Omer Syed - All Things Search..

GoDaddy Sold for $2.25 Billion

2011-07-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, has been sold to three private equity firms in a deal valued at $2.25 billion, the company announced late Friday.

How Justin Timberlake bought into Myspace

2011-06-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

As Specific Media was hammering out deal points with News Corp. over its $35-million acquisition of Myspace, the digital media company's founders — brothers Tim and Chris Vanderhook — met with Winnaman and Timberlake's manager to talk about a potential partnership.

The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace

2011-06-27T05:44:00.000-07:00

At its December 2008 peak, Myspace attracted 75.9 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S., according to ComScore (SCOR). By May of this year that number had dropped to 34.8 million. Over the past two years, Myspace has lost, on average, more than a million U.S. users a month. Because Myspace makes nearly all its money from advertising, the exodus has a direct correlation to its revenue. In 2009 the site brought in $470 million in advertising dollars, according to EMarketer. In 2011, it's projected to generate $184 million.

Traffic To This $100 Million Google Site Plummeted 94% In 4 Months

2011-06-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

Last November, Google lifted the curtain on Boutiques.com, the result of the search giant's $100 million acquisition of Like.com, to great fanfare.

Less than 6 months later, traffic to the site dropped off by 94%. In January, Google AdPlanner estimated Boutiques.com had 2.6 million visitors per month; in April, the estimate was 170,000 visitors. Even worse, it seems that no one noticed.

Employment Site Monster Starting a Network on Facebook

2011-06-26T22:12:00.000-07:00

Monster is adapting its job search functionality to social networking with BeKnown, an app that lets users set up a professional network on Facebook.

BeKnown, set to go live on Monday, will let Monster users import their data to Facebook and set up professional networks there as well.

Facebook Preparing for $100 Billion IPO in Early 2012

2011-06-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

Facebook is preparing itself for an IPO that could easily top $100 billion, according to a new report.

At $100 billion, Facebook’s impending IPO would be one of the largest in history, quadrupling Google’s $23 billion IPO in 2004.

Microsoft Bing Launched to Rival Google

2009-05-30T01:52:00.000-07:00

The software giant Microsoft has announced that it is relaunching its internet search engine with a new name and a new look, in a bid to take on Google.

The new Microsoft search engine, called Bing, goes live in stages between Friday and June 3. It will, Microsoft claims, offer users a more refined search experience capable of satisfying queries more quickly than any rival search engine.

At launch, the new service will have a strong American bias, with a UK version "soft-launching" as a Beta test version. A 60-strong London-based team will work on improving the localisation of search results for the UK, with a view to a full launch in around six months.

The man in charge of the UK project is Microsoft's UK Consumer Vice President Ashley Highfield, previously a key player in the launch of the BBC's wildly successful iPlayer. "There is a huge opportunity in the search market," he told The Times, "given that it’s dominated by one player, and given that research shows a high level of dissatisfaction among a high level of the user base. We know that only around a quarter of people get what they are looking for on the first search."

Mr Highfield acknowledged that Microsoft's current search engine, Windows Live, has always "underwhelmed people", although it ranks third by usage, behind Yahoo and "a very long way" behind Google.

Google is the brand very much in Microsoft's sights. In the last financial year, the world's leading search engine declared net income of $4.34bn, on revenue of $22.12bn, largely from paid advertising associated with search keywords. The challenge for Microsoft is to make a search engine so demonstrably superior that it breaks internet users' Google habit.

"We have what we think are a series of Google-beating features," Mr Highfield said. "Google is essentially the same as it was a decade ago. The world has moved on, but search absolutely hasn’t."

The new features in Microsoft's search engine include the ability to "guess" what the user is looking for, then offer suggestions based on that guess.

"Our search engine knows what it is you enter into that search box," Mr Highfield said. "If you enter Nikon D80, it will know that you are looking for a camera. From that moment on, a lot of things happen differently. With Google you get 500,000 search results in decreasing relevance. With us, because we know it’s a camera, we immediately open up categories on the left-hand side, breaking it down into the things you are likely to be looking for, such as where to buy Nikon D80s, or how to use Nikon D80s."

Bing's other key feature is the way it displays search results. If the search returns video clips, for example, these appear as thumbnail images at the top of the search results. Hovering over the thumbnail plays a key part of the video, so users have no need to leave the search results page to ensure they have the clip they were looking for.

Similarly, a search for a large company such as British Airways will return not only its homepage, but a summary of the most likely desired information on that homepage, including the address, customer services telephone number and even the ability to search within the BA site directly from the Bing search page.

Reaction across the online advertising industry to Microsoft’s new product has been largely positive.

Alex Hoye, CEO of the Latitude Group, a leading internet advertising and marketing consultant, told The Times: “In terms of user experience it’s very positive. I like the fact that it points you down certain paths. If this were launched four years ago, before every grandmother was using Google, it would be a clear market leader.”

“There's no point in doing just the same as Google, because you won't beat them,” Rebecca Jennings, of the internet consultancy Forrester Research, said. “You need something that takes it a step further and offers a different attitude, and that's what they've done. Microsoft is asking what it is people are wanting to achieve when they make a search. Google works very cleverly, but it's fundamentally about where something is mentioned. This is about what you are actually trying to achieve.”

Ten years ago, when the current model for search engines appeared, there were around 160,000 pages on the internet. Today there are 160 million. Any company that finds the best way of delivering what its users want will attract more users, and therefore paid, linked advertising. Companies such as Wolfram Alpha have already started to produce alternative search engines that use different parameters to produce their results.

The American launch of Bing will be backed by a huge marketing spend, which will follow here when the UK version comes out of Beta.

“It’s going to be very difficult for them to break the Google habit, because Google is such a familiar brand,” Andy Mihalop of the i-level online media agency said. “I can see people who do use it will become more engaged, but Microsoft is going to have to invest a huge amount in advertising to get people away from Google.

“Also, as far as advertising goes, our clients are still predominantly looking at market share. So for most advertisers Google will remain first choice, though I would like to see a successful challenger emerge.”

Mr Highfield is, naturally, more positive about his chances of success. “Advertisers are going to be able to start buying against categories with confidence that they will be against the right search,” he said. “I think we will get into a virtuous circle where both users and advertisers grow to love and trust search.”

Google Wave to Revolutionize Email

2009-05-30T01:48:00.000-07:00

Google Wave the future of email?

Google has unveiled its vision of the future of email.

Google Wave is a hybrid of email and instant messaging which opens inboxes to the real-time sharing of text, video, maps and even social network feeds. The aim is to make online communication more dynamic, more collaborative and more useful.

Google offered the first glimpse of its latest offering during the company's annual conference for software developers. Other internet users will not be able to surf Google Wave until later in the year.

By the time Wave rolls out for everyone, Google hopes independent programmers will have found new ways to use the service.

The company is counting on developers to figure out how to weave Wave into the popular services like Twitter, social networks like Facebook and existing e-mail services, according to Lars Rasmussen, a Google engineering manager.

A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly-formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Wave's users invite others to join their "wave" about a particular topic so they can all follow the thread of messages. Everyone on the list can see individual messages as they are typed, letter by letter, in real-time.

Users can drag and drop photos and maps onto the wave to make them immediately visible to others. They can also edit documents or blogs together, potentially appealing to workers who are collaborating on a project. The feature is aimed at consumers and businesses.

You can even collaborate over a real-time game of chess.

Mr Rasmussen and his brother, Jens, helped build Google's online mapping service. The Rasmussens switched from that in 2006 to concentrate on building a service that would enable email and instant messaging to embrace the web's increasingly social nature. They contend email has barely changed since its invention during the 1960s.

They started with three basic questions:

Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?

Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?

What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

"We started out by saying to ourselves, `What might e-mail look like if it had been invented today?'" said Lars Rasmussen, who worked on Wave in Australia with his brother and just three other Google coders.

I think Wave has some very interesting possibilities and the point about the lack of dynamism in email exchanges is well made. But I don't much like the cluttered look of the user interface presented so far. But I suspect that will get better once the designers and the developers get going.

There are more details and the demo at Google I/0 available here but beware - the video is 80 minutes long.

Create Free Flow Charts & Diagrams Online

2009-02-10T03:09:00.000-08:00

If you've ever looked for an easy, intuitive online diagram creation tool, you know how hard it is to find one. LovelyCharts is a brand new application poised to become the default online drawing tool for amazing flowcharts, sitemaps and wireframes.

Like Gliffy, Flowchart.com, and AutoDesk's experimental Draw project, the app enables you to create diagrams and more in your browser with drag-and-drop functionality. The main differentiator between LovelyCharts and other online services is that it actually makes your complex processes look incredibly good. Better yet, it's completely free and since last week, out of beta and available to anyone.

Hear World Music Via RadioBeta

2009-01-31T05:24:00.001-08:00

Searching for the latest songs on the internet is a popular thing to do these days. You’re able to listen to your favorite artists and discover new ones at the same time. With a fast internet connection, stream songs from virtually any website.

Sometimes you’ll need to pay a subscription fee and other times it will be absolutely free to use. Although you may think that you know just about every music artist out right now, there are plenty more to discover.

RadioBeta is a website that allows you to listen to music artists from around the world. Stream songs from the Internet during your free moments and enjoy various music styles. You won’t have to pay a fee to use the website because it’s entirely free. Within a few minutes, you’ll have a chance to find a new song to keep you completely entertained.

To get started, just visit RadioBeta’s homepage. Decide on the type of music you’d like to listen to by doing a simple search. Select music according to geographical location or genre. You can also enter a radio name or frequency in the available quick search box.

After your search results appear, you can easily refine them even more by changing a few things. Choose radio stations by continents, bands, languages, and tags. Once you’ve found something to listen to, click the “Play” button next to it. Depending on your Internet connection, the music station will start streaming to your computer within a matter of seconds.

Although you’re not required to register for a RadioBeta account to listen to streaming music stations, you can do so to keep your favorite radio stations stored. When you’re away from your personal computer, just log into your account from almost any computer with a highspeed Internet connection. You can also create your own playlists and listen to your favorite music when you want to.

Take the time to experience songs from all over the world with a few clicks of your computer mouse. You won’t have to leave your desk to discover a music artist you’ve never heard of before. RadioBeta is a useful way of finding a new type of music genre or listen to music artists you’re already familiar with. If you decide to register for a free account, it will only take a few short minutes to complete.

Explore the world by listening to various types of music that are not common in your immediate area. You might be surprised at the way your music tastes have grown because of RadioBeta. The next time you’d like to listen to something new, consider going to the RadioBeta website and start your musical journey.

How To Securely Hide Your Private Folders In Windows

2008-12-26T02:43:00.000-08:00

A quick and easy way to protect sensitive information on your computer from children, employers, and anyone else who uses your computer, including hackers.

Free Hide Folder will hide your sensitive files so that they cant be seen or accessed. Files stay hidden even if you turn on "View Hidden Files". Even links in your recent documents menu wont be able to find your hidden files!

For extra security, use a password to prevent anyone from accessing your files. You can run this software in stealth mode so that no one knows its there, and hide or show your sensitive files using hotkeys.

There has never been an easier way to keep private files really private.

View docx Files in Firefox Without Office 2007

2008-12-10T01:29:00.000-08:00

If you like to open .docx files without Office Word 2007, there’s a new Firefox extension from Microsoft that should help. Available for Windows as well as Linux machines.

Called OpenXML viewer, this plug-in (download link) lets you read docx files inside the Firefox browser just like any other HTML web page while retaining all the text formatting and layout.

There’s a command-line version of OpenXML viewer (download link) available as well for converting docx documents into HTML files that you may then open in any other web browser.

Other alternatives for reading docx files without Microsoft Office 2007 include Internet Explorer, Gmail, Email, Word viewer and the converter for Mac.

How to Hide Your Facebook Online Status

2008-11-07T01:12:00.000-08:00

Here’s a simple tip that I just figured out myself the other day: hide your online status on Facebook! Why is this useful? Well now that Facebook has built chat into the online interface (kind of like Google Talk running in Gmail), your friends can start chatting with you at any time once you log into Facebook.

Personally, I never wanted to use Facebook as an instant messaging program, that’s why I have a separate IM program (though I do enjoy using Gmail from inside Facebook)! Thankfully, Facebook has made it very easy to change your online status so that people cannot see you are online.

Of course, if you go offline, no one will be able to see you are online, but you will also not be able to see which of your friends are online. It’s not like the Invisible feature in Yahoo Messenger

Here’s how to quickly go offline and hide your online status:

Step 1: Log into your Facebook account

Step 2: Click on the chat icon at the bottom right of the browser screen. You’ll get a list of some options and you’ll see a link that says Go Offline.

hide online status facebook

That’s it. Now you are offline and you will no longer see the list of online friends. As long as you are offline, you’ll see a red icon next to the chat icon.

Send Pictures From Your Cell-Phone/Mobile to Facebook

2008-11-07T01:06:00.000-08:00

Just about everyone has a cell phone with a camera on it these days, which is great for capturing moments instantly, but it’s rare for those photos to ever be seen by anyone else. Getting photos off your cell phone and to an online account like Picasa, Flickr, etc can be a real pain.

Facebook, however, makes it a lot simpler to transfer photos from your cell phone to your Facebook account with their Facebook Mobile service. Basically, how it works is that you email a photo from your cell phone to Facebook and then login into your Facebook account and confirm your cell phone. After that, you can send photos directly to your Facebook account from the phone.

Step 1: First, find the picture you want to upload to Facebook on your cell phone and find the option to send the photo in an email. Or you might first have to choose that you want to send an email and then you can pick a picture.

Step 2: Now send the email to mobile@facebook.com. Make sure the picture is included as an attachment to the email.

Step 3: You can put a title for the photo in the Subject line.

Step 4: Send the email and wait until you receive an email back from Facebook stating that the upload was successful. At the bottom of the email will be a six character code which you will need in the following steps.

Step 5: Now go to Facebook and log into your account. Then go to the URL below

http://www.facebook.com/mobile

and click on the Activate Facebook Mobile button.

Step 6: At the bottom left of the page, you will see the Activate Facebook Mobile heading. Under the Activate button, click on Already have a confirmation code? link.

Step 7: Type in the confirmation number that you had gotten in the text message from Facebook. You will then get a message saying Your mobile phone has been confirmed.

That’s it! You should now be able to send photos from your cell phone to mobile@facebook.com and have them show up in your Facebook profile! Enjoy!

Google Starts Indexing Scanned Documents

2008-11-05T01:22:00.000-08:00

Google has begun indexing scanned documents using the Optical Character Recognition technology that helps the company in converting ‘a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words’. According to Google, “This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world’s information accessible and useful.”

“In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn't be sure of their content. We had occasional clues from references to the document-- so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes. We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe’s PDF format,” Google said .

Auto Login Into Facebook

2008-10-07T05:15:00.000-07:00

Make Facebook log you in so you don't have to. Just make sure you have Firefox set to remember your password.

For people who hate logging in always, this is one Facebook script you should install right away. No more will you have to waste logging into Facebook henceforth.

Install This Script

How to Remove Ads From Facebook

2008-10-07T05:12:00.000-07:00

Not only does this script remove banner ads from your Facebook site, it also removes that annoying Sponsored section.

Of course, Facebook's not going to like it that you can't see their ads, that's their source of income. But if those ads are really annoying you, here's your chance to get rid of them, at least from your computer.

Install This Script

Before Installing Facebook Scripts

Before adding any of these Facebook scripts to your computer you'll need to first add the Greasemonkey Add On.

Top 20 Wordpress Plugins for Power Users

2008-09-25T04:39:00.000-07:00

Finally something for wordpress folks, an all-time favorite, carefully-selected, top 20 wordpress plugins. Enjoy! Read More

Shrink Outlook PST by Removing Email Attachments

2008-09-25T04:27:00.000-07:00

Why do you have so much stuff in your Outlook? Are you just keeping everything there as a backup, maybe it is your central repository? Well, either way it would be wise to at least strip the attachments from your messages saving them elsewhere. This slims down your PST (Personal Folders File) and makes your files readily accessible
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Access Hulu, NBC and ABC Videos Outside the US !

2008-09-25T01:32:00.001-07:00

Hulu is one of the most popular video sites nowadays, and hearing from my US friends that they watch all their TV shows online doesn’t help to relieve the pain that it’s a region restricted website. The same is the issue with NBC, ABC and also Internet TV in Windows Media Center. While I may never understand why they have to restrict access to users outside of the US, I have understood a way to access them easily.
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Add Yahoo Messenger to your Website

2008-09-24T04:43:00.001-07:00

Yahoo! today introduced Yahoo! Messenger 9 and a new service called Pingbox which is like a live chat box (in the form of a Flash Widget) that you may embed in any website or blog including your MySpace page. Like the Google Talk badge, site visitors can send your private messages via the Pingbox chat box without requiring any IM client.
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How To Free Disk Space On Your Windows Drive

2008-09-24T03:50:00.001-07:00

It is generally considered that whatever drive your windows is installed in you should try to keep it as free as possible, that really helps boosting your PC performance, So here are some steps to free up your Windows drive.
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Browse Faster and Anonymously with Toonel

2008-09-24T03:45:00.001-07:00

Most of us know how annoying it is when you’re unable to open Facebook, update your antivirus, download any file, or use your IM application behind a corporate or university firewall. Although there are many ways to bypass them, most of them require you to find fast proxy servers or use unsecure tunnel websites
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How To Speed Up Your Torrents Easily

2008-09-24T03:43:00.001-07:00

Every torrent client needs to be tweaked so as to increase the download speed. Today we will show you how to increase your torrent’s speed without using any any complex software, you’ll see the difference in downloading speed.
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How To Fix ‘Cannot Delete Folder/File’, ‘Access Is Denied’ or ‘File In Use’ errors in Windows Using Unlocker

2008-09-24T03:22:00.001-07:00

If you get an “Access is Denied” error while accessing a folder then it means the administrator has not allowed you permission to access it. If you are not an Administrator then you will probably never be able to fix this error. But if you are an Administrator and receiving this problem then there is a software called Unlocker that is going to come in handy
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