Google Voice, with its "one number for all your calls and SMS" tagline and almost endless list of benefits, aims to make users’ lives easier. A new feature introduced today represents another step in that direction.
Suppose you’re sitting at a desk with a full-sized keyboard at your fingertips and a 20" monitor in front of your eyes. Most services would still ask you to fish out your little cell phone in order to read and reply to a text message. In the past, even Google Voice would require you to keep open an extra, dedicated tab.
Trade Group Calls Amazon NY Tax Law Unconstitutional
The Performance Marketing Alliance has filed a brief with the New York Supreme Court in support of Amazon.com’s appeal, which argues that the law requiring online retailers to collect use taxes on sales in New York based on their relationship with affiliate marketers is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Yahoo Launches New Contacts API
Yahoo has launched a new Contacts API, which uses OAuth. With the API, applications can allow users to read, write, and sync access to their Yahoo Address Book, which is one of the biggest address books on the web.
"We’ve completely reengineered the existing Contacts API and added more useful functionality for developers," says Yahoo Social Platforms Product Manager Shirish Anand.
Safety Top Concern For Users Of Online Classified Sites
With online classified sites becoming increasingly popular with Internet users, one of their top priorities is the safety of such sites.
A new survey commissioned by Kijiji, eBay’s free local classified site, found 36 percent of visitors to online classified sites are concerned about ads that may be misleading or fraudulent.
More than a quarter (28%) of visitor’s worry their email address will be spammed, while 26 percent are concerned about getting a computer virus and 24 percent are concerned about classified ads that may have adult content.
TweetDeck Harnesses MySpace, Goes TweetPhoto
TweetDeck, the popular Twitter and more application, has expanded upon its Facebook-related features, and added MySpace into the mix. Users now have more control over the sorting of Facebook friends, and can update their MySpace status/mood from TweetDeck, just as they have been able to do with Facebook and Twitter.
EU Cracks Down On Misleading Electronics Websites
More than half of European websites selling consumer electronic goods were found to be misleading online shoppers, according to an investigation by the EU Consumer watchdog.
The investigation covered 369 websites selling six of the most popular electronics goods to consumers in the EU, including digital cameras, mobile phones, personal music players and game consoles.
AdWords Opportunities Expanded to More Advertisers
Earlier in the summer Google began beta testing the Opportunities Tab in AdWords. This is a feature in advertisers’ accounts that tries to point them to additional cost-effective traffic for their search campaigns.
Google is now expanding the beta to more advertisers in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Australia. Google says over the next few business days, they will expand the beta to all English-language accounts.
Blogs Can Still Drive Big Traffic
You would almost think blogging was dead, the way headlines are dominated by Twitter, Facebook, and social media in general. I’ve always considered blogging to be a part of social media anyway, as the commenting factor lends to engagement between author and user.
More People Watching TV Online
The number of U.S. households watching TV online has increased 20 percent from last year, according to a new report by The Conference Board and TNS.
Nearly 80 percent of consumers go online daily for entertainment. Entertainment was cited as one of the most important Internet activities, behind only personal communication and work related activities.
How Google Looks at Spam Complaints
Google’s Matt Cutts answered a user question about how the company handles spam complaints in the most recent video upload to the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. More specifically, the question was:
Is there a minimum number of spam complaints about a domain and/or SERP before Google reviews the complaint? Presumably you get thousands of spam complaints daily, are these sorted into any order to be reviewed? The most popular first?