Posts filed under 'Vertical Search Engines'
Netscape today announced the migration of their social news site to a new domain:
“We promised you in our last communication about the Netscape.com site that we would get right back to you about where your current social news site will live after we redirect to the new Netscape portal.
The Netscape social news experience that you are currently using today will be migrated and revealed soon at http://www.propeller.com/. We’re working hard behind the scenes to ensure a smooth transition before we officially launch at this new destination.
It is important to us that you feel empowered to choose how you want to consume your news and participate in the community. As we mentioned in a recent post, the Netscape.com site will soon be redirected to the new Netscape portal, a more traditional and editorially-driven news experience. It’s already live, so you can check it out now if you haven’t already. You’ll notice some elements of our social news site there in short order, so that it will be easy for you to go back and forth and engage in each if you like.
Please continue to check back with us on the Netscape blog (or subscribe to our RSS feed for real time information), as we’ll be keeping you in the know about when you can expect to see the Netscape social news site up and running at http://www.propeller.com/.
Our goal is to allow you to continue to share and communicate with each other around the news stories of interest to you, so you can anticipate that the social news site will be coming sooner than later. “
September 12th, 2007
Wikia, Inc. today unveiled major next steps in its work to build a new search platform founded on open-source search protocols and human collaboration at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON). In a morning keynote address, Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales discussed business models and his vision for building the LAMP stack for search, which can be done by assembling open-source technologies.Wales announced that Wikia has acquired Grub, the original visionary distributed search project, from LookSmart and released it under an open source license for the first time in four years. Grub operates under a model of users donating their personal computing resources towards a common goal, and is available today for download and testing at: http://www.grub.org/ .
“We’ve had a tremendous response from very interesting commercial players in the search space,†said Jimmy Wales, co-founder and chairman, Wikia, Inc. “The desire to collaborate and support a transparent and open platform for search is clearly deeply exciting to both open source and businesses. Look for other exciting announcements in the coming months as we collectively work to free the judgment of information from invisible rules inside an algorithmic black box.â€
Grub, now open source, is designed with modularity so that developers can quickly and easily extend and add functionality, improving the quality and performance of the entire system. By combining Grub, which is building a massive, distributed user-contributed processing network, with the power of a wiki to form social consensus, the open source Search Wikia project has taken the next major step towards a future where search is open and transparent.
“In looking at the overarching industry, it has become clear that open is the business model of the future,†said Michael Grubb, Senior Vice President, Technology, and Chief Technology Officer, LookSmart. “We are pleased to collaborate with Wikia and believe that Grub will thrive under an open source license. We are happy to be able to assist in the movement to make search a more open proposition and look forward to seeing things progress from here.â€
To keep up with the latest developments around open source search or to volunteer, please visit the community wiki at: http://search.wikia.com .
July 28th, 2007
R.H. Donnelley Corporation , one of the nation’s leading Yellow Pages and online local commercial search companies, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Business.com, a leading business search engine and directory and pay-per-click advertising network.
Through this transaction, R.H. Donnelley will add to its existing interactive portfolio a rapidly growing and profitable business-to-business company, with online properties that include Business.com, Work.com and the Business.com Advertising Network. These online brands attract an audience of highly qualified and motivated business decision makers. Business.com optimizes the revenues from these properties through the use of its Performance Based Advertising (PBA) platform, which is considered to be one of the most advanced systems in the marketplace.
In addition, R.H. Donnelley’s Triple Play(TM) business-to-consumer integrated marketing solutions will also benefit from a significant infusion of leading-edge search and directory technology and interactive thought leadership from Business.com, particularly in the areas of performance based advertising technologies and corresponding ad network capabilities.
Business.com employs approximately 100 highly-skilled technologists, strategists and businesspeople and serves more than 6,000 business-to-business advertisers and their agencies. The company is profitable and is expected to generate revenues of greater than $50 million in 2007. It is widely recognized as a leader in the online business-to-business commercial search space and has been named to the “Inc. 500″ and BtoB magazine’s “Media Power 50″.
Business.com is led by Founder and CEO Jake Winebaum, a highly-regarded, successful leader of Internet and media companies. Upon closing of the transaction, Winebaum will be appointed as President of R.H. Donnelley’s interactive unit (RHDi), which will now include DexKnows.com(TM), LocalLaunch! search engine marketing company, Business.com, Work.com and the Business.com Advertising Network. Winebaum will lead RHDi from Santa Monica, Calif., and will report directly to Swanson.
Prior to starting Business.com, Winebaum led the Internet activities of The Walt Disney Company, serving as the Chairman of Buena Vista Internet Group, which managed high-profile brands such as Disney.com and ESPN.com. His leadership and contributions to the Internet industry have been acknowledge by Time magazine, which included him as one of the Top 50 Cyber Elite and Wired magazine, who placed him on the Wired 25.
Under the terms of the agreement, R.H. Donnelley will acquire Business.com for $345 million in cash and deferred purchase consideration. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2007 and is subject to customary terms and closing conditions, including compliance with the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.
July 26th, 2007
Digg.com and Microsoft today announced an agreement in which the two companies will collaborate to bring relevant advertising to the more than 17 million unique monthly visitors to Digg, an innovative Web site that harnesses the collective wisdom of the world’s online audience to prioritize the overwhelming amount of content available on the Web. Microsoft’s advanced advertising technology and sales force combined with Digg’s unique and growing user community make possible the three-year collaboration, grounded in the companies’ commitment to technological innovation and user experience.
As part of the relationship, Microsoft will be the exclusive provider of display and contextual advertising on Digg. The two companies also agreed to work together on future technology and advertising initiatives.Â
“Our collaboration with Digg is about bringing our advertising technology and sales force to one of the fastest-growing sites on the Web and a true innovator in user-generated content,†said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “We believe advertisers will welcome Microsoft and Digg’s combined strengths to forge more meaningful connections online.â€
Microsoft and Federated Media Publishing, Digg’s current advertising partner, plan to collaborate to bring integrated programs to Digg’s users and advertisers. “Federated Media has unique advertising sales assets that dovetail with our efforts, and we look forward to working with them,†Berkowitz said.Â
“We’re now positioned to provide a world-class advertising solution that builds upon Digg’s philosophy of providing a great experience for users and advertisers,†said Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg. “As the Digg audience continues to grow and diversify, we believe that this initiative with Microsoft, and the resources that it provides, will enable us to focus less on developing an advertising infrastructure and more on developing new and innovative features for the site.â€
The companies expect to begin execution of the agreement in the coming weeks.
July 25th, 2007
The THESEUS consortium is delighted with the EU Commission’s decision to approve public funding of the THESEUS research programme by the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie, or BMWi for short). The programme is set to run for 5 years and will receive some € 90 million of public money from the BMWi. The portion set aside for research and development will be divided equally between the fields of science and industry. A further € 90 million will come from participants from the industrial and research sectors, so that a total of around € 180 million will be invested in a considerable number of forward-looking research projects.
In the course of the next few weeks and months, 30 different companies, research establishments and universities will be embarking on a wide variety of exciting research products aimed at developing user-oriented basic technology applications and technical standards for a new internet-based knowledge-sharing infrastructure. Consortium members from the industrial sector will develop prototypes of the new technologies and test them in 7 application scenarios. The purpose of the tests is to find short-term ways of converting the technological advances into innovative tools, commercially-viable services and potentially profitable business models for the World Wide Web.
The THESEUS consortium is coordinated by empolis GmbH, a subsidiary of arvato AG. Siemens, SAP, empolis, Lycos Europe, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Deutsche Thomson oHG, intelligent views, m2any, Moresophy, Ontoprise, Festo, the German Mechanical Engineering Federation VDMA (Verband Deutscher Maschinen und Anlagenbau) and the Institute for Broadcasting Technology IRT are just some of the members of the Consortium, whose work is distinguished by its promotion of close collaboration between industry’s research and development departments and research bodies from the public sector; among these are, for example, internationally recognised experts from the DFKI (German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence), the FZI (Research Center for Information Technologies), Munich’s LMU (Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität) and TU (Technische Universität), the TU Darmstadt, the Technical University (TH) of Karlsruhe, the TU Dresden and the University of Erlangen. Nine member institutes of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft are also involved.
The research programme focuses closely on forms of semantic technology that are capable of recognising and classifying the content and meaning of information (words, pictures or sounds). With the aid of this technology, smart computer programmes are able to understand and replicate the context in which data is used and processed. By applying rules and classification principles, computers can also draw logical conclusions from content, and subsequently recognise and construct links between various items of information from diverse sources. In future, internet users will be able to apply the standards and basic technologies (“semantic toolboxesâ€) developed by THESEUS when they want to create or process content, rules and classification systems themselves, or to process, collect and link content from different media along “smart†lines. In combination with semantic methods of this kind, the Web 2.0 we know today – with its principles of transparent, open, interactive social networking – will become the internet of tomorrow.
Some of the basic technologies being developed by the research partners are functions for the automatic creation of metadata for audio, video, 3D and picture files, and mechanisms for the semantic processing of multimedia documents and their associated services. Research is also being carried out on the development of tools for the management of ontologies, and of new machine learning algorithms and dialogue processing systems that can assess an individual situation and then take this assessment into consideration. At the same time, work on innovative user interfaces is in progress, as well as on new DRM procedures intended to provide better protection for the holders of intellectual property and marketing rights to multimedia content.
July 25th, 2007
Today Google officially released a new feature of Google Maps that enables users to layer valuable third-party information directly on Google Maps with a single click and to save these customized maps to their personal library. These mini-applications, called Mapplets, make it possible for users to view and layer maps containing information such as real estate listings, jogging trails, events and photos.
For example, users who are planning a vacation can now view and layer maps of hotel availability, regional weather forecasts, gas prices and other useful information directly in Google Maps. Once they have created their custom map, they can create their own personalized itinerary by saving the results, adding their own notes, and putting it on a map to share with family and friends. Users looking for a new home can not only search real estate listings, but they can also layer their findings over transit maps and crime statistics to further refine their search.
These new tools can be found in the Google Maps Directory. The directory is accessed by clicking on the “Add content” link in the “My Maps” tab in Google Maps. Users simply click on the “Add it to Maps” buttons within the directory to bookmark relevant content.
Over 100 Mapplets are currently featured in the Google Maps Directory:
- Hotel pricing and availability from Orbitz and Booking.com
- Live, local weather conditions and traffic cameras from WeatherBug
- Worldwide webcams from Webcams.travel
- Things to do and local events from Zvents
- Gas prices from GasBuddy.com
Google has also developed several Mapplets:
- Google Real Estate Search — Find rentals and homes for sale in the US; this Mapplet draws from listings in Google Base
- YouTube Videos — Watch recently uploaded YouTube videos from around the globe
- Photos from Panoramio — See photos of locations from Panoramio.com while you browse Google Maps
These tools are built using the Google Mapplets platform, which enables any developer to create mini map applications that overlay their content on Google Maps and showcase their services to millions of Google users. Developers can find more information on authoring Mapplets here: http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/mapplets/
This new functionality is available for Google Maps users in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. It is available in the following languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian and Chinese (TW).
July 11th, 2007
Amazon is jumping on the social networking train with the launch of Askville. The concept of the site – Askville allows users to post any question they want and get answers from real people – is similar to Yahoo Answers and Answers.com.
Users will rate other people’s answers with “experience points” based on how helpful the answer is, aspiring experts can gain or lose points. Additionally, users gain Quest Coins for every action they complete, from voting to asking a question. Amazon describes them as virtual currency that can be used on a yet-to-be launched site called Questville. Amazon boasts in its FAQ section for Questville that “on Questville you will be able to use your Quest Coins to participate in exciting new adventures and other cool things!â€
July 10th, 2007
Local.com today announced that the company has been awarded patent number 7,231,405 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the process of indexing and retrieving web-related information by geographical location.
The patent covers local search technology related to identifying location information from web documents, indexing that information and making it searchable geographically. In Local.com’s commercial implementation of the technology, the search results are ranked by search term, LocalRank score, location prominence, among other factors. The system then extracts, matches and indexes web pages from the Internet and generates web references where applicable on more than 16 million local businesses listed nationwide on Local.com.
June 26th, 2007
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