Archive for August, 2007
Today Google launched a new feature in Google Earth that provides that same real time traffic information that people have come to rely on in Google Maps. By enabling the “Traffic” layer in Google Earth, you can see a real time picture of traffic conditions to help plan a route or just check out how bad traffic might be in a city that you’re exploring. It’s useful information to have at your fingertips whether you’re house hunting or just browsing.
August 21st, 2007
The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have added inline audio samples to their audio search feature:
“Now on Yahoo! Audio Search you can play samples of millions of songs. The new inline player provides instant playback right next to the search results. There are no intrusive pop-ups or multiple browser windows to manage — only a 30-second, uninterrupted instant audio experience. And, there’s also a ‘Select Preferred Audio Service’ feature that helps you link to your favorite audio provider directly from the results page.
From Cliff Richard to Norah Jones, search for your favorite songs, artists, albums, and lyrics and listen to the sample playback instantly. All you need to do is click on the ‘Play Sample’ button next to the track you want to hear.”
You can access Yahoo! Audio Search from www.yahoo.com by selecting the ‘Audio’ option from the ‘more’ drop down menu.
August 20th, 2007
Today, at a gathering of education leaders and decision makers at the Google campus in Mountain View California, five new universities announced they are launching Google Apps Education Edition on their campuses. University of North Carolina Greensboro, Clemson University, University of Texas San Antonio, Kennesaw State University and Arkansas State University will all implement Google’s suite of Web-based applications that includes Gmail accounts for students on their university domain. Google also announced that ads for faculty members using Gmail through Google Apps Education Edition are now optional (just as they are for students).
With Google Apps, students get Google’s best of breed consumer technologies that is constantly improved through user feedback. And because these technologies are based on the Web, students have access to school-related information no matter what device they’re on. To help schools learn more about this option, Google invited education leaders and IT professionals to hear from other universities that have made the switch to Google Apps Education Edition. The event, called Google@School, kicks off an effort by Google to work closely with schools and provide them a first-hand look at Google Apps Education Edition.
“Google has always had a close relationship with higher education,” said Jeff Huber, vice president of engineering at Google. “Google Apps Education Edition is a groundbreaking option for universities, and we want to work closely with them to implement smart use of technology for education.”
Representatives from the universities announcing their decision to launch Google Apps were on-hand at the event to discuss with other participants why they are making the switch:
- “By working with Google, we are able to bring students the popular products they already know and enjoy using in their personal life to their academic life,” said Todd Sutton, UNC Greensboro assistant vice chancellor “Creating a supportive environment for students and faculty to communicate only improves the education experience.”
- Jim Bottum, vice president and chief information officer at Clemson University added, “Google Apps Education Edition allows us to provide our students useful tools to be successful in their academic career and beyond. Also, because of the amount of email storage Google provides, students will be able to take their Clemson email address with them for life and won’t lose all of their contacts and information the day they graduate.”
Schools all around the world are moving to Google Apps, including Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Trinity College in Dublin, Nihon University in Tokyo, Macquarie University in Sydney, and Universidad Panamericana in Guadalajara. When universities sign-up for Google Apps, students, faculty and staff get Gmail powered email, IM capabilities with their contacts, and an online calendar that allows them to add classes and meetings right from the Gmail interface.
Google Apps Education Edition is a free service and includes the Google Docs & Spreadsheets program, Gmail email services, Google Calendar shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging and the Google Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page on a specific domain. Please visit http://www.google.com/a for details on the product, local availability, partners and customers.
Every popular isp asks for certain prerequisites before closing the deal. Earlier broadband suited them. Now however, they ask for a speed up dsl before providing service. Previously unknown, now people tend to decide the types of dsl more often. Usually adsl is preferred as one day or the other, people will be going wireless.
August 17th, 2007
Yahoo! today announced that it has expanded its growing network of newspaper partnerships to include Philly.com, online home of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. With the addition of Philly.com and four other newspaper partners since April, the Newspaper Consortium now includes 19 publishing companies representing nearly 400 daily newspapers reaching a total circulation of more than 21 million readers.
“With the addition of Philly.com to the Newspaper Consortium, the momentum continues. The open nature of the partnership between the newspapers and Yahoo! has made this the solution of choice for the newspaper industry,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president, Local Markets and Commerce Division and the Yahoo! Publisher Network. “Consortium members see the benefit in combining the newspapers’ own unmatched local news and deep local advertising relationships with Yahoo!’s leading technologies and extensive online audience.”
“Working with Yahoo! as a member of its Newspaper Consortium will give Philly.com the opportunity to share its award-winning local content with its users and advertising with Yahoo!’s 131 million monthly visitors(a), targeting those with interest in the Philadelphia area,” said Eric Grilly, president, Philly.com. “Being part of this unparalleled network will bring best-of-breed tools and resources to our local customers.”
Grilly, former president and CEO of MediaNews Group Interactive, has been a key advocate of the Newspaper Consortium since it was established in November 2006. MediaNews Group was one of the initial members of the Newspaper Consortium.
Among the benefits to Philly.com and Yahoo! are:
– Enhancing online revenue for Philly.com using Yahoo!’s industry-leading display advertising technology;
– Leveraging Yahoo!’s national online advertising sales force to promote Philly.com inventory to national advertisers;
– Having Philly.com’s sales force represent Yahoo! to its local clients;
– Implementing Yahoo!’s paid search technology across Philly.com; and
– Distributing Philly.com’s high-quality local content across the Yahoo! network in places where Yahoo! users have interest in Philadelphia’s local news, sports, finance and in other vertical content areas.
In addition to Philly.com, other newspaper partners that have joined the Newspaper Consortium since April include:
– GateHouse Media, Inc., headquartered in Fairport, New York, joined the Yahoo! HotJobs component of the newspaper partnership in May of this year. GateHouse Media, Inc. is one of the largest publishers of locally-based print and online media in the United States as measured by its 87 daily publications.
– Paxton Media Group also joined the Newspaper Consortium as part of the Yahoo! HotJobs component. Paxton publishes 31 daily newspapers in the South and Midwest including The (Durham) Herald-Sun and The Paducha Sun.
– The Tribune Review Publishing Company owns 7 daily newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Its newspapers’ online career sections will be powered by Yahoo! HotJobs and co-branded between Yahoo! and the local newspapers.
– The Day Publishing Company, publishes The Day, a daily newspaper covering a 20-town region in Eastern Connecticut. The Day will participate in all aspects of the Newspaper Consortium.
Other Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium members include: Belo Corp.; Calkins Media, Inc.; Cox Newspapers; The E.W. Scripps Company; Hearst Newspapers; Herald Media, Inc.; Journal Register Company; Lee Enterprises; McClatchy Company; Media General, Inc.; Morris Communications Company, LLC; MediaNews Group, Inc.; Paddock Publications, Inc; and Times-Shamrock Communications. The newspapers in this Consortium include major market dailies such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Herald, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Florida Times-Union, Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, New Haven Register, Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury-News and The Tampa Tribune.
(a)131 million unique visitors per ComScore, July 2007
August 17th, 2007
So many companies overload their IT staff with work that other department staff could be handling! With the IT staff generally being among the high paid staff members in the company, it just doesn’t make sense to bog them down with rudimentary tasks that others could be handling before they pass their projects on to the IT department. In London, where pay rates are significantly higher than almost anywhere in the world, sending your staff to Dreamweaver courses in London is a smart and economical move.
Why send your staff to Dreamweaver courses?
There are many people within a company that work on projects that eventually end up in the IT department. Copywriters, editors, marketing staff, and many more all help develop web-based content and products. So why shouldn’t they attend Dreamweaver courses? In London, people working in various areas of the company tend to be highly tech savvy. If given the right training, they could easily take some of the load off of your IT department.
For example, imagine a company that publishes a great deal of web content. Those who write content for your website or marketing newsletters can make it very easy or very difficult for your IT department to publish the content they provide. Passed along to IT in an HTML un-friendly format means that the web developer has to do a lot of extra work to strip out the formatting and position the design elements correctly.
After taking one or two Dreamweaver courses in London, these same writers and marketers can learn how to develop their content in Dreamweaver and pass them along to the web developer to be uploaded in one quick and easy step. Dreamweaver is not a complicated program and learning how to use it only requires a few days of Dreamweaver courses. In London where you can’t afford to lose time by sending employees to a semester-long course, these power-packed one or two day courses are a way to get results quickly.
What They’ll Learn in Dreamweaver Courses
In London, there are opportunities to get your staff up to date with the basics of Dreamweaver in just a few days. Best Training is one such provider of Dreamweaver courses in London that offers training both at your office or their London venues. A 1-day basic Dreamweaver course covers everything from introduction, to CSS formatting, to FTP publishing. A 1-day intermediate course covers more advanced material such as forms, behaviours and layers.
If you’re looking for ways to reduce payroll expenses, why not reduce the workload of your top paid employees by training others to handle some of their tasks! Asking copywriters and those who develop marketing materials to do these tasks is not beyond their scope. In fact, in many companies, those in these roles regularly use Dreamweaver and have a grasp of HTML. More than likely, they’ll appreciate the offer to learn more about this technology by attending Dreamweaver courses in London!
Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information about Dreamweaver courses in London, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net
August 15th, 2007
Ask.com achieved the highest percent increase in customer satisfaction of any online company, according to the University of Michigan’s annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released today on www.theacsi.org.
While the market share leader and search category as a whole declined this year, Ask.com’s level of satisfaction grew from a rating of 71 in 2006 to 75 in 2007. This represents the highest increase year over year among all portals, search engines, and news and information sites measured by ACSI.
In addition to the highest increase year over year, Ask.com’s new score also represents a 21% increase in customer satisfaction since the company was first tested as AskJeeves with a score of 62 in 2002—the largest increase of any online company in the history of the ACSI.
“The latest ACSI scores show that the search category is still evolving, and innovation still really matters,†said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “Given Ask.com grew our user satisfaction scores more than any other search engine this year—despite the fact that the study was conducted before the release of Ask3D—we’re looking forward to even better results in 2008.â€
Using the methodology of the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, the study measured how well the top search and portal websites delivered the kind of site experience consumers want.
“Ask.com seems to be well-positioned to rival Google in the coming years because it has a strong search technology lauded by analysts and users alike and by developing impressive features to challenge Google’s lesser-known add-ons,†said Larry Freed, President of ForeSee Results, on the ACSI e-business report he authored today. “Ask.com has been more than rewarded by its customers for the changes in functionality and search technology by receiving the biggest increase in the e-business sector this year. The bottom line is, Ask.com is showing that it is hitting on all cylinders when it comes to customer satisfaction and user engagement, and this denotes a mastery of the crucial mix of evolution and revolution.â€
Measurement for this particular survey was concluded in June 2007. Since the survey period ended, Ask.com has announced multiple efforts to increase customer usage and satisfaction, including Ask3D, a differentiated three-panel multi-media search interface that has increased engagement on Ask.com, and AskEraser, a product that will give consumers unique and groundbreaking control to prevent retention of their search history.
August 14th, 2007
Yahoo! today announced that Dr. Usama Fayyad, chief data officer and executive vice president of research and strategic data solutions, has been awarded the 2007 Innovation Award by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM’s SIGKDD Innovation Award is the highest technical award in the fields of data mining and knowledge discovery. This award recognizes individuals who have either driven significant innovations that have transferred to industry practice in impactful ways or who have significantly influenced the direction of research and development in these areas.
“ACM SIGKDD is pleased to present Dr. Usama Fayyad with its 2007 Innovation Award,” said Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, chair of ACM SIGKDD. “Dr. Fayyad made major contributions to the advancement of the data mining and knowledge discovery field, including machine learning and data mining algorithms that scale to large commercial database systems and the development of fundamental applications in mining massive science data sets that have lead to significant new scientific discoveries.”
Fayyad’s contributions span fundamental technical innovation and significant large-scale applications of science data analysis, commercial practice and commercial database systems. From his early work on applications of data mining and statistical pattern recognition to massive scientific data sets in Astronomy and Planetary Geology to co-authoring new SQL Extensions and leading development work for embedding data mining algorithms inside of Microsoft’s SQL Server 2000 system, Fayyad has led significant scientific advances and new discoveries in these fields. Before joining Yahoo!, Fayyad led two successful startups focused on data mining, business intelligence and targeting algorithms. At Yahoo!, Fayyad is responsible for the company’s overall data strategy as well as overseeing the Yahoo! Research organization.
“This award highlights the importance of technical innovation in real applications and in building analysis systems at a massive scale and I’m honored to be recognized by my peers, leaders of the community and the field as a whole,” said Fayyad. “At Yahoo!, advancements in data mining and knowledge discovery are making it possible for us to better understand how our customers use our products and what the future of the Internet experience will be. We are focused on creating advanced data insights technology that will enable Yahoo! to build next-generation web applications by learning about the dynamics and growth of online communities and the technologies for information navigation of the future.”
The award will be presented at the 13th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining on August 12, 2007 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif. Fayyad will also present the following plenary addresses:
ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award Talk
Sunday, August 12, 2007
6:45 pm - 7:30 p.m.
Invited Talk - From Mining the Web to Inventing the New Sciences Underlying the Internet
Monday, August 13, 2007
9:00 am - 10:00 a.m.
Yahoo! Research is focused on developing the science that will underlie the next generation of technologies and businesses helping to shape the future of the Web. Yahoo! Research continues to be integrated closely with business units and product teams throughout the company, enabling the scientific approach and expertise of the organization to directly benefit Yahoo!’s consumers and advertisers. For example, Yahoo! has incorporated algorithmic research into the company’s advanced platforms for social media and search, which allow users to find and share the information that they want, when they want. The company has also leveraged research on marketplace design and pricing mechanisms for sponsored search.
To register to attend the 13th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, please visit: http://www.kdd2007.com/registration.html.
August 11th, 2007
Ask.com and Dell today announced collaborative efforts to help protect the environment with custom, energy-efficient servers and the planting of thousands of trees to offset carbon emissions.
Ask.com and Dell’s Data Center Solutions Division (DCS) have developed an environmentally friendly plan that includes a combination of hardware and services to further Ask.com’s data center efficiencies. Specifically, the project provides a comprehensive computing architecture, including custom energy-efficient servers manufactured by Dell. Ask.com has found the new servers use 30 percent less power without compromising computing performance.
Additionally, Ask.com is the first corporate customer to participate in Dell’s “Plant a Tree for Me” program, which makes it easy for individuals and organizations to offset carbon emissions associated with electricity generated to power computer equipment. Dell partners with The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org, non-profit organizations that plant trees in managed reforestation projects to sequester carbon. Through its participation in the program, Ask.com will facilitate the planting of thousands of trees.
“Ask.com continues to minimize, reduce and offset carbon emissions in efforts to protect the environment,” said Chuck Geiger, executive vice president, technology and engineering at Ask.com. “By partnering with Dell on multiple green initiatives and ensuring that our new server facility in Eastern Washington uses hydro-power and less energy, we are pleased to be using less and giving back more.”
“Dell is committed to working with our customers to provide solutions that help simplify information technology and maximize data center efficiencies,” said Forrest Norrod, Dell vice president, DCS. “Dell achieves this through customizing products and services to drive even greater energy savings, which in turn help to lower emissions. Dell strives to be the greenest IT company on the planet and we commend Ask.com for its commitment to energy efficiency and helping protect the environment we all share.”
August 8th, 2007
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