Verizon Launches PPCall

This article spills the beans before the official announcement (today). The system is Verizon's own, for which it is reportedly seeking a patent. Other IYPs will likely follow. Here's the release. The most recent Local Commerce Monitor (SME) data to…

Read More

Dueling Directory Visions

In one corner is Yellow Pages Association president Neg Norton, who writes about the profile of consumer-users of IYP products (based on the assn's earlier study with comScore). Norton extolls the advertiser benefits of IYPs vs. search engines (more qualified…

Read More

Danger Ahead Rupert Murdoch

News Corp.'s purchase of social networking and music promotion site MySpace could only have been motivated by a desire to acquire social networking/community tools and the teen/young adult demographic that frequents the site. This AP article suggests that Murdoch may…

Read More

Dogpile Adds MSN to Metasearch

As others have already reported, InfoSpace's Dogpile metasearch engine added MSN Search to its layered results. Here's a visual tool where users can compare the uniqueness of search results across the major engines. Dogpile, with its ability to segregate results…

Read More

Mainstreaming Online Video

First there was Live 8 and now the Space Shuttle: "Nearly 433,000 people simultaneously watched NASA's webcast of this week's space shuttle launch."The significant difference between watching this type of event on conventional TV and online is that online you…

Read More

More Maps Mashups

The new Google Maps mashups are coming now by the day . . . Here's PremierGuide's (local search platform provider) customer list plotted on a Google Map. Here's a site -- ApartmentRatings.com -- that has integrated Google Maps and apartment…

Read More

My AOL Revamps, Adds Feeds

I've believed for a while that My Yahoo! was a powerful model for personalization. To varying degrees the other major portals/search engines are now pursuing a similar strategy. Google recently added more feeds to its personalized home page. Here's MSN's…

Read More