Apple introduced the newest version of iTunes today in version 9. It has a number of new features including:
Google Improves AdSense Competitive Ad Filter
In August, Google announced that it was upgrading its category filtering feature for AdSense, and extending the feature into more countries (like the US and the UK). Today, Google announced that they have added two additional improvements to the Competitive Ad Filter.
Gmail Experience Improves for Netbook Users
Netbooks have their problems. I am not anti-netbook like some people. I just have fairly big hands, and I find them practically impossible to type on. A software engineer at Google noticed that sometimes netbooks have problems displaying email subject lines as well.
Mobile Market Improves In 2Q
The global mobile phone market saw another quarter of year-over-year decline in the second quarter of 2009, shipping a total of 269.6 million units, down 10.8 percent from 302.2 million units in 2Q08, according to IDC.
The second quarter results are an improvement from the 17.2 percent decrease in the first quarter, but challenges from the economic crisis remain a factor to watch.
Google Improves Maps for Mobile
Google is adding a good deal of the functionality from Google maps to Google Maps for Mobile. This includes the ability to access and interact with different layers like Traffic, My Maps, and Search layers at the same time.
Google Improves Universal Results for Locations
Google is now showing images in universal search results for location queries. They have shown maps for some time, but the addition of images enriches the results that much more.
Google Improves Flash Indexing Capabilities
Last year, Google began crawling and indexing Flash content, but now Google has announced that it can also index external resource loading. In other words, Google can index external content that loads within an SWF file, and associate it with that file, so that it will appear in search results.
For example, a site that loads something like this in Flash:
..might appear in a Google SERP like this:
Google Improves Search-Based Keyword Tool
Back in November Google introduced a new keyword tool called simply Search-based Keyword Tool that enables paid search advertisers to see what keywords they may be missing out on based on searches that are leading to your site. Today Google has announced wider availability and some improvements to the tool.
Hulu Improves Search Feature
Hulu announced some improvements to its search functionality today. For one, they have added some shortcuts to the autocomplete feature.
Previously, the autocomplete suggestions would just take a user to the regular search results, but now, the shortcuts offer other options like going straight to the latest episode (for current shows), or the show page (for all shows).
Gmail Improves Attachments, Creates Convenient Title Lab
Google has announced a couple new features for Gmail. They’re almost cranking out too many to keep up with aren’t they?