According to YouTube, which held a press conference at its headquarters, Sponsored Videos lets users promote their videos by bidding on keywords. Here’s how it works: First, YouTube users, whether individuals or corporations, decide which of the videos they’ve uploaded they want to promote through site search. Then they decide which keywords they want to target.

Google, YouTube’s parent company, has created automated tools that help users place bids for the keywords in an automated online auction, as well as set spending budgets. When people use keywords in search terms for videos, YouTube will display relevant videos alongside the search results. If you’re, say, a Hollywood film studio, maybe you bid on the words “movie trailer.”

Wow. Selling keywords on YouTube’s search. What a great idea!

It only represents the single most important concept in online advertising, and it’s the inspiration on which Google built an advertising dynasty. So why has it taken so long for YouTube to adopt a similar strategy?

The Web’s largest video site has been casting about for a way to cash in on its 80 million users. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said several times this year that YouTube was not generating the kind of revenue the company hoped it would. Wouldn’t creating an Adsense-like offering on YouTube have been one of the first things Google did after purchasing YouTube for $1.65 billion two years ago?

As one reporter asked YouTube executives: “Wasn’t this a no-brainer?”

It’s not as easy as it looks, according to Matthew Liu, a YouTube product manager.

“You’re absolutely right,” Liu told reporters. “In hindsight, it is a natural transition for YouTube to make. We’ve been working on this for months. The key was, we wanted to make sure we got it right. There are a lot of intricacies involved. YouTube is a video discovery platform. We’ve been integrating with Google AdWords for some time, and now we’re at a place where it can be win and win.”

Sponsored Videos, labeled as such when they appear following a keyword search, are priced on a cost-per-click basis. Currently, only U.S. users can bid on video keywords.

So how much could this be worth to Google? It’s hard to say, at this point, whether Sponsored Videos will be the answer to YouTube’s revenue problems, but consider that the site recently surpassed Yahoo to become the No. 2 Web search provider, behind Google.

To squeeze more money out of YouTube, Google has launched other ad formats, such as posting links near videos, enabling visitors to purchase goods found in the clip. Google has also worked to repair its reputation in Hollywood and has recently signed deals that will bring full-length TV and film content to the site.

Google shares closed trading on Wednesday at $291, down more than 6 percent. This was the first time the stock fell below $300 in three years.

UPDATE - Looks dead now.

The backdoored pluggable.php file attempts to send the stolen data to wordpresz.org/tuk.php which is still accepting cookies if the requests are properly formatted. The spoof is a nearly perfect combination of social engineering, typosquatting and the natural EstDomains connection as the domain registrar, nearly perfect in the sense that they couldn’t duplicate the whole WordPress.org potentially raising suspicion at the end user’s end.

The site is on the same IP address as a fake pharmacy site, proving that scammers always ring twice.

You might want to stay inside today, folks, because there’s some space junk the size of a Buick set to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and land, well, somewhere later today. After the spectacular disintegration of the Jules Vern earlier this year, this is the second time our earthbound space agencies have purposefully burned something up in the atmosphere. The trouble is, the Verne was carefully controlled and tracked by two planes (hence, the spectacular video). When this puppy breaks up in the atmo, at least 15 chunks of ammonia-soaked metal and other space station goodness are going to reach the surface. “If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn’t get too close to it,” said a NASA spokesman.

Known as the Early Ammonia Servicer, or EAS, the tank was tossed overboard more than a year ago by NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson, during a July 2007 spacewalk. It is the largest piece of junk ever tossed overboard from the ISS, and yes, you read that right. An astronaut threw a 1,400-pound tank of toxic ammonia coolant into the void, on purpose—but it’s not as crazy as it sounds (we think). The tank was made obsolete by recent ISS repairs, and the ammonia-filled vessel was deemed to dangerous for a shuttle ride home. Tossing was the only option.

“As a matter of course, we don’t throw things overboard haphazardly,” said Mike Suffredini, NASA’s space station program. “We have a policy that has certain criteria we have to meet before you can throw something overboard.”

Still, if you find a glowing chunk of space waste in your backyard this evening, please call local authorities. People outside the U.S. are encouraged to call the U.S. Department of State via diplomatic channels. And don’t touch anything!

Absolutely awesome for some who had too many cars to keep.

Radiohead’s newest album will cost whatever you decide to pay for it. Want to give the band $10? Go ahead. $3? Sure, why not? $0? You got it. (Sorta, since you’ll need to pay credit card fees.)

The album, In Rainbows, will be released on October 10 as a digital download on the band’s Web site. Since it’s no longer tied to a record label, the band can do whatever the hell it wants with its music. So they’ve gone the museum route—donate what you feel it’s worth.

Prince did a similar thing earlier this year, bundling his album for free alongside a British newspaper, but hardly anyone cared since Prince is old hat. Radiohead, on the other hand, is still hip. (So I’m told. I never “got” the band.) I can’t wait to see how the RIAA responds to this one, crying wolf, claiming that these types of decisions will destroy the music biz, etc.

Windows has had one of the most ridiculous naming schemes in the history of software. First there were logical (but ugly) version numbers, like the once commonplace “Windows 3.1?. Then with the release of the overhauled Windows 95 the company adopted a naming system based on the year of release, which it continued until Windows 98.

Windows Me (perhaps the worst operating system I’ve ever used), sacrificed the scheme for a chance to be clever (it stood for “me” and the millennium at the same time!) Next up we hit Windows XP, which has served most of us reasonably well since 2001. It sounds sort of cool, it’s catchy, and we have no idea what it means. Fine.

Finally we had Windows Vista, which seemed to stick with the naming convention of “something that sounds sort of cool but didn’t really mean anything”. It had been more than five years since the release of XP, so there was little chance of confusion.

Microsoft is now in a hurry to push out its next operating system after the generally dismal response to Vista. And so we’ve come to Windows 7, which is apparently tied to the build numbers and not the actual releases. The new naming scheme lends itself well to faster, more incremental releases similar to what we’ve seen from Apple (about once every 18 months), but it’s probably going to confuse everyone and couldn’t be more bland.

You can read more at the company’s blog post here.

The invites are out and the rumors can be laid to rest.There are rumors that this new Apple Baby will cost you under $1000 and that’s a good price indeed for ultimately Apple Brand Macbook that included with Nvidia chipsets.

Mr. Munster released a report today that states Apple’s new MacBooks (the one’s that are being announced next week) will start out at $899 or $999. I wasn’t the biggest believer of an $800 entry point for Apple, so this seems to make a little more sense to me. The talk of the town the last few months has been a sub-$1,000 price point, which is more than likely, but not at the prices people are speculating. Like everyone else, I hope it’s as cheap as the rumors claim, but a $999 entry point on the MacBooks might deter me from dropping the dough.

“We expect the new MacBooks to be cheaper. However, it is likely that the new MacBooks will be a more premium product (with new aluminum casing and gesture-based touchpad),” he wrote. “In other words, we expect the new MacBooks to be a meaningful upgrade with an average selling price 9 percent to 18 percent lower [than today's models].”

He goes on to say that the MBP will be updated with a slimmer design and updated touchpad. He believes these will start out at $1,899. We should also be on the lookout for updated specs for the MacBook Air, he says.

via AI