Rising gas prices send
bargain-seekers to web
There’s one thing rising faster than prices
at the pump these days, and that’s internet searches for lower gas
prices and means of fuel conservation. Searches for key terms related to
gas prices increased 300 percent or more for the week ending March 26
compared with the four weeks prior, according to internet tracking company
Hitwise. Key search terms included “gas prices,” “fuel economy”
and “gas mileage.” Internet searches for electric cars rose 2,900
percent. Consequently, searches for Toyota Prius, perhaps the most popular
hybrid car, rose 36 percent. Also, market shares of www.fueleconomy.gov, www.gasbuddy.com and www.gaspricewatch.com rose by 334 percent,
214 percent and 282 percent, respectively.
Cheerio! In U.K., internet ad sales overtake radio
Advertisers in the United
Kingdom are starting to prefer to reach customers via the web. In the
U.K., internet advertisements rose by 60 percent last year, bypassing
radio advertising for the first time, according to new figures from the
British Interactive Advertising Bureau compiled by the accounting firm
PricewaterhouseCoopers. Advertisers spent about $1.2 billion (converted
from pounds) for advertising on the internet, while they spent about $1
billion on the radio. Internet advertising now accounts for 3.9 percent of
the total spent by advertisers, up from 2.6 percent in 2003. The study
found that online advertising is most popular among financial companies,
followed by recruitment and travel companies. The automotive industry has
also increased its spending. The IAB predicts that online advertising will
be higher than spending on outdoor advertising in the next few years.
Amazon entering on-demand publishing world
Bestseller readers and obscure-title enthusiasts can now both go to Amazon.com to get what they
want. The company is offering on-demand publishing after purchasing
Charleston, S.C.-based BookSurge Monday. BookSurge operates in 10
countries and produces out-of-print books at reasonable prices and
publishes for authors whose books have small audiences. The company does
not keep a warehouse full of titles but rather prints a book when someone places
an order for it. BookSurge sells its services to publishing houses through
BookSurge Publisher Services and to authors through BookSurge Publishing,
all of which now belong to Amazon.
Zoom
in: Google maps out new satellite images
Big Brother is not only watching, he’s letting us take a
peak through Google’s enhanced map service that now includes satellite
images. Yesterday the company announced a feature that allows users to
see an overhead snapshot of an area in addition to the usual graphical
map. The feature functions much like the conventional map, with zoom and
pan capabilities as well as that all-important red line that traces the
route of driving directions. In other Google news, the company is looking
into a video search service that would basically become a video blog site,
providing quick online access to video clips. It is an experiment in video
blogging, said company co-founder Larry Page, that will archive both
personal video clips and those from TV and news web sites.
Ethiopia
wants to significantly up online presence
Even the poorest nations in the world are willing to
invest money to get online. Ethiopia is aiming to expand its internet usage
from a few users to the entire country in three years, prime minister
Premier Meles Zenawi said yesterday. The Ethiopian government has invested
$40 million in the project and is working with U.S. technology company
Cisco Systems to increase coverage. The country's 71 million people have
just 30,000 internet lines. Within six months there will be 500,000 lines.
About half of the country's 57 million rural dwellers are illiterate and
most have never used a computer. The country is launching schoolnet, which
will provide 450 secondary schools with internet access and will link all
regional and district government offices.
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