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Tag: search

  • Yandex.Disk Expands Its Cloud Storage Options

    “Google of Russia” search engine Yandex is expanding the cloud storage options for users of its Yandex.Disk storage service. Yandex.Disk offers 20 GB of storage for free, but now users can add on 10 GB, 100GB, and 1 TB packages for an extra fee.

    Each package is cheaper is you commit to a whole year. The 10 GB addition costs $1 per month or $10 for the whole year. The 100GB add-on will run you $5 per month or $50 for the year. The 1 TB package will cost you $30 per month or $300 for the entire year.

    Yandex first launched Yandex.Disk back in April of 2012, and at that time is was invitation and Russian only. By September, the company had opened the cloud storage service up to everyone. The launch of Yandex.Disk was notable for another reason – the fact that the Russian search giant actually beat Google to the punch. It wasn’t for a couple of months after Yandex unveiled Disk that Google Drive launched.

    As far as prices go, Yandex’s add-ons mesh with what Google Drive offers – except Yandex is cheaper when you start talking about 1 TB of storage. It’s also cheaper than Dropbox at that tier.

    “Yandex.Disk now has about 12 million users worldwide,” said Natalya Khaitina, head of cloud services at Yandex. “For those of them who need a cloud storage space above 20 GB available for free, we have developed flexible terms for buying more storage space at affordable prices.”

    If you opt for the pay-per-moth route, and let’s say you miss a month, your stored files don’t disappear or become inaccessible or anything. You can still access everything – you just can’t add any more to the cloud locker, obviously.

    Yandex.Disk is currently available in 4 languages – English, Russian, Ukrainian, and Turkish. Yandex.Disk offer apps for Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

    In other Yandex news, co-founder Ilya Segalovich passed away over the weekend after a battle with cancer.

  • Ilya Segalovich Dies: Yandex Co-Founder Was 48

    On Saturday afternoon Ilya Segalovich, co-founder of the “Google of Russia”, Yandex, was taken off life support and passed away. That ended a battle with terminal metastatic gastric cancer that began nearly a year ago.

    Early reports indicated that Segalovich had died on Thursday, July 25th. The company put out a statement lamenting Segalovich’s unexpected death. But shortly after, company CEO Arkady Volozh clarified Segalovich’s condition – saying that he was still alive, but in a coma.

    “Ilya’s official medical condition was ‘coma with no signs of brain activity’. From what has appeared in the media, it felt like some thought that he was in a vegetative state – a state, in which the brain is active, even though other, technically replaceable, organs have failed. A patient in a vegetative state can be maintained on life support for years. In the case of brain death, however, supporting a body longer than a few days is impossible,” said Volozh.

    On Saturday, Segalovich was taken off life support.

    “We had to let him go with dignity,” said Volozh.

    After his diagnosis with terminal cancer last September, Segalovich wasn’t given much time to live – but as Volozh says, “a miracle happened.” Segalovich began to respond to treatment, and his cancer was stalled. But last week, doctors discovered a tumor in his brain. Within days, Segalovich had slipped into a coma.

    “Ilya was a friend of life and this is a terrible personal loss. Ilya’s contributions to the founding and development of Yandex were invaluable. More importantly, his philanthropic contributions touched many children in need. My thoughts and those of all of the Yandex family are with Ilya’s family at this difficult time. We know that the strong technical team Ilya helped to build will carry on the work Ilya cared so passionately about. Ilya was an encyclopedia in technology and his highest ethical standards has always set the landmark for us all,” said Volozh.

    “Yandex” was first invented in 1993 by Volozh and Segalovich to describe their search technologies, and it means “yet another index.” Yandex.ru was first launched in 1997, and was incorporated as a standalone company in 2000. Today, Yandex hold nearly two-thirds of the search market share in Russia.

  • Google Shows You How To Use Its Knowledge Graph Data In Your Own Apps

    Google Shows You How To Use Its Knowledge Graph Data In Your Own Apps

    In one of many interesting Google I/O sessions, Google shows developers how to tap into Freebase, the open core of its Knowledge Graph, to enhance their own apps with Knowledge Graph data.

    The session takes a look at the Freebase APIs, and discusses how they can enhance applications to better understand people, places and things.

    During the Google I/O keynote, Google SVP Amit Singhal said that Knowledge Graph already has over 570 million entities, and it continues to grow. He also announced the launch of Knowledge Graph in olish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

  • Google Music All Access Goes Live, Here’s What to Expect

    Google Music All Access Goes Live, Here’s What to Expect

    If you’re still looking to add a streaming music service to your collection of services (which, admittedly, could be pretty massive by now), Google wants to throw their hat in the ring. Today, Google launched Google Play Music All Access, which is their new subscription music service that puts millions of tracks at your fingertips, and cozies them up to all of your existing music to produce recommendations. Google says that All Access is all about music discovery.

    They’re not lying – it’s very heavy on the discovery. But more on that later.

    It’s now live, available at music.google.com. The first thing you’ll be prompted to do upon arrival is sign up for the free trial. Google is offering a 30-day free trial, after that the service will be $9.99 a month (the same as Spotify’s premium service). But if you sign up for a free trial before June 30th, Google will knock two bucks off that price. Not bad. When you sign up for the trial (via Google Wallet, but you won’t be charged anything right now), you then be prompted to upload your music to Google Play using Music Manager. Google tells you that All Access is “even better when you combine your collection with ours.”

    The first thing you’ll see is the “Listen Now” section. Google wasn’t kidding when they said at the I/O conference that it would be a true mix of your own music and all of the other music available via All Access. At first, it looks a bit confusing, but you quickly realize that it’s simply made up of a bunch of tiles – each tile representing something different. One tile may suggest an album or track or even a playlist because you recently played it. Right next to that tile, another may suggest a new release based on what you’ve been listening to. Another tile will suggest that you start a radio station based on a song you’ve played.

    Google says that the Listen Now section will improve the more you listen, as it will learn to surface better stuff based on your tastes.

    The “Explore” section is another tool for discovering music, albeit it slightly less-focused on your own personal library and interest. Sure, there’s a “recommendation” section, but it’s not as intensive as the “listen now” section. Two other tabs that help you discover new music inside Explore are “featured” and “new releases.”

    The featured section shows you featured playlists, top albums, and top songs from across the Google Play network.

    And the new releases section is pretty self-explanatory. The Explore tab is also where you can browse music by genre. Google currently suggests 22 different genres, which when clicked on open up options for sub-genres. For instance, if I click on Alternative/Indie, I can then click on ’80s Alternative, Emo/Hardcore, or Neo-Folk. Within each genre you’re given featured playlists, top albums, key albums (the classics in that genre for instance Radiohead’s Kid A), and top new albums.

    From anywhere in the service, just click on an album to open up it’s album page. From there, you can begin playing tracks, and get information on it.

    Also, you can always just play any song that you see by clicking the play button. If it’s on an album, it’ll just start playing the first track on the album.

    As you can see above, there are buttons to “add to my library,” which puts the album alongside all of your owned music in your library, and “play radio.”

    Radio is one of the features that Google seemed really excited by at the I/O conference. With Google Music Radio, all you have to do is base it off of one song, and Google will generate a never-ending playlist of related tracks – not exactly a breakthrough technology within the streaming music service world. But one cool thing about the playlists are that they fully customizable, as you can click and drag to reorder them however you please. Plus, you can play any track in the station whenever you want.

    Clicking on the “Radio” tab on the left-hand side accesses all of your created radio stations, plus gives you some suggested stations.

    Artist pages looks nice, an feature bios, top songs, albums, and related artists:

    Very early, probably misguided and subject to change thoughts:

    Look, there are other streaming music services that offer millions of songs ready to play at the click of a button. Google Music All Access looks to be at least a competent service by this criteria, if not better than that. Time will tell as you search through artists to see what’s available and what isn’t. Google has major labels as partners in the venture, so I think we’ll be good in that department.

    The “Listen Now” section is probably the most notable feature of the service so far. The way that Google interweaves your personal music library with all of the other music available through All Access is nice, and could lead to some good discoveries. Mainly, Google says that it will help remove the paralyzing “what the hell to listen to now” problem.

    One of the major strikes that it has is the lack of a free, ad-supported option. You’re either all-in or all-out with that $9.99 per month fee. And even the free trial requires a credit card signup. I feel that many users will be wary of that.

    But it’s worth a try, and with the free trial why not? Plus, if you sign up before June 30th, you can get All Access for $7.99 a month. Give it a try now.

  • Could A Yahoo-Apple Deal Spell Trouble For Google?

    The competitive landscape surrounding Google gets more and more interesting by the day. Now two of its rivals, one of which is being run by someone who probably knows Google’s inner workings more intimately than most of its current employees, are talking about teaming up.

    Apple and Yahoo are said to be in talks about possibly integrating Yahoo products more into iOS, the the operating system powering the iPhones, iPods and iPads in millions of hands.

    Should Google be worried? What would you like to see out such a partnership? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Any increased integration of Yahoo into iOS would only add on to existing Yahoo Finance and weather data that come on the operating system today.

    The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the two companies have been “discussing how more of Yahoo’s services can play a prominent role on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices,” citing people briefed on the matter. Such possibilities could include, according to the Journal’s sources, “more content from Yahoo News and its other web properties loaded onto Apple devices or available through an expanded Siri partnership.”

    A deal is not imminent, the report says.

    The Journal isn’t the only publication with sources talking about this. Bloomberg cites “a person familiar with the matter” as saying executives from both companies have “discussed ways to collaborate more closely on mobile software”:

    Yahoo Chief Executive Officer (and longtime Googler) Marissa Mayer has met with Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet services, to explore ways Yahoo can be more deeply integrated into the software that runs on the iPhone and iPad, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

    Mayer has been very clear about how important mobile is to the company’s strategy going forward since she took over as CEO last year. This would obviously be a huge step in making sure smartphone users are accessing Yahoo content on a regular basis. Depending on what kinds of integrations we see, it could turn out to be a pretty big deal for Yahoo’s piece of the search market as well, and would give Yahoo an interesting partner should the Microsoft alliance fall apart.

    The part about Siri is particularly interesting, and that could mean any number of things. One thing it can at least enable us to imagine is a search-related partnership. Yahoo, of course, outsources its search to Bing on the back-end, but Yahoo’s relationship with Microsoft seems to be souring. Apple’s with Google, meanwhile, is too.

    Yahoo has expressed how important search still is to it as a company in recent months, and now they have one of the biggest names in the search industry running the show. It was a different story when Yahoo went the Bing route.

    The Motley Fool even makes an interesting case for why Apple should (but probably won’t) just buy Yahoo. “Yahoo! already provides some of the default iOS apps for stock quotes and weather. Perhaps more importantly, Yahoo! isn’t Microsoft or Google,” writes Rick Munarriz. “Mr. Softy and Big G are Apple’s two biggest rivals, though these days Google has become the bigger enemy as Android conquers the smartphone and now tablet markets. Apple tried to distance itself from Google last year, going with a homegrown default solution to Apple Maps.”

    “Right,” he continues. “We know how badly that played out for Apple. Any bone that Apple could throw Yahoo! is one less bone that it would either throw out to Google or possibly mess up on its own.”

    I don’t expect any acquisition announcements to be made anytime soon, but it’s interesting to consider.

    Even with the right partnership between Apple and Yahoo, Google could suffer significantly in terms of search market share. Let’s not forget that Yahoo used to rule the search space, and now it has a seasoned veteran from the current king of search running the show. What if iOS made its way to using Yahoo as the default search? How many would bother to change it to Google?

    Google and Apple have had a search deal in place for about a decade. Few details are known about this deal. Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land recently shared a couple of analysts’ theories:

    An analyst at Macquarie Capital estimated that Google was making $1.3 billion annually in paid search revenue from iOS devices. Macquarie speculated that Google returned about $1 billion of that to Apple as part of the agreement that made Google the default search engine on the Safari browser….Another financial analyst has come up with a similar annual estimate of the value of Google’s default iOS search deal with Apple: $1 billion. Morgan Stanley’s Scott Devitt is responsible for the new estimate…Devitt disagreed with Macquarie, arguing that the structure of the relationship is probably not a “revenue sharing” deal but instead a straight fee-per-device payment from Google to Apple. Devitt believes that Google pays Apple roughly $3.20 per iOS device, which would avoid the accounting issues arising from a revenue sharing agreement.

    Sterling himself wrote, “While it’s extremely unlikely that Apple would try and make Siri into a full-fledged search engine, it could significantly beef up Siri’s content search and discovery capabilities. In that capacity, Apple might be able to siphon off selected commercial queries in key categories such as local, travel and entertainment.”

    As we have discussed repeatedly, including in this recent article, the biggest threat to Google’s search market share is the gradual chipping away at it by various vertical services. Even if Yahoo only supplied some of the content on Siri (regardless of whether it became the actual default search on iOS), Siri could continue to improve with increased integration across other services, and rendering Google less of a need for users, little by little.

    Obviously, how this really plays out is anybody’s guess. Apple and Yahoo may not even expand their partnership at all, when it’s all said and done. Still, if I were Google, I might be a little nervous about what these companies are discussing.

    Should Google be worried? Let us know what you think.

  • Wolfram Alpha Offers Handwritten Results for April Fools

    If there’s one thing that the internet lacks, it’s quality handwritten content. For decades, computers have been slowly but surely killing off the need for actually writing anything down. Lucky for us, Wolfram Alpha is here to bring a little bit of handwritten flair to the web.

    Today, Wolfram Alpha is introducing the Wolfram Alpha Handwritten Knowledge Engine, which they describe as a “more personal way of delivering computed answers.”

    Ok, it’s an April Fools’ joke. But it’s a clever one.

    According to a blog post, each of your queries will be transcribed and illustrated by a real live human!

    “We had a thought not long ago that it would be nice to get you (the internet) a gift. One of those “just because” things to spread a bit of happiness around the world. Conventional wisdom holds that the best gifts are handmade. But making gifts by hand for over 2.2 billion people? It was a daunting challenge,” says Wolfram Alpha.

    But they pulled it off, and are now offering “artisanal answers.”

    Like this important question about whether or not they are, in fact, Skynet.

    Even mathematical computations get the handwritten treatment.

    For more April Fools’ Day fun, check here.

  • Google Now May Be On Its Way To iOS [Rumor]

    For almost a year, Google Now has remained an exclusive feature of Android. The service may very well be coming to Chrome in the near future, but an iOS version seemed unlikely. Well, it’s not unlikely anymore if a leaked video is to be believed.

    Engadget reports that a video announcing Google Now for iOS popped up on YouTube, and then quickly disappeared. The authentic-looking video shows that Google Now would be integrated into the Google Search app for iOS. In the app, users would just swipe up to access Google Now and all the info cards contained therein.

    If the video is legitimate, we might be seeing an announcement of Google Now for iOS in the near future. I highly doubt that the video would leak this far ahead of Google I/O so a pre-I/O announcement seems the most likely. Still, the video could always be an elaborate fake that just so happened to hire an actress that sounds exactly like the narrator from the original Google Now announcement video.

    While the video does indeed look legitimate, we’ve reached out to Google for comment. We’ll update if we hear back.

  • Learn How To Make Searchable Google Drive Files

    Despite some early concerns, Google Drive has proven to be pretty awesome. Developers may find it especially awesome as it can easily be used to store documentation. You may also want to make these files searchable by others, but how would you go about doing that?

    A new video released on the Google Developers channel today walks us through the process of making documents searchable on Google Drive:

    During this event we’ll take a look at how you can make your Google Drive files searchable. In more details we’ll see why, when and how you need to set the indexable text on a Google Drive file. We’ll also talk about some brand new features that will make it easy for you to make your files searchable.

  • Google Custom Search Engine Gets A Redesign

    Google has launched a new layout for Google CSE (Custom Search Engine), which displays results in an overlay, over top of any content on the page.

    The company says that developers will benefit from the changes because it only takes seconds to create, for one. “We simplified the creation interface to get you going faster,” Google’s Custom Search team said in a blog post.There’s just a single code snippet for the search box and results, which developers can place anywhere they want the search box to appear.

    Features like autocomplete, image thumbnails, and results sorting are now part of the default experience.

    For users, Google says the new design brings an “uninterrupted browsing experience”.

    “Faster, more simple search means more chances for your users to discover great content from your site,” Google says.

    If you want to take a look at it, w3Schools has it up and running:

    CSE Redesign

  • Priceline Wins FTC Approval For Kayak Acquisition [Report]

    Priceline Wins FTC Approval For Kayak Acquisition [Report]

    Priceline announced in November that it had signed an agreement to acquire Kayak in a deal valued at $1.8 billion ($40 per share of Kayak). Priceline would pay about $500 million in cash and $1.3 billion in equity and assumed stock options.

    The Federal Trade Commission reportedly said that it has granted its approval of the deal. Reuters reports that the deal was one of several on a list of approved transactions that the FTC announced.

    Priceline CEO said when the deal was announced, “Kayak has built a strong brand in online travel research and their track record of profitable growth is demonstrative of their popularity with consumers and value to advertisers. Kayak also has world class technology and a tradition of innovation in building great user interfaces across multiple platforms and devices. We believe we can be helpful with Kayak’s plans to build a global online travel brand.”

    Kayak CEO Steve Hafner added, “Paul English and I started Kayak eight years ago to create the best place to plan and book travel. We’re excited to join the world’s premier online travel company. The Priceline Group’s global reach and expertise will accelerate our growth and help us further develop as a company.”

    Both boards approved the transaction. Priceline had indicated in November that it expected the deal to close by late first quarter 2013.

    Kayak will remain a separate entity under Priceline, and will keep its current management staff. Kayak processes over 100 million user queries per month.

    It remains to be see whether Kayak will remain part of the FairSearch coalition, as Priceline is not a member. When asked about this initially, FairSearch would not comment on the matter.

  • Twitter Adds Trend Matching, Negative Keyword Targeting to Promoted Tweets in Search Campaigns

    Twitter has just unveiled some new options for advertisers who use Promoted Tweets inside search results which allow them to both manually and automatically improve their campaigns across the platform.

    First up, Twitter has added new manual features for negative keyword targeting that allows advertisers to keep their Promoted Tweets out of certain search results. For example, Dick’s Sporting Goods may want to stay out of searches involving Dick Cheney. To do this, they could add “Cheney” to the negative keyword list.

    They’ve also added a bulk import tool so advertisers can import keywords lists from other ad programs they’re involved in. Or, they can just cut-and-paste the list into the tool as well.

    When entering positive keywords, advertisers can now choose between three different options for how (specifically) they want the Promoted Tweets to be activated – exact match, phrase match, and basic keyword match.

    On the automatic help side, Twitter is also announcing trend matching for advertiser’s campaigns. Here’s how Twitter explains it:

    “[E]ven more exciting to us is the new option to automatically match your Promoted Tweets in search to relevant and related trending topics. Trends can rise and fall quickly with world events, TV shows and sporting matches, or memes like #OneOfMyFavoriteMovies. If you use this new matching option (which is enabled by default for new campaigns), we use relevance signals about your Promoted Tweets and the Trend itself to help increase your campaign’s coverage automatically. For example, if a celebrity’s pregnancy news starts trending, and you’re a retailer of baby clothing, your Promoted Tweet may be entered into the auction for that trending search.”

    Twitter says that all of these new ad options should be ready to use starting today.

  • Online Ad Revenues Reach Historic High

    The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released a report on Internet ad revenues, which the organization says climbed to an all-time high of $17 billion in the first half of 2012. This is, in fact, a 14% year-over-year increase (compared to the previous high of $14.9 billion in the first half of 2011).

    The second quarter alone also saw a 14% year-over-year increase, hitting $8.7 billion (up from $7.7 billion during the same period last year).

    Here’s a look at the yearly increases for the first half of the year since 1996:

    First Half ad revenues

    “This report establishes that marketers increasingly embrace mobile and digital video, as well as the entire panoply of interactive platforms, to reach consumers in innovative and creative ways,” said IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. “These half-year figures come on the heels of a study from Harvard Business School researchers that points to the ad-supported internet ecosystem as a critical driver of the U.S. economy. Clearly, the digital marketing industry is on a positive trajectory that will propel the entire American business landscape forward.”

    IAB SVP, Research, Analytics and Measurement, Sherrill Mane, added, “Solid double-digit growth in a stagnating economy is a significant accomplishment. There is evidence that CPMs are maintaining, and even increasing, further substantiating the vitality of the internet ad market.”

    Mobile nearly doubled year-over-year for the first half of the year, rising 95% to $1.2 billion, compared to $636 million from the same period last year. Digital video increased 18% year-over-year, reaching over $1 billion in revenue (up from $900 million from the same period last year).

    “The tremendous growth of mobile advertising revenue over the past year is an indication of the importance of location to advertisers and mobility to consumers,” said David Silverman, a partner at PwC US, which prepared the report for the IAB. “Bringing the power of the internet to mobile devices has opened up a world of possibilities to both consumers and marketers.”

    Search revenues totaled $8.1 billion, up 19% from $6.8 billion. Display revenues hit $5.6 billion, up 4% from $5.3 billion in the same period last year, and accounting for 33% of the first half of the year’s ad revenues.

    You can find the full report here.

  • Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Gives Birth to Baby Boy

    Adding to the eventful 2012 for Marissa Mayer, the 37-year-old Yahoo CEO gave birth to her first child last night – a baby boy.

    The news was tweeted out by Mayer’s husband, Zachary Bogue.

    “Baby boy Bogue born last night. Mom (@marissamayer) and baby are doing great – we couldn’t be more excited,” tweeted Bogue about an hour ago. Marissa Mayer just retweeted the tweet.

    On the same day that Yahoo announced the hire of Mayer as their new CEO, she tweeted out the other big news of the day – that she was expecting her first child. At the time, she said that the due date was set for October 7th, so it looks like the little guy came a tad bit early.

    At the time, Mayer said that Yahoo learned of her pregnancy before she was tapped as CEO, and that nobody on the CEO search committee expressed any concern with it.

    We can expect Mayer to remain hard at work at her new job, as she said that she wouldn’t be taking an extended maternity leave back in July:

    “I like to stay in the rhythm of things,” she said. “My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it.”

    Late last month, Mayer held a meeting with Yahoo employees to discuss the future of the company. The main theme underlying the vision was that Yahoo is going to focus more on mobile and personalization moving forward.

  • Yahoo To Focus On Mobile And Personalization

    Yahoo will reportedly be increasing its focus on mobile and personalization moving forward under new CEO Marissa Mayer. Mayer held a meeting with Yahoo employees to discuss the company’s plans, and these were major themes.

    Business Insider obtained a summary/outline of what was discussed from sources the publication declined to name because they “want to keep people employed”. These sources reportedly said that Mayer shared non-specific plans to “acqui-hire” small companies for engineering talent to build products for Yahoo (as opposed to buying companies for their existing products).

    The company is reportedly striving to become something users use every day, to do more of what the company is good at (and less of what it is not), to be partner-friendly, to be strong in mobile by 2015, and to move faster (giving employees more deadlines and resources). One important point from the outline is that Yahoo will only give the green light to products that can scale to 100 million users or $100 million in revenue.

    That part about being partner-friendly is interesting in light of comments made by Google’s Eric Schmidt this week. He reportedly expressed interest in a partnership with Yahoo, though it’s hard to say that anything will come of this, as the two companies have tried to partner in the past, but had to pull the plug due to regulators. In other words, it’s obvious that Google would want to partner with Yahoo, but getting a partnership done is a different story. Still, it’s interesting that he would even say such a thing, especially considering that Yahoos now in the hands of a longtime Googler. I wonder what Microsoft thinks about it.

    Kara Swisher at All Things D also provided an account of Mayer’s talk, which pretty much mirrors Business Insider’s, but she also notes that search and email were not discussed much.

    On Tuesday, Yahoo announced the appointment of Ken Goldman to the CFO role.

  • Mitt Romney in One Word: “Unicorn” Suspiciously Absent from the List

    If you could only use one word to describe Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, what would it be?

    Ok, do you have it? Good. If the word you’re thinking of is negative, you side with the majority in a new Pew Research poll that looks to determine how Romney’s image is changing over time.

    Here’s what Pew had to say about their survey of over 1,000 American voters:

    “Overall, 42% of the words volunteered by respondents are clearly negative, most commonly liar, arrogant, crook, out of touch, distrust and fake. Fewer (28%) offer words that are clearly positive in tone, such as honest, good, leadership, and capable. The remaining 30% of words are more descriptive and neutral in their tone, including businessman, rich, conservative, and Republican. As the campaign progresses, fewer Americans are offering neutral descriptions of Romney, but people continue to have more negative than positive things to say about him.”

    The top three words used to describe Romney? “Honest,” “Businessman”” and “Rich.” Interestingly enough, those choosing to describe Romney as “Honest” increased 700% from March of this year. Only one more person chose “Rich” than did in March.

    Possibly the biggest takeaway from this poll is that fewer people are choosing to identify Romney with his Mormonism first and foremost. In October of 2011, 60 people chose the word “Mormon” to describe Romney. In this latest poll, that number has decreased to 8.

    Check out Pew’s word distribution below:

    (image)

    Oddly enough, nobody (or not enough to register) chose to describe Romney as a “Unicorn,” even though that’s been one of the top Google autocomplete results for months:

    (image)

  • Netflix Brings “People Search” to Xbox 360; Makes Library Searchable by Actor, Director

    Netflix Brings “People Search” to Xbox 360; Makes Library Searchable by Actor, Director

    Earlier this month, Netflix launched an update to its Xbox 360 app that brought the “Just for Kids” platform to the console. “Just for Kids” is a section that highlights programming that’s appropriate for youngsters so parents can feel confident that their children aren’t wading into some sketchy territory on the streaming service. The Xbox 360 was one of the last Netflix-enabled devices to get this feature.

    Now, Netflix is telling us that’s not the only new feature that came along for the ride.

    Even as a regular Netflix user, you may have overlooked this new way to find the movies and TV shows that you want to watch. “People Search” now allows you to search Netflix’s streaming library for actors and directors.

    Previously, Netflix’s search feature on the Xbox only allowed users to search by title.

    So, if you really want to see what Netflix has to offer in terms of Nicolas Cage movies, or Wes Anderson films, it’s now much easier.

    The feature has already been active on the web and on PS3 (and popular, according to Netflix). They say that it will hit other devices in the near future.

  • Google Announces Improvements To Mobile Quick Answer Results

    Google announced today that it is adding some improvements to some of the quick answers-style search results it gives users, across a variety of subject areas.

    “Today when you search on mobile or tablet, you’ll see some more improvements in the way we provide these quick answers, including better understanding what information you need and surfacing the most relevant information for you,” says Google User Experience Designer Jeromy Henry. “For example, in our flight status quick answer, we’ve included a flight progress indicator and increased the size of arrival and departure times so you can quickly see when your loved ones will be landing.”

    Google Richer Answers

    “Other quick answer features we’re updating on mobile and tablet cover finance, currency conversion, unit conversion, dictionary definitions, local time lookup, and holiday and sunrise times,” adds Henry. “In all these quick answers we’ve simplified the experience so you can focus on the answer you were looking for. For example, for unit conversions the answer is displayed prominently for a question like [how many miles are 42 kilometers]. If you’d like to convert another unit of measure like [how many yards in a mile], you can simply tap the card and see the full unit converter right there.”

    Richer conversion results

    Google says the changes are rolling out to Google.com in English on mobile and tablets.

    Google announced the changes on its Inside Search blog – the first announcement here since the addition of handwriting as a search option for mobile. Typically, Google posts monthly lists of search algorithm changes to the blog, but has so far not posted any such list for the past two months.

  • Google’s Siri Comes To iPhone And iPad

    Google’s Siri Comes To iPhone And iPad

    If you have an iPhone and were hoping to have another search assistant that talks back to you, Google has you covered.

    As one of a handful of search announcements this week, Google announced that its new and improved voice search, announced for Android at Google I/O is coming soon to iOS (4.2+).

    “Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud,” says Google’s Amit Singhal in the announcement. “So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences. This has been available on Android for a few weeks and people love it. It’ll soon be available on your iPhone or iPad (iOS version 4.2+).”

    “You just need to tap the microphone icon and ask your question, the same way you’d ask a friend,” adds Singhal. “For example, ask ‘What movies are playing this weekend?’ and you’ll see your words streamed back to you quickly as you speak. Then Google will show you a list of the latest movies in theaters near you, with schedules and even trailers. It works for everything from celebrity factoids to the height of Kilamanjaro and more. When Google can supply a direct answer to your question, you’ll get a spoken response too.”

    Now, obviously the feature is limited to Google search, and does not do all the things Siri can do, but it will be interesting to see how the feature competes with Siri on some types of information retrieval among iOS users.

    The feature comes at a time when Google and Apple are growing further and further apart. Earlier this summer, Apple announced its new Maps offering, distancing itself from Google Maps, and just this week, it became known that Apple is also dropping its YouTube app. Of course, Google is just offering its own apps, which many users will no doubt use anyway.

    This particular voice search feature appears to be just another way for Google to combat any souring relationship with Apple, and stay relevant to users.

  • How To Get Started With The Google Places API In 15 Minutes

    Google uploaded two videos about the Google Places API today. The first one is about getting started with the API, and the second one is a Q&A on the same topic. Together, you’re looking at about fifteen minutes of your time, and if this is something you think your app might be able to benefit from, you might as well check them out.

    The documentation for the API, which Google still considers experimental, by the way, can be found here.

  • Patent Troll Goes After Netflix And Others Over Autocomplete

    Autocomplete is pretty ubiquitous in the tech space by now. If a site has search, you can bet that they have an autocomplete feature of some sort powering the front end. That feature just got a dozen or so companies sued by the latest patent troll to climb out from underneath its bridge.

    The patent troll of the week is Data Carriers LLC, a shell company that is the epitome of the patent troll. They’re suing numerous companies over US Patent 5,388,198 for “Proactive presentation of automating features to a computer user.” To them, that translates to autocomplete and companies like Apple, Nokia and more are the targets of their frivolous litigation.

    Gigaom is reporting that Data Carriers has expanded their patent lawsuit to even more companies now. Companies including Netflix, LinkedIn, Target, Wal-Mart and others are now included in the latest round of litigation from this particularly nasty troll.

    This latest lawsuit just further confirms the need for patent reform. It’s a problem when software like autocomplete is used as fuel in patent lawsuits. The entire Internet relies on these features, and further innovations are impeded by companies looking for a quick buck. It becomes even more complicated when large corporations create these shell companies to handle patent lawsuits all in the name of slowing innovation and draining money from those who are actually making the Internet better.

    Fortunately, the lawsuit brought by Data Carriers doesn’t seem to hold much merit. You can see for yourself in the court document below.

    Data Carriers v Netflix

  • Gmail Log Search For Admins Now Available

    Gmail Log Search For Admins Now Available

    For those of you who pay for to use the Google Apps services for businesses, you know have the ability to conduct a Gmail log search, which is, after reading the description, something akin to Google Analytics for your Gmail account. The tool is aimed at domain admins who want a clear picture concerning the who, what, when, where and why of their domain’s email traffic.

    Over at the Google Enterprise Blog, the functionality of the Gmail log search is explained, including what kind of information a domain admin can expect to find with the new search feature:

    • Basic message information like Sender, Recipient, Subject, Date and Message-ID
    • Attachment size
    • Total transit time
    • Delivery status

    Google is also using its cloud storage facilities to help facilitate this capability:

    This Gmail log search feature was built using Google BigQuery, a Google Cloud Platform product that allows developers to store and query large amounts of data. We chose BigQuery because it can analyze multi-terabyte data sets with billions of headers to deliver precise results in just a few seconds.

    The post theorizes about what kind of situations Gmail log search could be used for, for those of you who aren’t sure why such a feature is useful. While general questions like “What happened to the inbound/outbound message?” are presented, perhaps the most important one–“Was a message sent to my domain and marked as spam?”–is essential for those businesses that employ email marketing and aren’t receiving a great response and/or open rate. If you find out the mailing was marked as spam, you can adjust your email marketing strategy accordingly.

    Google indicates the increased functionality is available now for Google Apps for Business customers. Those belonging to the Education and Government customer base can expect to see Gmail log search in “the next few weeks.”

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