Archive for April, 2007
This post is brought to you by: Cheap
International Calling with Tel3Advantage, VoIP, Phone Cards and More.
Some new features have been added to the Yahoo! Site Explorer. The biggest addition is the support of Mobile Feeds - publishers can now submit mobile sites and feeds to Site Explorer, which enables them to get their mobile sites into Yahoo! oneSearch and gain access to Yahoo!’s mobile user base. Yahoo!’s mobile crawler will consume these feeds to help it find new pages. The feeds can be:
- RSS 0.9, 1.0 and 2.0, such as CNN Top Stories
- Sitemaps
- Atom 0.3 and Atom 1.0 such as, Yahoo! Search Blog
- A text file with a list of URLs, each URL at the start of a new line
- A single webpage
Another new feature is the ‘Report Spam’ button, that appears when you are exploring your authenticated site. It allows you to submit a spam report, if you find a suspicious inlink, such as an off-topic link or a suspected linkfarm.
April 10th, 2007
Back in October Yahoo! launched the new Yahoo! Bookmarks and Yahoo! Toolbar to make it easier for users to save, organize, and find their favorite websites. Key features included the ability to easily organize with folders or tags, and the ability to instantly find bookmarks directly from the Yahoo! Toolbar searchbox. Today, Yahoo! is announcing the general availability, on Firefox and IE, with a few new updates including integration with popular Yahoo! properties, personalized recommendations for suggested bookmarks and enhanced features for organizing and managing bookmarks.
April 7th, 2007
Yahoo! came up with a new search service, called Alpha, earlier this week:
“Whilst aggregating feeds on one page is nothing new, we wanted to take a federated search concept one step further. With this beta, we have introduced personalisation elements that not only allow users to customise their view, but also to add their favourite search service (at least those who syndicate their search results via OpenSearch RSS).
We also decided to add a sharing element for logged in users of the site. Now, if you decide to share your personalised url with others, they can view and effectively use the search configuration you have developed.
We thought the idea was good enough to develop further into a public beta site and get a few ideas from the Australian search community at large.”
You can test the new search at http://au.alpha.yahoo.com.
April 6th, 2007
Today, Google is launching My Maps, a new feature of Google Maps that enables users to quickly and easily create custom maps for personal use or sharing through search. With this release, creating maps mashups is now as simple as pointing and clicking.
From chronicling trips, to sharing tips and documenting academic endeavors, My Maps empowers users to create content-rich maps that are relevant to their interests, expertise, or personal needs. With My Maps users can:
- Mark locations on a map from a library of icons
- Draw lines and shapes to highlight paths and areas
- Add text, photos, or YouTube/Google Videos to a map
- Add HTML for further personalization
- View their maps in Google Earth
Users can choose to make their My Maps unlisted or public. Unlisted maps are intended for personal use or sharing with friends and family by email. Public My Maps will be accessible through Google Maps search along with maps shared by other web sites in the KML format. My Maps users can store maps they have created or viewed when signed into their Google Account.
We expect that public maps created by our users will further enrich the Google Maps and Earth search experience by providing additional rich, local, and visual information about the world from our best source - our users.
My Maps is available in 10 countries and can be accessed on the Google Maps homepage at: http://maps.google.com.
April 6th, 2007
The Yahoo! Search Blog announced a Search Index Update today:
“We are in the process of rolling out some changes to our search results. As usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index throughout this process. This update will roll out this evening and will be complete very soon.”
The blog post also contains a list of Yahoo! speakers for the SES in New York next week.
April 5th, 2007
The Live Team has announced some cool new enhancements for the Live Search Maps service:
Firefox support for 3D mapping
Zooming around the virtual landscape is not just for Internet Explorer Users any more; users of Firefox 1.5 or later can click on the 3D button at http://maps.live.com and will be prompted to download and install the plug-in.
Ratings and Reviews of Business Listings and Details page enhancements
You can now read reviews of businesses entered by other users, as well as adding your own ratings and reviews for any business in Live Maps. Some businesses may have additional reviews from Judysbook.com and citysearch.com.
Address-Only Geocoding
This is a useful feature if you are looking up a lot of addresses in the same city, or your map view is already around the city you are searching. In the past you always had to enter a full street address with city, state or postcode information like this - 1200 madison ave, new york, NY. Now, if your map view is already in NY, you can just enter the street address as 1200 Madison Ave, and Live maps will default to finding it in NY. Â
There are some more new features, you can find detailed info on the Live Maps Blog.
April 4th, 2007
Google announced to deliver Google TV ads today. Working closely with their partners, EchoStar and Astound Cable, Google is currently running a trial to deliver better ads to viewers and help advertisers, operators and programmers more efficiently buy, schedule, deliver and measure ads on television.
Google’s main targets for these experiment are:
“Deliver more relevant ads to viewers and provide better reporting for advertisers
Advances in set-top-box technologies make it possible to report aggregate statistics on how many times an ad was viewed and whether it was watched through to the end. As part of this trial, we will be working with partners to use aggregate, anonymized set-top-box metrics to deliver timely and accurate viewing reports. Advertisers can use this data to understand the effectiveness of their TV ad campaigns and use this information to provide more relevant ads to viewers.
Bring more advertisers to TV and help inventory owners
With our AdWordsâ„¢ and AdSenseâ„¢ advertising programs we have seen the benefits of the long tail and we think we can apply these principles to help grow the TV advertising industry. Our goal is to extend the reach and visual power of this medium to include more advertisers, large and small, and help monetize more TV programming with relevant ads.
Create efficiencies in the existing model
With Google TV ads, the entire process is automated – from planning the campaign to uploading and serving the ad to reporting on its effectiveness. Like our AdWords advertising program, Google TV ads are bought using an auction model and through a single online interface that is already familiar to agencies and advertisers. Advertisers can target by demographic, daypart and channel and pay only for actual impressions delivered. Pricing is on a CPM basis. Because the entire process is automated and online, advertisers can plan their TV ad campaigns efficiently all year long. The flexibility of this model also allows advertisers to make changes to their campaigns as often and as quickly as they like.”
April 3rd, 2007
This post is brought to you by: Light Bulbs and Fixtures
Yahoo! has announced a new Web API for their Email service. The Web API is accessible via SOAP and JSON-RPC, and offers developers access, to the Yahoo! Mail core functions:
“With the Yahoo! Mail Web Service, you can connect to the core mail platform to perform typical mailbox tasks for premium users such as list messages and folders, and compose and send messages (you can also build mail preview tools for free users with limited Web Service functionality). In other words, developers outside of Yahoo! can now build mail tools or applications on the same infrastructure we use to build the highly-scaled Yahoo! Mail service that serves nearly 250 million Yahoo! Mail users today.”
Yahoo! Mail Web Service developers can also earn referral commissions by building compelling applications targeted at premium email users. For a trial period, Yahoo! Mail is offering an incentive for developers to build applications using the full functionality available for premium Yahoo! Mail accounts. Specifically, Yahoo! Mail is currently providing a commission of $10.00 for every new Yahoo! Mail Plus account referred by approved developers.
April 2nd, 2007
Next Posts
Previous Posts
