The acquisition and Memset’s stated intents represent good news for Is.gd users, who (should) have been rightly worried about the service’s ability to compete with the likes of Bit.ly and major Internet players who’ve introduced their own short URLs (Amazon, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, etc.).

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Is.gd founder Richard West will be staying on board to keep working on the service. He plans some major improvements to the site over the next few months, including the ability for users to create custom shortened URLs free of charge (a long overdue feature if you ask me).

Kate Craig-Wood, Managing Director of Memset, explained the rational behind the acquisition:

“I love Is.gd and use it a lot, and have often worried about a service like that failing or being bought and monetised. As a cloud provider, we have huge amounts of compute resource and bandwidth, so it was a good match for us. The costs are relatively small, and it also makes a great showcase for our network and hardware performance.”

According to the press release, Is.gd was good for the shortening of over 25.5 million links in March 2010 compared to 1.12 million in March 2009. According to the Is.gd website, a total of more than 173 million URLs have been shortened with the service since its inception.

Penry Price, Vice President, Global Agency Development at Google has blogged about the changes here and here.

In short, the search and Internet advertising giants aims to raise the bar for Google AdWords Certification, assist advertisers in finding and contacting certified partners more easily, and to lower costs for those who effectively help advertisers get the most out of Google AdWords, the Mountain View company’s popular Internet advertising service.

New AdWords Certification program

Google is retiring its Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) program, originally launched in November 2004, and replacing it with a new Google AdWords Certification program for agencies managing AdWords accounts on behalf of advertisers.

The distinction between individual and company certification remains.

(Funny sidenote: the ‘News’ landing page currently reads: “A lot has changed since 1994 when Google Advertising Professionals launched so we’re retiring the program and replacing with a rigorous, strategy focused version.” – who knew Google secretly started operating in the first half of the nineties?)

The new program provides agencies and their employees with new training materials that reflect recent changes in search marketing and AdWords functionality (think webinars, on-site training, etc.), tougher certification exams to test practical application of knowledge and best practices and advanced-level exams to “highlight competency in search, display, reporting and analysis”. Also: brand new badges! (embedded above)

Current Google Advertising Professionals will have a 6-month grace period to meet the new criteria and terms and conditions in order to retain their certified status.

Google Partner Search

Google Certified Partners can now opt in to Google Partner Search, a directory that helps advertisers find companies that best match their criteria. To show up in searches through Google Partner Search, agencies must opt in and fill in details about their core attributes and capabilities. Searches can be filtered by location, agency experience within a particular budget range, the types of services provided and the specific industry verticals served.

Google AdWords API pricing

Google has also announced preferred AdWords API pricing. This gives qualified Google Certified Partners who manage AdWords accounts on behalf of clients free use of the AdWords API, which allows developers to build applications that interact directly with the AdWords platform, based on managed client spend. To apply, agencies must have an active agency profile page and be compliant with the AdWords API terms and conditions. Google says it will start accepting applications for preferred AdWords API pricing on May 26, 2010.

During the beta test period, the AdWords API was free for all but only within certain quota limits. To calculate fees based on said quota, Google has a unit-based system in place. Each operation performed on an AdWords account, such as adding a keyword, consumes a certain number of API units, and developers basically get charged $0.25 – or local currency equivalent – per thousand units consumed (see detailed rate sheetfor more information).

Here’s how free AdWords API units for preferred partners are calculated:

We calculate free AdWords API units for the developer token that’s approved for preferred AdWords API pricing using the amount of spend managed by the My Client Center associated with the API developer token. If you receive preferred pricing, we’ll provide you with 250 units for every $1 of AdWords spend managed.

For example, if you manage $10,000 in March, you’d receive 2,500,000 free API units in April. We’re continuing to update the way we calculate the amount of spend you manage and will update this help article when we have more information.

Find out more about the updated AdWords API pricing model here.

Advertisers and agencies alike, we want to hear from you:

How do you think these changes will affect you, if at all?

Available from today for pre-order on Vodafone UK, the Android-powered Google Nexus One can be had for £35 per-month on a 2 year contract, including a bundle of minutes and texts, and the much needed 1GB monthly data allowance — this is a Google Phone after all (see TechCrunch review). There are a number of other tariffs available too. Customers who pre-order can expect deliveries to go out on April 30th.

It’s not the first time Brits could get hold of the Nexus One, however. It’s been available for import directly from Google itself, but this is the carrier-subsidised version, sold through Vodafone, both online and in-store, as is the tradition here in the UK. The perception is that a mobile phone should be “free”, albeit with a lengthy contract, or as close to free as possible. In other words, persuading Vodafone to carry the Nexus One will be an important factor in how well the phone, which is manufactured by HTC, will sell.

Nexus One hardware features

* Display: 3.7? AMOLED 480×800 WVGA display
* Thinness: 11.5mm; Weight: 130g
* Processor/Speed: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 3G QSD8250 chipset, delivering speeds up to 1GHz
* Camera: 5 megapixel auto focus with flash and geo tagging
* Onboard memory: 512MB Flash, 512MB RAM
* Expandable memory: 4GB removable SD Card (expandable to 32GB)
* Noise Suppression: Dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc.
* Ports: 3.5mm stereo headphone jack with four contacts for inline voice and remote control
* Battery: Removable 1400 mAh
* Personalized laser engraving: Up to 50 characters on the back of the phone
* Trackball: Tri-colour notification LED, alerts when new emails, chats, text messages arrive

Along with the 1GB 3G data allowance, customer get an additional 1GB of data via WiFi at premium BT Openzone hotspots throughout the UK.

The Google Nexus One will also soon be coming to Vodafone in France (SFR), Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Quietly, Sony wrapped up international sales of floppy discs last month, with the exception of India and a few other parts of the world. The company already stopped producing floppy disc drives last September.

As mentioned, this is the first time Apple has allowed such functionality in an App in the U.S. Europeans, of course, can access Spotify in an offline mode, but that’s not available in the U.S.

I suppose this is the next move for online music stores, offering an all-you-can-eat cloud-based service, while at the same time allowing you to download and take songs with you on your mobile device. Microsoft’s Zune MarketPlace does a similar thing, but you have to pay for each song you download. That is, downloading songs isn’t part of the standard subcription fee.

Rhapsody has two tiers of service of which to choose from, called Rhapsody Premier and Rhapsody Premier Plus (gotta love those names). The former costs $10 per month and includes access on one mobile device, while the latter costs $14.99 per month and allows access on three mobile devices (in addition to the standard desktop client, of course).

And this has nothing to do with anything here, per se, but word on the street is that Sirius XM will have an Android App sometime in May. Exciting times for music fans, to be sure.

A fbFund company, Wildfire launched its offering last year, reached profitability within 1 month of launching its product and won the fbFund twice. The company’s product has gained considerable popularity over the year as a dead simple way for brands to reach consumers across various social networks.

The startup has built up a very impressive roster of clients, including Pepsi, Sony, CNN, Universal, AT&T, Victoria’s Secret and even Facebook itself, which has used the service for multiple campaigns. The investment will be used for product development initiatives.

The key to the campaign was to get YouTube video personalities such as Smosh, iJustine, Alphacat, Rhett and Link, and Brittani Louise Taylor to take a physical challenge and make original videos about getting healthy. So far, all together these videos have been viewed more than 8.5 million times, rated more than 250,000 times, and attracted more than 110,000 comments.

The message GE is trying to get across is “better health for more people,” says Hu. Smosh won the challenge by applying kung fu to many heads of lettuce (1,019,526 views), Brittani Louise Taylor took the linkbait approach with her video HOT CHICKS PLAYING TENNIS! (508,584 views, see image above), Rhett and Link used children as dumbells (193,393 views, also below) and invented some new yoga moves(291,746 views), iJustine did a silly dance on the street (686,238 views), and Alphacat wrote a pretty decent rap with an updated Schoolhouse Rock kind of vibe (49,955 views).

The campaign was organized by Howcast, which also created about 20 custom How-To health videos such as “How To Fill Awkward Silences With Your Doctor”, which have been viewed an addition 350,000 times. Producing such advertorials (aka, “branded entertainment” ) is one of Howcasts’s main revenue streams. GE’s Healthyimagination ads also took over Howcast’s Top-100 YouTube channel, and each video contains both a pop-up rollover ad and a post-roll video ad. The ads have been watched about 4 million times, with a 28 percent completion rate.

It is the most successful campaign Howcast has ever done. GE was surprised as well. “We were astounded by how fast it took off,” says Hu. She plans on doing more campaigns like this in the future.

This is an important case study because it shows that branded advertising can work on the Web. I think there are a few reasons why this took off.

The sponsored videos are authentic. The video makers were given a topic (live healthier) and allowed to run with it any way they wanted.
GE was okay with giving up total control of the message to a bunch of Youtubers, who know better than anyone else how to communicate to their respective audiences.
The videos are clearly presented as sponsored fare.
GE isn’t trying to sell anything other than its overall brand image

Entrepreneur and inventor Judah Klausner, or rather his company Klausner Technologies, has filed suit against HTC for patent infringement under its U.S. Visual Voicemail patents.

The lawsuit is based on the unveiling by HTC of its MyTouch 3G mobile phones, which Klausner Technologies claims alleges uses its patented Visual Voicemail technology. The company adds that various other HTC models with the Visual Voicemail feature are already covered under Klausner Technologies Visual Voicemail patent licenses granted to certain mobile operators for their Visual Voicemail services.

Klausner Technologies says it currently has 27 Visual Voicemail patent licensees under its U.S., European and Asian patents, including major U.S. and European mobile operators, international cell phone manufacturers, cable/VOIP providers as well as other providers of Visual Voicemail services.

Just last week, BT Group subsidiary Ribbit entered into a patent license agreement with Klausner Technologies, settling their outstanding litigation.

Perhaps HTC can take some comfort in the fact that it isn’t exactly the first company to get taken to court: Klausner Technologies had earlier sued Verizon Wireless, Google, Apple, Skype, Comcast, AT&T, LG and others claiming that their visual voicemail feature infringes on Klausner’s patents, as well as Motorola and Research In Motion more recently.

FreeWheel, which was recently speculated to be an acquisition target, will use the new investment to build out product development and scale its infrastructure. FreeWheel’s media clients include Turner, VEVO, CBS and MLB.com and serves over two billion ad impressions per month. The company also announced formalized agreements with both Discovery Communications LLC and ESPN Internet Ventures to help manage ad businesses and monetize both companies’ digital video content.

After reaching a resolution, we spent today working on a go-forward plan to ensure that this never happens again.

Plan
1. Hire a Chief Security Officer and associated staff that will focus solely on issues relating to information security.
2. Have regular 3rd-party infrastructure & application security audits.
3. Continue to invest in systems to aggressively filter out sensitive information.
4. Control caching of information in search engines.
5. Create a security and privacy center that contains information about what we are doing to protect you.

The security of our users is our highest priority. If there are additional measures you would like us to take to improve Blippy’s security, please do not hesitate to email us at hello@blippy.com. We will personally respond to each and every recommendation.

Reading this list, I wondered why some of these measures were not implemented on day one. They’re a small start-up, so I understand not having a designated Chief of Security yet, but they should have had a security and privacy center (because of the high volume of sensitive information) and a closer relationship to search engines. Of course, that old cliche: better late than never, certainly holds true here. Conclusion, it’s thin on details but if executed properly, it could go a long way in restoring trust and persuading new users to come on board.