Rev2.org » Miscellaneous

Caffeine Boosts Google

Willie Morris — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:15:11 +0000

Caffeine, Google’s most recent algorithm update has been in the works for some time, but is being rolled out over the first part of this year. The biggest change in the Caffeine algorithm is the increased importance of web site load time. Up until now, this has been a point of contention in the SEO community – some argued it was taken into account by search algorithms, while others argued it was not. With the unveiling of Caffeine, we finally have a definitive answer: sites that aren’t optimized to load ...

Google Chrome Beta Release Gets Privacy, Language Translation

Craig Agranoff — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:42:37 +0000

The Google Chrome Blog has announced a new beta edition of Chrome, Google’s browser, which includes innovative language translation options and a new set of privacy tools. The machine translation comes as part of Google’s popular Web Monkey translation engine for the Web while the new privacy tools are what many users have said Chrome should have had from the get-go.

eWeek says that the new updates come when Chrome has reached 5.6% of the browser market share. The polyglot language options for Chrome are very unique ...

Walmart Gets Into the Movie Business

Craig Agranoff — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:07:23 +0000

Watch out Netflix, the Disneyland of retail is moving into streaming movies. In a surprise move, Walmart announced the takeover of VUDU, a little-known provider of digital movie and entertainment content. The company has been embedding itself over the past three years into HD-ready televisions and Blu-ray players while at the same time brokering licensing deals with major movie studios and distributors.

According to the New York Times on the issue, less than 5% of HD TVs can connect to the Internet directly. Walmart, obviously, wants to ...

Google Acquires Aardvark Social Search/Cloud Info Network

Craig Agranoff — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:55:19 +0000

Google has acquired the Aardvark social search and cloud information network. Aardvark allows users to ask questions that others in the network can answer, according to their expertise. Since it’s introduction in 2008, Aardvark has built a strong following of users and has integrated itself into email, Google Chat, and other services to become easy to use.

Aardvark works by allowing users to ask questions, which are sent over the network of other Aardvark users according to keywords within the question, so questions about “pets” go to some users while questions ...

Microsoft Enters the Social Networking Game

Craig Agranoff — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:54:42 +0000

Last year, in November, the Outlook Social Connector was launched and Microsoft entered the social networking game. At that point, LinkedIn was the only partner, but it was a good start. Rather than building a new network, ala Google’s Buzz, the Seattle Giant went for combination of existing networks to facilitate easier networking throughout.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced on their blog that the Outlook Social Connector has now stretched from LinkedIn and is including Facebook and MySpace as well. This big jump means that your Outlook box could become your ...

Google Buzz Has Flaws, They’re Working On It

Craig Agranoff — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:18:11 +0000

Google admitted to BBC News that they made some big mistakes with the new social service called Buzz. When Buzz released, it faced a sudden (and unexpected) backlash from several fronts, almost all concerned with privacy issues related to the service. Most of this was probably due to one simple mistake on Google’s part: lack of testing before launch.

Google now admits that they didn’t run the usual trials with external users (users outside of the Google intranet), as they normally do, and that mistake meant there were a lot of things ...

Windows Phone – New and Daring or Same Old Mobile?

Craig Agranoff — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:57:37 +0000

At the Mobile World Congress 2010 today, Microsoft unveiled the Windows Phone 7 Series, now known as Windows Phone. A lot of hype and hoopla has buzzed around with this announcement, which came as a surprise to most in the press. Looking through that hype, the question remains: is this really something new and revolutionary from the Seattle Giant or is it just the same old Windows Mobile with a new name?

The first step is the hardware requirements for the new phone OS itself. Ina Fried ...

The Buzz Around Google – Labs, Charts, and Privacy

Craig Agranoff — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:17:34 +0000

Google’s new Buzz social networking/status updating/Twitter Killer/Facebook Slayer/doomsday app seems to have a life of its own in the blogosphere. Even the Apple iPad didn’t get this kind of scrutiny. Well, OK, maybe it did, but things quieted down quickly once Apple released prototypes to select testers and the bubble was burst and people learned how less-than-functional the thing is.

Google, however, seems to have created a tsunami and they’re determined to keep that tidal wave rolling. Buzz is still all the, er, buzz, but there are a couple of other ...

Google’s Buzz Is, As Predicted, a Buzzkill

Craig Agranoff — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:16:25 +0000

Sure enough, yesterday just before lunch, Google rolled out a blog post about the new Google Buzz, which is hitting Gmail and other Google services over the next two or three days. The result got a lot of hype – not Apple iPad hype, but still a lot of hype. Then everyone in the blogsophere saw it.

What a buzzkill.

Of course, former Google employee Zengestrom is all over this and thinks it’s the bee knees. He might be right eventually, after Google has done something with Buzz, ...

Facebook Getting a Facelift, Full-Featured Webmail

Craig Agranoff — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:47:43 +0000

Facebook is redesigning their home page, at long last. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, announced a teaser to the changes on the Facebook Blog last night in celebration of the social media site’s 6th anniversary and 400 millionth user. Later, on the same blog, Jing Chen introduced the new updates.

Some of the new improvements include putting more core features right on the front page in easily-accessible menu options. The features are rolling out slowly, with about 100 million users having it as of this writing ...