SEO Articles

Visit Rank for $ales

Read my bio

email me

Home

My 2 featured articles for the week ending July 14, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of Jul. 10, 2006

1200 - July 13, 2006 - 2.19 PM EST

Google's GDrive storage features

Corsin Carmicheal stumbled upon a page hosted on Google's servers (the page has now been removed) that offers life to a Web service that has been in the rumor mill for almost a year.

The screenshot below suggests that GDrive works with Windows, Linux and Mac computers, allowing users to store files on Google's servers so they could be accessed from anywhere with just an Internet connection.

Question: Why would someone want to store their files on Google's servers?

Posted on Businessblog™

1199 - July 12, 2006 - 4.09 PM EST

Yahoo makes a deal with the HDN

According to news reports, Yahoo and HDN (the Hispanic Digital Network) have entered into a multi-year sponsored search distribution contract.

Details are sketchy, but under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo would deliver Internet and sponsored search results to HDN’s network of more than 70 Spanish-language media websites. The deal will provide U.S. Hispanic Web users with relevant search results.

For the past few years, Yahoo has had a strong Latino following in the United States. According to comScore's Media Metrix, 12.8 million US Hispanic Internet users visit Yahoo properties every month.

As a result of this agreement, visitors to any of HDN’s sites, which include digital editions of Miami’s Diario Las Americas, Chicago’s La Raza, Houston’s Semana.com and San Diego’s El Latino can now conduct searches via a Yahoo-branded search box located conveniently at the top and bottom of each portal.

In response to their queries, users will be served both Yahoo and sponsored search results.

Posted on Businessblog™

1198 - July 11, 2006 - 9.01 AM EST

Yahoo launches new travel website

Yahoo's new Trip Planner Website doesn't sell hotel rooms or plane tickets directly. Instead, it integrates PPC (Pay-per-Click) ads that charge a fee to companies like Expedia, Sabre Holding, Travelocity and Orbitz when a user leaves Yahoo's travel site.

Yahoo has also inked a sponsorship deal for its Trip Planner site with MasterCard.

Yahoo wishes to bring in 'travel' surfers to its portal with the help of user-generated content, this time in the form of 'travelogues' and photographs. “I don't know about any premium brand being associated with a 100 percent user-generated content product,” says Jasper Malcolmson, director of Yahoo Travel. “Advertisers tend to feel uncomfortable with user-generated content because it is highly unpredictable.”

While Yahoo's new travel site already generates lots of traffic, Yahoo Maps and Yahoo Travel, combined ranks number two in traffic market share for travel sites last month, according to Hitwise. Malcolmson thinks Trip Planner will help Yahoo grow its traffic and ad revenue, in light of a maturing travel market.

Posted on Businessblog™

1197 - July 10, 2006 - 3.59 PM EST

Yahoo extends its Instant Messaging features

Yahoo is now making available its Instant Messaging (IM) network enabling external developers to extend Yahoo's IM functionality with new Internet applications.

In June, Yahoo released a beta version of Yahoo Messenger with Voice. At the same time, Yahoo made available software development tools for creating plugins for it. Yahoo's IM beta version will have some plugins already installed by default and will allow users to choose others if they wish to.

Until now, Yahoo has provided application programming interfaces (APIs) that let developers work with its IM network to expose presence on a website. But Yahoo's new tools offer developers a much broader access to the service for the first time, said a company executive. “This is the opening of Yahoo Messenger to developers,” said Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo’s senior director of real-time communication.

Rivals AOL LLC and Microsoft also let third-party developers create applications for their respective IM networks. Internet companies such as Google Inc., AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft have in recent years gone out of their way to entice external developers to create applications on top of their products and services.

Developers have been particularly keen to build on Google’s online mapping service, Google Maps.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2006. All rights reserved.

All views and opinions expressed on this blog are those of Serge Thibodeau only and are not representative of any company listed. All slogans, trademarks, text or logo representation used or referred to on this blog are the property of their respective owners.