconventional marketer Andrew Lock looks at a funding show called Dragons Den, offers advice on prospect follow-ups, and a lesson from Conde Nast.
Conan O'Brien, the host of NBC's The Tonight Show has been engaging in something of a feud with the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Conan made a joke about Newark, and Mayor Cory Booker retaliated via YouTube.
While Conan has the power of national television behind him, Booker has managed to get a considerable audience for his side of the message as well. He has managed to get over 100,000 views on his YouTube videopages alone. Of course, Conan played clips of his videos on the Tonight Show as well.
Here are a few clips that explain the plot:
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It ends with Booker both banning Conan from the entire state of New Jersey, and inviting him at the same time, as well as banning him from Newark's "sister cities" around the world. Conan has already invited Booker on the show. I'd be very surprised if he did not turn up there.
This feels a bit like a set up on the Tonight Show's part, but even so, it's not a bad way to market a show who's ratings were a bit disappointing (for some reason) after Leno left.
PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Department of Administration said Friday it used a reverse auction to shave about $1.2 million from government natural gas bills in the three-year period starting next month.
This week’s crop of Web tools help you discover content for your Web or blog, find free, professional-quality fonts, easily create one-time-offers, and convert just about an file format you can imagine.
Back in June, Hubspot shared data, which indicated that about one and a half percent of all tweets were retweets. I'd be surprised if that number hasn't increased in the last few months. More people are adopting Twitter and becoming familiar with the Twitter culture. More tools have come out, which cater to the easy re-tweet. More sites have adopted retweet buttons, such as the one from Tweetmeme. I seriously doubt people are retweeting less. Is your content easily tweetable?Talk about your strategy with WebProNews readers.
We're still waiting on Twitter to incorporate the retweet feature onto Twitter.com. Once that happens, retweeting is almost certainly going to go up significantly. According to the rough sketch Twitter provided a while back, there will be a retweet option by the reply option on all individual tweets.
Retweeting is an incredibly useful tool for tweet promotion, which ultimately means for content promotion. If you are producing content, you want people to retweet it and spread it virally around the Twitterverse. This can lead to some big-time traffic. There are other business benefits to retweets as well.
Shéa Bennett, who writes the blog Twittercism, has come up with an obvious, but no so obvious equation for retweet optimization. The concept itself is obvious, the equation itself - not as much. The concept is this: consider Twitter's 140-character limit, consider your user name, and consider how many characters you need to leave free.
"When sharing links and content, I always ensure I leave a minimum of 12 characters at the end of each and every tweet," says Bennett. "This is a great habit to adopt. Otherwise, those wanting to retweet you are forced to edit your submissions so that they can give the proper credit. Because f this extra work, many times, they simply won’t bother retweeting you at all."
Originally, Bennett's equation was:
Your Number = length of username + five characters
That was based on a retweet looking something like this:
RT_@Sheamus_The original tweet goes in here...
The five characters in the equation come from the "R," the "T," the "@," and the two spaces (represented above by underscores).
12 is Bennett's number. At least it was. He had to change it to 15, because "RT" isn't the only way people retweet. Sometimes they use "via" with parentheses around "via @username". Upon realization of this, Bennett added 3 to the equation.
Bennett's equation is now:
Your Number = length of username + eight characters
It is an interesting system to go by, and perhaps a helpful equation, but the larger point of the equation is the real takeaway. If you want to increase your chances of getting retweets, you should be sure you're leaving room for readers to do it easily. It's a usability thing. It's a simple concept that could end up greatly increasing your traffic. Don't forget to consider any links as added characters.
What do you think is the appropriate amount of space to leave in a tweet? Share your thoughts.
NEW YORK – Natural gas prices fell 7 percent on Thursday afternoon after a report showed U.S. stockpiles of the fuel reached a record 3.589 trillion cubic feet last week.
UC Santa Cruz has received a major grant to help digitize the Grateful Dead Archive at the university library. The university was awarded a National Leadership Grant of $615,175 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant will allow the UCSC Library to digitize materials from its Grateful Dead Archive spanning from 1965 to 1995. The project will include a new website titled, "The Virtual Terrapin Station." "We are honored to be among a select group of libraries and museums chosen as recipients of National Leadership Grants," said UCSC Librarian Virginia Steel. "This is a first for the UCSC Library, and the grant gives us the opportunity to create a new model for web-based archives that will include traditional materials from our Grateful Dead Archive--along with materials contributed by scholars and Deadheads around the world." The website will offer access to the Grateful Dead Archive materials, including original documents, clippings, media, articles along with three decades of the bands recordings and its performance of thousands of concerts. The website will also allow fans to contribute to the archive. The library plans to develop a click-through permissions form for content contributors to help extend the reach of the archive to the academic community. The Grateful Dead donated their large band archive to UC Santa Cruz in 2009. The processing of the archive is expected to be completed in 2012 with parts of the collection being made available as the work progresses.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bank of America Corp. CEO Kenneth D. Lewis will step down at the end of this year, the bank announced in a statement late Wednesday. A successor has not been named.
When you run a Google Checkout promotion, the standard Checkout button on your site will automatically update to display the discount amount and cart minimum. AdWords advertisers will also have their standard Checkout badge that appears on their ads change to show the same information. 
Then, sure enough, Owen Van Natta, the CEO of MySpace, also contributed a quote. "We are in talks with Facebook, and other sites, about how we could partner with them," he said. "Partnerships are going to be a big part of our strategy moving forward as a lot of value can be derived from them."
The first is the unforgiving nature of the loud minority. Wayne Sutton, who runs the blog 
Next, be wary of unreasonable time expectations. Patrick O'Keefe, the founder and owner of the 
"When sharing links and content, I always ensure I leave a minimum of 12 characters at the end of each and every tweet," says Bennett. "This is a great habit to adopt. Otherwise, those wanting to retweet you are forced to edit your submissions so that they can give the proper credit. Because f this extra work, many times, they simply won’t bother retweeting you at all."