MSN Virtual Earth (beta)

In the new mapping/satellite imagery frenzy, Microsoft launched this weekend its beta version of MSN Virtual Earth. First things first, Microsoft’s Earth is basically USA, with the rest of the world as we now it, not really covered, but, well, let’s give them credit and wait a little more on this, while it’s still a beta version.

Compared with Google Maps, I personally find it a little slower and most of satellite images a little blurried and darker, but I might have looked at the wrong places.

Considering the rumors around the web on this service, there’s more to come so all we have to do for now is wait for good things to happen:

The service is promised to provide:

• Satellite images with 45-degree-angle views of buildings and neighborhoods
• Satellite images with street map overlays
• Ability to add local data layers, such as showing local businesses or restaurants

PS Microsoft is still playing its own hide-and-seek game, with Apple this time as pointed in a BusinessWeek Weblog and leaves Apple headquarters out of Cupertino. Here’s Google’s version.

UPDATE: Microsoft said its new mapping service, made available free during the weekend, was still in its testing phase and includes some older, black-and-white photographs from October 1991. Uhh, Mr.Gates, we’re in 2005, remember??

Technorati&IceRocket Tags: Maps, MSN Virtual+Earth, Google maps

Search Engines War…ming-up

Latest Nielsen report on first 15 search engines user reach in December reveals the warm-up of the top search engines war.

Even more than that, it seems that the beginning of the year opened up new war fields, in what would be Search Engine War V.

As such, Google launched its Google Maps, Google Video Search, and also worth be mentioned the latest huge wave of Gmail invitations available. (Don’t forget also, the speculations that Google wants tto host Wikipedia to compete with MSN Search’s Encarta content and Yahoo, which accesses the Columbia Encyclopedia.)

Meanwhile, Yahoo included its Yahoo!Video Search in its frontpage and launched some beta tools: Yahoo!Contextual Search, Firefox Toolbar and Yahoo!Desktop Search.

We shouldn’t forget as well, the coming out of beta of MSN Search Engine which is accompanied by Microsoft’s biggest online campaign ever, with TV, print and outdoor placements in 25 countries. If we add to all these AskJeeves’s launch of MyJeeves beta, recent aquire of Bloglines as well as its plans to spend more than 40 percent more on marketing in 2005 than it did last year it’s obvious that we’re having a full war going on here.

UPDATE: Things happen as we speak on this subject. After the all-around spreaded rumours of a potentially Mozilla-Google collaboration that, after all, ended up with key Mozilla volunteers working now for Google, and the browser showcases Google search in its interface there’s it seems that Ask Jeeves and the Mozilla Foundation have begun discussions on the twin possibilities of a Firefox-based Jeeves browser and of donating Jeeves’ desktop search technology to the open-source grou. (via CNet News.com Ask Jeeves mulls Firefox-based browser)

Microsoft Geeks on Future of MSN Search

If you are interested in an insight into the future of search, search engines, online advertising, there’s an interesting interview of Robert Scoble with two of the geeks who work on making MSN Search better: Andy Edmonds, lead program manager, and Erik Selberg.

It’s a pretty big download to do, 213MB for a 57 minutes video, but it’s totally worth it, as Scoble puts it:

They talk about how the engine works, and what they’re doing to beat the competition. Watch me give them a bit of heck about being behind the other major engines. You’ll enjoy this frank talk from the team.

Scoble is part of the Channel9 MSDN Videos team producing educational and evangelist mini-films targeted towards students and professional developers.

PS For the fun of it, check out the browser that Microsoft geeks are using The best one, of course: Firefox.

Tags: MSN Search, Future of Search, Microsoft, Blog Tracker, Scoble

Google Steps in Fighting Splogs

Following the latest buzz in the blogosphere, spam blogs in the Blogger.com system, Google steps in and address the issue.

Here is an excerpt of the article Google: Kill Blogspot Already, that started all this buzz:

Suggestion, Google? As bold as this might sound, you should institute an authentication system – a captcha of sorts – for every single post that gets sent through your Blogger service. This means that there’s no more easy rides for the idiots out there who are killing your baby and the blogosphere. The user logs in, enters their post, then has to jump through a captcha hoop – much like commenters have to do on Blogger.com these days. It’s a simple suggestion, and one that you really, really, really, REALLY oughta consider.

As such, Google followed the suggestion and introduced captchas word verification, for posting or editing posts in blogger system.

Blog Tracker from Technorati

Checking the referrals on one of my blogs this morning I stumped upon a curious link to http://tbt.technorati.com/ which lead me to a login page titled Technorati Blog Tracker.

So, is Technorati preparing to launch a blog reader/tracker? I checked the net around only to find a couple of references on the subject. First, was a Business Week online’s interview with David Sifry, Technorati’s CEO, in which he mentioned something about a new service that was supposed to be launched in August:

we’re unveiling a new service in August that’s currently in beta testing that’s geared toward professionals — people who need a deeper view of a company or its products, such as PR people, people in marketing or advertising, financial analysts. [Basically,] people who need to track buzz, how it changes over time, who are the influencers who is talking about their company or their product. These will be subscription products

Also I found some other references on the subject in Joseph Scott’s Blog and Datamining. I am, honestly, looking forward on this, as recently launched Google Reader is quite disappointing and Bloglines seems to be stuck in terms of providing more customization or functionality to its service.

Tags:Blog Tracker, Technorati, Blog Reader

State of the Blogosphere, October 2005

David Sifry of Technorati posted the State of the Blogosphere as of October 2005. While it’s true, the data and graphs are referring to the blogs monitored by Technorati only, the information resulted are pretty interesting.

• the blogosphere doubled again in the beginning of October, reaching 19.6 Million weblogs
• the scary splog (spam blogs) phenomenon seems to be not that scary, at least not yet, with only 2 to 8 percent of new weblogs fake or spam blogs
• London bombings and Katrina keep the top posting days in history so far, each with numbers of daily posts more than double than the US Election day last year, and Live 8 event is placed third.
• The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, with no signs of letup in growth
• About 70,000 new weblogs are created every day
• About a new weblog is created each second
• Between 700,000 and 1.3 Million posts are made each day
• About 33,000 posts are created per hour, or 9.2 posts per second
• An additional 5.8% of posts (or about 50,000 posts/day) seen each day are from spam or fake blogs, on average

You can find the link to the full PPT file presented by Sifry at the Web 2.0 on October 6, 2005, here.

Tags: State of the Blogosphere, blogosphere, blogs, postingvolume, spamblog, statistics

AOL – Weblogs Inc Deal Revisited

As day passed, news started to flow, making Weblogs Inc. buyout by AOL the news of the week at least, but certainly a story that will keep the blogosphere busy for a while and will throw bloggers in long debates on the subject.

First of all, some more interesting aspects on the deal itself. It seems like bloggers of the Weblogs Inc network found this out from another blog (jeez, this is sort of funny). Then Darren Rowse from ProBlogger broke in and reveiled some more details of the deal:

• WIN are selling to increase the resources that they couldn’t provide otherwise (offices, technology, people, infrastructure) as well as extra traffic.
• Nothing is changing – in terms of management which will continue to run WIN as an independently operated AOL company
• WIN headlines will start appearing on AOL home page, netscape, AIM etc
• Bloggers will need to sign a new contract shortly which will allow bloggers to own their own content for offline use
• The contract will contain other features yet to be announced that are favorable to bloggers
• There is no increase in pay mentioned but allusions to more money in the network due to the deal

On the other side Darren mentions that reaction from WIN bloggers is for the most part very positive with the news that Jason staying on, while a blogger from the network mentioned this morning:

I’m not wearing any damn AOL tshirt, and I sure as hell aint telling anyone how much I love their service.

As for myself, while I do believe the part with the t-shirt, I won’t be so sure about the last part of its sentence on the long run, and this kind of things don’t make me be so thrilled about this deal.  I really expect to see a lot of cross-promotion between the network and AOL owned offline and online titles, and that will be probably the least that might happen.

I have to agree more with Nick Denton of Gawker Media who quickly denied false rumors that the Gawker Media blog network is currently for sale:

The acquisition of WIN by AOL is exhilirating news, in many respects, most of which I shouldn’t list here. For what it’s worth, Gawker isn’t for sale. The whole point about blogs is that they’re not part of big media. Consolidation defeats the purpose. It’s way too early.

Without denying the business aspects of the deal and the huge amount of money, for a 2 years old company, that Weblogs Inc. got I also have to admit I tend to agree more with Denton on this. I’m still found of weblogs as independent media, with no direct connection with the big-sharks companies.

More, it seems like there’s a bubble smell in the air:

John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly opened the second edition of the Web 2.0 conference this afternoon with an exchange along these lines: Battelle said that last year, the mood at the conference was simply, “We made it” — we survived the Internet industry’s dark winter. This year, he said, it’s more like, “Something really important is going on — let’s not screw it up.” O’Reilly added: “We are definitely running the risk of another hype cycle.” (via)

More on the bubble thing:
Techdirt: And Now Comes the Real Blog Bubble
MobHappy: Weblogs Inc Sells to AOL for $25 million

Tags: AOL, Weblogs Inc, Calacanis, Gawker Media, Nick Denton

AOL buys Weblogs Inc.

It seems that big sharks media companies couldn’t stay away from the blogging remarkable development and they decided to step in. As I’m writing here, there’s almost sure that AOL is about to make the first move, buying Weblogs Inc, the blog media company founded by Jason Calacanis (pictured at We Media conference today) and Brian Alvey. The deals is said to be between $20m and $35m.

The other side of the story? Blog networks grew fast and big enough to get big media company’s attention. Weblogs Inc. have had an exponential trajectory, with sites like Engadget, Autoblog, BloggingBaby, and others. In total, the company has about 130 bloggers, with about 15 full time employees, is running more than 75 weblogs and hit the $1 million annual mark earlier this year through Google AdSense alone.

As if this is not enough, rumors around are talking about News Corp approaching Nick Denton’s Gawker Media and while others are talking about SixApart network.

I don’t know if all these are good or bad news, but for sure it is a blog media revolution, so to speak, and we’ll probably see things changing in the next few months in the blogosphere.

Technorati tags: AOL, Weblogs Inc, Calacanis, Gawker Media

Top 100 Best Products of 2005

PC World Magazine, released (quite early I would say) the 100 Best Products of 2005. We’re talking about IT of course. Actually the top is divided in 10 sections: PCs and Peripherals, Monitors and TVs, Office Software, Digital Photography, Security, Printing and Publishing, Storage and Backup, Mobile Tools, Web and Consumer Electronics.

Is interesting to notice that giants as Yahoo didn’t make it in the top 100. It’s true the most talked new Yahoo product (or upgraded) is supposed to come this autumn, and I’m talking about the new Yahoo!Mail here, and this is one of the reasons I say it’s really early to call it the 2005 top. Also Microsoft has only one presence in the top with its Windows Media Player 10 on the 47th place. Dell is leading, in terms of number of presences, with 6 products among the top 100, followed by Apple with 5 products.

Here is the top 10:

1. Mozilla Firefox – Web Browser
2. Google Gmail – Web Mail
3. Apple Mac OS X Version 10.4 (Tiger) – Operating System
4. Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router and Notebook Network Card – Wireless Networking
5. Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW – 24-Inch Wide-Screen LCD
6. Alienware Aurora 5500 – Performance PC
7. Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive – Portable Hard Drive
8. Skype – VoIP Service
9. Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT – Digital SLR Camera
10. PalmOne Treo 650 – PDA Phone

and some extras:

16.  Google – Search Engine
28.  Mozilla Thunderbird – E-Mail Program
33.  The New York Times on the Web – Web Site
51.  Flickr.com – Photography Site
60.  Wikipedia – Online Resource
88.  Opera 8 – Web Browser

Read the full review article in the PC Magazine: The 100 Best Products of 2005

Tags: 2005 Best Products

Google Seach Tips

Another excellent post on Google Blogoscoped Blog listing up more than 25 tips and tricks on using Google search engine and getting the results to be closer to what you’re searching for and doing it in an easier way:

• A quote/ phrase search can be written with both quotations ["like this"] as well as a minus in-between words, [like-this]
• Google has a lesser known “numrange” operator which can be helpful. Using e.g. [2000..2005] (that’s two dots inbetween two numbers) will find 2000, 2001, 2002 and so on until 2005.
• Google’s define-operator allows you to look up word definitions. For example, [define:css] yields “Short for Cascading Style Sheets” and many more explanations. You can trigger a somewhat “softer” version of the define-operator by entering “what is something”, e.g. [what is css].
• Google has some exciting back-end AI to allow you to find just the facts upong entering simple questions or phrases like [when was Einstein born?] or [einstein birthday] (the answer to both of these queries is “Albert Einstein – Date of Birth: 14 March 1879”)
• You can use the wildcard operator in phrases. This is helpful for finding song texts – let’s say you forgot a word or two, but you remember the gist, as in ["love you twice as much * oh love * *"] – and similar tasks

Check all of them reading the full post.

Technorati tag: Google+Search+Tips