Category: Archive

It’s that time of year when all of the big web properties reflect on the year’s worth of activity. We already saw Twitter’s top trending topics for 2009, for example. YouTube is also sharing its most watched videos and most searched for queries.

Twitter has broken down the top ten trending topics of 2009 for a variety of categories: news events, people, movies, tv shows, sports, and technology, as well as the top ten hashtags used.

Despite a number of positive developments, Yahoo did not have a very merry November according to the latest statistics from comScore.  In fact, as the company’s share of the search market dropped again, it hit an all-time low, landing at 17.5 percent.

Yes, Yahoo’s share of the search market shrunk from 18.0 percent in October to 17.5 percent in November, which counts as a sizable slip.  Yahoo’s biggest competitors, meanwhile, kept chugging along.

There’s a microwave that has been getting some attention this week. It’s called CastOven, and it plays YouTube videos while you cook your food. Not only does it play videos, but it plays videos specifically catering to the amount of time you have the microwave set for.

The CastOven was created by two designers from Keio University in Japan, Keita Watanabe, Ph.D. and Shota Matsuda. Their description of the CastOven reads as follows:

Yahoo’s got something to offer people who are tired of typing cities’ names and zip codes into search boxes.  Today, the company announced improved local business results that will allow users to find nearby places without first providing tons of details.

Ticketmaster has begun beta testing a new online "Interactive Seat Maps" for a select number of sports teams.

Interactive Seat Maps allows users to navigate and choose from all seats and configurations. Ticketmaster’s traditional "best available" searches uses computers to search availability one row at a time, the upgraded maps allows people to look for tickets in any part of a venue.

AOL’s MapQuest has announced the launch of "360 View," a feature that may remind Google users of Google Maps Street view. For now, it’s available for 30 cities and 13 suburbs in the United States, with more on the way.

"We have studied our industry, gleaning tidbits here and there, and polled our customer base in creating a simple, easy-to-use interface that fits seamlessly into the MapQuest mapping experience you have come to know and understand," says MapQuest.

LinkedIn has launched a new addition to its People Search Experience. It’s called "Faceted Search".

Faceted search allows you to search for a person and narrow that search down by specific "facets" as you go along, in order to quickly find the most relevant profiles possible. Users are presented with categories under the following facets as they search: current company, past company, location, relationship, industry, school, and profile language. The following clip nicely sums up how it works:

The Los Angeles city government is moving ahead with its plan to embrace Google Apps.  Today, 34,000 city employees are supposed to switch to it from an old system, and the mood appears to be much more "excited" than "nervous" at this point in time.

The L.A. City Council approved a $7.25 million Google Apps contract in late October, but not everyone was enthusiastic about the move.  Councilman Paul Koretz displayed a bit of doubt, for example, by referring to both "cutting edge" and "the edge of a cliff."