The New Yahoo! Search Crawler (Slurp) Is Online

David Simpson on yahoo search blog:

We launched a new Yahoo! Search Crawler, Yahoo! Slurp earlier this week. In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

While transitioning to the new crawler over the past few weeks, we had been running both crawlers in tandem. In some cases, this increased the frequency of Yahoo Search requests to websites. Now, with the new crawler in full production, we have turned off the old crawler and site owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.

With this change of behavior in the crawler, you may see some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index and some changes in ranking as well.

The Technology of War

In their current conflict, both Israel and Hizbullah have employed a surprising array of weapons. Israel has fought Lebanese guerrillas of one stripe or another for decades, but the latest war has allowed both sides to showcase weapons not usually seen on this battlefield.

CLUSTER MUNITIONS

Human Rights Watch photographed piles of cluster artillery shells on the border with Lebanon this week after NEWSWEEK reported that an Israeli reservist said artillery units had begun using the controversial armaments to destroy Hizbullah rocket launchers.

(Human Rights Watch field workers crawled through a meadow and used long-range lenses to photograph an artillery position in northern Israel from where the munitions were being fired. Israel won’t comment on the weapons it is using in Lebanon.)

Cluster shells are large munitions that explode in the air, scattering hundreds of small bomblets across a wide radius.

Military analysts say Israel has added the weapon to its arsenal because militants who launch rockets at the Jewish state are constantly moving, making them hard to target with a pinpoint strike.

“Clusters munitions happen to be fairly good at getting people who use rocket launchers,” says David Isby, a Washington-based defense and foreign-policy consultant. “They cover a large area, and it’s hard to hide from them.”

But because of their wide dispersal, cluster munitions tend to cause more civilian casualties than other armaments. And they have a high dud rate, which means civilians might set off the unexploded bomblets months or years after the end of fighting. Israel, under pressure from the United States, had not used cluster munitions in Lebanon since 1982. But the United States itself has made wide use of clusters in Kosovo and Iraq, setting back efforts to impose an international ban. “We came to the conclusion that the use of cluster munitions caused more civilian casualties than any other weapons system in Iraq during the three weeks of major fighting,” says Steve Goose, who directs the arms division of Human Rights Watch.

GUIDED MISSILES

For military analysts, the biggest surprise of the war has been Hizbullah’s July 15 missile strike on an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast that killed four sailors. Israeli officials said the attack marked the first time Hizbullah had used a guided missile, and they speculated that the Lebanese Army had provided the group with radar data on the location of the warship. So unanticipated was the attack that the Israeli ship had not activated its missile-defense system.

The weapon was identified as a C-802, a missile made in China and imported by Iran during the 1990s. The missile carries its own internal-guidance system, which kicks in during the last stage of flight and helps the missile hone in on its target. Steve Zaloga, a defense analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group, said he was surprised the missile did not destroy the entire ship. “It has a large warhead, and it also has fuel that gets sprayed on the engine of the ship and can cause a very large fire,” he said. “It may be that the missile failed.” Zaloga said firing the C-802 is a complicated task that requires extensive training. “It’s not something you just give to the boy scouts. It takes several months of training and an awful lot of prep work.”

OTHER MUNITIONS

Lebanon has accused Israel of firing white-phosphorous artillery shells at towns in the south. Phosphorous shells are usually used for illuminating the battlefield. When shot directly at a target, they can cause deadly fires. Israel has not responded to the allegation, and rights group say they cannot determine yet if the shells are being used. The United States was heavily criticized for using white phosphorous in its Fallujah battle of November 2004. “There was a big scandal with the use of phosphorous shells against civilians,” says Goose of Human Rights Watch. “If you’re using it against a human target, you’re going to incinerate the person.”

Israel says Hizbullah has at least one unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can be packed with explosives and crashed on a military or civilian site. Analysts say a UAV could find targets much more accurately than the rockets Hizbullah has been firing and could reach deeper into Israeli territory. The weapon, if it exists, so far remains unused.

Google Talk Update

There’s lots of instant messaging news today. Google isn’t letting the fact that it has less than 1% market share and only 44,000 people used its Google Talk client last month get it down. Tonight they’ve released three significant new features to the product - file transfers, voicemail and music status. Information on all of these features is here.

File Transfers

Files and folders can be sent to Google Talk friends by clicking the “send file” button. There are no limits on file sizes or type, and the recipient will see a preview of the image within the chat session. Both users must be using the actual Google Talk client, however, for this feature to work. See left image below.

Voicemail

Voicemails can now be left for friends who do not answer calls through Google Talk. Unlike File Transfers above, this feature does not require that the friend use the Google Talk client. In that case, they’ll receive an email with the message attached as an audio file. Voicemails can be up to 10 minutes long, and messages can be left for people online without calling them directly by clicking the down arrrow from any profile card or chat window. Voicemail will also automatically kick in after 4 rings. See middle image below.

Music Status

If you are listening to music while logged in to Google Talk, you can show your contacts what you are listening to by selecting “show current music track” from your status drop down menu. This is only for “supported music players” but they do not say what players are supported. See far right image below.

Note that the Google Chat client is, ridiculously, available only for Windows machines.

Google, Google Talk

Netvibes Updates digg module, and introduces Meebo and Alexa modules

Digg Module Update

Netvibes have upgraded the digg module to better support digg v3. Also, it will now auto refresh, allow you to browse more stories. And it loads faster.

Finally, they also provide some bugfixes for these parts of netvibes:

• module closing;
• keyboard navigation (make sure it is turned on in Settings);
• http://del.icio.us;
• module subscription;
• mini API;
• tab reordering.

Alexa module

Alexa is a website tracking service, based on statistics sent by an Internet Explorer browser toolbar installed on a sampling of Internet users.

You've been a lot to ask for this module and here it is : you will be able to display some colorful Alexa graph trends for up to five sites. To configure the module, just edit it, enter the url of one or more sites you want to see then click on Ok. You can also set a custom title, adjust the size and the range of the line graph.

You can easily switch between three types of traffic information:

• Daily traffic rank trend;
• Daily page views (per millions);
• Daily reach (per millions).

Learn more about traffic on Alexa.

For even more information about the pages, click on the chart to be taken to Alexa.com.

Meebo module

Netvibes and meebo have been working tightly to bring you instant messaging. You will now be able to chat with people on most popular networks: AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.By adding the meebo module will automatically create a new tab so you have enough room for chatting with everybody.

All you have to do then is fill the form with your accounts information. If you have a Meebo account, you will be able to log in multiple networks automatically

You are now ready to chat !

You can safely switch between tabs, your meebo will blink when someone is talking to you on IM

Netvibes
Digg
Alexa
Meebo

Top 5 Strangest Pens

Top 5 Strangest Pens

Our editors have compiled a list of the “Top 5 Strangest (or Coolest) Pens” for your enjoyment. Which ones are your favorites?

5. Wi-Fi Pen

Made by Informatica, this Wi-Fi pen allows users to detect wireless hot spots within a 50-foot radius — priced at $19.

It also includes a state of the art “writing” feature, allowing you to jot down notes and ideas on pieces of paper, no keyboard or printer required

[Source]

4. USB MP3 Pen

This nifty device not only functions as a pen, but is also a USB flash drive and MP3 player. It boasts 512MB of memory, an FM tuner, built-in microphone, LED indicator, and a shockproof case. Available now for $48 through Brando.

See, you use the voice recorder to record your CFO and CTO in the bathroom talking about embezzling funds—you were hiding in a stall, using the FM radio to pass the time

[Source]

3. Pen Scanner

At $300, the RC800 is a pen-sized scanner with 8MB of internal memory — good for use on magazine articles, newspaper clippings, small photos, and more. There’s also a built-in microSD card slot for memory expansion. Files are easily transferred via USB.

2. Baller Cheating Pen

For those who’ve always wanted a multi-function pen, check out this “Baller Pen”. It features a retractable 6.5″ sheet which can be written on. On the UV coated front side, you’re able to use fine tip markers/sticks while the back side is erasable — perfect for writing on with pencils.

[Source]

1. Pen Calculator

Not the most practical pen calculator, but quite interesting none the less.

A more reasonable application of this technology would be for one to be able to simply write out the problem 65 x 32 = (etc.) and have the calculator voice then answer the question

Motorola MOTO K1 KRZR: Officially Released

The KRZR, the 1-centimeter narrower and KRAZIER successor to the RAZR we all know and are bored to death of, has been released.

-GSM 850/900/1800/1900 plus EDGE (or CDMA with EVDO)

-2-Megapixel camera
-A screen with the pixel count of 176 by 220 with support for 260K colors
-A MicroSD slot
-Stereo Bluetooth audio, with MP3, and AAC playback
-A new address book that can hold bdays, AIM address info, and hopefully doesn't suck
-Dimensions of 42 × 103 × 16 mm
-Purdy like your cousin's mouth

-Available the second half of 2006, worldwide.

– Brian Lam

Motorola

101 Fabulous Freebies

Tune Up: Utilities and system tools
FoxIt Reader	For viewing PDF files, FoxIt Reader beats Adobe Reader hands-down--and it's got some tools Adobe lacks.
System Information for Windows	This utility will tell you everything you need to know about your computer's hardware, operating system, installed programs, and more.
PDF Creator	This printer driver lets you create Adobe Acrobat files from within almost any application.
CCleaner	Finds and zaps useless files--including cache files and old Registry entries--that may be slowing down your PC.
Microsoft Tweak UI	Take control of hidden Windows XP settings, from determining what appears on your Start menu to specifying how users log on to your computer, with this extra set of tools created by Microsoft developers.
7-Zip	Create ZIP compressed archives for free with this handy utility.
PuTTY	This free utility allows you to create an SSH, Telnet, or Rlogin connection.
OmniFormat	Convert BMPs to JPEGs, GIFs to PDFs, Word documents to TIF image files, and more with this free document conversion utility.
Find It: Online search and reference services
Google Desktop	Google Desktop extends the power of the Web's most popular search engine to your desktop by indexing nearly every document on your hard drive.
MSN Search Toolbar With Windows Desktop Search	This search tool indexes your hard drive and provides search results through a Windows application, rather than a browser.
Copernic Desktop Search	Copernic lets you search local files as well as Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail.
Free Download Manager	This companion to Internet Explorer can speed up single-file downloads, resume interrupted downloads, manage bandwidth usage, or schedule multiple file downloads for specific times.
FlashGot	This Firefox plug-in simplifies downloading, allowing you to grab every page from a Web site or download multiple files efficiently.
Project Gutenberg	Browse electronic versions of more than 17,000 books at this online library.
Wikipedia	This online encyclopedia is a convenient way to find general information on almost anything.
Wapedia	For accessing Wikipedia from a PDA or smart phone, try Wapedia.
Bartleby	This online reference library offers a host of features, including a dictionary, thesaurus, and various books of quotations.
WordWeb	This handy utility provides a dictionary and a thesaurus that work in any application on your computer.
podAmigo	podAmigo works with the Podomatic Web service to organize and download your podcasts.
Hyperwords	This Firefox browser plug-in makes any text on any Web page clickable.
Roam Free: Collaboration and remote-access tools
LogMeIn	This remote access service lets you control your PC from afar, via a Web browser.
Backpack	Create Web pages--with to-do lists, notes, pictures, and more--that you can share with a group.
WriteBoard	This service lets you create, edit, and share documents with others right in your browser.
FreeConference.com	Set up and host conference calls with this free Web service.
GetByMail	Don't pay for a pricey remote-access app--GetByMail offers access to your office computer through your e-mail account.
iTeamwork	This Web-based project management service helps groups keep track of complicated projects.
PBwiki	Create a free, password-protected wiki--a collaborative Web site--with PBwiki.
Groove Virtual Office	Bring your far-flung coworkers together with this file-sharing and collaboration tool.
Netomat	This social networking service allows you to create, access, and share content on the Web or a phone.
Get to Work: Business and productivity tools
Firefox	Still using Internet Explorer? It's time you made the switch to Firefox--a more secure, faster, and more flexible Web browser.
OpenOffice.org	This full-fledged, Microsoft Office-compatible office suite offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package, and database--and it doesn't cost one thin dime.
ThinkFree Online Beta	This software runs in your browser and lets you edit Microsoft Office-compatible documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
AbiWord	This lightweight, full-featured word processor is compatible with Microsoft Word documents and also runs on Linux and Macs.
Pegasus Mail	A longtime favorite of power users, this e-mail client provides a huge amount of control over your mail, with support for mail merges and flexible filtering options.
Thunderbird	The tighter security and robust stability of this e-mail client make it the top choice for managing e-mail on your PC.
Steganos LockNote	Password-protect text files with LockNote, a simple notepad with strong encryption.
Alleycode	A simple HTML editor for people who are comfortable with code and need to do some quick editing.
Nvu	This sophisticated Web page editor doesn't require any understanding of the underlying tags.
SeaMonkey	This suite of Internet tools includes the Mozilla browser, an enhanced version of the netscape Messenger e-mail client, the ChatZilla IRC chat program, and an HTML editor.
Keep in Touch: Communications tools and services
Trillian Basic	This universal IM client lets you keep in contact with your friends whether they use IRC, AOL, ICQ, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger.
eFax Messenger	You can receive faxes on your PC with eFax, viewing or printing them via the eFax Messenger software.
QNext	This universal instant messenger service includes robust music-sharing and photo-sharing features.
SightSpeed	This video calling service is simple to set up, synchronizes lip movements and audio neatly, and offers easy in-call controls.
Skype	Skype offers free PC-to-PC voice calls with text chat and file transfer capabilities.
Festoon Beta	This add-on for Skype and Google Talk lets users of these two services make calls to each other, and brings video chat capabilities to Google Talk.
Nail It Down: Calendars and organizers
Yahoo Calendar	This ad-supported calendar is one of the best available online.
Ta-Da List	Stay organized with this straightforward to-do list manager.
Palm Desktop	This remarkably well-designed calendar and address book application will appeal to users who don't even have a PDA.
Yahoo Widgets	This application puts "widgets" on your desktop that provide useful information, such as news updates, weather reports, stock tickers, or photos, or provide handy little services, like performing search engine queries, storing your notes, and more.
Del.icio.us	Forget bookmarks--this service keeps track of your favorite sites, and much more, from any Internet-connected PC.
EssentialPIM Free	EssentialPIM combines a calendar, contact manager, to-do list, and notes manager in a single program.
SyncNotes	This sticky-note application runs on your computer, but allows you to view and edit your notes from any Web or WAP browser.
FreeMind	FreeMind allows you to compile your notes in a "mind map"--a free-form tree structure that mimics the way your brain works.
Furl	Save your favorite Web pages in an online account that you can access from any computer.
Share It: File sharing and storage services
FolderSync	Keep your USB drive and your hard drive on the same page with this synchronization utility.
BeInSync	Make sure you have access to your critical files and folders with this remote-access tool.
FolderShare (Windows)	Automatically sync files and folders between multiple computers and easily share data with colleagues and friends.
FolderShare (Mac)
Flickr	Easily upload, share, and post pictures with this popular service.
Kodak EasyShare Gallery	This site's usability, mobile-phone access options, and lack of upload restrictions make it our top pick for photo sharing.
Yahoo Briefcase	Yahoo Briefcase is one of the easiest ways we know of to store and share files online.
BitTorrent	BitTorrent is useful for downloading legitimate content quickly or for sharing your own files.
Avvenu	This free remote-access and file-sharing service lets you and your colleagues get to files on an Avvenu-enabled computer from another computer, Web-enabled phone, or PDA.
Lock It Up: Security/antispam tools, system-stabilizing utilities
Spybot Search & Destroy	Spybot is a powerful antidote in the battle against spyware.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Personal	Ad-Aware scans your PC for spyware, making sure that no digital snoops are lurking in memory or on your hard drive.
Microsoft Windows Defender (formerly AntiSpyware Beta)	Microsoft's antispyware app catches spyware that other programs don't--including the dangerous "rootkit" Trojan horse that some Sony music CDs carry.
All-in-One Secretmaker	All-in-One Secretmaker blocks banner ads and pop-ups, filters spam, and offers an array of utilities for cleaning up and securing your system.
ZoneAlarm	Zone Alarm's free firewall keeps watch over inbound and outbound Internet connections, helping avert malicious attacks by hackers and spyware.
Anonymizer	This anonymous browsing service will display Web pages without revealing any information to the sites you visit.
GRC Shields Up	This browser-based tool checks your PC for common vulnerabilities, such as open ports.
Trend Micro HouseCall	This Web site runs software in your browser to scan for and eliminate malware on your PC.
AirDefense Personal Lite	This simple program alerts you whenever you connect to an insecure network or to a hotspot you haven't previously marked as safe.
Avast Home Edition	This antivirus scanner can do a boot-time virus scan (which can catch more viruses than scanning once Windows is running) and will continually monitor your system for threats.
Kick Back: Entertainment software and services (9)
Google Picasa	Picasa offers a simple--and free--way to organize, touch up, and share your photos.
Irfanview	This lean, mean graphics utility offers basic image editing and file format conversions.
The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)	This freely distributed app includes tools for photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.
Pandora	Enter the name of an artist or song that you like and Pandora creates a custom "radio station" for you--and makes surprisingly good choices.
iTunes	Apple's media player is a joy to use even if you never buy a 99-cent song.
Kristal Audio Engine	This sophisticated audio mixing and sequencing platform offers features found in much pricier apps.
Audacity	All-purpose audio editor lets you record, play, and edit digital files.
Google Earth	Spin the earth, tilt it, and zoom in to objects as tiny as one building.
Celestia	Zoom through the solar system with Celestia, which offers real-time views of planets, moons, comets, stars, and more.
Roundup: Web-based e-mail
Gmail	Google's e-mail service feels more like a Windows application than a Web mail service.
Yahoo Mail	With a traditional, forms-based Web interface, Yahoo mail is quick and easy to use.
Yahoo Mail Beta	Beta, not yet public.
MSN Hotmail	MSN Hotmail offers a respectable 250MB of storage and a familiar, Windows-like look.
Windows Live Mail	This Ajax-based service is still in beta, but you can put your name on a waiting list.
AIM Mail	AIM mail offers 2GB of storage and integration with AOL Instant Messenger.
Netscape Webmail	Netscape Webmail offers 250MB of storage and features large, easy-to-click buttons.
Roundup: Blogging tools
Blogger	This blogging service remains incredibly simple to use, but offers a rich complement of features.
WordPress.com	This hosted blogging service offers a clean, fast interface.
LiveJournal	LiveJournal offers plenty of customizable options for your blog, and carries no advertising.
MySpace	MySpace lets you store an unlimited number of small images, and makes uploading music and images easy.
Xanga Classic	Xanga offers 200MB of image storage and features plenty of blog-formatting templates.
Roundup: RSS readers
Abilon	This powerful, speedy RSS reader offers a choice of views, and features a built-in tabbed browser.
RssReader	RssReader displays your news feeds simply and cleanly.
Feedreader	This free Windows utility displays your news feeds, and includes flexible keyboard shortcuts.
Bloglines	This Web-based RSS reader lets you access your news from multiple PCs.
NewsGator	NewsGator displays your RSS feeds in a clean, readable display.
Roundup: Video sharing services
Revver	This service--our Best Bet--is a video sharing site from which you can actually make money.
Putfile	This basic video sharing service works reliably and well.
Vimeo	Of the video sharing services we tested, Vimeo is perhaps the easiest to use.
Streamload Mediamax	Streamload Mediamax is great for users who want to share lots of big files in addition to videos.
Google Video	Google's service is well suited for commercially oriented video producers looking for a large audience for their work.

Dabble Launched Today

Mary Hodder says that after a year of work, and both an Alpha and invited Beta period, Dabble launches!

He invite you to come check out our site, which is now fully open for people to search, browse and view media or requests. For people who were part of the invited Beta, we have a few changes. First and most obvious at a glance is the site looks a little different. Emily Chang and Max Kiesler of Ideacodes helped with the new design. We’ve added a bit of color that brightens things up.

The new Dabble has more sophisticated searching. Dabble now uses the many different social gestures people make to express how they feel about media, to find better matches in our search results. If people play with media in playlists or by sharing their collections with others, and tell us how it’s useful to them, we can take that kind of information and show better lists of media. These results change over time, because value changes as people shift their attention.

Popular media and recent media both help people serendipitously discover things that are bubbling up, or the very latest things added to Dabble. Tagging allows people to both describe media in ways that matter to them, as well as find media with tags that others have described it.

You will need to login to Dabble to “write” anything to the site. This includes being able to collect media, make subcollections or playlists, tag media or request something (if you are trying to find a clip or music, some help on editing or to find a listing of video festivals). Check out my Star Trek Mashups playlist for an example of one.We expect that our first public launch will mean lots of folks will want to give us feedback and we’d like to hear everything you have to say about the service and what we can improve. We plan to spend a lot of time integrating feedback and suggestions, so please share with us!

Dabble

Technorati Redesign

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs and Currently tracking 49.4 million blogs

After months of work and weeks of testing, Technorati just released an updated version of technorati.com. Here you have an official video presenting the new Technorati

Three years ago this month, Technorati was officially incorporated and became a “real” company, moving out of the "science project" phase of its life. Since then, so much has happened – not only has Technorati grown and changed, so has the live web. When I first started Technorati, my primary concern was how to be of service to a growing universe of bloggers, which then numbered in the thousands. Today, we’re tracking about 50 million blogs and we’re increasingly including other forms of citizen media, including photos and video.

While we got a lot of positive feedback from bloggers about the core Technorati service, we were increasingly hearing that we weren’t being of equal service to folks who are new to the live web. And because our mantra is to be of service – we set about renovating the Technorati site to make it easier to use for all people, whether they regularly create stuff on the web or not.

In short, we sought to make Technorati easier and more intuitive to search, discover and organize the World Live Web. What we released today is a big step in that direction.

First, in addition to a simpler and brighter design, we've continued to improve our core search technologies that index new information within minutes of being posted to the Web. We listened hard to your feedback - and redesigned the search results pages to include much less intrusive (and well-marked) ads, more results above the fold, and better sorting options - including sorting by language, authority, and freshness. If you're confused, you can get a deeper explanation of keyword results and of URL results. In addition, our link-counting mechanisms have also been dramatically improved. If you're a blogger, you should notice that your blog is being counted much more regularly, and that your rankings and authority information is much more accurate and up-to-date. If you've claimed your blog on Technorati, make sure to Sign In - we've worked hard to personalize your experience around the site to help you keep track of who is linking to you and what you care about, especially on the Technorati homepage.

Part of this work is also to make things simpler and more stable, so that we can understand and respond to all of your support requests. Hopefully, it'll also reduce the confusion! I know that some folks have sent in support tickets that we haven't answered. If you're in that camp, I'm sorry. I hope that with the back-end and front-end changes, you'll find Technorati more usable and easier to understand. Give us another try. I hope our revamped help section will answer any remaining questions you have, but if not, drop us another line.

Second, we've worked hard to make serendipitous discovery of interesting stuff easier and more intuitive. Our new “Discover” section, drawing on a commonly understood newspaper metaphor, organizes the blogosphere into easily recognized categories, within which some of the most interesting recent posts are highlighted. From news and tech, to sports, business and life, scanning what’s hot in the global conversation at any given moment in time is now only one click away. In case you're wondering how we did this, Liz has a screencast for later this week that will explain. Suffice it to say that if you want your posts included in the discover section, you'll first want to claim your blogs and then configure them with information on the things you regularly write about.

We've improved and updated our Popular section, putting all of the most interesting information on one page, including top searches and tags, The Technorati Top 100, the Most Favorited Blogs, Videos, Books, News, and Movies.

Third, Technorati’s Favorites feature has also been improved, enabling you to select and organize those blogs you like the most, and to see the most recent posts from your favorites each time you return to the homepage (you just need to be signed in!) The service now makes it easier to organize your Favorite blogs by simplifying the process of “favoriting” a blog in multiple ways, including right from your browser bar (drag that link to your browser" s="" toolbar="">

browser bar (drag that link to your browser" s="" toolbar="">If you've ever wanted to just get a better handle on who a blogger is and what they write about, have a look at our revamped blog directory. Simply put in a blog's URL into that searchbox and you'll get an at-a-glance view of what that blog is, how influential it is, and what the blogger writes about - even some interesting stats like their reach (thanks to Alexa), posting frequency, and more.

So, in summary:

• Technorati is 3 years old! What an amazing trip so far.
• The World Live Web is all about people - We're here to help make sense of all the interesting stuff we do in real-time.
• Technorati's rolled out a major update to our site and to our back-end systems.
• We've made some major speed and accuracy improvements in core search.
• Link counting is a lot more accurate and timely.
• We've personalized the homepage so you can get a look at all the stuff you care about on one page.
• While we love expert bloggers, we've also spent a lot of time making Technorati understandable to normal people.
• We've added in lots of features to help you make sense of the blogosphere, including Discover, which is topic-based, Favorites, which gives YOU the power to pick your favorite blogs, and Popular, which algorithmically derives the most linked-to items in the last few days.
• We've made some big changes to blog profiles - allowing you to get stats about any blog that Technorati tracks, including the tags used, posting frequency, traffic, and Technorati ranking.
• We've made things easier for advertisers and partners, and we've been overwhelmed with demand. We're building out our capabilities, and if you're interested in advertising, drop us a line.
• This is just a start - there's more to come in the coming weeks and months, including better charts, more real-time spam detection and elimination, more real-time media indexing, microformats integration, and additional localization and language support.

JotSpot launches Web Office Wiki 2.0

Wikis are traditionally editable webpages, allowing groups of people to "It's wikis meets Microsoft Office"collaborate on creating the page. However JotSpot is about to expand the definition of 'wiki', with a new version of its flagship wiki product - called JotSpot 2.0. The upgrade enables JotSpot users to collaborate on different types of "office-like" products. For example its spreadsheet product, Tracker, is being integrated into their core wiki product. Also integrated will be calendars, File Cabinets, Photo Pages.

In the new JotSpot wiki, if you click the "Create Page" button you will see various "page types" for specific tasks - web pages, spreadsheets, calendars, photo galleries, and file repositories. This allows users to collaborate on all types of documents, not just a blank wiki page or a Word document. Users can also customize their wikis - e.g. configure the color scheme and add logos. The usual wiki features are of course still present - permissions, WYSIWYG editing, etc.

I asked JotSpot CEO Joe Kraus what their new product augers for the Web Office (my hobby-horse here on ZDNet!). Joe said:

"JotSpot 2.0 allows users to create more than just web pages - it 'wikifies' calendars, spreadsheets, photos, and file sharing. It has some of the familiarity and functionality of Office — it's wikis meets Microsoft Office."

Let's put this into context of a recent Gartner study on wiki adoption, which noted that tools such as wikis and other web-based apps are becoming increasingly pervasive in the Enterprise:

"By 2008, 20 percent of "office" applications will be selected by users themselves. People are using more than the traditional personal productivity applications. Tools now include instant-messaging clients, Web-based applications, wikis, blogs, "folksonomies" and personal desktop search."

This is a continuation of the trend for consumer web apps infiltrating the enterprise - and as Gartner notes, that trend shows no sign of abating. JotSpot is doing the right thing morphing their wiki application products into office tools, because this is tapping into a growing market for web-based office tools and will also push the boundaries of what office tools can be in the Web Office era.

AMD said near $5.5 bln deal to buy ATI

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD.N), the No. 2 supplier of computer processors, is close to a deal to buy graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc. (ATYT.O) (ATY.TO) for $5.5 billion, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday.

Such a deal would shake up the processor industry, which is witnessing a tooth-and-nail fight for market share between AMD and larger rival Intel Corp. (INTC.O). AMD would gain one of two major graphics chips makers, the other being Nvidia Corp.(NVDA.O).

Markham, Ontario-based ATI is also a big supplier of chipsets -- the cluster of secondary chips and interfaces that surround a computer's processor -- for AMD and Intel products.

Unless talks break down, a deal could be announced as early as Monday, the source said.

ATI and AMD both declined to comment.

Since rumors of a deal first emerged in May, many industry analysts have voiced skepticism, saying it made little financial or strategic sense for AMD to buy ATI outright.

One concern is that the price would be too high for AMD, which already plans to spend $5 billion on capacity in the next few years, even as it fights a bruising price war with Intel.

"It would be a very dilutive acquisition and they don't want to spend their cash because they are going to need that for capital expenditures going forward," said one analyst at a U.S. research firm, who declined to be identified.

Graphics chips are also less profitable than PC processors. Gross margins in the business are about 45 percent, compared to 55 percent for main processors.

A tie-up with ATI could raise concerns that AMD would shun Nvidia, and potentially clash with a new AMD initiative called "Torrenza" that will open up its technology so other chipmakers can make their products work better with it.

Shares of ATI rallied on Friday on belief that a deal was close at hand. After gaining 83 cents, or 5.3 percent, to close at $16.56 on Nasdaq in regular trade, they jumped another 7 percent to $17.68 in after-hours trading. On the Toronto Stock Exchange, ATI finished 99 Canadian cents higher at C$18.77.

Rumors that Sunnyvale, California-based AMD could buy the Canadian chip maker surfaced in late May when an analyst suggested the move could make AMD more competitive with Intel.

But AMD shares finished down 15.7 percent at $18.26 on the New York Stock Exchange as investors worried that the company would not be able to continue taking market share from Intel.

Others wondered why ATI speculation received no attention from analysts on AMD's earnings conference call on Thursday.

"The most surprising thing with these results is the fact there was not even a question about ATI on AMD's call," Scotia Capital analyst Devan Moodley wrote in a research note.

(Additional reporting by Scott Hillis in San Francisco and Wojtek Dabrowski in Toronto)

Digg Launches Sports category

Today 22 July Digg.com launched a new category, SPORTS with this subcategoties:
Baseball, Basketball, Extreme, Fotball, Golf, Hokey, Motorsport, Soccer, Tenis, Other sports. Sound's good for digg, but not so good for netscape, because digg's competitor, netscape launghed with Sport category from the begining. For sport publishers this means great news. You may wonder why? They can add storyes now to netscape, but also submit diggs to digg.

Sports @ Digg

• Baseball
• Basketball
• Extreme
• Football
• Golf
• Hockey
• Motorsport
• Soccer
• Tennis
• Other Sports

Sports @ Netscape

Wired pays Lycos to recover Wired.com site

Wired magazine, the publication that helped popularize the Internet craze during the 1990s, is poised to recover the online business it lost when the company was divided in half eight years ago.

Lycos Inc. said on Tuesday it had agreed to sell its Wired News online properties for $25 million to Conde Nast Publications, owner of Wired magazine, the print publication that is equal parts technology culture trend-spotter and glossy product catalog.

Lycos acquired Wired News as part of the Wired Digital acquisition which closed in June 1999 for a reported $83 million.

The deal came a year after Advance Publications, owner of Conde Nast, paid $75 million to buy Wired from co-founders Louis Rosetto and Jane Metcalfe and other investors. The sale followed two failed efforts to hold an initial public offering.

The current transaction includes the sale of the Wired.com domain name and Wired News assets only. Lycos will retain other original Wired online properties including Hotbot, Hotwired and Webmonkey, the company said.

While one of the earliest and most insistent promoters of the notion that digital technology and the Web would transform business, Wired magazine's efforts to live up to its own mantra have been hamstrung by the loss of its online domain.

"We're bursting with ideas and can't wait to put them into practice," Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson said in a statement issued by Lycos.

Upon completion of the deal, the assets of Wired News will be operated as part of Conde Nast Publication's web division, CondeNet.

"Wired News has always been synonymous with Wired magazine, so it made sense for Lycos to transfer Wired News to Conde Nast, the parent company of Wired," Alfred Tolle, chief executive of Lycos, said.

Tolle said the sale of the online news property to Conde Nast provides additional funding to Lycos, once one of the best-known Internet search indexes, which is looking to become a destination for broadband entertainment consumers.

WIRED NEWS

2 million+ .eu domain Names registered

Here is a small statistic

Despite what has been said they're still registering names!

http://status.eurid.eu/

1. Germany - 639,791
2. UK - 368,380
3. Netherlands - 241,414
4. Italy - 118,900
5. France - 113,879

Considering that France and Italy are both very similar with population to the UK, there doesn't see to be so much enthusiasm from them for their .eu identities

YouTube serves up 100 million videos daily online

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers have are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare.

Since springing from out of nowhere late last year, YouTube has come to hold the leading position in online video with 29 percent of the U.S. multimedia entertainment market, according to the latest weekly data from Web measurement site Hitwise.

YouTube videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched online, the company said. Videos are delivered free on YouTube and the company is still working on developing advertising and other means of generating revenue to support the business.

The site specialises in short -- typically 2-minute -- homemade, comic videos created by users. YouTube serves as a quick entertainment break or viewers with broadband computer connections at work or home.

News Corp.'s MySpace, the social networking site popular with teens, has a nearly 19 percent share of the market according to Hitwise. Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN, Google and AOL each have 3 percent to 5 percent of the video search market. Collectively, these four major Web portals have a smaller share than either YouTube or MySpace.

In June, 2.5 billion videos were watched on YouTube, which is based in San Mateo, California and has just over 30 employees. More than 65,000 videos are now uploaded daily to YouTube, up from around 50,000 in May, the company said.

YouTube boasts nearly 20 million unique users per month, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, another Internet audience measurement firm.

Reuters/VNU

New Product from Google. Accessible Web Search

What is Google Accessible Search?

Accessible Search is an early Google Labs product designed to identify and prioritize search results that are more easily usable by blind and visually impaired users. Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.

How does Accessible Search work?

In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully --- pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op's technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.

Why is Google offering this?

Accessible Search is a natural and important extension of Google's overall mission to better organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. Google Accessible Search is designed to help the visually challenged find the most relevant, useful and comprehensive information, as quickly as possible.

In the past, visually impaired Google users have often waded through a lot of inaccessible websites and pages to find the required information. Our goal is to provide a more useful and accessible web search experience for the blind and visually impaired.

How do you decide which sites are "accessible" and which are not?

Broadly, Google defines accessible websites and pages as content that the blind and visually challenged can use and consume using standard online technology, and we've worked with a number of organizations to determine which websites and pages meet those criteria. Our methods for identifying accessible pages and content are always evolving; Currently we take into account several factors, including a given page's simplicity, how much visual imagery it carries and whether or not it's primary purpose is immediately viable with keyboard navigation.

How can sites make their content more accessible to the blind?

Some of the basic recommendations on how to make a website more useable and accessible include keeping Web pages easy to read, avoiding visual clutter -- especially extraneous content -- and ensuring that the primary purpose of the Web page is immediately accessible with full keyboard navigation. There are many organizations and online resources that offer Website owners and authors guidance on how to make websites and pages more accessible for the blind and visually impaired. The W3C publishes numerous guidelines including Web Content Access Guidelines that are helpful for Website owners and authors. Broad adherence to these guidelines is one way of ensuring that sites are universally accessible.

Google Accesible Web Search

eBay losing its 'magic'

Has the shine come off online auctions? eBay chief Meg Whitman has acknowledged that the site has lots some of its "magic", as the balance tilts away from home sellers to professional retailers.

Not that eBay is grumbling too much. The company reported profits of $310m on turnover of $1.4bn for 2Q 2006 yesterday. eBay also has $4bn cash in the bank. $9bn worth of trading went on under its roof in the period.

But revenue growth is faster than profit growth, which rose only one per cent sequentially, and this brought a frank admission from Whitman.

The marketplace has been overwhelmed with identical, often poorly-priced items that have diluted the magic of the eBay experience," she said.

This has resulted in fewer return visits, higher exit rates and fewer bids per listing. In turn, conversion rates and successful listings have declined and eBay's GMV growth has not been as strong as we would like.

To remedy this, she said, eBay will raise the profile of the auctions and raise prices for stores. That won't be popular.

eBay said that is has 78 million active users, 20 per cent more than a year ago, and there are 35 per cent more listings. But as a sign of its changing nature, fixed price listings - usually tagged "Buy It Now" - are up 35 per cent year on year.

The company offered no clues on how to turn Skype, which cost eBay $1.6bn, from an expensive albatross into a money spinner.The "communications" revenues grossed only $44m revenues in the period. ®

Jeff Bezos Invests in 37Signals

Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos has invested in 37 Signals, a Chicago-based software-as-a-service company. The investment comes from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment company of Jeff Bezos. The company has steadfastly refused venture capital investments, but I guess changes are in order.

Since we launched Basecamp we’ve been contacted by nearly 30 different VC firms. We’ve never been interested in the typical traditional VC deal. With a few exceptions, all the VCs could offer us was cash and connections. We’re fine on both of those fronts. We don’ t need their money to run the business and our little black book is full. We’re looking for something else. What we’ve been looking for is the wisdom of a very special entrepreneur who’s been through what we’re going through.

37Signals makes products such as the Ta-Da List, Basecamp, and BackPack.

37signals

Motorola Runs After Nokia

his was a big week for wireless earnings and market figures, with Motorola grabbing the spotlight from Nokia in the ongoing battle between the two dominating global cell phone makers. Motorola, still milking the success of the Razr, gained significant market share in its attempts to catch up with Nokia. Strategy Analystics says in a research report today that Motorola’s market share in the second quarter of this year reached 22.1%, up from 18.1%–Nokia grew more modestly to 33.3% from 32.5%.

The companies’ earnings matched those figures. Motorola said it brought in $10.9 billion in revenue, a growth of 29% from the second quarter last year, and–even better–earned $1.38 billion in profits, up 49% from last year. Nokia said it generated $12.4 billion in revenues, with $1.4 billion in profits, up 22% and 43% respectively from the previous year. Motorola stock rose 7% on the news.

Two things come to mind from the announcements. First, that the rivalry is getting tougher between Motorola and Nokia as the companies both work on dominating both high-end 3G replacement phones and lower-end models in fast-growing markets. Both companies are opening global stores in competitive markets, rolling out design conscious models that are finding popularity and spending major money on marketing. The ultimate battle will come over China, as both companies are gaining sales in the country.

The other note is that the two companies’ strategies are both working pretty well, compared to the rest of the industry, as Motorola and Nokia increase the distance between themselves and the three trailing cell phone makers, Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung. The market share between Motorola and the third place maker Samsung was at its largest gap since 1999, points out Strategy Analytics.

Motorola also announced a savvy partnership with Yahoo today that will embedd “Yahoo Go for Mobile” on some Motorola cell phones. A move like that could gain more of Nokia’s customers. Nokia better watch its back!

Webmaster Guidelines

Webmaster Guidelines

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index. Once a site has been removed, it will no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.

• Design, content, and technical guidelines
• Quality guidelines

When your site is ready:

• Have other relevant sites link to yours.
• Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
• Submit a sitemap as part of our Google Sitemaps (Beta) project. Google Sitemaps uses your sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
• Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
• Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Design and content guidelines

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
• Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
• Check for broken links and correct HTML.
• If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Technical guidelines

• Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
• Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
• Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
• Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Sitemaps.
• If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
• Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index.

Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at http://www. google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.

Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If a site doesn't meet our quality guidelines, it may be blocked from the index. If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and request reinclusion.

Google Sitemaps

Site Crawler Diagnostics, LIVE from Google Adsense

There's a new tab in AdSense: Site Diagnostics. The page includes information about Google crawler's errors when accessing a page to determine its content. Using the site diagnostic section, you can see the errors encountered by Google, when they happened, and what you can do to troubleshoot them in order to allow Google's bot crawl the specific pages. Some of the problems are: robots.txt files that forbid access to web spiders, servers down, HTML errors.

AdSense

Zooomr Launch officialy messed up!

Version 2 of ZOOOMR the beta should be launched Friday 17.07.2006, at 5 pm PST. Today is Sunday 15.07.2006 and the service isnt yet launched. I`m shure Zooomr will loose its value.

Techcrunch:
"Rumors are circulating that controversial photo sharing site Zooomr, the creation of 18 year old Kristopher Tate, is in acquisition discussions with at least three possible acquirors, with discussions taking place in the $5 million range."

On Zoomr blog i`ve saw that "Official Zooomr Launch Slightly Delayed"
and
"Well I suppose it serves us right for running a countdown timer to our launch at 5pm today, but Zooomr has been under a massive denial of service (DOS) attack all day and it has forced us to delay our launch by a few hours or so. We think we will have it up and running at 7pm Pacific Daylight Time assuming we can clear up this vicious attack."



And my favourite:

"St. tonight talking about Zooomr. Come on down and enjoy a beer with us. We will be back and a lot stronger when we can and in the end as a wise man once said, “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”"

Firefox 2.0 with Google Toolbar

The new version of Firefox, namely Firefox 2.0 Beta 1, takes most of its new features from Google Toolbar. And that's no surprise as the lead Firefox engineer, Ben Goodger, works at Google.

Let's see:

* Google Suggest in the search box. The Firefox implementation doesn't include your bookmarks and the results from the search history, but it's basically the same feature.

* Anti-phishing protection. Although not enabled by default, Firefox uses the same Google Safe Browsing technology from Google Toolbar. Previously that was a standalone extension. "By combining advanced algorithms with reports about misleading pages from a number of sources, Safe Browsing is often able to automatically warn you when you encounter a page that's trying to trick you into disclosing personal information."


* Subscribe to feeds. Like in Google Toolbar, you can subscribe to feeds using Live Bookmarks or a feed reader like Bloglines.

* Spell checking. The differences between Google Toolbar's SpellCheck and Firefox's new feature are that in Firefox every misspelled word is underlined automatically and Firefox uses a local dictionary, while Google queries their server. Google's dictionary is much more comprehensive and it's dynamically updated, but Firefox makes the feature more useful by integrating it in the normal use.
To test Firefox 2.0 Beta 1:

* you don't have to uninstall your current version of Firefox. The application installs itself in a different directory and you won't lose the stable version.

* most extensions will be incompatible with the new build, so you have to add Nightly Tools Extension after installing Firefox 2.0 Beta 1. Restart the browser, go to Tools / Add-ons and click on "Make all extensions compatible". Restart again. (Too many restarts, but that's how Firefox works.)



Here are the direct links for download:
Windows (5.4MB) | Mac (17MB) | Linux (8.9MB) | Non-English