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Google Chrome browser gets World Cup extension

Andre — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:08:41 +0000

Search engine giants Google and football federation Fifa have collaborated on a range of tools that will make it much easier to find the latest World Cup news and scores directly from Google’s Chrome browser.
The brand new Fifa extension provides a live feed of results, news and match statistics, and users will be able to personalise the plug-in to display goal alerts for their favourite team.

Google has also optimised its search service to deliver the specific information that people want, no matter how cryptic the search terms. For instance, Googling “World Cup”, “World Cup Spain”, or even “World Cup Group G” will pull up player profiles, live scores and player profiles for any team affiliated with your search.

There is also a Fifa gadget for Google’s personalised iGoogle home page, which streams team news, player information and matches directly to users. Meanwhile, fans that are travelling to South Africa to watch games will be able to use Google Maps to find out about host cities, and even to plan their route using Street View photography.

Google’s bitter rivals Microsoft have also created a similar service for World Cup fans on their Bing search engine. Bing’s social search page has a list of popular trending topics, as well as public messages from Facebook and Twitter.

Apple allow Bing as a search option for iPhone

Andre — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Among the many announcements made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ at WWDC in San Francisco yesterday was the interesting fact that Microsoft’s Bing will become a search option on the iPhone. Microsoft is also expected to announce later in the week that Bing will also become an option on both the Windows and MAC versions of Apple’s Safari browser.

Bing joins fellow Apple rivals Yahoo as a search option on the iPhone, but Google will remain the default search engine. Nevertheless this is a big step for Microsoft in their attempts to catch up with Google.

“Apple today announced that Bing will be included as one of the search engine choices within Safari on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and within the Safari browser on the Mac and PC,” Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post. “Needless to say, we are excited that Bing will be included as an option in Safari because it will make it easier for you to search and get the benefits of Bing.”

Mehdi also revealed that Microsoft has been working with Apple “over the last couple of months” to deliver Bing for Safari which will include some HTML5 work for the iPhone version.

“In addition, we are continuing to improve our existing Bing mobile application for iPhone which makes it easy to search, map, and find commerce and movie times,” Mehdi said. “We will have a new release with even more great features very soon. For those of you that have not already tried it, you can find it in the App Store today.”

Microsoft’s market cap beaten by Apple

Andy Russell — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:06:43 +0000

It has been a rather historic few weeks for Apple as their iPad tablet computer has now sold over two million and now it has been revealed that Apple’s market cap has beaten that of rival Microsoft for the first time in more than 20 years, according to Nasdaq share values at the close of business last week Wednesday.

It has been reported that Apple’s shares approached $222 billion (£154 billion) last week Thursday, compared to Microsoft’s $219b (£150b). Microsoft is still leading in net profits however, boasting $14.6b (£10b) profit at the most recent count, compared to Apple’s more modest $5.7b (£3.9b).

Full-year revenues are also inevitably in Microsoft’s court, with the company bringing in $58.4b (£40.1b) last year, while Apple closed on $36.5b (£25.1b) – however, these figures are likely to change due to the growing success and desirability of Apple’s products.

Launched last week in the UK, Apple’s iPad has been a huge success for the Silicon Valley company, with sales exceeding expectations in the US delaying its international release.

Market research company GFK NOP are anticipating that two million iPads will be snapped up in the UK within the first year.

After many years of living in Microsoft’s growing shadow, Apple enjoyed a new lease of life in 2001 with the success of its iPod which brought the company squarely into the limelight. Prior to the whirlwind success of the iPod, the company’s shares were worth less than one tenth of what they are today, and Apple may have gone under if not for a $150 million investment from Microsoft in 1997 to ship Office products on the Macintosh.

It seems that Bill Gates may now have reason to regret that decision

New Hotmail advertising campaign aimed at hooking new users

James Oliver — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:57:29 +0000

As Microsoft continue the process of giving their Hotmail client a makeover they are aiming to reel in some new users as they ready an advertising campaign set to hit London this week.

“The new busy” advertising campaign will help push Microsoft’s web-mail service as it highlights some of the new time saving features that are characterising the new service.

The adverts will run on black cabs, buses and billboards around the capital.

The advertising campaign will consist of more than just simple images, however, as Microsoft will be employing a number of initiatives in the form of interactive areas for the public to enjoy in Broadgate and Canary Wharf.

These areas will be aimed at showing off the services new time saving features whilst offering random suggestions as to what could be done with the time gained.

Product manager at Hotmail, Fiona Fyfe commented:

“We live in a world where people seem busier than ever and we have been listening to our users to improve Hotmail, developing these time-saving features to make it the most efficient email service for busy people.

“Whether it’s organising events, managing commercial transactions, searching for jobs, sharing photos, or communicating with friends and family, the new Hotmail will help increase personal productivity.”

This could be a very smart advertising strategy from Microsoft and Hotmail as increasing working hours and heavy workloads influenced by the economic decline are giving people less time, any service that offers speed and efficiency will surely be welcomed with open arms by many users.

Hotmail given a makeover by Microsoft

James Oliver — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:37:13 +0000

Microsoft have announced that they are currently updating their free email service Hotmail, as they attempt to retain and possibly grow their market share over ever present rivals Yahoo! Mail and Google’s Gmail.

The changes will go live in July or August of this year and will include a host of changes including allowing users to edit or view documents using a web version of Microsoft’s Office software.

The update will also allow users of Hotmail to collaborate on documents in real-time whilst saving them in the cloud.

G-Mail, Google’s increasingly popular e-mail service already allows its users to do this through its web based set of tools, Google Documents, which offers a similar functionality to the well known non-cloud based version of Microsoft’s Office suite.

Key changes to Hotmail’s refreshed look include the addition of ‘Active View’ which is a new function that will allow users of Hotmail to preview photo attachments and view them as a slide show with just one click.

There will also be the capability to watch videos sent via links from sites such as YouTube without actually having to leave the inbox.

Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, will also be integrated into the hotmail experience allowing users to search for videos and images and then embed them into an e-mail all without leaving the e-mail client.

Microsoft have also stated that additional capabilities will be made available such as increased storage and better account protection.

Yahoo! and Bing gain more ground on Google

Andre — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:00:21 +0000

New figures released by ComScore have revealed that Yahoo! and Bing have had a good month of April as both companies have gained some ground on Google in the search engine war.

Yahoo’s market share increased by nearly 1 percent whilst Microsoft’s Bing continued to rise for the 11th month in succession.

There has been an ongoing debate amongst market analysts as to whether the rise shows the effects of the recent search deal between the two former rivals is now being felt or whether Yahoo’s gain was a result of the new features they have released for their news service.

According to tech analysts AFP, the new feature of Yahoo! News, which registers each view of a photo slideshow as a separate search query is the main reason behind the turnaround for Yahoo! as their share has rise by 0.8 percent in the last month, meaning that they now account for 17.7 percent of the lucrative search market.

ComScore, however, confirmed that these clicks are still valid as the Yahoo! News feature meets its “established criticism for counting search queries”.

“Both Yahoo! sites and Microsoft sites have experienced gains due in part to the introduction of new site navigation experiences that tie content and related search results together within several channels,” the internet research company explained.

“These features provide search results to users as they navigate through topical content.”

Google are still leading the pack of course as they hold a 64.4 percent share of the market.

But Google will be worried about the five year search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! as they have been losing ground against their closest rivals at an accelerating rate, dropping by 0.7 percent last month and 0.4 percent in February.

Microsoft announce social media aggregator Spindex

James Oliver — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:00:26 +0000

Microsoft seem to have come to the realisation that there is no competing with Social Networking giants Facebook and Twitter so they have instead announce a tool that is able to aggregate all of a users social media activity into one place.

Named Spindex the service works in a similar way to products such as FriendFeed and runs with the slogan “Make sense of your social overload.”

The main aim is to show users all activity across each of the Social Networking sites that they are registered with thus avoiding the annoying task of having to log into each of your accounts individually.

Lili Cheng, General Manager of Microsoft Fuse Labs wrote:

“Spindex, which we’re making available in early technical preview form, aggregates your social streams (Facebook, Twitter, Bing, etc.), making it simple for you to find what’s new, see personalized trending topics, and generally make the most of the time you spend being social on the Web.”

Microsoft’s Fuse Labs is the company’s short term centre for innovation having recently launched a Bing-Twitter mash up to enable users to see where their friends are tweeting. They have been busy of late having released a product for Microsoft Office 2010 that can integrate social media into outlook and a tool to integrate documents completely into Facebook.

It would seem that Microsoft are subscribing to the age old prophecy ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ as they habitually team with Facebook and Twitter rather than competing directly against them.

A trip to the Spindex website gives a little more information as to what exactly the service does:

“Allows you to access and interact with your social networks, see trends from your friends, and see related info from Bing on literally everything you click on. Spindex proactively finds useful articles and information based on your interest in your friends’ messages and comments.”

It is only available as a technical preview to those at the web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco but should be on general release later in the year.

Google Chrome gaining on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer

Andre — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:33:39 +0000

Recent results for internet browser use read well for competitors of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with Google and their Chrome browser coming off best.

Although Internet Explorer 8 has approximately a quarter of the market all to itself Netmarketshare are reporting that 59.95% of the market are currently using any version of the browser, meaning that quite a significant number of users are still using older versions of Microsoft’s browser.

Nothing much has changed for Mozilla and their Firefox browser who have stagnated at 24.59% of the market share, the same amount they have had for the last year.

The biggest increase comes from Google’s Chrome browser which has made quite a significant jump in the past year from 1.79% to 6.75% of the market share.

Internet Explorer has been on a steady decline since 2002 but it has undergone its most significant drop in users more recently losing 8% of their market share since April 2009.

It is no coincidence that this loss of users coincides with the vastly increased awareness of alternative browsers for internet users. The main cause of this was the new addition of the ‘browser ballot’ in Europe which has forced Microsoft to give users of their Windows operating system a choice of which browser they would like to use.

Other factors that have pushed the decline in users of Internet Explorer include Google’s rigorous advertising campaign for their Chrome browser and the rise of popular new upstart browser Opera.

This news will not be received well by Microsoft, expect to see some sort of update to their browser soon as they attempt to hold on to the market share that they still have left.

Yahoo! gains exclusive Premier League Highlights

Matt Thomas — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:31:06 +0000

Yahoo! have scored a major coup in their battle with Google and Microsoft by landing an exclusive deal with the Premier League to feature highlights of the games online in a deal that will run for customary 3 year period until 2013.

Under the terms of their agreement Yahoo! will feature 5 minute highlight reels of each match on their UK website Yahoo.co.uk, the company will also have the rights to syndicate the content to other parties.

The deal is a major coup for the company as it puts them right at the epicentre of online football content in the UK, an extremely lucrative marker that puts Yahoo! in a rather enviable position.

The search engine based company will also be able to create targeted advertisement packages when they are distributing their content to major brands.

European Managing Director for Yahoo!, Rich Riley, stated: “The acquisition of Premier League rights shows how serious Yahoo! is about providing the best in video content for our both our users and advertisers.

“Sport is a passion for our target audiences and the Premier League rights are a key part of our efforts to build on Yahoo!’s reputation for engaging, original content.”

The agreement should push Yahoo! to further their online presence and capitalise on their recent profitability.

The deal will end BSKYB’s recent three year deal with the Premier League that proved to be a great success for the company, Yahoo! hope to achieve a similar sort of popularity with their version of the highlights.

Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, commented: “The way fans access Barclays Premier League action is growing ever more diverse and sophisticated. The online highlights package is an important medium for supporters of all our clubs to be able to follow match action.

“Yahoo! has a great reputation and presence in new media and we are pleased to welcome them as a Premier League rights holder. I am sure they will do a fantastic job in reaching the widest possible online audience over the next three seasons.”

Along with their recent announcement of a healthy profit for the year so far, this announcement would appear to have put Yahoo! on course for a very good year.

Facebook and Microsoft announce launch of Docs.com

Jenny Sanderson — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 12:51:51 +0000

In response to Google’s recent release of their updated “Google Docs” office suite program, Microsoft and Facebook have joint forces to create a rival online document- sharing service that suspiciously looks a lot like Google’s mew software.

The new site known as “Docs.com” went live this week at Facebook’s F8 conference in San Francisco along with the social networking sites announcement of their new social plug-ins as they attempt to connect with other third party internet sites.

The all new website will allow Facebook users to log in via their new ‘connect’ service; once in, they will be able to share, edit and create Microsoft Office documents including Word and Excel with any of their friends on Facebook.

New or edited documents will then show up in a users news feed in the same manor was pictures and status updates.

The service has not been perfected and is still in a beta testing stage at the moment.

The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise as rumours have been circulating on the web that Microsoft would be launching their own document sharing service later on in the year. However, Docs.com gives Microsoft a chance to test the technology that they are likely to use for their own service within Facebook’s walls.

This announcement may worry Google who have been working hard at pushing Google Apps and their new version of cloud computing to businesses both big and small. As seems to be the trend this year none of the big internet based companies are letting their rivals get too far ahead of them and this can only be good for the users.

‘Fix it’ program released by Microsoft

Andy Russell — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:23:52 +0000

Microsoft have given a major helping hand to Windows users this week by releasing an all new version of its “fix it” software designed to keep an eye on a PC and repair common faults automatically with no fuss (apparently).

The software works by adding the automatic diagnostics system found in Windows 7 to older versions of Microsoft’s operating systems.

Although the full version of the software is not out just yet it is available now as a beta or trial version, intended primarily for XP and Vista users, it can be downloaded from Microsoft’s support page, XP users must ensure that they are running service pack 3 in order to use it.

The package sounds like it is quite advanced for free software, it attempts to anticipate how any security updates will affect a PC before the user actually installs them, stopping any un-necessary files being installed.

Once it has been installed, the software continuously gets updates about known issues within Windows or even with any of the devices attached to the computer. Once a fix becomes available the program will tell users that they are ready to be installed.

The software comes ready with over 300 of the most widely encountered problems that may stop Windows working as it should, most Windows users are surely familiar with many of these.

Another bonus from the free software is that once downloaded it can be installed and used on numerous computers, the full release should be on the way soon.

Google take on the mighty Microsoft Office

Andre — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:55:26 +0000

Google has undergone a major overhaul of its suite of business management applications (Google Apps) in order to provide a rival to Microsoft Office 2010 which is set to be released in the coming months.

With the imminent arrival of Microsoft’s new office suite, Google have decided to update their own ‘Office suite’ with the view of taking users away from Microsoft.

The dominance of Microsoft’s Office suite speaks for itself in that many people are not even aware that Google has one of their own and pretty much every office and home in the land use Microsoft’s business suite. Much like Google’s attempt to take on Internet Explorer with Chrome, Google have shown a fearless and confident approach with their products of late.

New features include enhanced collaboration tools which will allow up to 50 users at a time to work on the same document whilst being able to see the changes that others are making as they make them. Vastly improved support for imported documents was also added as well as the ability to drag and drop spread sheets.

Google are attempting to hook users in by claiming that their software is significantly cheaper than Microsoft’s at £33 per user, per year.

“When they come knocking saying that you need to upgrade to Office 2010, you should know that you now have a choice, a viable replacement for the vast majority of your users,” said Anil Sabharwal, product manager of Google Apps.

The update for Google Apps is available now whereas Microsoft Office 2010 arrives in summer.

Facebook status updates added to Yahoo mail

Andre — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:37:51 +0000

The injection of social networking services into their own products seems to be a common theme amongst the internet’s big players. The integration of these kinds of services has become more and more common this year as ‘the big three’ (Yahoo, Microsoft and Google) all look to reach out to the burgeoning social networking community.

As of this week Yahoo mail users will be able to update their Facebook status from their Yahoo mail-inbox (as opposed to just going to the Facebook site and doing it there). They will also have the privilege of logging into their Facebook account from the Yahoo mail homepage, this will allow them to click through to their profiles or those of their friends.

This latest update should prove to be beneficial both for Yahoo and Facebook. Yahoo mail is the most popular and widely used e-mail client on the internet according to statistics fanatics Comscore. Therefore all those people that cannot seem to get enough of Facebook will be able to access and keep an eye on it whilst checking their e-mails meaning more time spent on Yahoo and more click-through’s from Yahoo to Facebook.

Much like Microsoft, Yahoo had been pushing users to use their service as a platform for social networking but the popularity of Facebook has negated this and they are both now integrating external social networking companies into their services.

Social media is evidently a priority for Yahoo in 2010 and they have promised to unveil even more features later on in the year.

Facebook and Microsoft shake hands on new deal

Matt Thomas — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:37:41 +0000

Two giants of the online world, Microsoft and Facebook, have come together to form a mutually beneficial agreement. The companies have decided to revise their search pact into a global deal. This would mean that the social networking behemoth Facebook will sell its own advertisements and receive more of Bing’s features on its web results.

The new deal will allow Facebook users to receive the full-featured version of Bing beyond links for the site’s web search. The deal is seen as more of a ‘global pact’ that will bring Bing to Facebook users abroad, and Facebook will in turn sell its own display ads.

Jon Tinter – General Manager at Bing outlined the thinking behind the new deal:

“We have deepened our joint work together on web search to provide even more compelling experiences to Facebook users with Bing. As part of this expanded cooperation in search, our two companies will soon provide Facebook users with a more complete search experience by providing full access to great Bing features beyond a set of links, including richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions.”

He added: “Second, we are extending our cooperation outside the US, bringing the Bing-Facebook search integration to the more than 400 million people using Facebook around the world.”

Facebook and Microsoft have teamed up in the past and appear to have quite a friendly relationship that will surely only benefit us as users.