SPAM e-mails cost US $22 billion annually. (Saturday, February 05, 12:28 AM EST)

Findings from the 2004 NTRS, an annual survey that tracks U.S. consumers’ technology opinions and behaviors, indicate that online users in the United States spend an average of three minutes deleting spam each day they check e-mail. Aggregating their usage across the 169.4 million online adults in the United States, this equals 22.9 million hours a week, or $21.58 billion annually when based on the average working wage.

My main email box gets so much spam it isn't even worth checking anymore. Literally 500+ spams a day.

And yet, I still like the fact there isn't a lot of government legislation on 'the internet' as a whole.

Could Verisign Effectively Knobble ActiveX Spyware Installs? (Saturday, February 05, 12:05 AM EST)

There's an interesting proposition threadlinked above that says, in short, that if versign were to excercise its right to revoke the digital certificates issued to spyware vendors pushing dodgy "drive by" installs.

Even though Microsoft can't (or won't) fully fix this problem, VeriSign can. Before an ActiveX popup can install software onto a user's computer, the installer's "CAB file" must be validated by its digital signature. If the signature is valid, the user's web browser shows the ActiveX popup, inviting a user to install the specified software. But if the signature is invalid, missing, or revoked, the user doesn't get the popup and doesn't risk software installation.

There's a lot of info in the post above but it would take someone with a far greater knowledge of this stuff than I to work out if Benjamin Edelman's solution would hold water.

From reading it though, it certainly seems it might...

From Google to specific video point - Very Cool Tech (Friday, February 04, 11:49 PM EST)

This is actually very impressive.

Try this:

Do a search on Google for the phrase "innovation-based cultures"

Now, click on the first result. The listing should be "NICK VALERY Our next session is on the innovators themselves. Who ..."

That should take you to a page, which opens a window. In that window, you'll see a video of a presentation (along with synched-slides and a rolling transcript). The spot in the video to which you are taken is not the beginning of the video, but rather (and this is the cool part), the spot in the video in which the phrase "innovation-based cultures" is said. This trick would work with any phrase in the text. It's just that this result scores #1 for that unique phrase.

his is the handiwork of a company called Vodium and it definitely points to a compelling future. This is not the result of Google's video search. It's the result of Vodium's ability to make the transcript of a speech indexable and linked to the video itself.

I am not sure, however, if Vodium is partnered with Google to do this. Does anyone know?

Is Google Responsible for Ruining the Internet? (Friday, February 04, 10:49 PM EST)

I was just sitting here drinking my coffee and I had a thought. Far from making sense of the web as they purport to do, Google is single handedly turning it into a bloated disaster zone.

First they spouted the content mantra. Webmasters diligenlty pumed out millions of pages to satisfy the hungry cralwers.

Then they started the anchor text numbers game. People then went out and built millions of sites especially to promote their other pages.

Now we have adsense. Pages are now being made from crap especially to make as many adsense impressions as possible.

Add to that buying pagerank, blog and guestbook spamming (all due to Google's algorythms) and the rest and I wonder if it's a master plan to take down the net :)

Rackspace bans Yahoo! (Friday, February 04, 09:53 PM EST)

How funny is THAT? - Well, not very funny at all for anyone hosted on Rackspace i guess..

Yahoo's Tim Mayer said:

A customer of a hosting company like rackspace may have a customer that is being hit by our crawler and not realize who it is so they report the IP to rackspace or another provider and they block the IP at the router level. This would cause other SE to have access and for us not to have access.

Muppets...

via barry

Gates + Windows = Interoperability? (Friday, February 04, 09:46 PM EST)

Bill Gates has issued a letter to Microsoft customers that outlines an intention to design it's software with interoperability in mind, primarily in the form of XML

Simply put, interoperability is a proven approach for dealing with the diversity and heterogeneity of the marketplace. Today I want to focus on two major thrusts of Microsoft’s product interoperability strategy: First, we continue to support customers’ needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of "interoperability by design" across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities.

and from beta news

"I think Microsoft is premature trumpeting the open-format messaging. And to be clear, by any definition typically applied to file formats, Office isn't open," Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox told BetaNews.

But Gates made clear in his letter that interoperability does not equate to open source. He said that interoperability is about how different software systems work together, regardless of licensing and development. Gates claimed that open source could actually have a detrimental effect on making software interoperable.

The comments in the Beta news piece are not kind - much talk of FUD heh...

Time Warner - 5 Million Shares in Google (Friday, February 04, 03:32 PM EST)

Bearing in mind all of the talk about Yahoo being a media company and Google being a tech firm and how that relates to predicted market share and growth for both companies it's interesting to note that Time Warner own 5 Million shares in Google.

Find the SEC filing here and see this Cnet report also

Making the Perfect Geek Curry (Friday, February 04, 04:33 PM EST)

Ok, so a little Friday FOO is in order :-)

Im going shopping for Curry tomorrow, and wanted to pick the collective brains of the Threadwatch boys and girls over general curry making. For my contribution, i give you... Follow the title link for the full post...

Effective Offline Marketing (Friday, February 04, 02:29 PM EST)

I'm interested to hear what methods of offline marketing people have found effective in promoting their websites. A lot of people who have become successful through SEM and have a bit of cash in their pocket are now realising that 'branding' and building real sites and real businesses is the way to go (as well as doing a little bit of blackhat on the side to keep the funds coming in obviously!)

It would be interesting to hear about the more unusual and non-mainstream methods of marketing that people might not be aware of. For instance, I read a book recently that discussed 'Undercover Marketing'. This medium involves using actors to stage situations whereby people overhear another group of people praising a particular company or product. For instance, a group of hikers are out walking, another group of hikers approach from the opposite direction. They are talking animatedly about this great new brand of walking shoes that are the best they've ever had. Obviously, things we overhear like that are more likely to sway our decision making process than obvious advertising directed at us. Another example of this is the story that Amazon paid lots of concierges in apartment complexes to leave Amazon boxes in the hallway in the morning. The supposition of the tenants passing these every morning is that this company must be good because lots of people in my apartment block are buying from them.

I quite liked these two examples and I thought they could work well to promote websites. Interested to hear from other people what forms of offline marketing they find effective.

How to Handle Mistakes (Friday, February 04, 02:19 PM EST)

When a company makes a mistake, there is almost always one option that is taken: The wrong option.

Defending the mistake, despite everybody knowing a mistake was made is bad news. It breeds mistrust, and creates a serious "them and us" feeling amongst those that have to live with the consequences of the mistake.

The worst part of the defending the error problem is everyone knows that a mistake was made. Well, everyone but the decision maker, who refuses to acknowledge the problem at all.

Since the decision maker is often the business owner, there is little the other people affected by the bad choice can do, to help with the problem. They can try to offer suggestions, advice, and cost effective alternatives, but those ideas are often flatly rejected in many cases.

Personally i've nothing but respect for any company i deal with when, inevitably they make a mistake but, deal with it swiftly, professionally and apologise for it. It just goes to prove that not only are they human, but also that in a crisis, i can depend on them to sort it out.

Dealing with Mistakes Publically

Why not turn a mistake into an opportunity? There really is no need for a mistake (barring loss of life etc..) to be a total disaster - especially online. If you're seen to act upon the problem quickly, professionally and to the injured parties satisfaction publically then IMO it can only do your business good. Some thoughts on ways to do this:

• Enable comments on product sections - and monitor them!
• Intall a forum for customer support - and man it!
• Issue a public notice on the website about the mistake, and again, enable comments and answer them..

Why don't people get this? To err is human, to admit error and handle it correctly and publically is a marketing & PR opportunity

original post found via Seth

WebmasterWorld Register Threadwatch.net - Is this a Wind Up? (Friday, February 04, 03:35 PM EST)

I mention in the title that this could be a wind up of course, it's ever so easy to give false whois information...

Threadwatch.net

To contact the owner of the domain threadwatch.net, please email webmaster@searchengineworld.com

Interesting eh?

Rackspace Hosting Blocks Yahoo! Spiders (Friday, February 04, 08:38 PM EST)
Tim Mayer from Yahoo! at a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Rackspace hates Yahoo? Or Vice Versa? said: We did some further testing and our crawler IPs are in fact blocked from Rackspace. Tim said this happens quote...

Google Backlink Update Underway (Friday, February 04, 04:43 PM EST)
During all this fun at Google, there is a backlink update underway. Forum Threads: DigitalPoint SEO Chat V7...

Yahoo! Express URL Removal (Friday, February 04, 04:01 PM EST)
A member at WebmasterWorld asked how he can remove a URL from the Yahoo! index. Tim, from Yahoo!, posted a URL to the answer. create a "robots.txt" file on your web site to prevent our crawler from indexing your site...

WebmasterWorld Goes After ThreadWatch (Friday, February 04, 03:51 PM EST)
Nick, the creator of a new great forum/blog named ThreadWatch posted an entry named WebmasterWorld Register Threadwatch.net - Is this a Wind Up?. Basically, it looks like someone over at WebmasterWorld, affiliated with searchengineworld.com, Brett Tabke, owner of WebmasterWorld -...

More On Latent Semantic Indexing (Friday, February 04, 01:57 PM EST)
Yesterday I wrote an entry named Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) - Crawl into the Google Algorithm?, where I discussed how the current theories behind the Google SERP changes have to do with a new algorithm shift for Google. Now many...

AdWords Relevancy & AdSense Revenue Take a Hit (Friday, February 04, 01:35 PM EST)
Last night, I received an email from Peter Da Vanzo, you know the guy who started that new cool directory named Rubber Stamped. Well in a blog entry he named First Rule of Adsense he mentions a thread over at...

JeevesGuy Come Out: Kaushal Kurapati (Thursday, February 03, 10:44 PM EST)
As I mentioned in my comment in an earlier entry named Ask Jeeves Goes Blogging, JeevesGuy came out for the first time under his real name at WebmasterWorld under the name Kaushal Kurapati. I waited for the blog post at...

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) - Crawl into the Google Algorithm? (Thursday, February 03, 10:19 PM EST)
Earlier today, I started a little theory on the sandbox dieing, well, there is a ton of smart forum discussion going on in a thread at SEW Forums that I renamed to Major Google Changes: Latent Semantic Analysis?. Now, bakedjack...

Is the Google Sandbox Over (Thursday, February 03, 04:50 PM EST)
I think, not 100%, since there are no forum threads speculating, but.... I believe, the Google sandbox is done with! - Maybe :) Why do I say so. Well, about a handful of sites I launched within the year, all...

Google Assigning Less Weight to Links? (Thursday, February 03, 04:28 PM EST)
Yesterday, I started to notice that my Google traffic for this particular site has come back to its normal level (maybe a little less then normal) from about 3 or 4 weeks ago. But I am not the only one...

MSN Spending Big to Promote New Search Engine (Thursday, February 03, 04:06 PM EST)
Yesterday, a IHelpYou Forum thread named MSN search ads everywhere today discussed the wide spread imprints of MSN Search advertisements throughout the Web. I noticed Google AdWords & AdSense ads for MSN that read "Try The New MSN Search" -...

Google Latent Semantic Indexing Technology (Friday, February 04, 01:05 AM EST)
Google recently strongly integrated latent semantic indexing into their algorithm.

Google AdWords / AdSense Shakeup, Free Link Renting Guide, Ask Jeeves Blog (Thursday, February 03, 06:55 PM EST)
Google AdWords and AdSense shakeup. SearchGuild birthday awards. Free link renting guide. Ask Jeeves launches their official blog.

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Q (Thursday, February 03, 06:54 AM EST)
Yahoo! launches a contextual search product.

When You Can't Rank for Your Own Name... (Thursday, February 03, 04:29 AM EST)
Post noting that some sites are no longer ranking well for their official site name in Google.

Amazon Margins Drop, Stock Tanks, Amazon offers Cheaper Express Shipping? , John Battelle Interviewed, AIRWEB Conference (Thursday, February 03, 12:12 AM EST)
Amazon has a bad quarter due to lowered margins. John Battelle interviewed. AIRWEB conference seeking white papers.

Google Referral Program & Google Karma (Wednesday, February 02, 01:30 PM EST)
Google launches an affiliate program.

Google Strong 4th Quarter, Yahoo! Japan Blogs, Australian SEM Conference (Wednesday, February 02, 10:04 AM EST)
Google has a great 4th quarter. Yahoo! Japan launches blogs. Australian SEM conference announced. Black Knight posts about the problems with DMOZ.

MSN Officially Launches, Comment Spammer Chat (Tuesday, February 01, 11:12 AM EST)
MSN makes their official launch announcement. Yahoo! is digging into Google's market share. Google becomes a domain registrar. Interview of an anonymous blog spammer.

Lots of Random Stuff... (Sunday, January 30, 11:18 PM EST)
AlmondNet creates an ad network based on search history. Steven Berlin Johnson writes about how technology will change writing. Apple beats Google as brand of the year. Clicktracks launches Optimizer product. Digital identity speeches. New blog newsreader network. Virtual Library updated using XML. A couple search engine surveys. New wiki based search engine launches. SBC to buy AT&T;.

Time Warner reports $1 billion-plus stake in Google (Friday, February 04, 10:53 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: SiliconValley.com - The New York media conglomerate, whose America Online unit acquired a stake in Google through a pre-IPO business partnership, sold a small chunk of that stake last year and still holds more than $1 billion worth of...

Little by Little or All at Once? (Friday, February 04, 10:41 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Small Business Ideas Forum - "I know I've got to update my web site. And, that the update will be extensive. So, do I make small changes over a period of many weeks or do I do one massive...

Ask Jeeves Reports Strong Results (Friday, February 04, 09:57 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: ClickZ - Ask Jeeves more than doubled its profits in 2004, posting net income from continuing operations of $52.4 million, or $0.80 per share, on revenues of $261.3 million. This compares with $24.8 million net income on revenues of...

Search Engine APIs: Right for You? (Friday, February 04, 09:40 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: ClickZ - It's great the engines recognize that when billions of dollars a year flow through an auction marketplace, automated control APIs are a necessity, as they are on Wall Street. But like Wall Street, technology alone won't make...

Is Answers.com the Next Google? (Friday, February 04, 08:34 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Fool.com - Why is GuruNet soaring? Investors may be looking at Google's $55.6 billion market capitalization and thinking that GuruNet's Lilliputian $93 million capitalization leaves a lot of room for growth. Maybe, but Answers.com has just been released, and...

Clicks add up to big ad dollars for search sites (Friday, February 04, 08:25 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: News.com - The fact that Eli Lilly, Napster, Novartis and Staples are among Super Bowl advertisers that are also regulars on Google is not the only evidence that Web advertising has come of age....

Interview: Thunderstone VP Doran Howitt (Friday, February 04, 08:11 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Search Engine Guide - Jason Dowdell interviews Doran Howitt, the VP of Marketing at Thunderstone about the Thunderstone Search Appliance SBE his company has recently launched....

Meta Search For The Desktop (Friday, February 04, 02:57 PM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: InternetNews.com - Watson, released this week by Intellext, is a sort of meta desktop search engine that also incorporates contextual analysis to automatically suggest related items as the user works....

Googling the Bottom Line (Friday, February 04, 02:31 AM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Wired - How much is it worth to a company's bottom line to place near the top of Google's search rankings?...

Local Search: Advantage, Google (Friday, February 04, 02:00 AM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: Traffick - Starting today, Google has begun making all Google Search users aware of the Google Local offering by putting a link to it on the Google Search homepage, with a red "new" notation. This will lead, in my...

Yahoo Offers New Y!Q Contextual Search Tool (Friday, February 04, 01:55 AM EST)
(Direct Link) Source: SearchDay - Yahoo has rolled out a nifty new tool that lets you use content you're viewing as the basis of a search query, providing results that are difficult to get otherwise without using advanced search commands....

Martha Stewart Hosts the Next Apprentice (Saturday, February 05, 03:44 AM EST)
Martha Stewart Hosts the Next Apprentice When I first heard about Martha Stewarts taking over Donald Trump's Apprentice spot for next season, I have to admit that the thought of the Camp Cupcake Mistress firing Popstick CEO Danny the Hippie just wouldn't be as cool as Donald Trump's little "YOU'RE FIRED" ...

MP3Tunes DRM Free Music Download Store To Launch (Saturday, February 05, 03:12 AM EST)
MP3Tunes DRM Free Music Download Store To Launch Michael Robertson, founder and former CEO of the original MP3.com, has announced plans to launch a new online music store next week - MP3Tunes. Robertson intends to launch a service that offers music which is free of any rights management, or DRM. He ...

Google Latent Semantic Indexing (Friday, February 04, 08:10 PM EST)
Google Latent Semantic Indexing Many people have been noticing a wide shuffle in search relevancy scores recently. Some of those well in the know attribute this to latent semantic indexing, which Google has been using for a while, but recently increased its weighting. How Does Latent Semantic Indexing Work? Latent semantic indexing ...

Yahoo Launches Yahoo! Q - Contextual Search Tool (Friday, February 04, 02:20 PM EST)
Yahoo Launches Yahoo! Q - Contextual Search Tool Yahoo launches Yahoo! Q, which shows contextually relevant news and links in a small pop up box next to content. "The thinking is that if you can read an article, you can be inspired to search," said Ken Norton, senior director of product management ...

How to Select a Web Site Host (Friday, February 04, 01:54 AM EST)
How to Select a Web Site Host So, you know how to create HTML files (web pages) and want to start a website. You have a domain name but don't know where to store the files (web host). You find countless web hosting companies offering a wide range of products but ...

Napster Goes After Apple iTunes (Thursday, February 03, 10:46 PM EST)
Napster Goes After Apple iTunes Blatantly attack Apple until market share declines just a few points. That's the name of the game. Desperation. Napster is following suit, today they launched a flat rate all-you-can-eat music service for $15/month they've been testing for a while. They plan to launch an aggressive ad campaign, ...

Video Search and Online Marketing (Thursday, February 03, 10:07 PM EST)
Video Search and Online Marketing Last week we discussed how Video Search is out there and growing, how can Internet and Search Marketers use Video Search to reach target markets of consumers and potential reoccuring site traffic? Online video and broadband are not only adding a new entertainment medium to the ...

Ask Jeeves launches Blog (Thursday, February 03, 02:30 PM EST)
Ask Jeeves launches Blog Search Engine Ask Jeeves has followed in the footsteps of rivals Yahoo!, Google and MSN in launching a corporate blog. The blog, which has no clear purpose specified at this stage, commenced with a post from Erik Collier, Data Engineering Manager, who writes about a recent office move. In ...

Link Popularity - A Thing of the Past? (Thursday, February 03, 04:04 AM EST)
Link Popularity - A Thing of the Past? I've found myself involved in a lot of discussions about the dropping importance of link popularity lately. Numerous people have said to me that they think incoming links no longer hold as much weight as they once did, and that the only links ...

New FireFox 1.1 Release Delayed (Thursday, February 03, 04:00 AM EST)
New FireFox 1.1 Release Delayed While the current final version of Firefox reaches new heights (it touched a download mark of 21 million recently!), the developers released some information about the coming releases. Originally planned for a March 2005 launch, the release of 1.1 version of Firefox has been delayed and ...

Mamma.com Intros Click Auction Model (Monday, February 07, 05:56 AM EST)
Mamma.com announced it added a new auction function to the flat rate pay-per-click media sales offered by the meta-search engine, according to DM News. Also announced were interface improvements,...

[summary]

AOL Posts Nice Ad Gains but Hemorrhages Subscribers (Saturday, February 05, 01:53 AM EST)
The good news is that AOL reported it grew its non-search advertising business to $313 million, a 53 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago. It reported ad sales of greater than $1 billion...

[summary]

Hitwise Shows Evidence of Viral Effect (Friday, February 04, 03:56 PM EST)
Hitwise reports that its monitoring of a Tide an ad-supported viral campaign - where visitors to a special website can sign up for free samples and recommend the site to friends - increased...

[summary]

Analyst: Search Marketing Will Exceed $23 Billion in 2010 (Friday, February 04, 03:55 PM EST)
SearchEngineLowdown points to a breakdown of Piper Jaffray analyst figures showing the search engine marketing field growing to $10 billion in 2006, then growing 35 percent in 2007, 20 percent in...

[summary]

Ohio Toughens Spam Penalties (Friday, February 04, 03:55 PM EST)
Ohio enacted a new anti-spam law that makes illegal a wide variety of activities common among spammer, including falsifying routing information and using unauthorized access to computers to send...

[summary]

Amazon Growth Big, Slowing (Friday, February 04, 03:53 PM EST)
Amazon.com reported financial results showing 26 percent sales growth in 2004 when taking into account currency adjustments, a figure that disappointed some analysts. International sales grew...

[summary]

Spam Absent from DMA Ethics Referrals (Friday, February 04, 02:44 PM EST)
The Direct Marketing Association's ethics committee forwarded four internally-policed cases to government authorities, according to DM News. The four members referred to various authorities involved...

[summary]

Internet Ads to Eat More Marketing Share (Friday, February 04, 02:43 PM EST)
eMarketer collected a bevy of statistics showing the general picture of online adspend growth. It predicts 4.2 percent of adspend will go to the internet, just about where Merrill Lynch estimates had...

[summary]

Online Adspend Pegged to Hit 7.4 Percent in 2009 (Friday, February 04, 02:43 PM EST)
Merrill Lynch estimates that online ads will account for 4.6 percent of adspend in 2005, up from 3.7 percent in 2004, according to a MediaPost report. Due particularly to increased forecasts for...

[summary]

Ogilvy Staffs Digital Innovation Group (Friday, February 04, 02:23 PM EST)
OgilvyInteractive launched a small internal group called the Digital Innovation Group that will deal with emerging interactive technologies and media. Headed by Maria Mandel, a former director of...

[summary]

Everyone Now an Online Marketer, Even Superbowl Advertisers (Friday, February 04, 01:43 PM EST)
Taking one in every 25 marketing dollars might not have been enough to grant the internet "mainstream" status, but The New York Times reports that the medium may have come of age now that Superbowl...

[summary]

Ask Jeeves Blog (Thursday, February 03, 01:34 PM EST)
Hey, Look What We Found: The Official Ask Jeeves Blog! http://blog.ask.com/

Google switched definitions from Dictionary.com to Answers.com (Wednesday, February 02, 02:24 PM EST)
In case you havent noticed Google switched definitions from Dictionary.com to Answers.com!

MSN Search out of Beta (Tuesday, February 01, 09:28 AM EST)
I am proud and excited to announce that MSN Search is now officially launched. With this final push we have made more than 40,000 Encarta encyclopedia articles and associated media available for free to MSN Search users, which translates to more than 1.5 million Instant Answers. We also improved ...

Google blogger reappears, redacted (Monday, January 31, 10:35 AM EST)
Mark Jen this week got a gentle schooling in the dos and don'ts of blogging at Google after posting and then temporarily pulling from the Web some mild criticisms of his new employer. via News.com

Yahoo Launches Local Search BETA (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)

Lycos Sells to Korean Internet Portal (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)

Google Launches Bidding Site (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)

Search Engine Marketing Organization Cops Criticism (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)

MSN Previews New Search Engine (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)

Mamma.com Adds Auction to Pay-Per-Click Offering (Friday, February 04, 06:37 PM EST)
DMNews reports meta-search engine Mamma.com has added an auction-based pricing tool to its Mamma Classifieds flat-rate pay-per-click search product. Via MarketingVOX.

Search Revenue to Reach $23 Billion by 2010 (Friday, February 04, 02:08 PM EST)
Gord Hotchkiss breaks down the recent predictions given by Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy. Next year, he predicts search revenues to top $10 billion, and then hit $13.5 billion in 2007, $16.2 billion in 2008, $19.8 billion in 2009 and top $23 bill

Paid Search Rivals Super Bowl Commercials (Friday, February 04, 02:03 PM EST)
The New York Times provides a good comparison of paid search with other big advertising favorites, such as the Super Bowl. I've always said that search gets you an audience larger than the Super Bowl, for the cost of a Yellow Pages ad. Lot's of basic i

GuruNet Sees Stock Growth from Answers.com Publicity (Friday, February 04, 01:55 PM EST)
Haaretz reports on Jerusalem-based GuruNet's good fortunes, since going public in October. The company, once known for its enterprise search, is know creating a buzz with its Answers.com search engine (which I use and love). GuruNet now hopes to base a

A Gmail Rollout from Google? (Friday, February 04, 01:49 PM EST)
Neville Hobson speculates that Google may be getting ready to rollout a Gmail to a wider audience, i.e. everyone.

Yahoo YQ Contextual Search (Friday, February 04, 01:46 PM EST)
Jason Dowdell doesn't let a trivial thing, like a birthday, get in his way when it comes to search. He gives his thoughts on Y!Q the new contextual search service from Yahoo. I tried to add to a post on this site, but couldn't get the code to work, but

UK's Yell.com Understands Slang (Friday, February 04, 01:35 PM EST)
The UK's online yellow pages, Yell.com, is reported to now understand different slang words. ...the new website also recognises words like cludgie (toilet in Scotland), stotty (bread in Newcastle), laithe (barn in Yorkshire) and sough (drains in Lancas

Ask Jeeves Can't Match Google's Pace (Thursday, February 03, 11:47 PM EST)
I'm guessing that the execs at Ask Jeeves wish they had announced their Q4 numbers before Google and not after. After Google reported a sevenfold increase in profits, Wall Street was looking for Ask to provide a similar performance, they were disappointed

SMA-UK Faces Scrutiny (Thursday, February 03, 08:05 PM EST)
Think we don't report on the criticism SMA-UK is getting? Think again! It's unfortunate that, because of the major failure of SEMPO to get things right, any future SEM/SEO groups will face the same scrutiny. SMA-UK may or may not do better than SEM

10 Things Google Could Do as a Domain Name Registrar (Thursday, February 03, 05:23 PM EST)
CircleID taps in to collective thoughts on why Google has been accredited by ICANN and gives a top 10 list of speculation. Thanks Robert!

Yahoo Launches Contextual Search (Thursday, February 03, 02:19 PM EST)
Haven't had chance to play with this yet, but Yahoo has launched a new contextual search tool named Y!Q.

Google Images ad (Friday, February 04, 10:30 PM EST)
Apparently if you search for certain terms, it displays some images and a link to the equivalent Google Images search. Here are the ones that have been found so far: for x in l: print "* "+x+"" print 'Let us know if you find any more.' --> pipes ahmad limes lemons caterpillars heads takashi murakami asia argento pepperoni mushroom green pepper olive anchovy bicycle mountains sunsets good nothing everything world argyria starling ostrich finch sparrow seagull albatross Ian Brown ps3 ps2 poodle puddle hey jesus aishwarya hello mount mount st. helens faces makeup leaves america sewer chocobo quake 3 emerica kilimanjaro dj funk architect mimes tornadoes potatoes munchkins rhino michal foamy celts brueghel escher goodbye olaf scissors matisse bach natalie portman sean connery eiffel strong bad mayan giraffe ganesha penguins baseballs chickens easel glasses giraffes goat paints pencil pens rings roosters ruler shrub zebra fox hunting moulin rouge peanut climb nature puck skeleton bsd hexagon octopus dove oyster alley picaso michelangelo freemason honda civic toyota camry mousse snowman igloo mustard seed hawk microphone mexican flag pakistan flag tuxedo HAL titanic tux hashish ak47 grenade pipe bomb bong oranges tables cans apples cherries a carrot gif grapes i jpg of raider butter moo pig meh ko d h k n q v ira glass Let us know if you find any more....

A9 Yellow Pages (Sunday, January 30, 08:09 PM EST)
Google competitor A9 has Company > Yellow Pages on A9.com " href="http://a9.com/-/company/YellowPages.jsp">a nifty new thing where you can see street-level photos along with the Yellow Pages on Amazon.com. They got the photos by driving around in trucks with computer-controlled cameras....

Superbowl Advertisers Also Big on Search Advertising (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
John Markoff's article in the NY Times is a nice backgrounder of the search advertising industry, starting with Bill Gross's PPC innovations with GoTo.com in the mid-1990s. Markoff notes that several big buyers of Superbowl ads are also regular presences on search results pages. The big brand-recognition efforts still cost a fortune, while the lead-conversion methods have never been cheaper or more direct.

The Google Atom Bomb (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Much blog buzz about Tom Foremski's doomsday scenario for Google AdWords. A billionnaire (presumably Bill Gates in disguise) offers $100-million dollars to the first person who clicks through an unidentified AdWords ad. I suppose the landing page would exist in isolation with no incoming links, and would contain a form to fill out. Millions of people would take up ad-clicking as their new hobby, tromping through legitimate landing pages and hoping to stumble upon the winner. TechDirt points

What is a Top-Ten Listing Worth (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Adam Penenberg decided to quantify the answer to this question and reported his findings in a Wired News article. He collaborated with Oneupweb to conduct a study of traffic and conversion results of clients, before and after they cracked the top 30 Google listings for their keywords, and also the top 10. Many multiples of improvement transpired as each milestone was reached, proving that SEO really does work.

GOOG Soars (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Did I say something about the value of Google's quarterly report already having been priced into the stock? Yes, I believe I did. That's why I'm not making the big bucks as a financial analyst. Today, GOOG gapped up hugely, and is leveling out around 211. The stock has closed above 200 twice before--on January 3 and January 18--but has responded to the 200 level as a resistance point. They say that the third attack on a resistance le4vel makes it a support level,

Google an ICANN Registrar (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Google is now a domain registrar. Why not? The company has its hands in so many pots, it doesn't hurt to get a little registration action going. Signing up domain names connects to the Blogger business, and beyond that Google's intention here is anybody's guess. Here is Google's rather preposterous explanation: "Google became a domain name registrar to learn more about the internet's domain name system. We believe this information can help us increase the quality of

MSN Search Graduates from Beta (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn't leave its projects in beta for years at a time. MSN Search graduated to the main search engine spot today. That's about it--nothing more to add at this point. My review of the latest beta version is here. (I still love those sliders, and the built-in answer engine works well.)

Gigantic Google Bonuses (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Google has initiated a bonus program that rewards employee projects with stock dumps that vest over several years. The first wave of bonuses included 12-million dollars worth of stock divided amont 12 employees whose projects were particularly valuable to the company. Treating employees well is always good. In this case, Google seems to be responding to much discussion of the difficulty in keeping rich employees from leaving the company to start their own enterprises. In that light, the bonuses

GOOG quarterly (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Google beat projected revenue in its fourth quarter by 10 cents a share, it was announced today. That would normally be a blockbuster report, but glitter was expected and already priced into the stock. GOOG spiked above 200 in today's trading, then slithered down nearly two percent. GOOG's price-to-earning (past year) is 230. Gulp.

Is Yahoo! Eating Google's Lunch (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
This NY Times article profiling the leapfrogging competitveness of Yahoo! vs. Google assembles a number of quotes portraying Google as a lazy and capricious company that doesn't follow through on its beta projects. Granted, it is hard to fathom why Google keeps mature products in beta for so long--Froogle and Google News come to mind. But there is a PR advantasge to that tactic, as it conveys the impression that Google scientists are just not satisfied with services that we lowly consumers

Google Quarterly: Tuesday (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Watch for Google to post results of its fourth fiscal quarter Tuesday. Analysts expect whisper number to be exceeded, which implies a quieter level of whispering well, anyway, everyone expects GOOG to report a good quarter.

A9 Local Slideshows Become an Art Form (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
This is taking off even faster than I anticipated in my Blastoff post. A9's new Yellow Pages section, featuring many millions of street photos, has become the target of a certain type of virtual joy riding. There is an undeniable fascination in prowling around major cities through the A9 interface--the photos sequences do not approach movie-frame rates, but are closely enough spaced to present a visual tour of neighborhoods. People-watching is part of the appeal, as anyone walking along the

Introducing the Yahoo Y!Q search tool (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Highlight any text paragraphs you find interesting and ask Y!Q to find out what the text is about.

Google switches to Answers.com (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Google replaces Dictionary.com as its definition provider.

Microsoft starts using the MSN search engine (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
MSN abandons Yahoo and switches to its own search engine.

The Google Browser (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Pandia believes Google is developing a Gbrowser.

Google adds TV search (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
About the new Google Video beta test.

Google's new 32 words limit (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Google now allows as many as 32 words in search queries.

New anti-spam tag (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
The search engine agrees on common HTML tag.

AOL Search gets a face lift (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
AOL adds some features.

Exalead gets a 1 billion document index (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
European Exalead is preparing an even larger index.

MSN Search tests RSS feeds (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
MSN is alphatesting the possibility of displaying search results through RSS feeds.

Yahoo's new desktop search software (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Yahoo! Desktop Search lets you search your own computer.

Last chance for my seminar (Saturday, February 05, 02:37 AM EST)
My whiteboard seminar is 2/16/05. This is the only scheduled small seminar I've announced. There are just a few seats available. You can find all the details by clicking this link: Seminars. I hope you can make it. See you...

I don't get it (Friday, February 04, 09:42 PM EST)
Maybe I'm not supposed to. Do they make lubricant for eyeglasses? Link: Dove.com....

the Purple Hotel (Friday, February 04, 08:39 PM EST)
Steve points me Tom's blog--about a (pun intended) Purple Hotel.  tompeters! leadership training development project management....

What do you do after you make a mistake? (Friday, February 04, 12:13 PM EST)
Nice post by Wayne, thanks Red: Blog Business World - Marketing, Public Relations, Search Engine Optimization....

Great job (last part, for now) (Wednesday, February 02, 05:23 PM EST)
A friend of mine is a world-class lawyer, with a great background in copyright, deal-making and intellectual property issues. She has a stellar resume and could get a cog-job in about two seconds. Except that she doesn't want to do...

Great job (part 2) (Wednesday, February 02, 05:07 PM EST)
Well, if it's the jobs at little companies that we want, what's wrong with the current system? In my experience, little companies are rarely so organized that they know just what slot to fill, what to call that slot and...

Are you looking for a great job? (part 1) (Wednesday, February 02, 05:02 PM EST)
I've been thinking about the job-finding/person-finding paradox a lot lately, and it seems completely broken to me. Consider a few facts:1. The traditional way to get a job is to send a boring resume in response to as many posted...

I've been remiss (Wednesday, February 02, 01:32 AM EST)
Worse than remiss. Negligent. I haven't told you about Vincent Flanders' funny and useful and free article on web design. Link: Web Pages That Suck presents the biggest web design mistakes in 2004 learn usability and good Web design by...

Mitch Joel discovers... (Tuesday, February 01, 08:32 PM EST)
That life is a bit like an open source project. The more he gives, the more he gets. Montreal Gazette - canada.com network....

Fix your computer (Tuesday, February 01, 07:37 PM EST)
I had to use a PC today in order to run Exact Target to do a mailing. I was stunned and astonished at how much the experience has degraded since my last exposure. There were dozens of pop ups...

Latent Semantic Indexing (Friday, February 04, 12:09 PM EST)
Very nice post by SEO Book, I mean Search Engine eBook, ah how about Search Marketing Guide? :) about Latent Semantic Indexing. The idea is related to what I've seen described as "contextual relavency" where a search engine (like Google) ranks a document in part based on the related concepts in the page as a whole and compares them to other related documents in the index. What this means for

Google spatial engine (Thursday, February 03, 11:13 PM EST)
According to Government Computer News, Google Inc. will be geo-enabling its search engine with the recent acquisition of Keyhole, a digital mapping company. Keyhole's technology lets a user enter an address, "fly" over a 3-D image of it, zoom and tilt, measure distances and find things around it. "The Google engine will be part of the second-generation Geospatial One-Stop e-government site,

Ask Jeeves - Google Local (Thursday, February 03, 10:31 PM EST)
Ask Jeeves now has a blog with JeevesGuy unmasked! Also via WMW: SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search provider Ask Jeeves Inc. (Nasdaq:ASKJ - news) on Thursday posted sharply higher profit and revenue, helped by strong Web search advertising and an acquisition last year that roughly doubled its size. Oakland, California-based Ask Jeeves said net income from continuing operations rose to $17.1

Internet Explorer on a Mac is dead. (Thursday, February 03, 07:36 PM EST)
As the browser wars continue, I think we can now rule out one. Internet Explorer on a Mac should be considered dead. Why? If you run IE on a Mac and load www.msn.com you will get a horribly rendered site. Seeing as this is Microsoft's browser and a Microsoft site, I would think they'd work together, but they don't. This leads me to believe that they no longer care about IE on a Mac and maybe we

New Vote Business Blogging Awards (Thursday, February 03, 03:25 PM EST)
The first voting script for the Business Blogging Awards apparently had some issues, so a new voting system is in place and any votes prior to today have been scrapped. So please take a moment and cast your vote for Best SEO Blog Our blog is listed as: Online Marketing SEO Blog Additional categories to vote for include: Best Overall Blog Best Group Blog Best New Blog Best Law Blog Best

Yahoo to launch search tool Y!Q (Thursday, February 03, 02:46 PM EST)
MercuryNews.com ran a short article today announcing that Yahoo is launching a new search tool (Y!Q tool). Yahoo boasts that it's the first contextual search technology that analyzes the contents of the Web page you're viewing and then gives you a list of search results directly related to what you're reading. You can test it out on Yahoo News Tags: Yahoo, Y!Q, Search Engine, Search

Google Referral Program (Wednesday, February 02, 07:48 PM EST)
It's official, Google has launched a Referral Program that pays $20 for every advertiser or publisher you refer. Breakdown at SEO Book and InsideGoogle Tags: Google, Affiliate

MSN Shopping Beta & MSN Newsbot (Wednesday, February 02, 02:00 PM EST)
Matthew@MSN notes that MSN Shopping Beta. "It's another much cleaner interface over the predecessor and quite like Windows Marketplace." msnsearch WebLog also notes that Newsbot has been Revamped. What's new: * More stories are featured at the top of the page * A page listing all of the news publishers has been added * A 'similar coverage' feature groups instances of a story picked up by

Google Doubles Q4 Revenue to $1.03 billion (Wednesday, February 02, 12:45 PM EST)
DMNews.com reports Google profits increased sevenfold in the fourth quarter of 2004. AdSense generated $490 million, or 48 percent of total revenue, up 92 percent over last year. "Google had an exceptional quarter," CEO Eric Schmidt said. "Revenue and profits increased significantly, our execution was solid across the company and most importantly, our relationship with our users, partners and

Netscape 8 Coming Soon (Tuesday, February 01, 03:22 PM EST)
Thomas is the fellow who re-designed this blog and is also our design-savvy SEO. He's busting at the seams to share his enthusiasm about search so here you go: Netscape 8 is almost a reality. A beta, along with a re-design of Netscape.com, should be out February 17th. The new Netscape has the rendering engine of Firefox and Internet Explorer all in one browser. They are also working with

MSN powers its own search engine (Tuesday, February 01, 02:11 AM EST)
As of Feb 1, MSN Search will be powered with its own search engine. Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice-president of MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform division at Microsoft, said: "The final version of our MSN search service provides us with an infrastructure that allows us to continually and rapidly deliver innovative new features that give consumers precisely the information they're

Google Update Allegra (Thursday, February 03, 08:22 PM EST)
Updates are always a fun event. Even without the new pretty green pixels accompanying the update, you can bet their will be some great conspiracy theories that come out of this. Is latent semantic indexing a reality yet?

Google Update Allegra 2-2-2005

Google Local Tab on the Homepage (Thursday, February 03, 08:16 PM EST)
Local search gets bigger by the day. Time for it to hit the mainstream...It's now on Google's homepage. Good spot by Chicago at Webmasterworld.

Google Local Tab

I Though Google Hated Affiliates? - Google Enters the Affiliate Game (Thursday, February 03, 02:29 PM EST)
Big G is now paying the teeth that bite them. Google has opened up their own affiliate program.

The Google referral program (beta) is for businesses whose customers and visitors include small to medium-sized businesses, and who want to help those companies become more successful by running Google AdWords, or serving ads with Google AdSense. The program works by giving approved sites unique links to Google, then compensating the referring site for passing on a new AdWords advertiser or AdSense publisher.

Joining is easy, and free

1. Apply.
2. Once you're approved, place a Google referral program link on your site.
3. Earn $20 for each advertiser or publisher you refer.

Google Enters the Affiliate Game

Typos (Thursday, February 03, 03:10 AM EST)
So I'm #19 for "English as a second language" and #23 for "English as a second langauge" because of a typo on my new header. Who would have though that the mispelling would be so competitive? Obviously I'll be fixing...

Sony to Sponsor Blog to the Tune of $75,000 (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Here's an interesting story that I picked up, via B.L. Ochman's website, about Sony's sponsorship of a new web log called Lifehacker.com. The article, entitled Sony Pays $25,000 a Month for Gawker Blog, says that the electronics firm is going to pay $75,000 over 3 months for the privilege. In...

Register, it's Free! (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
How often have you gone to a website, been invited to sign up and then found that you would have to pay subscription?  Having been directed to the AdAge website from a business blog, it was refreshing  to see straight away that subscription was free (though for premium articles you...

Bridging the Gap Between PR and Search Marketing (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
When speaking to clients about Web content, I always try to make a distinction between what comes out of a company brochure and the content that appears on a company's website. Very often the way that companies present information about themselves and their products in an offline context, is different...

Technology for Marketing Conference (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
Next week the Technology for Marketing Conference will be held in London's Olympia on the 8th and 9th (February). They bill themselves as:UK's premier event dedicated to helping marketing, customer service and sales professionals implement technology solutions to optimise their marketing strategies and campaigns.There looks like there will be quite...

E-Mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy from Peppers and Rogers (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
I've just downloaded an interesting pdf from the Right Now website, entitled E-Mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy (you need to sign up to receive it). Written by the Peppers and Rogers Group, the management consulting firm, it offers a guide to High Impact E-mail Marketing and according to the...

Keep Track of your To-Do Lists with Ta-da Lists (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
I just came across a neat new tool, called Ta-da Lists, which allows you to make lists of things you need to do, such as Bills to Pay, Things to do for the Holidays, Search Engines to Submit to, Blog Articles to Write, Directories to Link to, etc. To-Do lists...

Inland Revenue (UK Tax Office) Manages a PR of 6/10 (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
I've just been on the Inland Revenue's site and noticed that its Self Assessment page for tax returns had a Google PR (Page Rank) of 6/10, on  whilst its 2003-04 Tax Returns, Notes and Help Sheets managed a PR of 5/10. And no, I don't make a habit of frequenting...

A9 Launches Online Local Yellow Pages (with photos) (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
A9 has just launched a new search product, in partnership with Yellow Pages, which gives users the opportunity to get address details, view maps and even photographs of business addresses. Coupled with the ability to view books (through Amazon), a search engine (results enhanced by Google) and image search...

Does Your Website Lack Personality? (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
The other day I was reviewing a site that had been developed for one of my clients (previous to engaging me!). This B2B site had a few thousand products, was relatively easy to navigate around and offered clients the ability to pay through a variety of means – their terms...

Google Hires Firefox Programmer (Saturday, February 05, 08:55 AM EST)
In a move that is sure to fuel speculation that Google is planning to launch its own Internet browser, it was announced this week that Google has hired the lead programmer, Ben Goodger, of the Firefox browser. Here's what they had to say on Wired: Among other clues pointing to...

The New MSN Search (Wednesday, February 02, 11:10 AM EST)
The New MSN Search is out so hurry up to get the beauty of it hot. Microsoft has definitely done a very good work with this one and I am quite impressed with it. Here are my first comments on...

Y!Q Beta Launches ... with Mixed Results (Friday, February 04, 06:50 PM EST)

Yahoo! has launched Y!Q, its contextual search engine that refines search results according to related keywords that the searcher might not have thought of. the idea is to make searching more intuitive—or, more accurately, to make the search engine seem more intuitive of your needs. In a Y!Q search, Yahoo! returns standard Web results (without advertising, at this point), refined by considering additional, related keywords. All keywords (yours and Yahoo!’s additions) are listed above the results.

Y!Q may be tested in a number of ways, the quickest being to visit the Y!Q engine itself. I tried the engine there, and also followed instructions for adding Y!Q searching ability to Firefox. In this manner, you can launch a Y!Q search by adding a keyword (”yq” is suggested) before your search string, typing the whole shebang into the browser’s address bar. This method requires a minute of setup, and does not require any downloads. (Plug-ins for Firefox and IE are available.)

Y!Q’s usefulness is not compelling at present, but does attain satisfaction when applied to news items and news stories. Yahoo! encourages this application, suggesting a visit to a special Y!Q-flavored version of Yahoo! News, where each headline is enhanced with a Search Related Info link. Clicking that link pops up a window with related links—a quick and powerful way of delving deeper into a story. Of course, this gambit is most useful with headlines that aren’t already bundled into Yahoo!’s Full Coverage, which is already a contextual treasure-house.

Presently I do not see an important reason to use Y!Q searches consistently, and no important reason not to. The service is not distinguishing itself compellingly. Most troubling, it seems to lack imagination. No matter how many broad searches I tried (president bush for example, or mp3), Y!Q returned results refined by only the keywords I entered, and no others. How could even the stupidest contextual engine fail to relate mp3 to music, iPod, MP3 players, and dozens of other key phrases? Search results do differ between Y!Q searching and regular Yahoo! searching, but I’m at a loss to explain why, how, or which is better.

Y!Q is a dud, but an interesting dud. Stay tuned.

Yahoo! Video Added to Home Page (Thursday, February 03, 07:27 PM EST)

Pressing the advantage over Google, whose video service cannot compare on any level, Yahoo! has placed Yahoo! Video on the home page. I guess a few people will see it there.

Yahoo! Japan Starts Blog Service (Wednesday, February 02, 06:36 PM EST)

Nobody knows (well, nobody outside of Yahoo!) if this launch represents a test before starting a U.S. blog site. But Yahoo! Japan has opened its Weblog service.

MSN Search Graduates from Beta (Tuesday, February 01, 10:45 PM EST)

Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn’t leave its projects in beta for years at a time. MSN Search graduated to the main search engine spot today. That’s about it—nothing more to add at this point. My review of the latest beta version is here. (I still love those sliders, and the built-in answer engine works well.)

Is Yahoo! Eating Google's Lunch (Tuesday, February 01, 03:45 AM EST)

This NY Times article profiling the leapfrogging competitveness of Yahoo! vs. Google assembles a number of quotes portraying Google as a lazy and capricious company that doesn’t follow through on its beta projects. Granted, it is hard to fathom why Google keeps mature products in beta for so long—Froogle and Google News come to mind. But there is a PR advantasge to that tactic, as it conveys the impression that Google scientists are just not satisfied with services that we lowly consumers think are fairly splendid, as if they have more tricks up their sleeves than we’ll ever know. The article is wrong about at least one statement: “Yahoo is receiving acclaim for some of its innovations, like local search that allows users to see a map that pinpoints the location of the area or business they are searching for.” True, but the implication is that Google does not deploy such a map. In fact, Google Local puts the pinpointing map directly on the search results page, whereas Yahoo! inconveniently removes it to a separate page.

At any rate, both companies are fairly shameless in their marketing responses to each other’s innovations. Neither is asleep at the wheel, and my best hope is that they ignore each other better. Otherwise the risk is that they’ll become clones of each other in the mad dash for market share.

A9 Local Slideshows Become an Art Form (Tuesday, February 01, 01:59 AM EST)

This is taking off even faster than I anticipated in my Blastoff post. A9’s new Yellow Pages section, featuring many millions of street photos, has become the target of a certain type of virtual joy riding. There is an undeniable fascination in prowling around major cities through the A9 interface—the photos sequences do not approach movie-frame rates, but are closely enough spaced to present a visual tour of neighborhoods. People-watching is part of the appeal, as anyone walking along the street as A9’s photo vehicle made its pass was captured for posterity. In fact, a privacy issue is emerging over that very fact. A9 fans are using Flickr to mount slide shows and assemble photo montages.

Hungering for the here and now (Thursday, February 03, 04:06 PM EST)

All in a year's work (Wednesday, February 02, 01:39 AM EST)