May, 2006 Archives | Homepage
AOL to Offer New Search Tools
GameDaily reports that AOL is going to be adding new search features.Time Warner's AOL unit is focused on further boosting its competitiveness with new services and doesn't fear being hurt by traditional media firms entering the online advertising sector, the online giant's head told investors Wednesday.AOL could use a boost. It has been falling farther behind Google in the search department over the past few years. Currently, MSN is third behind Yahoo and Google. In the most recent study MSN dropped farther behind Google in search marketshare.
AOL chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller predicted a bright future for his firm, thanks to "rapidly rising" online video consumption patterns and technologies the firm will continue to add.
AOL will launch "a new search experience this summer," Miller said in a webcast session at the Goldman Sachs Internet Conference in Las Vegas, hinting that a "primary video search technology" could help AOL draw users away from other leading search portals, such as Google and Yahoo! Inc.
Posted on May 30, 2006
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ReadersRead.com Expands Blog Categories
ReadersRead.com has expanded and now includes two additional blog categories: Book Publishing News and Comics. The comics category is especially relevant today as comics made into movies represent many of the box office blockbusters over the last few years including Spider-Man, Batman and the X-Men. The latest X-Men film, X-Men: The Last Stand recently made box office history with a $100+ million opening. You will also notice several comic movie titles topping Yahoo's movie trailer searches including the Superman remake which comes out June 30th.Posted on May 29, 2006
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Google is the Search King
Google is still the search king according to new data from HitWise. In article citing HitWise's statistics, IT Wire reports that Google has 47.4% of the search market. However, they trail their competitors in services like web-based mail, online news and digital mapping.According to the newly released Hitwise figures, Google has 47.4% share of the search market, which is pushing toward double the combined shares of Yahoo (16%) and Microsoft's MSN (11.5%). However, based on the same set of figures, outside of the search space Google does not seem to have gained much traction at all. Yahoo Mail rules the roost with 42.4%, followed by Microsoft's Hotmail with 22.9%. By comparison, Google's Gmail does not rate, with just 2.54%A ComScore study also shows Google pulling away from its competitors in search.
Google also does not do well in online news or finance areas, where once again Yahoo wins out easily. In finance, Google, with just 0.29% share is absolutely dwarfed by Yahoo, which has 34.9%, with Microsoft's MSN providing at least respectable competition with 13.4% share. News is more fragmented but Google once again has just 1.9% share compared to Yahoo's 6.3%.
Posted on May 25, 2006
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Riya Plans Sophisticated Image Search Engine
ZDNet reports that Riya, a photo sharing and tagging tool, is planning to add complex search tools, including similarity searches, in the future.
Based on some recent insights, Shah said that Riya is building a new type of photo search engine, one that finds similarities among images. "Riya started with facial recognition, but we will deliver public image search and do similarity, such as finding images similar to your location or girl friend," Shah said. "Click on any photo of any person and get similar results. You could have a picture of a car and find things that look like cars."These sounds like very interesting tools. The article also says that Riya will soon be hitting the 10 million photo mark. By comparison, Flickr, the largest photo sharing site, has over 100 million photos.
Similarity searches could be applied to dating sites or for finding similar images, such as a particular landmark, without explicit tagging. "The only technique today is linguistic query, and many things are hard to describe linguistically, such as a person. That's the challenge. It's easier to say 'more like this,' 'less like this,' and that's the direction we are heading," Shah said.
He doesn't expect to have his crawler and public search available any time soon, however. "There is core science to crack to actually run similarity across billions of photos and have any semblance of accuracy and speed," Shah said. But he doesn't expect his company's technology (he has filed some patents) to reach a level of accuracy that would be appealing to national security agencies. "The level of accuracy and scoping will only be useful to consumers," he said.
Posted on May 23, 2006
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Yahoo Answers Announces 10 Millionth Answer
Yahoo has announced, here and here, that its Yahoo Answers service now has over 10 million answers posted by users.
At around 5:30 am on Sunday, May 7th, almost precisely five months since we launched, a user posted the 10 millionth answer on the service. This is a big day for us, and we've decided to celebrate by coming out of beta, and beginning the integration of Answers into our core search services.People can both ask questions and answer questions on Yahoo Answers. You can read a faq to learn more about the service. Yahoo Answers has people like Richard who have answered over 5,000 questions. Yahoo Answers competes with other answer services and information websites like Google Answers and Answers.com.
Do a search on Yahoo! and you'll see how questions and answers are being surfaced within results. Every day, someone out there has a question, and someone out there knows the answer and gives it for free. Just because helping someone by sharing what you know is a reward in itself.
Posted on May 22, 2006
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Writers Write, Inc Launches WatchersWatch.com
We love to watch! TV, Film and video, that is. We're happy to announce the launch of WatchersWatch.com, our new blog about what's hot in movies, television and videos.What's hot this week at WatchersWatch? Why it's the Da Vinci Code, of course. Dan Brown's international bestseller opened in wide release Friday, May 19, 2006 and has already made $224 million worldwide in its first weekend, making it the second biggest opening weekend of all time.
You can find our Da Vinci Code review roundup, the scoop on the new fall TV shows and much more at: http://www.watcherswatch.com
Posted on May 21, 2006
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Study Finds Microsoft is Leading Internet Company Worldwide
If you had to name the dominate Internet leader you would think Google right? A new study from ComScore says Microsoft not Google is the top worldwide media company. The three top companies are actually pretty close together: Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. This study looked that all of the company's websites. Earlier studies have shown that when just search is looked at Google leads by a wide margin. Here is a list of the leading media companies.MSN-Microsoft Sites: 538,578 Google Sites: 495,788 Yahoo! Sites: 480,228 eBay: 269,690 Time Warner Network: 241,525 Amazon Sites: 154,640 Wikipedia Sites: 131,949 Ask Network: 127,377 Adobe Sites: 115,774 Lycos, Inc.: 109,394 CNET Networks: 107,589 Apple Computer, Inc.: 98,622 Real.com Network: 78,104 Monster Worldwide: 74,152 Wanadoo Sites: 73,446
Posted on May 18, 2006
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Yahoo Launches Livesearch on the AlltheWeb
Yahoo! has announced the launch of a new search technology called Livesearch. Livesearch is currently running on Yahoo's AlltheWeb search engine.
Today we are introducing a new search technology called Livesearch on AlltheWeb. It helps you find what you want faster, by showing search results instantaneously as you type. Livesearch also shows related queries, spelling suggestions, and enables you to use keyboard shortcuts to help you find the right query faster to get to the results that you want. As some of you might be thinking, this is an evolution of Instant Search and other search technologies we've been working on.In addition to helping you notice an spelling errors, Livesearch also gives you a great list of relevant search terms on the left hand side that you can click on to bring up more search results. The post on Yahoo's Search Blog says AlltheWeb will be sort of a testing ground for Yahoo: "AlltheWeb is a search destination that has its roots as a showcase of new and innovative technology - for example AlltheWeb was the first site to roll out the calculator functionality within the search box. The site will remain true to its roots as we continue to introduce new technologies there in the future."
Posted on May 15, 2006
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Google Trends Launches
Google has announced the launch of Google Trends, a new tool that lets you track the popularity of Google searches. A Search Engine Watch blog post points to some example searches like a google,microsoft,yahoo search and yankees, red sock. Our Bloggers Blog site looks at the trend in blogging. There is no limit to what Google Trends users can compare. It is a powerful tool that offers an inside look at what websurfers are searching for. Posted on May 11, 2006
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Microsoft Debuts Celeb Favorites
The Washington Post reports that Microsoft has launched CelebFavorites.com. The website shows the favorite places of celebrities using Windows Live Local.
If you've ever wondered where tennis star Anna Kournikova likes to get a pedicure when she's in Miami or asked yourself where New York Yankee Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez goes for Italian food in Manhattan, Microsoft has those answers.The idea of the site is similar to the Gawker's recently launched Gawker Stalker, which lets people submit celebrity spottings. However, Microsoft's site just provides information about celebrity hangouts and homes -- it doesn't allow submissions about recent celebrity sightings. Actor George Clooney once suggested flooding Gawker Stalker with fake celebrity sightings to render it useless.
The company yesterday launched a promotional Web site ( http://www.celebfavorites.com ) featuring Windows Live Local with an overlay of the favorite restaurants, bakeries, hotels, dance clubs and more from a handful of celebrities' hometowns. The map features "pinpoints" of those locations.
Click on the map for actress Eva Longoria, for example, and you'll see that she loves dining at Mi Tierra Cafe and Bakery, a 24-hour restaurant in San Antonio, and shopping at the River Center Mall.
For now, only a handful of celebrities are featured on the site but Angela Morrow, product manager for Windows Live Local, said the company is in negotiations with several more celebrities and plans to keep the site up for the next month or two to gauge its success in driving traffic to Windows Live Local, a rival to Google Maps.
Posted on May 9, 2006
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Babel Fish Now at Yahoo
Yahoo reports that the popular Babel Fish web translation tool has moved to Yahoo at babelfish.yahoo.com.
Today Babel Fish is hanging his shingle here at Yahoo!, debuting Yahoo! Babel Fish across our properties worldwide. For those of you new to Babel Fish, you can visit babelfish.yahoo.com and translate text or web pages across your choice of 38 language pairs, such as English => Korean, Dutch => French, and Greek => English. It's the same convenient, free, easy-to-use resource that people have relied on for years, and now we've added more features, such as:Bloggers Blog explains how the babel fish was originally an interesting creature in a novel written by Douglas Adamas.
Posted on May 5, 2006
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Judge: Don't Fire Web Surfing Worker
News.com reports that NYC cannot fire a Department of Education employee for surfing the Internet.Toquir Choudhri, a Department of Education employee of 14 years, was accused of ignoring supervisors who warned him to stop browsing the Internet while at work. An investigation found evidence that Choudhri had browsed news and travel Web sites from his work computer.The judge's decision sounds reasonable. He said, "agencies should apply the same standard to personal Internet use as they do to other personal activities. He noted that many agencies allow employees to take personal calls, or even read the newspaper, as long as those activities do not interfere with a worker's overall performance."
"Look, at 4 in the morning, or because of the nature of the department, some city agencies have downtime. Surfing on the Internet--everybody does it," Martin Druyan, the union attorney representing Choudhri, told CNET News. "Choudhri was singled out in retaliation for discrimination charges that he filed against the Department of Education," he said.
"The judge ruled in our favor because they could not prove that work was backed up, or that phone calls went unanswered," Druyan added. "We don't advocate goofing off. The public should be served. But if there's not work, it's not his fault."
Choudhri was not fired, but Spooner reprimanded him in a letter that will go into Choudhri's employee file.
Update: The employee was fired anyway.
Posted on May 2, 2006
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