Digg Updates iPhone App - More Stable, Better Twitter/Facebook Integration

Digg has launched an update to its iPhone app, which comes with better Twitter and Facebook integration and improved stability.

Digg lists the following as key changes in the app:

• Logging in to, or changing accounts on, Facebook or Twitter
• Sharing stories through Facebook or Twitter without first logging in to that service
• Digging a story without first logging in to your account
• Running a search for a random string with no results
• Navigating away from a story while it is loading
• Saving a story or trying to access saved stories
• Loading more user comments related to a story

The app was originally launched in March, then received an update in April, making some stability improvements. Those apparently weren't enough, as most of the feedback Digg has received since then, has been about stability issues. We'll see if they got it right this time around.

Who Would Benefit from the Government Regulating Google Search Results?

There's a very interesting discussion going on about whether or not the government should regulate search results. This begun earlier this week, when the New York Times ran an editorial titled, "The Google Algorithm", which suggests one way "to ensure the editorial policy guiding Google's tweaks is solely intended to improve the quality of the results and not to help Google's other businesses," is to "give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks."

Another way, the piece suggests could be for Google to "explain with some specified level of detail the editorial policy that guides its tweaks."

The piece was enough to not only get a response from long-time search industry reporter Danny Sullivan, via a clever, satirical look at the NYT piece itself (giving the publication something of a mirror to look into), but it was also enough to get Google to respond.

Google's VP of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer wrote a piece for the Financial Times, which was reprinted on Google's Public Policy Blog (Google also thought enough of Sullivan's response to link to it). 

"What is fair in terms of ordering?" asks Mayer. "An alphabetical listing? Equally, new results will need to be incorporated – new web pages, but also new media types such as tweets or audio streams. Without competition and experimentation between companies, how could the rules keep up? There is no doubt that this will stifle the advance of the science around search engines."

"Abuse would be a further problem," continues Mayer. "If search engines were forced to disclose their algorithms and not just the signals they use, or, worse, if they had to use a standardised algorithm, spammers would certainly use that knowledge to game the system, making the results suspect."

"But the strongest arguments against rules for 'neutral search’ is that they would make the ranking of results on each search engine similar, creating a strong disincentive for each company to find new, innovative ways to seek out the best answers on an increasingly complex web," she adds.

To the NYT's credit, the piece did say that "Google provides an incredibly valuable service, and the government must be careful not to stifle its ability to innovate." But it's hard to see how any government intervention wouldn't stifle innovation.

Twitter's @earlybird Starts Offering Deals

Last week, Twitter announced its new @earlybird account, designed to provide followers with exclusive deals from the comapny's advertising partners and other businesses. Now, the account is in full swing, as it has tweeted its first deal.

The deal comes from The Walt Disney Studios, and allows followers in the U.S. to get a special deal on tickets to the movie "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

Terms of the offers provided on the @earlybird account are set by Twitter's partners.

"We're just getting started-- we've got an amazing lineup of deals to share in the coming days and weeks with people following @earlybird," says Twitter PR guy Matt Graves. "Several times a week, @earlybird will help consumers discover Twitter-exclusive deals in entertainment, fashion, technology, beauty, travel and more."

The @earlybird Twitter account already has over 47,000 followers. That will no doubt grow significantly as word spreads and people start captializing on the deals provided.

comScore Puts Android Up Yet Again

Palm's out of the running. Microsoft's about to lose its advantage. And although they're still way out in front, even RIM and Apple appear to be in trouble, according to the latest report from comScore, which indicates that Android has taken market share from all of its top competitors.

You can see the data for yourself below. Note that it's not exactly up to date, covering the period between mid-February and mid-May, so RIM, Apple, and Microsoft fans can cling to the hope that they've made comebacks. Also, RIM's loss isn't as bad as the dips corresponding to the other companies.

Still, it looks like Android is making a significant dent in the market.



If these patterns persist, Android will have already toppled Microsoft and secured third place by now. Then Apple will fall sometime around December.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out. Google could spend lots of money and energy in an effort to press ahead, or Apple could do the same in the hope that the iPhone 4 will preserve its market share. Or all of the companies could show a certain amount of patience/confidence by just maintaining their current levels of ad spending. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Analyst Pushes eBay To Launch Fulfillment Program

In the past year, eBay's stock has risen by 17.57 percent. Amazon's stock has risen by 40.92 percent. It's possible to argue that eBay might learn a thing or two from Amazon, then, and an analyst at RBC Capital has done so by suggesting that eBay launch a program similar to Fulfillment by Amazon.

Below, you can see a diagram of how Fulfillment by Amazon works if you're unfamiliar with the arrangement. It makes Amazon an integral part of all buying and selling processes, which is good for the company. It also helps reduce shipping costs (and times), which benefits the buyers and sellers.



Implementing a similar program would then have at least one other benefit in eBay's case, according to RBC's Stephen Ju. As reported by Eric Savitz, Ju said, "Most importantly, this measure would help EBAY to shed its Web 1.0 image and remain more relevant to its base of buyers and sellers."

eBay may want to make some changes sooner rather than later, too. Savitz reported, "Ju maintains his Outperform rating on the shares, but cuts his target to $25, from $30. He cut his 2010 EPS forecast to $1.62, from $1.64; for 2011, he goes to $1.79, from $1.82."

So perhaps eBay's shareholders can start to apply a little pressure if they feel the fulfillment program is a good idea. Launching it would represent a big change from eBay's traditional way of doing business, though, so no one should expect John Donahoe to greenlight the project on a whim. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Facebook Offers Scholarship to Female Computer Science Students

Facebook has announced a new scholarship, the Facebook Grace Hopper Scholarship, which it will award to 5 women university students excelling in Computer Science, to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. The conference takes place in Atlanta from September 28tht to October 2nd.


"Last year I had the opportunity to participate on the 2009 Grace Hopper Technical Executive Forum in a discussion around the challenges organizations face with the recruitment, retention, and advancement of technical women and the solutions to these challenges," says Facebook's Mike Schroepfer. "It was an educational and motivational experience, and I've subsequently met many people who were hugely impacted by attending a Grace Hopper conference."

Applications for the scholarship must be submitted in full by Saturday July 31st. Award recipients will be notified by email of their acceptance on Tuesday August 31st.

To be eligible, women must be enrolled full-time at a university, pursuing a Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical major, and a U.S. resident.

Women who wish to apply for the scholarship can do so here.

Nokia Now Offering Free Map Navigation

Nokia said today it's releasing a new version of Ovi Maps for its smartphones that includes walking and driving navigation for free.

The move by Nokia to offer free navigation on its smartphones is widely seen as a way for the handset giant to boost sales and better compete with the likes of Google, which already offers free Google Maps Navigation in the 2.0 version of the Android operating system.

The new version of Ovi Maps includes car and pedestrian navigation features, such as turn-by-turn voice instructions for 74 countries in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries, along with detailed maps for more than 180 countries.

"Why have multiple devices that work in only one country or region? Put it all together, make it free, make it global and you almost double the potential size of the mobile navigation market," said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia.

"Nokia is the only company with a mobile navigation service for both drivers and pedestrians that works across the world."

Ovi Maps is available for download for 10 Nokia handsets, including the Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia E72, with more Nokia smartphones to be added in the coming weeks.

In addition, starting in March, new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, allowing users to view maps offline.

"The large-scale availability of free-of-charge mobile phone navigation offerings using high-quality map data will be a game changer for the navigation industry," said Thilo Koslowski, Vice President Automotive and Vehicle ICT at Gartner.

"Such offerings will accelerate mass market adoption for navigation solutions and shift innovation focus to location-based services that go beyond traditional routing benefits."

source: http://www.webpronews.com

SEOmoz Launches Open Site Explorer, A Competitor (Replacement?) To Yahoo Site Explorer

SEOmoz has launched Open Site Explorer, a new tool that joins the already crowded field of link analysis tools. In choosing that name, SEOmoz is somewhat blatantly positioning it as a competitor, and perhaps eventual replacement, for Yahoo’s popular Site Explorer tool.

Open Site Explorer provides a number of data points pulled from SEOmoz’s Linkscape tool and its index of the web. It shows stats such as overall link counts and a count of domains that link to a URL, along with anchor text distribution and more. A helpful feature is the ability to compare two domains side by side.

Although it’s called “open,” the tool is limited for those who aren’t SEOmoz Pro members. Guests are allowed three reports per day, and those reports will show only up to 200 links per report. SEOmoz free account holders get unlimited reports and can see up to 1,000 links per report — this is the level that seems to be most similar to what Yahoo Site Explorer offers. Paying SEOmoz Pro members get unlimited reports, up to 10,000 links per report, and a variety of other metrics not available to anyone else.

Is it a competitor for Yahoo’s Site Explorer? Most certainly. Is it a possible replacement? Well, that depends on what happens if and when the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal gets approved. When asked last night about the future of Yahoo Site Explorer, spokespersons from both companies said they couldn’t comment. source: http://searchengineland.com/seomoz-launches-open-site-explorer-33892

Turkey Blocking More Than 3,000 Websites

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a human rights watchdog, called on Turkey today to reform or abolish its restrictive Internet policy.

"At present, 3,700 Internet sites are blocked in Turkey, including YouTube, GeoCities, and Google sites," said Miklos Haraszti, an OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.

"Even as some of the content that is deemed 'bad', such as child pornography, must be sanctioned, the law is unfit to achieve this. Instead, by blocking access to entire websites from Turkey, it paralyzes access to numerous modern file sharing or social networks."

In a report Haraszti presented at Bilgi University in Istanbul, Ankara State University and at the International Law Congress of the Ankara Bar Association, he noted that, while in Turkey, he was unable to access even the OSCE's YouTube website.

"Blocking access inside of Turkey is an affront to the public's right to the entirety of the Internet, said Haraszti. "Numerous Criminal Code provisions are applied against media workers, and as a result, journalists risk imprisonment for carrying out their work."

"Therefore 'reform or abolish' the Internet Law is our main recommendation. I hope that the Turkish authorities will soon remove the blocking provisions that prevent Turkish citizens from being part of today's global information society."

source: http://www.webpronews.com/

Google Makes Mobile Search Suggestion Location Aware

The Google Mobile Blog has just posted a short note announcing a new feature of its search suggestion on Google.com for mobile phones. Currently working on iPhone and of course on Android phones, the new search suggestion feature now either remembers your phone’s last location or your current location.

This means that you can save some precious time trying to determine which among the search results are relevant to you, based on where you are right now, or where you have been the last time you use Google.com on your Android phone or iPhone.

Example given is when you’re typing “muse” on your mobile phone while you are somewhere in Boston, Google will suggest “museum of science boston” and “museum of fine arts boston.”

To make the new feature work, you must activate the “Save recent locations” and “Allow use of device location” on the Settings link at Google.com home page on your mobile phone’s browser. Once you’ve turned on these two options, you can visit Google.com and start typing your query and see how well the mobile search engine will give you its suggestions.

source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com

Where’s AP In Google News? Apparently In Limbo, As Contract Running Out

It’s been noticed that new Associated Press stories — hosted by Google itself — are no longer appearing in Google News. It’s true. Since Dec. 24, Google has no longer added new AP content, something the company confirmed with me today. I received this statement:

We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. Some of that content is still available today. At the moment we’re not adding new hosted content from the AP.

So why not? The statement doesn’t explain. But it’s reasonable to assume it’s related to the ongoing talks between Google and the Associated Press.

Google has an agreement to host AP articles on its own web site, plus to make use of AP material in other ways. That expires near the end of this month. Since the agreement only allows stories to be hosted for 30 days, it might be that Google’s covering the legal bases in case a new agreement isn’t reached. You don’t want a story going up on, say January 23, only to have to pull it down the next day.

Google News Now Hosting Wire Stories & Promises Better Variety In Results from us in 2007 has background about how Google began hosting stories from several wire services, including the AP, on its own site.

The AP, in particular, wanted its stories hosted. Josh Cohen Of Google News On Paywalls, Partnerships & Working With Publishers from us last November explains more about this, how Google makes use of AP content under the current agreement and some of the issues that have come up in talks to strike a new deal.

It’s important to note that AP stories may still appear within Google. Many newspapers carry AP content, and those papers continue to be listed. So you can find AP stories hosted on newspaper sites. You just won’t find them hosted within Google itself.

On a somewhat related note, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has threated to block major search engines, including Google, from crawling its news content. Some see the first shot in that threat being fired as UK-based The Times is now blocking the UK-based NewsNow search engine.

As it turns out, this seems largely unrelated to Murdoch’s complaints with Google. Instead, it focuses on NewsNow providing a commercial service that allows companies to monitor the news. The UK’s Newspaper Licensing Agency wants to charge companies that provide this type of service. While Murdoch’s Times hasn’t joined that push, which is under review by UK authorities, it has restricted NewsNow for the same reasons. PaidContent provides an excellent rundown on the situation in these articles:

• Murdoch Paper Blocks UK Aggregator Before Paywall Goes Up
• UK Newspapers Suspend ‘Link Tax’ Bills To End Users

Technically, NewsNow doesn’t have to obey the restrictions blocking it in the robots.txt file at The Times. It’s not a legally-binding protocol. But respected crawlers do obey it, which is one reason why there have been so few lawsuits over crawling.

That robots.txt file is farcical in one respect. At the top, it says this:

#Robots.txt File
#Version: 0.8
#Last updated: 04/01/2010
#Site contents Copyright Times Newspapers Ltd
#Please note our terms and conditions
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,497,00.html
#Spidering is not allowed by our terms and conditions
#Authorised spidering is subject to permission
#For authorisation please contact us -

see http://www.nisyndication.com/about_us.html

A robots.txt file is designed to be read automatically by a machine. Anything line that begins with a # symbol is a comment that machines ignore (the two indented lines above without a # symbol are actually part of the line above, just with a line break in this story, so you can read them properly). There’s no way for Google or any search engine to automatically know this file that “Authorised spidering is subject to permission.”

The way they actually know this is if the robots.txt file uses an accepted command to block them — which it doesn’t, except for NewsNow and some smaller crawlers.

I highly doubt Google, Yahoo or Bing have actually asked The Times for permission to crawl them. But I have an email out to The Times and News Corporation to find out. Of course, if any human had tried to follow the link to seek authorization, they wouldn’t have gotten an error. That link doesn’t work.

source: http://searchengineland.com/wheres-ap-in-google-news-33164

With Mobile Ad Networks Being Snapped Up By Google And Apple Will Yahoo Or Microsoft Be The Next To Buy?

Google surprised many when it announced that it was buying mobile ad network AdMob for a massive $750 million in stock, bringing mobile advertising suddenly into the consciousness of people who’d simply not paid attention before: “Hey, maybe this thing IS for real.”

Now Apple is reportedly buying another tier one mobile ad network, Quattro Wireless, for $275 million. That immediately raises the question: What will Yahoo and Microsoft Do?

Yahoo already is a top mobile ad network and so is Microsoft — in both traffic and estimated revenues. Both rank in the top five in terms of monthly uniques, according to various sources.

In 2007 Microsoft acquired Screen Tonic (mainly for technology) and, last year, committed an estimated $500-$600 million in revenue guarantees to be the search and display ads partner for US carrier Verizon (89 million subscribers). Microsoft’s mobile MSN has 25 million (or more) users.

While Yahoo probably should further expand its reach and buy a mobile display ad network there’s a strong possibility that it will not, perhaps believing that it has all the reach and mobile display assets it needs already. Alternatively, then, a technology or platform buy might be in order. The company recently lost a dynamic display (PC + mobile) ads technology partner in Teracent, when Google bought that company too.

Another possibility for Yahoo might be Mobclix, which operates one of just a few of nascent mobile ad exchanges. It could become the mobile companion to the PC-based Yahoo RightMedia Exchange.

Microsoft, for its part, will probably buy one of the remaining tier one mobile ad networks in the near term. That probably means Millennial Media or JumpTap. But there are a number of other platform, tool providers and so on that might be candidates as well.

While it will take a few years for big mobile ad revenues to show up and justify these prices, rest assured that the mobile internet will only continue to gain adoption. With 70 million users in the US today, poised to pass 100 million at some point this year, this market is real — and red hot.

source: searchengineland

Google Shows How People Have Been Searching

Before 2009 came to a close, Google provided a look (as always) at the most searched for terms of the year. It showed the top ten fastest rising and fastest falling terms on both a global scale, and in the U.S. Globally, "Michael Jackson" was the fastest rising, while "Beijing 2008" was the fastest falling. In the U.S., "Twitter" was the fastest rising (just above "Michael Jackson", and "John McCain" was the fastest falling (just over the Olympics).

Google has now shared some other interesting facts related to search behavior over the course of 2009. These are:

- Proportion of Google users in the U.S. making over one query per day: 7 out of 10

- Proportion of Google users in the U.S. making over 10 queries per day: 1 out of 7

- Fraction of Google queries, duplicates excluded, never seen before: More than 1/3

- Fraction of Google queries, duplicates included, never seen before: More than 1/5

- Country with the greatest increase in Google web search traffic in 2009 vs. 2008: Indonesia

- Approximate percentage of Internet users in Indonesia: 11.1%

- Average amount of time it takes a user to finish entering a query: 9 seconds

- Average amount of time it takes Google to answer a query: Less than 1/4 second

- Number of search quality improvements made by Google in 2009: 540, ~1.5 each day

Proportion of Google result pages that show a map in search results: 1 in - 13

- Average increase in driving distance on weekends vs. weekdays on Google Maps: 11km

- Median distance from a user's location to ice skating rinks found on Google Maps: 30km

- Median distance from a user's location to ski resorts found on Google Maps: 300km Google notes that most of the stats are based on U.S. traffic during weekdays. World Bank, World Development Indicators are cited for the Indonesia stats.

Statistics like these provide for an interesting reflection of search on a broad scale. Those directly connected to the search and marketing industries may sometimes have a hard time stepping out of the box and looking at things from the average person's perspective. Information like this kind of puts thing into that perspective.