NFL Betting Odds: Steelers Must Beat Ravens Without Roethlisberger
The Pittsburgh Steelers are once again learning just how hard it is to repeat as Super Bowl champions. Tonight, they must play a huge divisional game against Baltimore without their first and second string quarterbacks.
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NFL Betting Preview: Undefeated Colts Face Big Challenge Today
The Indianapolis Colts are one of two teams that remain undefeated at this point in the NFL season. Today, the Colts will receive another stiff test from the Houston Texans.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Release Sets Records
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.
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Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?
After all is said and done Rupert Murdoch may still be seen as the sly old fox that really knew best. Many bloggers and journalists have pounded the insanity of Murdoch’s suggestion that News Corp publications might strike an exclusive indexing deal with Bing and delist itself from Google’s search engine.
However, what if Murdoch was really only talking about the Wall Street Journal and not all News Corp publications? Then the idea might actually make a lot of sense.
According to Compete.com WSJ.com already receives the largest percentage of its traffic from Microsoft’ (18.74%). This is contrary to many sites which typically receive the majority of their referrals from Google, often many times more than what Microsoft delivers. Yahoo provides another 6.3% and since Bing will likely be owning Yahoo’s search business that means Microsoft is actually delivering 25% of the Wall Street Journals current traffic.
If Rupert Murdoch can get Microsoft to pay possibly as much as $50 million or more a year to lose just 11.5% of his Google traffic sent to WSJ.com the deal makes a lot of sense.
According to Hitwise Google and Google News combined deliver approximately 26% of WSJ.com visitors. However, even with this larger percentage (vs. Compete’s) Hitwise notes in a blog post why this might not be as much of a traffic loss as it appears:
Analyzing Google search terms driving traffic to the Journal, the top 100 terms accounted for over 21.6% of all Google search traffic to WSJ.com. Of that 21.6%, 13.4% were navigational or brand searches (e.g. "Wall Street Journal," "WSJ," "WSJ.com" etc…). Even if Murdoch decides to block Google, these navigational search queries will most likely remain intact.
Of the remaining 8.2%, the majority of searches were for stock quotes, and general business related searches. Most specific news related searches fill-out the long tail of search queries. While the Journal may lose traffic if it ceases to cooperate with Google the loss may be less then anticipated.
From Bing’s perspective Wall Street Journal exclusivity not only differentiates Bing from Google but it could also help change its image as a more consumer focused search engine. The Wall Street Journal is the most read business publication in the World and this deal could go a long way toward modifying Bing’s consumer image in the minds of business executives.
After all, a click resulting from a B2B oriented search term usually demands a premium price, which could help offset Bing’s cost of paying Murdoch for exclusive inclusion.
Update: Two more publishers have come out with statements indicating their possible desire to de-index from Google as well. Read more here …
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Will a Lack of Editors Affect Wikipedia Accuracy?
Wikipedia is a very useful site for anyone looking to find information on any given topic. Chances are that you have used it for research at one time or another. Even if you don’t start by going directly to Wikipedia, results from the site are often at the top of search results in Google, and you’ll get there anyway.
Those Google results likely play a significant role, but Wikipedia’s popularity is as great as ever. Right now, it is cited as the fifth most popular site in the entire world. It gets 325 million monthly visitors, and the number of visitors grew 20% in the 12 months ending in September, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing data from comScore.
The WSJ also says that the number of editors Wikipedia has is dwindling. They say that Wikipedia lost over 49,000 editors in the first three months of 2009 alone. During the same period the previous year, Wikipedia lost only 4,900 (WSJ attributes these figures to Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega. His thesis on the subject can be found here [pdf]).
The accuracy of information on Wikipedia has always been something to be leery of, simply because of the open format of it. If you give the public access to things, some people will abuse it. Even if their intentions aren’t bad, they may still just post inaccurate information. Wikipedia’s has taken measures over time to try and weed out the bad, by making stricter policies for content addition. These days, altering or contributing to Wikipedia content is no easy feat.
With such a drastic loss in editors, one has to wonder if accuracy of information will suffer. Will there continue to be enough people to keep Wikipedia updated with accurate information across the board?
"We need sufficient people to do the work that needs to be done," says Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia foundation is quoted as saying. "But the purpose of the project is not participation."
It is the implementation of Wikipedia’s measures for cleaning up the site that is the focus of many people’s speculation on why it is losing so many editors. Basically, it’s just become too strict. However, there are also suggestions that Wikipedia is simply getting full, content wise – there is a lack of new topics that require entries.
There’s no question that there are entries out there yet to be created, and a whole lot more that could use additional information added to them, but are the right people available to add that information? Are the right people granted access to do so?
Let’s hope that Wikipedia is able to maintain the highest level of accuracy possible, moving into the future. It needs to continue to improve, not get worse. It’s a useful resource, despite its flaws, and the world knows it – hence the site’s enormous popularity. If accuracy becomes more of a problem, it could have a harmful impact on what is perceived to be knowledge in general. People taking inaccurate information for fact can be a dangerous thing.
Related Articles:
> Wikipedia to Start Coloring Trust
> Wikimedia Reels In $500,000 Grant
> Wikipedia to Go Creative Commons
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Gambling Jackpot For Las Vegas Sportsbooks: Alabama And Florida
The Florida Gators and the Alabama Crimson Tide have both made it through the last regular season game unscathed, and now they will meet in what should be a blockbuster day for Las Vegas sportsbook gambling.
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Gettysburg Casino Could Be Next For Pennsylvania
The state of Pennsylvania has continued their casino gambling expansion over the past couple of years, and their next target could be in Gettysburg..
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What Would You Change About Google Search?
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:
If you could improve one thing or add a feature to Google Search right now, what would it be? (Tell us what your answer would be.)
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.
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Portuguese Internet Users Reached Nearly 4 Million in September
comScore released findings this week from a study of the online habits of Portuguese Internet users. Interestingly, they found that the Portuguese Internet audience grew to nearly 4 Million users in September.
Over 3.8 million people age 15 and older accessed the Internet from a home or work location in Portugal in September, viewing an average 1,843 pages and spending an average 1.9 hours online per person during the month.
"Portugal represents a dynamic and growing Internet market in Europe with users continuing to be more active and engaged online," said Mike Read, comScore managing director for Europe and Ibero America. "The average Internet user in Portugal is spending more time online engaging in different behaviors such as reading news and articles, search, conducting personal financial transactions and social networking. As these behaviors continue to take hold in the Portuguese market there will be an increasing number of opportunities to leverage the Internet for marketing and advertising purposes."
Google sites are the most popular in Portugal, according to comScore’s data. Here’s a look at the top 15 online properties for Portugal:
Naturally, social media plays a big role in Internet use in Portugal, but it is not Facebook that dominates there, according to comScore’s numbers. Here are the top ten social networking sites:
The figures for both charts exclude traffic from public computers, such as those from Internet cafes. They also exclude access from mobile phones and PDA’s. I’m willing to bet that social networks and Google sites are pretty popular among mobile users in Portugal though.
Related Articles:
> Study: Most People Go Online to Socialize
> Google, Bing Perform Well In Latest comScore Report
> "Time Spent Online" Report Puts Microsoft Way Ahead
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College Football Betting Preview: Can Seminoles Save Bowden?
The current members of the Florida State Seminoles have not done much spectacularly in their run in the garnet and gold, but on Saturday they could become the team that saves legendary coach Bobby Bowden’s job.
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