Preparing for a day when there is meaningful usage of wireless devices as local search tools, Google has launched Google Local for phones. Maps are the centerpiece. It currently works on "Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, especially those purchased within the…
Personalized search came out of Google Labs today, and now Google is extending its network to offline print buying. This program has been going on for a number of months at least, but it's now getting a bit more visibility.…
I was talking with one of the Yahoo! PR/corp comm people at AD:TECH about how everything seems to be accelerating. And recently another person from Yahoo! said he hoped things would slow down a bit so he could relax a…
The Spanish publisher Telef³nica Publicidad e Informaci³n (TPI) has expanded its presence in South America with the acquisition of Telinver, Argentina's largest directory publisher. The enterprise value of the deal was US$74 million. TPI already owns the market leaders in…
Here is one item of interest from our notes of Dex Media's recent third-quarter earnings conference call. Dex President and CEO George Burnett was asked how the publisher planned to monetize the traffic it is buying for its Dex Online…
Here's a riddle of sorts: When is a patent application like a press release? Answer: When you're Google and you've literally got hundreds of bloggers poring over your patent filings and other public records for any hint of strategy or…
The partnership between Yahoo! and TiVo will allow the latter's users to record programs from their PCs. This not only gives TiVo users an easier search and browse interface than their remote control offers, but it will also bring more…
Google is apparently testing travel. Here's Reuters' write-up. I'm on a break from a private equity conference and on a PAINFULLY slow connection, so I can't check it out right now. Per Search Engine Watch, here's an example of a…
I received a call from a Bloomberg reporter tonight (cellphone reception in an elevator no less) who said that Yahoo! had acknowledged to him that the company was in fact doing a test of PPCall with Ingenio's product (kind of…
I had a dizzying series of meetings with people yesterday at AD:TECH on everything from the future of newspapers (Quigo) to mobile local search (Nokia). All very interesting stuff that I'd love to elaborate on if I didn't have to…
Ingenio added another distribution partner in Interchange's Local.com destination. Local.com is impressively fast and clean but needs to beef up its content to really be competitive over the long term. However, Interchange recognizes this and says it is working on…
We conducted another focus group tonight -- this time with twentysomethings in a Bay Area suburb. The idea was to gather 22-to-27-year-olds as the next generation of "life events buyers." Lots of interesting stuff came out of the session (to…
Here's the new Yahoo! Maps upgrade: It's nicer to look at and easier to manipulate. There are a great many features here. There's no more need to enter an address first to get a map. Now you can do a…
Not unlike PocketThis (voice/DA in, SMS/Wap out) AskMeNow is a new, more useful version of current directory assistance. The fully automated service is free (like 1-800-Free411), and the "AskMeAnything" service costs US$.49 per call: Within seconds you can get 411…
Citing the performance of the stock and the generally poor outlook for traditional newspaper publishing, Knight Ridder's largest single shareholder, Private Capital Management, a Florida investment firm that owns 19 percent of the company, has asked the board to put…
Here's an interesting post from Om Malik on a Windows Live/Messenger demo (yesterday) that integrates VoIP click-to-call into MSN mapping so users can see, select and then contact a local merchant. I haven't been briefed on this, but my head…
Deutsche Bank conducted a survey of 87 media executives in conjunction with MediaPost about their clients' third-quarter media spending. The survey indicated that some display ad budgets are shifting more dollars to locally targeted online media: Media buyers and planners…
In the past, RHD has described itself as €œa leading Yellow Pages publisher and directional media company.€ That was the term used in the press release for both Dex and RHD. However, the current earnings announcement describes RHD as €œa…
I'm probably the last one to write about this, but news aggregator Topix.net (majority owned by the newspapers) added 15,000 blogs to its crawl. The company also organizes that information by ZIP, so you can get blogs in your local…
Here's an interesting article from Sunday's N.Y. Times about Yahoo! and its long-term search strategy. I was at Yahoo! on Friday talking to Local GM Paul Levine about his just-added keynote at ILM:05. He and I discussed a range of…
