Archive for August, 2008

Yahoo! Falling Apart From Within- More Executives Jump The Sinking Ship!

August 28, 2008 at 11:48 pm · Filed under Search Engine News ·Tagged

What stumps me the most is the fact that how a company like Yahoo! could afford to turn down the generous Microsoft bid for a takeover. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, and I’m sure to a lot of people who must asking one simple question, “What is Jerry Yang thinking?”

Since the day Yahoo! turned down Microsoft’s takeover offer, the stream of high level executive leaving the company is off the charts, by all standards. Now, as per the news details provided by Tech Crunch, two more senior vice presidents (SVPs) have quit Yahoo! and left for greener pastures.

One of Yahoo! SVP, Todd Teresi, previously SVP  Yahoo! Network Business had already been acquired by Quantcast and is now working in the capacity of Teresi is now the Chief Revenue Officer.

The other SVP, a ten year Yahoo! veteran. Steve Boom has reportedly resigned as well. Boom started in Yahoo’s London office in a business development role. More recently he oversaw Yahoo’s broadband partnerships with AT&T, Rogers, BT and Verizon.

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Microsoft CashBack Service Falls Face First In The Stock Market!:

August 28, 2008 at 11:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Microsoft is like a man whose is just plain unlucky at just about everything. At the end of the month of May this year, Microsoft introduced its CashBack service aimed at garnering more user attention. Since the inception of this well intentioned service, Microsoft has spared no efforts to bring success to Live CashBack program. The CashBack service is all about providing cashbacks to users who make an online purchase of certain products, using the Live Search.

However, as reported by Tech Crunch, their entire endeavor has been fruitless and no matter what they do, the Live Search CashBack hasn’t been able to impress the users not the stock markets.

According to Tech Crunch, “After Live Cashback launched in May, Microsoft saw an initial one-month boost in its share of the U.S. search market (from 8.5 percent in May to 9.2 percent in June). But in July, its share slipped again down to 8.9 percent, according to comScore. Although we only have two months of full data (June and July) since launch to evaluate, it doesn’t look like Cashback is having any effect.”

On the other hand, the other competitors, Google and Yahoo! Showed stead increase in their revenues. (See figures below)

U.S. Search Market Share
———-May, 2008——June, 2008—–July, 2008
Google——-61.8%———61.5%———-61.9%
Yahoo——-20.6%———-20.9%———-20.5%

Click on the Image to Enlarge and view the entire figures

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Mozilla and Google Partnership To Extend Till 2011!:

August 28, 2008 at 10:46 pm · Filed under Search Engines ·Tagged

Mozilla Inc. that is the inventor of the widely acclaimed web browser, FireFox has announced that it has extended its search deal with the search engine giant, Google for another three years. According to the negotiations between Google and Mozilla, in exchange of setting Google as the default search engine, Google will pay Mozilla a hnadsome amount of $57 million amounting to a total of 85% of Mozilla’s annual revenue. The new deal will run till throughout the year 2011.

According to Mitchell Baker (Mozilla, CEO), “We’re very, very happy about our relationship with Google and this makes sure that Mozilla will be sustainable and thrive for quite a long time to come. We develop our product and technical direction as part of an open process unrelated to the search relationship with Google. We talk to Google about the parts of the product that offer Google services (i.e., the Firefox Start Page) and the services they provide, like anti-phishing. Otherwise Google does not have any special relationship to Mozilla project activities.

The monetary benefits provided to Mozilla due to search deal, enables the company to pay staff, support its bandwidth and hardware infrastructure, and to distribute a number of grants.

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Three of the Best Female Tennis Stars- Straight Sets To Our Hearts!

August 28, 2008 at 10:16 am · Filed under Sports & Entertainment ·Tagged

Tennis is sort of a game that not only provides a sense of class but also provides unadulterated excitement and adrenaline rush, that can be compared to inly a handful of activities in the world. Since the era of Martina Navratilova, there have been numerous female tennis stars that have won over the hearts of millions, not only because of their style of playing, but also because of their killer looks and in all, because they are HOT!.

I am a tennis enthusiast (or call me fanatic, I don’t mind!) myself and always on the lookout for more information on the legends of this noble game. So, I took this opportunity of sharing some info about three all time best female tennis players that I’ve come across. Hence, here are the three most awesome and gorgeous women, the world of tennis has ever produced. Steffi Graf, Anna Kournikova & Justin Henin.

Steffi Graf:

Born June 14, 1969, in Mannheim former West Germany, Steffi Graf is still considered to be one of the hottest female tennis stars of all time and is a legend in her class. In her entire career, Steffi Graf has won an astounding 22 Grand Slams, trailing just behind Margaret Court’s 24 Grand Slams. In her childhood days, Graf was introduced to the fabulous world of tennis by her father, Peter Graf and went on to compete in her first ever tournament, at the tender age of five.

As fate would have it, Graf’s breakthrough came in the year 1987 where she started the season with a great stride and with six tournament victories, got herself a place in the French Open. At the Roland Garros, Steffi Graff continued her fierce competitive form and defeated Gabriela Sabatini in a three-set semi-final, moving on to the finals to face the World No.1 Martina Navratilova. The final of the French Open 1987, proved to be a sizzling match that lasted for three sets and finally Steffi Graf came out victorious, defeating Martina 6–4, 4–6, 8–6. A true legend who has captivated the heart and minds of millions, men and women alike. With her exquisite play and her gorgeous looks, the 90’s era saw Steffi as a power and a sex symbol that took the world by storm

Anna Kournikova

Born on June 7, 1981, in Moscow, former Soviet Union, Anna Kournikova is a highly successful and one of the most sought after female tennis stars in the world. In her entire tennis career Anna has been a truly versatile players with significant successes in the field of singles matches as well as doubles matches. At the age of 14, Anna Kournikova got the sporting world’s attention, when she was crowned as Junior European Champion Under 18 and ITF Junior World Champion Under 18. She had also won the coveted “Italian Open.”

However, the year 1998 turned out to be the platform that would propel Anna Kournikova into fortune and fame. That particular year saw Anna reach the WTA top 20 rankings and with her incredible game play, she was able to defeat the three tennis legends, Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, and Steffi Graf. Then in the year 1999 and 2002 Anna Kournikova snatched two Grand Slam doubles titles and incidentally, both of them at the Australian Open. In both these wins, she had an incredible partner in the form of Martina Hingis. Apart from her tennis career, another factor that put her solely into the limelight has been her modeling career and her star celebrity status.

Justin Henin

Born on June 1, 1982 in Liège, Belgium, Justin Henin was the World No.1 player till May 14th 2008, when she announced her sudden and shocking retirement from the world of tennis. In her entire tennis career, Justin Henin has won an incredible 41 WTA titles, that include four French Open titles, one Australian Open title, and two US Open titles. Known for her tremendously powerful single handed backhand shot, her rhythmic footwork and synchronized handwork, Henin has been termed by the tennis legend Billie Jean King as, “pound for pound, [Henin] is the best tennis player of her generation.“

Justine Henin began playing tennis at the age of 14 and in the year 1997, she claimed her first big title, with the junior girl’s singles title at the French Open. The year 1999, saw the emergence of a ‘to be’ tennis legacy, entered the Belgian Open as a “wild card” entry and won her first ever WTA Tour event, making her fifth female player in the world win a debut WTA event.

The year 2003, saw the rise of Justine Henin from the overall rank of the top fifth to World No. 1. Justin Henin entered the US Open 2003, as the second seeded player and quickly progressed to the semi-finals after defeating Anastasia Myskina in the quarterfinals. In the semi-finals, Justine faced off with the sixth-seeded Jennifer Capriati, whom she defeated 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(4) after three grueling hours of hardcore tennis action. Later she defeated Kim Clijsters in the finals and won the US Open 2003 and with it became the World No. 2 player, just behind Clijsters. Later on, at the Zurich Open, Justine Henin defeated Serbia’s Jelena Dokic in the finals and finally claimed the throne of World No.1 on October 20, 2003.

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Google Suggest- As Seen From a Webmaster’s Perspective!

August 27, 2008 at 1:11 pm · Filed under Search Engines ·Tagged ,

As soon as Google took out Google Suggest from BETA and introduced it for the users world wide, Webmasters around the globe have started commenting on the feasibility as well the pros & cons of the service.

Over at Webmaster World, in an ongoing thread about Google Suggest, Webmaster have been sharing their opinions and their expectations from this nifty Google Search function.

Here are some excerpts from the Webmaster World Thread:

“Fortunately, Google has added an option on the Preferences page to turn it off. I did. Yes, I’m a curmudgeon on this one. “I don’t need no stinking suggestions.” But it might be a somewhat interesting bit of research to turn it on from time to time and see what pops up”

“I’m also wondering if this new default “Suggest” feature might hurt some long tail search traffic – and maybe some typo searches too. It will be interesting to watch.”

“It is clear that Google is now playing catch-up with “you know who” since “you know who” has this “suggest” feature standard and it rawks according to users!”

“Maybe the competition pushed Google to making a full roll-out, but the technology has been there for quite a while. They’ve been developing it in Google Labs for what, three years or so?”

“It appears, at least so far from what I see, that this is only active when entering a term on the Google home page, not on the subsequent SERPs when you might want to refine the search, as on Y!. An interesting choice. And G is including nav searches in the suggestions (example.com, .org, etc.), whereas Y! appears to filter these. Again, interesting.”

“Seems that google is rolling out the search suggest one at a time, I’ve seen it on some dc’s already. Still not rolled out to other DCs. Pretty big change for the homepage.”

“Those of us who have griped about “City, State” and “City, two-letter code” searches will not like this. The issue has been the search results should be the same on both. They are not. (Atlanta, Ga vs Atlanta, Georgia, for example.) Now we have a new issue. Now when you type in Atlanta it default to…just Atlanta. The listing for state doesn’t even show as a option. Likewise, Cincinnati, etc. And, the search results (for good reason, but, well, you know) are different for all three.”

“My thought is that a truly long tail term is not likely to appear in the suggestions. So one of those options is more likely to be selected and the user may find what they were looking for on that search – and never type in their original idea for a search. I suppose it all comes down to what we are calling the “long tail.” The terms that I see in Suggest are more in the area of what I would call the fat belly.”

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Eric Enge In Conversation With Google’s Maile Ohye!

August 27, 2008 at 12:27 pm · Filed under Search Engines ·Tagged ,

Google’s Maile Ohye, who is an integral part of the Google Webmaster Central was recently interviewd by Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting.

Here are a few excerpts of the interview transcript:

Eric Enge: Can you talk a bit about the Webmaster Tools API that you announced in June?

Maile Ohye: Yes, I’d love to. For us, the Webmaster Tools really allowed us to reach webmasters of all levels. The API allows for verification, and submission of sitemaps, and it allows us to work with hosting programs. Through these hosting programs, we can reach the webmasters who might not have already heard of Webmaster Tools at all, and help them build better sites. Also, the API allows us to reach the more advanced audience.

Eric Enge: Okay. So, one thing that I noticed recently is that there is the ability now to designate an RSS feed as a sitemap file. And, if you go into the interface, it will actually tell you what your RSS feeds are and ask you if you want to make them a sitemap. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Maile Ohye: Sure. This is part of our effort to reach more and more webmasters, and to make it simpler for you. The RSS sitemap is already rich with a convenient format that we can extract links from. So, if you’ve already got one we can detect that and let you know that we’d like to take some of that data to help us understand your site better. When you submit a sitemap, you can also get more indexing stats about your site. So the URL is extracted from your sitemap, and it will tell you the percent of URLs in the index and things like that.

Eric Enge: Right. So, back to the RSS thing for the moment; if you do agree to have an RSS feed be a sitemap file, does that tie into the whole notion of query deserves freshness at all? I ask this because RSS feeds imply time based data. I was just wondering if it might increase the speed in which something is indexed when it’s delivered through an RSS feed rather than as a static page in a sitemap.

Maile Ohye: Thinking about how our pipeline works, I would say that it’s not going to improve that speed. There is no added weight because it came from a source RSS.

Eric Enge: Right. I understand. Okay, so with spam reporting one of the new things I noticed is that you provide confirmation of spam report submissions in Webmaster Tools. I am not sure how long that’s been around, but when did that start?

Maile Ohye: Sure. The confirmation of spam reports I believe started earlier this month. We want to get the spam reports, but at the same time we keep a lot of this information confidential within ourselves. We want to acknowledge that we are receiving them. We are looking to give more helpful messages in message centers in general. Another one we rolled out that wasn’t widely announced was the Chilling Effects messages. You know how you can file a DMCA request to have content taken down from a certain webpage? When that request is approved, then we will take down that content. But, also because we have some verified website owners for some of these sites, that DMCA request effects your site, and you are verified in Webmaster Tools. You can also get a message there notifying you of what the request was and what we’ve done on behalf of the request.

Eric Enge: Right, so then next question for paid links that get reported in Webmaster Tools. I think it’s fairly well stated that the primary thing you do with it is use it to improve your algorithms. But, if you do confirm a link is a paid link when you get the report, is it normally disabled from passing PageRank?

Maile Ohye: Yes, we do disable such links from passing PageRank.

Eric Enge: So, will a link embedded in Flash pass PageRank?

Maile Ohye: Yes, it functions as a regular link.

Eric Enge: Excellent, so part of this update you added support for SWFObject?

Maile Ohye: Yes. There is a lot of Flash loaded through SWFObject.

Eric Enge: Alright. Can you talk a little bit about the Geographic Target Option and what it does?

Maile Ohye: Sure. The Geographic Target option is especially useful if you have a top level domain like a dotcom, and you would like to target a verified subdirectory or sub-domain to a particular region. So, if I have example.com/Canada, then I might have that regional specific content there, within that subdirectory. I can actually target that to the geographic location of Canada. Once we have that information, we can use that to provide better results for searchers who want more Canadian information, whether it’s based on the fact that they are in Canada, or they are searching for something specific to Canada. That’s a great area where getting webmaster input allows us to improve search quality.

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Logitech Introduces Harmony One- Advanced Universal Remote!

August 27, 2008 at 11:05 am · Filed under Gadgets & Gizmoz ·Tagged

Logitech has announced the launch of, the all in one advanced universal remote controller known as ‘Harmony One’ for the Indian markets. The Logitech Harmony One will be available for $250. Harmony One is a user friendly universal remote and sports a 2.2-inch full-colored touchscreen with capacitive technology. It means that it responds to the rapid movements of your fingers.


According to Subrotah Biswas, (Country Manager, India & SAARC, Logitech), “The Harmony advanced universal remotes have been highly successful at providing easy, one-touch access to favorite activities, such as watching TV, playing a video game, or listening to music – all with a single remote. To further improve our lineup, while developing Harmony One, we sought to intimately understand the interaction between people, their remotes, and their entertainment systems. In fact, Harmony One is the result of our most comprehensive research and development undertaking ever – more than 20,000 hours.”

The extremely comfortable and easy to use button layout, ensures that the device provides enhanced usability as well as control over the functions.

The remote is divided into four zone, where the remote focuses on umbers; traditional DVD controls; D-pad with volume and channel up/down; and on-screen menu buttons.

Harmony One has been designed on the one-touch activity-based control system that includes the largest database of A/V-control entertainment equipments. This advanced universal remote come with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and an adjustable LCD light.

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‘Google Suggest’ Now Out of BETA- That’s Fast!

August 27, 2008 at 9:47 am · Filed under Search Engines ·Tagged ,

Two days ago, Google had announced the launch of ‘Google Suggest‘ that has been designed to enhance and simplify the user search experience by providing highly relevant search suggestions. The following are the benefits of Google Suggest:

  1. formulate queries.

  2. reduce spelling errors

  3. the ultimate goal of reducing keystrokes when you are doing your search.

Now, according to Search Engine Journal, Google Suggest that had been in the Google Labs for quite a while now, is finally out of the BETA phase and is ready to be rolled in its actual form.

Google Suggest works on IE 6.0 (or newer) and Mozilla 1.4 (or newer). Firefox 0.8 (or newer) Opera 7.54 (or newer), and Safari 1.2.2 (or newer). To use this nifty Google feature, you’ll need to turn on your Javascript and Cookies setting on your Browser’s option.

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Ride The City.com Launches Google Map App for Bikers!:

August 26, 2008 at 4:45 pm · Filed under Search Engines ·Tagged ,

Ride the City.com has a launched a nifty application, that enables users to plot a course for their biking routes, that can be calculated on the factors of speed and safety. Users can select a start and stop point in New York City and the application will automatically create the safest route along with the quickest ones, without compromising the safety of the bikers.

According to Tech Crunch, “The project is run by three bikers, Jordan Anderson, Vaidila Kungys, and Josh Steinbauer (Full disclosure: I went to college with Jordan but found out about this via NPR.) who connected Google maps to a few basic heuristic rules and added a cool logo. The GIS data comes from the city itself and is merged with Google Maps for display.”

Founder of of the app, Jordan Anderson says, “Sometimes the most daunting thing about riding a bike in New York is figuring out the best route to take. How do you get to the bridge entrances? What’s the best way to Central Park from the Hudson River greenway? We created this website to help beginning bicyclists answer those questions.”

Every time you search Ride the City, we look through more than 125,000 records in a database. Most of that data comes from the City’s LION GIS data. The City’s LION file does not contain bicycle facility data, so we made a Freedom of Information Act request to the NYC Department of Transportation and NYC Department of City Planning. That got us a little closer, but we still had to put in dozens of hours of data cleanup to get everything working more-or-less correctly.

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