According to The White African Blog , a new Ad network has been launched called Pamoja Media . Started by Joshua Wanyama )of AfricanPath ( and Benin Mwangi )of Cheetah Index (, it's an ad network created to serve advertisers trying looking for a one-stop-shop for publishers in Africa, or that reach Africans in the diaspora. Publisher requirements are quite high. Among other factors sites must have an Alexa ranking of 250,000 or better and a minimum of 200,

Comscore has released figures showing that Google received a billion searches in June placing it number one with an 81% share. The largest local search engine was Rediff.com with a 1.5% share. India is a massive potential and growing market with 23 official languages but where English is the only lingua franca. Google Adwords is available in several - but by means all indian languages. via Searchengineland Google in India ,

Appfrica, web portal offering news related to African innovation, education and entrepreneurship in technology, published information and statistics on the current state of Internet penetration in Africa . Broadband Access Africa , Information Technology Statistics Africa ,

There are always room for improvements, but my overall impression of SMX São Paulo 2008 was positive. In order to avoid duplicated content I'm linking to Sara Holoubek's post at DM News. brazil , event , sem conference ,

The Complexity and Social Networks Blog presents an interesting paper on mobile phone users and data stored in service provider databases around the world, discussing the different types of data captured and how it can be used to provide insight into human cultures. Examples are provided from a variety of cultures and hundreds of millions of individuals, illustrating how phones can be used as a cultural lens, improving understanding of a particular cultures pace of life,

Intel signed a deal with the Portuguese government in which they will provide experience and know how in the education market in order to put 500 thousand small PCs in the hands of children with ages raging from 6 to 10 years old. The computers, named "Magalhães" in honour of the Portuguese explorer , will cost between zero € )for underprivileged kids( up to 50€. When they come out of the factory )which by the way is in Portugal(,

According to the The European Information Technology Observatory )EITO(: Revenues from Internet access growing by more than 10 percent Telephone flat rates and online video sales are stimulating business Germany is the largest single market in the EU with a 25 percent share The increase in revenue )+10,7% in 2008( is attributed to the falling prices of high speed DSL connections.

On July 4th, Overture Japan launched its updated website with both Overture and Yahoo logos. URL is also changed from "overture.co.jp" to "ov.yahoo.co.jp". Last week, they announced the changes with minimum bidding cost, which is currently 9yen )35yen for some categories(. Starting in August, the minimum bidding cost will be adjusted according to the importance & the value of keywords and the quality of keywords & the ads.

According to a recent study by the University of Udine and Gorizia, 80% of internet users find online ads an obstacle to their navigation, reducing ease of use of the web. The results presented in the study are based on a survey conducted in the north east of Italy: 69% of those interviewed find publicity a violation of their privacy 39,8% find it "invasive" Source: ANSA Italy , statistics , web internet marketing ,

A fascinating acquisition has taken place in Russia where Google, which has not traditionally performed well in the Russian search engine market, has paid one of its competitors $50 million for their share of the Begun contextual advertising system. The total acquisition value of Begun was $140 million - but a signficant slice of that will be paid to Rambler's partner in Begun - Bannatyne Ltd. Meanwhile, Rambler, the original control owner of Begun,

Yesterday, Google announced its second quarter figures showing that international revenues represented all revenue growth for the last 9 months with the US virtually flatlining. Growth in revenue compared to last year was 39% and 3% compared with the first quarter of the year giving a total quarter turnover of $5.3 billion. Clicks decreased by 1% over the first quarter of the year but were still 19% up year on year.

For a number of years, Germany ).de( was the world's most popular ccTLD in terms of registrations. But about two years ago China made its ccTLD a lot more affordable and easier to get. Since then, the country has been registering roughly 20,000 country codes a day. The country went from 2 million registrations to 10 million registrations in an amazing 12 months. Within the past two months, China overtook Germany for the top spot, with approximately 11.

Abondance brings us further news of the Google book publishing initiative which sees Lyon , France's second most important city )sorry Marseilles(, jumping the gun on Paris and cooperating with Google. The digitisation will involve those books which are out of copyright. The library houses an important collection of books in the French language and some rare editions from authors such as Nostradamus and Newton.

The Top Level Domain extension .it - geographical extension that identifies Italy - has reached the 1,5 million activations, ranking 5 th in Europe and 7 th worldwide. Significant changes in the registration process are foreseen later this year, introducing a so-called syncro system which delegates authority of domain name activation to 3 rd parties.Source: NIC .it , domain names italy , TLD ,

Ericsson and 3 Italy announced the successful conclusion of the first ever high speed mobile internet connection with HSPA+ technology ) H igh S peed P acket A ccess( reaching 5.8 Mbps transfer rate.Source: ANSA HSPA , HSPA+ ,

India is unusual in having 23 official languages from English and Hindi to Kannada and Telugu - now the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing )C-DAC( has released 'cross language search plugins' which are intended to make search more readily available to the wider spectrum of Indian languages, reports India Times . This, together with the wide availability of access, is essential to enable India to take it's rightful place as a major economy in the modern world.

Audiweb, powered by nielsen, has published panel data gathered in the month of May. 24 million users went online at least once during the month of may, 2008, a 5% increase compared to April The number of users increases to 25,6 million if instant messaging and software to download music or films are included The average Italian user went online 30 times and was connected for an average of 21,5 hours )30 minutes more than previous month( totalizing 1.650 page views 19,

SMX franchise will have its first edition in Brazil on August 7th and 8th. Among the key speakers are Bill Hunt, Director of Global Search Strategy at Neo@Ogilvy; Erica Schimdt, Global Search Director at ISOBAR, and Sara Houlobek, Consultant, DMNews Columnist & SEMPO Board of Directors.

Statistics Iceland has published the results of its seventh survey on the use of ICT and the Internet by Icelandic households and individuals. The survey was conducted earlier this year and shows how the vast majority of Icelandic households have one or more computers and access to the Internet. In 2008, 92% of the households had a computer and 88% of the households had access to the Internet. xDSL Internet connection are the most common type of Internet connections,