Collecta Launches Mobile Version Of Real-Time Search Engine
Collecta has just announced the launch of a mobile version of its real-time search engine. The mobile site is available at m.collecta.com.
Like it main site, Collecta mobile includes real-time news, photos, and status updates from more than 10 million content sources — from Twitter to Flickr and CNN and blogs. The mobile site is available [...]
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Microsoft To Launch Bing Ads In UK vs. “Goliath”
Microsoft is about to roll out a “a multimillion-pound TV ad campaign” for Bing in the UK market, where it has less than a 5 percent share of searches. Google by contrast has roughly 90 percent. According to the Guardian:
The ads feature ordinary people asking for information and receiving nonsensical, “speaking-in-tongues” answers; one early spot [...]
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Google: “What’s Your Name?” Topeka, Kansas: “What Do You Want It to Be?”
Apparently Google’s promise to bring ultra-fast broadband to select communities has small towns in a tizzy.
I was pleasantly surprised to see neighboring Durham, North Carolina step up to the plate:
After Google put out an RFI, or request for information, on the company’s blog on Feb. 10, about 50 people gathered at the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce last week to form groups helping the city of Durham gather information for an application.
The possibility of getting Google Fiber in Durham has also generated much enthusiasm online. A Facebook group has been formed with nearly 700 fans, and a Web site has been created at www.hifiberdurham.com, where people can submit ideas on how they would use the ultra-high speed network.
Oh Durham, you’re going to have to try harder.
Apparently the people of Topeka, Kansas, want Google broadband so bad, they are willing to change the city’s name to Google, Kansa–albeit not officially:
Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten signed a proclamation Monday calling for Topeka to be known for the month of March as “Google, Kansas — the capital city of fiber optics.” Bunten told city council members about the proclamation prior to a special meeting of the council held at noon at City Hall to hear the first reading of a proposal that wasn’t linked to local efforts to convince Google to make Topeka a test site for an ultrafast Internet connection.
That’s going all in!
However, this is not the first time that Topeka has changed its name. Back in 1998 the city changed its name to “ToPikachu” in recognition of the launch of Pokemon/Pikachu franchise.
Rumors are that if the Google thing doesn’t work out for them, residents can look forward to the city being renamed Tapioca Pudding, Kansas. It won’t bring them free broadband, but they’ll have pudding, so won’t care! 
(via)
Twitter Engineer Deletes Tweet to Avoid Developer Backlash?
Twitter Engineer, Alex Payne, has inserted his foot in his mouth. Actually he inserted a big chirping bird in his mouth and ended up with a fail whale of backlash. This tweet started it:
That apparently caused all kinds of angst among Twitter developers, concerned that third-party apps–such as Seesmic and Twhirl–would become obsolete.
So much angst that Payne has apparently deleted the tweet! You’d think he of all people would know that deleting tweets just stirs things up more–and tweets never fully vanish from the web, as the above screenshot proves.
Payne also had to kiss and make up with those that flooded him with @replies:
Still, there’s one sure way to take the heat off any impending new features for the web interface. What’s that, you ask? Simple! Go ahead and launch the Twitter ads that are rumored to be imminent–that will give users something different to complain about. 
Apple and Microsoft Teaming Up?
Once up on a time, it seemed that Google and Apple were natural partners, as inseparable as . . . well, two boards of directors with the same guy on them. And then last August, Google CEO Eric Schmidt left the Apple board, citing “core business conflicts.” Those conflicts have become more apparent over the intervening six months as Google has unveiled a smartphone/superphone set to compete against the iPhone.
And Apple may be set to fight back. Last month, they were apparently thinking about making Bing the default search engine on the iPhone, and now people are speculating that Apple is contemplating Bing for the iPad. You know what they say about the enemy of my enemy, but . . . isn’t this going a bit far?
Naturally, with a month until the iPad’s launch, nothing is set in stone—at least not to public knowledge. This speculation comes from Global Equities Research based on usability evidence about Bing, including the fact that instead of Google’s inverted triangle heat map, Bing has a rectangular heat map. Bing also uses layouts including several panes that are well-suited to rectangular screen.
Rectangular? Layout? Remind you of anyone? (The iPad. Also has a rectangular screen. But then, so does my computer and I still use Google.)
If this happens, the move may help Bing a little, but I doubt it’ll hurt Google in the long run—and since it has nothing to do with the Nexus One, it’s hard to imagine it’s going to hurt the competition in that arena.
What do you think? Will Apple really team up with Microsoft to spite Google, and if so, is it because of Bing’s usability results?
Google Rolls Out New Buzz Features: But Why These?
Yesterday, Google announced five little tweaks to Buzz. While they’re certain to please active users, they do little to address some of the issues Buzz has faced.
To be fair, Google has tried to address the major privacy concerns after Buzz’s initial (rushed) launch. Probably most important is the note that buried in your Gmail settings is the Buzz tab where you can disable the service if you’re not interested.
Probably the two most useful new features are a yellow bar to denote new items from the last time you checked your Buzz, and a way to keep your Gmail chat status from appearing in Buzz (putting it in parentheses. Obviously I love the parens, but in a chat status it’s kinda ugly, actually.).
The other changes are that you can post to Buzz through email (nice for active users, I’m sure), link to posts (though you’ll still need the correct permissions to view Buzz posts) and follow the Google Buzz team. Let’s admit it—that last one is just a little silly, eh?
When it comes to Buzz, I’m not interested. I’d like to be interested, really I would, but the signal to noise ratio is still too low. (And I still hate seeing things my friends recommended on Google Reader on Buzz, too. And for that matter, stories I’ve already read in Google Reader’s Recommended items.)
I’m not the only one. Plenty of more active users are looking for a way to refine the types of stories they see in their feeds. Of course, it’s not Google’s fault your friends are useless, but it is Google’s fault that you have to be reminded of it constantly. 
What do you think? Do you find Buzz useful? What would it take to make you feel safe and make it useful for you?
Google: An Elephant Dancing Ballet
What really goes on inside Google? Wired magazine’s Stephen Levy takes a peek inside the world’s most popular search engine. While most of what he saw will come as no surprise to people who’ve been in search at least a year or two, we do get a glimpse of some of the mechanisms the company uses to keep ahead of the competition.
Google really does strive to be all things to all people. They want to—and have to—”answer” questions asked in thought fragments, interpret meaning from snippets of sense and return relevant results. So how do they do it, while serving billions of queries? The same way a lot of us have to do things at work: meetings.
For real.
Meetings are usually the antithesis of productivity, but naturally, at Google, that paradigm is turned on its head (or so it sounds—I’m sure they sit through many unproductive meetings, too). At a weekly Search Quality Launch Meeting, a team of engineers examine search results before and after little tweaks to the engine.
These little tweaks are constantly being tested by Google’s employees, quality testers—and you. Says Levy:
There are so many changes to measure that Google has discarded the traditional scientific nostrum that only one experiment should be conducted at a time. “On most Google queries, you’re actually in multiple control or experimental groups simultaneously,” says search quality engineer Patrick Riley. Then he corrects himself. “Essentially,” he says, “all the queries are involved in some test.” In other words, just about every time you search on Google, you’re a lab rat.
Levy also looks at “bi-gram breakage” improvements—i.e. when Google figured out that “new york” is a unit and “new york times” is a distinct unit—as well as earlier improvements like synonyms and early semantic search cues.
It’s good that a behemoth like Google is light enough on its feet to continually try to improve. If they rested on their laurels, they would have become obsolete years ago.
But my favorite part of the article was one of the comments. Despite Levy’s note at the beginning that Facebook, Twitter and Yelp point toward the disparate, fragmented future of search, and the fact that it’s actually possible to get off the Google-Aid, essentially, the commentator bemoaned our fate as Google will become our one and only choice for virtually all our Internet information needs.
The commentator included a link to his blog—hosted on Blogspot. (At least he noted that he likes Google 
!)
What do you think? Is Google-vergence inevitable? Are they doing enough to innovate? Do you see the little improvements?
Google Testing Comparison Ads In UK
When Google launched AdWords Comparison Ads last fall, the company promised it would continue to expand its testing and use of this new ad format. Today, Google says it’s begun testing comparison ads in the UK for credit card-related searches.
In writing about the launch in late October, Danny Sullivan explained how the ad formats works:
Ads [...]
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How Google Buzz Hijacks Your Google Profile
Google Profiles existed long before the launch of Google Buzz earlier this month. But since that time, Google Buzz has hijacked Google Profiles in a way unmatched by any other Google product. That’s bad news for those who want to fully opt-out of Google Buzz. Doing so kills your Google Profile. It’s also bad news [...]
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Google Bypassed Internal Testing to Rush Buzz Out the Door?
For all of you complaining about the way Google Buzz invaded your privacy, the search engine has a perfectly simply explanation for you:
It didn’t really care!
OK, so Google hasn’t actually come out and made that statement, but it doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines:
The BBC understands that Buzz was only tested internally and bypassed more extensive trials with external testers – used for many other Google services…Many of the firm’s new services are tested by the so-called Google Trusted Tester program…Buzz was not tested by this program.
So basically, Google decided not to conduct its normal rigorous internal testing AND didn’t place Buzz in Google Labs–like it does with just about every other experimental new product. That leaves us to reason that either Google didn’t care, didn’t think, or got greedy.
Which ever option you pick, it hardly paints a pretty picture, does it?
Now, Google is faced with massive clean-up operation–practically changing Buzz every day–and by many accounts, has lost some of the respect of its users.
To its credit, Google is now working "extremely hard" to fix the mess it created:
[Google] has now set up a "war room" at Google HQ to bring together engineers and product managers to make decisions about what changes need to be made to Buzz.
"If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes," said Mr Jackson.
He acknowledged that many of the networks "tens of millions" of users were "rightfully upset" and that the firm was "very, very sorry".
"We know we need to improve things."
Before you comment, Yes I know that I am looking at this through my own biased filter–that’s what we do here–but you tell me? How in the world did Google make the decision to launch such an experimental product, in an area that it has had little home-grown success, without testing it for months?
What is Google scared of, that it needed to rush Buzz to market? Facebook? Twitter? Or progress passing it by?
