One in four surfers visits gaming sites
Visitors to online gaming sites now number almost 217 million worldwide, representing year-on-year growth of 17%, market researchers estimate. The sector attracted 28% of the total worldwide online population in May 2007 and recorded an average of nine visits per user, according to the latest comScore World Metrix study. Yahoo Games was the most popular site, attracting 53 million unique visitors in May 2007. MSN Games followed in second place, having grown by 16% since May 2006 to reach 40 million unique visitors in May 2007. Both sites provide a mixture of strategy, trivia, arcade and board games, with puzzle and card games proving the most popular choices for gamers. The fastest growing Top 10 gaming site was WildTangent Network, a US company that makes online and downloadable games, which grew by 398% year-on-year to attract 11.5 million unique visitors in May 2007. The site also attracted an average 12.2 visits per visitor, notably higher than any of the other top 10 gaming properties. The popularity of gaming websites varied significantly between geographical locations. Yahoo Games dominated the North American and Asia-Pacific continents, registering 18.7 million and 20.9 million unique visitors respectively. In Europe, however, Yahoo proved to be the fourth most popular gaming site with 8.6 million unique visitors. MSN Games, the second most popular gaming site in the world, was the most visited site in Europe. MSN Games was also more consistent in global geographical take-up, emerging as either the most or the second-most popular site in every geographical location.

How to measure website success? Page views or time?
The yardstick for how the popularity of websites is measured has changed, as analytics firms scramble to reflect how pages are now frequently updated piecemeal and "live" by the host, rather than loaded wholesale by users. Nielsen Netratings, one of the top firms which make a living by telling advertisers and publishers what web users are up to, said today it will put less emphasis on page views in favour of total time spent on a site. The new methods are more akin to how TV audiences are estimated; not by if they flick through TV channel, but if they stick around and watch it. The system takes better account of the popularity of YouTube, Yahoo! Mail, and other Flashtastic and Ajaxmatic services. Ajax is the Javascript technology which makes it possible to update a page's contents without refreshing it. It's often viewed as the main technological bedrock of the more nebulous web 2.0 concept. Nielsen rival comScore has already tackled the culture shift online in March by emphasising "visits". It says it tracks users' loyalty to web destinations, rather than page views, making it easier for advertisers to assess their value. In Nielsen's first analysis where time spent gets top billing, AOL came out on top largely thanks to the US popularity of its instant messenger. The usefulness of page views has been waning with the rise of more varied online content. For a basic web function such a search, a comparison between Google search and Yahoo! search the metric used makes negligible difference, with Google coming out on top in page views and time spent by a factor of three. However, in a MySpace versus YouTube head-to-head, the picture is skewed. Murdoch's social network comes out on top for both page views and total minutes, but the ratio for page views is 10.4 to 1, compared to just 3.6 to one for total minutes.

TiVo users can get Amazon movies from TV
Users of TiVo's digital video recorders will be able to order movies from Amazon.com Inc. directly from their TVs starting Tuesday. The two companies partnered in March to deliver Amazon's Unbox download service to TiVo machines, but the feature required customers to place their orders on a computer through Amazon's Web site. Now, PC intervention won't be needed. The new "Buy on TV" feature allows TiVo users to search Amazon's video catalog and rent or purchase titles using their TiVo's remote control. The feature works for owners of TiVo Series2 and Series3 broadband-connected DVRs. The new feature is the latest example of how companies — including Microsoft, Wal-Mart Stores and Apple — are trying to find ways to deliver online videos to customers' living rooms. In conjunction with the new feature, TiVo developed a safeguard so users would have to punch in a five-digit password to complete the transaction, said Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing. "We wanted to avoid the baby sitter scenario where you come home to find a bunch of movies on your TiVo that you didn't order," he said.

Cheaper iPhone coming
The Maker of entertainment gear, Apple is planning to release a cheaper Iphone based on the Ipod Nano. According to a JP Morgan report Apple has filed a patent application document dated July 5 that refers to a multi functional hand held device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano's scroll wheel. Talking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan, unnamed people in the supply channel indicated that the report was true and they are preparing to make the cheaper phone. Chang said Apple plans to convert the Nano into a phone and price it at $300 or lower. He said this would be a way for Apple to launch a lower end phone without severely cannibalising iPod Nano. The new phone will have limited functionality, he added.

Newspapers Losing the Most Ad Dollars to the Internet
Newspapers are losing the most ad dollars to the Internet compared to other media, according to a new report from Wachovia Equity Research. Analyzing 100 leading national advertisers to determine the shift away from traditional media to the Internet. Specifically, the team looked at 55 of those advertisers that fell in the following categories: automotive, retail, telecommunications, financial services, general services, media, and tech/Internet. Of those seven categories, only one -- financial services -- increased spending in newspapers. Television, the study noted, actually experienced the opposite trend with four of the seven categories including telecommunications, automotive, media and tech/Internet, increasing the amount of dollars spent the medium. Looking at the seven categories collectively, newspapers lost 14.3% in advertising dollars in 2006 while TV gained 4.4%. The Internet experienced a rise of 17.8% in spending while ad spending on other measured channels fell 1.1%. Telecommunications advertisers shifted the most out of newspapers. In 2005, the top advertisers in that category spent 31.6% on newspapers while in 2006 they spent only 24% in newspapers. Newspapers felt this shift with the automotive category as well. In 2005, auto advertisers spent 9.2% of the budget on newspapers. In 2006 spending slipped to 4.6%. The research noted that TV was the benefactor of these dollars. Retail was much less dramatic. Advertisers in that category spent 29.8% on newspapers in 2005 and 28% in 2006.

Google reveals China's military secrets
Google Earth has shown pictures of what military experts say is China's new nuclear ballistic missile submarine. Defence experts say that the new class, known as the Jin-class or Type 094, is expected replace the unsuccessful Xia-class (Type 092) which was built in the early 1980s. The sub is still classified but was snapped by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006. It can be seen on the Google Earth web site. Defense experts are fascinated by the details which they can make out from the satellite picture. We wonder if China might want to stick Google on its list of banned sites, or use one of its anti-satellite weapons to knock out every commercial satellite which flies over the country. Click here to see the image from Google Earth

Vietnam tipped to be next outsourcing hotspot
Vietnam is tipped to become a more popular outsourcing destination than both China and India within the next five years. Vietnam has the second highest GDP growth after China and that it's now the third largest offshore services destination in South East Asia. The Vietnamese labor pool also has around 80,000 IT graduates, a figure that is increasing by 9,000 per year. More than half of Vietnam's 84 million population is under 25 years old and 83% of all graduates are science-based. Companies already outsourcing IT services to Vietnam include Honda and Intel. Vietnam is a natural offshore location and has all the ingredients to become the leading market choice in the next few years."

Internet blamed for Shanghai teen pregnancies
Nearly half of the pregnant teens in China's financial hub, Shanghai, met their partners on the Internet. Zhang Zhengrong, a doctor who oversees the city's first-aid hotline for pregnant teens, said 46% of the more than 20,000 teenage girls who called the hotline over the past two years said they had had sex with boys they met on the Internet. "Most of the fathers disappeared after learning about the pregnancy, and some of the mothers did not even know the fathers' names," the China Daily said. Zhang blamed the situation on adult Web sites, videos and books and appealed to parents, teachers and society at large to pay more attention to sex education. A survey by Zhang's hospital found that only 7.9% of the parents queried talked to their children about sex, and 79% of high school and university students said they got their ideas about sex from the Internet. Chinese attitudes towards sex have relaxed in recent decades, triggering a boom in extramarital relationships which the ruling Communist Party blames on bourgeois mores imported from the West.

Women prefer well-built Men
Here's some good news for the gym monsters among you: women are "predisposed to prefer muscularity in men", according to researchers at UCLA. The team's report, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests "muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks" which "attract females looking for a virile mate". However, this animal magnetism is most effective on females looking for a quick roll in the hay, since they will tend to opt for a "regular man" when it comes to long-term relationships. On the other hand, it makes women more suspicious about their romantic intentions." The researchers quizzed 99 male undergraduates on their sexual histories and found that the muscular examples were "twice as likely to have had more than three sex partners than less-built types". They also presented 141college women with "six standardized silhouettes of men ranging from brawny to slender" with most selecting a "toned man who was more likely to commit over a muscle-bound man they perceived as more volatile, aggressive and dominant".

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