CrunchGear Review: T-Mobile G1
I will keep this review short and straight to the point, folks. You know how Google likes to keep things in Beta for years and years? Well, Android is no different. Like many of you I was excited at the prospect of a new OS to muscle it's way in and take down the iPhone, but I'm afraid Android is not it – at least not yet. The OS actually isn't that bad, but it does have its issues and those cannot be overlooked. Unfortunately it's the hardware that will be Android's folly this go around until the other manufacturers can churn out some better goods. Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 12:04am
Have It Your Way: MyWonderfulLife Helps You Plan Your Own Funeral
Death is an unfortunate consequence of life, at least until science can prove otherwise. And while most of us would rather just avoid the subject entirely, the thought of having a sappy, cheesy funeral weighs heavy on some people. MyWonderfulLife, a Minnesota-based startup that launched earlier this month, is going to help you make sure that doesn't happen.
You're first asked to create profile detailing many of your last wishes, including the type of burial you'd like, who'd you'd like to have as speakers, and any music you'd like to have played. You can also upload a photoalbum that you'd like to have projected during the ceremony. If you'd like to get a bit more creative, the site features a listing of some of the more unique ceremonies users have submitted to give you... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 11:53pm
That’s Right. I Just Threw A 110 MPH Fastball On iBaseball
SGN is definitely on to something with these Wii-like iPhone games. They've had over 2 million downloads of iGolf and iBowl. And tonight they've released the next game in the series, iBaseball (iTunes link).
Like the other games it's free, and you use the accelerometer in your iPhone to control game play. The application includes applause and game sounds, vibrates when a hit is made, and supports left handed game play. You can also challenge your friends to play, asynchronously for now but with direct head-to-head play... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 11:03pm
FriendFeed Built The Ultimate Live Blogging Tool
What you see above is an embed of a special page on FriendFeed tracking discussion of tonight's presidential debate. The page updates dynamically, meaning no page refreshes are necessary, using similar "long polling" code that makes instant messaging on web pages (see Meebo, eBuddy) work properly.
Facebook implemented the new feature tonight. Users can choose to view most of their FriendFeed pages in real time, including topical based pages. Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 10:17pm
FriendFeed Opens the Floodgates with Real-Time Updates
Using FriendFeed to track all of your friends' activities has become a daily routine for many of us. But, apparently, pressing the refresh button to get the latest and greatest information has been a bit arduous for some. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 9:34pm
Microsoft Taps Multiply.com as New Home for MSN Groups
In a world dominated by Facebook and MySpace, one of the best kept secrets in social networking is Multiply.com. This fast growing little social network is about to make a whole lot of new friends. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 9:25pm
Confirmed: Microsoft Gives Up On MSN Groups, Hands It Off To Multiply
We've received confirmation that Microsoft is handing over the reins to its MSN Groups property to the social network Multiply. Microsoft is planning to release a new service called Windows Live Groups in November, and apparently doesn't want to compete with itself. Oddly enough, Microsoft has chosen not to allow groups to transition between the two services, and instead is going to offer a migration tool that will allow users to take groups over to Multiply, which currently bills itself as the world's 8th largest social network.
The rumor was originally reported earlier today after a series of emails were posted to a MSN Discussion newsgroup, and has since been confirmed by both Multiply and Microsoft through a Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 7:59pm
As eBay’s Core Business Hits Hard Times, Skype Begins To Shine
Although eBay beat its downwardly-revised earnings numbers today, its earnings call was filled with glum news for investors. (Full earnings slides embedded below). After three flat quarters, revenues declined 3.6 percent from the second quarter to $2.2 billion. Free cash flow has been going down each of the last four quarters, and so has the total value of goods traded over the auction and e-commerce site. eBay is leaning much more heavily these days on merchant-dominated categories like autos than on auctions between ordinary people.
Even PayPal's revenues were flat in the quarter at $597 million. Maybe the $945 million acquisition of Bill Me Later will help... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 6:22pm
Help Twitter Find a Revenue Model
Twitter is the poster child for the 'scale first, don't even think about revenue at launch, monetize much, much later' model of startup. In the current climate, ventures like that probably won't get funded. Which is a shame. Twitter is addictive and fun and even occasionally useful. If anybody can pull this business model off, it will be Twitter. It has scale, seem to be moving mainstream and they've even fixed their reliability issues. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 6:15pm
Automattic Acquires PollDaddy: Polls Come to WordPress.com
PollDaddy, the online polling and survey tool we use a lot here on RWW, has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind the popular WordPress blogging platform. This is Automattic's second major acquisition in a short time. Just three weeks ago, Automattic also announced the acquisition of IntenseDebate, a popular blog commenting plugin. Neither Automattic nor PollDaddy, an Irish startup, released the terms of the acquisition. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 6:11pm
WordPress Acquires Irish Startup Polldaddy
Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has acquired Irish startup Polldaddy for an undisclosed sum. The purchase gives WordPress an infusion of polling technology and seems to be justified simply on the basis that bloggers love polls (we use PollDaddy here at TechCrunch for many of our posts). Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 5:54pm
Facebook fbFund Awards 25 Apps $25k Each
With today's technology startups, sometimes a little funding can go a long way. Today, 25 Facebook applications received word that they've got more runway ahead of them. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 5:11pm
FancyUpload for Flash 10 to fix your uploader
This is the week of the plugin. First we had the launch of Silverlight 2, and then, quickly on the back of that we get Adobe Flash 10 at the same time as the entire Creative Suite 4 (which has great Flash authoring tools of course).
One of the security features in Flash 10 is the [...] Read more...
Ajaxian, Yesterday, 5:06pm
TechStars Startup Ignighter Raises $1.2 Million For Group Dating
Ignighter, the group dating site that is part of the TechStars class of 2008, has closed a $1.2 million angel funding round. CEO Adam Sachs says that the money will be used to expand its team (particularly its development staff), and will also be used for a marketing push to increase awareness.
Ignighter allows small groups of friends to collaborate on a group profile, where they can include photos and specify their interests. The site then presents a list of possible matches with other groups and helps them arrage get-togethers in the real world. The group environment helps avoid the awkward 1-on-1 situations that result from tradional dating sites like Match, and there's less pressure - if you don't hit it off with... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 5:04pm
Restaurant Review Site Boorah Launches API
BooRah, a restaurant review site we first reviewed earlier this year, just announced the availability of an API that will allow other web sites and business to offer online reviews and ratings from BooRah to their customers. The API will surface most of BooRah's data about a given restaurant, including ratings, menus, discounts, and coupons. BooRha also hopes that developers will implement this data in location aware applications through Mozilla's Geode and on the iPhone and Android platforms. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 3:41pm
Say Goodbye to alert()
Blackbird, G. Scott Olson's JavaScript logging library, truly has a catchy slogan. The slogan "Say hello to Blackbird and 'goodbye' to alert()" definitely captures what the Blackbird library aims to do; make logging messages in JavaScript extremely easy. And setup is very easy. By incorporating the following lines of code, you've now added the ability [...] Read more...
Ajaxian, Yesterday, 3:25pm
The fbFund Gives Out Cash To 25 Facebook Developers
Facebook has just announced 25 winners of cash grants from the fbFund. These grants are given to the Facebook developers that are creating some of the most promising apps on Facebook. The fbFund is a $10 million fund announced a year ago by Facebook, Accel Partners, and the Founders Fund.
Below is a list of the 25 winners, out of 600 applicants. They each received about $25,000 and will be eligible for five top prices of $225,000 (about $2 million, when all is said and done). To help determine the final five, Facebook will have a page where members can vote on their favorite apps. The cash is a free-and-clear grant, but Accel and... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 2:53pm
Three Years Later, Buying MySpace Looks Like One Of Murdoch’s Smartest Bets
Three years ago today, Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace and its parent company Intermix for $580 million. That turned out to be money well spent. The last time we ran the numbers, we figured that MySpace alone is worth between $3 billion and $20 billion, depending on how much you value each user. Fox Interactive Media (which is mostly MySpace) accounted for about $850 million in revenues last fiscal year (which ended in June), and is projected to hit $1 billion next year.
It was supposed to hit $1 billion this year, but never mind. Unlike other social networks, MySpace is actually making a profit. The company now employs 1,600 people worldwide, compared to 150 in October, 2005—more than a tenfold... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 2:31pm
Blip.fm, The “Twitter for Music”, Gets Its Own API
When Fuzz launched a microblogging service for music aficionados called Blip.fm last May, no one in the company expected it to rise above the status of an experiment. But before long, Blip.fm's traffic began to eclipse that of Fuzz's main site, which provides an altogether different service for bands that want to cultivate their fan base.
Fuzz's attention has now turned primarily to Blip.fm as a result of its popularity, although it will continue to maintain its other service as well. Since May, its developers have added several distinguishing features, such as badges for members who accumulate a horde of followers. The idea behind these badges is to recognize the most popular DJs and identify them for new members. In the same vein, members can also give... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 2:23pm
Sonoa appliance knits APIs and Cloud together
Enterprise IT looks at the emergence of cloud computing with mixed emotions. On the one hand, financial tough times breed layoffs, consolidation, and outsourcing away from IT's control. On the other, a new breed of cloud-aware managers look to rationalize the metrics, security, and regulation challenges a distributed model brings. In the middle are companies such as Sonoa Systems, who just announced the closing of a $10 million Series C round of funding, led by Third Point Ventures with current investors Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners and SAP Ventures.
Sonoa sits in the middle of the API party, with a $50,000 box that proxies and manages a company's cloud computing services. The ServiceNet appliance, or a virtual VMWare image for those who have their own hardware at $30K, lets IT manage customers of a company's APIs with a single policy... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 2:03pm
Technorati Acquires AdEngage - Launches Self-Service Advertising Network
Blog search engine Technorati today announced that it has acquired AdEngage, a small, Los Angeles-based online advertising network. Technorati launched its own ad network in June, but focused mostly on large, high-traffic sites. Now, Technorati will release a new advertising network on top of the AdEngage platform which will be open to all publishers who fulfill Technorati's basic quality standards. AdEngage will continue to exist as a standalone business, while the newly created Technorati Engage will focus only on blogs and social media sites. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 1:40pm
Flash 10 Released - Finally, Flash Videos In Firefox Work Again!
Today Abode announced the availability of Adobe Flash Player 10 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new plugin offers a number of improvements such as native support for 3D, a new text rendering engine, and integration with Adobe's Pixel Bender technology. However, we know that many of you aren't interested in these upgrades, which are mainly aimed at Flash developers. What you want to know is this: Will Flash video finally work in Firefox? Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 11:46am
Help Eliminate Poverty, Make a Microloan to An Entrepreneur
The financial crisis in world markets over the past few weeks has been a real eye-opener, but even those of us who have seen our stock portfolios decline by 30 percent or more don't have much to complain about. It could be worse. It could be a lot worse. A third of the world's population lives in poverty, and 20 percent lives in extreme poverty, meaning they are always hungry.
What can you do? How about making a microloan of a $20, $50, or $100 to an entrepreneur in a poor country? Today is Blog Action Day, with blogs around the world making a concerted effort to raise awareness about global poverty and ways to fight it. What we've decided to do is to start a TechCrunch lending team at Kiva.org. ... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 11:19am
Technorati Acquires AdEngage Advertising Network
San Francisco based Technorati has acquired AdEngage, a twelve person advertising network based in Los Angeles, in an all stock transaction. The AdEngage platform will remain a free standing, branded service, and Technorati will also launch a version of the platform under its new Technorati Media brand. The size of the transaction is not being disclosed.
This follows Technorati's August acquisition of BlogCritics, a network of blog content.
AdEngage, which was founded in 2004, sells advertising for 4,000 sites, and has 13 billion ad impressions per month, says Technorati CEO Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 11:02am
All Eyes On Google This Week
Google, who's stock is down 45% this year, announces third quarter financial results tomorrow, and Silicon Valley will be watching. Analysts expect revenues of a little over $4 billion and EPS of $4.79 - and most have price targets for the stock, which closed yesterday at $363, to bounce back up to the high 500's.
For now, the big factors affecting Google are the strengthening dollar (half their revenue is outside the U.S.) and general pessimism about the advertising market moving forward. There are also concerns about the intense regulatory scrutiny of the Google/Yahoo search deal. Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 8:58am
iKnow Is A Social Learning Platform That Can Really Make You Smarter. Opens API.
Although the world market for e-learning is estimated to top $52 billion in 2010 (in 2007, revenues exceeded the $17-billion mark in the US alone), it’s still quite hard to find good resources for education and training in the Web 2.0 space. It seems that so far, the e-learning industry as a whole focuses on applications for enterprises and educational institutions.
But now there is a new player in town: iKnow!, which calls itself an intelligent social learning platform, initially offers a number of English vocabulary extension, SAT preparation and Japanese language courses, but more content will be added in the near future. Tokyo-based Cerego actually started the beta version (in Japanese only) in October 2007 with... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 8:31am
Amie Street Sheds Its Barebones Look, Gets Professional With Site Redesign
Amie Street, the music store that sells songs on a sliding price scale based on how popular they are, has launched a totally revamped website and new features including a new music player and an enhanced recommendation system. We've been big fans since first hearing about them in 2006.
Despite Amie Street's growing popularity, especially in the indie music scene, the site has long had a somewhat barebones or even amateurish look that was functional but not very visually appealing. The new site is much more professional, with a rotating 'featured' panel prominently displaying new releases and promotions, and more intuitive overall design.
New features for the release include a new music... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 8:00am
Federated Media Unleashes The Conversation As An Ad
Federated Media (our advertising partner) has been experimenting with "conversational marketing" almost since their launch in 2005. Today they are launching a new marketing toolbox for advertisers which gives them tools to track all the ways users interact with these ads.
The goal, says Federated Media, isn't just to track ad impressions and clicks, but also to look at a new set of metrics like posts, trackbacks, votes, RSS subscriptions, comments, etc, where users somehow interact with the advertisement and talk about it. Hopefully, a conversation occurs between users, the ad publisher and the advertiser, which gives the advertiser's brand more face time. An old example of this is Hakia's ad that asks bloggers what better search means. Other examples are Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 8:00am
Non-Euclidean Browser UI
The video above by Ron Brinkmann is his mockup of a non-euclidean browser UI which looks a touch like the magnifying glass tool on the iPhone, and aims to give you your data in a readable way, while still showing the larger context:
The reason why I think an interface like this can be superior in [...] Read more...
Ajaxian, Yesterday, 7:16am
The Karaoke Channel Launches Online Hub
The Karaoke Channel, a video on demand karaoke service that is available through cable in 30 million households, is launching its own online karaoke hub. The site offers a catalog of over 5000 popular karaoke songs, including songs available in a number of foreign languages.
To gain access to the site's full catalog, users will have to become paid members. Membership fees run around $10 a month or $100 a year, with a $15 24-hour membership available (the site advertises that these are intended for "karaoke parties"). There's also a free plan, but this only grants access to 100 of the site's songs.
For each song that they have access to, users can play back and record their songs through the site's Flash-based media... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 7:00am
Ross Levinsohn And Ted Meisel Put $3.5 Million Into FatTail
There's always money in helping Websites make more money. FatTail tries to do that with its ad optimization software that tells Web publishers which ads and ad networks, in what combination, will give them the most ad dollars. The Southern California company, started in 2001 by math geeks who previously built a financial derivatives exchange, has bootstrapped itself until now.
With more than 500 customers including WebMD, Bloomberg, TheKnot, and Orbitz, FatTail is raising its first series A round. It raised $3.5 million from Velocity Interactive Group, Ted Meisel (the former CEO of Overture and president of Yahoo Search Marketing), and others. Velocity's Ross Levinsohn will join the board.
I asked Levinsohn why he invested. His answer:
For a company who nobody has heard of, it has 500 clients. We like... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 7:00am
Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health - The 'Coke and Pepsi' of Online Health
Last week we reported on an interview that health blogger Amy Tenderich carried out with Google Health's Missy Krasner. Amy has followed up with an interview with Keith Toussaint, Senior Program Manager with Microsoft HealthVault. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 6:53am
Using JavaScript to make things work
An interesting top 12 list has been published, on using Javascript to fix 12 common browser headaches:
Setting Equal Heights (jQuery example: $("#col1, #col2").equalizeCols();)
IE6 PNG Alpha Transperancy support
Changing CSS Classes in JavaScript
Browser selectors in CSS ($('html').addClass($.browser);)
min-/max- height & width support
Center Elements Vertically / Horizontally
Display Q tags in Internet Explorer
Increase the size of click targets and get [...] Read more...
Ajaxian, Yesterday, 6:31am
FreshBooks Provides Unique View into Small Business Finances
Businesses under 10 employees account for a large portion of the US workforce. Yet the metrics associated with this market remain enigmatic, at best. And while professional organizations have tried to capture information on these workers - like the AIGA's annual review of design salaries - those surveys only show a slice of the pie. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 3:30am
RealityV: Revolutionary Virtual Reality Training Originally Designed For The Army
When most people think of computer games, they think of escapist titles like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, or Super Mario. Even most games that label themselves as simulations, like the ever-popular Madden football series, are meant to more for fun than realistic training.
Development studio Intelligence Gaming is behind a different kind of game, dubbed "serious gaming" - games that are designed to teach users rather than entertain them. The company has previously created games for the United States Navy, and has now been contracted by the Army to develop a new kind of game that is part virtual reality, part movie. The company teamed with development and design firm EffectiveUI to create a technology called RealityV based on Adobe's upcoming Flash 10 platform. The result: 3D... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 2:00am
Firefox 3.1 beta: Geolocation, @font-face, Video and Audio, XHR++, and TraceMonkey
Isn't it great that a browser point release these days adds so many features? We are starting to see this from Firefox, Opera, WebKit and others, and it is exciting!
The Firefox 3.1 beta 1 release has a slew of features that developers have been craving:
Geolocation
The labs team got Geode out there, and quickly we have [...] Read more...
Ajaxian, Yesterday, 1:01am
Flock 2.0 Launches: Adds MySpace, Media RSS, and More
Remember when we told you that your MySpace web browser is coming? Well today it has officially arrived. In the new version of the social browser Flock, they've finally integrated their number one most-requested feature: support for MySpace. Additionally, the Flock 2.0 upgrade includes support for Media RSS, a technology which delivers real-time image and video streams in a standardized format. With this feature, Flock can support any web service as long as they offer a Media RSS feed. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Yesterday, 1:00am
Who’s Afraid of Chrome? Flock 2 Released With Even More Bells And Whistles
Design philosophies could hardly be further apart. Google's ironically named Chrome browser, which launched last month, advanced the notion that browsers ought to be neither seen nor heard. Like operating systems, they should sit obediently in the background and make sure that the applications on top of them run quickly, reliably and safely.
Flock has always taken the opposite approach, insisting that the browser should provide a lot of upfront functionality on its own, not fade out of sight. Tonight's release of Flock 2.0 - which brings the Mozilla-based browser up-to-speed with Firefox 3 technology and adds new support for MySpace and media RSS - reasserts this... Read more...
TechCrunch, Yesterday, 12:00am
What's Next After Web 2.0? Here's What You Told Us...
Over the weekend we editorialized that the world financial crisis will have a big impact on where Web Technology is headed. Has the world arrived at one of those giant inflexion points, we asked, where one Web era is usurped by another? We asked you to leave a comment in the post telling us what you think will be next. Many of you did just that and also the post was fortunate enough to get to the digg frontpage, where it received 100 additional comments. Finally, we polled our friends on Twitter today and got many great replies. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Oct 14, 11:15pm
Jive Software Lays Off 1/3 Of Staff
When it comes to layoffs, 1/3 of total staff seems to be a magic number. Portland based Jive Software, which is backed by Sequoia, laid off around 40 people today, a third of their total staff. This follows massive employee growth over the last year. Twelve months ago the company had around 60 employees.
Two Vice Presidents are among those that left - Marty Kagan, VP Engineering and Scott Campbell, VP Sales. Read more...
TechCrunch, Oct 14, 8:27pm
ComScore: Google’s Search Volume Accelerates In September, But Market Share Dips
Ahead of tomorrow's earnings announcement from Google, comScore just released its search market share figures for September. Google's overall share of search queries in the U.S. dipped from 63% in August to 62.2%. Yahoo and Ask (whose search is powered by Google) saw the biggest gains. Read more...
TechCrunch, Oct 14, 8:20pm
Download Firefox 3.1 beta 1: Get Geolocation API, @Font-Face, and More
The latest beta build of Firefox - Firefox 3.1 beta 1 - is now available for download. With it, comes a whole new set of features designed with developers and designers in mind. The beta includes native support for the Geolocation API, CSS @font-face support, and audio and video tag support. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Oct 14, 8:02pm
Still Not Sure Who To Vote For? Take the Glassbooth Quiz.
By this point, most Americans have made up their minds about who they are going to vote for President come Election Day. But if you are still trying to decide, or just want to reassure yourself that you are indeed voting for the candidate who most closely reflects your views, take the Glassbooth Quiz. The site is run by a non-partisan, non-profit organization (or so it claims). You tell the site what your positions are on a range of issues, and it spits back compatibility scores for each of the Presidential candidates (including third-party candidates Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Bob Barr). You can try it just to make sure you really are on the same page with your preferred candidate. Read more...
TechCrunch, Oct 14, 7:37pm
First New York Times API is Live - Here's Why it Matters
The much-anticipated first Application Programming Interface (API) from the New York Times went live today, according to a post on the company's blog Open - All the code that's fit to printf(). First up is a campaign finance data API and next is a movie review API. Also available is a database management program initially developed for internal use at the NY Times. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Oct 14, 7:27pm
Nameo: Single-Button Business Card Replacement For The iPhone
A few months ago iPhone application developer Tapulous announced FriendBook, an app that would allow users to hold shake their phones together to exchange contact information - a fun and simple alternative to pocketfuls of clumsy business cards. Unfortunately, FriendBook still remains unreleased after a wave of shakeups over at Tapulous, and while we've seen a few alternatives like rmbrME, none of them have the simplicity of a proximity-based, wireless transfer.
Thankfully developer Meganova BV has created an application called Nameo that manages to replicate much of the functionality promised by FriendBook. The app was released on the App Store last night and is available... Read more...
TechCrunch, Oct 14, 5:03pm
ProIP Act Signed Into Law - White House Gets Copyright Czar
On Monday, President Bush signed the controversial ProIP bill into law, which will create a 'copyright czar' position within the White House and raise the potential fines for copyright infringements. While proponents of the bill such as Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Tom Donohue see it as sending a message to criminals that "the U.S. will go the extra mile to protect American innovation," opponents of the bill argue that it will have unintentional consequences and created unintended harm. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Oct 14, 4:03pm
Bringing Data Portability to a Website Near You: An Interview With Chris Saad About JS-Kit
If cookies were the multi-billion dollar magic for much of the web's first iteration, tiny technologies to power conversation could play a similar role in the future of business online. More fun than that, though, is the innovation we hope to see in the technology of conversation. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Oct 14, 4:02pm
Can Yahoo Find New Searchers Through An Ad Campaign?
Yahoo wants to change your mind about its search engine. It wants you to know that it is better at helping you find things thanks to features like its SearchAssist auto-complete keywords (which has been around for a year), safe searching filters, and Search Monkey add-ons. So it is launching a campaign with display ads like the one on the left for the Web and radio spots as well trying to paint Google's search engine as an inferior product—a place where people go to get lost.
Of course, Yahoo's market share numbers tell a different story. In the U.S., it's Read more...
TechCrunch, Oct 14, 3:44pm
Yahoo Fights Back: Launches New Ad Campaign for its Search Engine
Yahoo today launched a new ad campaign for its search engine that stresses the security and convenience of using Yahoo Search. After relying on outside search providers (including Google) for a long time, Yahoo launched its own search engine in 2003, but even though it has constantly innovated and opened up its search index to developers, it has continuously lost market share to Google. By now, YouTube handles more search queries every day than Yahoo. Read more...
ReadWriteWeb, Oct 14, 2:33pm
Bush’s New Copyright Czar Is Going To Do About As Much Good As His Drug Czar
Yesterday, President Bush signed into law the Pro-IP Act, which further criminalizes consumer behavior and appoints a new "Copyright Czar" to oversee enforcement of the new measures. The law triples damages in copyright infringement cases, allows the government to seize property used to usurp a company's copyrights (hang onto those laptops), makes each song, movie, or other piece of stolen content a separate criminal offense. Correction: this last provision thankfully was stripped out of the bill. The law is so over the top that even the Department of Justice opposed it.
Chalk this one up as another victory in the copyright wars to the reactionaries who don't want... Read more...
TechCrunch, Oct 14, 1:11pm