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Google's Schmidt calls for more innovation, stronger infrastructure

2008-11-19T20:02:00.002+05:30

WASHINGTON--Government leaders need to do more than provide bailout money for America's flailing economy, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Monday. They need to use the bailout programs as an opportunity to invest in infrastructure and look for more innovative solutions to persistent problems.

Addressing a large audience of academics, government workers, and others in Washington on Monday in his role as chairman of the board of the New America Foundation, Schmidt laid out the myriad ways in which the government could open the doors for innovation and long-term economic growth.

While he claims he is not interested in becoming President-elect Barack Obama's chief technology officer, Schmidt's talk on Monday gave not only technical solutions to problems like the need for new energy sources and immigration reform, but policy-based answers as well.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Monday discussed ways the government could spur economic growth through innovation and investments in infrastructure.

(Credit: Stephanie Condon/ CNET News)

Google has already made inroads influencing how the government conducts its everyday business, as evidenced by Obama's use of YouTube, and the firm opinions Schmidt offered Monday indicate the company could have a strong voice in the political philosophy of the next administration as well.

"This may be the toughest economic time that most of us will face in our lifetimes," Schmidt said, but it is also a time to look for opportunities.

"Let's not just have bailout programs," he said. "Why don't we use the stimulus money to get infrastructure built?"

Schmidt emphasized the need to invest in infrastructure, both physically and otherwise. He suggested opening up the development of smart electric grids to more innovation and creating more competition among broadband providers.

"We have to find the right balance of incentives," he said. "We've had the most extreme version of the free market approach, and we've seen some of its consequences."

Those incentives, he said, could include giving matching funds to state utilities for energy efficiency programs they already run. It could also mean funding auto companies that meet emissions standards.

Government systems could also benefit from modeling the open nature of the Internet, Schmidt said.

"Open systems have this clear promise of innovation and greater choice," he said.

He called the Federal Communications Commission's decision to open up unused broadcast TV spectrum for unlicensed use an "act of remarkable courage, and one which we applaud."

"You never know where innovation's going to come from, but with an open platform, you welcome it," he said.

With that in mind, Schmidt said it is essential that "the small start-ups with funny names get founded and get funded."

He applauded Obama's promise to double federal funding for basic research, calling it "the core aspect of America's competitiveness," but one that is dependent on government funding.

Other steps can be taken to help the U.S. maintain its competitiveness, he said, such as reforming visa policies for skilled workers.

"We train these people, we bring them to the country, and then we don't give them a visa to work here where they would pay lots of taxes," Schmidt said.

As the government embraces innovative reforms, it should reform its own practices, Schmidt said, to create more public engagement and restore trust in government.

"We can stream almost all public meetings," he said. "The bandwidth is there, so why don't we get more people involved?"

Stephanie Condon is a staff writer for CNET News focused on the intersection of technology and politics. She is based in Washington, D.C. E-mail Stephanie.

Spitzer Scandal Sheds Light On Web Prostitution

2008-03-31T17:38:00.000+05:30

A Girlfriend Experience Is Just A Click Away

The controversy surrounding New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has shed light (a red light) on a number of underground activities. Besides government corruption and the sex trade in general, Spitzer's use of the Internet to connect with prostitutes is exposing a huge industry with which people may not be familiar.

Or even know exists.

The online escort/call girl/"model"/prostitute scene isn't so hard to find, though. Just use Google. If the organic results don't fit what you're looking for, AdWords can help, too.

The truth is, investigating this scene is much like investigating the adult entertainment scene. The breadth, depth, and scope of prostitution available via online booking is staggering, indicating that just like the online porn industry, sex trade is not just a huge industry, but one that employs cutting edge marketing techniques, and one that apparently is thriving.

Just Google It

It's unclear at this point exactly how Governor Spitzer was referred to the Emperor's Club website. But if he's a self-starter, he could have used a search engine like Google. A search for [new york call girls] for example brings up a host of relevant organic links, most of which seem to be news article related.

The sponsored links, though, are another story. Sponsored results for these keywords brought back websites like BadGurlModels (screen shots will be provided but no links), HourGirl, and a site advertising "full service" $50 half-hours and $100 hours. Full-service is, according to research, code for you-know-what.

Similar results came back for [full service escorts] and [ny gfe]. "GFE" is another code meaning "girlfriend experience," which means the escort is open to certain things like kissing and other "girlfriend"-type activities. [ny gfe] brought 491,000 results in Google, along with their very own targeted ads.

Not all incarnations of the word "prostitute" work, by the way. A search for "whore," for example, brings back a myriad other results. Apparently the connotation of that word has changed a bit.

An Open Sex Market

It would be impossible to explore every website offering some kind of escort service, and many of them seem to have shut down since the revelation about Governor Eliot, including the Emperor's Club website he used. But perusing some of them reveals details that would be mundane if talking about any other business.

When people think of prostitution, they generally think of street-walkers with cash-only policies. The 21st Century, though, brings change to the world's oldest profession, too. Visitations can be booked with cash or credit. There is often a registration process for potential clients, or a requirement that the client participate in a screening process. One escort requested that clients specify ethnicity when booking.

Some have model-recruitment programs, and offer $250 per referral, payable after the "model's" third successful appointment.

Some offer discounts for daytime appointments. Others have senior citizen discounts.

Though some are pretty up-front about what they offer, the more cautious ones provide a legal disclaimer, that usually is worded something like this:

Payment is for companionship only. Anything outside this is a matter between two or more consenting adults. This is not an offer of prostitution.

Regardless, that "companionship" and anything a client can talk her into usually has a flat-pricing model, with hourly rates ranging from $150 to $3,600. Just like in the brick-and-mortar world, some places of business are more of the Wal-Mart variety, while others cater to a more, well, selective clientele.

Some of the more expensive ones put some of that money toward very high-tech, 007-type surveillance equipment that allows them to watch whomever might be watching them.

A Virtual Smorgasbord

Governor Spitzer obviously had a certain taste: prostitutes he could take to Washington on important visits that didn't look like a prostitute and could provide him confidence that she would exercise her right to remain silent. There are more expensive women than $4,300 for two hours, but he is a government employee at the end of the day.

If money is no object, a fat-walleted client can choose from a menu of women on sites similar to the Emperor's Club, some with the same diamond-rating system. A seven-diamond lady, if paying by credit card, will run about $3,600 per hour. If paying by cash, a client can get a $600 per hour discount. If he wants to weed out the less expensive, less exclusive women, he can run a more specific search for [high class call girls] or [high class escorts] and Google will bring him back what he is looking for, thanks to some good SEO and SEM.

With the Internet, though, choices aren't limited to the New York area (NYC though is some kind of high-class call girl mecca) or to one type, or even to just two genders. Options are available anywhere one might travel: Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, or Las Vegas. Admittedly, given the legal status of prostitution in Nevada, Las Vegas is a degree less shocking.

Flying to London, France, Italy, Romania, or Czech Republic? No problem. Thailand or the Philippines? The Internet has John covered.

Approaches are notably different in the southern United States than in New York. Websites devoted to southern escorts appear to be more up-front with what is offered via easily-deciphered code language. Thanks goes out to UrbanDictionary.com for help with the decoding. Many of their websites, though, are no longer online.

Southern escorts don't have "rates," by the way, but they do accept donations, and are happy to post the types of gifts they enjoy.

One, for example, expressed a liking for World War II memorabilia.

All of these options too Anglo? Again, no problem. There are websites devoted to every ethnicity. One Asian escort website promised "new girls every two weeks" as though they had regular shipments of "product."

Prostitution 2.0

If all of this isn't surprising enough, some of the thousands of websites are well ahead of the online marketing game and employ just about every avenue at their disposal. The sites are very well designed, some very expensive looking. The more expensive ones employ the right blend of Flash and text.

Many have blogs and interactive calendars. Some are portals. Many are set up like social networks where clients are treated as "friends" who refer other "friends." In fact, many are reference-based only, which makes one wonder if Spitzer was referred by someone, or if his name-recognition got him a free (and perhaps nerve-wracking) pass. Then again, he's been reportedly participating for ten years, before these sites became so sophisticated. Maybe he was a usenet guy.

One site was set up exactly like a traditional dating site, an eHarmony for hookers. It boasted 2,800 direct phone numbers for registered members.

And then there are the niche-industry players, the support-industry. Some websites specialize in escort web-design, and judging by the quality of some of the sites, there's a decent market for it. Some of these offered free websites for escorts, as though part of an affiliate marketing program.

The websites are heavily SEO'ed to make them appear in the top ten results for certain queries, which makes one wonder how involved the SEO business is with the online escort scene, especially when the branding efforts are sophisticated enough to include paid search result complements.

They also haven't forgotten to make use of local search engines and mapping services. Just for one example, you can check out prostitute blogger College CallGirl's guide to New York City sex hotels on GridSkipper.

What Now?

Well, one thing we know: As long as there are clients willing to pay and entrepreneurs willing to provide, this industry isn't going away. So the industry itself is probably not in trouble.

Spitzer probably wishes the same could be said for him, since he has resigned. As for orchestrated online marketing campaigns for the sex trade, or activities that could be construed as the sex trade, it is unknowable at this point if a crackdown would be likely, possible, or fruitful.

It could be, maybe, at least temporarily, until they pop up again "under new management." One other thing we know: Other "underground" heavily marketed products, like pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, etc., are not quite so sophisticated or up-to-date in their online campaigns. Some illegal markets are pretty heavily masked and much more clandestine and difficult to find.

The sites we found, not all of which claim directly to be prostitution sites, are not so careful, and in fact are very much designed for anyone to find them. We found via search. They have put a lot of effort and money into online marketing and seem to have mastered every element from site design, to search marketing, to social media, to vertical search and mapping.

And that's, well, pretty blatant.

About the author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

Link Buying Replaced With Bartering

2008-03-31T17:37:00.000+05:30

Google Time Warp Edition

Here's a hard truth for the hardliners to swallow: Outlawing something sometimes has worse consequences than the thing outlawed. Or, as the mob tried to tell Congress once: Prohibition's a bitch.

Pardon my French. I'm descended from Appalachian bootleggers.

Google's recent and notorious hard line stance against paid links is resulting in something quite predictable: The disaffected are leveraging every back-alley strategy they can think up. At least it doesn't involve exploding trailers, tripwires, or bullets.

Andy Beard was a bit of a pioneer on the link-laundering front; his (complicated) strategy for masking paid links got some attention last month. But simpler tactics are emerging, some inspired by Google itself.

One of them, which is the digital-world equivalent of impersonating a police officer is destined for a crackdown. Dave Naylor points to (and thus becomes a bit of a narc) what appear to be Google ads but are really nicely done spoofs.

Now that's pretty sneaky.

John Andrews reports another method, which Google would have hard time targeting since the idea came from them to begin with. Instead of buying links, barter for them, which makes for a weird 21st Century currency time warp.

It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me/ So you can't see me, no not at all/In another dimension…

It's just a jump to the left and then a step to the right to find Google rewarding volunteer participants at the Google blog with juice-filled back links. Andrews gets a little dramatic in his analogies (so do I, for that matter) comparing Google to a casino and SEOs to card-counters before suggesting Google is actively looking to destroy the entire SEO industry.

There is a nugget of reason within this paragraph, though. See if you can find it. (Hint: It's in bold type.)

The take-away is this, folks: Google is controlling you not for some benevolent reason, but in order to control the currency of the web. It took X amount of effort in those forums, dedicated for free by those posters, to earn a direct backlink from Google’s very popular webmaster blog. What was that worth? Google got to decide. Google thinks it is fine to barter in links without the nofollow… it just wants the price for such links to remain pitifully low, managed by Google. Can you see it now? Do we really need to wait a few more years until it is perfectly clear beyond any doubt that Google has all of the money and there is no room for us to share?

… But it's the pelvic thru-ust/ that really drives you insane-yay-yay-yay-yane.

Bob Massa carries on that idea in this extraordinarily long, but perhaps more reasonable, post, which you can read for lots of good industry insight, or you can rely on Aaron Wall to dig out a solid, actionable nugget. In a smaller nutshell, people will barter links in exchange because:

Either it makes them money, saves them time, provides added value to their visitors or they believe it makes them look good or smart or benevolent to their visitors, their peers, their friends, their relatives, to the search engines, award sites or just about anyone that can make them a buck or stroke their ego.

Or, as it's still known by the revenuers in Washington: You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

About the author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

Get 1 Million Real Visitors For Free

2008-01-30T10:26:00.001+05:30

You can use our new marketing system to send over 1 million Guaranteed real visitors to your website totally free. There is absolutley no cost to you at any time

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How to Make Pizza Healthy - good news for pizza lovers

2008-01-30T10:25:00.003+05:30

Pizza. It's the weakness of many, many people including me. I love pizza- always have. I eat it in moderation, but it's still one of my favorite foods.There's now good news for pizza lovers.

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Hidden images part2

2008-01-30T10:25:00.001+05:30

These are some images which have another image inside. figure them out!!!

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Rudraksha - About Rudraksha - Birth of Rudraksha

2008-01-30T10:24:00.003+05:30

Powers of Rudraksha and origin was described in Mahashiv Purana. It describes that Lord Shiva had been meditating for many years for the welfare of all creatures. On opening the eyes, hot drops of tears rolled down and the mother earth gave birth to Rudraksha trees.

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Manage Depression in 5 Easy to Follow Steps

2008-01-30T10:24:00.001+05:30

Being lonely or sad can be a normal part of our lives from time to time. We get sad when we fail our exams, when we're rejected by the person we love, or when someone very close to us dies.

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Eating Wisely and Weight Loss

2008-01-29T15:18:00.001+05:30

Please bear in mind that I am not a dietician, or a physician, and my opinions are those of a Yoga teacher and life-long student of Ayurveda. Always consult your family physician before changing your diet

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HOW-TO Set Up Your Own BLOG and RSS Feed In Less Than 5 Mins

2008-01-28T23:04:00.001+05:30

I have a quick question to ask you... "do you know How-To set up your own BLOG and RSS Feed so you Too can take advantage of all the benefits Blogs and RSS(Real Simple Syndication) have to offer you and your business?"If you answered NO, your not alone.I didn't either at one time, but that didn't stop me from finding out How-To on my own.

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