Google Hear and Google Things!

May 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Google kick off their three day developers conference today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco

It starts at 5pm BST (9am PST) and keynotes and much more is live streamed.

Todays Keynote & Android sessions should appear here:

After last years blockbusting Google Glass Skydivers many expect a rather lower key event this year. We’re not so sure there has to be some eyecatcher!

Rumoured happenings are:

  • Updated Nexus Tablets definitely 7 and possibly the 10 or even an 11!
  • Possibly an x phone form the Motorola Mobility stable.
  • The next alphabetically following android operating system update either Key Lime Pie 5.0 or just a rejuvinated  Jelly Bean 4.3.
  • A sort of Google Spotify on the music streaming front – Google Hear is our working name ‘cos Google Play is already taken and Google Listen may not warrant a  ressurection!
  • YouTube have already announced their pay Channels but there may be more from this source.
  • Perhaps further developments on a personal assistant front?
  • The Internet of Things (IOT) will also likely feature at some stage – Google Things has a certain ring to it!
  • The Cloud will also get more than a passing mention!
  • We do NOT think it will introduce its own currency to rival Amazon Coins although Google Bills has a certain “je ne sais quoi”!

We shall see and may report back later with some highlights

We’ll leave you with last years show stopper:

Filed Under: Google, Search, Tablets, Technology

Trust izik to Play with an Apple

January 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Blekko the search engine specialists we talked about last year have just launched, we think, a very appealing tablet orientated search app Izik (pronounced eye-zic which of course attracted us immediately!).

Screen shot - we added the statue! Click to

The name is a play on Isaac Newton apparently so we couldn’t resist following their lead!

Available free, in all the right places ie Google‘s Play store and Apple’s app store, it’s definitely worth downloading. If you’re separated from your tablet you can have a look & get a feel for it at the website izik.com which of course involves clicking rather than swiping.

Its got the look of some of the more elegant news reader apps like pulse .

The Izik words say “Content on izik is presented in various categories to allow for minimal typing and to provide context to results. Look up “Jennifer Lopez” and see results under the categories of Lyrics, Gossip, and Perfume. Search for “Lincoln” and see not only movie times, but also sites organized under Reviews, History, and Cars — all accessible with a tap of your fingertip. Use izik to meander your way through your favorite subjects and discover more!”

They reckon you can “Type less, get more” which of course is what we all want. They encourage you to “Join us in taking search for a joy ride!”

On the  Blekko blog on Friday they said “For example; if you want to search for the Windows Phone 8, the app will bring up the categories like tech websites, tech news, Windows Phone related websites. Similarly when you type ‘Katy Perry’ in the search box, the app will offer the categories like music-websites, Katy Perry’s albums, gossips etc. Izik search built app is based on the categorization technology.

Talking about the dynamic interface of the app, Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta says, “this interface “really blows up” the idea that users are only going to look at few search results, because Izik makes it so easy to see many scroll down or swipe through many more results””.

Anyway we encourage you all to have a look & give it a try – we think it might just be a big winner!

Here’s the sort of teaser video and of course twitter  & facebook presences are up and running.

Filed Under: Search, Tablets

What in the World have we been searching for?

December 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google have now fully updated their Zeitgeist pages with their 2012 search results and have details of the most popular from 55 different countries and the World. They have numerous categories of searches and a wealth of fascinating information.

We will simply show a limited selection of the overall most popular searches for the World some English Speaking countries and the BRIC countries, leaving you with Google’s introductory video. We do encourage you to explore!

Google  Searches 2012
World UK USA Australia
1 Whitney Houston Euro 2012 Whitney Houston Gangnam Style
2 Gangnam Style Olympic tickets Hurricane Sandy The Voice
3 Hurricane Sandy Whitney Houston Election 2012 One Direction
4 iPad 3 Kate Middleton Hunger Games Whitney Houston
5 Diablo 3 April Jones Jeremy Lin Olympics
6 Kate Middleton Netflix Olympics 2012 Oz Lotto
7 Olympics 2012 Natwest Online Amanda Todd Diablo 3
8 Amanda Todd iPad 3 Gangnam Style Hurricane Sandy
9 Michael Clarke Duncan Gary Barlow Michael Clarke Duncan KONY
10 BBB12 Gangnam Style KONY 2012 Morgan Freeman
UK.events 2 5 1 2

We apologise in advance for the BRIC country translations (courtesy Google) and any inappropriate links! Google of course in China is well behind their leading search engine Baidu. Brazil’s Zerg Rush is worth a visit – just wait!

Google  Searches 2012 (BRIC countries)
Brazil Russia India
1 Face ютюб (YouTube) IBPS
2 BBB12 смотреть фильмы онлайн (Online Movies) Gate Exams
3 Ask олимпиада 2012 (Olympics) Sunny Leone
4 Avenida Brasil одноклассники социальная сеть (Social network site) Ek Tha Tiger
5 Zerg Rush вконтакте моя страница (Social network site) Rowdy Rathore
6 Eleições 2012 евро 2012 (Euro 2012) Cbse
7 Transformice евровидение 2012 ((Eurovision 2012) Rajesh Khanna
8 Enem великолепный век (Magnificent century) Aakash Tablet
9 TRE выборы 2012 (Elections 2012) Hdfc
10 Fina Estampa универ новая общага (University dormitory) Jabong

.

China
1 中国好声音 (Chinas voice)
2 伦敦奥运会 (London Olympics)
3 江南 Style (Jiangnan Style)
4 甄嬛传 (Zhen Huan Chuan)
5 钓鱼岛 (Diaoyu Islands)
6 爱情公寓 3 (Love apartment 3)
7 神九 (God nine)
8 iPad3
9 海葵 (Sea anemone
10 安卓游戏 (Android Games)

.

Filed Under: Google, Search

Search for eyetease’s CabWifi

December 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s, sort of, Zeitgeist time with Google releasing their preview of the most searched for UK terms during the year.  Their Zeitgeist site pages still glorify in 2011 but we are sure all will be revealed in the not too distant future!

Unsurprisingly we majored on the Olympics although not to the extent of eclipsing Euro 2012 and Synchronised Swimming from the top spots in their respective categories!

Click to ....

Skyfall is really making a significant impact but Gangnam rules the world although we suspect it’s the video what done it!

Click...

Cl.....

Our home town (Bristol) comes in at number 2 which is a bit of a surprise.  Politician wise none of our three leaders make the top 10 although the perennial Alex Salmon does together with certain other “celebrities” both past and present!

 

 

 

The rather attractively named, we thought, Eyetease (clever logo as well) have just got TFL’s (Transport for London) agreement to roll out their wifi service (CabWifi) for  black cabs. With a market of 24,000 ish cabs they say they are aiming for a 10% share. We think that once it takes off the facility will quite possibly become almost a necessity, or as the Wall Street Journal says “Why has no one done this before?”.

Eyetease’s business is ad driven with an “… “ads-for-access” model, prompting passengers to watch a short 15 second advert before gaining access to 15 minutes of internet access. Drivers, with a separate login are also able to benefit from the service and off-set the high cost of data charges incurred from using taxi apps, which some drivers claim have doubled their phone bills in recent months”.

They also have the ” iTaxitop … the first digital rooftop advertising solution to be presented to the city of London – enabling ads, news and public information to be updated wirelessly and broadcast across double sided digital screens with geographic and time specific accuracy. Following 3 years of development and over a quarter of million investment, Eyetease is determined to champion this new format in London, which it hopes will be trialled in early 2013, pending Transport for London approval”.

Brings a whole new meaning to the Knowledge!

Filed Under: Google, Search

Have you been Amazonkd Bangld or Scroogled?

November 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We are sure that all of us over the spendfest season will be, possibly on several occasions, Amazonkd, Bangld or Scroogled!

To be honest, in view of their rankings Bangld is the least likely of all!

Having a scrupulously fair and even handed editorial policy we have added to Bing’s attack verb with our very own concoctions! (We wonder if Google might respond with a Bringled piece. Just a thought!)

Microsoft via Bing are trying to launch a bit of an attack on Google on the shopping side at this, how should we say, fairly competitive time of the year. They have even set up a website  to attract the curious who want to find out more about Google’s advertising practices which they deem to be less than honest. Someone over at All Things D (part of the Wall Street Journal stable) thinks that Bing themselves are not entirely whiter than white and, heaven forbid, may be commercially biased. They, sort of, have a fisk of Bing’s attack promotion with a  critical conclusion.

“Clearly, Microsoft’s timing with the campaign is a little fishy. While it lines up with the holiday shopping season, it also probably has a lot to do with the 18-month-long investigation of Google’s search business, which is coming to an end. As a source told my colleague, Liz Gannes, it’s now a good time to try and land something on Google: “All these people who have wanted to kill Google, this is their chance. They will never have a better opportunity than the next 30 days.”

Better get your lumps in quick, Microsoft — time is running out”.

The concept of “killing” Google did make us smile!

We’re not great shopping channel addicts here but having found the top male (apologies to our female visitors it’s not deliberate) Christmas presents at The Huffington Post UK we thought we’d do a little experiment. We selected the Polaroid Z2300 for our research and both Amazon.com and Google shopping came up with $159.99 but Bing shopping had a headline figure of $163.19 which with a little drilling down morphed into $159.99. (Amazon in the UK have it at £149.99 incidentally).

Bottom lining it we think that choice and price considerations far outweigh any of the service providers commercial practices.

Bing have a blog post about it all and we couldn’t help appreciating the first comment from blix10.

“You know I really like Bing, but I’ve never used bing shopping (or google shopping for that matter). But I just watched that video where you searched “toy trucks” on both bing and google…google still gave much cheaper prices for the exact same product. I also searched “wilson baseball gloves” and bing returned me 1 result, that’s right 1 result and google gave me almost 5,000 results. I understand why you don’t like googles “pay-to-rank” system because I don’t either, but someone using googlel shopping is still going to get way more options and that will most likely lead to a better price.  I would recommend not making this campaign public because people will be really disappointed and that’s not good for the Bing name.  Besides, this whole shopping thing is what Amazon.com is for.”

Ouch!

We couldn’t leave the topic without also including Bang’s Bing’s video covering all the detail about the toy trucks! Enjoy!

Our apologies for the rather feeble & hurried graphic in particular the Amazon element with whom we have affiliate marketing arrangements!

Filed Under: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Search

Google search – Is it spiffing?

November 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

You may be noticing a few changes to the Google search facility today in the UK (particularly on your desktop) with, how should we put it, a few teething problems! These can often lead to a strange grrrrrrrrrrrr noise occurring in the room. There’s a minimalist explanation from Google on their blog here as applicable to the US entitled – Spiffing up your search results page!

Here’s a slightly longer explanation from redOrbit

Click to enlarge

Basically what was on the left panel as a series of limitations/definitions now appear as a series of dropdown menus at the top underneath the search box – or should do – certainly here on various PC’s and browsers it’s appearance was initially often fleeting with useability intermittent at best!

SEARCH TOOLS Click to....

As more ahem facilities become available we will add a few more screenshots.

ANY TIME Click to

The Search Tools tab has the Any time and other time options as well as The Web with Pages from the UK.

THE WEB Click to .....

Now fully working on Safari and Internet Explorer (1pm GMT) – no comment!

Just goes to show how much we rely on good old Google.

Once it settles down and as long as you remember to look straight ahead instead of to the left we think a majority of you will like the new “open” / increased white space look!

You could of course try another search engine and join the other 10.67% of us who go elsewhere!

Footnote 8.30 pm GMT Firefox was our least “spiffing” browser but we found, sort of old school, resetting our “Google News” bookmark to the all new singing and dancing “open” version worked wonders, or to be more accurate worked!

 

Filed Under: Google, Search

Doodle Wars and the i2coalition!

September 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Update September 19 Baidu have issued a clarifying statement concerning the doodle:

“The vast majority of Baidu’s users, as well as our employees, are of a mind on the issue of the Diaoyu Islands. But the real purpose of the logo and the microsite was to encourage people to be rational in their expressions of patriotism, to renounce violence and other forms of extremism. The way we see it, planting a digital flag to express your feelings on the Diaoyu Islands is a far better alternative to throwing rocks or smashing cars.”

Amidst all the kerfuffle the doodle appears to have been taken down!

It may have been brought to your attention that there is a little spat going on between China and Japan disputing the ownership of the Senkaku (the Japanese name) / Diaoyu (Chinese name) islands. From our limited reading Japan’s got them and China wants them. Taiwan is also in the vicinity – there may be oil involved!

Baidu the Chinese search engine have incorporated a little doodle on their site which got us wondering about the extent to which, search engines and other, sort of, public service sites get involved / react to certain issues.

The Sopa (Stop Online Piracy Act) lobbying in the US certainly made Google & Wikipedia highlight the issue.

Click to enlarge

Google also on occasion, mainly internationally, has doodled election days, but clearly in a non partisan way.

There’s something quite Orwellian  about the concept of global service websites supporting nationalistic/ethnical causes!

As far as we can tell Google Japan have not retaliated so far!

 

 

 

Perhaps the newly formed Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition), which sadly doesn’t appear to yet have an international remit, might like to get involved. We like the concept and the “i” element of their name! Certainly a global trade association supporting “…. those who build the nuts and bolts of the Internet” would, in our opinion be most welcome.

Worth a look. Here’s their inaugural video.

Filed Under: Google, Net t'internet, Search

Online Consumers reap what they sow!

June 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A nice report from Webreep (pdf) (claiming to be the worlds largest ever online survey with over 36,000 contributors) on country comparative online consumer behaviour (unfortunately though it doesn’t include the UK)

They are an interesting set up and we will simply let them explain all!

“Webreep is a customer feedback tool that collects customer experience data from websites spanning 30 different industries across the internet. The primary method of data collection is through customer feedback survey, though foot-printing methods are also used. Using a complex array of algorithms based on the Webreep model, the purpose of Webreep is to detect website dissatisfaction, identify what factors cause loyalty and word-of-mouth, and identify how websites in different industries compare to each other. Webreep is a multiple language tool, operating in North America, Latin America, Western Europe, United Kingdom, and Chinese speaking countries in Asia.”

Wikipedia explain the Webreep model

Before looking at the survey results we thought we would just extract their concise precis of the contributor countries internet status. The country running order is theirs!

“Spain

Spain’s growth rate of online buyers in comparison to the rest of Europe is less than 1%. As of November 2011, 21% of Spanish businesses (10+ employees) purchase online, and 12% sell online.

France

France has a relatively advanced broadband network, performing above the EU average in terms of development and internet connections. France also has one of the highest growth rates in the EU for online shopping adoption, and one of the biggest percentages of population who buy online8. Nineteen percent of French businesses with more than 10 employees purchase online, while 12% sell online.

Germany

Germany has a well-developed internet infrastructure, with annual growth of access to broadband exceeding the EU average. Forty percent of German businesses with 10 or more employees purchase online, and 22% of businesses sell online. Adoption of the internet for shopping however remains stagnant at less than 1% per year.

USA

According to the US Census bureau, the US continues to show strong growth in e-commerce, with retail sales accounting for 4.4% of total sales in 2010. This represents 16% increase in sales from 2009.

Australia

Recent statistics suggest that over 90% of Australians now have access to the internet. According to the OECD, 58% of Australian businesses with 10 or more employees purchase online, and 33% sell online, suggesting Australia’s e-commerce industry is very mature in comparison to the reference countries.

China

As at June 2011, China had 190 million online shoppers, and 2.8 million websites. China now has more internet users than any other country in the world at 512 million.

Russia

Approximately 37% of the Russian population are connected to the internet, with 76% of those who have internet access having broadband. Russians in general are very cautious about revealing credit card information online because of a rudimentary national credit card processing ability, and online fraud.”

(Their reference list links certain of the above statements to their sources).

Now on to the results. The country winners for consumer internet usage by element are:

Click to enlarge

Trust -USA
Ease of use -Australia
Ease of search -Spain
Attractiveness -USA
Loading speed -USA /Russia
Relevancy -Spain
Satisfaction -Spain
Loyalty -China
Word of mouth -France/Australia
Information quality -France

 

We’re sure you’re not allowed to add up all the scores (1 is the minimum & 5 the maximum). But we have so here goes:

  1. France
  2. Russia
  3. Spain
  4. USA
  5. Germany
  6. Australia
  7. China

On a very quick assessment based on a sample size of 1 and no model usage we would place the UK in second position!

Filed Under: Broadband, Net t'internet, Search

Search on “blekko”

April 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

blekko  is a rapidly expanding allegedly “comparatively transparent” search engine that attempts to filter out content farmers / spam. It also enables you to uses slashtags ie /tags.

Click to enlarge

Their website does “feel” transparent with the provision of investor and management  details plus their bill of rights. Contact details are also readily available and comprehensive (always a good sign we reckon). They also have a fairly active blog.

Their recent growth is documented in some detail in a recent searchengineland article illustrated with internal traffic analytics from blekko showing a quadrupling of traffic from December last year which they confirmed with comScore.

The reasons given by blekko’s CEO (and founder) Rich Skrenta were fivefold ranging from, improved index quality through increased visibility at trade shows/conventions to dissatisfaction with Google, the disappearance of Yahoo’s site explorer and some commercial deals with eg Lavasoft.

Wiki as ever has info on blekko  and its founder Rich Skrenta.

We couldn’t help wondering about the name which apart from having the same number of letters as Google, and being lowercase like amazon does have the advantage of an o ending so it can be extended ala blekkooooooooo if required!

We have to admit initially searching on the other search engine and finding an early (2008) Name inspector article that concludes its an “empty vessel” word with unpleasant connotations and should not be used!

Click to enlarge

Well we’ve now used the “correct” source  and found out the rather complex truth which (again from 2008) traces it back to the name of Rich Skarenta’s “loved” computer “pre dating the existence of the web” We rather like the name and also like to see competition in this market place so hope to see its name prominently appearing in NetMarketShare’s  statistics in the near future.

We’ve added their search box for you to give it a try (top right) – it’s meant to have a b avatar on the left of the search box which for some, unknown to us, reason hasn’t appeared. We’ll possibly try & rectify this at some future point.

We’ve also added it to our I Search page. As with the other main search engines you can customise your browser to have it as your default search engine. There’s a mobile app and some Facebook “specials”. If you use Firefox you can add blekko to your list of drop  down engines from here.

And here’s their video on, in particular usage of slashtags.

Any feedback gratefully received.

We have no commercial arrangements with blekko – yet!

Update 8pm BST Recent (April 17) interview with Rich Skrenta by PageOnePower

Filed Under: Net t'internet, Search, Terminology