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Yahoo Upgrades Go, Announces Mobile Developer Platform

posted on January 7, 2008

OK, forget what we said about 2007 being the year for mobile content. 2008 is where the mobile action is at!

Hot on the heels of Google’s Android initiative, Yahoo is announcing its own developer platform. The Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform will provide tools for developers to code and launch mobile widgets for a wide range of cell phones. Here are the details from Yahoo:

  • The platform is an open environment for developers to create mobile Widgets for instant access by millions of consumers.
  • Widgets created on the Mobile Widget Platform will be available to consumers from various starting points, including Yahoo! Go 3.0 and Yahoo!’s new mobile homepage.
  • The platform will enable developers to write code once and publish their content across Yahoo!’s mobile network, allowing accelerated delivery of a feature-rich mobile experience.

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Why SEOs Will Kill Wikia Search

posted on January 7, 2008

When you launch a new search engine, admitting defeat at the outset isn’t exactly a promising start. Jimmy Wales founder of Wikia Search–which launches today–did just that.

“We want to make it really clear that when people arrive and do searches, they should not expect to find a Google killer,” Mr. Wales told the New York Times.

Hmm, not exactly the statement of faith I’d want to make when launching a new product. Sure, Wikia Search may technically be in “alpha”–what happens when that gets exhausted by start-ups, will we have to invent a new Greek letter?–but do you really want the media (and users) to form a negative sentiment before even giving Wikia a chance to impress?

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Intel Drops One Laptop Per Child Project

posted on January 7, 2008

Intel announced they are leaving the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project. OLPC produces low-cost laptops for developing nations. Fighting and differences between the two couldn’t be bridged. It was six months ago Intel and OLPC founder Nick Negroponte announced they would work together to produce the laptops.

Intel has their own PC for school children, called the Classmate PC. They weren’t willing to meet Neogroponte’s request not to sell it. It probably didn’t help things further when Negroponte went on 60 Minutes in May and basically asserted that Intel was undermining the OLPC by selling the Classmate PC below cost. Intel had their own accusations, namely that OLPC wanted Intel not to sell chips to anyone with a similar product.

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Google Soon to Recognize Text in Images?

posted on January 4, 2008

Information Week has reported that in June of 07 Google filed a patent application, which has just become available, outlining a “method of optical character recognition in digital images.” The application seems to cover both static images as well as video. The ability to do this could radically change a number of existing Google services as well as again change the way the Internet marketing world interacts with images and video.

Being able to identify text in images and video would be an extremely large leap in search engine indexing technology. Being able to index the content of videos and other new social media would most likely either force a change in the way search engines have to build their SERPs or provide opportunities to build highly relevant image and video search functions that could generate significant relevancy from the text content within the media.

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Email and Blog Marketing on No Budget

posted on January 4, 2008

With absolutely no money spent on advertising, Martin’s (Peter Martin, CEO of AskPatty.com) email marketing strategy landed more than 200 dealership clients in one year. – MarketingSherpa

I’m a big fan of practical experience and reports to see what works in marketing. This case study by MarketingSherpa shows how a business used blogs and email marketing to reach their audience.

Women purchase 65% of the cars in this country and car dealerships are a hard sell. AskPatty.com is a site to give car-buying advice and information to women and at the same time market to car dealerships. They teach dealerships how to reach women and create custom websites and email newsletters targeted to women.

Here are some of the successes they had:

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Pilgrim’s Picks, January 4

posted on January 4, 2008

Lots of great headlines today! You might even be able to get away with just reading this list and still be on top today’s marketing news.

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Innovation in 2007

posted on January 4, 2008

PC World has a list of the 25 most innovative products of 2007. While most of them are actual gadgets—the iPhone, the Kindle, and various other pieces of hardware—many of them are web apps. Among the most interesting picks:

1. Google Gears—heralded as a step toward the browser as a desktop

9. Facebook API—duh.

17. Zoho Notebook—compiles all kinds of information and enables you to share it

18. Radiohead’s In Rainbows—check out our our coverage of In Rainbows if you missed this ongoing story

20. Mint.com—brings all your personal finance information together, from bank accounts to credit cards

21. Microsoft Popfly—hailed as better than Yahoo Pipes, Popfly is the best masherupper around.

23. Ask.com—commended for Ask3D and AskEraser