Google Tag

Internet About To Get SPeeDY

Are you constantly complaining at how slow your Internet speed is?  You may soon be in luck, because Google announced today, that they are in the early stages of a project in efforts to make the Internet nearly two times faster than it is now.  SPDY (Speedy), is an Internet protocol, which would take over the Internets current HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

Google’s Chromium Blog explains, “We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP.  HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web’s tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.” (more…)

Traveling Just Got Easier with Free Wi-Fi

Just a few weeks ago, we told you about how Google has teamed up with Virgin America to offer free wi-fi for passengers this holiday season.  While the wi-fi is officially free as of Tuesday morning, Google and Yahoo both have announced this morning that they will be offering more free wi-fi in places besides 35,000 feet above the Earth’s surface.

Google announced that it will be offering free wi-fi throughout 47 airports across the country.  The company is working with Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and other companies to provide the free wi-fi. (more…)

Murdoch To Say Goodbye To Google

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, made news Monday in an interview with Sky News Austr Words To Send An Ex To Get Back Together alia, when he said he plans to make News Corp sites disappear from Google searches.

News Corp owns more than 100 media assets around the world including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and MySpace.com.  Murdoch has suggested in interviews all year that he wanted to take all of his sites off search engines. From there, users would  have to pay to view content on each site.  (more…)

MySpace’s Slow Traffic May Cost News Corp. $100 Million

It’s not exactly news that MySpace is losing users, but a serious drop-off in visitors could put the company in jeopardy of losing nearly $100 million.  News Corp., owners of MySpace, made a $900 million deal back in 2006 with Google, to let the world most’s popular search engine be the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace, which at the time was the most used social networking site.  The site is coming dangerously close to  maintaining the minimum traffic level, which could break the deal with Google, and leave MySpace without the $100 million. 

According to Alexa.com, in the past 3 months MySpace’s page-views have dropped 22.75%.  The site is losing its high ranking. While last week the site was the 11th most visited site on the web, however has since dropped to number 12.  At this time last year, MySpace was the 6th most viewed site on the web, but the site has been progressively making its way farther and farther from the top ranks.

“We’re still losing traffic,” said Chase Carey, chief operating officer of News Corp. He added, “We’re not trying to beat Facebook. We’re not trying to beat Twitter.”

MySpace has been making some big news lately, as they are in talks about teaming up with Facebook in order to share video and music content, which would hope to drive users back to the site.  MySpace is also in talks with MSN about sharing entertainment content.  No deals of any kind have been made and it is still not to late yet for MySpace to earn the $100 million, but they will need to do something drastic, fast, to get their hands on the money.

Commerce Search From Google Helps Online Businesses

Google has released yet another new feature that should help with online businesses.  Earlier this week, Google announced a new Google Checkout feature, which allows users to enable a checkout button on the site to promote sales. Now, the Google Commerce Search tool will be useful for online businesses by improving product searches on their site, along with possibly increasing sales and reducing bounce rates.  The search is almost identical to Google’s main search, but it’s geared specifically toward business websites. The idea is to help find products being sold.  Google is expecting the tool to grow significantly in the new few weeks, as businesses prepare for the upcoming holiday season.

“Visitors spend an average of just eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website,” a Google rep said.  “So having a good search tool is important for turning visitors into buyers.” (more…)

This Week In Social Media – November 6, 2009

This Week in Social Media – Nov 6, 2009 iePlexus from iePlexus on Vimeo.

This Week in Social Media – Nov 6, 2009 iePlexus from iePlexus on Vimeo.

Here’s a look at some of what happened this week in the world of social media and elsewhere on the Web.

-It should be no shock that MySpace is losing users, but now the company is in jeopardy of losing nearly $100 million.  In 2006, MySpace made a $900 million deal with Google that would allow the search engine to be the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace, which at the time was the most used social networking site.  The site is coming dangerously close to maintaining a minimum traffic level, which could break the deal with Google. In the past three months, MySpace’s page views have dropped 22.75 percent.  (more…)

New Google Check Out Feature Debuts

Google Checkout has rolled out a new “Promotional Checkout” option, which will allow online US merchants to offer checkout promotions at anytime.  Effective as of late last week, users can sign into their into Checkout accounts, click on the ‘Tools’ tab where they’ll be able to use the Promotions link to create a promotion while checking out.  Google states the entire process takes less than a minute. 

Sellers will be able to choose a specific date and time, that they’d like the offer to run, and choose from a wide selection of discounts they want to offer potential buyers.  When it’s time for the promotion to go live, Google will immediately change the standard checkout icon, to display the discount amount, along with a cart minimum. 

(more…)

Google Lands L.A. E-mail Contract

After almost a year of furious lobbying and jockeying for position, Google earned the right to provide e-mail services for the city of Los Angeles. Microsoft had mounted the fiercest competition, but the city now plans to turn over its e-mail operations to Google by June 2010.

The story, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, reminded me of my own frustrating experiences with an amateurish e-mail system.

When I enrolled at Michigan State University several years ago, I was given a personal e-mail account where all my communications from the school would be sent. It didn’t take long to realize – even though this was waaaay back in 2006 – that the MSU e-mail program was a joke. It lacked a chat feature. It complicated folder organization to the point of frustration. It boasted a spam filter that was about as water-tight as a colander. (more…)

Google Your Social Networking Friends

Last week, both Google & Microsoft announced they were teaming up with Twitter to bring real time search updates to their sites.  While Google still has yet to release the real time updates, the search engine site did launch it’s Social Search feature yesterday afternoon on Google’s Experimental Search.

Google created the Social Search because they know that your friends and contacts are an important part and influence on your life and wanted to make it easier to help you find your friends.  Many surveys have said that personal reviews of items from friends which are frequently posted on social networking sites influence a person’s decision if they want to purchase or obtain that specific item.  However, when you have hundreds or thousands of social networking friends, it can be a little hard to keep up with what everyone is saying. (more…)

This Week In Social Media – October 23, 2009

iePlexus “Week in Social Media” October 23, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

iePlexus “Week in Social Media” October 23, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

-The Web 2.0 Summit took place this week in San Francisco. Some of the biggest news from the event came out on Wednesday.  Both Microsoft and Google announced they would be teaming up with Twitterto bring real-time search updates to the search engines.  Microsoft’s Qi Lu first announced that Bing.comwould be getting get the real time twitter searchs updates, up on their site, which happened just minutes after the announcement.  Twitter’s blog said that they want to make twitter a search tool to help find people what they need in current time. Surprisingly, just a few hours after Microsoft’s big announcement, Google announced they would also be teaming up with Twitter to bring real-time search.  Neither of the companies would release the financial terms of their deals but are expected to bring more traffic to the search engine sites. There are also rumors the sites are trying to team up with Facebook as well. To watch the announcement’s in their entirety, visit Web 2.0 Summit’s website. (more…)