Emad Fanous

Congratulations to Matt who is now at The Kelsey Group.

Matt, for those of you who don’t know, was a former Citysearcher and always a good sport with practical jokes.

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There appears to be more evidence of a google calendar, along with uncovered urls.

Google seems to have shut me out of the service but there are screenshots.

via siliconbeat

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I noticed that Apple has begun shipping macbook pros…but the article stated speeds of 2.0 & 1.83 GHz.

If you ordered a macbook pro 1.83 GHz or 1.67 GHz like me, you might have been wondering what was going on too.

Well, it sounds like Apple is providing the upgraded processors in your order. Rumor has it that they may be reserving the lower end 1.67 GHz processors for the ibook versions.

Some people have been canceling their orders to ensure they get the correct versions…but that just put them at the end of the queue…which is alright by me since mine isn’t coming for another 6 weeks and people canceling orders just moves my order up…so don’t cancel your order to reorder!

UPDATE: I just received this email from Amazon, whom I placed my order with:

Hello from Amazon.com.

You recently placed an order for a new Apple MacBook Pro from
Amazon.com. Apple Computer Inc. has decided not to manufacture this
particular computer model. Instead, Apple is manufacturing an upgraded
model with a faster processor to fulfill outstanding orders.

The good news is that we will automatically ship the upgraded model at
no additional charge to you when we fulfill your order. The new
computer is also eligible for the $150 rebate offered by
Amazon.com. You can view your order status by visiting “Your Account”
on Amazon.com.

Here is information on your order:

CANCELLED ITEM:
Item # B000BNHMIY
Apple MacBook Pro 15.4″ Notebook MA091LL/A
(1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

Item # B0006PK94Q
Apple MacBook Pro 15.4″ Notebook MA464LL/A
(2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

You can find more information about the new product specifications and
the Amazon.com rebate on our website here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006PK94Q/

If you don’t want to receive the upgraded product as a substitute, you
still have the option to cancel your order before the Estimated Ship
Date that appears on the order in “Your Account.”

We hope you enjoy your new computer.

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I mentioned Blingo in the past as a search engine that provides prizes to its searchers (like iwon).

Last year, Bill Gates announced revenue sharing with searchers for their future ad product, AdCenter.

Well, they just recently announced incentivizing MSN searchers with prizes…so, naturally, someone was bound to exploit the system.

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Well, we heard a lot about Google creating their own eBay Shops (gBay) and their own payment system (gPal/Google Wallet).

Well, it sounds like they’re actually testing it. From the WSJ article:

For the last nine months, Google has recruited online retailers to test GBuy, according to one person briefed on the service.

FYI, Google is also testing magazine/offline advertising placement.

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I’ve received a lot of questions lately as to what the difference is between an iYP (Internet Yellow Pages), cityguide, and local search. Over the past year, we have seen more and more of these cross over and the lines between them have been grayed a bit (and continue to do so). Now, I am of the opinion that these terms don’t necessarily describe companies but, instead, they define how these companies have built their products.

iYP - A yellow page directory. These are keyword-based searches against categories as opposed to searches against records. Often, you have to enter the city information in a different box than the sate or zip code (each field gets its own box). Data is usually collected from a partner or the “offline” division of the corresponding phone company but may also come from or be supplemented by base data providers. Usually have a good sized customer/advertiser base due to upselling offline customers for online advertising. Originally, advertisers would pay to show up in the listing, have an enhanced listing, or buy some guaranteed placement position in the search results. However, we are seeing more online advertising usually consisting of a base monthly fee providing some level of clicks baked into the flat fee along with inclusion into the directory. We may see pay per call increase in this arena faster than the others, usually due to relationships with phone companies (though there are many cost-effective options to call-metering these days).

Local Search - Searching for listings geospatially (most often). Data can be location records but can include searching for products, classifieds, events, or just about anything that is searched for locally. The interface usually consists of two boxes (a “what” and a “where”) but have had a trend moving towards a unified box . The decision on the interface is usually based upon the company’s ability to parse the single box properly to identify that 1) it contains a local modifier (if it is integrated with algorithmic/web search) so there are no false positives such as “Chicago” the musical, not the city and 2) a what and where term can be identified and parsed out. Data is usually from a base data provider and is supplemented with additional data/metadata. Advertisers are usually acquired through web interfaces and will consist of a pay for performance model (usually consisting of pay per click but can also include pay per call).

Cityguide - a cityguide isn’t really a searching feature but some of the local search companies have some cityguide component and some news paper companies or other local companies tend to have a cityguide. A cityguide is, as the name implies, a guide to a city. It provides information about events and will provide recommendations and lists about where to go or what to do within the city. Data is either purchased or acquired based on a partnership, built through an internal editorial staff, or garnered from users (either by directly soliciting information like user reviews or by traffic habits such as popularity lists based on pageviews of businesses or recommendations based on past viewing/purchases). Traditionally, advertisers paid for placement positions or CPM advertising. They then shifted to enhaced listings. In more recent times, they have consisted of cost per click advertisers (especially as companies with large local customers bases try and find a way to get more local traffic to feed the almost insatiable appetite for local consumers by these customers). The click-based advertisers are usually from a third party/partnership (they usually don’t build their own ad engine).

There is a lot more to it than just this but this helps provide some context when I refer to the different types of products out there.

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Well, I’ve been up here at Microsoft’s campus and here are a few bullet points of interesting items (not a complete list):

1. Lots of great ideas, some of which can be made public but others remain under NDA that will be released within weeks or months. Stay tuned to here about the new features as they come.
2. There was a nice review of the request for user info by the government
3. Gary Flake announced Live Labs (MSN’s labs) and they are committed to hiring talent and building cool new tools. I’ll be providing slides (a good presentation by Gary) but here is the manifesto…more, better APIs, etc.
4. Chris Pirello is always a great person to argue with … Chris also demo’ed the OSX on his intel-based IBM laptop that was seen on engadget (thanks, Chris)
5. MSN has demonstrated great community support and wants to embrace it…they’d like to share the Microsoft stigma and would like to experience the recent renaissance Yahoo enjoyed when they got their mojo back.
6. Live.com will be their new platform. They will carry verticals there and other tools.
7. Developers should check out Microsoft Gadgets
8. Alex Daley and had some great insight and are doing great things with virtual earth. Check it out if you are a developer.
9. Scoble is not an edge case.

more to come…

UPDATE: Gary’s presentation is now available online.

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I’ve been invited to join MSN for Search Champs v4. If any of you are going, I’ll see you there!

From the email:

Search Champs is an invite-only event where we bring together a small group of people to start a conversation about the future of Search and Windows Live. In short, we bring you to Redmond, introduce you to the product teams, and host several day and night sessions to give us your feedback and thoughts. Our desire here is to learn how we can do things better and to build connections. We want to be good citizens and provide a face behind the products.

I’m looking forward to going.

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Sounds like the Google Cube might not be what is being announced at CES.

Instead it will likely be announcing Video and Pack (and MSN is not too pleased).

The Google Video deal sounds like a an apple itunes competitor (with CBS and others already signed up)…although it is unclear if it will be a rental or a download like itunes.

Google Pack will be a downloadable package/software bundle that includes Google and third party software…a potential list exists here.

Sources tell us that Google pack will feature a Google-tweaked version of Firefox, Adobe Acrobat Reader, antivirus software from Symantec, AdAware, Trillian, and Google’s own offerings, including Google Desktop Search, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Talk, and all of the toolbar action you can shake a stick at. Oh, and I left out one other item: the RealPlayer.

Bundling is nothing new for Google. I’ve seen their software bundled many places. I just find it interesting that they would offer this bundle on their site (how do they intend to promote or distribute?) and provide competing services such as Trillian software (which, as far as I know, does not connect to Jabber-based services like Google Talk).

Meanwhile, Yahoo is announcing Yahoo Go:

Yahoo! Go allows you to access the information and content that is important to you on whatever device you choose.

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We’ve all heard the rumors about a Google OS. Now, there are rumors of a Google computer, termed the Google Cube.

Rumor is they will announce at CES were Larry Page is a keynote speaker. The plan on selling/distributing through WalMart who once sold the cheap Lindows (and variants of Linux including SUSE) computer. They will be using their own OS, avoiding the high price of Windows OS and allowing them to sell the computer cheaply.

The idea is that they have built many apps using AJAX that mimic desktop apps so they could provide a cheap network PC or kiosk that would simply use their apps in place of their thick client equivalents (i.e. Gmail in place of Eudora).

With their PPC Ads, how long until they go from the cheap PC to a free one that used spyware/adware to serve ads and/or track user behavior (such as Idealab’s free-pc/the former emachines, etc)? They’ve already given away free Internet…if they can get users to use broadband so that they are always online, constantly serving ads on their computer would probably pay for those computers within 6 months to a year for the average user…especially if users must register and they get to have the users’ addresses (I’ve noticed buying clicks for terms locally have gotten relatively expensive lately…and I still cannot get the supply I seek).

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