Club co-presidents Brendan Edwards and Rosie Marsiglio reiterated how happy the Mozzies were to secure the partnership. “We are delighted that Moo Marketing has decided to join us for another season. The last 12 months since Moo joined have been phenomenal. Like Moo, we are dedicated to staying at the top of our game and their support maximises our opportunity to achieve this.”

The sentiments were echoed by Moo Marketing director Andy Watts: “Moo Marketing is extremely happy and proud to extend our sponsorship of the Manchester Mosquitoes. Following their Grand Final success and unbeaten season in 2010 we are excited to see what 2011 holds.”

So, the #digitalgokarting 2 event happened last night. At a different track, and with a different race format… which lead to, uh, mixed results. Still, fun was had by all, even those of us who crashed! There was a nice mix of new faces and people who came to the first #digitalgokarting over at 3 Sisters. This time we were racing at Daytona in Manchester, on their 450 meter track, and we were racing in a Grand Prix format instead of a team endurance.

14 people raced in all, with best lap times in the 28 – 33 second range. Best lap time goes to Rob Hayward, who came second over all, losing out to Alan Williams (A full results table will be live soon). So congrats to those two! But, you know, it’s the taking part that counts… (we would say that; our best position was 5^th!)

We’ll get stuck into organising the next #digitalgokarting soon. We’ve taken on board peoples’ comments about both races so far, and will be scouting out a new track and having a bit of a think about race formats and so on. Keep on talking to us about it; there’s a lot of chat on Twitter, just look for #digitalgokarting. We’ll keep you posted about the next race… hopefully this time we’ll manage to rig it properly so we win!

These video extensions are currently in beta in the USA, and although Google haven’t made any concrete statement about when they’ll see general release / UK functionality, it can’t be too far off (depending, of course, on them going down well in the USA). This new feature follows on recent extensions of the amount of information displayed in paid search listings, as Google brings together more and more features. AdWords listings are becoming increasingly diverse and increasingly information-rich, as are organic SERPs.

Now, down to brass tacks: how much will it cost? Apparently, Google will be charging the maximum CPC of the ads’ keywords per 10 seconds of video. So that’s not an insignificant amount, especially on campaigns that are getting a lot of impressions.

Apparently, the videos will play in expandable plusboxes underneath the classic text ads we all know and love. So, like Google’s current “hover-over” page shots for organic results, it’s a chance for Google users to get more content before clicking through. We’ll be interested to see what effect a little added rich media has to CTRs. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Everybody will get:

* 5 minute practice
* 3 x 7 minute heat races
* 12 minute grand final

It will be great to see everyone down there and as Daytona is indoor we don’t have to worry about Manchester’s winter weather getting in our way.

Event Details:

* Time - 19:30

* Date - 18/11/10

* Location - Daytona Manchester (Google map)

To book you place on the grid complete the form below.

There’ll also be a light training session to provide a taste of the Mozzies’ usual training regime. People who have previously played the game are more than welcome; anyone who wants to get involved is invited. It’ll be held at Burnage Rugby Club. Start time is 11am and it’ll be running until 1pm.

It promises to be a fun day, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to learn something, even if it’s just that the Aussie Rules scoring system is a little bit more complex than most games that involve kicking a ball! All the times we’ve been down to Burnage Rugby Club to watch the Mozzies play we’ve had a whale of a time, so expect fun, as well as a good work-out.

The Burnage Rugby Club bar will be open once the training session has finished, so there’ll be a chance to relax and chat with the team. Remember to congratulate them on their recent championship win!

Thursday’s torrential rain also made for a wet track at Three Sisters, but it dried out as the race continued. There were a few spin-outs, but luckily nothing more exciting than that. Everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun during the race – it’s hard to tell when everyone’s got a helmet on – and there was definitely some good chat going on in the pub afterwards.

Although we had to cut the race a bit short because of traffic on the way, there was still time for a good 44 minutes and 52 seconds of racing. 13 teams competed – 26 people in all – with Joe Critchley and his partner finishing the endurance race as the fastest team. But it’s the taking part that counts, isn’t it? Mike from Fudge (he’s @13twelve on Twitter) has put together a results table, so you can see exactly who came where.

We’re already talking about organising the next one, so watch this space (and Twitter – #digitalgokarting). We think the next one will probably be indoors, and we’re not sure if we’ll stick with the endurance race / team set-up or go for something different – let us know what you think. On a more general note, if anyone fancies organising some digital paintballing (sorry, #digitalpaintballing) we’d definitely be up for it!

Take it away blog.facebook.com:

“To help us show your question to the most relevant people and ensure the best answers, you can tag it with a specific topic. For instance, if you have a question about what type of camera you should buy, you could tag it with “Photography.” If you want to find the best bike routes in the area, you might tag it with “Cycling.”… The questions you ask will be shown to people who have expressed interest in the particular topics you tag.”

It’s a user-generated development; Facebook have spotted a pattern in usage – “Millions of people ask their friends questions on Facebook every day” says Blake Ross on the official Facebook blog – and have developed a feature reflecting that pattern.

Here are some Facebook Questions questions:

Has Yahoo! Answers come to mind yet? It’s a good example of the shortfalls of expecting answers from the internet. Wikipedia works because it’s moderated; will Facebook Answers be compromised by its open nature? Only time will tell. There’s been some discussion of Facebook Questions as a replacement for Google as the go-to for quick answers. Can the massed expertise of Facebook users rival Google’s algorithim? Answers in the comments please…

So, what happens next? What scope is there for expansion in Bing’s market share? Microsoft appear to be taking opportunities where they’re available – helped of course by a healthy amount of investment – and have been targeting mobile web users. With 23 million mobile web users accessing Bing (and 4.3 million downloads of Bing’s iPhone app) it seems to be paying off.

According to Erik Jorgensen, senior vice-president for mobile at Microsoft : “People drive themselves crazy trying to type on these mobile devices so the more we can understand what they are trying to do and provide an easier way to get to it through visual, voice and touch is a key insight into how mobile search is going to evolve.”

How much bigger can Bing grow before they hit the brick wall that is Google’s market dominance? Or could Bing be the legendary Google-killer? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

What are the potential repercussions of Louis Vuitton’s campaign to have exclusive rights to “Louis Vuitton” as keywords? Google said this back in March:

“We believe that user interest is best served by maximizing the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts,”

They’re clearly of the opinion that limiting certain keywords to the use of those who’ve trademarked them could compromise AdWords as a whole:

“Some companies want to limit choice for users by extending trademark law to encompass the use of keywords in online advertising. Ultimately they want to be able to exercise greater control over the information available to users by preventing other companies from advertising”

And they’re confident that their AdWords anti-counterfeit-goods policies are enough to deal with the problem of knock-off goods being advertised as genuine on Google. At the moment, trademark owners can report individual sites for infringing trademarks, and it seems that as far as Google are concerned, that’s enough. This is bolstered by a mid-July update to AdWords policy, extending the prohibition of implying affiliation through deceptive business names.

Since the French Supreme Court’s decision, however, it seems that the argument is going to continue for a while yet.

Louis Vuitton claims the judgement will “ensure greater legal certainty to the benefit of both businesses and consumers operating online”.

The Mozzies definitely deserve their position as league champions, having won every match since the start of the season and the beginning of our sponsorship. They’ve done us – and themselves – proud.

As well as the impressive result, it was also great to see the Mozzies getting a bit of publicity. The BBC covered the build up to the final on TV as well as the online. As this article on the BBC news website says, Aussie Rules Football is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, one of Moo Marketing even joined in with a pre-match kick-about at the final… (he did need a bit of a breather afterwards).

The Mozzies have completed their season in the best possible way. Moo Marketing would like to say a big congratulations to the whole Manchester Mosquitoes team; it’s not just the people who play on the pitch, after all. Well done to all of you. We’re already looking forward to the next season, and we’re glad our sponsorship helped the Mozzies make it to the top!