Microsoft Plus Yahoo vs. Google, So It Begins
The Microsoft and Yahoo marriage has been blessed by antitrust regulators both in Europe and over the pond, giving the two companies green light to implement their anti-Google search alliance. On the morning of February 18th, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Antitrust Commission have wrapped up their reviews of the Microsoft-Yahoo search agreement. With the alliance between the two giants cleared without restrictions, the duo will now move to implement the deal.
“Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone,” said Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. “I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers.”
Microsoft claims that the search agreement was announced in late July 2009, but the company has been flirting publicly with Yahoo for a total of over two years, but there’s no way of telling just how much time had Ballmer actually spent on this deal ahead of the start of 2008. The debut of February 2008, brought with it an unsolicited offer of $44.6 billion from Microsoft, which at the time was trying to acquire Yahoo. Making sure that the deal fell through was Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, then occupying the position of CEO. Read more
MSN and the City
Microsoft has overhauled its MSN City Guides online destination providing users with a range of enhancements better suited to connect them with locations, businesses, and events across US cities. MSN City Guides is a local offering from the Redmond company tailored specifically to the US market. The main aspect of the evolution of MSN City Guides is that the service is now designed to go well beyond MSN and integrate Windows Live and Facebook. Over 5,000 cities in the United States have been reviewed, with the content available to users immediately.
“The new MSN City Guides puts city life at your fingertips,” promised Scott Moore, U.S. executive producer, MSN. “All the information you need about a city or neighborhood is there easy to find, easy to use, easy to share. Our goal is to deliver the best resource for navigating U.S. cities, whether you’re a die-hard local or just visiting.” Read more
Google Has a Need for Speed
Everyone knows faster Internet is better, but Google is actually doing something about it. The company wants to make the web faster with a variety of different measures detailed on the newly launched site code.google.com/speed, aimed at web developers and full of tips, tutorials and tools, all focused on speed.
“We are excited to discuss what we’ve learned about web performance with the Internet community. However, to optimize the speed of web applications and make browsing the web as fast as turning the pages of a magazine, we need to work together as a community, to tackle some larger challenges that keep the web slow and prevent it from delivering its full potential,” the official Google blog reads. Read more
Google Launches Google Squared
The amount of online data is increasing exponentially and everyone trying to keep track of it is having a harder time doing so. Even Google isn’t having it any easier and it has acknowledged that the current keyword-based search won’t be able to keep up for long. Adding structure to the data online, using it more like a database, would make it much easier to manage the volume of information. This is what the search giant hopes to do with its Google Squared project.
Having the web all organized, labeled and structured is what many companies are trying to do for the search engines of tomorrow. A recent popular example in this regard is the recently launched Wolfram Alpha, which works differently from most search engines, including Google’s, because instead of just indexing the data on the web it gathers it and stores it in its internal databases. Read more
MS Firefox discovered!
Once the most preferred browser is Internet Explorer, Firefox, especially with the support of its plug-and users, and software developers are happy. Many independent programmers and users for Firefox, is developing its own plug-ins offer. In this way, and has made their introductions, and facilitate business users. The new Firefox add-ons that enhance the company’s very difficult for independent programmers, because these firms with IT giant Microsoft.
“Heavy on demand, we have to integrate Live Search to Firefox” and speaking of Live Search software manager Ray Debapriya own blog, Microsoft’s add-in was announced by the official. Read more
Google Enters The Browser Business
Just a couple days ago Google released its own version of a web browser, dubbed Google Chrome. This is exciting news, because it now increases the pressure on Firefox and Internet Explorer to be all that they can be. It’s even surprising, considering that Google and Firefox were business partners in advertising. Just a while ago Google Adsense was paying people for referring people to Firefox. Read more
Google Enters The Browser Business
Just a couple days ago Google released its own version of a web browser, dubbed Google Chrome. This is exciting news, because it now increases the pressure on Firefox and Internet Explorer to be all that they can be. It’s even surprising, considering that Google and Firefox were business partners in advertising. Just a while ago Google Adsense was paying people for referring people to Firefox.
Google Chrome has a unique minimalist look that easily separates itself from other browsers. The browser bars are not cluttered full of different options, menus and toolbars, instead it only features your most used browser features, like the back and forward arrows, bookmark button, bookmark toolbar address bar, go button, and two pull down icons for page settings and internet options. Read more
Seeker and Ye Shall Find
Have you ever lost a file or forgotten where you’ve put it on your hard drive? Of course you have, we’ve all done it, and if you’re lucky you may even have found it by searching through folders, or using the Windows Search facility. The one in Vista is actually quite good, but even that won’t be able help you if you can’t remember what the file was called.
Here’s something else to try, it’s called Seeker and in addition to searching for files by all or part of the name, it also looks inside files, for keywords or phrases. Again it’s something Windows can do, but this search tool is fast, very fast in fact, thanks to a powerful algorithm and an unusually flexible range of search criteria. Read more
Chrome Plated Easter Egg
It didn’t take long for the hidden ‘Easter Egg’ in the new Google Chrome browser to be discovered. In case you haven’t heard, Easter Eggs are hidden features in a program, usually of a whimsical nature, put there by bored programmers. The one in Chrome is fairly good and quite amusing to watch but I won’t spoil it for you by giving the game away. To see if for yourself you will have to download and install Chrome then in the Omnibox (the name for the combined address and search box one of Chrome’s best features – type ‘about:internets’ and see what happens. While we’re at it there are a couple of other things you can try. Typing ‘about:memory’ displays Chrome’s memory usage, ‘about:histograms’ shows a number of performance statistics and ‘about:crash’ does just that, and instantly shuts down the open browser window.
Personalised emoticons for Windows Live Messenger
Can’t find the right image to use for your Live Messenger character? Help is at hand from the new minimise me website. This has an online designer for creating a new avatar for Live Messenger software. Once installed they will appear as the character picture in conversations and also as four different emoticons to use in conversations.
It is simple to use although it is sometimes a little slow to respond when clicking on some of the icons, but this is common complaint with web based editors and it is a limitation with the technology as a whole. Read more
