Archive for December 2008
David Beckham AC MILAN to Milano
The world wide sports news headlines are already set for this weekend; expectations of seeing Beckham in the San Siro stadium is a major event for the Italians.
With the arrival of Becks to Milan, the Italian sports press and different media’ focus will be on the causes, consequences and reactions of Beckham’s deal with the red and black striped football jerseys whose managers’ delight is to pull Beckham upon the football field to compensate the lack of stars due to a large number of injuries within the Rossoneri football lineup. Nonetheless, the English star will be watching the football game from behind the white lines and off the green grass.
The AC Milan football team is enduring from several injuries of focal players; the Milan team is awaiting Kaka’s healing but with Andrea Pirlo playing half a game and Gattuso on the injury list (mainly for the whole season), sports experts and football critics believe that the early integration of David Beckham into the football field, will definitely play the role of a motivator causing an improvement in strategies and pace of the games that the AC Milan will have to play in the Italian Serie A or in the UEFA competition.
In the final UEFA cup championship game, AC Milan was clearly missing the efforts of its key players; the lack of creation and skills ended their game against the Wolfsburg with a tied result.
David Beckham is by far, one of the most popular soccer stars of the planet, but, the fame wasn’t acquired because of his performance upon the football grass. The looks of the British football mid-fielder gave him an extra push towards celebrity, after being signed by a large number of advertisers (sports equipments, food and beverage, clothing…). Beckham’s marriage with the Spice Girls’ singer Victoria Adams drove Becks to the peak of fame.
Speculations within the sports media pointed at the AC Milan focus upon marketing more than trying to set scores; many sports programs and football commentators acknowledged the fact that the Rossoneri management is busy in advertising and collecting money, while seeding the football results of the team in the 2nd of their priorities.
Therefore, Beckham’s would fulfill the role of money generator; Milan football club who has the sports betting site bwin.com as main sponsor have put a major bet upon Becks who’s expected to cause an increase in the revenues of AC Milan by augmenting the sales of football tickets as well as urging the Milan fans to buy more authorized and Milan-approved products (football jerseys, shorts, football shoes, magazines….), not to mention the football betting activities that are expected to boom.
Despite all of the AC Milan efforts and wishes of joining Beckham to the AC Milan squad a.s.a.p., the English idol will remain benched and watching the in-pain Milan football team until the month of January.
While pending and awaiting for the transfers panels opening, Coach Carlo Ancelotti, who took advantage of every TV interview to motivate the AC Milan players after their 4-2 defeat against the Juventus football team, has finally let out his complain by acknowledging that AC Milan football team is having hard times because of the excess of injuries that are keeping the team away from its real level exhibited during the launch of the Italian Serie A. Ancelotti, who impatiently awaits for the return of Kaka and the get-better of Seedorf and Pirlo, promised the Milan fans that the Rossoneri will keep it up until reaching the scudetto at the end of the season.
AC Milan have called a press conference for tomorrow evening to introduce David Beckham as he joins on loan from the Los Angeles Galaxy.
The former England captain will meet the Italian press for the first time at 7pm local time at the San Siro stadium.
Beckham, 33, has agreed a short-term loan with the Serie A giants in a bid to remain match-fit and stay in the thoughts of England manager Fabio Capello.
Beckham will likely be in the stands to watch his new team take on Udinese on Sunday evening. He will then join them at a training camp in Dubai and could make his debut when the Serie A season resumes with a trip to Roma on January
11th.
In addition to the league calendar, Beckham is set to turn out for Milan in a friendly against Rangers in Glasgow on February 4th.
He is due to return to Los Angeles ahead of the start of the 2009 Major League Soccer season on March 21st.
Meet Ilaria D’Amico, the gorgeous television host Posh has banned David Beckham from doing an interview with. Judging from her sexy pictures, I can see why! Read her biography and check out photos and video here.
Did Victoria Beckham deny David a sexy interview with Ilaria D’Amico?
David Beckham has apparently been banned form doing a one on one interview with Italy’s hottest television host, Ilaria D’Amico. Ilaria was to interview Becks tomorrow, but according to reports, Posh did some research and after seeing how sexy Ilaria was, had David call it off. He will instead do a standard press conference.
But Beckham’s people said on Friday that was madness: ‘Ilaria D’Amico will still be doing an interview with David. Originally Sky wanted to do an exclusive interview but we felt the press conference should be open to everyone and wouldn’t want to restrict it to one broadcaster.
Ilaria D’Amico is a sexy Italian television host. She was born in Rome on August 30, 1973 making her age 35. She attended the University of Rome La Sapienza, and soon thereafter debuted on TV in 1997 with La giostra dei gol. She went on to host several TV shows and specials, and also has appeared on satellite TV. Since 2003 she has presented the SKY Calcio Show (”SKY football Show”).
Ilaria is a stunning woman, with a dark complexion, dark hair and almond eyes. She has several bikini photos out there if you do a little searching, some of which include partially nude shots as she frolics in the ocean with a man. Of course we can’t show you those here!!
Semantic web that makes sense
WELL THAT MAKES SENSES TO ME AND YOU. RIGHT? REAL Surfing on Google Earth
The “semantic Web” does not sound like it’s fun and easy to use, but it could make surfing Web 3.0 a more rewarding and interactive experience. Some believe it could even lead to a new form of artificial intelligence. CNN.com
Spotlets pop up on a ‘semantic Web’ kiosk run by a pair of German researchers.
Spotlets pop up on a ‘semantic Web’ kiosk run by a pair of German researchers.
The idea behind the semantic Web, very broadly, is that things on the Internet will be described with descriptor languages so that computers can “understand” what they are.
An object might be a marked as a car part or a person, for instance. If objects were thus identified, an enormous network of linked data would emerge and machines, with their vast processing speeds, could suggest surprising and useful links that the human mind could never come up with, posing the possibility of a new sort of artificial intelligence.
The semantic Web is considered a key part of the upcoming “Web 3.0.” It’s starting to occur here and there, but widespread adoption is still a long way off.
A pair of German researchers have created an experimental kiosk that lets you easily use semantic Web capabilities — even if you have no idea what they are. All that is needed is an iPhone and a finger with which to drag icons around on the kiosk’s touch screen.
The kiosk takes advantage of the fact that MP3 files are “things” that have already been described in ways that machines can understand. That’s because they have ID3 tags, which supply information on the artist and album.
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An MP3 file on an iPhone is already a semantic annotated object, which means it’s easily read by a computer.
Place the iPhone on the kiosk’s surface and a circle appears around it. Next to that automatically appears a list of songs arranged by artist, title or genre.
Nearby on the screen are various “spotlets,” intelligent agents that can perform different actions with the objects. One spotlet, for instance, plays MP3s that are dragged on top of it. There’s also a YouTube spotlet.
Suppose you want to find videos related to Coldplay. Place your finger on the band’s icon next to your phone and simply drag it on top of that spotlet. Instantly, icons for the first five videos from the YouTube search results appear around the spotlet.
Unwittingly, you’ve just done a search using semantic Web capabilities. Now, if you drag one of those icons onto the spotlet, the video will play. (Click here to watch a demonstration.)
Searching for new possibilities
These are just simple examples. Much more can be done with the system.
Other semantic Web tools are not nearly as fun. Consider, for instance, SPARQL, a query language. To find, say, music artists associated with the producer Timbaland, you’d have to type a long piece of convoluted code that most of us wouldn’t bother to do.
“Complex operations should be hidden,” says Simon Bergweiler, who along with fellow researcher Matthieu Deru, created the kiosk project at the Advanced Tangible Interface Lab at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Saarbrücken.
The team also will soon launch a Web-site version of their system, where users can drag icons with a cursor instead of their finger. Users also can employ speech commands, which has interesting implications for home entertainment systems.
Reaching out to share the moment
But what the team really liked was the use of natural gestures.
“Via simple gestures, one can interact with content of Web 3.0 knowledge-bases without concrete knowledge of SPARQL or other Web 3.0 components,” notes Bergweiler.
The idea is that their system can be used for quick and precise interaction with any rich semantic content. Real-world settings might include heavily trafficked places like airports or train stations, where they envision their kiosk ending up in the future. (They don’t actually like the word “kiosk” — they prefer “shared interaction space.”)
You might want to quickly play a video from your iPhone to a group of friends, for instance, on a larger screen without the hassle of AV cables or any other setup.
“The idea of in-the-moment sharing and exploring in a public place, or even as a public event, is a very interesting one that I am surprised hasn’t shown up in bars and at concert events,” says Andrew Hawn, a strategist with consumer trend research firm Iconoculture.
Garage mechanics could also use such kiosks. Suppose mechanical parts have RFID antennas with semantic product memory. In that case, you could get technical data simply by placing a part on the surface of the kiosk.
The German team will soon set up interactive kiosks for German libraries to help visitors perform searches that involve context. Consider, for instance, searches like this: “Violin concerto compositions written by Mozart when he was in Salzburg.” Or: “Books written by Nobel prize winners of the last decade.”
Google and most other search engines cannot easily help with the desired context. “Only context information that contains the semantics can resolve and give an answer to these questions,” notes Bergweiler.
A few new Web sites, like Cluuz.com, attempt to use semantics for better searching, albeit with their own approaches to the challenge.
Cluuz does better than Google with “Nobel prize winners 1990s,” but it’s worse at many other queries.
The semantic Web, when and if it fully blooms, will complement, not replace, the current Web. What’s missing so far are enough fun ways to use it.
CoMET is a new creative media exchange terminal to interact with semantic annotated objects. The video gives a preview of upcoming Web 3.0 user interface technologies. For more details: http://www.dfki.de/iui/advanti
Tags:
Web 2.0 3.0 Semantic Service Mashup semantic annotated objects LastFM Seeqpod Music Brainz personalization YouTube MP3Player speech interaction multimodal annotations ontology RDF OWL ODP Ontology-based dialogue platform spot spots spotlet spotlets CoMET Collaborative Media Exchange Terminal recommendations community profile settings multitouch screen DFKI iPhone iPod Touch Cocoa mobile fusion terminal Advanti-Lab innovative paradigm intelligent software voice graphical user interface
Google needs more money? Accept Alcohol Gambling Ads
After Google said yes for Gambling Poker and casinos in UK, it turns now to Alcohol:
Google needs more money? Accept Alcohol Gambling Ads
An update to the AdWords alcohol policy
As many of you know, we’re constantly evaluating our AdWords program policies to keep them current and effective. This means making changes from time to time by either adding new policies, such as the endangered species policy, or updating existing policies, such as the Display URL policy.
This fall, we changed our policy around beer, for the first time allowing advertisements of its sale in the U.S. via AdWords. And starting today, in response to advertiser feedback we’ve received over the years, we’ll permit the advertisement of hard alcohol and liqueurs that target the U.S.
To comply with the updated hard alcohol and liqueurs policy, advertisers must promote the information about hard alcohol and liqueurs that their websites contain, such as recipes and brand messages. Ads that directly promote the sale of hard alcohol and liqueurs are still not permissible through our program. In contrast, advertisements for beer may directly promote its sale.
For example, under the hard alcohol and liqueurs policy, you might market to individuals searching for helpful and relevant alcohol-related information by promoting holiday cocktail ideas or the caloric content of popular spiked beverages. Under the beer policy, you might state a specific sales promotion for a great winter ale.
Hard alcohol and beer manufacturers can now take advantage of online holiday traffic and initiate campaigns that appeal to their target audiences.
Plans to expand this updated alcohol policy to other countries in accordance with local regulations are expected in the coming weeks. For more information about the alcohol policy and other AdWords content policies, please visit our Advertising Policies page.
Alcohol
Don’t promote unacceptable alcohol products or promote alcohol where restricted.
Hard alcohol and liqueur:
Ads are not permitted to directly promote the sale of hard alcohol and liqueur. This means that the sale of hard alcohol and liqueur cannot be promoted in ads or be the purpose of your site (occupying a significant portion of your site). However, ads for hard alcohol and liqueur with the sole purpose of branding may target the U.S.
Beer:
Advertisements for beer may target countries where such ads comply with local regulations. However, beer ads may not target India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, or Malaysia.
Wine and champagne:
Advertisements for champagne and wine are allowed everywhere that such advertisements comply with local regulations.
All alcohol products:
Since we consider beer, wine, champagne, hard alcohol, and liqueur to be products intended for sale to, and consumption by, adults, ads promoting these products will be given a Non-Family Safe status.
Some jurisdictions might enforce any of the following additional regulations. They might:
Require government permits for the advertisement of alcoholic beverages,
Prohibit advertisements for beverages with a certain level of alcohol content,
And/or require certain disclaimers in advertisements for alcohol beverages.
It is the advertiser’s responsibility to ensure that any ads related to alcohol (including beer, wine, champagne, hard alcohol, and liqueur) are in full compliance with all national, state, and local laws, as well as any industry or self-regulatory guidelines relating to the placement, content, or nature of these ads. By placing such ads with or through Google, you are representing that your ad complies will all applicable regulations in the countries your ad targets.
In addition, please ensure that your ad complies with our suggested alcohol advertising principles, which state that alcohol ads should:
Always be directed to an adult audience, and never targeted to those under the age of majority in the country where the ad is shown.
Not be placed or run in venues where more than 50% of the audience is below the age of majority (higher percentages apply in certain countries).
Only show models and actors who are, and appear to be, over 25 years old.
Not contain any curative or therapeutic claims except as permitted by law.
Not contain claims or representations that individuals can attain social, professional, educational, romantic, sexual, or athletic success as a result of alcohol consumption.
Only promote responsible drinking, and not promote excessive drinking or the intoxicating effects of alcohol consumption.
