Category: Archive

There’s about a month left before the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit becomes a thing of the past, and – perhaps like many individuals – Google’s not going to let this opportunity slip away.  The search giant’s upgraded Google Maps’s real estate options in several different ways.

Update 3: Skype and eBay may be close to resolving their issues. Om Malik reports:

Amazon.com has introduced "PayPhrase," a new shortcut for making purchases at the online retailer and other websites.

PayPhrase works by allowing users to choose their own phrase along with a PIN and then set up their shipping information, which is stored at Amazon.

Amazon customers can use PayPhrase to make purchases at any websites that offers Checkout by Amazon, such as DNKY, Patagonia, Buy.com and J&R Electronics.

Microsoft has launched some new features for the mobile version of the Bing search engine, which is available at m.bing.com. These include features related to the NFL and to travel.

The NFL feature lets the user type a team or player and see upcoming games, stats, and scores. If you use the feature while a game is being played, you can get real-time updates on the plays. The feature is only available in the U.S.

National Geographic and Weather.com are not, if we’re to be honest, nearly as trendy as something like Twitter or Facebook.  Still, both entities garner a significant amount of respect (and a significant number of page views), and Bing recently received a sort of nod from each of them.

A majority (79%) of information technology (IT) professionals use social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube, but 21 percent do not use social networking sites at all, according to a new survey by CompTIA.

Of the major social networking sites, Facebook was the most popular, with 57 percent of respondents reporting they had been active on the site within the past 30 days. YouTube was the second most popular site (53%), then MySpace (29%), Twitter (25%) and LinkedIn (22%).

Research from AT Internet Institute indicates that Microsoft is losing European market share in the web browser sector with Internet Explorer. The firm says IE is being seriously shaken up by rival browsers across the continent.

Catching episodes of your favorite show(s) on Hulu just became a little easier.  The site’s introduced a "Coming Soon" page so that early bird users can figure out when the stuff they want to see will actually become available.

One might argue that this is a very minor feature – essentially a redundant online TV guide, given that most Hulu users know episodes become available the day after they air.  Still, even if that’s the case, it should prove handy for folks who are new to the site.

Update: Amazon announced the completion of its acquisition of Zappos.com today. The Zappos management team will remain intact, and Zappos will operate independently with its headquarters in Las Vegas.

Original Article: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh sent an email to Zappos employees today informing them that Amazon is becoming the only shareholder of Zappos stock. The following video from Jeff Bezos was also posted on the Zappos Blog:

Here’s an interesting twist on the ‘pay for access to conten’t dilemma that faces the newspaper industry these days. Newspapers who do this may actually lose a writer or two! While it’s not likely that staffers at any newspaper are looking to just walk out the door to another job because there really aren’t any but you may get some that are going to walk n principle.