I just received an email from Google informing me that I have been invited to participate in their new video sponsorship pilot ads:

Thank you for your continued participation in the Google AdSense program.

We are always working to improve AdSense and seeking out opportunities for publishers to help us test and provide feedback on new offerings. Soon, we’ll be launching an AdSense video distribution and sponsorship pilot and would like to invite you to participate. This is an exciting opportunity for you to test out new forms of high-quality, engaging, and relevant video content on your site and help us to shape this new offering while it’s still in the early stages. Additionally, the video content is ad-supported which provides a new incremental revenue opportunity for you.

In the coming days, we’ll be enabling your AdSense accounts with the option to select video content and display them on your AdSense sites. We’ve assembled premium video content providers including The Wall Street Journal Online, CondeNet’s Epicurious and Style.com, and LX.TV to create a compelling mix of editorial, fashion, travel, wine, and culinary-themed video channels. We feel that these video channels will complement your content and cater to your audience, which is why we have invited you to participate.

How it works:

A content provider, for example Warner Music Group, defines multiple video channels such as “Rock Videos,” or videos featuring the “Divas of Pop Music.” A publisher can select one of these video channels and embed it on their AdSense site. Visitors to the site can then browse and watch ad-supported video playlists within that video channel. In addition, Warner Music Group can update the channel with new video content to provide websites with a steady stream of content that will engage and excite visitors over the course of the pilot.

A few important notes:

• The pilot will run for 4 weeks over which time content providers will be creating new playlists with fresh, diverse, and relevant content for your site’s audience. The content within a video playlist will be updated regularly, ensuring freshness of content and improved response from your users.
• The video playlists are sized at 300 x 250 and are user-initiated. Nothing will play until a user interacts with the video and users will be able to skip over any video content and ads within a playlist.
• You may display a video playlist in addition to the maximum 3 ad units per page. We recommend creating new content space for the video playlist rather than making any changes to your current AdSense ad implementation.
• Content providers may choose to refresh or remove available video content at any time and for any reason. In the event video content is not available, the video player space on your pages will display standard text ads which you will be paid for as normal. You are also free to remove the video player from your pages at any time during this pilot.

In order to participate, no action is required on your part at this time. We’ll send you a note in the coming week once we have enabled your account to select video content, along with instructions on how to get started. In the meantime, we recommend looking through your site and think about where it makes sense to insert the video player and what your users will be most responsive to…

This is the first time we have been invited to participate in an adsense pilot program so it should be fun to see how the entire process works and hopefully it will be an area where we can generate some profit.

This is something that is typically Japanese. I came across this magazine at a Japanese bookstore the other day. Basically, it is a magazine that teaches you how to use Google in ways that aren’t necessarily accepted as proper or with the best intentions…kind of like illicit Google. Across the top is “how to meet young girls” and though all the references don’t state it outright that this magazine teaches you how to do bad things on Google, all the feature stories reference it subtlety and anyone looking at it would get the hint - not exactly what Google had in mind with their “do no evil” policy:

Notice how it is tied up - this is often done in Japan to keep people from reading the inside of popular magazines in the store and to force customers to buy them

As most people have heard, Window’s Vista’s official launch is happening as we speak. In the past, there was very little for Windows to worry about when it launched a new product since it was the only player in town. That is not longer the case so the question is, will Vista help keep Microsoft at the top or has their time passed?

Windows XP came out in October 2001 which is now over five years ago. XP stands for Experience and overall Microsoft did a decent job of allowing the user to work faster while not pushing them too far out of their comfort zone. With over 400 million copies in use, Microsoft must have done something right. The question is will Vista be as successful? Obviously, only time will reveal the answer, but we can still speculate and put forth some personal opinion on the subject. Here are 4 key questions and what Windows Vista’s answers are to them:

• Easy and intuitive networking and integration

  We all live in a world of wireless printers, laptops, iPod’s, Palm Pilots and a ton of other gadgets. We want to be able to share data between all of these devices easily and efficiently.

  Window’s Vista Answer - Networking

  It seems Microsoft is trying to help make networking easy. They are moving to a visual based system that helps map and grid your network.

• Customization and access to information

  Everyone has different interests. I want to see my favorite Blogs and newspaper articles when I wake up on my desktop. Most computer users do not need very many different programs, but they want the ones they use to be fast and easy.

  Window’s Vista Answer - Side Bar and Gadgets

  Windows is moving to more of a Mac desktop system. This will definitely allow for more customizations. In the early beta of Vista they had very few Gadgets that work. I hope the official release has more to offer.

• Security

  Not everyone is a computer guru and it is very frustrating when you have to phone the kid next door to get the virus off your computer.

  Window’s Vista Answer - Security

  Windows XP Service Pack 2 brought some additional security functionality. Hopefully, Vista brings a greater improvement upon this since it is very difficult to configure and disable functionality.

• The “Cool” Factor

  We may not want to admit this, but we all want to be up to speed on the latest fads and the coolest software. We want to have access to the cool features and software that allow us to impress our friends.

  Window’s Vista Answer - Cool Factor

  Windows Vista is trying to take this to the next level. Many of the windows allow for Alpha fading. It seems they have taken some guidance from their friends at Mac.

The question really is going to be, is Windows Vista too little to late for Microsoft? Mac has made some huge leaps and bounds over the last five years. I am walking into more and more offices these days that run only Macintosh systems.

I hope Microsoft put more effort into working on Windows Vista than they did with Internet Explorer 7 (I finally switched to FireFox and I am loving it).

Long term, Microsoft definitely has an uphill battle to keep their monopoly like hold on operating systems. Mozilla is consistently gaining market share with FireFox, Apple is going strong and has iPod loading profits into their development fund and you can never leave out Linux from the equation.

It will be interesting to see who owns the Operating System game in ten years…Can you say web based…