Yahoo today announced the 10th anniversary edition of their Year in Review.  The top 10 searched terms are a general barometer of the year, giving insight into the biggest products, news stories, and celebrities.  Yahoo boasts about 700 million unique monthly users, so these results do provide a pretty good overview of the hot topics of the year.  Yahoo has made their Year in Review available “in 17 versions including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Philippines, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States”

Surprisingly, at least to me, was that the most searched for term of 2011 wasn’t a celebrity or a news story, but a tech item – the iPhone.  It was the first physical object to garner the number one spot since the Playstation 2 did in 2002.  Britney Spears is the only multi-time winner, being number one in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.  The Apple phone was the only non-news, non-person to to make the top ten list.  Beyond it, you will find a mix of names, mostly celebrities along with a couple from news stories.  Only one event made this year’s list – the Japan earthquake.

Here are top ten most searched for terms of 20, based on Yahoo’s data.

1. iPhone
2. Casey Anthony
3. Kim Kardashian
4. Katy Perry
5. Jennifer Lopez
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. American Idol
8. Jennifer Aniston
9. Japan earthquake
10. Osama bin Laden

You can get a lot more data and lots of different lists by visiting the Yahoo Year in Review.

My Tree Lot Finder

Looking for that perfect holiday tree? The lots seem to pop up within 24 hours of Thanksgiving. But which one do you go to?

A new application has hit the Android market. My Tree Lot Finder ™ can help you find the best tree lots; those “Mom and Pop” lots that use quality trees for best selection. That way, you don’t have to search for hours to find that perfect tree.

The app helps you not only save time and money by locating the perfect tree, but also gives you care instructions for your new purchase. That way, if you are a N00b when it comes to trees, you don’t have to act like one.

“Have you ever headed out after dark to find that perfect tree?  Kids in tow?  The first lot you go to had nothing but dead and dried trees,” says Wayne Irving II, creator of My Tree Lot Finder. “ Wouldn’t it be nice to know where the next tree lot to you is?  So you are not driving further than you have to?”

You can search trees by Zipcode or just scour the map within the app. Target a lot and get driving directions. It will also let you know where the tree farms are and where the non-profit lots (like Boy Scouts, fund-raising lots, etc) are located.

Some lots also have other amenities, such as selling ornaments or if the tree farms have other cool events like hay or pony rides, if they also offer things like Yule logs, wreaths or more.

The application is only available for Android at this time. The parent company – Iconosys - is a member of the National Organization for Youth Safety (NOYS).

The murder trial of Jo Yeates is front page news throughout the UK – a neighbour Vincent Tabak is accused of killing her. At the moment, the prosecution is presenting its case and a couple of interesting things have emerged as evidence.

In particular, the prosecution has alleged that the defendant:

• looked at Wikipedia for the definitions of murder and manslaughter.
• searched for the maximum penalty for manslaughter, i.e. how many years in jail.
• looked up definitions for sexual assault and sexual conduct.
• searched maps showing the area where the body was later found.
• searched on CCTV cameras in street where both the defendent and victim lived.
• use Google StreetView to view the same area.
• researched criminal forensics, fingerprinting and DNA evidence.
• read news stories on the investigation into the disappearance  of the victim.

Of course, it will be up to the jury to decide whether these are good indicators of guilt, but regardless it’s clear that if someone is accused of a crime then there’s a pretty thorough examination of one’s computers and on-line behaviour. Obviously this case is about a very serious crime but it’s almost a gift to the prosecution when put together like this: can you think of any good reason to access this material at the time of the disappearance? However, this is circumstantial evidence and needs to be weighed as such.

On a related note, Google has announced that if you are signed-in to Google when you search, you will automatically use https://www.google.com/, the secure version of Google Search. While this will prevent casual snooping on your search, Google will be keeping hold of your search information so that it can better serve you adverts. And how long does Google keep the search information? Indefinitely or until you remove it. So while on the face of it encrypted search is a good thing, it comes at the price of Google knowing yet more about you.

I suspect that in the current murder trial, all the computer forensics team had to do was look back through the defendant’s browser history. Easy if there’s only one computer, but more difficult if the person has a home computer, work laptop, smartphone and so on. If you’re tied into Google everywhere, all they’ll have to do is subpoena information from Google and get your search data in one tidy little bundle. Nice.

I really hate it when I go to a website, especially a complex one, and try to use their search box to find something that I know is there.

This has happened to me a lot lately, and it makes me wonder who is making the mistake.  Or maybe I’m just too “googled” to put up with poor search engine results these days.  I mean, really, when I go to google and put in a search term, I usually get what I’m looking for within the first half-dozen results.

If you can’t match that level of accuracy, why are you even bothering?

Recently, I attempted a search for an on-campus conference on a college website.  The particular conference has happened every year for 20 years.  You would think a quick search using the college’s own search engine would have returned a result.  You’d be surprised to find out that it didn’t.  In fact, no amount of me putting in various terms and combinations of terms got me a result I could use.  Oddly enough, when I went to google and tried there, it gave me an immediate link.  The problem, as I can tell, is with the bazillion sub-domains on this particular college’s website.  None of these sub-domains seem to know the others exist.

The other place I’ve seen this issue is on news website.  They are using various search engines, none of them google-driven, and the results are very very poor.  It is frequent that I am looking for an article I read recently (within the last two weeks or so) and instead of dragging through my history on my browser to find it, I just go to the site and type in key words that should bring up the article.  I get a list of articles, usually over six months old, with those key words, but not what I’m looking for.  Continuing to refine the search terms doesn’t seem to help.

If you’re going to bother to have  search box on your website, at least bother to make sure it actually works as intended.  If it doesn’t work, figure out why it doesn’t, and fix it.  There is no point in offering false hope to users in providing the box if it’s not going to work as intended.

This isn’t 1993, when the best search engine available was Alta Vista.  There are plenty of choices, and part of your web site design should be checking for the accuracy and effectiveness of your search engine.  If you’re not going to do that, why bother?

It’s almost my favorite time of the year, otherwise know as football season.  And, today Google revealed that all sorts of football information, both NFL and college, is now available right in Google Search

Last week Google began bringing MLB results, but football is America’s number one sport, so it’s nice to see this partnership with ESPN evolve.  The simple announcement from Google came from software engineer Itay Maman and reads as follows:

“Just as the NFL season kicks off and you have your fantasy football league ready to go, you’ll be able to get useful information such as the latest scores, schedules, standings and stats for football-related queries in your search results. Last week, we started showing MLB results in partnership with ESPN and we’re now expanding sports live results to include the NFL. In addition to information on the football league, teams and players, you’ll also have direct links to previews, live streams, updates and game recaps. We hope to add more and more sports information on google.com, so stay tuned. “

You can try it out by doing a Google search.  A simple search for NFL yielded results such as the schedule, fantasy football, news, players, news, and more.  Adding ESPN to the search gives you box scores right in the top your results.  You can see screenshots of both at the bottom of this post.

This is a handy way to get quick information and news without trying to navigate the NFL web site, or an app app on your phone or tablet.  As you saw in the Google announcement, they are promising even more integration is on the way.  So….Are you ready for some football?!

Google NFL search

Google NFL ESPN search

Yahoo announced today that they are enhancing their image search.  It has a new tiled interface, a “latest” tab for trending results, a “galleries” tab, and Facebook integration that displays pictures from your friends with your results.  The biggest change is, perhaps, the way clicked images are displayed.  According to the Yahoo announcement:

“By clicking on any image on the search results page, the image will appear on a fresh page allowing users to browse effortlessly through full-size images with a simple click on the desktop browser.”

The new tiled interface renders all images in equal size, which I actually like better than Google’s “mismatched” look.  Like Google and Bing, Yahoo enlarges an image if you hover your mouse over it.

Yahoo is also claiming that more improvements are on the way.  These changes are worth checking out because I think this may be the cleanest, prettiest image search of any of the big three search engines.  Of course, the bottom line is the results your query gets, and that remains to be seen.  You can test it out at images.yahoo.com.

Google

Why Would IBM want to sell their patents? And to Google, nonetheless?

Think of it this way – You’re at a garage sale and you see a box of comic books (or records if you are not a comic nut). You buy the box for $20, hoping there is a valuable comic (record) in there. You pull out the important ones and what is left is a box of comics you don’t care about.

IBM has been gobbling up different companies throughout the years and some of the patents are like the odd comic books. Nortel is a great example – IBM had over 6,000 patents that they didn’t need. Therefore in May, they decided to auction off those patents that didn’t pertain to them. Google didn’t win that bidding war.

But , according to SEO by the Sea, IBM last week did find 1,030 patents that they sold to Google for an undisclosed sum. It was a hodge-podge of patents – from fabrication to database structures. These are patents that could keep Google from going to the courts for their Android devices, new products coming out on the market and other threats to future revenue.

It’s also a case of Google picking out the ones they need, then keeping a couple in the back pocket for future need (whether for selling or future projects). A couple of those patents relate to search methods. It will be interesting how that effects other search engines like rival Bing.

We’ll have to wait and see how Google utilizes these patents.

Controversy. The world of news seems to thrive on it, including the world of tech news.

Ever wonder what goes on inside a premier tech company like Google?

I just finished listening to “In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives” written by Steven Levy and narrated by L.J. Ganser.

“In The Plex” is all about Google – it’s employees, it’s business culture, and even it’s cafeterias. Additionally it includes behind-the-scenes accounts of major Google controversies most people will remember.

Google is one of those remarkable “Great American Company” stories that happened right under our noses within the past decade.

The unabridged “In The Plex” Audible audiobook version is 19 hours long. The narration is top-notch and the content quite entertaining. It ends with a discussion of Google’s sometimes-tumultuous, sometimes ho-hum social networking forays, along with a brief discussion of the development of “Google+” which has recently gone into a controlled roll-out to the general public.

If you were ever curious about the company behind the search engine, I recommend “In The Plex” as a means of sating that inquisitive urge.

While Google+ may have been making most of the headlines, Google also introduced “What Do You Love” at www.wdyl.com. It’s a way of searching Google services such as Maps, YouTube, News, Patent Search, Blogger all at once will the results presented together.

The user interface is much as you’d expect.

The results are displayed on a single page broken up into applets showing the individual returns from each service.

Let’s say you love kittens – who doesn’t? The results for a WDYL search for kittens is shown below.

You can easily dismiss it as superficial – who cares about the popularity of kittens on the web – and the name WDYL doesn’t help. But if you were wanting to get an idea of emerging trends, say democracy in the middle east, you can see what’s happening along with (mostly) relevant books and videos from YouTube. The more you experiment with it, the more you get the feeling of how powerful a tool it is for research. There’s nothing that you couldn’t have done yourself, but by presenting everything together you can start to see synergies.

WDYL isn’t going to replace standard Google search, but if you want to go a little bit further and search beyond text, give it a try.

A couple of months ago Google released a new Search app for iOS devices.  Now, today, they are releasing an update to that app based on user feedback they have received.  The new version is touted as faster and easier to use.

Google claims that search is now 20% faster as you type in your queries.  They have also turned off the “Just Talk” app by default claiming that it was a part of the slower performance that users were experiencing.  Just Talk allowed users to search via voice by bringing the phone up to their ear and speaking, rather than tapping ,the microphone icon.  It can be re-enable by users by visiting the Settings > Voice Search menu.

Google has also increased the size of the font that appears in search results, making it easier to read on a small screen.  They have also made the entire result “tappable” as opposed to just the actual link.

Both of these improvements should enhance the usability for all iOS device owners.  Google, in mobile especially, needs to continue moving forward with improvements given that Bing is suddenly emerging.  While Bing has a great mobile service, I wouldn’t go so far as to call them a competitor yet, but they are at least the little dog that nips at ankles.

I hope you have been pleased with the format tweak, while all may not be 100% apparent I have made some major process changes here over the past 2-3 shows that I am going to work very to keep in check. One thing should be obvious slightly shorter show.. 1 hour and 10 minutes +/- 4 minutes is the goal.. Keeps you listening longer and keeps the cream of the crop content in the heart of the show.. Going long is something that grew into a monster that I hope to keep tame..

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Listener Links
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Show Notes:
We don’t track Anyone! (Yea Right)
Apple and Google Summoned to Washington D.C>
South Korea / Europe Start Investigations on Apple!
Facebook Send Button.
Sprint wants a Look at AT&T Docs.
Not your Standard Internet Cafe.
Facebook Locals.
God Particle at LHC?
The Sun!
Wifi on Plane but no Power Plugs?
New Lunch bag for Kids
Simply Ridiculous!
Webm Coalition
Seagate Hybrid SSD.
HeyTell.
Whistle “Free Calling” App.
Make Reservation to Charge your Car?
Apple Record Sales.
11 Billion Product Lock In.
More Dumb Criminals.
SurveyMonkey Buys Form Company.
Netflix still growing.
Dropbox tries to kill Open Source Project.
Demand Media Fallout Bad.
Google Preview for Ads.
Android App Giveaway.
Tech Takes Over Store.
Rent Videos from YouTube?
Did you turn on Do Not Track?
Trolls Winning?
TV Waking Up?
Wanna buy a IP address?
Amazon Outage.
Nook has Apps?
Yahoo buys TV Interaction Company.
FBI raids Actors Guild Member.
Level3 Buys Global Crossing.

Y Buzz

Yahoo! continues to condense the Yahoo! Giant. This time, it’s Yahoo! Buzz – the Digg-like site that aggregates news articles. In a statement made on the website, it says:

Yahoo! Buzz will be discontinued as of April 21, 2011. As of this date, you will be unable to access the Yahoo! Buzz site. This was a hard decision. However this will help us focus on our core strengths and new innovations.

We appreciate your patronage.

The Yahoo! Buzz Team

In the last 6 months, Yahoo! has continued to close down properties. Yahoo! 360, MyBlogLog, AllTheWeb and more. All put in mothballs.

Some properties continue to thrive – for now. Delicious almost saw demise, but Yahoo! corrected by stating the bookmarking site is actually “For Sale” (unless it did get sold. Last time I heard, the sale was unofficial news). Other sites we saw for sale were Yahoo! HotJobs (sold to Monster) and it’s search engine (to Microsoft).

No word why Buzz isn’t getting sold. Maybe they tested the market waters and no one wanted it.

Do You have the Buzz Widget on your Website?

One thing to note – if you installed the Buzz widget on your site, you might want to take it off.

No, not the Google Buzz widget. That’s still around.

Yahoo! Buzz launched Feb 26, 2008 to tepid fanfare. They launched to counter Digg. Earlier this year when content farms got hit with a new Google algorithm, Digg had to restructure. I guess Yahoo just wanted to be done with it.

If you follow the news about Google or search you know that what some people call content farms have become a big issue. First what are content farms, Wikipedia defines content farms as Web sites that employ a large number of freelance writers to generate large amounts of articles that are written to be search engine friendly. The main goal is to increase ad revenue. Critics of these sites say the content is often of low quality and many of the articles often just copy information directly from other sites. Proponents say they are just reacting to market demand and are doing nothing wrong. The problem I have with content farms is they tend to push higher quality articles down the search page. The more popular a search is the more likely this is to happen. They also tend to be simplistic and leave out important details.

The question is what to do about content farms. There are a couple of solutions that have become available lately. The first is to use a search engine called Blekko. Blekko allows you mark sites as spam and then that url is removed from your search database. It works really well, however for it to work you have to use Blekko. This is not realistic for most people who equate search with Google. The second option is a Google created solution which can be found in the Google App Store called Personal Blocklist by Google. Once you install the extension when you do a search if a site comes up that you consider to be spam, you simply click on Block this Site and that site is again removed from your search database. There are a couple of problems with Personal Blocklist that prevent it from being the ultimate solution at this time. First it is available in Google Chrome only and it doesn’t sync across computers. However if you live in Google Chrome and have a single computer this is a great option. A third option is an independent tool called PersonalBlock through Kynetx which is an Appbuilder site. Personal Block works on Google Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. It will works whether you search through Google, Yahoo or Bing. When you do a search and you find a site you consider spam you click Block x Web site and like the Google extension those sites are now blocked from your searches. With Personal Block if you decide you want to see the site if you scroll to the bottom of the search page there is an option to show the site. If you use this method then Google doesn’t get the information. if you use the Google created solution, then Google can aggregate the information and hopefully better search for everyone. I do like the fact that all these solutions leave the choice up to the user.  I am not sure I want Google or Bing or Yahoo to make that decision for me.

There’s a free Google Mobile App that I found in the iPod/iPhone app store that I decided to give a try.

On loading it for the first time, I immediately noticed the “Voice Search” button I’m used to on my Android smartphone. In Android, the “Voice Search” is incredibly useful. Google’s voice recognition works by making a short recording of a verbal search query and then immediately sending the data to Google’s voice recognition servers, which do an amazing job with voice to text. The recognized text is immediately sent back to your device, and the device responds appropriately.

The Google Mobile App also includes quick access to many other Google services, such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Talk, Reader, etc. The app includes a number of other settings such as privacy, the ability to do push email notifications, setting the level of safe search or turning safe search off completely, etc.

Google’s voice recognition is astoundingly good. It’s worth loading the Google Mobile App on an iPod, iPhone or iPad just for the purpose of wowing others with it.

I have been using Blekko off and on over the last week and although it does some things that I like, I doubt it will ever go main stream. First, what is Blekko. Blekko is a new search engine that uses slash tags to narrow down your search range. The first big difference between Blekko and Google Search, is that you have to be sign in to your Blekko account to use it. The strength of Blekko is the ability of each individual to manipulate search the way they like. There is a good video tutorial on how it works on Vimeo. Using the slash tag does work and it does narrow down your search, however it is nothing new, using the advance features in Google Search also allows you to narrow down your search options. Blekko does however allow you to do something that Google does not and that is create your own slash tag algorithm. I created one called mac-tutorial, where I added all the sites that I know that do video tutorials on Mac subjects. When I want to find a video tutorial on a mac-software or hardware, I can use this search and it will pull up searches only from these sites. You can also do searches using slash tags other people have created. If you are interested in the slash-tags that I created I am listed under klandwehr on Blekko. If you are on of the few that created list on Twitter then you will probably like creating your on slash-tags on Blekko. However I am afraid like Twitter list’s I don’t think most people want to create their own slash tags.

There are a couple of things that Blekko does that I wish Google would adopt, the first is there spam filter. If you search for something using Blekko and within your search stream you see a site that you consider spam. You simply click on the spam indicator and that site is gone from your search forever. Also if you are interested in the SEO of a site, you can hit the SEO indicator and see all the search data about that site. This is great if you want to check why one site is ranked higher then another. You can check your own site and find out where the people who are searching for your site are coming from and which sites are linking to your site. Again though this is something that a power user might be interested in, but not the average user. The average user just wants to find what they are searching for. I do think Blekko is worth trying. However I am afraid that its chance to become main stream is slim. After all they are competing against Google, and Google is hard to beat, just ask Ask.com. Have you tried Blekko, what do you think of it and will you continue to use it.

For the past few days I have been scanning the net looking for a new WordPress theme for my own site.  There are a lot out there.  Just do a Google search if you don’t believe me.  Some are for purchase, but a lot are free.  Many of the sites are legit, but some are sketchy.

So the question is, how do you find legitimate content when it comes to something as generic as a WordPress theme?  If your computer-literate then you probably have a bit a intuition about sites you visit.  You may also have some help from services such as the Firefox add-ons – NoScript and Web of Trust.  But those are really just a belt to use with your suspenders.

Is there a way to really sort out the good content?  Back to my WordPress example, I have waded through pages of Google results, but found only a smattering of decent ones.  Some sites that show up high in the rankings don’t even pass the Web of Trust tests.  If it’s tough for a geek to figure out then that explains the amount of people who find their PC’s infected – or worse, don’t know their computers are infected.

That’s the discussion I’d like to have with all of the readers of this site.  I am not just looking for WordPress theme sites.  I am really looking for how all of you sort through results in a generic search and find the good stuff.  With Google returning thousands (or more) of hits and some of the less-than-savory sites rising up the rankings, how does anyone figure out where to go today?

I’ve been using Android for a while now and feel I’ve been using it long enough to make some meaningful observations.

I like Android. It’s quick. It’s powerful. It has some astounding voice recognition capability built right in that even the iPhone can’t touch. For example, hold down the search button and when the voice search box pops up say “navigate to” and then speak either a street address, the name of a business or a business category, and watch what happens. The results are something right out of science fiction and nothing short of amazing. Try THAT with your iPhone.

In other areas, Android seems to fall rather flat. While it’s possible to create, name and populate folders, the process seems clunky and rather counter-intuitive.

How about allowing me as an end-user to rename application icons to something useful? Many apps have names that don’t bear any relationship or give any hint as to what their functionality is as an app. If I could just rename the text under the app icons it would help me out as an end user quite a bit. Either give me a direct icon name that describes functionality succinctly, or give me the ability to rename an icon myself just like I can in Windows or OS/X.

Another area that falls somewhat flat is how to discover great apps. There are a ton of apps, but it’s often difficult to find the best ones. I’m willing to spend money on apps, however I want the best bang for my buck. How can I be assured if I buy an app I’m buying the best possible one?

Google has introduced instant search. It is being rolled out to the US today and should be available to France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK by the end of the week. It should roll out to the rest of the world over the next weeks or months according to Google. In order for Google instant search to work in Safari you have to be signed in to your Google account however in Google chrome it seems to work even if you are signed out. I can’t seem to get it to work in Firefox at all, not sure why and since I don’t use Firefox that often I am not really worried about it. However I am curious if anyone else was having trouble getting it too work in Firefox and has found a solution to the problem.

The way Google search worked yesterday is you would start typing in an inquiry such as Indian restaurants and after you had typed in Indian res you would see a list with the words Indian restaurants and the nearby cities and towns. You would then have to arrow down to the one you wanted, hit enter and then you would get the search results for Indian restaurants in that city. You then have to click on your choice to go to the page. If you think about you are looking at about four steps to get to the page you want. What instant search does is speed this process up. If instant search is turned on when you go to www.google.com and start typing Indian restaurant, you will notice as you are typing some grey letters start to appear as it tries to guess what you are searching for. If the grey letters are completing what you are looking for you can hit tab and it will give you that search result page. Then you can click on the result you want and go to the page. If instead of hitting tab you hit the down arrow you will notice the search page changes to match your choice once you hit the one you want if you hit the right arrow key, it will automatically take you to the first search entry on the page.

If you decide you don’t want to use Google instant search, but you still want to use Google to search ,you can turn off instant search two ways. The first one is to click on the arrow where it says instant search is on and then click on turn instant search off. The second way is to go into search settings and then scroll down to Google instant search and click on Do not use Google Instant, then make sure you save your preferences. If you are wondering how Google can guess what you are looking for so quickly it is using your web history and your ISP location. If you are uncomfortable about Google having this much information you can turn it off. To turn it off go to settings then My Account, and click on the edit button next to My product and then Remove Web History permanently. You will get a warning message and it will ask for your password. I recommend reading the Web History FAQ before you decide to delete your web history permanently, so you are aware of the consequences. Google instant search uses the same information that regular google search did, it just does it faster. I am not sure how much I will use it since I use Google Chrome and use the address bar to do most of my setting. What do you think of Google instant search, do you like it or not.

Well, it was a deal that was a year and a half in the making. Actually, it’s been longer than that – nonetheless, Microsoft has finally gotten what they want. While it still needs to have a final stamp of approval, it looks like Yahoo search will become Yahoo Search powered by Bing.

The real history is this: Back in 2005, Microsoft talked ‘Partnership’ with Yahoo to thwart the ever growing Google. That was during the Instant Messaging days – When it was announced that MSN Messenger and Yahoo IM would be able to talk to each other.

By May of 2007, Microsoft and Yahoo were in talks of an apparent $50 Billion dollar merger. While that didn’t happen, we started seeing the beginnings of the Mass Exodus of Yahoo. Employees such as Farzad Nazem – who was Yahoo’s CTO at the time – took retirement. That was followed by other key players in Yahoo’s stable.

However, the battle didn’t really start until Feb 3rd, 2008, when Steve Ballmer offered $41 Billion to take over the company. It was a long – drawn out battle that gave people like Carl Icahn a seat on Yahoo’s board and Jerry Yang the heave – ho as CEO. Since then, Yahoo has plummeted in stock price.

Carol Bartz took over as CEO in January 2009 with a renewed hope. However, the Yahoo name has been pretty stagnant until just a couple weeks ago when they revamped email. Closing services like Yahoo Music and Geocities helped Yahoo score a profit in Q2, but the search side had remained at a plateau.

Then along came Bing.

“I think actually Bing is a good product. ” Carl Bartz announces in a transcript. “It actually extends sort of the experimentation around search and how people use it instead of just thinking like a standard blue link.” She goes on with “…Microsoft should be given kudos for Bing.”

What is supposedly proposed is that Microsoft will take over the search engine side of things. Yahoo will continue with ad placement on the site. Yahoo is expected to get 110% of search ad deals until 2011, in which it will drop to 90%, according to Allthingsd.com.

The drama is expected to unfold in the next 24 hours as it is said to be a ‘done deal – with the formalities happening later today’. Right now, neither side is ready to comment.

It’s an interesting picture, right? Well this was made by a website. Geeknewscentral to be precise. This is a Heirarchy of Geeknewscentral.

Wolfram Alpha is the new “Computational Knowledge Engine”. It’s not really a search engine like Google – If you search for “Geeknewscentral” you will get no information. However, if you ask “3+2″, you will get the result of “5″. If you enter “Uranium”, you will get all information on Uranium. So on and so forth.

In the meantime, pretty pictures….

Two major rants tonight: Realistic privacy expectations in new media and signing exclusive podcast advertising contracts. Plus, a lot of great tech news and information.

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Listener Links:
Dorthy iLife08 Video
Metric Conversions
Zune running iPhone Fake or Real
AMIE Street
NYT Lowers some Walls
Amazon Payment system for Developers
HDTV Worth Waiting For
Linspire – Indiana University — Listen to show
Flashlight that makes you throw up

Show Notes:
Spam Blogs
AOL will Kill Digg Clone
Google Deletes Own Blog as Spammer
MAC vs PC in Cost
Circuit City and No Refunds
Oklahoma Students Fight Back
Apple Strategy
iPhone Touch Screen Issues
Ford almost got my vision correct
Sprint + Nokia N800
iMac teardown
Apple Wireless Keyboard
Xbox 360 has HDMI
NASA Asteroid Buster mock up
Vonage Financials
Google Evil News Walled Garden
Be careful Jason!
Endeavor STS-118
Search Engine Privacy Improvements?
Big File Transfer
Hitachi Blu-ray Camcorder
iLife08
Low Marks on Video Downloads
DRM Stripped from Netflix Movie Stream
Universal Music DRM Free Test

I’m fighting the flu that my lovely wife gave me and I am on the hunt for some used video gear primarily lighting a professional tripods

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Listener Links:
Verizon FIOS Setup
Atomic Insight
Microsoft Patent Spyware
Custom Website Design

Show Notes:
Solar Panels
WD-40 Explosion
Microsoft Web Standards
Ooma VOIP
Six Minutes of Terror
Have a 100 Million?
ClearWire and Sprint !!
Microsoft 50 Billion
Google Earnings Lower
Update Firefox
Spectrum Giveaway
Google Search for $100
SpaceJunk by NASA
USB Superboosters
No Vista SP1 Rush
Google Indexes in 120 Seconds
Miro Launch!
Google – Doubleclick in Cross Hairs
Jing by TechSmith
MPAA No Net Neutrality
Policeware
SoundExchange Battle
AT&T $3.00
FBI + Telcos + Records = Spying
Harry Potter

Lots of great content even for a holiday weekend. Talk real quickly about Final Cut Studio 2as well as my QuickBooks dilemma!

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Comments to 619-342-7365 e-mail to geeknews@gmail.com

Listener Links:
Sony Screw Prices
Joost Friends Edition
Joost Invites
3 Apple TV’s?
Deadly Delay

Show Notes:
Firefox Cautions
Songbird
Ban the Bulb
Your Birthday
ISP Video Spoilers
Did not Download It
Japan Culture
Marketing all Wrong
Netscape Hacked
Nice Shipping
Firefox Ranking
One Million Zunes Sold
Prescription Glowcaps
PDC Canceled
Vista Update
192.com Maps Review
Google Mini Matrix
MillionRSS Overview
Illumio Review
Particls Review
AllofMP3.com Interview
Domain Squatter
PR Pawns?
PR Spam Bloggers
28 New Planets
Wifi Hacks
Security Deposit
Final Days of Google
Beyond the Browser
Google and Yahoo Promoting Domain Squatting
Google Deal under Antitrust Scrutiny

Almost no show tonight had a blazing headache but I have a pile of content for you today and of course we talk about the Vista launch.

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Show Notes:
Quicktime Bugs
Hubble in Trouble
YouTube to Pay
Verizon Fiber Rollout
Mars Water
IPTV
Meizu
T-Mobile
Vista Launch
WordPress Themes
Top 100 Search Engines
PS3 – 25% Off
Vista Photos
Over Clock Oil Idiot
Gnomedex
PodCamp Atlanta
500 Million
SlingBox Buyers Beware

Customized Search and a lot more cool things to come when we get this integrated into our site. This took me 5 minutes to create and should make you think a little about what Google has released here.

This search box will only search the data that is on Blubrry.com, PodcasterNews.com and PodcastPromos.com

It seems like the phone will not quit ringing and when I finally get a chance to look at what has happened in tech in the past 18 hours I about flip out when I see this new service Google has launched.

This new service allows you to include the sites you want included in searches (Awesome) you can place a search result box and search results on your website. It can be branded to look like your own site. And you can make money with revelant ads in your search results.

This thing is gonna change the dynamics of search in a big way. [Google Co-op]

Tired of clicking on a Google Search Results well now you can just call the person that you have found in the search results and talk to a warm body about their service or product. I am not sure I want my phone ringing at 3am from someone complaining about a point of view I have on the website but it is a interesting concept, that I am sure many companies will take advantage of.

And you thought Google Talk was just for calling your friends for free. [Google Click to Call]

The day that companies like technorati, pubsub and feedster feared more than anything is here lets call it “G Day“. Personally I think those companies are now dead meat. I just created a huge number of search terms, and added them to my news aggreator, and I will know in several days how well it works. [google.com/blogsearch]

I have not really been watching my raw log files for blog specific search engines, at least not until today when I found and article about a new blog that had not yet been discovered by the big search engines and was able to look at the traffic for a couple of days before getting slammed by the big boys.

I was aware of most of these sites but had not paid much attention to them, I think though it is time for a closer look. [Labnotes]

These are the Blog only specific search engines that have been crawling the Labnotes website feedster, icerocket, blo.gs, syndic8, blogpulse, blogslive, topicblogs, and omni-explorer.

Three academic computer scientists have uncovered a serious security hole in the Google Desktop Search Toolbar that was released on October 14th. Dan Wallach, assistant professor of computer science at Rice University and two graduate students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, have known of the security problem for a month; however, this is the first confirmed report of a serious problem with Google’s popular search tool.

The security hold allows a cracker to gain access to the contents of a toolbar user’s computer without the user’s being aware of the the attack. Google says that it has repaired the security hole and has begun distributing an updated version of the search toolbar installation program.

Dave’s Opinion
It seems that users of the Google Desktop Search Toolbar are safe from this security problem, if they are using version 121.004 or newer.

Call for Comments
What do you think? Leave your comments below.

References
Rice University
Google