Month: April 2006

News: Yahoo Launches Tech News Channel

Content, it's the new black. Yahoo Tech is up. In short, it's a consumer tech magazine online. But with a bunch of Yahoo's social, search, and so on tech integrated. From the release: Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today launched Yahoo! Tech, a new Web…

Yahoo Tech

Content, it’s the new black. Yahoo Tech is up. In short, it’s a consumer tech magazine online. But with a bunch of Yahoo’s social, search, and so on tech integrated.

From the release:

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today launched Yahoo! Tech, a new Web site that gives consumers plain-English advice and information about choosing and using the technology that has become a part of their daily lives. Yahoo! Tech (http://tech.yahoo.com) was developed with the simple philosophy of making technology easy for all Yahoo! users, especially those without a deep understanding of technology and gadgets.

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Updated: Alexa Now and Then

Via Threadwatch and SELowdown, news that Alexa is now powered by MSFT Live, rather than Google. Here's a screen shot of Alexa (via IA, natch) last year (powered by Google)… …and here's a snip from the service now. I've pinged Bruce Gilliat at Alexa to ask about this, but…

Via Threadwatch and SELowdown, news that Alexa is now powered by MSFT Live, rather than Google. Here’s a screen shot of Alexa (via IA, natch) last year (powered by Google)…

Alexagoog

…and here’s a snip from the service now.

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Yahoo And The Yellow Pages: Co-opt, or Co-opetition?

Yahoo Local has rolled out an update to its business model for local merchants, and it's looking a lot like what the Yellow Pages do, only online, self service, cheaper, and, well, what I've been on about for a while – a step towards the online version of what…

Us.Yimg.Com I Us Cn Lp Lfl Scrn 5Yahoo Local has rolled out an update to its business model for local merchants, and it’s looking a lot like what the Yellow Pages do, only online, self service, cheaper, and, well, what I’ve been on about for a while – a step towards the online version of what the Yellow Pages really need to become.

I spent some time with the Yellow Pages industry earlier this week at their annual conference, and I must say they are pretty tuned in to all of this. They were most interested in whether or not they should work with Google (Verizon just decided to sell AdWords, for example), but I told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to watch Yahoo. Why? Because Yahoo has built in the ability for local merchants to interact directly with the listings, to create contnt for their businesses, and to buy premium listings.

Today Yahoo has moved the needle again, adding Local Featured Listings, a way for merchants to buy placement on results pages – it’s basically sponsored links, but with a twist. I spoke to Paul Levine, who runs Yahoo Local, and he told me that there has been a lot of demand from local merchants to be “at the top of the page” for a given result. Now, for between $20 and $300 a month, they can be.

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Melanie’s Round Up

We're still catching up – AdTech plus travel means a very backed up week. Here's Melanie's second edition: Yahoo and AT&T cozy up together in a co-branded Messenger with Voice, adding high speed internet to Y! Messenger and making AT&T Yahoo's preferred global network provider. Google Earth & SketchUp…

We’re still catching up – AdTech plus travel means a very backed up week. Here’s Melanie’s second edition:

Yahoo and AT&T cozy up together in a co-branded Messenger with Voice, adding high speed internet to Y! Messenger and making AT&T Yahoo’s preferred global network provider.



Google Earth & SketchUp

“Visionaries, utopians, virtual world builders: your time has come.” Can’t you just feel the warm-fuzzies?

Today Google announces a free version of SketchUp in Earth, paired it with a 3D Warehouse wherein amateurs and aficionados can share their virtual monuments and collaborate on new creations. Earth brought the flying experience. The SketchUp synch lets the users fly about and build their world–flagging favorite spots, localizing friends, errecting their childhood home.

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The Intention Cloud

How cool is it that some smart geeks hacked up an application inspired by the Database of Intentions framework of The Search? Check out The Intention Cloud. From the About section: The Cloud is the result of a mashup between the concept of 'Database Of Intention' and 'Tag Clouds'…

How cool is it that some smart geeks hacked up an application inspired by the Database of Intentions framework of The Search? Check out The Intention Cloud. From the About section:

The Cloud is the result of a mashup between the concept of ‘Database Of Intention’ and ‘Tag Clouds’ visualization. The current live engine of the Intention Cloud is collecting data from the Google Suggest service, but will be extended in the future to integrate other databases of intention.

Intent Cloud

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Quaeroless? Exalead CEO Says There’ll Be No Quaero Site

What the hell is Quaero? Yesterday I had a chance to put that question to Francois Bourdoncle, CEO and co-founder of Exalead, a leading European enterprise search company (and partner in Quaero, whatever it turns out to be). It was a timely conversation, as French President Jacques Chirac announced…

No QuaeroWhat the hell is Quaero? Yesterday I had a chance to put that question to Francois Bourdoncle, CEO and co-founder of Exalead, a leading European enterprise search company (and partner in Quaero, whatever it turns out to be). It was a timely conversation, as French President Jacques Chirac announced a $2.5 billion initiative earlier this week, a major portion of which was earmarked for Quaero.

If all you had to go by was Google results, chances are you’d be confused in your search to figure out what Quaero was all about. Wikipedia has an entry (in French, of course). Other news outlets seem to think Quareo is in fact a real search engine – albeit one with a multimedia focus – under development by the French and German government in partnership with private European media conglomerates like Thompson, and smaller startups like Exalead.

That’s what I thought, and in response I said that it was a deeply dumb idea. But turns out, we were all responding to the wrong thing.

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Google Promotes First Non Google Product on Homepage

And it's Firefox, and the execution is not exactly subtle. Now, it's only promoted to folks inside the US, and only folks using IE (which is to say, most people, but not Mac folks like me who use Firefox or Safari). And, of course, Google Toolbar is featured heavily….

And it’s Firefox, and the execution is not exactly subtle. Now, it’s only promoted to folks inside the US, and only folks using IE (which is to say, most people, but not Mac folks like me who use Firefox or Safari). And, of course, Google Toolbar is featured heavily.

Up at Microsoft, they’re probably ordering new chairs for Ballmer’s office…

Googffox2.

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The Melanie Round Up

Melanie has been hard at work poring through feeds, looking for items of interest. She's already got a bunch of great stuff, and as I've been behind, here are some highlights of stories from the past two days: Adsense is allowing text links for referrals. And Matt is coy…

Melanie has been hard at work poring through feeds, looking for items of interest. She’s already got a bunch of great stuff, and as I’ve been behind, here are some highlights of stories from the past two days:

Adsense is allowing text links for referrals. And Matt is coy about using Toolbar data for search relevance. As I wrote in the book, I think clickstreams could be the next step in relevance.

A major new grassroots net neutrality campaign. Om says it’s missing some angles.

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China Rediscovers Porn, Bans It

When you're a totalitarian state with control over the entire Internet, and you decide to ban porn, you can actually do it. From a Times Online report: Beijing has declared war on the wave of "unhealthy" internet content it says is engulfing the nation’s cyberspace, amid fears China's young…

When you’re a totalitarian state with control over the entire Internet, and you decide to ban porn, you can actually do it. From a Times Online report:

Beijing has declared war on the wave of “unhealthy” internet content it says is engulfing the nation’s cyberspace, amid fears China’s young are being corrupted en masse by an influx of online sex and violence.

The nation’s leading news sites and internet portals have vowed to adhere to a strict programme of “self-censorship” to support the “Eight Honours and Disgraces”, a new doctrine of “socialist morality” recently laid out by Hu Jintao, the Chinese President. …

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