Archive for July, 2009
Yahoo! Inc., which is building a regional data center in Lockport, has formed an Internet search partnership with Microsoft Corp. that Yahoo says will lift its annual operating income by about $500 million.
In the long-awaited 10-year deal announced on Wednesday, Microsoft will power Yahoo’s search tool while Yahoo will become the exclusive sales force for both firms’ premium search advertisers.
Under the agreement, Microsoft will license Yahoo’s core search technologies and Microsoft’s Bing will become the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites.
In addition to increasing its annual operating income, Yahoo said the deal will provide it with $200 million in capital expenditure savings and an annual operating cash flow benefit of $275 million.
In June, Yahoo announced a decision to locate its Northeast data center on a 30-acre site in the Lockport Industrial Park near the Delphi Thermal Systems complex.
The new operation, which includes a 190,000-square-foot structure, could initially employ 125 people, the company said.
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The driver who was killed when his vehicle crashed more than 200 feet off Point Reyes-Petaluma Road Thursday was identified as Harry Samuel Atkinson, 80, of Daly City.
According to Andrew Barclay of the California Highway Patrol office in Marin County, the CHP received the call reporting the accident at 12:46 p.m. Thursday.
Atkinson’s 2005 Ford Escape plunged 200 feet down an embankment on the 5900 block of the road, near the McEvoy Ranch.
Firefighters responded and used ropes to reach Atkinson and pull him back up the embankment, but he died after being airlifted to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.
The cause of the accident is under investigation.
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Google’s new Latitude Web app for iPhone is so hamstrung that Apple customers may be wishing they had a BlackBerry or Android handset instead. Why? Because lacking multitasking, Latitude really isn’t Latitude.
Google Latitude iPhoneHere’s what the free Google Latitude service does: It allows you to make your location available to other users in near real-time. On the color BlackBerry models, Android, Symbian/Nokia, and Windows Mobile–lets call these “real” mobile platforms–this is done constantly and in the background.
This is how God–and Google–intended Latitude to work: Without user attention or intervention. And this is the functionality that iPhone users have been waiting on for months, only to receive a third-rate version of a first-rate application.
But, there’s more: On the iPhone and iPod touch, Latitude isn’t even given application status, but is delivered as a Web application in the Safari browser.
I have a number of potential uses for Latitude in my business and volunteer lives. This is an app I’d been anxiously waiting for, smug in my knowledge that my iPhone was always the better platform.
I’d even imagined that Apple would open up multitasking on the iPhone, just for their Google buddies, if no one else.
Obviously, I was wrong–and I’m also disappointed. Which is bad news if other platforms that turn multitasking into a key feature they have (and iPhone lacks).
On its Google Mobile blog, the company bravely tried to turn this lemon into lemonade. First the bad news:
“Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile.”
Followed by the lame attempt at a save:
“Nevertheless, your location is updated every time you fire up the app and then continuously updated while the app is running in the foreground. And, of course, you can check in on where your friends are, so we think there’s plenty of fun to be had with Latitude.”
In other words, Google expects the iPhone to be a mostly one-way Latitude device, used to find your friends all the time, but able to send your location only when Safari is the foreground application.
That’s not plenty enough fun for me. I want a tool, not a toy.
OK, I won’t junk my iPhone over this, but my love is diminished. And maybe my anger shouldn’t be directed at Apple. Perhaps, Latitude generates enough network traffic that AT&T put the kibosh on it.
Either way, my smug iPhone superiority has been pierced and now I have to make excuses to my friends who use Latitude on platforms that support it properly.
This seems like a small thing, but it has me thinking that someday my next device won’t be an iPhone.
Good work, AT&T and Apple!
(For the record, here a list of the handsets that Latitude supports, besides Apple: Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1, most color BlackBerry devices, most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices, and most Symbian S60 devices such as Nokia smartphones.)
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Story time, kids! Once upon a time (July ’08) in a corner of the web far, far away, a search engine named Cuil challenged Google. While claiming to search more pages of the net than anyone else, it was found to be slow — and came under fire from critics — and quickly fell back into insignificance.
Since then, Cuil (pronounced “cool”) has tried to stand out by including supplementary search results, such as including timelines and geographical “maplines.” Now, Cuil would like to further beef up its results by including related results from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. According to Seval Oz Ozveren, the engine’s VP of finance and business development, it’s something that hasn’t been done before.
“We are trying to leverage the information found on users social networks to enhance search results,” he told the Technology Review. “This is similar to what Amazon or eBay already does: ‘People who bought this book, also liked this one’ … nobody has actually done it to date.”
While social networking sites are currently searchable through internal means and by way of specifically tailored apps, Cuil’s method would put it out there along with whatever you’re searching for. This has some pull in two big ways: socially driven advertising is a hot new market and, especially when it comes to Twitter, breaking news and viral fads are appearing first on social networks.
The engine plans to include the new functionality in August. Whether or not it will help Cuil recapture the magic and go toe-to-toe with Google — something that Bing, which hasn’t been crushed, is arguably doing — will have to be seen.
So we know you Google. We’ve asked if you Bing. (That just sounds dirty.) Is anyone out there staying Cuil?
It’s unclear whether they brought the requested “boatloads of money,” but several top Microsoft executives are in Silicon Valley to try to finalize a search deal with Yahoo, according to an All Things Digital report late on Thursday.
According to the report, the two sides are “down to the short strokes” after years of excruciatingly well publicized on-again, off-again talks. A deal could come within a week, All Things Digital said.
Included in the Microsoft entourage, according to the report, are three of its top online executives: Yusuf Mehdi, Satya Nadella, and Qi Lu.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in May that she was open to a search deal if she believed in the partner’s technology and they provided said boatloads of money. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has indicated for more than a year now that he would like to strike some sort of search deal, although he no longer wants to acquire all of Yahoo as the company offered to do in February 2008.
With Microsoft’s Bing getting some good reviews and Microsoft having billions in cash on hand, the ingredients would seem to be in place, if both sides have the will to make it happen.
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Attessa III – 225 Ft. Motoryacht. Exterior and Interior.
Yacht Fast Facts:
- Owner: Dennis Washington, 88th on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans
- Size: 225 feet, 14th largest yacht in America; 71st largest in the world
- Features: Helicopter, movie theater, gym, massage room, Jacuzzis
More on the Attessa III:
Credits:
Vancouver Shipyards; North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. News. Boat International USA (Mar. ’06). Power & Motoryacht (Feb. ’06). Showboats International (Dec. ’05/Jan. ’06). P&M ( Nov. ’06) Showboats International Award – Best Refit/Reconfiguration – 2006. Boat International Award – Best Refit – 2006. Photos by Neil Rabinowitz.
As if Twitter wasn’t already addictive enough, now the folks at Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, have figured out a way to make it even more mesmerizing. The site is called BingTweets, and it… well, you can probably guess what it does. It presents you with a combined view of the search engine, the current list of Trending Topics, and a live feed of current tweets that match the Bing search criteria you enter in the “Search Bing & Twitter” field.
I’m not much of a Twitter hound myself, but I admit to becoming somewhat enraptured by the synergy between the search results and the tweet feed. By searching for “PCMag,” for example, I received not only handful of useful (and official) links, but also commentary about some of the recent stories we’ve covered. If I entered an even more well-traveled topic, such as Harry Potter (the sixth movie was released today, after all), the feed spun almost as wildly as a malfunctioning slot machine.
BingTweets struck me as an efficient and enjoyable way to get sources of established and of-the-minute opinion at the same time, in the same window–a real convenience and patience saver. The most significant drawback I noted with it was the generally impersonal experience it offered. Because you can’t log in to the service, you have no access to what your friends are saying (unless they just happen to be discussing whatever search term you enter). As Twitter is as much about maintaining close (140-character) relationships as forging new ones, this limits BingTweets’s usefulness on a personal level. (A “Share This” feature in the upper-right corner lets you tweet, e-mail, text, or post to various social networking sites your BingTweets results, which at least is a nice to way to hopefully engage your friends.)
The service compensates somewhat for this shortcoming with an expanded, and highly useful, Trending Topics box. Expanding on what’s available on the Twitter site itself, you have instant access to not just the hottest overall topics, but specific people, places, and products–just click one of the tabs in the box to narrow down your Topic search to those areas. It, like the rest of BingTweets, is a handy feature that makes Twitter–at least for the casual user–easier and a bit more fun.
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New stats from monitoring service StatCounter suggest that for the second time since its launch, Microsoft’s Bing has surpassed Yahoo Search as the second most used search engine in the United States. Shortly after publicly debuting the new service, Bing already jumped over Yahoo Search – if only for one day – which many attributed to the launch momentum. But Bing has proven to be a very solid product that many seem keen to try out even after a month.
According to the new data, Bing took 12.9% of the US market like comScore had earlier measured. With the strong jump, Bing comes out ahead of Yahoo Search (10.15%), while Mountain View remains the undisputed king of the mountain with a US market share of 75%.
StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen comments on the leapfrogging of Yahoo Search by Bing, saying: “The jump in Bing?s share may reflect a positive review of the search engine compared to Google which appeared online in the New York Times on the 8th and in the print version on the 9th July.” I’m not really sure if that is in fact the reason and if this isn’t just the service’s regular growth path. After all, Microsoft has shown a remarkable drive to keep the momentum for its decision engine going, recently adding Twitter messages to search results and bringing the search platform to its Hotmail service. Surely one newspaper article can’t be the only reason for its steady rise in share?
In any event, while Google shouldn’t be particularly worried about losing its dominance on the search market yet, the other players in the field better be watching Bing’s progress very closely. Microsoft is doing it right, and users are noticing, too.
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Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Bing posted higher search-engine growth on a weekly basis in June than its three main rivals, according to online Web site measurement researcher Hitwise, though Google Inc. (GOOG) continued to distance itself from its rivals.
The software giant’s search engine has gained market share on a weekly basis since it was launched last month, going from 3.4% in the first week of the month to 6.63% by month’s end, according to Hitwise. Microsoft, long an also-ran to Google, is hoping Bing becomes a bigger player in the lucrative online-advertising arena.
Still, Google accounted for 74% of all U.S. searches conducted for the four weeks ended June 27, up fractionally from May and the prior year’s 69%. Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) accounted for 16% last month, up a bit from May but down from 20% last June. Microsoft’s sites dipped a bit from both periods, to 5.3%, while IAC/Interactive Corp.’s (IACI) Ask.com slid to 3.2%.
Longer search queries have increased in popularity over the past year, said Hitwise. It noted average searches of five to more than eight words in length increasing 8% from a year ago. Searches of eight or more words increased 16%. At the same time, shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – fell 2%.
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PETALUMA, Calif. — An 18-year-old Petaluma man was injured when a pipe bomb exploded in a portable toilet located in a public park on the Fourth of July.
At about 10:35 p.m., Officer Matthew Capitelli was flagged down at Lucchesi Park to assist with someone who had been injured.
“The officers found… the subject had a puncture wound to his back,” said Petaluma police officer Tim Lyons.
The injury was severe and the victim was losing a large amount of blood, police said.
Medical personnel arrived while Capitelli was assisting him and transported him to the hospital.
The man said he was walking by the portable bathroom located near the park when he heard a loud bang and felt the injury to his back. The portable bathroom had evidence that a pipe bomb had been detonated inside, according to police.
The shrapnel from the pipe bomb had blown through all the walls and the roof of the portable bathroom. A piece of shrapnel from the pipe bomb hit and injured the victim.
“We don’t have any witnesses to the crime. No one reported it or called in any loud explosions,” said Lyons. “The female that flagged down the officers just found the injured subject.”
The man is in stable condition and an investigation is ongoing, according to the Police Department.
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ABOUT
My name is Kyle Kazak and I am the CEO and President of Kazak Media, a local Internet marketing firm that specializes in web design, local SEO, and pay per click management. We are located in Petaluma, CA, USA.