WSJ is beaten hands down by Google News!

When Mr. Ruperd Murdoch is busy complaining and drawing legal strategies against Google, a data generated from comscore comparison has popped up that is definitely going to give Mr. Murdoch a fresh new point to look at the ‘News’ issue (if he is not painstakingly prejudiced).
According to a recent survey it is revealed that, more people trust Google News over any other dedicated news brands, when it comes to getting news online. The closest competitor being New York Times, who has been outnumbered by an astonishing margin of 34million unique visitors. According to the survey Google had attracted almost 100 million unique visitors November,2009, with compare to 66millions by NYT. And if you are thinking where the hell is Mr. Murdoch, he is right at the bottom layer fetching just about 6 million unique visitors last month. Someone please go and tell the gentleman that it is just not the way to go about things!
You simply can not afford to be a hard nut, when it comes to compete with a brand as innovative and as trustworthy as Google! This striking data has not only given WSJ a lot of stuff to think, but also raised a serious question over the acceptability of the News Brands.
At this point you must be thinking that Google is doing just a great job!
You are right Google indeed is doing a great job, but there is another player who’s doing greater job in this field. Guess who?
It’s Yahoo!!!
The survey has revealed that almost 138 million (WOW!!) unique visitors had knocked Yahoo News, when it came to getting the news. Now that was some finding!
You just cannot write Yahoo off.
Following is the Comscore’s unique visitor’s graph(as posted in tech crunch);

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Google's Real Time Search - Its Real Now!

It was new, it was happening, it was futuristic and above all it was related to “Search”. So how could Google stay away from it? It’s just little over six months since Larry Page had announced that they ‘have to do it’, and they have done it. It just proves their commitment and why they are the leaders. Of course they are not the first bring it, Bing has already been providing real time updates from twitters and all, but Google’s ‘RTS’ feature makes more sense to me. Let me tell you why;
 To avail Bing’s real time search you have to go to a dedicated page. That’s a complete repeller for me. We simply don’t have enough time to access different pages for regular results and real time search results. That’s where Google scores higher. Their feature makes more sense to me. You only get to see it ‘if’ there is any interesting updates available in the web, otherwise you will never get stuffed with crappy and unnecessary updates. And above all you will not have to go to another page to get them.
 Another overhead of Bing’s RTS is I think the retweet option. These tweets never get updated, so whats the point in retweeting? Google’s newest offering is atleast clean from such overheads.
But till now Google has covered very specific and little space for updated news. So you get to see real time search results for very few and selective keywords. But I guess that’s going to change, as its understandable that it’s still in an experimental phase, and they are definitely going to improve it.
But we go by the words of Amit Singhal, Google’s Ranking System’s head; Google will stay away from providing unwanted and unnecessary updates so that it never becomes annoying. Singhal added that Google RTS covers updates from the following domains,
• Tweets from twitter
• Google Blog Search contents
• Jaiku updates
• Identi.ca updates
• TwitArmy updates
• Google News updates
• Updates about newly created WebPages
And we think, this list is just going to get longer.

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Pull Up Your Socks to Optimize Your Site's SPEED to Rank Well

Last Monday in a remarkable presentation at Pubcon, Matt Cutts has revealed that there is a strong possibility that Google might start considering loading speed of a site while ranking it. He said that the this parameter is under the review for quite some time now and lately it has caught a strong wind behind it through several lobbies within Google.

He said that Google's aim has always been to provide it's users with fast and most relevant search results. And with perception like that how could they overlook the speed factor. After all there's no use having a SERP full of relevant results that take ages to load. That's definitely not where the future of search lies. Specially when real time search is gaining more and more wind, this discrepancy is annoying not only from users point of view but also from that of Google's.

There's already around 200 parameters that Google consider in their algo, it could very well be an addition to the list shortly.

Though it might not be the most important factor, but still it could very well be decisive in its own term. So I think the time is not very far when webmaster's will start optimizing the speed for their sites.

To know more on this topic, see the webpronews video below that features the Matt Cutts interview.

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Is News Corp Really a Crusador for Modern Day Journalism

When the several news agencies under the self proclaimed leadership of News Corp raised their voice against Google's authority to publish their news without their consent, I really gave it a thought that 'is Google really going a bit too far to please it's users?'

I thoroughly analysed their claims and their accusations. In spite of being a great fan of Google, I kept myself neutral to avoid even the single pixel of biasedness.

Their main allegation against Google was that they are providing their users first click info about a news, which is simply unacceptable. And I agreed with them in that point. But when I looked in to the matter with a slight seriousness, it sounded to be honest ridiculous to me, Why so?

Well how much info Google is providing in the first click?

The answer is, it's only the amount that you are providing them to publish. And you have full capability to control this amount. A person with the modest knowledge on web technology can put a limit on this.

And in an age, when a 10 year old kid knows how to protect his data using password, it sounds really nonsense that a big media house like News Corp are incognizant about that.

So if they want only their paid users to view the news, they can easily design their site in a way that SERPs will only show the news titles, and whenever a viewer wants to get in to it, it will ask for user name and password. And if the user is registered, then only he/she can read the news. It's as simple as that! So why they are making such a big noise out of it ?

Are they trying to use this issue to clear up their own guilts?

Specially if we think of News Corp, they have had a long tradition of plagiarism. And when 'they' speak against it in a way, it really sounds fishy.

I have no personal grudge against News Corp and all, but all these just seems to be too easy a problem to make a noise for.

And if you are thinking that why should news media make that extra technical effort to ensure their privacy, I think its too little a compromise compare to what they are going to get for it.

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Google Introduces "One Box" Music Search feature

Google now has gone one up over yahoo in the domain of music search with their newly announced “One Box” venture. It also marks the beginning of a new journey by Google in an arena once overlooked by them. And here they have done almost a catching up job by embedding this new music search feature. But as they say, its always better late than never! Though Google was lethargic to react, still when they came up, they came up with a feature that is much superior to the one already in motion by yahoo. While Yahoo’s music search only returns live playable music results for the artists name only, Google’s will return results for album and songs name also along with the traditional artist name results.

Turning down the speculations thrown out by the media that this music search results will come up with links to purchase the songs, Google’s RJ Pittman said that, they have no intention to give a commercial touch to this search feature, at least at this point of time. But going by the past records, one can easily assume that this option is always on the cards. Any ways, who cares, at least I’d care the least even if they had embedded it with commerciality.

Google has tied up with online music majors like, Lala, iLike, Pandora and Myspace for this venture. And depending upon the availability, viewers will be able to listen to the songs live, provided by these content partners.

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Real-Time Search is Not Far from Reality Now

If the current development tracks are maintained, we are not really far from celebrating the true advent of the 'Real time Search Experience'. In a win win deal proceeding Microsoft defeated Google by roping in Twitter in a dramatic table turn. Just when it seemed that the Search Emperor was going to get hold of the most promising and talented kid in the block, Microsoft flown in to the picture and snatched the prey to sport the last laugh.

And just to make the dish sweeter, Facebook also joined in the flock.

Now that's definitely one deal Google didn't want to see kissing success. Well, not much really revealed at this stage, but still it seems that the impregnated deal will soon give birth to the wonder baby who can completely change the face of the Search World in coming future. With millions of users tweeting about almost every thing under the sky, its definitely the future of searching. And the company from facebook is definitely going to make the road smoother.

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Google Drops Page Rank from Webmaster Tools

After seeing that all their suggestions regarding the ineffectiveness of page ranks in deciding a page’s true quality falling in the deaf ears, Google finally decides to drop the page rank statistics from Google Webmaster Tools. Google has been saying discouraging things regarding page rank’s authenticity for long now. But it seemed like a rather contradictory policy on their side as they kept providing page rank statistics in their Webmaster Tools. So finally Google has sealed their thoughts on page ranks with this move, that got reflected in their recently released Webmaster Tools Lab.

The obsession over the little green bar among the webmasters community was like insane. Though many of them admit that it has very little significance while judging a page’s quality, still they simply couldn’t stop themselves from giving a glare at the little green devil. Many a time I wondered how on the Earth Google could give a vulgarly high pr to some pages that simply looked like craps!

It was Susan Moskwa from Google Webmaster Central team who came out explaining the exclusion as a reminder from their end to the webmasters community about their dangerous liaison with the green bar.

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Google Chrome OS..the Raw Version got Leaked

At last we got to take a peek at the first glance of Google Chrome OS, and that too strangely enough came not from the Google’s end. And although it has come with loads of bugs and

problems in it, still it has already succeeded to generate enough curiosity among enthusiasts. You can now easily download the raw or unstable version as it is named. Google is definitely not happy about this. And they have already started an internal investigation to find out the source of this leak. I’ve here also posted some screen shots that were originally posted by Jonathan Frederickson of Techcrunch, who was actually the first person to find this out.

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Ask Launches "Deals" to Survive the Search Engine War

To 'Deal' with the competition thrown by the heavy weights like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, Ask has introduced a new service or feature, 'Ask Deal'. It is almost in the same line as 'yahoo Deal'. Using its decent enough search technology Ask promises to churn out more than 1 million discount deals available in the web that covers offers from both the national and local merchants.

In its press release(as published in the searchengineland) Ask has said,

" Ask Deals, its proprietary database of more than 1 million high-quality savings offers from national and local merchants across hundreds of product categories.

Ask Deals scours the Web for all the deals available online – from savings on ‘skinny jeans’ to restaurant coupons – and organizes the best money-saving offers front and center on the results page, eliminating the need for consumers to search multiple sites or multiple coupon sites or search engine links to find their answer. The Ask Deals database is continuously refreshed and editorially refined, giving consumers the most up-to-date and highest-quality savings offers every time they search on Ask."

With its wide range of merchandise covering and looking at the approaching festive season, it seems that Ask has struck the right chord at the right time.

Being a relatively unexplored territory, 'discount deal' search has given Ask, the required breathing space. And being early in the competition will definitely enrich them with great advantage.

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Microsoft Urges it's IE Users not to Install Google Chrome Frame

Microsoft's recent urge to it's IE8 users regarding the usage of Google Chrome Frame has not gone down well with the web community. According to a Microsoft representative who spoke with ars technica said;

"With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers. Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take."

And that at least to me sounded really fishy. To me it was just a reflection of Microsoft's growing anxiety regarding Google. Yes,There were security issues with Chrome at it's nascent stage, but they have sorted it out now. And the most funny thing was that why they are only concerned about the IE8 version! And that too when the version still could not achieve the success that it was meant to. Isn't it a fact that more people use IE than Chrome and so the hackers also mainly target IE rather than Chrome. So their concerns in the security issue looked more of a protective grudge to me.

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Adobe buys Omniture for $1.8 billion.

In a surprisingly fast development, Adobe has announced that it will take over web analytic software company 'Omniture'. This take over will be costing them about $1.8 billion. This buy by Adobe will definitely force Google to revise its strategies for the web analytic market. Many are thinking that Google might come out with an 'Enterprise' version of their web analytics service.

Adobe Systems Inc. said Tuesday it will buy the Web analytic software company Omniture for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers monitor the effectiveness of such content.

San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. said it will buy Omniture Inc. for $21.50 per share in cash, a premium of 24 percent over Omniture’s closing stock price Tuesday.

The announcement came as Adobe said it earned $136 million, or 26 cents per share, in the fiscal third quarter that ended in August, down 29 percent from the same time a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, Adobe earned a profit of 35 cents per share, a penny above what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting. The maker of Photoshop, Flash and Acrobat software says its revenue fell 21 percent to $697.5 million.

As nobody was expecting the entry of Adobe in the web analytics market, and that too so early, it will take some time for the web geeks to come out with their own versions and thoughts regarding this development. This has already started showing its effect in their shares(NASDAQ:OMTR), as it has pushed Omniture shares up $4.43 a share, while Adobe's share went down about 4% to $34.10.
According to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan, this was an important game changer for both Adobe and their customers. He has also said that this 'Omniture take over' wil enable advertisers, media organizations and e-tailers to realize the full value of their digital assets.

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Google Looses Kai-Fu Lee in their Chinese Crusade

Just when everything seemed to be going alright for Google, they recieved a very disguised jolt from the Google china's head Kai-Fu Lee, as he left Google to nourish his own venture, 'Innovation Works'. It was on the cards according to many. Kai-Fu Lee has served Google for four years. And just when every one was sensing that Google might at last take a bite of it's share off the China's search engine market, that is one sidedly dominated by 'Baidu', the cards fell down. Though it might seem from the surface that it's just another job switch of a high profile Googler, there's more in to it. Google had started to penetrate the Chinese 'Oasis' search engine market after years long try and the timing could not be worse. Though Kai-Fu Lee has said that he for the time being will get fully absorbed into his venture which is about helping young and talented Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs to develop fresh internet and mobile computing technology. This new endeavor, 'Innovation Works' will hire the budding talents from China and nurture them for one year and then finally let them go open.
This is no doubt a very noble initiative and quite appreciable, but what if Kai-Fu Lee thinks of building a new Chinese search engine by mobilising these pool of talents. And with the invaluable Google experience that's definitely quite viable. No matter if it does not succeed to overpower 'Baidu', even a decent attempt can bid Google's Chinese search market dream a premature good bye forever. And that is definitely the last thing Google wants.
My assumption got closer to get transfared into belief after talking to several fellow web wizards. Now it will be really interesting to see, how Google reacts to this, what strategy they incorporate to enforce their Chinese crusade, who replaces Kai-Fu Lee and what vibe he spreads.

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Google Finally Owns the Patent to its Homepage Design

After five long years of legal procedures Google finally got hold of the patent to its very simple yet so powerful homepage design. So any one from now on, trying to take a piece out of its design could very well be dragged into legal trouble. Many Search engines who either consciously or subconsciously got influenced in their design aspect by Google, have definitely not accepted this patent episode in open minds. They are fearing a possible Google lash out from legal grounds sooner or later. They are thinking that with this new found ammunition, Google might go for the kill to extend its monopoly by finishing off the smaller rivals. And with the merging of Yahoo and MSN search technologies, it definitely looks quite a decent possiblity to clarify their no-fuss stand.

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Yahoo Launching English Version of Meme

After achieving fair success in the Portuguese and Spanish versions, Yahoo is getting ready to launch the English version of its microblogging platform 'meme'. From the recent developments it gets quite vivid that yahoo is playing all its cards to impress 'Twitter'. But may be acknowledging the huge competition its now concentrating upon developing its own 'twitter' version. The Portuguese version was shown the daylight earlier this year and they soon followed it up with a Spanish version. This service comes with almost all the features that could be found in twitter. It provides the scope for sharing photos and videos with fellow users. It also dishes out the option of reposting the messages of other users. I, like many other over enthusiastic net freak waiting eagerly for this service to get launched. It will be really interesting to see how yahoo tries to elbow out twitter on their very own ground.

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Now its Microsoft-Yahoo-Amazon vs Google in the Book Settlement issue

The challenge has become tougher for Google in the Book Settlement issue, as America’s largest online retailer and web biggie Amazon joins the hand with Microsoft-Yahoo against them. And to add salt to their wound, strong supports have been enunciated from many quarters. With a steadily growing support, this coalition is now looking to pose a serious threat to dismiss the deal that Google had struck with Authors Guild last year.

According to this deal Google gets the right to make the published books available on the Internet and in return they give back a certain percentage of revenue generated from the ads that run along these books. This deal was struck after almost a three and half year old tussle between Google and Authors Guild over the dispute regarding publishing of the books online by Google through their book search segment. But just when it was looking everything has been sorted out, it suddenly went wrong from Google's point of view. It seems that their steady growth and envious success has amplifying their enemy list rapidly.

The reason behind this new dispute is stemmed out of the concern that this deal will provide Google with an unfair advantage over other players in the digital book market.

As several groups of authors, libraries and publishers are uniting against the deal, and libraries like Special Libraries Association and the New York Library Association, supported by American society of Journalists and Authors are joining the coalition, it seems that Google is going to have a tough time ahead.

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Twitter soon to make available it's 'Geolocation' feature.

Do you want to let others know from where are you tweeting ?

If you do, then it will soon be brought to reality by the Twitter team. After getting poplular through iPhone, now its turn to get popular in the webworld for "Geolocation" feature. Like iPhone, where you are asked several times for permission to enable several features of Geolocation, the Twitter version of it will also offer you to turn off this feature.

But the question is, are they somewhere compromising with the privacy of the users. Specially when you are already getting updates 24x7 from an user about his movements, was it really necessary to make this feature available where you are actually offering the users to know others geographical locations. Am I being a bit too sceptical, may be yes. But its not just me, many in the web community is getting sceptical about it. Arnold Zafra, of SearchEngineJournal also didn't hide his inhibitions about this new kid from Twitter's stable.

Well the feature is cool, but this will definitely offer the wicked members of the web community with a thick opportunity to intrude. this will definitely open up a new proxy lane for them. Though they will ofter you to turn this feature off, but still many unsuspecting member will overlook it as just another stupid security advice pop up. And this can seriously put them on high risk of playing with their social and even in some cases personal security.

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Google Ranked #1 in Search Engine Satisfaction

According to a recent report published by American Consumer Satisfaction Index, who compares customer satisfaction among and across a number of companies and e-business and several other domains, Google succeeded to better its satisfied custer toll this year with last years comparison. This report also suggests that all the search engines basically improved their performance for this quarter as compared to last year.

The report says Google managed to achieve a overall satisfaction rating of about 86%, while all the other search engines managed to score just 78%.

This report published just right after the announcement of the Microsoft-Google tie up. So the effect of the deal could not be reflected in the report. But the report definitely suggests that 'Bing' has performed surprisingly better than expected. And this can give a mild pain in the neck to the leaders, Google though the maintained their supremacy, but the race was way too closer than expected. The main difference that differentiates the leader from the pack is the search volume and of course the search relevancy. But Bing is definitely by far the best bet pitched against Google ever.
Apart from the search engines, Internet Portals also did fairly well in the first quarter, which witnessed a 3.8 percent up in last year’s comparison.

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Google hits back at Microsoft with its Go Google Campaign

Google launches its most vicious campaign against Microsoft till date. The war under the banner name of "Go Google" is one serious move taken against the collaborative offensive of MIcrosoft-Yahoo coterie.

"Go Google"is pitched basically against Microsoft's monopoly over business office application. Though Google Apps are in the scenario for quite some time now, it definitely could not be termed among the most successful ventures of Google. Though liked by many, some how it has still not been successful in its attempt to penetrate the hard core MS Office users heart. Google's not so impressive promotional campaign for this niche might be counted among one of the reasons behind it. But Google has decided to make up for the lost time with its newly worked out hostile ad campaign.

This campaign is also using social medias like twitter, facebook, orkut and others. And google has also gone to the extent of ditributing freebies to all its present users of Google Apps through out this August.

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Microsoft Yahoo seal 10 years deal

Well its official now, Microsoft and Yahoo have finally sealed the deal under which, Yahoo
will be using Microsoft's Bing, while Yahoo will mastermind to push the global sales for the
both. This was such a critical and important deal not just for the two, but for so many people, that many have already started to term it as the biggest deal ever sealed in the web industry. Now this deal has definitely rang the bell of a serious search war in coming days. As a result of this agreement, Microsoft will be able to report a greater share in the search market through Bing, while Yahoo will be relieved from spending any more money behind its slowly dying search engine.
After last years unsuccessful show down, when Microsoft's Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, wanting to go for a all out aquisition clashed with then Cheif Executive of Yahoo, Jerry Yang it was definitely a shy of relief and moral booster for both the camp. The credit for the deal definitely to a great ectent goes to the current Cheif Executive of Yahoo, Carol Bartz, who took the batton of command in last January, and almost immediatley she went for sealing the deal. And so far she can be considered as the conqueror of the first battle. Though the deal is done, still a lot is left to be sorted out.
According to the agreement 88% search revenue will go to the Yahoo Inc's bank account for the first five years, and this has left many in the Yahoo camp unhappy.
Specially when Carol Bartz said that the deal will fetch Yahoo great value rather than great money, it is quite obvious that Microsoft has definitely made the most out of Yahoo's current financial slump. Which is a bit disappointing according to some loyal Yahoo employees, as this reflects a compromising surrender from Yahoo's part.

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MySpace cofounder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe raising money for his new venture, "Vertical".

It definitly hurts to get replaced in any sphere of life. And when after building the biggest site in the Internet from scratch, you get replaced, the pain is definitely felt in a different way. So after establishing MySpace, as arguably the biggest site in the Internet, when Chris DeWolfe got rudely replaced by Owen Van Natta, he couldn't take the incident sportingly. It was more so hard because of his eccentric nature. And if our sources are to be believed, He is now busy raising money for his new venture, VERTICAL. Now what this projest is all about is still kept tightly under wrapper, and we couldn't get a peek at it so far. But going with the dynamic nature of Chris, it can be said that, something unique, and never heard of 'thing' is coming out of his sleeves. Reportedly, he has been pitching up a number of private equity funds to raise his money. According to our source the approximate budget of the project is arround $100 million.

If every thing goes right, it will not take much time for the project to see day-light. And a person who could help a company reach from no where to every where within just the span of 5 years, is definitely capable of making it again.

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Twitter Redesignes it's Home Page

It was known to all that Twitter would come out with a new design, but it would be this fast! nobody expected it. They wasted almost no time in launching their revamped new home page, which sports a distinctly clear search box meant specially for the new comers, so that they can find out, how great twitter is, apart from being just a social media site. They have used darker blue color in their design, and the design looks really sleek. It will definitely help them in catching the attention of any new visitor and impressing them. The search box instantly provides a visitor with an opportunity to explore the tweets, and get connected with it instantly. From the recent advancements, one thing gets clear, Twitter is in no mood for being tagged as just a meer micro blogging network any more. They want to make it bigger, and they want to do it in a hurry.

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Microsoft-Yahoo deal, at last?

If every thing goes right, the Yahoo-Microsoft deal will at last see its day light. The proposed deal has already started showing its affect, as Yahoo Inc shares rose 4 percent Friday. This widely talked about deal is aimed at throwing a more serious challenge to Google Inc. In a recent development Activist investor Carl Icahn has also spoken out in favor of a search engine deal between the two biggies. Yahoos recent reviews in a positive flavor about MS's Bing also supports the positive development.
After last years failed deal both the parties are putting the steps very very carefully. But according to most, this is one deal that is destined to be sealed, 'today' or 'tomorrow'. The ever accelerating growth of Google Inc, hasn't really left any other option open for the two.
Yahoo chief Executive Carol Bartz wasn't avail able for any comments unlike the last time when she accepted the deal build-ups. May be the over cautious CEO doesn't want to take any chance this time, as this deal means so much to their existence( to be honest). No serious reaction was also observed from the end of Google Inc. but they definitely are keeping a close eye on the proceedings.
According to stats Yahoo's search engine share in the us market is currently about 20 percent, while that of Microsoft's is About 8 percent. So even if they merge, they are not going to dismantle the Google supremacy( currently holding about 65 percent market share) over night. But the competition will definitely get spiced up.

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Twitter launches 'Twitter 101' , a step forward to the 'Business plan'

Twitter has launched its new business plan in the wrapper of "Twitter 101". Twitter, since its launch back in 2006, has been functioning as an excellent business platform for many companies. Either for approaching towards new customers, or providing service to existing customers, twitter has been doing brilliantly. Almost all the biggies in the market today has their twitter accounts running either under their official signature, or under an anonymous umbrella. So it was quite expected that twitter would not behave like a saint for long( even saints are making big money these days).
But the main thing is, whether they will be able to draw the same volume of crowd and followers, who will dare the money barrier. Getting free is one thing, as some time people tend to over look so many factors, if its free. But if they are lightning their pocket, every quarter of service will be scrutinized. So the challenge is not so simple as it seems. Now it will be interesting to see whether "Twitter" will pack enough punch in its service to allure the business eagles.
"Twitter101" consists of a complete guide for a beginner.It also also has a list of several case studies and it is also been designed in a very user friendly way.
But whether it stands up to their expectation or not , will only be decided by the time.

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Yahoo aquires XoopIt for an estimated amount of $20 million!

When every body was talking about the current economic slump of Yahoo! suddenly the news of XoopIt, a third party browser side application, being aquired by them was shocking to say the least to many. Those who have heard about XoopIt, must know that it is the third party application who had won Yahoo's Open Hack Day in last December. Sources say that Yahoo has aquired it to team it up with yahoo mail, to better the photto sharing experinece through mail. They have said that it will better the experience by many folds.

All's right, but how could yahoo! afford to spend a staggering $20 million, specially from their current economic condition, which is now

known to every body. And even if they have managed somehow to make the deal, why Google had let the opportunity go.

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Youtube video stats can now be made public

In a remarkable move recently Youtube has announced that all the stats regarding the videos will from now on be available to its owners for making it public. They have said that it will help the video owners to make their videos more popular and draw more audience than before. This stats include, total number of views, detailed ratings etc. Though some of the stats were available for the video owners already, but there was no option to make them public, at least officially. But from now on it can easily be done. In addition, video owners who are also Youtube's content partners, will also be facilitated by an increased opportunity of drawing more advertisers. Many are taking this move as a very interesting turn and great power booster for video marketing.

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Google Finally Comes out Clean from the Search Result Controversy

A London high court judge finally ruled in favor of Google over a case that could well set the a trend for such type of cases regarding search result controversies.
A case was filed against Google by London based Metropolitan International School (MIS) regarding some search result disputes. The controversy started, when some defamatory comments made in some forum about the above mentioned institute's some distance learning program, and that appeared in the search results of Google.

MIS dragged the issue to the court only to get humiliated themselves, as judge Eady said that Google was just acting as "facilitator", they didn't published the content themselves. And since the way search engines operate, hardly leaves any scope to manipulate the search results. So there is no way, Google could be held responsible for the incident. There are millions and billions of results come out during searches through diverse key words in every second, and which result a viewer will click depends entirely upon him/her. So the user hardly stands any chance to get influenced by the search engines like Google. However the judge opined that Google must act more responsibly from the next time to deal with such issues.He said that though Google doesn't posses any hand over its result but it still must act sincerely in the cases where an individual or an organization alleges against some results that could cause their personal defamation or damages them morally or by any other means.

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Google announces full fledged war against Microsoft

At last the speculations are over. Google has decided to take on directly Microsoft in their home ground itself. And despite of keeping Google's reputation of making it to the end in mind one can say that it was arguably the boldest move that they had taken. It just depicts Google's growing arrogance and grandiosity according to some, but whatever might be the reason behind such a move, I think we will be the ultimate gainer in this "WORLD WEB WAR" between the two biggest web giants.
After the moderate success of Google Chrome browser, they have decided to go for the full circle. According to Google's survey, it is the third most popular browser, with already over 30 million users. And its typical simple yet fast nature is expected to produce a perfect feat with the Google Chrome OS. And this is exactly what got reflected, when they termed this project as a "natural extension of Google Chrome".
It is expected that the Google Chrome OS will quite obviously be built on the Chrome architecture. Google has announced to target this OS initially at net books. Google described Chrome OS as,
"Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel."
The most important thing is that it will be a open-source operating system, which will be light weight in nature. This will definitely lighten Google's development load. And at the same time it will help to make it popular among the web community too. This will most definitely compel a lot of developers to get busy in building their applications that will run on the Chrome OS.
It is expected to be available with several net books, sometime in 2010, and its source code will be made available later this year.

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Mozilla's 3.5 Beta version storms its way into the Web World..

Mozilla's transition from 2.x to 3.x had earned them a whooping 8 million downloads in the first day it was available, to topple all the previous records. The main factor that had played the most significant role in this showdown, was a very successful PR campaign. And the majority of the credit should go to this campaign, which succeded to create the hoopla.
But with compare to that the release of Firefox 3.5 was a very silent affair. It saw the day light almost without any real publicity. But the sheer success of its predecessors ensured that it becomes a smashing hit over night. The internet community jumped in to hit the download button and made sure that it enjoys over 5 million downloads in the first 24 hours of availability.



The reviews so far have been very positive and encouraging. Very few of the users experienced any server mishap this time, guess they had proper planning placed in right place time. And definitely their effort was successful regarding this.
While the new additions like private browsing was welcomed by many, its strangely slow start up speed has fetched them some fierce criticism.Some felt that they should make teh option much more available(as it is almost hidden in tools) and easy to switch like Bookmark's star button. Many have also complained that newly incorporated private browsing feature does not match with the efficiency and quality of that of Chrome or even opera in that sense.
Many have also complained that many of their add ons are not working with this new kid. But overall the release has been proved to be definitely a positive step forward. And the fact is that it still works faster for most of the sites than its contemporaries. It is still miles ahead in the add on aspects, and its just got better.

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Viral Web Marketing is slowly but surely taking the batton away from the traditional ad campaigns.

In a time, when every one is striving to win a single ray of attention, what if suddenly the world comes to you and asks, "Whats next?"
Welcome to the new avenue of marketing..Viral web marketing or Word of mouth marketing. And it is the new Buzz. It not only saves your time and insane amount of money that you spent in an attempt to win the heart of your target audience, but it also offers you an instant stream of attentions that you have never thought of. Every day millions of dollars are spent behind the ad campaigns, and according to a current stat, almost 70% of all the ads made are just come and vanish without leaving the slimmest trail in the viewers mind. Thats a big waste!
With compare to this just a few creative hours spent behind the making of an ad with a good and enticing storyline can make the day for you. You need no superstar, no graphic wizard for it. just a simple ad that looks more of a sort story with something unconventional in it can do it for you.
It can be a sort animation film or a simple video made with no stars, but it must not speak for the product loudly. It is made in a way that even if you remove the product title, people will still watch it just for it's sheer appealing and indulging storyline.
Here I have tried to enlist some of the tricks for viral marketing.
By invoking people's emotions:
We all love to laugh, we all love to cry. so why not helping them to do that. Make them emotioal. Offer them some charaters whom they will either love or hate, but most importantly these characters should make an impression which will stay even after the ad is over, make them think about these characters. If you can do that, your 90% job is done , no matter whether your product has gone unnoticed or not. Just make them jump with excitement.
Do something unconventional:
People get bored to see good looking models and superstars promoting your ads loudly with fake emotion and excitement. They just hate it, when you pump your chest and say that you are the best and give them a thousand false reasons to go for your product. just put your self in the neutral shoes, you will also react in the same manner, its just disgusting and so boring! Make something very funny, or very dark, or very mischievous.It will definitely make your story an instant hit, and in the process your product too.
Just have a look at this very unconventional ad campaign;



Its funny isn't it?

Do follow a successful campaign with a sequel.
Once an ad campaign becomes successful, you must follow it up with a sequel. Its the best chance you get to grab your share of attention. No matter how much successful it was, if nothing follows it up, it eventually fades away from the viewers mind. So a meaningful sequel is very important to convert your effort to a success. This helps the characters of the commercial to make a bigger impact, this eventually results in helping your product to reach your target audience with a bang.
As in the above advertisement gets followed with another superb one, reflecting the same motto. And later on more and more sequels came to carry on the legacy. Here are some sequels of the above ad campaign;








Aren't they just superb..
One can also follow it up with something like say, broadcasting or popularising the

• Behind the scene news
• Making of the commercial
• making a blog of the commercial

etc.

The main thing is not let the audience to foget the characters or the theme of the ads.
One more important thing is to connect with the audience using different midiums, like blogs, or live promotional campaigns. Because its very important to know the feed back of the audience about the ads. And once you get assured that they are quite interested about the ad, you must use these methods of interactions to flood them fully with feeds. This will help you to create a wide spread buzz about the commercial and eventually the products.
Let the audience get free access to everything related to the product. Like say make free videos of the product available in the internet. Let the viewers download the logos and other stuffs related to the advertisement. This is the best way to get free publicity and attention from your audience.

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Never believe what you see!

Do you think, when you type in your favorite key words like "download Bryan Adams music" or "download free movies" in a search engine like Google or yahoo, you get the best results?
Think again.
Almost all of us by now have heard about the SEO things, but very few of us are completely aware of the inducing effect that they are capable of injecting to influence your search results.
So, listen to your brain not your eyes.
And for some strange and unknown reasons search engine majors are dealing to solve this matter with very noticeable reluctance. Isn't it fishy?
Well, lets avoid such shady stuffs for the time being, and move away the search light on some other aspects of it.
This revamped and reinforced craze for search engine optimization has been all good for one league, while completely playing with and fooling the others. So in spite of belonging to this industry, I think there should be some sort of a balance between these. At least until search engine majors come up with some really authentic and genuine algorithms to get the best search results, SEO people must be given the chance to show their parts and grab attention. What I mean to say is, until a good site, filled with good stuffs doesn't get its due from the search engines, we can not blame the SEO guys by any means for manipulating the results. How many times we see that a old site leading the search results in spite of not being the best among the lot, while a younger one in spite of boasting better stuffs not getting the chance to come up at the top. This is really pathetic. This not only deprives the site owner to get its due, but also prevents the prospective viewers from tasting it. They must do some thing, but till now it has fallen into deaf ears, or the sheer bulk of the web world has made them feel like mitigates. Whatever might be the reason, eventually its the users who are suffering the most. And people like me(shame on me buddy!) are taking advantage out of it. Please do not misjudge this as a confession statement, I was never sorry, and I'll never be sorry for what I'm doing. I think if you make a deal which is not illegal(not legal though!), you can some time over look the moral aspect of it(or is it?), specially when you are doing good for at least one community, and helping them to see the day light(or search light!).

Any ways, Microsoft recently has taken a noble initiative through it's latest counter commercial to Google, "Bing". They are claiming to provide the best search results through their smart and efficient algorithms. From a recent press release from Seattle, Washington, I have come to know that their researchers are trying to better the user interaction with search engines, and helping them to get what they exactly want and deserve, as sometimes they are incognizant about what's actually best for them. No doubt, Google will definitely take a note and come up with something new to counter them.
May be we are entering a new era. And I personally feel jubilant to think that the planet gets tougher for the SEO guys, and when the things get tougher, only the toughs get going(don't get me wrong!).

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Is "Bing" the next big "Thing" ?

At last Microsoft has taken a serious approach in the direction of establishing it as a major search engine operator. Bing in that sense is definitely a very welcome move by them. And one has to accept that though it is just gliding through its nascent phase, it has already succeeded to make quite a buzz in the web world. That definitely is an indication of a serious search engine war between two biggies in the near future. I have been using Bing for the last three weeks, and I have used it side by side with google and some times self consciously compared the results. And my overall assessment about the new MS baby is quite positive. At least it is way better than 'Live.' The most amazing thing that has really struck me is its video search. Its just too cool, and in this particular section it has scored way greater than google. Specially the mouse over property that has been included to give users an ultimate hassle free video searching is just fantastic! I am also impressed by their image search, the" similar type image reasults" feature that was incorporated in google labs, was directly incorporated in bing. It is also an amazing feature. I really could not make a choice between the two from the web search result's point of view. In some cases google scored over bing, and in some cases bing won the race.
So over all the effort made so far by bing is quite appreciable, is'n it? I have tried to make a simple comparision among the two using the same key words.The key words i have used are,

• bing
• internet marketing
• brad pitt
• linkin park songs

And the results i found, was a bit confusing for me to a outright winner among the two.





















Surprisingly my first word bing resulted in the favor of google! while bing returned its uk domain as the first result.

My next search was internet marketing, which is one of the most typed in key phrase in the web. And the result went in favor of google. As I found the google results more relevant.

















My next search featured my favorite actor Brad Pitt in the form of Brad Pitt biography, and the result was again backed google.




















Next I opted to go with another very popular key phrase, linkin park songs, and this time bing performed better than google.



















So the final score was 2-2, which was fair enough for bing. The most important thing that really scored in the favor of bing is its no fuss and clean search results. The cherry on the top was its sleek look. Overall Bing is the thing to watch out for.

Have a look at this vedio..

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some of the best websites in the world..

Being a net freak I daily visit thousands of sites, some of them are great, some are just good and some are really pathetic. When I visit a site there are several parameters that I check to judge them. And my next visit gets greatly influenced by that. The parameters that I generally consider are,
• User friendliness and visibility of important features.
• Aesthetic aspect of the site.
• How much information rich the site is.
• Relevant site links.
• And above all its simplicity!
Depending upon these aspects here I have given a list of my favorite sites, which are also well recognized world wide.

1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. Windows Live
4. YouTube
5. Microsoft Network (MSN)
6. Myspace
7. Facebook
8. Wikipedia
9. Hi5
10. Orkut
11. Rapidshare.com
12. Blogger.com
13. Megaupload
14. Friendster
15. w3schools.com
16. NDTV.com
17. Fotolog
18. Microsoft Corporation
19. internetmoviedatabase.com
20. scirus
21. EBay
22. Skyrock
23. nationalgeographic.com
24. closertotruth.com
25. searchenginewatch.com

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5 most important things to remember while designing a site..

How many sites have you visited so for in your life?
Well, this is not really a simple question to start with. But it’s really relevant to this topic of discussion. You must be thinking what kind of a freak I am to ask such a nonsense question.
Now if I ask you to tell me the name of your favorite sites that you visit regularly, then you probably give a realistic glance at me. I am sure the ratio will be an outlandish one. So what’s the reason do you think?
Are there any certain features of a site that pulls you to it every now and then? There must be some.
Actually this parameter varies from person to person. But I think there are some common parameters or features that draw our attention almost immediately we visit them. In this jungle called World Wide Web, you will find sites on almost any subject, but only few of them are worth a second visit. God save the designers of those sites. I think it mainly happens because of the poor research work or lack of it! Hardly any web design company performs a market survey before the building process, so most of the time they deliver you a poorly designed site with zero market value. But you can not complain as they had included all the features you asked them to do. Here I have pointed out some features that every web designer must consider before going for the building job.
• Load time: loading time is one aspect that always plays in the back of our mind before we visit a site. No matter how effective or captivating the site may be, if it’s taking longer time than your toleration level, you will most likely to navigate away to a faster alternative. These are the factors that should be considered;
-Code length, huge coding are likely to cause slow loading.
-usage of graphics, heavy graphics can make your site an eye candy, but you must first ensure your visitors a smooth entry to your site. So make a proper balance between both.
-make sure that your site is hosted in a high end server. This ensures faster speed.
-usage of music files is not recommended.
-You can put your content on one server and the database on another. It will make your site faster and it is also secure to do that.
-use a slash at the end of the domain name of your site, which will indicate that it is a directory page and so server will take lesser time to load it.


• Compact ness: what I first notice in a site is its compactness. It not only saves space but also sends a right no fuss signal to your audience.
• User friendly ness: your site must be user friendly; too much complicacy will definitely spoil the soup. So keep it simple and avoid including unnecessary features.
• Open up your data: this is not the age of keeping the data in your volt; it is the age of exposing your data as much as possible.
• Think out of the box: you need not be conventional rather history never remembers the followers, it remembers the trailblazers. So if you think any of your approach is a bit absurd, don’t get retarded rather if you think it will work for you and then go for it.

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you me and websites!!!

This is the age of internet and no one can escape this buzz. From a business organization to an individual, this heat has spared none. So which was a sheer luxury even a decade back, has become a necessity now. We have been gradually becoming hugely dependant upon this “triple W” thing. Along with it's informative aspect it had also spread it's business tentacles throughout the world. And in spite of having several black stains we are eventually getting hugely benefitted by this fast and easy media.

It's not long back, when very selected league of organization, forget the individuals, would go for owning a website, and it was the time when the inter marketing aspect was totally or majorly untapped domain. E-commerce was a untouched zone at this time. But the time has changed fast and within almost no time, the terms like internet marketing, web marketing or e commerce have swept across the world like a tsunami.

At this juncture of time, almost all the organization regardless of their size are going for internet marketing, as they have understood that this is the easiest and cheapest means of reaching their targeted customers. This has thrown a comparatively new industry in the corporate pan , named ' web-design industry' or 'web-development industry'. Along with the growth the competition has grown from mild to fierce within this industry. With the growth of this industry, several new tools and technologies are being developed on a regular basis. This has ultimately benefitted the users. And as a user we can only gain from it.

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search engine defined

A web search engine is a tool that is designed to search for different information that's spread across the world wide we. It simply retrieves all the information that a user wants to know while he types in some keyword in the search tab. The results known as hits are basically a list of some web pages or some images. Search engine biggies like google msn or yahoo are constantly striving to produce the most relevant search result a user can dream of. The complex techniques and algorithms that are being used behind these search engines are regularly reviewed and updated.
From some time now the search engines have become an way of internet marketing or in other sense a platform for advertising. Now along with it's benefits the search engines often provide us with some illusive information, manipulated by some oganization or individuals. The equations are often very vague, and there are bhfknvpd4s many things which go on beneath the surface. But like every thing it has it's good as well as evil sides. This is the law of the nature. So we can not really complain.

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