Category: Archive

The current top article on Yahoo’s homepage may be about a former NBA player’s "sad turnaround," but the story of the homepage’s recent overhaul is a happy one, according to Tapan Bhat.  Bhat shared some impressive statistics at Yahoo’s Analyst Day Meeting.

YouTube’s Promoted Videos program has spread again.  In addition to Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S., promoted videos are now available in Australia and Japan.

If you’re not familiar with the Promoted Videos program, the following video does a pretty good job of explaining its purpose (odd motorcycle accident metaphor aside):

Part of managing your online reputation involves your strategy for handling the negative commentary that you acquire. If you write articles on the Internet, use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media outlets, or simply have a prodcut that people talk about, there is a very good chance you will encounter comments somewhere on the web that are less than favorable.

Symantec’s MessageLabs released its Intelligence Report for the month of October, and it reveals the that the spammers behind the biggest botnets – Cutwail, Rustock and Donbot – are using the upcoming major holidays and world events as the themes for their the latest spam runs. This is not particularly surprising news, but it is news that people should be aware of nevertheless.

The app features Disney content including characters, music, video and games. Disney says content in the app will be updated regularly with the latest news and entertainment from the company.

The new Disney App offers a "Click2Life" feature, which works by allowing iPhone users to take pictures of images from Disney.com that will come to life within the app and turn into a 3D image.

The City of Angels has shown a great deal of faith in Google.  Late yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a $7.25 million contract that’ll have all branches of the city’s government adopting Google Apps over the next eight or so months.

Amazon and Walmart have been engaged in an online price war over holiday sales of bargain books. The whole thing began when Walmart announced that it would let customers preorder 10 of the most highly anticipated upcoming books for as little as $10 each. In a matter of hours, Amazon matched the price for all of the same books. Walmart then dropped the price to $9. Then Amazon did the same.

Google launched a Google Labs project earlier this year called "Similar Images," as an extension to Google Image Search. It allows users to search for images using pictures instead of words. The project has now graduated from Labs and is now a part of Google Images.

Bing and Google may have gotten a head start, but Yahoo isn’t ignoring the whole real-time search arena, according to a new report.  In fact (or at least in rumor, if you will), Yahoo may be working on a product with OneRiot right now.

Online retailers can expect to see an increase in consumer spending compared to the previous quarter, according to a new survey by Javelin Strategy & Research and released by eBillme.

Online shoppers predict they will spend an average of $281 online during Q4 2009, a 24 percent increase over last quarter. This is the first increase in spending since last year, but an 18 percent decrease in the overall spending rate compared to Q4 2008.