Bing Celebrates 1 Year

Microsoft Advertising has launched a special interactive page to celebrate the 1 year milestone of Microsoft's re-branded search engine .... Bing.

You won't be able to see it on your iPad.

The page isn't written in HTML5 or Silverlight. 

You guessed it.

The anniversary page is rendered in Adobe Flash  .....

.... and can be found here.

Microsoft Betting More on SkyDrive Brand

Microsoft has been leveraging their SkyDrive brand more often lately.

The recently announced free cloud based version of Microsoft Office 2010 is located within SkyDrive.

Those who downloaded the new Live Essentials beta last week not only noticed Office 2010 - like 'ribbons' and a significantly improved suite of free add-ons to Windows 7, but also may have noticed interaction with SkyDrive.

Now, Microsoft's Office Live Workspace is becoming part of Windows Live SkyDrive.

Some information on the Office Live Workspace upgrade is now available here.

Firefox 3.6.6 Unleashed - Tweaks Crash Protection

It's been less than a week since Mozilla announced the latest stable version of Firefox (Version 3.6.4).

Late yesterday, they did it again .... jumping the latest build to version 3.6.6.

This week's Firefox was primarily introduced to stop the browser from occasionally crashing (particularly of Mac - based systems) by providing crash protection from some plug-ins.

Today's upgrade .... available here ... tweaks that feature allowing a bit more time for the plug in to load before disabling it.

The Firefox web browser has long been a favorite among the blogging and tech crowd because of the availability of thousands of extensions (and plug-ins).  This latest release addresses concerns by some that have experienced ongoing crashing with specific plug-ins ..... and works with Windows, OS X and Linux.

Mozilla has also been updating their Firefox Developer Preview (currently 3.7 build 5) which is not only fast, but embraces the Google promoted Web-M video standard.  It's an open early build which can be found here.

Quora Opens to the Public - Early

Due to launch tomorrow, Quora has already opened to the public.

The start up, funded by Benchmark Capital and located in Palo Alto, came out of limited beta a short time ago.

What is Quora?

The Wall Street Journal has a good piece on Quora here and Marshall Kirkpatrick appears to have broken to early launch story at ReadWriteWeb here.

For now, early adopters have a shiny new toy.

Will it gain traction?

From what I've seen so far, the answer could be YES.

Hopefully a full review later this week but Quora has (so far) captured my imagination.  It's a unique and interesting approach and has 'some' fascinating activity.

You can follow me on Quora here.

BTW - They're hiring.

Charlie

Are You Using the New or Old Google Docs?

Google recently upgraded Google Docs with a variety of new features including new keyboard shortcuts, offline access, HTML editing, and CSS editing.

I use Google Docs fairly often. The template gallery is nothing less than incredible (and money-saving in many ways). I also maintain at least 5 legacy accounts that I intend on using more often later this year.

This morning, I opened a doc from one of those accounts.  Nothing looked new?

According to the Google Docs info page, the new version should be the default:

In my case, it was the opposite. The new version was not activated ... but easily taken care of.

So far I haven't found any downside to the newer version but you might want to check and see which one you're using. The HTML editing and shortcuts, at least for me, are a win.

PS: You might also want to check out the recently released Collaborative Drawing Editor while you're there as well as the new Google Docs sharing features announced this past Friday.

Simple Ideas - Another News Site Chimes In

Back in April, I wrote about a simple idea that the NY Times had implemented to keep you on-site.

Now, it's Reuters with a non-invasive way to keep you coming back.

Simply mouse over any headline on the front page and you can save the article for later reading.  More importantly, you can do it without logging in.

Of course, if you're in the habit of clearing cookies, you'll probably wipe these out but I seriously doubt most web users do (otherwise most affiliate programs simply wouldn't work).

It's little ideas like this, that don't invade the user experience but add value, that have the potential to make or break some online publications as time goes on.

You can check it out and see what you think at Reuters.com here.

Twitter Launches Their Own World Cup Pages

After some serious service disruptions, Twitter seems not only to be back up and running but has launched their own World Cup coverage,  powered by ... you guessed it ... tweets.

Using the arrows from the home page you can go match by match and see what fans worldwide are posting to the popular micro-blogging service.

You can check out your favorite teams and what others are saying in real-time at the Twitter World Cup home page here.

Yahoo! Ramps Up TV Move with New Sony Deal

In what is still a virgin market, more than a few companies are targeting software and hardware to bring the Internet (and more) into your living room .... and on to your TV.

MG Siegler writes about Google's new TV initiative at TechCrunch here. The video clears up a lot of questions about Google's intentions. The TechCrunch piece also mentions Apple TV and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

There are (a lot) of other players.

Microsoft has built-in (free to registered users) the new Windows Media Center in Windows 7 and while it doesn't have the content of say, Apple's iTunes, it does offer the functionality to stream video, record, search and port to almost any TV assuming your PC has the system resources and ports. It also comes pre-loaded with Netflix and a variety of 'channels' which continue to grow (and be automatically updated).

Yahoo! entered this market last year with the Yahoo! TV widget and deals with numerous TV manufacturers to build-in Yahoo! content. Last night, the company went a step further entering into a worldwide agreement with Sony that will bring their product to over 100 countries or, as their blog post says, increasing the availability of Yahoo! on your TV by seven-fold.

It's a pretty safe bet that most people 'connecting' their TV's today are using an Xbox or simply porting video and audio from PCs and watching Hulu or one of the multitude of other emerging TV programming online aggregators. CBS continues an online push with TV.com, and of course, the TV networks themselves are already streaming. Google's YouTube is there as well with increased HD content.

Comcast, barring regulatory issues, will most likely soon own NBC Universal. The company has already launched several TV-related Internet portals.

A 30 billion dollar merger currently under heavy scrutiny by the FCC.

Sound confusing?

Think about this.

Advertising buyers are already having a tough time deciding where to place their 'recession-limited' ad dollars.

That's all going to change .... and it could happen a lot sooner than most anticipate.

Google Caffeine Update Adds Right Click

Last week, Google announced that their new hyper indexing system was live across all data centers.

Dubbed Google Caffeine, a variety of changes were made.

While doing a vanity search this morning, I noticed that not only 'freshness' (last update) is displayed in the main index search results .... but a right click on your mouse drops down more information.

In this case, 'Get more results from the past 24 hours'.

Talk about speed ?  Wow!

Update: The right click functionality seems to have 'turned off' in the past hour ... however the index is still running at an incredible speed.  Will the feature come back?  We'll see :)