March, 2006 Archives | Homepage
MSN Offers Search Macros
You might be familiar with Macros if you have ever used them to make life easier on Word or other software tools. Microsoft is now offering Macros for use on the MSN Search Engine.Search Macros are a feature of Live Search that make results more relevant for a given search topic. This is done by easily using, creating and sharing customized sets of search engine rules.Users can create their own macros or they can use search macros created by others. The Microsoft Gadgets website provides a growing list of pre-made macros you can use. (via Search Engine Watch)
Technically speaking, a Search Macros are custom, user-created groups of search operators built with the Live Search query language (see 'Symbol reference' and 'Keyword reference' in our help section). Macros are stored on our servers and are available to any user on live.com. All macros can be used by anyone completely anonymously.
Posted on March 31, 2006
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Viacom's Video Mixer
B2Day blogs about a Viacom website that includes a useful video tool called Video Mixer. Video Mixer lets you mix clips from the N's shows, like Degrassi and O'Grady, with music and graphics.
It is dead-simple, but it gives you enough functionality (you can lay down one of four music tracks, put in transitions between scenes, and add graphics) to create fun, viral video clips. (Here's mine). Then once you e-mail that, an ad from Skittles is inserted in front of your mashup. It's the perfect media microchunk. Media companies need to provide more tools like this to help raise the bar for consumer-generated video.Many film and tv studios offers stills and desktop pictures on their websites. B2Day is right that they should also be offering video mixing tools as well.
Posted on March 29, 2006
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Startups Want to Imitate MySpace's Success
The popularity of MySpace.com, a social network with over 60+ million profiles, has led to an increase in the number of companies launching social networks. There are numerous competing social networks like Xuqa, Bolt, TagWorld.com, Tagged and Friendster. Then there are emerging social networks for young people like Industrious Kid. There are also new niche social networks like Joga (soccer), CarSpace (auto enthusiasts) and Xianz (bills itself as the Christian MySpace). There is also a new service that lets you spy on MySpace members. Could this be the beginning of a bunch of product launches that work with MySpace?Posted on March 28, 2006
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Inside the Minds of Websurfers
USA Today reports on a Neilsen survey that revealed many interesting facts about the way people surf. The study also had some interesting findings:The study used eye-tracking equipment to obtain these results.Individuals read Web pages in an "F" pattern. They're more inclined to read longer sentences at the top of a page and less and less as they scroll down. That makes the first two words of a sentence very important. "People are extremely good at screening out things and focusing in on a small number of salient page elements," says Jakob Nielsen, a principal at the firm. Surfers connect well with images of people looking directly at them. It helps if the person in the photo is attractive, but not too good looking. Photos of people who are clearly professional models are a turnoff. "The person has to be approachable," Pernice Coyne says. Images in the middle of a page can present an obstacle course. People respond to pictures that provide useful information, not just decoration. Consumers will peek at ads in search engines as a "secondary thing," Nielsen says, since they usually have specific product targets in mind.
Posted on March 27, 2006
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Study Finds 3G Phones Will Change Social Habits
A study on 3G phones, the next-generation of the cell phone which has broadband speed and video recording, has found the the phones could change the way people behave. A BBC article about the study says men and women used the phones differently and that the phones could eliminate blind-dates.Men used the technical capabilities of their phones more extensively than women, the report suggested, often adopting fictional personas to make amateur news reports, dubbed the "Andrew Marr effect" by researchers.The article also says some people made short films and news broadcasts with the phones. Some women also shopped with the phones asking other people how they looked in different outfits. We can also be sure that teenagers will come up with new and unexpected uses for the 3G phones.
Some women used their phones to take pictures of taxi drivers in an effort to guarantee personal safety.
The increasing use of camera and video capabilities has already opened up new opportunities for phone users to contribute to news coverage on TV and online.
And the time-honoured blind date could soon fall out of fashion, if the report's conclusions are correct.
More and more people might use 3G phones to check out a potential date before meeting them, or use video calls as part of an interactive dating service.
Posted on March 23, 2006
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The Emergence of Clip Culture
BBC has an interesting article about what it calls the emergence of a "clip culture." The article talks about the growing popularity of both streaming video and the short viral video clips that people like to email to friends and post in blogs. The article mentions MSN Video and YouTube as two popular websites for video clips.The emergence of video sharing sites is yet another seemingly instant internet success story that has caught many by surprise.The article says there are three different types of clips: amateur clips, montage videos and short clips from television shows or movies. The third category has caused the most concerns in Hollywood. NBC recently overreacted and removed a popular Saturday Night Clip, called the Lazy Sunday viral, from YouTube. Eventually, the networks will probably cut deals with sites like YouTube to allow the videos to be distributed around the web as long as a short ad is included.
Last month, two sites, MSN Video and Youtube, attracted nearly 10 million unique US visitors each.
While those numbers are relatively insignificant when compared with network television viewership, widespread video sharing is just getting started.
Youtube, which is home to 25 million videos and streams 15 million of them each day, just launched its service last year.
Most of the videos on Youtube and other video sharing services are not full-length features.
Posted on March 20, 2006
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Discovery Launches Online Homework Help Resource
The Discovery Channel has launched Cosmeo, an interactive online homework help tool. The site contains over 30,000 educational videos, interactive games and learning tools. The site is designed to help kids with schoolwork, research projects and mastering complex concepts. Parents can also help kids check to see how they have done on quizzes and tests. The site has material for K-12 grade levels. Cosmeo also offers interactive educational games, home learning tools, 15,000+ images, and a library of teacher selected websites. Discovery is currently offering a 30-day free trial to Cosmeo.Posted on March 17, 2006
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Growth of Internet Users Slows
BusinessWeek reports that the growth of people using the Internet has come to a screetching halt. This is partly due to broadband not being available to a considerable percentage of the population. However, there are also some that live in areas where broadband is readily available yet still choose to live net free.Plowing through e-mail has become part of the daily routine, like brushing your teeth or walking the dog. But Rogers isn't as much of an oddity as it might seem. Despite its popularity among teens and techies, and its use in most offices, the Internet is far from ubiquitous. In fact, 39 million American households still do not have Internet access. That means only 64% of households are connected, according to a recent survey of 1,000 people by Dallas researcher Parks Associates. An even bigger surprise is that the growth of the Internet in the U.S. has stalled. Despite cheaper prices and faster speeds, analysts expect uptake to creep just one percentage point this year, to 65%, and to only 67% by 2009.A lot of people that abadoned the Internet in the early 2000s may be surprised to see how much it has advanced and how many useful services there are. They might also be surprised at how much faster it is.
Many people are non-Netizens for obvious reasons. They can't afford service or live in remote areas without hope of affordable connections. And some are past the age when they want to adopt new technology. Says Jeanette Lamar, 92: "I'm too old to start that stuff." But the spectrum of naysayers also includes millions of well-off, educated, and younger professionals. Of the survey respondents who say they don't use the Web, 24% make more than $50,000. Some 39% of the Netphobes attended or graduated college or have at least some associate degree training. And 29% are 44 years old or younger. "It's not just everyone's grandmother who is avoiding the Internet," says John C. Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates.
Posted on March 15, 2006
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Accoona Search Engine Debuts
PC Magazine reports that Accoona has raised $100 million to produce a search engine that can take on the search leaders. Accoona uses AI algorithms and is quite bold about the capability of its search engine.
AI algorithms analyze results and rank search results according to relevance to each specific user. Information is directly relevant to the search terms.Accoona lets users quickly change results from web search to news or business search. Accoona also has some great targeting options that let you limit the search results. One of the targeting options lets you show only webpages that have been updated recently -- options here include last hour, last 24 hours, last seven days and last 30 days.
"Accoona is modeled after the human brain, it's designed to think with you and for you," said Eckhard Pfeiffer, Accoona chairman and former Compaq president and CEO. "The next phase of the Internet is about finding, not searching. It's all about context."
***
"Today is either the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning," Pfeiffer noted, quoting Winston Churchill. "Today we are making history."
With Wednesday's launch, Americans join millions of consumers in China that are already using their own version of the search tool. Accoona has secured an agreement with China Daily Information Company as the "preferred search engine portal across China for the next 20 years on an exclusive basis." China Daily was established in 1981 as the only national English-language newspaper distributed in China, according to its Web site.
Posted on March 13, 2006
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Online For No Reason At All
A recent Pew study found that one big reason people are online is just for fun or for no reason at all. The survey found that 30% of web surfers used the Internet in this way. MediaShift blogs about digital lollygagging and the fuddy-duddies that want to stop the fun.Digital lollygagging seems to be catching on in the U.S. And let's face it: The vast majority of blogs and news sites we read have nothing to do with work. Sites such as Fark.com are set up for the express purpose of having fun, usually while at work.People are not going to want their Fark or random surfing time micro-managed but it wouldn't be a surprise to see some offices limit surfing time.
And for the fuddy-duddies who don't want us goofing off at work, there's even a cottage industry of web filter companies that help our bosses monitor what we do online and for how long. Last year, Websense, one of those filtering companies, estimated that Internet "misuse" in the workplace cost American companies $178 billion annually in lost productivity, or a whopping $5,000 per employee per year.
Of course, Websense sees itself as our corporate superhero, ready to solve this national crisis.
"Websense allows organizations to institute flexible policies to effectively manage employee Internet use," says one Websense press release triumphantly. "For example, through implementing time-based quotas, companies may set daily limits to manage employees’ access to non business-related websites. Employees can visit these sites for a specific allotment of time each day, and are notified when they must use quota time to access a website."
Posted on March 7, 2006
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The Toolbar Wars Have Started
A News.com article says the battle for computer real estate has moved from the desktop to the web browser and major Internet companies are battling it out for the best toolbar positions.The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the companies are mulling a three-year partnership that could bring as much as $1 billion in revenue to the PC maker for letting Google install its software on Dell machines. The Dell representative declined to comment on the future of the relationship between the two companies. A Google representative confirmed the two companies were testing the search giant's products on new Dell PCs, but declined to comment further.It makes sense that the browser would be coveted real estate because many people have it open for hours a day. Getting people to download and install toolbars is not always easy so having them pre-installed is a big advantage. A big list of toolbars can be found here on Search Engine Watch. Yahoo has a smaller list here.
The browser, not the desktop, has become the most sought-after piece of real estate on a new PC, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. Five years ago, PC companies were giddy over the prospect of renting space on their boxes' desktops to the highest bidder, after Microsoft's antitrust settlement with the U.S. Justice Department forced it to open up the Windows desktop to increased competition.
Companies such as America Online and CompuServe rushed to get prominent placement for their dial-up services on new PCs, but the move didn't pay off as they had hoped. PC users simply ignored icons they didn't wish to use, or used cleanup programs to remove all icons from their desktops or start menus, Kay said. However, just about every PC user who's connected to the Internet uses the browser at least once a day, and browser toolbars that contain useful utilities such as Google's search engine will grab a user's attention, he said.
Posted on March 3, 2006
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Technorati Adds Favorite Feature
Technorati, a blog search engine, has added a favorites feature that lets people maintain a list of up to 50 of their favorite blogs. Technorati also keeps track of the blog posts from this list of fifty as they occur on the member's favorites page. Our BloggersBlog.com site has information about how to add a Technorati favorites link button to your blog so people can quickly add your blog to their list. Technorati is also tracking a list of the top 100 favorites on this page.Posted on March 1, 2006
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