Yahoo! just released a new version of Konfabulator, now known as Yahoo! Widgets Engine. The new version includes new default widgets for Yahoo! search, maps, notepad, address book, and mail. Also included are improved widgets for Flickr, Yahoo! Photos, Calendar, Weather, and Finance. According to Toni Schneider of Yahoo! there have been 1.5 million downloads of Konfabulator since it was acquired by Yahoo! in August. Downloads are currently about 90% Windows, a low number considering Apple’s latest operating system features a very similar application, Dashboard, already built-in. 50-100 widgets are submitted to the widgets gallery every week. Yahoo! Widgets…
Category Archives: Search
Yahoo! buys del.icio.us
Yahoo! has bought social bookmarking site del.icio.us for an undisclosed amount. Joshua Schachter posted an announcement to the del.icio.us blog and mentions Yahoo!’s ability to help del.icio.us scale and keep pace with it’s growing user base and site usage. Jeremy Zawodny welcomed the del.icio.us team on the Yahoo! Search blog and notes Yahoo! properties My Web and Flickr are natural matches for Joshua and del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is based in New York and received its first round of funding in April 2005 from a variety of investors including Amazon.com. The site now has about 300,000 registered users and 10 million…
Google Christmas treat
Google has decorated its advertising sidebar with a strip of peppermint candy cane for certain holiday searchers. Try a search for Christmas, peppermint, or candy cane to see the modified search results page. Tags: easteregg…
Submit site feeds to Yahoo! Search
Yahoo! Search allows any user to submit a list of pages for submission in Yahoo!’s search index. You may submit site feeds to Yahoo! formatted as RSS 0.9, 1.0, or 2.0, Atom 0.3, or a text file with one URL per line. You can automate the process if you would like with just a few simple steps. Start with the base URL of http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request?pass=1&class=1. Parameters pass and class are required. Add a url parameter, setting the value to the URL-encoded location of your feed. Example: http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffeed.xml Submit via HTTP post. Sending a ping to blo.gs might eventually accomplish the same…
Eric Schmidt’s rules of management
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Berkeley professor Hal Varian wrote an article in the latest issue of Newsweek about Google’s approach to managing the knowledge worker. Google’s extensive perks program is their way of removing things that may get in the way of their employees. Schmidt admits Google’s problems of “techno-arrogance” and “the not invented here syndrome.” The company also needs to adjust to a workforce of varying ages and motivations as it looks towards long-term growth. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures…
Google total information awareness potential
Google is gathering as much information as possible about our online activities in the interest of serving up more targeted ads across more and more locations. Google continues to introduce new services limited only by what can have an advertisement placed alongside the content. Future products might include data gathering and targeting as a primary business goal with the intent of collecting higher advertising revenues elsewhere on the network on a future visit. Yahoo! just announced they will serve advertisements based on surfing behavior. Where does Google stand in its behavioral targeting? Google is already well on its way to…
Wharton on Yahoo!
Professors from the Wharton School of Business analyzed Yahoo!’s many business lines in a recent article featured in Knowledge@Wharton. While Microsoft and Google duke it out Yahoo! may remain friendly to both and emerge a winner. Google is known for being good at search, and it is argued that while Yahoo! is certainly in a lot of different areas it is not a product leader. Most of the “Web 2.0” goodness mentioned in the article comes through acquisition of other small companies like Oddpost and Flickr that might be able to shake up a large media company. I think Yahoo!…
Microsoft to unveil listings service
Microsoft will unveil a new listings service and marketplace within the next few weeks according to eWeek. The new service is a competitor to Google Base and will be integrated with Windows Live service offerings. Windows Live Fremont is currently only available to users with a Microsoft.com e-mail address. Microsoft plans to integrate listings submitted through its Windows Live service into MSN Search results as well as Virtual Earth map visualizations. TechCrunch dropped a teaser about the project yesterday….
Happy birthday Technorati
Three years ago, on November 27, 2002, Technorati was introduced to the world. Technorati started as a way for Dave Sifry to track who was talking about his blog online and the project eventually grew into a company of 30+ employees. The blogosphere often gets caught up in the buzz of the moment, so here is a little history from Technorati in 2002: The first Technorati 100. Scripting News was on top with links from 598 blogs and Boing Boing was #4 with links from 408 inbound blogs. 12,739 blogs watched in its first week. $5 a year for…
Google searches local store inventories
Google’s shopping comparison service Froogle will now contain inventory information from local brick-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy, Circuit City, Home Depot, Bombay and CompUSA. Google will also populate the database with local merchant information from Google Base in addition to Google’s existing merchant feeds. Users searching for a product will be shown a map with local an overlay of local stores carrying the item. Google is in a unique position to offer the service because unlike traditional shopping comparison engines that make most of their money when a user leaves the site, local search does not provide easy lead and…