WebProWorld

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."

Amazon has released an iPhone app for the Kindle to over 60 countries. Now users in a total of 64 countries can read Kindle books on their iPhones and iPod Touch devices.

Google is a master of online advertising, and in recent days, has more than ever been vilified as an enemy of the newspaper industry.  People were understandably surprised, then, to find ads for Chrome plastered all over a UK newspaper this morning.

The Metro is a free paper targeted at commuters in 16 cities.  It’s supposed to be the world’s largest free paper and the UK’s fourth largest paper of any sort, with 1.3 million copies distributed every weekday.

The tech industry was abuzz about a new phone from Google over the weekend. After months of speculation, it was discovered that Google does indeed have a new smartphone, and now more details and images have surfaced.

Although spell checkers have been around for about 30 years, they still miss or incorrectly flag a whole lot of stuff (try "eye wonder weather this is write" and "monetize").  Google wants its transcription software to become better more quickly, and so is asking for users for a hand.

European online Christmas shopping season got off to a strong start this year in the U.K., France and Germany, according to a new report from comScore.

Visits to retail sites were up 18 percent during the first week of November compared to an average week during the prior two months, and increased even more throughout the month to reach a 41 percent growth rate during the week ending November 29.

France saw solid gains, resulting in the same 41 percent growth rate during the last week of November, while Germany showed slight lower growth at 16 percent.