Microsoft/Yahoo Deal Gets Cleared By Canadian, Australian Authorities

The Canadian and Australian anti-trust authorities have cleared proposed Web-search partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo, eliminating the two potential barriers to combining Yahoo search and Bing

But the anti-trust reviews by the U.S Department of Justice and European Union Competition Commission is still in progress.

“Microsoft and Yahoo! have been notified that Australian and Canadian authorities have separately concluded their reviews and have no objections to our proposed search agreement," said the two companies on Tuesday. "We continue to believe that this deal will create a true, competitive alternative in the marketplace that will benefit consumers, advertisers and publishers. We remain hopeful that the agreement will close in early 2010."

According to the proposed 10-year deal, Bing would power Web search of Yahoo, combining Bing and Yahoo into a larger search engine behind Google. Yahoo would be taking care of both the companies’ premium publishers and advertisers. More details are given below;

Microsoft and Yahoo have an existing partnership in Australia in which the Microsoft utilizes Yahoo’s paid search-ad platform, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said this in its public notice. So the companies do not compete for paid search in Australia.

"Microsoft and Yahoo!'s share of online paid search advertising queries in Australia was limited," states ACCC’s notice. "In combining search engine platforms, Microsoft and Yahoo! may have been able to achieve the necessary scale to provide effective and sustainable competition to Google, which had a very large share of online paid search advertising queries."

The Canadian Competition Bureau is yet to release publicly its review. But the spokesperson Alexa Thorp confirmed the bureau is done with the review and raised no objections to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal.

Microsoft and Yahoo did not comment further on Tuesday because the deal is still under the review in other jurisdictions such as the U.S and Europe.

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Yahoo Rolls Out Improved Search Assist Feature

When Google was busy working with more search ads formats, on the other hand Yahoo is busy in improving their Search Assist Feature. Yahoo has released a new set of features for aimed to help the searchers find the right information on various Yahoo online properties that include Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports.

This new Search Assist Features makes use of the Search Assist layer in the relevant links related to a search query. This could either be stock charts or stock quotes when searching for finance- related searches, career and game schedules achievements while searching for the name of athlete or travel-related links when searching for information related to travel.

Another new Search Assist feature is its ability to do a search for a particular Yahoo property on the Yahoo Search box itself while you are using a particular Yahoo online property. For example; Yahoo Finance. You just have to type in email on search box to get you to your Yahoo Mail inbox.

And the best new feature that rolled out ha something to do with the smart detection system. So, when you type any particular query on the search box then Search Assist will give you the links to either Yahoo! News Search or Yahoo! Image Search. You just have to click on these links that will get you to the right information that is when you are looking for news items or images.

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Twitter Activates Opt-In GeoLocation Feature

Twitter has just turned on its GeoLocation feature that will allow you to opt-in whether you want your tweets to be tagged with your current location. This feature is not carried on your Twitter account but on the third-party Twitter application which will use the GeoLocation API released by Twitter.

If you are using Twitter apps such as Seesmic Web, Birdfeed, Foursquare among others and those apps implemented Twitter’s GeoLocation API all your tweets will be tagged then with your current location. Seesmic already has implemented geotagging features. So if you use it as a desktop client for Twitter, then you might want to check out how this geotagging features goes.

So, the question may arise to you is what is good about the feature. Actually there are plenty of good things about the feature. One feature is, it could spark up more local conversation between you and the people you follow, as well as your Twitter followers. You can easily find out about the events that are taking place in nearby locality just by checking out your Twitter timeline. There are several suggestions and creative ideas that ReadWriteWeb has that you might want to check them out.

You can enable geotagging on your Twitter account by going to the Settings, and selecting the option of geotagging.

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Google Announces Updated Mobile Google News For iPhone

Yesterday, Google announced of an updated mobile-formatted Google news pages for IPhone, Androids and Palm Pre users. The new enhanced Google News Mobile is now more consistent with the desktop version. Google has tried to copy the same look and feel to the Google News mobile like of the Google News on a web browser.

With the updated Google News Mobile now it will display more stories, images and stories while maintaining the same feel and look as its desktop browser counterpart. Another feature of this mobile application which seems useful is the navigation links that lead you to the different areas of your personalized Google News site. The best part is, all the customization that you did to your Google News site will get carried over to the Google News mobile edition that includes customs sections.

For mobile Google News is available in 29 languages and 70 editions. And to check it out you simply have to point your phone’s mobile web browser to www.news.google.com or you can install a Google Mobile application.

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Is Google Thinking Of Ranking Websites Based On Speed

Google ‘might’ use a site’s speed as a part of the ranking algorithm used by them. That means sites that load faster will rank high than those which loads slower. This is proving quite controversial.

Google’s Matt Cutt had already hinted about the possibility when he said, “We’re starting to think more and more about should speed be a factor in Google’s rankings?”

Google has given a fair list why they are considering speed as a major factor for ranking websites. A fast web is according to them will be better for users, site owners, and to Google.

• More productivity is what matters a lot: A fast loading website if given a boost in ranking will improve the user experience for those coming from Google. If you click on the site that is on top and it is taking a lot of time to load then, you will obviously lose the patience to wait for it to open.

• If site owners would improve their speed to appease Google, it would be better for the users as well.

• Google ads are everywhere on the web. So if site owners are given an incentive to address speed issues it will increase page views, clicks and revenue for both Google and the publishers. That means more revenue for everyone.

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Do You Think Google Should Rank Sites Based On Speed

Though Google has not officially announced whether they would rank sites according to the speed but a lot of buzzes have already started to float around. Some are too pleased with the proposal or rumor but some have voiced against the proposal.

Big company-big favor: Some people think that penalizing slow loading websites would mean better chances for big companies who can afford load sharing, web acceleration caching, or cloud technologies. If small companies cannot afford what big companies can then they will have no hope of scoring well in the search engine which would eventually discourage them even to try. The big favor will be given to big companies who have the money to plow up resources into technical prowess. If this happen it would disturb Google’s equal basis, and the idea of the web as a meritocracy.

Whose benefit is it anyway: Google had put forward that the publishers and itself would benefit a lot if sites can load faster. But in total the value is really greater for Google itself.

Being faster does not mean good results: In case if users are searching for local business they would have a hard time finding. Local businesses would not have their sites optimized for speed and taking advantage of that are the big companies. When it comes to speed metric, it would always be the big companies.

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Google Translate has a New Look and New features

One of the interesting Google service is its online translation tool that just got a newly streamlined layout. And with the new site design there are some great features that will make it easier and faster to translate words in 51languages.

If you are living somewhere under the rock, Google Translate is such an online tool that lets you translate automatically translates text and web pages into different languages. Some use this service when covering netbook news in foreign languages including Dutch, German, Japanese and Chinese. The translation can be crappy at times but it is good enough to give you the gist of foreign news that you are trying to cover.

Google Translate allows you:

• Translate text as you type, you don’t need to click on the “translate” button.


• To show the Romanized version of words and phrases (applicable to all Non-Roman languages except Arabic, Hebrew and Persian)


• To transliterate Hindi text, Persian or Arabic to convert them into other language.


• To hear the translation in English.

These are the great features that add value to one of the most underrated Google online tools.

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Now Track Your RSS Feed Clicks With Google Analytics

Do you want to know number of people who are visiting your site via RSS feeds? If you have been using FeedBurner to syndicate the RSS feeds of your blog then now you can easily track your incoming traffic from feed clicks through Google Analytics.

For that you just need to open your FeedBurner dashboard, then click the title of RSS feed and select “Configure Stats” under the Analyze Tab. Now tick the options that say “Items views”, “Item click” and “Track clicks as a traffic source in Google Analytics” and save it.

Besides the click counts, you will also know the exact source from where the click may have originated. This is an important data because it will help you to know if people who subscribe your feed in Google Reader are more engaged than you “My Yahoo” subscribers or vice-versa.

Traffic from the clicks inside your RSS feed will come under “All Traffic Sources” and “Campaigns” in the reports of Google Analytics reports. Select “Ad Content” from the category drop down in the traffic source data table and it will allow you to see the incoming traffic from your RSS feed segmented by the specific feed readers or the email clients.

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Teaming of Bing With Wolfram Alpha

Microsoft now teamed up with a web too which was once hailed as a rival to Google to provide results for its search engine Bing.

Wolfram Alpha aims to answer question directly, rather than displaying a list of links like a search engine.

The “computational knowledge engine” is the brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, a British- born physicist.

It will be used to assist Bing’s result in the areas such as health, nutrition and mathematics.

The partnership will be initially rolled out in the U.S. Bing has been grabbing market share gradually from the other search engine since its launch in May.

Figures from the Experian Hitwise suggest its market share in the US rose from 8.96% in September to 9.57% in October.

This figures put it well behind the market leader Google which has 70.6% of the market.

‘Diet Tool’

Wolfram Alpha is differentiating itself from the standard search engines with an attempt to answer the questions directly. Many of answers “on the fly” is computed by the tool by grabbing raw data from the public and the licensed database.

This system can be used by the people to look up for the simple facts like; the height of Mount Everest or you can just crunch various data sets to produce new results, such as the GDP of any Country.

The data which it consults is chosen and is managed by the staffs at Wolfram Research who ensures that it can be displayed by the system.

According to the Wolfram team, the new partnership with Bing would be allowing the Microsoft to access “tens of thousands of algorithms and trillions of data” to incorporate those into results.

The partnership was made possible by the decision of Wolfram to offer an API (Application Programming Interface) in October. APIs are a set of tools and protocols offered by a firm to allow third party developers for building tools and services for a platform.

They have become common amongst web firms, such as Twitter and Facebook, who use them in extending their reach beyond their own website.

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Tracking of Friends (And Yourself) With the Google Location History, Alerts

To make Latitude, Google’s location-aware friend finder, more useful and engaging the company has added location history and alerts to the service. Location Alerts, which needs Location History to be enabled, will tell you when the friends are in the area. This system is smart enough to recognize the routine places like work and home. It will be sending alert when you and your friends are in “unusual places.”

According to the Google blog post: “Using your past history, Location Alerts can recognize your regular routine, locations and not create alerts when you are at places like home or work. Alerts will only be sent to you and any nearby friends when you are at unusual place or at a routine place at an unusual time. “

Location History once turned on, tracks your trip, movements and places you have been (that is how it recognizes common and “unusual” places). It creates like a record of activities or travels.

Google says that your history is not broadcasted to your friends, although they can potentially see when you move from place to place in real time if you allow them. You can also edit or remove the places that you don’t want to include in your history. While there may be people who may be uncomfortable with the idea of all one’s movement being recorded. SO you don’t have to enable Location History if you don’t want to, but then you will also not get the benefit of locations either.

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Google launches Flu Shot Locater that will show where to get Vaccines near You

So you are looking for the nearby place where to get a seasonal flu shot or searching for hard-to-find vaccine against the H1N1 Flu? Now Google provides you with the solution by launching Flu Shot Locator that will prove helpful to you.

When you load the locator, you may need to manually enter your location. You can do it by using the “Change Location” option. After doing the search, there will be a red needle icon that will show where you can get regular seasonal flu shots and another blue needle for the H1N1 vaccine. If both type of vaccine are offered in one location then both color needles will be pointing to that particular location.

You can find a list along the left-hand side of the map gives more details about the particular place and reflects all the locations on the map. Most of these are pharmacies, but according to Google more locations will be added.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to tell at a glance that if a particular location is out of stock on flu vaccine. It would be better if the map could also reflect the availability status of the vaccine.

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Twitter and Ecommerce - Interactive Online marketing

There is no question of doubt that ‘social networking sites are the great marketing tools.’ Therefore, Twitter is much used by creative marketing professionals in present scenario. As a social networking site, Twitter allows professionals to use it as a micro-blogging tool. This blogging tool enables the decoder to send a message of 140 characters only. You must be surprised by knowing this reality that how can one communicate business effectively with such limitation but an ability to conversation with customers makes Twitter a strong ecommerce business solution.

People who are part of business of ecommerce website design company use a well thought strategy to use Twitter as marketing tool. Its basic knowledge includes an attention to customer’s queries and advices and an understanding of their needs.

Although Twitter allows ecommerce professionals to take note of people’s likes and dislikes, and they can easily figure out their target clientele. There are times when the customers genuinely show interest in a product. While there are other times they respond to ecommerce blog just to know about the accurate sale season but marketers answer to every query to make a hold on customers. Twitter also has to offer some great tools like widgets; Ecommerce professionals use this tool to send online updates.

A good ecommerce also keeps attentive on people’s feedback on products. It helps in the improvement or maintaining the marketing strategy. There are many ecommerce website design professional is using Twitter as an extensive online marketing tool. They are using this social networking site for their promotion of their products among online mass. This is latest style of online marketing is getting popular with each passing day and is here to stay.

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Twitter Finally Begins To Add Search Relevancy Features

The Twitter Blog has a short blog post mentioning they have added a technology “to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful.” This is Twitter’s first step in improving Twitter Search is by the addition of relevancy and search quality factors to the search algorithm.

Now, Twitter search returns results based on the keyword match and the most recent tweet. Trending Topics is the first among Twitter’s search areas to get the relevancy filter, to minimize the “noise” that Twitter Search has. We knew Twitter was working for addition of relevancy factors with linkage data, and it assumed that this is the first signs of it. In the Twitter blog post, Twitter said it might be much noticeable right now, but they hope it over overtime.

You can test it yourself at Twitter Search and then clicking on one of the “trending topics.”

In other news of Twitter, now Twitter is experimenting with adding retweet buttons to some user accounts. There seems to be a lot buzz around the retweet button and then around the Twitter Search relevancy addition.

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Twitter Can Add Value To Your Business Marketing Plan

There are some people who refer to it as a micro blogging platform and there are others who refer it to a mass public instant messaging tool. Some of the social networking has been growing big and becoming a popular business tool with the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter has been looked upon as the distant, not much admired of the three popular sites. Many people questions whether this social networking tool is a waste of valuable time and energy. But the truth is that, Twitter is quite beneficial once the businesses and the professionals learn how to use it. To achieve success with Twitter, it is important to learn the different ways in which this site can be used. There is no doubt that the social networking tool’s tweet is bigger than the people may realize.

Here are some interesting ways that you can use Twitter to tweet yourself to the success:

• Follow those people who Interest You: Search for those people who not only interests you but also who may provide some sort of benefit for you. Be it beneficial information or possible contacts, you should calculate your step to follow those who aren’t going to waste your precious time.

• Offer Interesting and Valuable Information: Of course some people will tweet about their plans for weekends, what they ate for breakfast, but Twitter can prove more than just a juvenile social tool. This site can be a lot of opportunity for those who are willing to use it to their profit. Post interesting and informative links and statements throughout the day to remain at the forefront of every people you want to connect with.

• Use the Tools that are Available to You: Use Twitter by taking all the possible advantage of its many support applications. Save some valuable time for yourself by connecting your Facebook updates and Tweets with the Facebook for Twitter application. By using this tool you can update your status on the two sites at once. And if you use several sites then Ping.fm allows you to update your status on the major networking sites including Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

• Take it in Stride: Do not get caught in every single tweet that crosses over your page. You need not waste your valuable time going through every single tweet. Scan, read and reply to the information that interest you only.

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Google Doodle Changed | Google Celebrates Sesame Street 40 Years

Today Google logo has been changed to that of “Monster Cookie”. The Monster Cookie feature is dedicated to mark the celebration of Sesame Street’s 40 years of completion.Sesame Street is an American children television show which is an educational children show combining educational & entertainment both. This cartoon is popular for its Muppets.

This Muppets are a group of characters making this show the longest running children program in U.S.
The Indian version of this program is called Galli Galli Sim Sim. To mark the anniversary of such a show Google changed its logo in Google India, Google France, in the form of Big Bird.
Google United States i .e Google.com changed the logo with the word spelled out in yellow letters consisting of Big Bird’s legs replacing L.So, to mark such a great event Google changed its logo to that of cartoon character depicted here in.

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Google Dashboard now lifts curtain on stored data

Google is well aware of the uneasiness which is created among the public over the increasing amount of data it stores from its users of its services.

Google is launching Google Dashboard, a service that allows you to log into a console and see the personal data that the company maintains on a Google Account user across all its products from Gmail and YouTube to Picasa and Blogger. It allows the users to log into the settings page of their Google account and review links to the personal data stored by the Google across many of its products from a single Web page.

Users can now delete data, change the privacy settings and also read the privacy policies from various accounts on that page which is scheduled to go live on Thursday. Google had been pre-briefing news outlets on the announcements but somehow a You Tube video outlining the service was published on Google’s Privacy Channel on You Tube and was spotted by the Google Operating System blog.

This year, one of the overreaching themes with regards to Google has been increasing discomfort among both government and the public with the degree to which Google has grown to dominate the Internet. With almost two-thirds of all the Internet searches passing through its servers and increasing numbers of people using Its Google Docs, Gmail and the YouTube services, Google is a important gateway to information for Internet users.

Google has tried to pacify critics, recently emphasizing that it tries hard to let users export any data they enter into one of the Google’s products through the work of the Data Liberation Front. Launching a Dashboard is another step in that direction as Google tries to emphasize that users have control over the data it stores on them.

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