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Opera
Goes Global With Mini Browser
The Opera Mini browser, complete with integrated Google search, has been released
globally and will work on virtually any mobile phone capable of downloading it.
Performancing
Updates Blogging Tool
The Firefox extension Performancing for Firefox received an update to 1.1, adding
several new features and squashing several bugs in version 1.0.1.
Ask
Jeeves For Pictures Too
A new search engine from Ask Jeeves lets users delve into the world of image search,
via a new dedicated picture search technology from the company.
Google
Local, News Updated
More pictures means more reasons to enjoy Google Local, while Google News loses
a notable part of its name after nearly four years. Google News has left beta.
According to Google, that is; the little BETA...
Senate,
Hollywood To Crush Next iPod
Apple will have to think really different if Gordon Smith's (R-Ore) reintroduction
of the broadcast flag gains traction in Congress, as fair use stands to be replaced
by "customary historic use."
Google's
Top Three Take $1 Salaries
Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page repeat their base salaries of $1 for
2006, just as they took in 2005; don't be in too much of a hurry to launch SaveGooglers.com
and start a fundraiser, though.
Yahoo
Staffer Predicts Google Fall
One diviner of the inscrutable GOOG has peered out from the Yahoo enclave in Sunnyvale
and forecast a dire fourth quarter earnings report from Google.
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A Google search can be a good barometer of how pervasive some stereotypes are in the world. If a search spider could sum up a nationality, a race, a religion in a few words, what would it say? What are Americans known for? What are the Europeans like?
Editor's Note: Do you think Google search results describing
various nationalities is a good measure of world prejudice/sentiments? Are the
results fair? Discuss at WebProWorld.
 Google
Blogoscoped's Philipp Lenssen, a German resident, recently put together "The
Prejudice Map," a world map with descriptions of world citizens based on Google
searches. Using search queries like ["Americans are known for"] and ["Germans
are known for"], Lenssen extracted descriptive phrases from the results.
According to the map he created, Americans are known for their strength, dislike of walking, geniality and hospitality, guarding their rights, and anti-Muslim politics; Russians are known for brutality, passion, tough negotiations, and soulfulness; and Mexicans are viewed as friendly, resourceful, rule-bending, and foul-mouthed.
On the whole, these results spin positively (save for the occasional unpunctual Bolivian and "extremely unclean" Brit-see map).
That positive spin is much different than what one may find from Google Suggest, a feature in beta that completes your keyword queries based on the most popular searches. Intended to make searching quicker and easier with real time artificial intelligence, Google Suggest's automatic guessing about the completion of some phrases may leave your jaw agape at the seemingly inherent negative viewpoints out there.
Type in [Europeans are] into the query bar and you'll see the world may often describe them as stupid, lazy cowards. Americans don't fare much better. Beginning a query with [Americans are] finishes with them being fat, ignorant terrorists. And it doesn't shy away from race, either. The same experiment works for completing phrases about blacks, whites, Jews---you name it.
The writer of the blog questineverything believes the auto-complete function is a reflection on the world society, not on Google.
"Google is not to blame. They are only the medium; we are the message," reads the weblog.
Google Suggest more closely matches Wikipedia's account of negative national stereotypes, but the optimist can hope that Lenssen's more positive list is a better measure of world sentiment.
About
the Author:
Jason is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Fourteen Percent Of Internet Visits ITunes
 By
David Utter
Many more visitors beat a path to the iTunes front door, with traffic increasing
dramatically year-over-year from December 2004 to December 2005.
Nielsen//NetRatings published a statement on the growth of iTunes traffic. An audience of 6.5 million in December 2004 became a massive crowd of 20.7 million visitors in December 2005. The research company said iTunes touches 14 percent of the active Internet universe.
"The rapid growth of iTunes is an important phenomenon in the online media marketplace," said Jon Gibs, Nielsen//NetRatings director of media analytics, in the report. "Consumers have clearly indicated that they are eager to control their own music libraries, one song at a time."
If iTunes were a conventional site publisher, marketers and ad agencies would be pummeling each other for a spot in line in front of Apple's headquarters on 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino. The demographics cited by Nielsen//NetRatings contain numbers that make advertisers' heads turn like Linda Blair's did in "The Exorcist":
Teens are disproportionately represented among iTunes users; 12 to 17 year olds are nearly twice as likely to visit the iTunes Web site and use the application as the average Internet user. iTunes users are also more likely to be male; the site's traffic is 54 percent male and 46 percent female.
Nielsen//NetRatings also offered some interesting brand information about iTunes users. They are most likely to drive a Volkswagen automobile, drink hard cider, read Wired and Rolling Stone magazines, and watch Cartoon Network and BBC America, the report said.
About
the Author:
David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Yahoo Refreshes Their Search Index
While Yahoo may have waved the white flag in the battle with Google for the lead
search market share, that doesn't mean they are going to let their current product
decay and waste away into another Kozmo.com
venture. In fact, Yahoo is doing the exact opposite with their search index.
Reports have surfaced about a large update currently underway at the various Yahoo
datacenters. Even though a large portion of the ecommerce world focuses on Google
and the traffic they send, it is absolutely foolhardy to ignore what's going on
at Yahoo.... even if they did capitulate to Google.
Be sure and confirm whether or not Yahoo's update affected your previous rankings,
because while they may not be shooting for number 1, Yahoo is a major player (and
will be for the foreseeable future) in the search industry. Ignore these changes
at your own risk.
|| Chris||
New
Yahoo Update?
I think there is some type of index update going on. I've been complaining that I've seen no activity from Yahoo for almost two months. As of last night, Yahoo had actually indexed a number of pages that I've created / updated within the last week.
They've fixed some url's that were changed, and seem to be updating a number of pages on our site. It does not appear that they've done a full index, but it seems like it's getting close.
I use their site explorer to see how the updates on my site are going and they seem to be hunting for lots of great stuff on the site.
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