Silverlight Cream for January 11, 2011 -- #1024

1,000 blogposts is quite a few, but to die-hard geeks, 1000 isn't the number... 1K is the number, and today is my 1K blogpost! I've been working up to this for at least 11 months. Way back at MIX10, I approached some vendors about an idea I had. A month ago I contacted them and others, and everyone I contacted was very generous and supportive of my idea. My idea was not to run a contest, but blog as normal, and whoever ended up on my 1K post would get some swag... and I set a cut-off at 13 posts. So... blogging normally, I had some submittals, and then ran my normal process to pick up the next posts until I hit a total of 13. To provide a distribution channel for the swag, everyone on the list, please send me your snail mail (T-shirts) and email (licenses) addresses as soon as possible.
I'd like to thank the following generous sponsors for their contributions to my fun (in alphabetic order): and Rachel Hawley for contributing 4 Silverlight control sets First Floor Software and Koen Zwikstra for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Spy and Sara Faatz/Jason Beres for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Data Visualization controls and Svetla Stoycheva for contributing T-Shirts for everyone on the post and Ina Tontcheva for contributing 13 licenses for RadControls for Silverlight + RadControls for Windows Phone and Charlene Kozlan for contributing 1 combopack standard, 2 DataGrid for Silverlight, and 2 Listbox for Silverlight Standard
And now finally...in this Issue: Nigel Sampson, Jeremy Likness, Dan Wahlin, Kunal Chowdhurry, Alex Knight, Wei-Meng Lee, Michael Crump, Jesse Liberty, Peter Kuhn, Michael Washington, Tau Sick, Max Paulousky, Damian Schenkelman

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Above the Fold:

Silverlight:	'Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties' Dan Wahlin
WP7:	'Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers' Nigel Sampson
Expression Blend:	'PathListBox: making data look cool' Alex Knight

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From SilverlightCream.com:

Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers

Nigel Sampson blogged about WP7 Gestures, the Toolkit, and using Gestures as Triggers, and actually makes it looks simple :)

Jounce Part 9: Static and Dynamic Module Management

Jeremy Likness has episode 9 of his explanation of his MVVM framework, Jounce, up... and a big discussion of Modules and Module Management from a Jounce perspective.

Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties

Dan Wahlin takes a page from one of his teaching opportunities, and shares his knowledge of Dependency Properties with us... beginning with what they are, defining them in code, and demonstrating their use.

Customizing Silverlight ChildWindow Style using Blend

Kunal Chowdhurry has a great post up about getting your Child Windows to match the look & feel of the rest of youra app... plus a bunch of Blend goodness thrown in.

PathListBox: making data look cool

File this post by Alex Knight in the 'holy crap' file along with the others in this series! ... just check out that cool Ticker Style Path ListBox at the top of the blog... too cool!

Web Access in Windows Phone 7 Apps

Wei-Meng Lee has the 3rd part of his series on WP7 development up and in this one is discussing Web Access... I mean *discussing* it... tons of detail, code, and explanation... great post.

Prevent your Silverlight XAP file from caching in your browser.

Michael Crump helps relieve stress on Silverlight developers everywhere by exploring how to avoid caching of your XAP in the browser...

(WPFS) MVVM Light Toolkit: Soup To Nuts Part I

Jesse Liberty continues his Windows Phone from Scratch series with a new segment exploring Laurent Bugnion's MVVMLight Toolkit beginning with acquiring and installing the toolkit, then proceeds to discuss linking the View and ViewModel, the ViewModel Locator, and page navigation.

Silverlight: Making a DateTimePicker

Peter Kuhn attacks a problem that crops up on the forums a lot -- a DateTimePicker control for Silverlight... following the 'It's so simple to build one yourself' advice, he did so, and provides the code for all of us!

Windows Phone 7 Animated Button Press

Michael Washington took exception to button presses that gave no visual feedback and produced a behavior that does just that.

Using TweetSharp in a Windows Phone 7 app

Tau Sick demonstrates using TweetSharp to put a twitter feed into a WP7 app, as he did in 'Hangover Helper'... all the instructions from getting Tweeetshaprt to the code necessary.

Bindable Application Bar Extensions for Windows Phone 7

Max Paulousky has a post discussing some real extensions to the ApplicationBar for WP7.. he begins with a bindable application bar by Nicolas Humann that I've missed, probably because his blog is in French... and extends it to allow using DelegateCommand.

How to: Load Prism modules packaged in a separate XAP file in an OOB application

Damian Schenkelman posts about Prism, AppModules in separate XAPs and running OOB... if you've tried this, you know it's a hassle.. Damian has the solution.

Stay in the 'Light!

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A Decade in Search

The top 10 searches of 2001 provided a telling snapshot of the times. Yahoo! users wanted to know about file sharing, car racing, and taxes with queries for Napster, NASCAR, and the IRS taking positions No. 4, No. 9, and No. 10. The most poignant entry on the list, World Trade Center, captured a national tragedy in just three words. Its placement at No. 6, shows just how hungry searchers were for details, information, and insight on the events of 9/11. Not until the BP oil spill took the No. 1 spot in 2010 would another newsworthy event appear on the top 10 list.

But searchers at the start of the millennium also craved entertainment, which didn’t slow down. PlayStation 2 topped the most-searched list in both 2001 and 2002 while the smackdown shenanigans of the WWE (then the WWF) gave it a place on the most-searched list starting in 2001 and almost every year thereafter. And though we could turn down the sound, we couldn’t look away from American Idol – one of the most-searched shows for 5 out of the past 10 years.

When it came to celebrity searches, our leading ladies shined throughout the decade. The women who best captured the public’s – and paparazzi’s – attention included Pamela Anderson (No. 9 in 2006), Paris Hilton (who made the list from 2003-2007), and the Jessicas: Simpson (list-maker from 2004-2006) and Alba (on the list 2007-2008). Famous females dominated the most-searched list in 2010 with Lady Gaga making her debut at No. 5, joining a top-ten sisterhood that included Miley Cyrus (No. 3), Kim Kardashian (No. 4) and Megan Fox (No. 7).

That’s not to say there was no place for men in the top 10. The guys held their own with Eminem placing solidly in 2002, 2003, and 2005, 50 Cent reaching No. 2 in 2002, and teen-heartthrob Justin Bieber emoting his way to No. 8 in 2010. Barak Obama became the first politician to make the list in 2008. Not real? Not a problem. Fictional favorite Harry Potter made the list in 2001, 2003 and 2004.

But the people’s-choice-award for celebrity search belongs to Britney Spears, who ranked somewhere in the top 10 every year since 2001. Britney had a quiet year in 2010 and slipped to the bottom of the list, but the pop princess plans to unveil a new album in 2011, so check back in December 2011 to see if she’s continued her steady reign over search.

While some our most popular questions have stayed the same over the years, the answers – and how we get them – have seen some big changes since 2001. Innovative features and Quick Apps now bring the information you’re seeking within the search page, rather than just giving you a list of links. You can even Sketch-a-Search! Today’s Yahoo! searchers don’t have to rely on PCs; mobile devices now let you search on the go, delivering snack-sized bites of information – like scores, stats, and song lyrics – perfect for the top 3 2010 searches on mobile: NFL, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna.

The Yahoo! Search team celebrates your searches all year long and we want to make sure you find the right information at the right time in 2011. Maybe your favorite search will make our next top 10 list!

ShareThis

7 Most Interesting Viral Videos of All Times

Instead of spending all my time writing thousands of words worth of explaining each of these videos I thought I would spend more time finding some of the best/interesting/funniest viral videos out there to this date. Some are from ad agencies, some from users optimised by companies. Enjoy!

1. Brick Thief

An interesting one to start off the post this one and it is there to show the people of the world just what can be done with a few Lego bricks. Have a watch and see for yourself, if only I could make half the things this guy could make!

2. Banned Xbox 360 Ad

This will always be a favourite of mine this is simply because it was around the time the Xbox 360 was first released. I was doing some heavy research at the time to see if the system was worth getting and it is when I came across this video. Although it was banned (for obvious reasons?) it is hilarious and really shows how brilliant Microsoft advertising can be. This is a really big shout out to gamers including the lag aspect right at the end. I wouldn’t say this convinced me to buy the console as I loved the original Xbox but let’s just say this didn’t harm the decision process.

3. Coke + Mentos

Although this campaign was not originally designed for either Coke or Mentos it is something that both took on with open arms when they saw how well it was doing, generating a big increase in sales for both Coca Cola and Mentos and resulting in many a botched test at home I am sure, this video takes the theory to the extreme!

4. John West Salmon

Using the power of Jim Henson’s creature creative skills and a very clever advertising agency this piece was thrown together. I remember watching this one on television for the first time and heading out to buy this salmon the next day. Sure I buy salmon anyway but I wouldn’t have brought this brand if it wasn’t for the awesome advert.

5. Will It Blend?

Collectively these videos have become one of the most successful marketing campaigns on the net. I certainly expect these blenders to be the biggest selling blender in the world now. Of course although the videos are very dangerous and they do say you shouldn’t try it at home I am sure it has resulted in a few people trying it in their homes! The clever thing about this is that in the background they have safe blended videos like the Avocado and other fruits and vegetables.

6. Wedding Entrance

This video was put together by the creative minds of a family, nothing more, and nothing less. Instead of taking the song off YouTube (something owners can do) Sony decided to use the popularity of the video to sell more Chris Brown records, it worked. Take a look at the number of views on this video. Even if a small proportion of the people that have seen this brought just the single you are looking at millions that wouldn’t have been made otherwise.

7. 7 Billion

Ending on something to think about I think with this National Geographic video. (Coincidently the 7^th video on the list) The figure that really stands out above everything else is the fact that all of us put together could fit inside LA. It really does put things into perspective.

These are by no means the defined list of successful viral campaigns out there but they are ones that have either made me laugh or read further into what it was talking about. If you have anything to add to the post then let me know in the comments!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

7 Most Interesting Viral Videos of All Times

Weekly Search & Social News: 01/25/2011

Hello and welcom back to ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘. While there was a lot of good posts last week, there was also a fair bit of drama, animosity and oddities as well. I found it kinda odd since the search world had been fairly calm the last few months. Everyone get’s grumpy in January? Dunno…

I hope this edition finds you well, let’s get it on!

Lead Story

Google seeks to clean up the SERPs!

Over the last while there has been plenty of buzz around the quality of the SERPs. This is starting to hit a bit more mainstream, it’s nothing really knew in the SEO space (we have Aaron Wall and Michael Van Der Mar dontcha know).

Is it REALLY getting worse? Or is there just an expectation out there for it to get better? I’d have to imagine as Google and the internet itself grows, there are going to be more and more spammy sites (and tactics) to deal with.

And of course, getting into new signals such as social, sure ain’t going to make it any easier.

Fear not, super-Matt is on the job!

• Google’s blog post
  


• Google targeting content farms


• Relevancy Changes at Google
  


• What is a content farm?

It is some interesting news and I am sure a LOT of SEOs would be happy to see the thin-content spammy sites given the true value of what they’re worth. How effective will this be?

Is this just lip-service from Google given the recent spate of public grumbling? Not sure, time will tell…

And now, the rest of the week’s news…

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents -

Talk of the Town

The drama returns!! Long time readers know of my love of the drama’s that spark up in the industry from time to time. Over the last few months, things have been pretty damned quiet. But no more… so here’s some interesting rants from the week past; SEO Karma: What Goes Around Comes Around – Jessica highlighted a few unsavory moments of late and then opened the can of worms that is; SEO Ethics. Black Magic SEO – Alan goes on a bit of a tangent started by some recent advice coming out of Umoz (easy pickins methinks). Good post and the comments are equally entertaining. SEOs: Google is not your friend – in this one Barry (Adams) talks about the adversarial relationships between SEOs and search engines. Something I’ve written on in the past, I shall let you decide (there’s a reason it’s called; adversarial information retrieval). Are You A Link Loud Mouth? – this time out it is the uber-fabulous Debra Mastaler whom just couldn’t take it anymore and smashed up a recent SEW post. Particularly enjoyed this one. Myths, BS and FUD, Oh My! – and last but not least, Doc Sheldon also lashes out at the many myths and other crud dolled out in the SEO space. Meoooow.. hissss…. And while not entirely Drama, it was interesting to watch this one; First off there were a couple posts; Guide to Competitive Backlink Analysis, (via the Moz) and Performing a Competitive Link Analysis, (via Search News Central). Which, not by design, was beat up on a bit by Michael (Martinez) with; Why competitive link analysis wastes your time. And that, was retorted with a post from Wiep entitled; Why a Link Analysis is Anything But a Waste of Time Anyway, that’s if for; As The Search World Turns (seriously, it’s fun stuff). Let’s get back to the rest of the news from the week shall we? Getting a grip on social signals in search – was a post from yours truly that was a bit of an extension on last week’s ‘Lead Story’. What exactly IS the value from social in SEO? Take a ride along to find out. How to Get Links from Journalists – was an interesting post from Nichlola Stott (via Search Engine Watch) that looks a journo relations. Important stuff worth reading. On a side note, don’t ‘settle’ for a citation. Why? Because non-link citations are becoming more important these days – so it’s just FINE to have them. Enterprise SEO: 5 Tips To Create A Governance System – What can I say? If you’ve ever worked corporate or large scale SEO, you will enjoy this one. Even if you haven’t, still a good read. I personally know this pain all to well and concur with many of the points in it. Study: Google “Favors” Itself Only 19% Of The Time – some great analysis of a recent study done that (tries) to show Google results are biased towards themselves. Interesting the author of the study has worked for Bing and has a lawsuit against Google… LOL. Aaron also had some input with; How To Measure Bias In Google’s Results SEO Gets Dissed by CBS TV Series “The Good Wife” – Yea? Well screw you too!! hee hee… Talking Search with Danny Sullivan – last week the gang from Search Geeks Speak (SEO Dojo Radio) did an interview with Danny Sullivan. Some interesting stuff and Danny is always an entertaining listen.

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents -

Search Geek Central

Search Geek Goodies Irony, Thy Name is Microsoft – SEO by the Sea Bing Soon To Power Yahoo UK Search Results? – SER Google’s Show More Results (Plusbox) Patent – SEO by the Sea Whats in a name – SNC Web Search: How much are real time search queries worth? – Jim Jansen Backlink Analysis: Root Domains vs Total Links – Shimon Sandler Indexation Problems: Diagnosis using Google Webmaster Tools – Distilled blog How Best to Use Links for SEO? – SEO Theory 6 Ways to Help Non-SEOs Spot Link Opportunities – SEP SEO Mistakes That Just Make You Look Dumb, – Outspoken Media A Geek’s Guide to SEO for Joomla CMS – SNC

Social Search Quora vs Yahoo Answers: Which Q&A Site is Better for Your Business? – On React Google Knol Still Alive & Fixed, But Questions Linger About Its Future – SEL Hotpot Adds Preferred Friend Filter For Location Recommendations – SEW Does Twitter have an impact on indexing speed – Holistic Search

Going Vertical Google Links To Competitors Next To YouTube Videos – SEL Can’t Reply To Google Maps Negative Reviews? You’re Not Alone - SER Loci 2010 – Matt McGee – Mike Blumenthal Ultimate Guide to YouTube Success – Web Analtics World Bing Terminates Relationship With Publisher Doing Tricky Home Page Switch – SEL Google Places to Rollout Repair Option for Merged Listings – Mike Blumenthal SearchFest 2011 Interview: Mike Blumenthal – Search Engine People Video Marketing And Video SEO Best Practices WhiteSheet – Reel SEO Google’s Eric Schmidt: “2011 All About Mobile” – SEL Confirmed: Google Readies “Google Offers” Groupon Clone – SEL Video Apps For Facebook Fan Pages: North Social Review & Special Offer – Reel SEO 7 Steps to Sexier Online Video Optimization – Ourspoken Media Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents

Videos How Personalization and Social Media Can Improve conversions Page Replaces Schmidt At Google, 2011 PageRank Update & The Whitelist Cutt’s Corner Does indexing a mobile website create a duplicate content How can an out-of-town company compete with local competitors

Weapons Linkbuilding Tools – SEO Boy Tilde Search Operator for Real Time Search – Rishi Lankin Indexation Problems: Diagnosis using Google Webmaster Tools – Distilled Google Website Optimizer: Using GWO to Boost PPC Conversions – SEJ

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents -

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Search Patents

Microsoft Using link structure for suggesting related queries Web Searching Interleaving search results Search interface for mobile devices

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/end SOSG session

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search - Going Vertical- Videos – Tools – Patents -

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Weekly Search & Social News: 01/25/2011

Search Engine News Wrap-up January 9

Happy New Year to you all! Here is this our first search engine news review of 2011:

IndexPing: A Useful Thing

Beyond Search: The free service will send an email to a Web master each time the Googlebot nuzzles that Web site.

Google News Archive Search

P Bradley: Having had a go at Big G, I’d suggest taking a look at the Google News Archive Search which is great fun. It’s a collection of hundreds of newspapers, scanned and digitised.

Musikki

P Bradley: Musikki. This is a nice search engine for musicians and bands. Nicely laid out, with comprehensive biographies, concert lists, map, Twitter references, similar/related artists, discography, photographs.

Keewl Search Engine

P Bradley: Keewl: It’s a social search engine. It has a trending option, searches the web, photos, video, news, social web, blogs and shopping.

Facebook Shutting Down Rumor Goes Viral: Site Said To Be Ending March 15, 2011

First crackpot rumor of the year. Huffington: The hot rumor — evidenced by Google Trends and gaining traction on Twitter — says that on March 15, 2011, Facebook will be closing down. Not taking a day off, not undergoing maintenance, but ending entirely.

The Big List: 168 Marketing Trends, Predictions & Resolutions For 2011

SE Land links to all the collected thoughts of experts about marketing in 2011 wrapped up in a Big List of Trends, Predictions and Resolutions.

Why you cannot reverse engineer Google’s algorithm

SEO Theory: Some people just cannot seem to learn what it means when Google says We made 400+ algorithm changes last year!

Bing Feature Update: Check your local TV listings with Bing

Bing: If you are one of those people who watch TV on an actual TV, we’re pulling in guide information to help you easily find what’s on in your area from your service provider, so you can make sure you are on the couch or setting your DVR to catch your favorite shows.

Google’s Earth Engine Imaging

SE Journal: The Earth Engine data allows access to images from over 25 years of satellite imaging, and provides all the current analysis tools that Google has developed since its launch, including some that aren’t a part of the public-facing version of the Google Earth program.

Google Adding New Spam Warnings In Webmaster Tools

SE Land: Google adds a “notice of detected unnatural links” and a separate warning about cloaking.

What are some search trends on your radar?

YouTube: Matt Cutts from Google and Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan talks about the role of social marketing and much more.

Does Google use data from social sites in ranking?

YouTube. Matt Cutts of Google says that Google does use social web reputation in ranking. See also Danny Sulivan’s article: What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?

Google tracks you. We don’t.

Duck Duck Go explains how Google track your online identity. See also SE Land: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google On Privacy With DontTrack.us

Search History Helps Convict Husband Of Wife’s Murder

SE Watch: In his appeal of the original conviction, Mark Jensen’s claim his computer use should have been protected under the Fourth Amendment – unreasonable searches – was overturned. His home computer revealed Internet searches for botulism, poisoning, pipe bombs and mercury fulminate.



Google’s Fast Flip in the Works

SE Journal: One of the more anticipated lab items is Google’s Fast Flip, which creates an automatic magazine in your browser.

Bing Maps Launches Toyota In-Car Search

SE Journal: Announced at CES and on various outside reports, Bing will be working with Toyota on its new navigation system, known as the Toyota Entune.

What Social Signals Might Search Engines Use

Graywolf: Probably the number one place you should be involved in is Twitter. It’s extremely likely that search engines are looking at who is tweeting and retweeting links that go to your website or are about your keyword. In fact you can already see this at work in the SERP’s right now.

Will Google Be Your Next Phone Carrier?

SE Journal: Report claims that Google already has all the pieces assembled to create a full-fledged cellular service company, starting today.

Google PageRank Becoming Non Exclusive, At Least The Original Patent Document

SE Roundtable: Some time in 2011 Google’s PageRank patent will become non-exclusive. And then in 2017 the patent will expire completely.

Google Vows Renewed Look At Cloaking In 2011

SE Land: Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.

Google Adds “Reading Level” Search Tool

SE Journal: Google announced on their Google for Students blog that their advanced search would be coming with a simple but incredibly useful new feature. That feature? The ability to sort and filter results by the reading level of the materials.

Alibaba Leaps Over Google To Second Place In China

Multilingual Search: Alibaba has leapt ahead of Google in terms of the share of online advertising revenue it earns in China — it’s home market. According to Analysys International, Alibaba’s Taoboa keyword advertising and the further development of its interactive advertising offer in China are the root cause of this development — rather than Google’s failure.

Russian Search Engine Yandex Begins Predicting User Intent Using Spectrum!

Multilingual Search: Leading Russian search engine Yandex, has introduced a new method of predicting user intent in order to improve the quality of its results and thereby improve relevancy.

Pandia Search Engine News Wrap-up January 16

Recent headlines from the world of search engines and the social web:

Internet 2010 in numbers

pingdom: How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there?

We’re tired of Google, it’s time for a change

State of Search: It seems history is doomed to repeat itself. Google now takes the role of the lumbering and slow-moving giant of the web, incapable of dealing with the growing mountains of webspam. (On Yandex as the next Google)

E-Books: Amazon.com Updates Kindle iPhone/iPad App with Several New/Useful Features

Resourceshelf: The version 2.5 update adds the ability to takes advantage of iOS 4’s multitasking abilities, adds support for millions of free books from various Internet sources, and adds a few minor improvements as well.



Google Hasn’t Gotten Social Right: Marissa Mayer

Google Watch: In contextual discovery, or “search without search” in [Google's] Mayer’s parlance, Google will use your location, based on the GPS in your cell phone to feed you suggestions about what to see or do, or where to eat. … For example, at a restaurant, you might see a marked-up version of a menu on your phone, based on experiences and recommendations of your friends and/or by people who go there regularly.

What’s new with dtSearch?

Beyond Search on enterprise search: Their brand boasts fifteen search options in a new rundown posted to the site. These include the Natural language type, which allows users to enter an unstructured search request in any international language, or Phrase and Phonic search choices.



European Commission Project Challenges Google Books

PC World: The European Commission is set to take on Google Books — the latest report on the Commission’s Europeana project, released on Monday, urges European Union member states to digitize collections held in all their libraries, archives, and museums.

Proximity search in Google

P Bradley: …we can use the proximity search operator AROUND(x) to work more effectively. You have to put AROUND in capitals to ensure that Google knows you want to do a proximity search, then add in the brackets with a number in there. Why Google has decided to use ‘around’ as a proximity term is a bit odd – most sensible resources would use something like NEAR instead, but that’s Google for you.

Yahoo Search Share Down in Yet Another Month, While Microsoft Bing Gains Again

BoomTown: Yahoo’s 16 percent share was down from 16.4 percent in November, which was actually down from 16.5 percent from October.

Microsoft-Yahoo! Search Alliance expands to five markets globally

Liveside: Yahoo in Australia, Brazil and Mexico is now powered by Bing. It is expected that the transition will fully complete globally by the end of 2012.

Yahoo’s Irving: “Hell Yes” Yahoo Is Committed To Flickr

SE Land: Yahoo Product Chief Blake Irving just tweeted a ringing endorsement of Flickr, the company’s photo sharing site/community. “Q. Is Yahoo! committed to Flickr? A. Hell yes we are! We love this product and team; on strategy and profitable.” See also Read Write Web: How Much is Flickr Worth to Yahoo? Not Very Much

Google Now #1 Search Engine In Czech Republic; 5 Countries To Go For Global Domination

SE Land: The Czech Republic was one of six countries where Google wasn’t the dominant search engine. ComScore doesn’t report on the Czech Republic, but the company tells us that, in the 40 or so countries where it does report, Google has less than 50% market share in these countries: Russia (where Yandex is #1), Japan (Yahoo), China (Baidu), Taiwan (Yahoo), South Korea (Naver).

Bing Adds Enhanced Auto Search

SE Journal: Microsoft has added a full automotive search page for users. This page allows users to enter whatever starting data they would prefer for key-terms, then narrow down their results based on important vehicle information — including the trim of the auto, the location, the user ratings, how many miles per gallon it receives, etc.

Google SE Watch: Buys eBook Technologies, Is Reader On Way Or Maybe GPad

Speculation that Google plans on creating an electronic book reader were given more fuel with the company’s acquisition of eBook Technologies – “a company that specializes in both hardware and content distribution for electronic readers,” IDG News Service reported.

Google Translate’s Impressive Update

SE Journal: This service allows users to quickly translate their context content into another language, with dozens of languages on the list of supported options. They’ve also brought this tool to Android devices, and a recent update is rolling out a number of new features — including the impressive “conversation mode.” This mode will allow two users to speak into the device and have the device speak a translation back.

Google Shocks Some Publishers Saying They Can’t Use AdSense With Auto Generated Content

SE Rountable: In short, Google said they do not allow sites with auto-generated or otherwise unoriginal content to participate in the AdSense program.

Mr. Cutts Goes To Washington, Testifies Google Has Integrity

SE Land: The head of Google’s search spam fighting team, Matt Cutts, is in Washington DC this week, doing an ‘educational tour’ to explain to US Federal Trade Commission members and congressional staffers that his company’s search results don’t require government regulation…’The only reasons I know of to go in and change [search rankings] manually is for security, a court order or spam,’ Cutts said. ‘It is impossible to pay for a better ranking.’

9 Tips for More Effective Facebook Marketing

SitePro News: …trying to “market on Facebook” requires good sense, strict moderation, and an understanding of how Facebook might work for marketing purposes.

Europeans Go “Fishing” For Bad Google Behavior In Anti-Trust Inquiry

SE Land: According to the NY Times, EU antitrust officials have developed a lengthy questionnaire directed to advertisers as part of its antitrust inquiry into Google’s business practices. Broadly speaking the 120 question document ’seeks to ascertain whether Google manipulated search results and used its popular platform to keep business and disadvantage rivals in online advertising and Internet search.’…However it appears to me, from looking at these few questions, that there are some assumptions and preconceptions and maybe biases about Google going in.

German Govt. Says Google Analytics Now Verboten

SE Land: German privacy officials are concerned that Google Analytics tracks web users’ IP addresses, and that could violate an individual’s privacy. According to German news site The Local, Johannes Caspar, data protection commissioner in Hamburg, told a German newspaper that tracking IP addresses of web users should be illegal. Since it’s not, German officials are threatening to levy a “steep fine” against German companies that continue to use Google Analytics. See also SE Journal:

German Officials Fight Google

Google Drops Popular Video Codec Support

SE Journal: According to a report on Tech Crunch, Google has officially announced that it will no longer be supporting the H.264 codec in its Chrome browser. Given that Chrome is now at 10% of market share in the U.S., and an even higher percent in Europe, this is no small shift for users on the whole. Currently, the H.264 codec is completely free, but there’s no guarantee that it will remain so forever; as a closed-source project that may or may not becoming commercial, it’s possible that licensing requirements will be added down the line. See also SE Watch.

Google Docs gets video playback

techradar: Although users could already share videos by uploading and downloading them in Google Docs, the new functionality allows you to play them directly from the cloud without downloading a single byte.

SEO: Quit Obsessing On Anchor Text Already

SE Watch: Turns out, much of Google’s problems started through link manipulation. Today Bing is where Google was a few years back: looking vulnerable to link spam. Google’s gotten better, to be sure, but sadly ham-fisted link spamming approaches still work (although thankfully, their effect seems to be more and more temporal).



Yandex Injects Semantics

Beyond Search: Russian Yandex’s new search engine has been dubbed ‘Spectrum’ for it’s ability to ‘read’ your mind. Spectrum uses a machine learning program that uses your previous searches as well as historic search patterns to infer what it is that you’d like on your search return.

Google Goggles Evolves, Can Now Even Solve Sudoko

Google Tutor: The new version of Goggles offers faster barcode scanning that can help you scan product barcodes or QR codes and produce relevant information without the need to tap extra buttons. See also Google Mobile Blog.

On Larry Page leading Google and other search engine news

Big search engine news this week: Google founder Larry Page takes over as CEO after Eric Schmidt.

Apart from the argument that Page now has the necessary experience to run Google (GOOG), the reason for the switch is not known. The debate has thrown up a few sensible guesses, though.

Although Schmidt has run the company through a hugely successful period, some argue 10 years is enough. Whether bringing on one of the founders of the company as new CEO will bring renewal is questionable.

One thing is certain, making Page the one powerful man at the top, may make it easier to coordinate technology and product development in this big company. It seems co-founder Sergey Brin will be allowed to be the developer he thrives being, without having any formal leadership position.

Page is facing several important challenges:

• He has to develop a coherent strategy for Google’s social media prescence. Google Buzz was a disaster.


• He has to do something to counteract the new belief that the quality of Google’s search results are deteriorating because of spam (regardless of whether this is true or not).


• He has to make a more coherent narrative about what Google is, like in “We are a search engine, not a publisher” or “We are not a monopolist” to stop countries and public authorities from attacking the company (again whether this is true or not).


• He has to make sure that there is room for young and innovative entrepreneurs, avoiding the Yahoo! trap of becoming a conservative copy cat, bleeding talent in the process.


• He has to develop a sensible response to the attempts by companies like Apple and Facebook to close of large sections of the Internet in “closed gardens”, being that the closed networks of friends at Facebook or the apps of the iPhone and the iPad. Android and Chrome may be part of the solution.

Whoa!!! Larry Page To Take Over As Google CEO

John Battelle: Google Inc. said co-founder Larry Page will replace Eric Schmidt as chief executive, a surprise change atop the Internet giant. See also SE Land: Was It Time For A Fresh Face? Thoughts On Larry Page As The New Google CEO. Here is Schmidt’s own blog post. And finally Danny Sullivan: A To Do List For Google’s New CEO Larry Page.

More search engine news headlines

And here are some of the other articles we found interesting this week:

Confirmed: Google Readies “Google Offers” Groupon Clone

SE Land: Google has confirmed that it is preparing a service called “Google Offers,” designed to compete with the popular social buying site Groupon.

Google’s Eric Schmidt: ‘2011 All About Mobile’

SE Land: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, writing in the Harvard Business Review (via RWW), says that Google’s 2011 initiatives are ‘all about mobile.’ In his short piece he explains that geolocation on smartphones enables contexual personalization and a range of new possibilities and user experiences.

Google’s Knol Seems To Be Unit Of Knowledge People Don’t Use

SE Watch: Once thought of as the Wikipedia killer – the site seems to have some spam issues and has not been updated since December 2009, according to reports.

Google NOT ruling out Chrome OS tablets

techradar: Google has been consistent in its assertions that Chrome OS – at least in its first public incarnation – is designed for small laptops and netbooks.

The Web: Why Users No Longer Matter

SE Watch: The powerful have become so powerful — monetarily and technologically — they’ve been able to dictate to us, the users, what functionality will be on their sites. Now they’re beginning to dictate how the web will be used and how it will be delivered to us.



Yahoo switches on OpenID sign ins

techradar: Yahoo has finally gone over to the OpenID system, allowing people to sign into the network with their Google and Facebook logins.

Spain To Google: Anyone Can Potentially Censor Your Index

SE Land: The Spanish Data Protection Authority is treating Google not as an intermediary but as a publisher under Spanish law. That brings with it numerous burdens and obligations that potentially create a massive legal and privacy headache for Google. A similar thing happened recently in Italy where YouTube is now being classified and treated as a conventional TV broadcaster.



Spotify closer to US launch, signs up Sony

techradar: This is great news for European music streamer company Spotify, which has been inching closer to getting its service launched in the US, expanding it beyond its current European reach.

Italy Drops Inquiry into Google News

SE Journal: In Italy, the complaints were about Google News, and specifically the inability to remove articles from Google News without also removing them from the primary search engine site. The Italian Antitrust Authority had been investigating them for this reason, but Google has now officially addressed these issues and Italy has dropped the inquiry.



Google Explains H.264 Codec Drop

SE Journal: Google says that they chose this solely because of its open nature and compatibility with HTML 5 video tag.

Real-Time Search Engine Collecta Hits Pause

SE Land: One could argue that the major search engines’ incorporation of Twitter’s feed in particular stole much of the thunder of specialized search engines such as Collecta, Topsy, Crowdeye and OneRiot.

Google Opens Up Downloads To Iran But Blocks Iranian Government

SE Land: Google announced that after years of not allowing those in Iran to download their software, Google has opened up downloads of their Google Earth, Picasa and Chrome applications.

Bing Terminates Relationship With Publisher Doing Tricky Home Page Switch

SE Land: The site, Make-My-Baby.com, now appears to have gone down. But earlier it was suggesting that people needed a plug-in to use it — one that would install a toolbar and change their search provider and home page to Bing. The site had allowed people to create baby characters. See also: Irony, Thy Name is Microsoft by SEO by the Sea.

Russian search engine Yandex sees huge growth: 43% revenue increase in a year

State of Search: Revenues from contextual advertising grew 45% year-over-year, which is a much bigger growth than the increase the Russian ad market in general sees, that ‘only’ grew by 14%, while the online advertising market showed a 37% growth.

Facebook Halts Phone & Address Sharing (For Now)

Mashable: Facebook’s recent decision to allow application developers to request access to a user’s address and mobile phone number ruffled a lot of feathers over the weekend.

Wow, Google is linking to video competitors!

State of Search: The critics will now be at bit more silent if they read the latest update Google did last Friday on the results for music videos. A search for an artist or song which returns a YouTube video now has links to other video sites and search engines next to the results.

Google’s Java Infringement Refuted

PC World: Analysis: New research seems to point to Google infringement of Java code, but the evidence is also refuted.

Google Turns Groupon Rejection Into Own Daily Deal: Google Offers

ExecDigital: Google Offers will mimic Groupon & LivingSocial, but problems for small business owners emerge as more daily deals materialize.



Google Says Search Quality Improved With New Spam Detection

SE Land: Matt Cutts, a Google engineer working on search quality, wrote at the Google Blog that Google has recently released a new spam detection classifier to help prevent ’spammy on-page content’ from ranking highly in the Google search index.

What is a content farm?

SEO Theory: Just what, exactly, is a content farm? No one really seems to know. Some people point their fingers at Mahalo, AOL, Answers.com, About.com, et. al. and include them in the list of nasties. But what are we to do if we are also included in that growing list?



Google May Let You Blacklist Domains To Fight Spam

SE Land: In the discussion, Hacker News user bradly asks if Google would consider letting searchers remove domains from search results themselves. Cutts replies, ‘we’ve definitely discussed this,’ and seems to hint that some kind of announcement may be on the way.

Attentio acquires 365Research

Press release: Attentio, a European market leader in social media monitoring and research has acquired market research technology company 365Research. Both companies are based in Brussels and all of the 365Research team have already relocated to Attentio HQ.