If you have any kind of passing interest in video games then you've more than likely heard of Call of Duty. The series has been around since 2003, and including sequels, spin-off/expansions has released 12 different games. The latest title is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) and looks to be the best selling yet.
Modern Warfare 2 could be on the Top 20 best selling games of all time list before the year ends. You thought Twilight knocked the ball out of the park with a $142 million opening weekend? Modern Warfare 2 raked in over $310 million in it's first 24 hours and sold 4.7 million units, setting a launch day media record. The previous record holder was Grand Theft Auto IV which sold 3.6 million units.
The Modern Warfare 2 craze not only spawned record breaking sales, but set records on the Xbox Live Service. The first day of release saw around 2.2 million gamers logon to play Modern Warfare 2 online. Coupled with the statistic is 5.2 million online multiplayer hours were logged during the game's first day. Have you played Modern Warfare 2 yet?Let Us Know. Leading up to release, Modern Warfare 2 had a couple of minor speed bumps. First, the PC community was up in arms about Infinity Ward's decision to do away with dedicated servers from the multiplayer service. Dedicated servers are the tried and true method of allowing multiplayer gameplay in first person shooters. The reason dedicated servers are so loved by the PC community is they allow players to monitor and police gameplay sessions, and allow for open customization by the server admin.
Instead of going the traditional 'dedicated' route, Infinity Ward launched their IWNet service. They decided to scrap dedicated servers altogether, stating the overall quality of online multiplayer would improve with IWNet. This led the PC community to petition, and some to even boycott MW2. Currently, there are over 226,000 signatures for the online petition.
*spoilers ahead*
What had greater potential to spoil the MW2 party was the backlash coming from a particular gameplay element which sparked some controversy. There's a mission included in the game which has you working undercover in a terrorist cell, who's gunning down civilians in a Russian airport. The game provides an option to engage in the shooting to help bolster your undercover image. I haven't played the game personally, but reports on all fronts state the level is played out very cinematically and is meant to pull the emotional strings of the player.
What are your thoughts on the Modern Warfare 2 controversy?Tell us.
The controversy has stemmed from a wide variety of places. The most prevelant is from Australia, where classification of the game was put under much higher scrutiny than the US release. The events of the Ft. Hood tragedy only added fuel to the fire, and led many people to be upset at the images shown in MW2. Stephen Totilo an editor of Kotaku.com, a popular video game blog, spoke with MSNBC and provided some insight into what brought the level to the media forefront:
*spoilers end*
The dedicated server protest, and terrorist level couldn't keep Modern Warfare 2 from reaching mammoth sales. If anything the added media coverage only helped hype the game even further. VGChartz, a company based around video game sales figures is projecting Modern Warfare 2 to sell 14.5 million copies by the turn of the new year.
Rhode Island legislators and policymakers next year will likely again be faced with deciding whether the benefits of the tax credit for producing a movie or television show in the state are sufficient to warrant its cost. At left, an ad in Paris for …
Google's Matt Cutts, as you may know, frequently appears in videos for Google's Webmaster Central YouTube channel. In these videos he answers questions submitted by Google users. One of the latest ones features a different kind of (and perhaps more fun) question:
Every Google user probably has an answer for this question, and the differences among those answers are limitless. It is interesting to hear what Cutts himself has to say on the subject though, considering he has kind of become the unofficial posterboy for giving webmasters information about the inner-workings of the world's most popular search engine.
Matt says there are actually a lot of things he would like to see added to Google Search, but one thing comes immediately to mind for him. When you do a search on Google (for example for "flowers"), the URL you get for the results is not just www.google.com/search?q=flowers. There are always other parameters such as "hl=en" and others.
Cutts finds this annoying because he emails search results a lot, and English is the only language he speaks. He says he has even considered writing a Greasemonkey script that would eliminate the extra parameters. He also says he's tried to get some people at Google to consider changing it, but nobody is very exited about the idea because not that many people email search result URLs around.
"But who knows? Maybe some day I will prevail," Cutts proclaims with a smile on his face.
It's interesting to look at the comments for Matt's video. Other people have made suggestions for what they would change about Google search. Suggestions include more control over regular expressions, a date limiting factor on search results beside the search box, and Google Alerts recognizing hyphens in searches.
What would you change about Google Search? Is there a feature you would add? Is there one you would like to see removed? Comment here.
PROVIDENCE — The 233 unsold condominium units at The 903 Residences in Providence are scheduled to go on the auction block for a mortgage sale on Dec. 17.
Italian prosecutors have - sort of - tried to put several Google executives (and the company's former CFO) in jail. The prosecutors requested sentences ranging from six months to one year in connection with a case that involved a YouTube video and a disabled boy.
In September of 2006, a clip showing several teens making fun of a classmate with Down syndrome was uploaded to YouTube. Employees took it down about two months later, but prosecutors have made the case that Google knew about the clip before then and violated defamation and privacy laws by leaving it up.
Arvind Desikan (who was Google's head of videos in Europe), David Drummond (Google's chief legal officer), Peter Fleischer (its global privacy counsel), and George Reyes (its old CFO) were charged as a result.
But here's a catch that may address the outrage some people feel: Eric Sylvers wrote today, "If found guilty, the four defendants, none of whom were present in court, would not serve jail time because sentences of less than three years are commuted in Italy for those who do not have a criminal record."
So as long as YouTube isn't (allegedly) slow to remove objectionable content again the future, the outcome of this trial might not matter much.
The new color laser offers impressive speed and versatility, but it’s got stiff competition from…another Xerox printer. What the heck? Let the discount confusion begin.
PAWTUCKET – On the eve of one of the biggest shopping days of the year, consumer watchdog groups say two products made by Hasbro Inc. - the FurReal Friends Baby Bird, left, an an X-Men Wolverine toy - are unsafe.
Whether you’re upgrading to Windows 7 or buying a brand new computer, you’ll need to get the old files over to the new system. Ron Pacchiano shows how to do it faster using Windows Easy Transfer utility.
It's easy for businesses to get caught up in Google's expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That's certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too.
I'm obviously talking about Yahoo and Bing, but Yahoo's share is declining, while Bing's is gaining. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway.
Do you take Bing into account when optimizing your site?Comment here.
We don't hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don'ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for honoring Bing's policy, does not differ too much from advice that Google would give you. It is, however, still always nice to see how they feel, just to clear up any possible confusion.
Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. "Just don't make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution," says DeJarnette. "You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time."
What Not To Do
DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:
1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
3. Using hidden links in your pages
4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known "bad neighborhoods" on the Web
5. Linking out to known web spam sites
"When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction," says DeJarnette. "If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index."
What To Do
DeJarnette also shared some tips for getting more quality links. Following are Bing's tips for effective link building (paraphrased):
1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently
2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they're aware of your site/content
4. Publish expert articles to online article directories
5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site's content when applicable
6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)
7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content
8. Launch a blog/forum on your site
9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site
Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any savvy search marketer is not already aware of. That said, there are clearly plenty of online (and offline for that matter) businesses out there that don't have savvy search marketers on the payroll. It can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and what not to do to help webmasters get better rankings.
PROVIDENCE – Encouraging and celebrating the “Knowledge Economy” was the theme Monday night at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce’s 142nd annual meeting. At left, leaders of local colleges and hospitals took a bow.
Laptops may be a hot ticket item, but the desktop PC remains a reliable, affordable workhorse. From size and shape to processors and video, our guide looks at all the specs you need to know to buy the right desktop PCs for your small business.
Bing has managed to turn retailers' heads in a big way. After looking at statistics from part of 2008, SearchIgnite reported that retailers spent almost 50 percent more with Microsoft's search engine this time around, which puts Google and Yahoo partly to shame.
Or, to be more precise, "Retailers have spent 47% more on search ads on Bing in Q4 this year than during this same time period in 2008," according to SearchIgnite. "Compared with Google and Yahoo!, Bing also saw better YoY click volume growth."
Additionally, "[a]verage order values on Bing are 21% higher than across all engines, which could account for the spend growth."
Impressive, right? It's only when you sort of step back for a moment that Bing's achievements look less stunning. That's because, despite the progress Microsoft has made, exactly 75 percent of advertisers' dollars went to Google during the first part of this quarter, and 16 percent headed to Yahoo. Bing grabbed just 8 percent.
PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island needs to speed up its permitting process if it wants to attract industrial businesses, a consultant hired by the R.I. Economic Development Corporation said in a report released late Monday. The report also identified …
Have you ever wondered what would happen to your content on third-party sites if those sites ceased to exist? You may own your content on them as it stands now, but what if they went away?
Would you be ok if your tweets or your status updates disappeared?Discuss here.
You may recall earlier this year when URL-shortening service Tr.im announced it was going to shut down and sparked a big discussion about what happens to all of these links if such a service just decides it doesn't want to exist anymore. It is an interesting discussion, and it ultimately led to Tr.im having a change of heart and deciding to remain functional.
Now, the Internet Archive has announced the launch of 301Works.org, a service, which archives shortened URLs. The organization sums up the need for such a service pretty well:
The use of shortened URLs has grown dramatically due to the popularity of Twitter and similar micro-streaming services where posts are limited to a small number of characters. Millions of shortened URLs are generated for users every day by a wide variety of companies.
But when a URL shortening service shuts down, the shortened URLs people put in their blogs, tweets, emails and web sites break. Unless users have kept a record of each shortened URL and where it was supposed to redirect to, it’s not possible to fix them.
Over 20 URL shortening services have gotten involved with 301Works.org, and Bit.ly (Twitter's service of choice) has already begun donating archives. "Short URL providers have in the space of eighteen months become a corner stone of the real time web — 301Works.org was conceived to provide redundancy so that users and services could resolve a URL mapping regardless of availability. The Internet Archive is a perfect host organization to run and manage this for all providers," said Bit.ly CEO John Borthwick.
"The Internet Archive is honored to play this role to help make the Web more robust," added Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.
The issue of archiving the web of course touches a much broader spectrum than that of URL-shorteners. 301Works should go a long way for maintaining shortened URLs, but what about Facebook updates? Tweets? What if Facebook or Twitter decided to shut down one day? According to Twitter's terms of service, you own your content, but Twitter does host it and they have control over it regardless of whether or not you own it. Jesse Stay talked about this with WebProNews in a recent interview:
The concept of Twitter or Facebook shutting down seems far-fetched, but the same thing probably could've been said about Geocities 12 years ago. Now Yahoo has shut it down. It's just something to think about. Given the speed of the real-time web, it seems that archiving could become a concept of growing importance.
With a weak economy and a growing number of vacant properties - like Fidelity Investments' former home, Providence’s American Express Building, left - another potential crisis is brewing in Rhode Island’s commercial real estate sector.
Do you maintain a different version of your site for Windows and another for Mac users? Or, when allowing your visitor to download items from your site, would you like to automatically redirect them to the appropriate software download page for their computer? This script does it all, and it's short too!
Google CEO Eric Schmidt while appearing on Fox Business made some interesting comments about Google's emergence as a huge Microsoft-like business power. I thought most interesting was Schmidt's statement about Google becoming like Microsoft, "Hopefully, we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsot made ten years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened with them". Schmidt elaborated: "In our case we see ourselves as a disruptor, and a disruptor because we are using new technology to solve real consumer problems, that in some cases people didn't even realize could be solved. We are also a company that operates at scale using computers globally. And of course, we are in the information business and people have a lot of opinions on how information should be organized." Fox Business' Neil Cavuto asked Schmidt in reference to Google's new Dashboard product how we really knew if Google deleted our personal data when we pressed delete via Dashboard. Schmidt's response: "Because we say so and we would be sued (if we didn't)." Cavuto joked: "It's like ... come in peace to serve man." Watch the whole interview below:
Gibbs College in Cranston, long a mainstay in career training in Rhode Island, had been scheduled to close by Dec. 31. Now its parent company says it instead plans to retool Gibbs to focus on certificate programs.
WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation passed a day earlier by the Senate that would extend unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks in Rhode Island and other states hit hard by job losses.
In September of 2006, a clip showing several teens making fun of a classmate with Down syndrome was uploaded to YouTube. Employees took it down about two months later, but prosecutors have made the case that Google knew about the clip before then and violated defamation and privacy laws by leaving it up.
We don't hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has 