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3 ways Bing is ahead of Google
"This morning, Microsoft employees demonstrated a long list of enhancements to their Bing search engine at a press event at the company’s San Francisco office.
That office is next door to the city’s newest, splashiest, most expensive shopping center, the Westfield, and after sitting through the Bing demo, I’m sure Microsoft parked its employees next to a mall on purpose. Many new Bing improvements, such as maps with interactive driving directions, are mere catch-up to what Google has done for years. But others, driven by heavy market research aimed at finding ways Google is missing the mark, show how very much the kind of people who use the Internet has changed since a few years ago.
In short, the people who use search engines today are nothing like the people who build them. Online, the normals have finally displaced the geeks.
Here are three ways the new audience’s demands differ from the early adopters.
1. Don’t give me a link to the answer. Just give me the answer.
2. Pictures are better than words.
3. I’m totally fine with getting search results from a Microsoft database of multimedia celebrity flash cards instead of from the entire Internet, if it tells me what I want to know."
With Redesign, Reuters.com Goes After Consumer Audience | paidContent
"Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) believes this is a good time for a major overhaul of its consumer-facing website. In addition to the bolder logo—red background replaces the washed-out gray look—the new Reuters.com went live tonight with a less-cluttered homepage and a slimmed-down toolbar, which now presents a choice of News & Markets, Sectors & Industry and Analysis & Opinion, and a long list of topic sections within each. That last category will get a lot more attention from the company in the wake of its closing on its roughly $20 million (£12 million) acquisition of financial commentary site Breakingviews. All of which is intended to recast the company at time when the terminal business is growing slowly."
Introducing Google Public DNS: A new DNS resolver from Google
"Today, as part of our efforts to make the web faster, we are announcing Google Public DNS, a new experimental public DNS resolver.
The DNS protocol is an important part of the web's infrastructure, serving as the Internet's "phone book". Every time you visit a website, your computer performs a DNS lookup. Complex pages often require multiple DNS lookups before they complete loading. As a result, the average Internet user performs hundreds of DNS lookups each day, that collectively can slow down his or her browsing experience.
We believe that a faster DNS infrastructure could significantly improve the browsing experience for all web users. To enhance DNS speed but to also improve security and validity of results, Google Public DNS is trying a few different approaches that we are sharing with the broader web community through our documentation:"
Learn the five secrets of innovation - CNN.com
"Coming up with brilliant, game-changing ideas is what makes the likes of Apple's Steve Jobs so successful, and now researchers say they have identified the five secrets to being a great innovator
Professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs, that included interviews with high-profile entrepreneurs including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers.
In an article published in December's Harvard Business Review the researchers identified five skills that separate the blue-sky innovators from the rest -- skills they labeled associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and discovering."
How to Fix Your Relatives' Terrible Computer
Drop your bags, grab a drink, and grab the XP CD—it's time for the holiday ritual of fixing up your relatives' computer. Here are some tips and downloads to keep handy while you're cursing all the auto-starting crapware.
Google Turning Times Square Into A Giant Voice Search Experiment On Black Friday
"Google, Verizon, Reuters, and R/GA are teaming up to take over the largest displays on Times Square to allow for a giant Google Search by voice experiment/Droid advertisement."
What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
"Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. Traditionally we take stock of the things that we’re thankful for on this day each year. And I realized that one of those things is Steve Jobs. I’m thankful that he returned to Apple in 1997 and did the things he has done since. It wasn’t at all a certainty that he would ever return to the company that he cofounded two decades earlier. In fact, it was only luck and coincidence that pushed him back there. "
Google provides Free Wi-Fi in 47 Airports and Virgin Atlantic flights
"Google got into the Holiday spirit several weeks early. The search giant didn’t want to just give boring old toys or gadgets, though. No, when Google does something, it does it on a wide scale. Perhaps that’s why they gave holiday travelers the gift of free Wi-Fi in 47 U.S. airports and free Wi-Fi on Virgin America flights.
The technology behemoth made clear today that it’s not done giving, though. Google (Google) has just added an additional seven airports in its free Wi-Fi program. They are: Washington-Dulles, Washington-Reagan National, Phoenix, Columbus (Ohio), Albany, Boise, and Asheville (North Carolina).
Don’t forget: in addition to free Wi-Fi, Google is also matching donations made in these airports to Engineers Without Borders, One Economy Corporation, and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, so you can do your part to give as well."
Logitech Takes on Cisco, buys video conferencing device maker, LifeSize, for $405M
Logitech, a Swiss maker of peripherals for computers and digital consumer devices, is buying 6-year-old Austin, Texas-based video conferencing device maker LifeSize Communications for $405 million in cash. It makes high-definition video conferencing systems that use standard broadband connections and IP technologies to connect distributed offices and locations. The deal will put Logitech in competition with Cisco Systems and Tandberg, a Norwegian video conferencing company that Cisco wants to buy for some $3 billion. LifeSize currently has over 9,000 customers and is sold across the world. In a previous post, Stacey pointed out that Cisco’s Telepresence gear “provides an immersive HD experience, is expensive, and is aimed squarely at the high end of the market, where it competes with services such as HP’s Halo. Tandberg gear, on the other hand, is cheaper and aimed at the middle market.”
Apple’s iTunes Pitch: TV for $30 a Month
"Would you pay $30 a month to watch TV via iTunes?
That’s the pitch Apple has been making to TV networks in recent weeks. The company is trying to round up support for a monthly subscription service that would deliver TV programs via its multimedia software, multiple sources tell me.
Apple (AAPL) isn’t tying the proposed service to a specific piece of hardware, like its underwhelming Apple TV box, or its long-rumored tablet/slate device. Instead, it is presenting the offer as an extension of its iTunes software, which already has a huge installed base: A year ago, Apple said it had 65 million iTunes customer accounts."
Google Equals Apple In Value. And Vice Versa!
"People often compare market capitalization (current share price times the number of shares outstanding) for public companies as an indicator of success / failure, and one surpassing the other as a sign that one is overtaking the other, regardless of whether they’re actually full-fledged competitors or not.
So here’s a fun fact to start off the week with: the market cap for both Google and Apple are currently tied at about $170 billion after Friday’s market close."
Oracle's takeover of Sun clouded with uncertainty | guardian.co.uk
"Oracle hasn't done enough to calm the concerns of EU regulators over its take over of Sun Microsystems, and now a filing in Russia has cast some uncertainty over whether Oracle is stepping back from the deal. Oracle filed a request with Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service to withdraw its competition filing for the take over.
However, a commenter points out a story at PC World magazine's site in which Oracle provides details about how it plans to develop some of Sun's technologies. That's not really the kind of talk from a company looking to walk away from a take over. "
How to capture vibrant fall foliage with your digital camera | Digital Cameras & Camcorders | ZDNet.com
"Fall (or autumn, for many of you) is my favorite season of the year, particularly because of the crisp weather and beautiful falling leaves. Capturing the vibrancy of the foliage can easily be done with either a pocket camera or digital SLR. Here are five tips to get you started:"
U.S. Air Force using airborne lasers as high-speed, wireless data links - SmartPlanet
"U.S. Air Force jets and drones could soon send high-quality video and audio of the battlefield wirelessly using high-bandwidth lasers.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research says it has conducted experiments to transmit data optically, without interference, across long distances up to 22 miles."
Spark IM Client - Open source Realtime Collaboration
"Spark is an Open Source, cross-platform IM client optimized for businesses and organizations. It features built-in support for group chat, telephony integration, and strong security. It also offers a great end-user experience with features like in-line spell checking, group chat room bookmarks, and tabbed conversations.
Combined with the Openfire server, Spark is the easiest and best alternative to using un-secure public IM networks. "
Openfire - OpenSource Collaboration Server from JIVE
"Openfire is a real time collaboration (RTC) server licensed under the Open Source GPL. It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP (also called Jabber). Openfire is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers rock-solid security and performance."
L.A. votes to "Go Google"; pressure shifts to Google and the cloud
"The Los Angeles City Council today voted unanimously to “Go Google,” approving a $7.25 million contract to outsource the city’s e-mail system to Google’s cloud and transition some 30,000 city employees to the cloud over the coming year,"
BBC NEWS | Health | Curry spice 'kills cancer cells'
"An extract found in the bright yellow curry spice turmeric can kill off cancer cells, scientists have shown.
The chemical - curcumin - has long been thought to have healing powers and is already being tested as a treatment for arthritis and even dementia.
Now tests by a team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre show it can destroy gullet cancer cells in the lab.
Cancer experts said the findings in the British Journal of Cancer could help doctors find new treatments.
Dr Sharon McKenna and her team found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. "
IBM WebSphere MQ Bridge for HTTP - REST Interface to Queues and Messages
"The WebSphere MQ Bridge for HTTP can provide simple access for Web 2.0, Web services and applications that don't require MQ clients."
For those who want to create a rich Web experience with AJAX and REST, the Bridge for HTTP offers a simple to way to access business data from core applications to present to Web users as well as to collect data from Web applications.
* Speeds and eases integration of new Web apps with enterprise applications and data
* Helps deliver richer content to Web users
* Provides a publish/subscribe data movement model for Web applications
* No MQ skills needed to access data on MQ
Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years
"Highlighted comments include:
* Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
* Today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.
* Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
* Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
* "We're starting to make signifigant money off of Youtube", content will move towards more video.
* "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."
* There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.
* "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"
* It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem."
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