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For over a year, Google has been cruising around in a car without anyone driving.  The self-driving car fleet (yes, there’s more than one) has logged over 140,000 miles so far.  At least 1,000 of those were without anyone touching any controls.

The New York Times appears to have broken the story right after it released on Google’s blog.  Google didn’t say how long they’ve been testing these self-piloting vehicles, but TechCrunch has video from about a year ago showing one of the cars in action.

Of course, Google has a lot of reasons to be playing with this technology.  First, it’s cool.  Beyond that, though, eWeek does a good job of summing them up: it would reduce traffic accidents, free up commuter’s time, and curb emissions.

The car’s haven’t been driving empty, of course.  That might be dangerous if something goes wrong with the test system.  A driver has been behind the wheel since Day 1, but has gone “hands off” to allow the car to do its thing more than once.  Google says they cleared this with local law enforcement before hitting the roads to make sure there wouldn’t be any problems.

If Google were to perfect this technology – and they aren’t the only ones working on it, Daimler has “road trains” and many have attempting self-piloting cars in the past.. but if Google were to perfect this, not only would our lives become a little more like the future in Demolition Man, but many things about our society would change with it.  Things like how fast we think our cars need to go, the kinds of entertainment available in-car, and of course, what kind of cool hacks could be done to make our self-driving car even cooler..

It’s a cool tech and I hope it becomes mainstream.

Hipmunk, the funky and hip flight search engine is set to make a splash in the flight sector. Brainchild of Adam Goldstein (an MIT graduate) and Reddit founder Steve Huffman, Hipmunk delivers a clean and useful interface for searching for flights. Users use a Spartan interface and enter standard details such airport codes, cities and dates and after scraping the US travel site Orbitz Hipmunk returns the results.

Instantly, travellers can see flights represented as bars of time which include layovers. Flights can be sorted by price, departure time and so on but also by “agony” which is a combination of price, stop overs and total travel duration. Everything’s all on one page and it’s very visual; there is not a complicated click-through table in sight. There are no any ads cluttering the user experience leaving just pure hard data represented in a user friendly and useful fashion. There are just 14 buttons on the homepage so it couldn’t be simpler.

It’s a simple but powerful idea, and is executed beautifully. Revenue has been steadily coming in with latest figures reportedly to be in the region of $50,000 per day in its first week.  Extra features have been rolled out which include auto complete (useful for when you can’t remember airport codes) and tabs allowing even easier access to multiple itineraries, which is extremely useful for comparing different trips. Most recently, Hipmunk has announced that Alexis Ohanian (another Reddit partner) is on board.

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The cloud content management system Box.net has just released a client for Android phones to cover a larger proportion of the business market. Interestingly, this client went live before the Blackberry offering – a strange move considering the large numbers of business users.

So far, Box.net’s iPad and iPhone apps have been a hit and the success looks set to continue.  Both Android and iOS apps offer similar functionality allowing mobile access and management for consumers on the go which is a fantastic feature road warriors. Features include mobile uploads from devices, file previews, and sharing via email links.  One advantage included in the Android app is a powerful search capability which doesn’t slow down with increasing numbers of files.  Not surprising given that search is deeply integrated into the Android platform.

According to the founder of box.net, larger firms like Microsoft don’t offer much in the way of competition. Although SharePoint has recently added cloud capabilities – along with other Office programs – but how successful the SharePoint offering will be remains to be seen. There are other advantages to box.net including integration with other web based services that many find extremely useful in a business environment. Integration compatibility includes Zoho, Gmail, Twitter and even Fedex. There are more on the horizon and with such easy customisation integration becomes potentially limitless. Now with Android, iOS and (soon) Blackberry mobile acces box.net becomes a serious contender in the mobile cloud space.

It’s one of the largest refunds a telco has ever had to undertake.  The $90 million will be spread amongst about 15 million current and former customers to cover overages for data charges to customers who did not have data plans, but were charged anyway.

The FCC has received thousands of complaints from customers since 2007 complaining of Verizon’s charges and refusal to refund.  The telco has now succumbed to the pressure from the FCC and released a press release detailing how the overages will be refunded over the next month or so.

Most of the refunds will be in the $4 to $6 range for customers who received billings for the $1.99 charge associated with accessing data without a data plan on their account.

The problems arose when customers who had no data access plans on their accounts were charged for access when some phones’ built-in software attempted to access data or when browsers were opened accidentally or through other software.  The New York Times reports that those customers who complained were discouraged from opting out of data entirely (blocking it) and were refused refunds.

Most of the refunds will be given as credits on a bill or, in the case of those who are no longer Verizon customers, a check in the mail.  It’s also likely that Verizon will be assessed a fine by the FCC over the matter.

The FCC began their formal investigation into the overages in January.

Simply put, a domain is a website address.  When someone decides to develop a website, generally one of the first things they do is register a domain name.  The domain name tends to be something unique that reflects whatever the website is promoting.  Once registered, the domain name belongs to that person for as long as they continue to pay for it.  Once registered, the URL will be pointed to a dummy page and parked until the website is developed.

Sometimes URLs are purchased with the sole intent of parking them to make money as an advertising site.  This type of domain development and monetization is called domain parking.

Domain Parking

Domain parking allows a URL owner and/or third-party to use a dummy page to create revenue through advertising.  There are two levels to domain parking: one where the URL owner does not receive a portion of the revenue and one where he/she does.  For the URL owner, the latter is often the more desirable option.  For many, this is the way in which the monetize their site.

Because domain parking does not generally provide a high-level of revenue per URL, people who use parked domains to generate income from advertising usually register hundreds of URLs for mass domain development.  Most of these URLs, if not all, will have a common theme and point to one place specific to that user’s domain development and monetization scheme.

The Decline of Domain Parking Revenue

Domain parking relies on two sources of traffic: 1) search engine results and 2) key-ins.  But in the past few years, Google has made changes that place both sources under threat.

Search Engine Results

For this, Google’s ranking criteria has become more stringent.  To ensure that a user lands on a legitimate seller’s site, they look for: 1) level of content, 2) how often the content is updated, and 3) whether the site has the ability to sell products – i.e., a shopping cart, BBB seal, accepted credit card list, etc.  Parked sites don’t have these things.

Key-Ins

Key-in traffic doesn’t rely on search engine rankings, so in 2008 Google announced that advertisers could opt-out of ad sites (seen as poor sources).  With advertisers being able to choose not to pay for clicks made from parked domains, revenue from these sites has greatly diminished.

Developing Your Domain to Increase Traffic

To increase revenue from domain parking, sites nowadays need to be more developed.  Search engines are looking for content, so it is content that ultimately needs to be provided.  For maximum traffic, the content must be relevant and rich in keywords.

The easiest way to ensure keyword-rich content is via news and reviews from outside websites.  RSS feeds are perfect for this.  For instance, using the keywords “PS3”, “Sony”, and “PlayStation 3”, the parked page would perhaps include a search module presenting current news and reviews relating to the PS3 next to a featured product module, which is showing images and links to associated PS3 and related-product seller sites.  People looking for PS3s would find the parked site and if/when they clicked, a commission would be earned.