Bing makes ground on Google

GOOGLE released search engine refinements recently as Microsoft begins to lure people to Bing and Twitter heightens appetites for real-time updates and news.

Google modifications include tools that let people limit online searches to only serve up results from the past hour, or by specific date ranges.

Patrick Riley, Google engineer said, "this can be particularly helpful when you're looking for the freshest information. If you have an idea of when the information you're looking for may have been published to the web."

Bing's making ground

The Bing search engine Microsoft launched in May was designed to intuitively understand what people are seeking online and challenge Google.

The US software colossus described Bing as a "Decision Engine" aimed at online shoppers trying to make buying decisions, plan trips, research health matters, or find local businesses.

Bing posted a slight increase in its share of the US search market in August, the third month in a row of gains, according to online tracking firm comScore.

Bing increased its market share to 9.3 per cent in August from 8.9 per cent in July and 8.4 per cent in June, comScore said.

Google remained the overwhelming leader of the lucrative US search and advertising market in August with a 64.6 per cent market share, a dip of 0.1 per cent from July. Yahoo!'s share was unchanged at 19.3 per cent in August.

Apple giveaway for 1 billion apps downloaded

Apple is approaching the 1 billion mark for applications downloaded from the iTunes App Store. The Billionth customer will recieve a swag of Apple gear.

Update: The number of downloads is about to hit 980 million.



Apple put up a countdown on their WEB site on Friday. As you can see there has been over 933 million applications have been downloaded from the App Store since it went live last July. Whoever manages to download the 1 billionth application will come away with a pretty good collection: a MacBook Pro, a 32GB iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate.

More than 32,000 applications have been added to the Apple App Store. Along with the promotion, Apple released some stats on the top downloads in both the paid and free categories: Facebook has been downloaded the most times among the free applications, while Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D has received the most downloads among paid applications.

A link to the count down page can be seen here.

SEO and Matt Cutts Happy 404 Day

On the 4th April Matt Cutts celebrated 4.04 day (ie 4th of the 4th). He said "... it’s a perfect day to learn what a 404 status code is. Essentially, a 404 is a way for web server to return a Page Not Found error when a browser requests a web page that the web server doesn’t have."

I embellished Matts art work a little ...


Matt posted a collection of handy links to make the most out of 404 errors on your site ...

• Maile Ohye organized 404 week - Link


• What is a 404 Error - Link


• How to make 404 Error pages more useful - Link


• Find out who is linking to your 404 Error Page - Link


• Flickr pictures of 404 errors - Link

Viral marketing done well - Uniqlo Japan

I saw a recent episode of BBC Click and they presented this Japanese viral website uniqlo. Uniqlo is a Japanese clothing chain and created a very clever screensaver / flash time clock.

Schmedley and G.ho.st - an evolution for web applications

Everyone has heard of cloud computing ... applications moving to the WEB and beyond. Google and Microsoft are doing it with their office suites and Chrome, Google's browser wasn't developed to provide "yet another one". Considering how fast everyone is moving from local applications to WEB based services, we can expect a new operating system. In the next ten years. I have used two of the better web based OS environments ... Schmedley and G.ho.st. both described as your complete Virtual Computer (VC) in the browser.

Your free G.ho.st ("ghost") Virtual Computer (VC) includes a desktop, file storage and applications. Your VC lives securely in the internet cloud and is accessible from any computer or mobile phone in the world via this Web page

When people consider good looking operating systems they usually think og Mac OS X or Microsoft Vista. Schmedley has a Mac style dock, and I think even my mother could use it without getting a headache. In the end, that's where we should arrive one day - using a computer should be as easy like using a hammer, but without any painful outcomes, of course!

Why should you set Schmedley? Google Chrome ... YouTube, Google, RSS feeds, sticky notes, Amazon search, and the chance to create new tabs to populate whatever you like. If we have to choose between widgets on the desktop and on my virtual desktop, you will always choose the later - its like having a roaming profile available across the internet.

I won't get much into this, since you can take advantage of the Schmedley private Beta invitations we got from Dustin(thank you very much!) just for you, and try this online gem for yourselves.

Some new features that we would like to see included are ... a bookmark manager / integration with delicious and a way of exchanging data with your browser, as well as opening files from your hard drive(for example, using Schmedley to open a text file and place it on your virtual desktop as a sticky note), a widget for file uploads, just like the one leading to Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Ghost has more advanced features but with that comes an overhead. It is slower to load and feels less like a set of browser "applets". I am not saying this is a good or bad thing, just different.

For now, we're still talking about a Gamma version (pre BETA), so some problems may still turn up, but that's what makes it interesting.

Apples new productivity suite - iWorks 09 (documents, spreadsheets presentations)

Apple's iWork '09 is a great suite for Mac users who are after a well designed and easy to use productivity suite. iWork doesn't offer an integrated business e-mail solution like Microsoft Outlook, it does include a core group of applications; Keynote, Numbers, and Pages . The number of intuitive features is impressive, including things like interoperability across apps to make that absence easy to overlook. Apple has significantly updated all three products to enhance and streamline workflow with numerous interface tweaks and feature enhancements. iWork files are fully compatible with its Microsoft Office counterparts looking after the Windows / Mac interchange.

Cool Benefits

This software is very flashy, making it very easy to create eye-catching presentations. The iWork suite play well together with added interoperability across all applications. Intuitive interface design and easy access to useful features make iWork the best office suite choice on the Mac. Though it lacks some of Microsoft Office's advanced options, iWork '09 is an emerging powerhouse in its own right.

I have my own copy of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and I know I will be using both product suites. The fact that they file formats are interchangeable is good news.

Hardware Requirements

OS Required - Apple MacOS X 10.4.11 , Apple MacOS X 10.5.6 or later
Software Requirements - QuickTime 7.5.5 or later
Minimum Processor - Intel Power PC G4 , Intel Power PC G4 Power PC G5 - 500 MHz
Peripheral / Interface Devices - DVD-ROM
System Requirements - Apple MacOS X 10.4.11 - PowerPC G4 - RAM 512 MB - HD 1.2 GB

Microsoft, media and digital convergence

Recently Steve Ballmer at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas keynote speech, said technology was converging upon three screens - the computer, the phone and Television. The internet and software would allow all three to talk to each other seamlessly, with consumers able to access their content on any device. Regular readers will know that I am passionate about digital convergence. This new announcement by Microsoft will help to accelerate media convergence.

Ballmer said, "We're on the verge of the kind of technology transformation that only happens once every 10 or 15 years ... In the next couple of years the computer will be able to hear you and see you. Speech, gestures, handwriting will become a normal part of the way we interact with computers, with TVs and with phones."

New features announced in Windows 7 to support this vision include:

• The ability to move between running programs using a simple preview pane that pops up along the bottom of the screen.



• Seamless access to photos, music and videos stored on all devices on a network.



• Users can pin frequently used applications on to a redesigned taskbar for easy access.



• Right clicking on applications in the taskbar brings up a Jumplist of commonly used tasks associated with that application, such as recently viewed documents in Word.



• Play to allows users to stream video, music and photos stored on the network to other devices such as the TV and Xbox 360.



• Touch support is built into the operating system to support touch screen applications. Multitouch is supported, allowing people to use gestures to zoom and tilt the screen.

I recently read on a few blogs that television companies are scrambling to ensure that all of there content has digital presence. More and more we will see the integration of TV downloads and movies on demand. Currently Apple is at the forefront of digital media through iTunes. Combine this with Microsofts focus on cloud computing and SaaS, I see this as a very exciting time for us all.