Number 64 on Google Trends yesterday was a search for “Puppy Bowl”. The Puppy Bowl is an annual event on Animal Planet, where for three hours puppies play and run around on a fake puppy-sized football field with a number of toys. There is an in-water bowl camera, a referee, two MVPs, and a kitty halftime show, and it’s consistently the most popular show on all of cable TV during the Super Bowl.
Puppy Bowl IV was last night, and I’m sorry I missed it. Me and the wife like to watch the pups go at it during halftime, especially when guys we aren’t that interested in, like Tom Petty or Mick Jagger are performing, but our cable system never carries the big “game”. No one ever seems to put the Puppy Bowl on bit torrent, and DVDs are $15 ($10 each for Puppy Bowls I-III, $20 for all three, and $7-13 on Amazon), so that might be an option*.
So, did anyone else watch the Puppy Bowl yesterday? The video highlights seem to indicate the best Bowl yet. The early ratings indicate the Puppy Bowl was a huge success for the fourth year in a row.
* - on the other hand, this was the first Puppy Bowl in High Definition, and there’s no Blu-Ray/HD-DVD option, so maybe I’ll wait. Or I could call Animal Planet and try to convince them to put it on the Xbox Live Video Marketplace… This is sad.
The latest video making its way up the YouTube charts is a political music video, starring Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas and featuring a number of celebrities, turning a Barack Obama speech into an inspirational song.
Guest stars include Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock*, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon. Two days, 698,934 views already.
Don’t interpret this post as an endorsement of Senator Obama. I like him, and find him a welcome change in some ways, but until I get a chance to vote for him, if I get a chance to vote for him in November, I won’t know enough about his policies to decide if he is the man. Whoever you vote for, make sure you know everything about them, so you are making an informed decision.
And for god’s sake, vote if you can tomorrow! Even if you just cast your vote for a favored candidate who dropped out weeks ago, please, show up and show you count.
(via Al Walentis)
It’s worth noting that Google has on YouTube a Super Tuesday page, mapping out political videos from voters, candidates and news outlets related to tomorrow’s semi-national primary day.
* - am I the only person who can’t help but think of Tommy Boy when I hear “Herbie Hancock”?
This is a tad unfair: On the day of the Super Bowl, halftime show performer Tom Petty was the number one search on Google Trends. Wait, you say, what’s wrong with that? Who wouldn’t want to be the number one search? Well, see, the search term wasn’t just his name, but rather the top search yesterday was “How old is Tom Petty?”
Sad to say, my wife asked this question and I did Google it during the performance (though I just Googled his name, knowing Wikipedia had the answer). Petty’s 57, which prompted both me and my wife to exclaim that Tom looks a whole hell of a lot older than he actually is. The little lady said, “He isn’t aging well”. I think a lot of people thought that, hence the top search position.
The Wall Street Journal, after talking to sources at Yahoo or Google, reports that Google reached out to Yahoo and made an offer to help Yahoo avoid Microsoft’s takeover bid. Google can’t offer to buy Yahoo outright; it doesn’t have that kind of money, there isn’t a good enough market to borrow the money, and Google’s got close to $5 billion tied up in the FCC auction. Plus, the antitrust regulatory storm kicked up by a vengeful Microsoft wouldn’t be worth it.
Instead, Google is offering assistance in helping Yahoo find alternatives. Google can help Yahoo line up other bidders, or barring that, Google could form a revenue agreement with Yahoo to keep the company away from Microsoft. One scenario I’m hearing discussed is the “Yahoo sells its soul” scenario, wherein Yahoo outsources a significant part of its business to Google, ruining the value of the company for Microsoft.
If Yahoo takes the poison pill, giving Google full control of its search and keyword advertising programs, Microsoft would not be able to make Yahoo succeed without kicking a portion of revenues to Google. Alternatively, Microsoft could try to break the contract, the costs of which could also be prohibitive enough to kill the deal. One wonders whether Yahoo shareholders would be able to vote to stop Yahoo from enabling a poison pill, especially since most of them want the Microsoft deal to go through.
Google also released its official statement on the situation on the Google blog, telling media “This will be our only statement for the time being.” In it, Google touts openness a quality of Google and Yahoo, and calls Microsoft’s bid hostile. Google brings up Microsoft’s past transgressions with regards to monopolies and antitrust violations.
Let’s try to keep some perspective here. Google isn’t trying to “help” Yahoo or internet users, it is trying to do what is best for the future of Google. Yahoo is a weak company right now, and the longer Google’s competition stays weak, the better for Google. Put Yahoo and Microsoft together, Google might actually have to deal with a real open market, and that’s something Google will fight to the last minute.
That said, wouldn’t it be ironic if Google saved Yahoo from ending its run as an independent company, only to see Yahoo rebound eventually? Yahoo’s executives keep saying that things will turn around in 2009, and while the market is impatient, it is possible the company could rise again on its own. Imagine Google saves Yahoo, and Yahoo comes back and actually beats, or at least becomes a match, for Google? We’d be laughing at the irony, sometime in 2011.
Google has released a beta of the first version of its Urchin Software package since Google bought the company almost three years ago. Google bought Urchin in March 2005, later releasing Urchin’s hosted web analytics service as Google Analytics, but Urchin customers have been waiting for years for a new version of the Urchin Software product. That wait is thankfully, finally over.
The new version of Urchin is available for download as a free beta, which will expire in three months. Owners of Urchin 5 will get a free upgrade when the beta ends, and new customers can purchase the software for $2995. The beta period represents the perfect time to trial Urchin and see if it is worth purchasing in three months, so download the beta and give it a shot.
Google Urchin Software runs on Linux, Windows or FreeBSD servers. Features include:
Pagetags or IP+User Agent: Choose which methodology works best for you. You can even have the pagetags make a call to your Google Analytics account and run both products together allowing you to audit the pre and post processed data.
Advanced Visitor Segmentation: Cross segment visitor behavior by language, geographic location, and other factors.
Geo-targeting: Find out where your visitors come from and which markets have the greatest profit potential.
Funnel Optimization: Eliminate conversion bottlenecks and reduce the numbers of prospects who drift away unconverted.
Complete Conversion Metrics: See ROI, revenue per click, average visitor value and more.
Keyword Analysis: Compare conversion metrics across search engines and keywords.
A/B Testing: Test banner ads, emails, and keywords and fine-tune your creative content for better results.
Ecommerce Analytics: Trace transactions to campaigns and keywords, get loyalty and latency metrics, and see product merchandising reports.
Search engine robots, server errors and file type reports: Get the stuff that only log data can report on.
Google took a long time developing this software, presumably relegating it to a low priority status over the last few years. Google provides a backwards warning in the FAQ that future development, if any, will depend on how successful this version is.
Will Google continue developing Urchin Software after this release? Although Google does not provide specifics on future product development, if demand is strong, we anticipate continuing development on Urchin Software.
Running Urchin Software is not a small manner. The distribution is 700 megabytes, but the Urchin database grows ten gigabytes for every one million page views. That means a site like Gizmodo would need 162.6 gigabytes of storage space for their web statistics… every week. For the year, Urchin would require 8.48497 terabytes of space, a daunting, almost impossible amount.
Some other improvements in Urchin Software over Urchin 5:
Additional goals and funnel steps
Cross-segmentation options that allow you to view metrics sliced into dimensions such as by referring source, keyword, country, city, browser type, and more.
Improved user interface is presentation-ready Flash-based graphics instead of SVG
More robust log processing engine
E-commerce and campaign tracking are included, no more module additions
Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily and smoothly arrange processing and re-processing jobs
Numerous security enhancements including an updated Apache webserver
Improved translation interfaces in all languages
Configuration database now uses standard relational backend (including MySQL and PostgreSQL)
Want to use Google’s Charts API to create nice-looking charts for use online, but don’t want to have to actually learn how to use it. Lucky you, lazy boy, because Jon WInstanley’s created a Google Chart generator for you. Fill out the form, copy the code, and you’re done. Here’s a chart I made (that honestly makes no sense, given the inputted data, so good luck):
Besides all those PhDs, Google can now claim a Beauty Queen In Residence, namely Gina Valo, Miss Michigan 2007. Gina placed First Runner Up in last year’s Miss Michigan pageant, but when champ Kirsten Haglund was named Miss America a week ago, Gina was elevated into the top spot in her home state. Despite her job as an Account Associate for Google AdWords Detroit office, Gina accepted the Miss Michigan crown, meaning she now has to work double duty as a Googler and beauty queen.
Congratulations, Gina, and enjoy the next four or five months as Miss Michigan. Hopefully your bosses won’t bother you about the time off, considering the good publicity this must be bringing, the kind Google could use these days.
(via Vallewag)
The Wall Street Journal, after talking to sources at Yahoo or Google, 
Google has released a beta of the first version of its 
