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.