Core Dump

AOL yesterday acquired the video search engine Truveo. This is interesting in light of Google paying $1 blilion for AOL's 5% and even stinks of betrayal. Techcrunch's post with the news here, also covered by Jeff Clavier here.

They use some innovative techniques to create metadata about the media files, looking at surrounding content to determing context. Techcrunch's original review on Truveo here.

Here's a good demonstration of Truveo in action by comparing search results for Google's keynote video at CES 2006, covered earlier.

Posted by rishabh at 08:46 AM | Permalink

Posted by rishabh at 03:59 PM | Permalink

Also announced at the keynote, Google Software Pack - a free collection of essential software, available only for Windows XP. Comes with a Google updater to now help them keep track of what software you're using on your machines :)

Posted by rishabh at 04:39 PM | Permalink

Bill Gates announced yesterday the launch of a new music service that is obviously aimed at dethroning Apple iTunes. Called Urge (coming soon), it has over 2 million tracks for purchase or as part of an all-you-can eat subscription. The service extends to TV as well with a partnership with DirectTV.

What's interesting is Microsoft's partnership with Intel around Viiv, which was earlier rumored to power Apple's next generation Mac Mini with DVR capabilities. Can't wait for the MacWorld Expo next week now :)

Posted by rishabh at 10:32 AM | Permalink

Skype is finally catching up with other IMs (Yahoo, MSN and AOL) in terms of features with it's new version that includes video. Version 2.0 beta, reviewed here at Techworld is currenty only available for Windows however.

Mentioned at TechCrunch here and also discussed at Slashdot.

Posted by rishabh at 05:00 PM | Permalink

According to PCMag, Microsoft is testing it's answer to Google Base and Craigslist. Codenamed Fremont, the service will allow people to post listings, which will be indexed and made available via Microsoft's search engine. It's unclear, as with Google Base whether they will allow other crawlers to index these listings. It seems to be currently only available to MS employees.

Michael at Techcrunch thinks it's cool and will shake things up. That's enough for me to treat it with respect. Also reported by BetaNews, SearchEngineWatch and eWeek, and also discussed on Slashdot.

Related post on Live Custom Domains. Here's their blog.

Windows Live previously covered here. 

Posted by rishabh at 12:35 AM | Permalink

So Google's stock price hit 400 yesterday. WSJ questions (subscription reqd!) the merit of this mania. Either way, I should have bought the stock post IPO. The problem was, the stock always seemed too overpriced, even for a company like Google, whether it was 200, 300 or now 400.

In a related vein, Henry Blodget from Internet Outsider attempts to solve the mystery that has baffled even me time and again - Who exactly clicks on Google sponsored ads? For some weird reason (in an attempt to not let "them" win maybe), I'll NEVER click on a sponsored link. If the link is useful, I'll mouseover to get the URL and then type it manually in the address bar. Although I must admit, I'm changing this behavior lately for all free ad supported websites I like.

Posted by rishabh at 07:00 PM | Permalink

CNET is running an article on how Microsoft is considering offering free desktop applications, supported entirely by ads. This is the clearest indication so far of the software giant feeling the heat from Google and Yahoo and of their willingness to accept the challenge head on. Microsoft's core strength is in the desktop business, and if they manage to integrate the desktop with this online model, they very well might be on the verge of a" disruptive wave".

Windows Live, is their first step in that direction (although technically MSN was supposed to be that). But as noted earlier, they clearly need to take the battle to the desktop where they can kick butts of the likes of Google anyday.

The CNET article also talks about AdCenter (code named Moonshot), unveiled almost 8 months back, and Microsoft's reply and more to Google AdWord.

Posted by rishabh at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ars Technica is running an article on the new Google Analytics service that provides traffic metrics and other website analysis features, especially useful for marketing purposes. It also claims to provide easy integration with Google AdWords to help find out the usefulness of the campaigns.

Web sites that don't use AdWords can add a small javascript snippet to the pages they wish to track.

Google is using the Urchin web analytics technology, a company it had earlier acquired.

Also discussed on Slashdot here.

More on this once I've integrated it with this blog.

Update: Brief coverage on TechCrunch. 

Posted by rishabh at 12:25 PM | Permalink

Wired is running a piece on  Riya, an online photo sharing and management tool that uses face and text recognition to automatically tag photos. The premise is that once you've sufficiently trained the software with your family pictures, Riya automatically tags any new pictures you upload and identifies each person it recognizes. From the article, the software has proven sensitive enough to tell the difference between twins and recognize members of the same family. It can even read street signs for clues about a picture's location. Pretty neat!

The software was first reviewed at TechCrunch. Following are some of the first review of the alpha release: Hulleye Comes By, David Castera, Letters from Lex, Calm Computing and Software and Tools

Munjal Shah, the CEO of Riya has a blog here.

Posted by rishabh at 01:50 PM | Permalink

Close on the heels of Microsoft's announcement (covered earlier) to digitize the world's books and make them available for online searches, Amazon plans to introduce two programs next year that will allow consumers to buy online access to entire books, and to individual pages or chapters. As opposed to the Google Print program, where they are scanning copyrighted books, in some cases without the permission of publishers or authors, Amazon plans to work with the publishers and essentially provide them with another way to generate revenue.

This is very similar in many ways to Apple's ITMS where individual songs are available for purchase for $0.99. Judging by the success of that program, this seems like a good move, and would especially appeal to students and researchers. I can't however imagine people wanting to buy entire books to read online. Earlier efforts in this direction have failed miserably.

Posted by rishabh at 09:44 AM | Permalink

And it's not bad at all! The use of flash instead of AJAX is an interesting differentiator from Google maps. But they also have the AJAX version available as part of their APIs, along with a simple and flash version. They seem to have done their homework, their beta version being much more advanced than Google's at launch.

As always, TechCrunch has an indepth review, as does Y! Search.

I'm loving this. More later ...

Posted by rishabh at 09:28 AM | Permalink

Not unexpectedly after their recent reorganization, Microsoft yesterday launched two online services Windows Live and Office Live in an apparent effort to take on Google in this space. The desktop looks very similar to the Google personalized home, with the ability to add custom feeds and content. The gadgets have an uncanny resemblance to Mac OS X dashboard widgets :) The VOIP IM is quite interesting.

I won't be surprized if plans include integration with the Windows desktop version in some way allowing MS to cut down on time to market and offer software more and more as a service.

More on this later ...

Michael from TechCrunch who covered the announcement has a detailed review of the services.

Posted by rishabh at 06:43 PM | Permalink