Author: jgaynor

One day there may be an official phobia related to fear of e-mail in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. An obvious moniker would be "e-mailophobia." Or maybe it will be swept broadly into a more general fear…

Google is introducing a new music feature, according to Reuters and SEW. When users search for, say, Madonna (the example used at SEW), they'll see some information: a picture and links to a page about Madonna and a link to…

AOL has apparently decided to no longer offer direct classifieds advertising and will instead become a distributor or aggregator of classified ads from other sources. Also the San Diego Union Tribune is apparently having good success with free classifieds (the…

I haven't been there in person, so I had to read about it on the Google Blog. Some time ago Google created Google Space (a physical place in Terminal 1) where users can access the Internet for free while waiting…

Amid a frenized and potentially boffo online shopping season (projected to reach $19.6b in the U.S.), U.K.-based GUS announced that it's buying California-based comparison shopping engine PriceGrabber. The online shopping site was No. 6 in terms of August U.S. traffic,…

Interchange's consumer destination site Local.com will be offering a del.icio.us-like tagging/bookmarking feature powered by LookSmart's Furl like The N.Y. Times). This is the latest in a series of moves (with more coming) to beef up the content and features of…

On the advertiser side, Ingenio has added a couple of features ("auto-bidding" and "conversion management") to make PPCall easier and more effective. Ingenio explains: Auto-bidding: Similar to the proxy bidding features popularized by Google and eBay, Ingenio Auto-Bidding allows advertisers…

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, there were 5.1 billion total search queries in October. Here's how Nielsen recorded search engine market share (U.S.): Google -- 48 percent Yahoo! -- 22 percent MSN -- 11 percent AOL -- 7 percent Ask -- 3…

Local retailer aggregator and Google Base partner StepUp announced that it had received a $6.6 million series B round. From the press release: StepUp Commerce, Inc., the Internet€™s local shopping service, today announced it has closed a $6.6 million funding…

Here's a picture of the MIT-developed $100 laptop. The computer, created in partnership with Google and AMD, is set to roll out soon. Reportedly, Intel Corp. Chairman Craig Barrett (and AMD competitor) said users will not want such a device.…

Earlier in the week I wrote a post about the inexorable spread of Wi-Fi and how "21st-century" businesses (i.e., ISPs and wireless) are going to be challenged and that currently fat revenues may dry up sooner than anyone expected. Now…

In all-day meetings, so there's no time to really blog (drat!). MSN follows Yahoo! and AOL in offering VoIP PC-to-phone calling (through MSN messenger). MSN is doing this in partnership with MCI (being acquired by Verizon). Here are the details:…

This is very interesting -- and we could see a proliferation of vertical search engines on top of this. No time to discuss extensively. Here are the opinions of: Danny Sullivan and John Battelle. Here's Susan Mernit and Om Malik.…

Far ahead of its newspaper industry owners, news portal Topix.net has launched a redesigned site and added user comments and community features, turning the entire site into a blog of sorts. Here's more from SiliconBeat.

Yellow Pages Group (YPG) is reportedly buying Canadian classifieds publisher Trader Media Corp. for C$436 million in cash and equity. This puts YPG on similar footing as Australia's Sensis, which owns classifieds publisher Trading Post. Classifieds and Yellow Pages content…

Many others have pointed to this. But here's Google's first mainstream marketing effort (PBS TV commercial).

Thanks to my colleague Mike Boland for pointing out this post on the Search Engine Watch blog (Gary Price), which points to Dirson, about Google possibly buying Oslo-based Opera. (Opera has an approximately 1 percent market share.) There's also lots…

That ever-intrepid patent sleuth Gary Price over at Search Engine Watch has found a Microsoft patent application covering "electronic Yellow Pages." Gary posts the abstract: Abstract: A method and system for allowing a regional service merchant that is outside of…

I read in PaidContent that family-oriented city site GoCityKids.com had been acquired by Viacom-owned cable channel Nickelodeon. I met with founder Clare Ellis years ago when the network of sites had just launched (in 2000). Her concept was great --…

I got an update yesterday from news aggregator Inform.com. These guys launched several months ago with a host of super-charged features that proved well beyond what most users want from a news site. Product manager Julian Steinberg acknowledged this in…