Google Launches Google Squared
Sometimes it is easier to review information if it is contained in a database. Examples include baseball statistics and financial information. Google uses the example of rollercoasters in its explanation of its new search feature called Google Squared.For instance, I'm a big fan of roller coasters. In the past I've used Google to search for information about roller coasters, such as which ones are the tallest, fastest, and have the most loops. Finding this information used to take multiple searches — I'd find roller coaster sizes on one website, heights on another, and speeds on a third. By manually comparing the sites, I could get the information I was looking for, but it took some time. With Google Squared, a new feature just released in Google Labs, I can find my roller coaster facts almost instantly.The Google Squared site includes many different databases for mountains, dog breeds, presidents, poets, cloud types and more. Not everything is easier in a database form but it sure makes it easier when you need to make comparisons.
Posted on June 17, 2009
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Microsoft Launches Bing to Challege Google
The name of Microsoft's new search engine is Bing. Bing can be found at bing.com. The search engine used to be called Live. Microsoft condiders Bing more of a decision engine than a search engine. Bing promises to deliver content and results in a way that will help people make decisions. Microsoft's Bing website has a "tour Bing" section here that introduces users to Bing.
The ad budget for Bing is said to be around $100 million. Any increase in its small 8% search marketshare would be an improvement for Microsoft. The company trails search leaders Google and Yahoo.
Posted on May 31, 2009
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Rocketboom Explains Single Serving Sites
Rocketboom explains single serving sites in this episode. The single purpose websites like istwitterdown.com and isobamapresidentyet.com. Most single serving sites like doihaveswineflu.org are more humorous than informational.Posted on April 29, 2009
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Rocketboom Explains Numa Numa
Rocketboom explains the background behind the Internet meme Numa Numa. Gary Brolsma generated millions of a view and generated thousands of imitations. Gary's most recent appearance is with the Geico gecko. Rocketboom says there are over 6,000 people with their own versions of Numa Numa on YouTube.Posted on April 4, 2009
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Search Engine Queries Are Getting Longer
Internet Retailer reports that data from Hitwise found that Internet search queries of five words or more increased by 10% year over year in January. The number of queries with 8 or more words climbed 22%.Hitwise data shows the rate of increase in the number of Internet searches steadily rising along with the number of keywords per query. The number of search queries consisting of four words rose 2% year over year in January; queries consisting of five words rose 6%; six words, 8%; seven words, 12%; and eight or more words, 22%.People are getting better at using search engines. There's also a lot more information on the Internet to comb through making it necessary to use multiple keywords when trying to find something.
In contrast, the number of single-word search queries declined 3%, two-word queries declined 5%, and three-word queries remained the same.
Posted on March 4, 2009
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Google Maps Runs Over a Deer
Wow! That's not very cool. It looks like the Google Maps driver hit a deer and then left it there. Hopefully, this is some kind of a fake. (via BuzzFeed)
Posted on February 24, 2009
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Facebook Backs Off Content Grabbing Terms
Facebook recently put up new terms of service saying they could use and sell user's content and keep its user's content even if people deleted their accounts. This upset many Facebook users who have personal photos and other content on the Facebook service that they don't want Facebook to be able to use or resell. The anger at the new Facebook terms kept building to the point where Facebook finally had to retract the new terms. Facebook plans to post a new revision to the terms later which could anger Facebook users all over again. Rocketboom explains Facebook's terms and what it all means for users and content ownership in the clip below.Posted on February 20, 2009
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Facebook Claims 150 Million Users
Facebook has been doing very well every since they decided to open the social network up to everyone. Originally, the social network was just for high school and college students. Facebook announced that they have reached the 150 million people milestone.
Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent-even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.That's a huge number. We would be curious how many of these are active users.
When we first started Facebook almost five years ago, most of the people using it were college students in the United States. Today, people of all ages—grandparents, parents and children—use Facebook in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories.
The full potential of the web is to make the world more open, so everyone has a voice and can share what is important to them. With 150 million voices and counting, we can't wait for the rest of 2009, and we look forward to offering even more ways for you to connect with the people who matter most.
Posted on January 8, 2009
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Online Holiday Shopping Declines 3%
comScore is reporting that holiday season retail ecommerce spending for the holiday shopping season, beginning November 1 and ending December 23, shows a 3 percent versus the corresponding shopping days in 2007. comScore says this is the first decline for ecommerce sales since they started tracking it in 2001."The 2008 online holiday shopping season has declined 3 percent versus year ago, falling behind our expectation of flat sales this year," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. "This marks the first time we've seen negative growth rates for the holiday season since we began tracking e-commerce in 2001. The combination of having five fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the severe economic headwinds faced by consumers has made this a really tough season for retailers, both offline and online."Online sales did not fall nearly as much as brick-and-mortar sales but it does show that even a growing area like online retail is not immune to this recession.
Posted on December 31, 2008
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AP Names Hulu Website of the Year
AP has dubbed Hulu the Website of the Year for 2008. The website lets users watch full-length video content including the latest tv shows and movies. An AP article says the blogosphere was initially skeptical of the project.
"This is period of great experimentation in regard to media, in regard to online video," said Hulu chief executive officer Jason Kilar in a recent interview. "You've seen a lot, you're probably going to see even more in terms of various business models, various interface designs. I personally love to operate in moments of time like that."Hulu is a great website and its very useful. It's usefulness depends on its ability to continue to be able to get new video content for its viewers to watch.
Hulu officially launched March 12, a result of the unlikely collaboration between News Corp. and NBC Universal. Normally, such corporate fusion in new mediums doesn't pan out.
The blogosphere was, to say the least, doubtful. Before its name was announced, bloggers derided the project as "Clown Co."
Posted on December 20, 2008
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Google Takes Chrome Out of Beta
It's good when a product doesn't stay in Beta forever and ever. It probably helps to get out of Beta faster when you have so many people using your product. Google says they have already had ten million people download Google Chrome. Google has now taken its Chrome browser out of beta. Google also says they've increase the stability of plug-ins, the browser speed and improved the bookmark manager.
Better stability and performance of plug-ins (particularly video). Video and audio glitches were among the most common bugs fixed during the beta period. If you had problems watching videos with Google Chrome in the past, you should be pleasantly surprised with the performance now.
Even more speed. Google Chrome starts up fast, loads pages quickly, and just keeps getting faster. Since the first beta, the V8 JavaScript engine runs 1.4 times faster on the SunSpider benchmark and 1.5 times faster on the V8 benchmark - and there is more speed to come.
Bookmark manager and privacy controls. We heard you! Better bookmark features were a top request from our users. It's now easier to switch between another browser and Google Chrome with the bookmark import and export features, and we added a new simple way to manage large numbers of bookmarks, too. We also wanted to make it even easier for you to control your browsing data, so all of the features in Google Chrome which affect user privacy are now grouped in one place with detailed explanations for each one.
Posted on December 12, 2008
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Google's Search VP Talks Search Trends
Google's Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Ann Mayer was on the Today Show talking about some of the trends. She listed some of the fastest rising searches in 2008.Fast rising searches in 2008:
- Obama
- AT&T
- iPhone
- YouTube
Posted on December 3, 2008
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Firefox Reaches 20% of Global Browser Marketshare
ReadWriteWeb reports that Mozilla is excited about a new report that shows Firefox with over 20% of the global browser marketshare.
The good folks at Mozilla are trumpeting a new report by global analytics service Net Applications that documented a 20% global market share for two out of four weeks in October. It's a new high bar of popularity for the 2nd most popular browser in the world.Sites focused on tecnology tend to have an even higher percentage of Firefox users which means the trend toward Firefox may continue to rise as the browser reaches more and more non-techies.
Firefox is safe, standards compliant, extensible...and not made by Microsoft. That's what most people like about it and the number of fans is growing.
Posted on November 19, 2008
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Gmail Adds Voice and Video Chat
Google has added voice and video chat to Google Mail. They say getting started is easy and all you need is a webcam. You can download the video chat software from Google here. Will this be what sends video chat into the mainstream? Here's a video from Google where Serge explains how Gmail video chat works.Posted on November 12, 2008
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Phishing Scams in Plain English
Phising is one of the biggest and worst types of scams on the Internet. Usually phising involves fraudsters pretending to be your bank or credit card company. They try to fool you into giving you your information by sending you an email that looks official. Here's some great advice about how to spot phising emails from commoncraft.com.Posted on October 24, 2008
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