Online/Interactive

This piece in Reuters discusses the VW-Google partnership to develop a "prototype vehicle which features Google Inc.'s satellite mapping software to give drivers a bird's eye view of the road ahead." Nvidia is also part of the deal. There's lots…

Amid gloomy reports (WSJ sub. req'd) about the health of print newspapers, there's some very good news in online revenues and traffic growth for newspaper sites. According to Nielsen and the NAA:Both the overall number and percentage of Internet users…

Following Neal's comments earlier about direct distribution of content that could increasingly render middleman distribution channels unnecessary, CBS has done something similar with its famous "Survivor" reality show. Though CBS is a distribution channel itself, in this case it is…

With all the media coverage and business activity surrounding online video, and with the Super Bowl coming up, one would expect the annually hyped set of ads to get some broadband play. PaidContent has a roundup of where you can…

Social search is something that has gained a lot of attention and business activity in the past year, especially from Yahoo! (Flickr, MyWeb, 360). The next logical place for social search is video, and it already has been applied to…

A couple of days ago I met with Simply Hired. Beyond some interesting things that they were telling me about their roadmap, I was fascinated by the "vertical"' vs. "horizontal" search discussion we had. My personal belief is that the…

Here's a fun and timely one: The Windows Live Local Super Bowl mashup. (So there's a football pun/joke in there, but I'm going to leave it alone.)Here's the official MSN/WLL word on the site:[MSN has] created a Super Bowl mashup…

When StepUp launched a couple of years ago with the intention of delivering real-time inventory information and product availability to the Internet it was met with considerable skepticism, along the lines of "yeah, how are they gonna do that?" and…

When Yahoo! Answers launched it was immediately clear that people would be asking for local recommendations and seeking answers to questions with local implications. Now, consistent with Yahoo!'s strategy to push user-generated content from anywhere within Yahoo! to anywhere else…

Speaking of "click-to-call," here's a Mercury News piece on Google's "click-to-call" initiative. According to the article, the company is working with Florida-based VoIP Inc.Click-to-call is not PPCall. There are many companies using click-to-call, which is about connecting calls between individuals…

OK, not exactly. But yesterday's financial results showed the company was subject to the same pressures, market trends and unreasonable expectations that have confronted other Internet bellwethers such as Yahoo! and eBay. I had expected Google to beat expectations. But…

Search Engine Journal covers the recent GeoVector/Mapion announcement about "point and search" mobile local technology in Japan. From the GeoVector announcement:With Mapion Local Search, users can now walk down the street anywhere in Japan and point at over 700,000 objects…

My colleague Charles Laughlin posted about the YellowPages.com "Need Something" ad campaign when it officially launched earlier this week. Here's more on the size and reach of the campaign from ClickZ. You can view the online ads here and the…

Google's well-publicized earnings announcement yesterday overshadowed another notable piece of news about the company. The San Jose Mercury News reported that Google is working with Florida-based VoIP Inc. to possibly add voice calling to its network of offerings, which can…

I saw this article this morning but was racing out to a meeting at StepUp.com and so I didn't have time to do a post earlier. From Reuters:The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, whose members include dozens of national newspaper…

EarthLink has apparently finalized its deal with Philadelphia to provide what amounts to wholesale wireless/Wi-Fi access that can then be resold to ISPs (which would then sell to consumers). So this isn't "free" Wi-Fi, but reportedly EarthLink would only be…

Google went live tonight with version 4 of its toolbar for IE (Firefox version coming soon, I'm told). You can take a look at the laundry list of features and upgrades here. Worth noting from my point of view are…

America Online has decided to make another push into broadband. Built on top of third-party partnerships with BellSouth, Time Warner Cable, Qwest and AT&T, the company will offer high-speed access across the U.S. AOL had limited success with this the…

News Corp.'s True Local search engine has gone live in Australia. Its purpose is to compete with Sensis and it's "powered" by News Corp.-owned newspapers. This is an interesting thing for U.S.-based newspapers to consider, but perhaps impossible for them…

To add to Greg's post last week about My Yahoo!, there was an interesting article in The New York Times yesterday about the site's usage and strategy. The Times reports that as of December, there were 30 million Americans that…