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Showing posts from September, 2010

Facebook and Skype on Social Network VOIP Deal

Rivaling Google’s VOIP tools, Facebook will integrate along with Skype to let users leverage the VOIP giant’s PC to PC calling capabilities. Facebook and Skype are planning an integration that would allow their users to send SMS’s and make voice and video calls to friends and contacts through Skype. The users will be able to sign into Skype via Facebook Connect and allow them to sign into third party sites with the Facebook accounts. The integration is expected to happen in Skype 5.0 and will be launched in October. However, this report hasn’t been confirmed yet either from Facebook and Skype. They are keeping the whole thing a hush hush matter. Web users today are spending a lot of time in Facebook socializing rather than searching on Google. Even though Facebook has over 500 million users, they still want to improve the stickiness quotient as they are progressing its social advertising capabilities. To achieve this, Facebook has to give more emphasis on their communication capabiliti

Google on a Mission to make Display Ads more Exciting

Google has set itself on a mission to make its display ads more interesting. The search giant still has high hopes of bringing its display ad business to the next level. Google has said that in the next five years, the display ads will be more social, which means people will be able to put comments and share it with friends on social networks or even subscribe to them. Users will be able to sign up to receive notifications when there are similar ads available to watch. 50% of the display ad campaign will have video ads where the advertisers will pay based on the number of times it is viewed and another 50% of ads will use real time bidding technology. Google has also demonstrated various new technologies alongside which includes new video ad formats for its YouTube service, called “TrueView”. The YouTube ad formats will be launched later this year and it will give viewers the option to skip the ad if they are not interested to watch it or choose from the multiple ads displayed and watc

Google Chrome to Phone

Now Chrome to phone is a must have for phones running Android 2.2 ("Froyo"). The utility allows anyone to send a Webpage from Chrome browser directly to a phone and have it opened by using an appropriate application. Like sending directions from Google Map by using Maps app and a standard web page will open in the Android web browser. This is a great way you can use to share information between a computer and a mobile device. To clip text from the web page, you can simply highlight the text and send it to your phone and it will be copied in the device clipboard. For dialing a number from a web page, highlight it and send it to the device and it will open the “phone” screen with the dialed number. You don’t need a maximum amount of set up. You only need to download the Chrome to Phone extension for Chrome on the desktop and it will ask you to log into the account used with your phone. You can do the same with the Chrome to your phone app on the phone and run it. The app doesn’

Google’s Doodle – Marking the 12th Birthday of the Search Giant

It’s Google’s 12th birthday today and the search giant is celebrating over a decade long of search engine dominance. They have marked their 12 years of existence with a Doodle painting of a cake on the home page, which is done by Los Angeles artist, ‘Wayne Thiebaud’. The company became a corporate on September 27, 1998 and from that moment began a gigantic journey that created an online phenomenon. Visitors are greeted with a picture of a cake on the search engine’s home page. The candle of the cake represents the ‘L’ in the Google logo. The Doodle this time is pretty simple and it doesn’t need any explanation. It’s a simple cake with the initials of the search giant. Though it is pretty simple as compared to the recent colored balls and playable Pacman doodle, which distracted a lot of users. The creativeness of Google’s Doodle is noteworthy. It does lighten up the home page but it also invokes a lot of curiosity in its users. The Doodles become more prominent when there is a celebrat

Google Chrome Web Store gets ready to roll

Though Google has officially announced that they are going to open the Chrome Web Store later this year, it seems they are in a hurry to launch it sooner. They are taking the steps to get ready to launch sooner than they have announced. Developers can hook their applications up to the Google Checkout merchant accounts and there is also a way to preview how the application will look like in the store when it is live. Google had announced in August that the Chrome Web Store would be launched in October this year but all the pieces are fitting together sooner than expected. The placeholder space for applications in the Chromium pops in and out of existence but the Web Store will be fully functional as it is a portion of the Extension online area. Google has also put out a set of guidelines for what images the developers will need while uploading the application for display in the Chrome Web Store. There are also guidelines for icons, screen shots, header background and promotional images,

Google Instant – A new innovation or not

Google Instant has been making waves across the Internet, and has also been making all the other search engines work harder to beat it down, but is it really a radical innovation that is changing the whole search experience? According to one industry expert, it is not a radical change. What you didn’t know is that Google Instant has naturally evolved from the search engine’s Suggest function, released in the year 2004. While the feature filters and alters the way you interact with search, it does not make any changes to the search results. This updated feature in the search engine has not incurred any changes in its ability to measure the search activity consistently. Google Instant can also predict if the search is for news, images, video and in turn, displays the best media type that is relevant to the search. But as compared to Google Classic, Google Instant will supersede as it is going through a global rollout. Google services received about 10.3 billion searches last month in the

Bing boosts social search with Twitter account suggestions

You will now find suggested Twitter accounts displayed on Microsoft’s Bing search engine. This account will allow users of its social search engine to subscribe or follow in the Twitter parlance based on the search queries made. To choose the account suggestion, Bing gives more value to a wide range of factors about its author like popularity, influence and the knowledge about the theme in question. Twitter is growing fast with more than 140 million accounts and to find interesting people to follow can be a hard effort. With the people recommendation from Bing’s Social, you will now be able to discover relevant and interested Twitter users based on the searches. If someone is searching for a celebrity, Bing might suggest the star’s official Twitter account, while if you search for a product, the suggestion will be for the manufacturer’s account and of the professionals. Bing is increasing its capability in the popular area of social search. The search engines are trying hard to help th

Cloud-Based Learning Engine Offered by Google

Google has launched a service, “Google Prediction API” for developers, that would help them pave a simple way to create a software that learns to handle incoming data. Just like the Google hosted algorithms could be trained for sorting out emails into categories for “praises” and “complaints” using a dataset that offers many examples of both types, similarly, in using API, the future emails can be screened by software and handled accordingly. Only few hundreds of developers have access to the service and they are already creating amazing things. The users come from different backgrounds and many want to opt for product recommendation. As a matter of fact, machine learning is not an easy feature to build into a software. There are different mathematical techniques and algorithms that work best for different kinds of data. You need specialized knowledge when it comes to machine learning to consider utilizing it in a product. Google’s service offers a machine learning black box, wherein t

New Twitter and How It Can Help your Business

Twitter is trying to start a new interface in the coming days and the updated version will include video and image sharing compatibilities, which will be integrated directly into a user’s streams. This makeover will give the millions of users a more sophisticated look. As compared to Twitter developers, who have been developing multimedia-sharing Twitter apps for some time, Twitter.com is actually far behind. The only changes made is the the third party apps like TwitVid, TwitPic and Twitgoo will be accessible directly from the Twitter.com making it more like Facebook. So, will the new Twitter affect the connection you have with your customers? Not too much. This new feature may make other Twitter desktop clients irrelevant. It will be easier to engage and interact with the customer base with so many info-sharing options that will be available. Multimedia is crucial in today’s marketing world to develop brands through social media and with Twitter partnering with Dailybooth, Justin.TV,

Bing is Coming up with a new trick against Google Instant

With Google Instant, it has fueled a new competition between all other major search engines. Now the competition is full on. New innovation has been accelerated in the search space with Bing. Google and Bing have been at each others throat, and have each been coming up with new technologies. The Google Instant went live last week, which changed the search page. Now Bing is not sitting idle, they are coming up with new interesting innovations to compete with Google. Microsoft has introduced some new features at the IE 9 launch event in San Francisco. Most of the features that Microsoft introduced rely upon CSS3 and HTML5, a little late to adopt. IE 9 is the only browser that can support Bing’s new features, but other browsers have supported this technology for years. Bing’s use of HTML5 tools is good news for the developers as it will speed up adoption of HTML5 compatible browsers. IE users are usually behind Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari users as they are totally new in adopting th

Facebook - The Most Visited Site in US than Google

Facebook has a lot of reasons to smile as it has been confirmed that it is the most popular website in the USA. They have surpassed even the Internet giant Google. According to the report, people spend 9.9% of their daily time, perusing through Facebook as compared to 9.6% for Google. This study also took into account Google’s various services like Youtube and Gmail. The report showed figures from August and found that users spend about 41.1 millions minutes in Facebook as compared to 39.8 million minutes on Google. The usage of Facebook is constantly growing and let’s not forget that Google has been trying hard to overthrow them using their not so lucky networking experience. Facebook accounted only less than 5% of all time spent online in USA only a year back and today, they are more than 10%. Google has yet to crack down Facebook in the social media world. Facebook now has over 500 million users while Google has still yet to make their networking sites work. Let’s see if Google Me i

SEO not affected by Google Instant

With Google Instant coming live, many people already made the speculation that SEO may be dead (again), but Google has made an important announcement that the Internet marketers shouldn’t change the SEO strategies to make up to their partially typed keywords. The Google Instant search will provide results for each query and letter typed based on the popularity trend. Now, these partially typed keywords seem to change the whole aspect of SEO or keyword research but Google has confirmed that they don’t have to do so. The Google Analytics team has said that the new Google Instant won’t change the search ranking so much and the search queries using the instant search will be tracked just like they have always been. Queries are measured on the predicted query versus the actual query and this has made it possible for the strategies not to be changed. The AdWords impressions are counted in the similar manner with an impression which is generated when you click on an ad or the link on the pag

Instant Search – Not Entirely a New Idea by Google

The Google Instant Search has made a new wave in the search world today, but come to think of it, it is not a new idea that they have developed. Yahoo had it years back and has since, chucked the idea. On 15th September, 2005, Yahoo had launched a search tool called the Yahoo Instant Search. Much like Google Instant, the Yahoo version depended on Ajax to make searches more quick. The Yahoo Instant Search, however, was never made available on the home page but the users could manually add it up to the home page at search.yahoo.com. Meanwhile, Yahoo engineers were working on a similar but separate search tool called Livesearch. The experiment resembled closely with Google’s Instant Search. The Livesearch was installed on Yahoo’s AlltheWeb search engine at livesearch.alltheweb.com in 2006. But what really happened to both Livesearch and Yahoo Instant Search? It is said that Yahoo really didn’t have the infrastructure to serve live as-you-type search results to all their users, which Googl

With Google Instant The Death of SEO Predicted AGAIN

When Google changes something, it brings chills down the spine in most SEO experts. They hate it when Google starts acting smart. The new feature, Google Instant, has become an instant debate with many search engine marketers. This has changed the total aspect of search results. Google Instant means no one will be able to see the same web and it has made optimizing a site almost next to impossible. We don’t know whether this has finally killed SEO, but definitely it has changed a lot of rules again. It marks one of the biggest changes in years to Google’s search engine technology. But, Google does keep changing on and on. Don’t they? And every time they do, they send every SE marketers on their toes on how they can perfect it before others do. So, why the big fuss over this new feature. If SEO experts have been surviving a major sea of changes that Google inflicted before, why not now. Bottom line, SEO is not dead. It’s still alive and trying to outsmart Google once again.

Google Instant – Making Searches Lively

The Google Instant is a new feature that Google added to dramatically reduce the amount of time that people spend on searching online. This feature saves time just by eliminating the keystrokes. As soon as you start typing, the homepage jump to the result page. You don’t have to enter the search button anymore when you finish typing and don’t need to spell out the whole title. The result will come automatically to you. This new interface also provides a drop down lists, suggesting different titles. You only have to click and the searches will be ready. This is not a new feature to the search giant and it is a standard feature in Bing and Yahoo. The suggestion is made based on the historical popular queries. Google love being different and this new feature is something that Yahoo and Bing haven’t tried yet. Google Instant puts the most popular searches and turn it into immediate search results. Google's vice president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer said: “We&#

Latest Google's Doodle Mystery

It is always interesting to see the designs of Google’s Doodle. You can say some of them are a masterpiece. Yesterday Google had unveiled a new logo and what’s great was that you could play along with it. "But it gradually recaptures its original color as you type into the search box." Google’s Doodle yesterday was a collection of colored balls which move away when you pass your mouse over them. When you put the mouse away, it settles down and form the Google logo. Unlike other Doodle’s this time it doesn’t appear to refer to anything in particular. The Google ball logo consists of a lot of HTML5. This is not the first time, Google has tried to do something different. In May 2010, they allowed internet users to play PacMan during the weekend on their homepage. This was selected to mark the 30th birthday of their classic arcade title. Yesterday’s doodle was fast, interactive and fun just like what Google is trying to make their search to be. Google hasn’t disclosed yet why th

Google Launching Sponsored Map Icons In Beta Mode

Web marketing solutions will be broaden as now Google is launching sponsored map icons in beta mode. Google always has a surprise for us every now and then. Their new innovations not only make sure they remain in the spotlight, but it also keeps us happy. People will have a great time reaching out for the Google map as now they will find sponsored map icons displayed on it. Now, company logos will appear on the map making the search more enjoyable. The sponsored map icons is now in beta stage and will be tested using big brands like HSBC, Public Storage, Target and Bank Of America. Well, Google loves to experiment first when they launch something new. Great just to see whether users response well or not. If this feature tunes well with the users, then it will be rolled out to other companies.The logo will simply replace some point of interest icons but it will not be displayed according to the query typed into the Google Maps. Companies will be charged CPM (Cost Per Impression) rather

Google Live Search – Good or Bad

Google has always believed in refining its search value but they have been receiving a mixed reaction from the users especially for search engine optimization experts, it’s a big headache every time a change comes in. Now a number of changes have taken place, which include changes to the dictionary listings, images section and the color of paid adverts. All these changes have been done to enhanced the user experience. Most welcomed the changes but few dread over anything new comes. There had been a lot of speculation about the testing of their latest dashboard tweak but we still don’t know whether this is just a test that’s going to be wasted just like Google’s Wave expedition or it might turn out to be successful. The latest test is a feature which alters the search result as you type but this clearly modifies the page providing instant page refinement instead of pressing the enter key each time a keyword phrase is changed. This sound quite efficient, but does it bring anything new to

Chrome Celebrates its 2nd Birthday with New Stable Release

Google’s Chrome is turning two and to celebrate the event they have released an updated version of its browser promising users with faster speed and a simplified interface. Google has stated in their blog that the new version of its browser will be three times faster regarding the JavaScript performance than before. The search giant has also been focusing on simplifying the chrome of its browser. They have fused the browser’s two menus into one, cleaned up the Omnibox and URL box, moved button locations and adjusted the color scheme. In recent search queries, Google has seen a drop down in their search results. Most users have left to a more better Bing and Yahoo. However, they are always working hard to make their services to the people faster and more user friendly. Be it the search engine or the browser. The Chrome is getting a makeover with faster results, improved graphic performance and with Chrome Web Store, they hope to make the browser much easier to find and use better applic

Is Google losing its Grip in the Search Dominance

People have been keeping a close watch over the search market, and from the last few months they have seen Bing and Yahoo gaining their market share. But what you can notice also is that Google seems to be losing its share. In July, Google lost its market share to Bing and now a notable shift is that Yahoo is getting an increase in its search query as well for the first time since January. As you could see, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing have fused together in an effort to gain in the search realm. Yahoo’s organic search results are now powered by Bing’s algorithm in Canada and the USA. Some of the facts that were collected are: The number of Google users have declined steadily during this year and the figure is steady in recent months. Some of the users are moving to other search engines and most likely they are using mobile search and vertical search. Bing saw a decline in the search a bit earlier in the year but it has increased steadily since March. There were more searchers conducting