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Google has launched a new feature for Google Checkout, which allows merchants based in the US to create and run their own Checkout promotions at any time.

Users simply need to sign in to their Checkout merchant account, go to the "Tools" tab, and click the "Promotions" link to create a promotion. Google says the process takes less than a minute. Users can specify the date and time they’d like the promotion to run, and choose from different dollar-off discounts to offer their buyers.

When you run a Google Checkout promotion, the standard Checkout button on your site will automatically update to display the discount amount and cart minimum. AdWords advertisers will also have their standard Checkout badge that appears on their ads change to show the same information.

"These promotional badges have been introduced to enable shoppers who search on Google.com to easily identify and take advantage of promotional offers," says Google Checkout Specialist Gina Del Vecchio.

"Checkout promotions are a great way to attract new buyers, and we’re excited to make this functionality more widely available," she adds.

Google recently made changes to its content restrictions for Google Checkout. The service now allows the sale of real estate rentals, timeshares, and day sight-seeing tours. Google has just announced a couple of other things that people in real estate might find particularly useful. For one, they have expanded upon their real estate features on Google Maps. Secondly, they are now offering a new type of ad to allow for comparisons between offers.

Related Articles:

> Google Reduces Restictions on Google Checkout

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Earlier this year, Facebook launched its new system of governance for the social network’s policies. The system lets users comment and vote on proposed changes to governing policies. The company is now using this system with its Privacy Policy, and has made it available for review and comment.

"Our primary goals remain transparency and readability, which is why we’ve used plain language and included numerous examples to help illustrate our points," says Facebook’s Elliot Schrage. He points to an example about how they explain users’ options for modifying or deleting info or content. Here is the section in  the current policy:

When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information. …
… Even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User
Content. …
Access and control over most personal information on Facebook is readily available through the profile editing tools. Facebook users may modify or delete any of their profile information at any time by logging into their account. Information will be updated immediately. Individuals who wish to deactivate their Facebook account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook.

Here’s how the section reads in the new proposed policy:

Viewing and editing your profile. You may change or delete your profile information at any time by going to your profile page and clicking "Edit My Profile." Information will be updated immediately. While you cannot delete your date of birth, you can use the setting on the info tab of your profile information page to hide all or part of it from other users. …

Backup copies. Removed and deleted information may persist in backup copies for up to 90 days, but will not be available to others.

Facebook has restructured the document with key points and links for jumping to different sections. They’ve added sections on current practices and a new concept around Facebook Ads.

Users can read more about Facebook’s proposed changes to its policies here. The comment period ends at 12:00 p.m. PST on November 5. At that point, Facebook will review the feedback and update users on the steps that will follow.

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Google launched AdSense for Feeds all the way back in 2005. Now the company is integrating it right into its Blogger property.

"One of the things our publishers have always asked for are ways to make it even easer to configure their blogs to work with FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds," says Steve Olechowski on behalf of the AdSense for feeds and Blogger teams. We’re happy to announce that Blogger users, with just a few clicks, are able to do both at the same time."

Users can can use AdSense for Feeds for Blogger the same way they set up AdSense on their blogs. Just go to the Blogger Dashboard and select "monetize". This gives the user options for configuring ads. If the user’s blog is already connected to FeedBurner, you can confirm that the proper feed is being configured. AdSense for Feeds will pick the ad size automatically.

Users can view AdSense reports after setup to view feed revenue right from the Blogger Dashboard. You can of course see the reports in your AdSense account as well.

Google launched AdSense for Feedburner last year. This came just after Google closed down the Feedburner Ad Network.

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> AdSense For RSS Feeds Launched

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Call it "The Battle of the Bands and the Social Networks."  Following Weezer-MySpace and U2-YouTube match-ups in the past ten days, a third pairing will soon be added to the mix as a live Foo Fighters performance is scheduled to stream on Facebook this evening.

The free performance is supposed to start at 7 PM California time (the Foo Fighters will be using the Studio 606 complex in Northridge as a base of operation).  It’s sure to be a big draw, considering that the band has over 821,000 Facebook fans.

Of course, in all honesty, the Foo Fighters and Facebook don’t have much hope of matching U2 and YouTube.  Reports indicate that U2’s Sunday night broadcast generated 10 million streams, which is an astonishing number.

Factor in U2’s bigger fan base, plus the fact that this is a Friday, and again, no one should look for a repeat performance (in a manner of speaking).

Still, the spate of major concerts that’ve been streamed (toss in Hulu’s coverage of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, if you like) seems to represent the start of a trend, and should mean a lot to music fans who don’t feel like flying across the country and spending still more money on tickets.

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The global mobile phone market saw slight growth in the third quarter, according to IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker.

Year-on-year growth remained negative, but improved from the first half of 2009. Mobile shipments totaled 287.1 million units worldwide in Q3, down from 6 percent from the previous year, but up 5.6 percent from the second quarter.

"The mobile phone market is showing the first signs of improvement since the onset of the economic crisis," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team.

"During the third quarter, we saw a number of channels promoting older devices at significantly lower prices. For many, this was enough to spur demand and push volumes higher. Now that we have moved into the fourth quarter, vendors are setting the stage for further gains by launching their flagship devices to meet pent-up demand."

The North American market posted mixed results for Q3. The United States posted positive results, with mobile devices and prepaid handsets once again driving growth. The Canadian mobile phone market declined for the third straight despite double-digit mobile device growth.

Nokia took the top spot in market share with 37.8 percent, but its year-on year growth dipped 8 percent. Samsung landed in the second spot with 21 percent market share and positive year-on-year growth of 15.9 percent.

"Although some regions are still reeling from problems associated with the economic crisis, the third quarter served to cleanse the channel while providing the signs of stability necessary for additional improvement in the fourth quarter," said Will Stofega, research manager of IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team
 

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There’s about a month left before the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit becomes a thing of the past, and – perhaps like many individuals – Google’s not going to let this opportunity slip away.  The search giant’s upgraded Google Maps’s real estate options in several different ways.

Did you forget that Google Maps can be used to research real estate?  Well, that’s one problem that’s been addressed.  A post on the LatLong Blog announced, "First of all, we’ve made it easier to find real estate listings. Now, you can simply select ‘Real Estate’ from the ‘More’ button on the top right of any Google Map to discover listings.  From there, it’s a simple matter to refine your search using the left hand panel – price, bedrooms, bathrooms, and so on."

Then Google threw a bone to people who haven’t quite saved up a down payment, as the post continued, "We’ve also added the ability to search for rental listings in the US."

Finally, so that either buyers or renters can figure out whether they’d be moving in next to a charming old movie theater or a hospital with a helipad, icons show "the names and location of businesses and prominent features of the neighborhood."

This represents a nice round of upgrades that should mesh well with the mortgage comparison ads Google recently introduced.

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> Google Gives AdWords Advertisers New Comparison Option

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Earlier this month, StumbleUpon started showcasing their new homepage design, when they touted their “Google + Twitter” social search. Now they’ve gone through the rest of the site to make it more consistent (less customizable), easy to understand and streamlined.

Read Write Web reports:

The new interface is streamlined and more social with an updated relationship system. A focus on consistency (e.g., limiting user control of visual elements) and removal of clutter (e.g., presenting tags in a drop-down menu rather than a cloud) characterize the design changes made. Also, a few tweaks to group sharing were made to help reduce share-spam.

The most significant UX changes have occur[r]ed in the way friendships and subscriptions work on the site.

Now, your friends are you “Mutual Subscribers,” which makes the relationship a little clearer. They’re the people users can share pages with directly from the toolbar.

However, the redesign is largely changes like those—clarifying various site functions, streamlining the design, making things easier for users. The homepage, same as the beta featured earlier this month, highlights recent activity from Mutual Subscribers—but doesn’t place a big emphasis on the social search aspect they were talking about earlier this month.

So is StumbleUpon shying away from that? Or are they worried that their core user base was confused? I know I was a little worried when I first hear the social search news—even though I’m now an infrequent Stumbler, I didn’t want to lose that original “discovery engine,” even if it would be for a working social search model. However, the actual stumbling part of the service would remain—and maybe this is just to remind and reassure their users of that.

But it still seems like they haven’t really played up the social search aspect enough. While I remain highly skeptical of social search, it’s one of those brass rings for mainstream search engines—like Google, which announced Social Search in Labs, using sites that your Google contacts have viewed, as well as sites you’ve seen before in your Web History, Google Reader and associated Google services.

However, with StumbleUpon’s more targeted “Mutual Subscribers” option, you have the ability to control what friends you’re getting information from, instead of results from everyone you’ve ever emailed.

What do you think? Does StumbleUpon have a better chance of getting social search right? Is it shying away from that—and should it, now that Google’s officially thrown its hat into the ring?

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Kevin Pollak, who even if his name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ve likely seen before. He’s a comedian, as well as an actor. He’s played in movies alongside Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Jonn Candy, and others.

Not a moviegoer? He’s also played on his fair share of television shows. You may have seen him on The Drew Carey Show, Shark, Ed, or Entourage. Or maybe you’ve seen him in a comedy club.

Actually, there’s a good chance you’ve seen him on the web, and if not, you will (I guess you have now either way). Pollak has his own online show (Charlie Rose-style) called simply Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show in which he talks with some pretty big-name people. He’s had guests like Kevin Smith, Levar Burton, Eddie Izzard, Lisa Loeb, Kevin Nealon, Seth Macfarlane, Hank Azaria, and others.

Are you familiar with Pollak’s work? Comment here.

Here’s a look at the intro from the first episode of Pollak’s show.
 

Pollak likes the online format for a variety of reasons. He likes that you can get stuff out all over the world instantly. He likes the lack of limitations. You can do a show uncensored, and you can let it run as long as you want. His shows are normally at least an hour long, and sometimes 2 hours or more.

The online format is ideal for inspiring audience participation with the show itself as well. Pollak says he’s had users contribute a theme song, questions for guests, and participate in a "Larry King game" (you’d have to watch the show to understand).

We’re seeing this audience participation with content thing more and more in the online video world. Look at what Paramount’s doing with Mountain Dew, Adobe Flash, and MySpace. They’re marketing with an interactive web series/game.

In another article I talked about using more than just the obvious communities to spread your message. Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show is a good example of how this can happen on its own, particularly with online video in the mix. His videos are not only on his site, but they’re on YouTube, Beet.tv, Blip.tv, Ustream, and other Video sites.

The natural shareability of online video combined with the communication power of social media opens up the doors for a whole lot of opportunity. Pollak has presences on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. He’s even got one on Mahalo. Pollak’s show proves that you can find success online even if you don’t know that much about the Internet. As Kevin says in our interview with him, he’s learning as he goes. It certainly helps that he is already in show business, but if you can provide interesting enough content, people out there will watch it, and they will share it. Best of all, you can reach people all over the world.

How has being online expanded your opportunities? Discuss here.

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The first Internet addresses with non-Latin characters will soon be online after today’s approval of the new Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush.

"Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters – A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."

ICANN said starting November 16 nations and territories will be able to apply for internationalized domain names (IDNs) made up of characters from their national language.

"This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s President and CEO.

"The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online – people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives."

IDNs have been an issue since before ICANN was created. ICANN said its taken years of technical testing, policy development, and global co-operation to prepare for the launch of the Fast Track process.

"Our work on IDNs has gone through numerous drafts, dozens of tests, and an incredible amount of development by volunteers since we started this project. Today is the first step in moving from planning and implementation to the real launch," said Tina Dam, ICANN’s Senior Director for IDNs.

"The launch of the Fast Track Process will be an amazing change to make the Internet an even more valuable tool, and for even more people around the globe."

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Spammers may want to steer clear of Facebook in the future.  Late yesterday, a representative of the social network’s legal team announced that it was awarded $711 million in damages as a result of a case against Sanford "Spamford" Wallace.

As Sam O’Rourke explained on the Facebook Blog, Wallace is "one of the spammers who accessed people’s accounts without their permission and sent phony Wall posts and messages."  And he’s harassed folks in other ways over the years to the point that a 725-word Wikipedia article is tied to his name.

Now, a sort of downside of this development is that Wallace probably doesn’t have $711 million to give Facebook.  He may try to get away without paying anything, in fact.

Still, O’Rourke wrote, "[W]e hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals.  Most notably, the judge referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney’s Office with a request that Wallace be prosecuted for criminal contempt, which means that in addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time.  This is another important victory in our fight against spam.  We will continue to pursue damages against other spammers."

So if you’re spammed on Facebook – and it’s looking less likely that you will be – take comfort in the fact that the person responsible may get in quite a lot of trouble.

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