Old news for September 2006

Next Google Update

2006.09.29If anyone was wondering when the next Google PR update will be then most predict it to be around the beginning till middle of October. This is based on the last one that occurred in middle July and usually it’s happening every 3 months or so.

Yahoo Acquires Jump Cut Video Editing company

2006.09.28Six-month-old Jumpcut of San Francisco provides Web users a free set of online video editing tools that give people the ability to manipulate moving video images without the need to own or install software on their own computers. While the popularity of online video watching has surged, the numbers of people actually creating video programming remains a tiny fraction of the audience of passive viewers.

MySpace Trumps YouTube in video

2006.09.28Social networking juggernaut, owned by News Corp was the No. 1 video site in July, trouncing popular YouTube, seasoned Internet companies, like Yahoo and granddaddy media outfits, like Viacom. This is pretty significant considering that YouTube and Google Video have gotten all the press when it comes to who's garnering the biggest video-viewing audiences. According to a new video report that comScore Media Metrix will begin offering starting Tuesday morning, 37.4 million unique individuals watched a video on MySpace in July. All told, they collectively watched 1.4 billion videos.

Microsoft will Launch Digital Advertising Solutions

2006.09.27At Advertising Week 2006, Microsoft Corp. will announce the worldwide launch of Microsoft® Digital Advertising Solutions in a move that combines the company’s broad set of global advertising products and services into a unified offering for advertisers. Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions is designed to connect advertisers with their target audiences across such devices as PCs, Xbox® video game systems, Web-enabled mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

AOL sued by subscribers over search data release

2006.09.26AOL has been sued over its online release of data on the Internet searches of more than 650,000 members in late July. A lawsuit seeking class action status was filed against AOL on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit accuses AOL of violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act...and seeks at least $5,000 for every person whose search data was exposed.

Yahoo in Talks to Acquire Facebook

2006.09.23Yahoo Inc. is in serious talks to acquire Facebook Inc., the Palo Alto social networking site that allows users to post profiles online and gab, according to a published report. If the deal is completed, Yahoo could pay up to $1 billion for the Web site, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Thursday.

Microsoft will put Works Suite onto Web 

2006.09.22In the clearest sign yet that the big guns are preparing to step up the battle for Web Office, Microsoft has said it is considering releasing a version of Microsoft Works (the poor cousin of Microsoft Office) as a web suite. The desktop version of Works retails for $50 and includes a calendar, word processor, spreadsheets, Web Browser and e-mail. While its currently positioned as a home productivity toolset (to do your accounts, write letters, etc), it could pretty easily be re-positioned as a (small) business web office suite. In any case - because Works includes basic word processing and spreadsheet software, to web-enable that and bundle it as a suite would be a step above what both Microsoft and Google currently offer. Right now Microsoft has Office Live (web hosting, email, project collaboration) and Google offers Apps For Your Domain (email, IM, calendar and website creator).

Yahoo Reports Decline in Ad Sales

2006.09.21Yahoo Inc. warned Tuesday that slowing ad growth will depress its Q3 results, marking the Internet company's latest letdown. Investors took out their frustration on the company's stock price, which plunged by more than 11 percent to deepen a yearlong slump. Two of Yahoo's top executives, Chairman Terry Semel and Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker, delivered the bad news during a joint appearance at a New York investment conference that was streamed over the Internet.

YouTube and Warner Bros. in a music deal

2006.09.20It means interviews and videos by Warner's artists can be used by Youtube in return for a slice of advertising revenue. The agreement also covers the use of material in homemade videos, which form a large part of YouTube's content. Both companies hailed it as a landmark agreement, coming days after Universal Music said it was considering legal action over sites such as YouTube.

Microsoft will launch a YouTube rival

2006.09.19Soapbox starts testing on Tuesday and will launch within six months as part of current service, MSN Video. "It's really early days in online video; this is still act one," said MSN's Rob Bennett. "We're definitely not blind to the fact that YouTube has a big lead right now," said Mr Bennett, general manager of MSN's entertainment and video services. "Microsoft is jumping on this bandwagon with some uncertainty with where it's going, but the company believes it needs to be on board," Joe Wilcox, an analyst at Jupiter Research, told Reuters news agency."

Yahoo! On A Marketing frenzy

2006.09.19As its rivals create a bigger buzz on the Internet, Yahoo Inc. is hitting television and radio airwaves to remind people that its Web site remains on the cutting edge of technology and culture. The advertising blitz, scheduled to begin Thursday, marks the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's biggest marketing push in two years. As an added promotional gift, Yahoo will offer coupons for a free cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts to anyone who sets Yahoo.com as their home page this Friday.

User-Generated Content rules

2006.09.16User-generated content sites, platforms for photo sharing, video sharing and blogging, comprised five out of the top 10 fastest growing Web brands in July 2006. Image hosting site ImageShack ranked No. 4 among July’s fastest growing Web brands, increasing 233 percent, from a unique audience of 2.3 million to 7.7 million (see Table 1). Heavy.com, a video sharing site, took the No. 5 spot, increasing 213 percent, from 965,000 to 3.0 million unique visitors. Photo sharing site Flickr followed at No. 6, growing 201 percent from 2.1 million to 6.3 million unique visitors. Other user-generated content sites that made it into the top 10 fastest growing Web brands were MySpace, with a 183 percent year-over-year increase, and Wikipedia, with a 181 percent year-over-year increase.

Firefox update 1.5.0.7

2006.09.15Firefox 1.5.0.7 is a security and stability update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version. Improvements to product stability Several security fixes

Google Earth Multimedia Featured Content

2006.09.14Today, Google announced the addition of Featured Content for Google Earth, which consists of multimedia overlays from different content providers. Initial Featured Content comes from the likes of National Geographic, the Jane Goodall Institute, the US National Park Service, Discovery Networks, and the United Nations Environmental Program.....and.....can be activated from a new drop-down menu in the Layers sidebar; once it is selected, small icons representing featured content litter the globe and users can access information by clicking on one of them. And on the same note, schools in Israel will start merging Google Earth into their geography teaching. The point is to use GE to reach places they can't reach physically.

MySpace Battling with YouTube

2006.09.14News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin told investors at an industry conference Tuesday that the media giant was considering creating a video component to its MySpace social-networking Web site that could rival the wildly popular YouTube. “If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flicker, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace,” Chernin said at the conference. “There’s no reason why we can’t build a parallel business.”

Microsoft's New Search Officially Launched

2006.09.12Microsoft officially started its new Internet search engine crafted to compete with offerings from rival online powerhouses Google and Yahoo. Microsoft announced that its "Live Search" online portal was opened in 47 markets worldwide to complement MSN and Windows Live Internet-scouring services that attract an estimated 465 million visitors monthly. www.live.com

Google Adwords goes Mobil

2006.09.07The U.S. offering follows April’s launch of a similar service in Japan. Google is working to patent a system for click-through ad placements that determines the type of device being used and automatically takes a user to a mobile Web site or places a voice call, depending on the phone’s capabilities.

Human Powered Search Engine: ChaCha

2006.09.06The new search engine model that employs thousands of paid "guides," who will provide live one-on-one help to users who need extra assistance tracking down online information. The free service, called ChaCha.com, goes live today as a test and is expected to go into full beta later this year. http://chacha.com/

New Google image labeler game

2006.09.04How does it work? You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session. Google didn't just create this for fun, if they have enough people play the game, I am guessing the data can be used to help determine the quality of the image search. http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

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