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Yahoo Overhauls Image Search Preview Pages

posted on April 6, 2009

By Peter Young

With Google announcing a number of changes recently the noise from the other search engines,  or lack of it, has been noticeable. It is therefore good to hear Yahoo announce a range of improvements to its image search preview pages, with the hope that these should make the pages easier to use.

The changes to the image search preview pages are immediately obvious on entry, with the now familiar (sleeker in Yahoo’s words) navigation interface which includes:

  • Search box with the now familiar search assistance
  • More image search results within the preview facility, which allows greater browsing between results
  • Suggestions based on queries from other users making similar searches

New Results pages

The Old Results pages

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A Higher Education in Social Media

posted on March 30, 2009

By Trisha Lyn Fawver

Forget spending years in grad school toiling away on an advanced marketing degree.  Birmingham City University in the UK is going to begin offering a MA course in Social Media.  All you social media junkies out there, grab your backpacks and passports!

Jon Hickman, the course convener, had this to say about the year-long program:

It’s not for freaks or IT geeks, the tools learnt on this course will be accessible to many people.

During the course we will consider what people can do on Facebook and Twitter, and how they can be used for communication and marketing purposes.

There has been significant interest in the course already, and it will definitely appeal to students looking to go into professions including journalism and PR.

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Google Rolls Out Longer Snippets and New Search Refinements

posted on March 24, 2009

by Peter Young

In a move that will surprise few within the industry Google have announced two new features within the Google search results, first an expanded list of related searches and second the rollout of extended snippets—both of which could affect search behaviour quite significantly.

Firstly, Google have announced the deployment of a ‘new technology’ that better understands concepts and relationships associated with a query. This technology will allow Google to offer a greater number of related searches to users via the search results (found at the bottom/top of certain searches).

For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need. Here’s an example (click on the images in the post to view them larger):

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Is Social Networking Slowing Down the Generational Lines of Communication?

posted on March 20, 2009

By Nick Stamoulis

Lately it seems like the social communication behavior and methods people use to interact are more like tangled-up power lines. Years ago there were traditionally only a small handful of ways to communicate; at work, phone, fax and face-to-face. For the last ten years or so many generations have been able to adopt email as a crucial form of communication, but now there are many newer social networking methods of communication between consumers, businesses, friends and families.

How many people do you know across different generations that actually have Facebook accounts? The numbers are staggering, but to a marketer and business owner it is crucial to understand that one size does not fit all. Even though these generations tend to actively use social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn they are still VERY different overall in the way they communicate.

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British Search Engine ‘Could Rival Google’

posted on March 10, 2009

By David Lindop

It’s coming up to a year since I interviewed someone over at Hakia.com, a semantic, natural language based search engine. Now it seems another contender to the throne is making considerable noise in Britain where London-born scientist Stephen Wolfram believes he has set the foundation for a more intelligent search engine coined Wolfram|Alpha.

wolframalpha

Wolfram aims to unveil the new search engine to the public in two months’ time, and has so far tantalised us with claims “that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we’re actually managing to make [Wolfram|Alpha] work.”

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Google Calendar Available Offline

posted on March 9, 2009

By Trisha Lyn Fawver

googlecalendarsnpshot-1

Last week, Google announced that Google Calendar will be available to view offline. They’ve already offered users the ability to view Gmail offline at the end of January, and last week’s announcement both excites and dismays me at the same time. 

There’s been a lot of talk in the last two years about the move from desktop-based computing to cloud computing with the widespread adoption of Google Documents, Google Calendar, and other online services that have slowly replaced traditional software applications for many astute marketers and business people.  In fact, taking a look at the schedule for the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco later this month you’ll see several sessions regarding cloud computing.

Is Google bringing the cloud down to Earth?

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Goliath Picks on David: The Tweet-Wars Begin

posted on March 6, 2009

by Matt Rebeiro

Just a thought: who else finds that Twitter is their new RSS feed? Yep, me too!

Further observation tells me there are only two things being discussed in the news: the global recession and Twitter. Seriously, when was the last time you read a news story that wasn’t about how we’re all poor and talking to each other in 140 character bursts?

In the case of the former (the global recession), Google has once again leapt to the rescue and are offering a Google branded solution; their ‘Tip Jar‘. Financial panacea? Hardly. Interesting bit of digital fluffery? Probably.

Anyway, when taking time out from solving the world’s financial ills one tip at a time, Google has decided to get—how to say—’snarky’ about Twitter’s increasing popularity.