Agriya

Google has unveiled an experimental news reading service called Fast Flip from its lab. Krishna Bharat, the engineer who created Google News, describes it on the Google News blog as follows –

“Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers.” He adds, “As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting.”

Fast Flip is designed to drive traffic and revenue to online news sites, for supporting news publishers facing financial trouble. Some three dozen publishers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and sibling Newsweek, Salon and The Daily Beast have agreed to use their site content with logos and graphical images.

People surfing the corresponding page can flip through content quickly, and move to the original site by clicking on the image. Visitors can sort out news under recent, most viewed, recommended and headlines, and see news under various sections like Politics, Business, Sports, Entertainment etc. Also users can watch news based on sources.

Apart from helping the news industry by driving traffic to their site, Google has also promised to share their revenue from contextual advertising.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Aaron Boodman, the Google engineer who oversees the extensions work, has announced in the Chromium blog that in the latest update of Chrome, extensions will be on by default on Google Chrome’s developer channel which is one of the top-requested features of Google Chrome’s users.

Extensions are small programs that are added to Google Chrome to modify existing features and customize the way it works. From today, all developers in Google Chrome will get extension support enabled by default which was previously hidden behind the developer flag.

Boodman explains this clearly in the blog – “Removing the flag is the first step in our launch process, and it means we’re ready for a few more people to start using extensions– the kind of adventurous people who populate the dev channel. For this release, we focused on getting most of the basic infrastructure and security pieces in place, in particular our new permission system. However, you should still be cautious and only install extensions from developers you trust.” As he says, a developer has to be cautious while installing extensions from a third party.

Visit this page to download the dev channel.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Google has released its newest project for general public testing and is still waiting to be launched. Nicknamed “Google Caffeine”, it includes crawling, indexing, and ranking changes which appears to be replacing the existing Google search engine. Unlike Google’s previous project- Search Mash, the latest search engine contains a Developer preview which requests webmasters and power searchers to try it and give them some form of feedback. While Microsoft’s Bing contains changes that are user interface related, most of the changes Google has incorporated are infrastructure related and this is very evident in the search results.

Surprisingly the layout of all the search results has also been modified. Initially searching for a specific topic would produce a bunch of related links and results, whereas the Google caffeine now has a specific format. It first gives text related results for the particular topic in question, and then follows it up with videos and finally links which contain images of that topic. So in short a specific issue is not only provided with pages and pages filled with detailed information but halfway down, the page is supplemented with videos and images. This expands the vistas available for search engine results and opens up new opportunities for search engine optimization.

“Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve,” Google’s head of Webspam, Matt Cutts said. This is Google’s latest initiative to display its relentless push to improve the quality of its service. “Google has let Caffeine quietly slip out. It talked about vertical specific searches while quietly doubling the speed and starts introducing real-time results and news feeds,” said Martin McNulty of the search marketing specialist Trafficbroker. With the feedback it seems to be getting, Google’s Caffeine is definitely the next platform for sites to gain leverage from and ensure they have high page ranks by filling their websites with the right amount of content and adding a visual flavour to their products.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The entire field of search engines was taken over after the emergence of Google. Primarily flourishing because of its strong networking and extensive data which it provides to its users, Google has surpassed all its competitors in quality and quantity when it comes to the usage of search engines. With Google dominating the entire sector of search engines, it has been considered quite an impossible task to match the levels of delivery Google provides. Microsoft Bing has managed to finally break these ideals and with all the advertisements it has made, seems to show a lot of promise.

Industry experts on the other hand have stated that Google has not had a realistic competitor for years and for Bing to attain the quality and popularity that Google has established will also take time. Due to this Google has been able to give time to its smaller projects like Chrome OS, Google wave and several others. If by any chance Bing is seen to show stable growth and attains popularity among the masses, Google will release several other advanced features similar to its launch of the “Show options” feature that will once again overthrow any possible competitor.

All the same with all the advancements Microsoft has displayed many companies are looking to optimize their sites with Bing. Microsoft also launched a PDF called “Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters“ which essentially states that all sites should continue with their solid regular practices which they have been using to optimize their ranks through SEO techniques and this will work well even for Bing. Some of them include using keywords like titles and meta descriptions for every page on the site, using keyword oriented and relevant URLs, themes per page in context and in relation with your keywords, submission of an XML sitemap and your site to Bing.

Ultimately there is a lot more to effective SEOs like the quality of your inbound links, along with other standard SEO best practices play significant roles and any special initiatives your site has taken to increase page ranks will also prove useful in Bing. It has also been reported that Bing is increasing its focus on local results than Google. So not only does increasing quality of your meta descriptions along with the regular SEO practices play a role, but having a unique content to attract consumers will all be picked up by Bing thereby giving you a direct leverage to increase your page ranks.

Microsoft Bing has established itself as one of Google’s most challenging competitors but whether it will be able to deliver on all its expectations and stand the test of time can be determined only based on its performance in the forthcoming years.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Today many webmasters are using different strategies to bring loads of traffic to their site. One of the main strategies is online banner advertisement. It helps webmasters advertise their list of products and services in an effective way, and promote their business. They can also gain brand awareness in the market place and stay ahead of competitors.

Webmaster tools portal offers free webmaster tools to help everyone maintain their websites without spending much on expensive software. Now it has added a new tool to its kit known as online banner generator tool. The tool will allow webmasters to create 468×60 sized banners with the ability to include clipart and flash in a matter of minutes.

In this tough economic situation, no one is ready to spend extra money to buy expensive software. The great news is you can get the tool at zero cost. There is no need to hire a person to create a banner; with the banner generator tool, webmasters can create a quality and appealing banner like a professional and promote their products and services easily.

“With this latest addition to our tools library, webmasters will have an easy way to create banners online that are quality and require no training or expensive software.” the company’s manager Ted Stevenson, says.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Flickr, a photo sharing site is like a heaven for all media lovers where, they can browse, upload, tag and share their favorite photos. With Flickr you can upload thousands of pictures from your hard disk and share them worldwide.

Recently Flickr has redesigned its search result page to make people browse through the billions of photos and videos on Flickr without any difficulty. Here is a small recap on the redesign search result page.

The view button at the top of the search result page will enable you to see images in different formats and sizes like small, medium, detail and slideshow. Just clicking the ‘I’ icon on the thumbnails of small and medium views, will get more information about a particular photo and video like total views, comments, clickable tags and user information without having to leave the search result page.

Also the links related to your current search will be displayed at the right side menu of the Flickr search result page. These links are purely based on how Flickr users have tagged their photos and included more information like places where the photo is taken.

Additionally, you will be able to see related image options in the search result page. The team at Flicker has done a great job by redesigning the search result page. The company blog states that you can expect more excellent features in the search result page to give Flickr a smarter look.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The recent buzz in the net world is the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal according to which Microsoft will integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its search engine Bing and Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Through the deal, Microsoft has taken a brilliant move to capture the search market.

According to figures released by Hitwise last month, Microsoft’s search market share will rise to around 21.5% or roughly one quarter of Google’s share. Ergo, SEO people have to concentrate on Bing while promoting their clients’ sites for reaching all the net surfers.

When we focus on search algorithm, it is clear that Bing concentrates on keyword placement in the sub or root whereas Google focuses on exact keyword matches. By default, Bing’s results are richer than Google and Yahoo. It is more likely that the market for search engine Bing will expand.

If you don’t have an account with the Bing webmaster tool, it is time to start your account and learn the difference between Bing and Google to optimize your site for Bing.

Even if Bing does not overtake its rival Google, it will be the second largest search engine. Hence you have to work for Bing to reach global audiences irrespective of search engines used. Obviously the changes will not take place overnight, but potentially Google could have a much bigger, consolidated competitor in the near future.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Recently, Firefox has placed the initial Windows theme based mockups for Firefox 4.0 in its wiki page. As we have a look at the mockup, it looks like Google Chrome. I think the simple design of Google Chrome has greatly influenced the Firefox development team.

In the proposed design, the rarely called out actions like menu bar, home icon and status bar are removed which gives a clean and clear look for the browser ( as desired by user). The combo Stop/Refresh/Go button is the brilliant idea. By removing all the undesirable options, the actual web space is increased.

It proposes two primary designs: tabs-on-bottom (as in current firefox) and tabs-on-top (which resemble Google Chrome). The tabs-on-top version hides the title bar which has less importance among the net users. Anyway it is better to offer both the designs with an option for users to choose between the two as some users may need to have tabs in close proximity while others need to access the menu items quickly.

It has summarized the pros and cons of the two designs in its wiki as:

Positives:
- Save Vertical Space
- Efficiency/Remove Visual Complexity – Right now the tabs have to be connected to something. So we are adding an extra visual element for them to connect to.
- Shorter Mouse Distance to Page Controls

Negatives:
- Breaks Consistency/Familiarity – Moving things that confuse existing users.
- Title is MIA – With the space removed from the titlebar you only get the truncated version in the tab.
- Longer Mouse Distance to Tabs – Takes longer to mouse to a tab.
- Lost Space – Sandwiched in between the application icon and the window widgets you lose some space.

As a Firefox lover, I am looking forward for the release of Firefox 4.0 with a brand new design and exciting features.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Webmaster tools are the great gifts from Google for webmasters. It helps them to analyze their website for promoting it in the right manner. In order to help webmasters manage their site easily, the team of Google webmaster tools has just released an update on Webmaster Tools. For every update they have code names, this time they named their current update “Summer Shine”.

Google webmaster tools were updated with four new features. Here is the summary of the new features of Google webmaster tools.

Search your domains

Once you login to Google’s webmaster tools, the site selector will list all verified sites that you own and allows you to search for them quickly and easily. Remember only the verified sites will be listed and available here.

Block Non-home page site links

This feature will enable you to block non-home page site links in the Google search engine results page. For instance, if you have links in the site’s interior pages such as news, latest additions, music, photography, movies etc and and you want to block the display of the specific page’s site link like www.example.com/photography, you can do it with this feature.

URL removal requests of your site

In the updated version, if any webmaster has removed your site URL, you can get the URL removal request and revoke it easily. In the past, if your site URL had been removed by them by mistake, it will be difficult to undo the request.

Improved navigation on the home page

Google has modified its homepage to make users identify the sites that have been verified and the sites that have not been verified.

Lets hope the “summer shine” updates will be useful for webmasters. Let’s celebrate this by updating the new version.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

One of the most used tools technology has provided us with is the concept of search engines. Business people, writers, teachers, students, and people from all facets use search engines. The most used and popular software is that of Google but one of the latest products emerged is that of Sig.ma.

This software is a tool to explore and leverage the Web of Data. At any time, information in Sigma is likely to come from multiple, unrelated Web sites – potentially any web site that embeds information in RDF, RDFa or Microformats .

Normally what search engines do is to provide any kind of information related to the data typed in which results in a lot of unwanted information being provided. The user then needs to clear the unnecessary material and select the data which is useful. In the case of sigma, it puts together a series of related inputs regarding that particular query and puts it to together as a single data sample and presents it. It currently uses mostly Yahoo! BOSS and Sindice. It primarily is used to put together that collection of data fragments (which they call a ’sigma’) into a permanent URL. This in turn can then sent around or embedded as an iframe in another web page.

One of the major disadvantages of software like this is the fact that more time is spent to remove unnecessary data that the user is not interested in. So when the user requests a specific piece of data he spends a lot of time cutting and editing the irrelevant material. And moreover, one would definitely not be interested in squandering his time clearing up another person’s messy material when he needs some information from a search engine. Sig.ma on the other hand, emerged for the sole purpose to enable people to actually obtain the information they were looking for than for just publishing papers about potential Utopian scenarios. So in that regard sig.ma was created with a lot of potential, and definitely will play an integral role in the technology of search engines by providing efficient semantic information mashup.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites