Google Search By Voice Learns Chinese (In Limited Fashion)

Many products are initially available in English, and then branch out into languages like French, Italian, German, and Spanish.  (There's even an acronym, FIGS.)  But Google Search by voice broke with tradition - and started to make its way into a huge market - by moving straight from English to Mandarin Chinese today.

New Twitterers Down, Tweets Up in October

Last month we looked at Twitter's numbers for user registrations and total tweets for the month of September. We saw a small decline in new user registrations, but tweeting appeared to be on the rise again following the previous month in which tweeting declined. The numbers for October follow a similar trend. The information was supplied by Matthew Daines, the lead developer of the Twitter…

Google Checkout Gets a New Promotions Feature

Google has launched a new feature for Google Checkout, which allows merchants based in the US to create and run their own Checkout promotions at any time. Users simply need to sign in to their Checkout merchant account, go to the "Tools" tab, and click the "Promotions" link to create a promotion. Google says the process takes less than a minute. Users can specify the…

Online Retailers To Have Better Holiday Season

Overall retail sales are expected to show no gain this holiday shopping season, while online retail sales in the U.S. will reach $44.7 billion during the holiday season, an eight percent increase over last year, according to a new report by Forrester Research. The growth rate represents an increase from 2008, when, on the heels of the global financial crisis, online holiday retail sales in…

Microsoft Partners With OpenX On Ad Deal

Microsoft has entered into a partnership with advertising start-up OpenX, focused on promoting each other's products to their respective customer base. Under the terms of the multiyear agreement, OpenX will expand its distribution of its technology for delivering ads on websites. In addition, OpenX will promote Microsoft's Content Ads monetization products.