Local Search Connects Business with Consumers » Web Marketing Consultant

The Web’s Best Travel, Shopping, and Dining Sites

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:09:37 +0000

Whether you need to arrange a flight, find bargains, or make a restaurant reservation, these 13 sites make it easy.

With these 13 terrific Websites and online services, you can make travel arrangements, dig up discounts and unusual gifts, decide on a great restaurant, or whip up amazing meals of your own.

For more on the year’s top sites, see The Web’s Best Productivity Sites and The Web’s Best Entertainment Sites….Find out more

Getting Started With Internet Marketing: Conducting Research

admin — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:39:16 +0000

You’ve heard the stories of entrepreneurs creating social networking sites from their garage, generating millions of dollars. You’ve heard the stories of the person who was laid off from their job, who then turned to the Internet to provide their skills, resulting in earning a full-time income from home. Also, you’ve also got the stories where people are generating full-time incomes by being the middle man and promoter of other business owners’ products and services. These are stories where regular people, young and old, have turned to the Internet to generate a second income, build a business, or have the opportunity to join the ranks of entrepreneurship and free them from working for someone else….Read more

Word-Wide Web Launches

admin — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:24:49 +0000

Language analysts, sifting through two centuries of words in the millions of books in Google Inc.’s growing digital library, found a new way to track the arc of fame, the effect of censorship, the spread of inventions and the explosive growth of new terms in the English-speaking world.

In research reported Thursday in the journal Science, the scientists at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google and the Encyclopedia Britannica unveiled a database of two billion words and phrases drawn from 5.2 million books in Google’s digital library published during the past 200 years. With this tool, researchers can measure trends through the language authors used and the names of people they mentioned…Read full article

A bountiful year for open source

admin — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:41:15 +0000

It is now just over 12 years since seven people sat down in a conference room in Silicon Valley to fix what they saw as the marketing problem with the words “free software.” Most people thought that the word “free” meant only that no one had to pay. It seemed they didn’t have an attention span long enough to try to grok what Richard Stallman was saying when he kept repeating, “‘free,’ as in speech.”

After considering dozens of combinations, Christine Peterson hit upon “open source,” and the phrase has grown to represent a section of the software marketplace big enough to merit its own end-of-the-year roundup. Full Story here

Hi, It’s Google

admin — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 13:49:59 +0000

Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete in the hot market for local business advertising.

The Internet-search giant this year has hired several hundred sales representatives to call U.S. businesses such as spas, restaurants and hotels to promote new advertising initiatives, people familiar with the matter said. The effort includes an office in Tempe, Ariz., with around 100 sales representatives, one of these people said.

Channeling the Web: How to plug your TV into the Internet

admin — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 13:50:48 +0000

TV isn’t supposed to be complicated.

But just as we’ve finally sorted out the digital TV transition, another wave of technology is about to remake the lowly set once again.

This time it’s a flood of new gadgets for connecting TVs to the Internet and tapping the river of online content.

Geeks have been talking about this “convergence” of TVs and the computer world for decades. About one in 10 U.S. households with home networks are doing this already, mostly by connecting PCs to the TV, according to research firm IDC… Read more

Ogilvy Chief Makes Technology His Focus

admin — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:46:18 +0000

Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, spent the last 18 months touring his company’s 100 offices hunting for trends and found the monster that is affecting all businesses.

“The monster is that consumers everywhere are seizing back control through the use of technology,” he said in an interview with The New York Sun. “The iPod is not about a technology. It’s people seizing back music agendas from the DJs of the world. TiVo isn’t a storage device but it is people choosing their own television agenda. Google isn’t a search technology but a new shopping agenda for consumers. These are all the same thing: power to consumers.” Read more

The Highest Paying Work-from-home Jobs

admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:10:25 +0000

Technology is continuously opening up new opportunities for people who want to work from the comfort of their own home. Remote workers or Telecommuters as some others call them are finding and landing profitable jobs though it may not come as easy as it was, there are however some great options listed for each aspiring workers benefit. Read more on this link.

Windows Phone 7 Gets Jailbroken

admin — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 12:08:26 +0000

By Casey Chan

Windows Phone 7 is “finally” jailbroken! ChevronWP7, the unlocker tool, works with every WP7 phone and allows for the side loading of apps, the use of private APIs, and access to low level functionality. Basically, it unleashes your WP7 phone.

It’s easy to jailbreak too:

Read the rest of the story…

Who’s Afraid of Apple, Google, Facebook?

admin — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:07:36 +0000

GIGAOM November 26, 2010, 6:11PM EST

Timothy Wu says we should be alarmed by the monopoly powers accumulated by Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, and eBay. Why he’s wrong

By Mathew Ingram

Timothy Wu, the Columbia University law professor who coined the term “net neutrality,” is not someone to be dismissed lightly, especially when it comes to communications and media trends. In his recent book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires—and in a related piece in The Wall Street Journal—Wu argues that just as AT&T was a monopoly during an earlier phase of communications history, companies such as Google, Facebook, and Apple now hold what he calls “information monopolies” that could be just as damaging to our society.

Does he present a convincing case that this is true?

Read the rest of the story…

Google Fashion Shopping Site Makes Debut

admin — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:09:08 +0000

CRITICAL APPRAISAL

By CATHY HORYN

Published: November 17, 2010

YOU know how remote and strange the fashion world is when you go to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. For one thing, employees are zipping around the sprawling campus on scooters and bicycles, so that pretty much eliminates platform shoes and minis. And for another, there are way too many snack stations at Google. Fashionistas are funny about food.

Read the rest of the story…

Microsoft: Half of mobile searches have a local intent

admin — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:20:15 +0000

BizReport : Mobile Marketing : November 15, 2010

Microsoft’s internal analysis of their mobile search query data has thrown up an interesting, yet not entirely surprising, fact about the search behavior of mobile users.

by Helen Leggatt

You’re ambling around town when suddenly you crave Chinese dumplings. You whip out your phone and after a couple of local searches you’re well on your way to getting your fix.

A similar scenario plays out day after day as mobile users refer to their devices for local information – information that will help them navigate their immediate environment and solve their real-time needs and wants.

It’s not surprising, then, to read of recent data from Microsoft that shows over half (53%) of mobile searches on Bing have a local intent.
Hence the development of ads that, quite literally, guide consumers from “search to store”. Such ads, including Google’s Expandable Map ads, appear both on the mobile web and in apps and, when clicked, provide the user with directions to a store.

“Mobile user demand for information that can be acted on in the real world, in real-time is, well, very real,” writes Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling, who uncovered the data in a recent chat with Bing’s Director of Search, Stefan Weitz.

“That’s what this Microsoft stat reflects. If that’s not an argument for mobile advertising in general and mobile search in particular, I don’t know what is.”

Read the rest of the story…