Google Promoting Apps Through Billboards
Google are using billboards around the metro areas of New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago to promote their Google apps. Here is a clip showing some of the billboards;
Microsoft and Yahoo Together at Last?
You may have heard by now about the planned partnership between the two search engine minor players Microsoft and Yahoo. Here is a Bloomberg video discussing the partnership and what that might mean to their search engine future on the web;
New Twitter Homepage
If you are a regular user on Twitter you probably haven’t been to the homepage since the day you signed up, so you probably haven’t noticed that there is a new homepage.
The new homepage is more about searching for different topics and niches on twitter, rather than just a sign up form.
And there is a new headline on the homepage, “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”.
Bing Released Early
Microsoft’s long awaited search engine which was reported recently that it may be called Bing has been released live in an unexpected move.
The early reports on Bing is quite promising from some reviewers, yet unpleasant from others (what else is new!). I havn’t had too long to work my way through the features on Bing but from first glance I do like two features;
- Getting a preview of the results in the right hand side
- Watching videos with a hover over (awesome)
But there was one thing I wasn’t too impressed with – Images. It was so cluttered so I will still stick with Google images to find some web pics.
With Bing they offer you some other tools for helping you find what you want (like images), they are;
- Health
- Images
- Local
- Maps
- News
- Shopping
- Translator
- Travel
- Videos
- xRank
So see what you think of Bing yourself and decide if you want to move away from the big 2 engines.
Microsoft Bing
Microsoft has been testing its search engine under the name Kumo, but if a report on Advertising Age is on target, it will launch under the name “Bing.”
The company has long offered Live Search, it had been talking about a new product called Kumo and now rumor has it the new search product will be called Bing.
Microsoft is hoping a major ad push will take a chunk out of Google — the number one online search brand — in favor of Bing. Bing’s debut will feature a $80 to $100 million online, TV, print, and radio advertising campaign.
Google Down But Not Out
Google suffered another embarrassment when a technical glitch rendered the Internet search company’s main page, mail service and news site sluggish or unavailable to millions of people worldwide for about an hour Thursday morning.
Google services were back online by about 9 a.m., PST, Thursday and appeared to be running smoothly throughout the day.
Google confirmed an “issue affecting some Google services,” saying it had “been resolved” and that the company would “share more details soon.” A spokesperson gave more specific details about the disruption to its Google News aggregator.
Twitter was going crazy all morning with reports and ‘angered’ users twittering about the issue.
The list of Google services that were reportedly down for various periods of time Thursday includes YouTube, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Docs, AdSense and Blogger.
Default Browsers
Whenever you start a web application one type of browser will start (ie, firefox etc), but what do you do if you want your default browser to be different. Here are the steps you should take to make each browser your default;
Internet Explorer
- Open internet explorer
- Click tools
- Select internet options
- Select internet properties
- Click the programs tab
- Click the make default button under default web browser
Google Chrome
- Open chrome
- Click tools
- Select options
- Click the basic tab
- Click Make Google Chrome my default browser
Mozilla Firefox
- Open firefox
- Click tools
- Select options
- Click the advanced tab
- Click the general tab
- Click the check now button under system defaults
Opera
- Go to Tools
- Click preferences
- Click advanced
- Select programs
- Tick the checkbox for Check if Opera is default browser on startup
Microsoft Answers
Microsoft has just released a beta version of answers, a website setup to provide insight into various problems associated with the Windows Vista operating system. You will be able to search for any answer you need in three ways on the website;
- Search for one using the search bar at the top of the page
- Ask the community – Use the expertise of other Microsoft users to try get a result
- Browse through specific categories to find an answer to any problem
Check it out for yourself and give us back some insight into it by leaving a comment.
Firefox TimeTracker Add On
I just added this add-on to my Firefox and the results rather embarrassed me!
The TimeTracker add-on tool records how much time you spend browsing the web using Firefox and records it conveniently on your browser. It can help you control your browsing habits and stop you getting internetitis from being online too long.
TimeTracker features;
- Tracks browsing time across sessions
- Pauses automatically when you stop browsing
- Reset counter
- Pause toggle per window
- List ‘work’ sites that should not count
- Tooltip showing total time today, since last reset and since installing
To find out more about TimeTracker and to download it click here
Speed Up Firefox Browsing
I am personally a big fan of Firefox and use it more than IE for a few reasons, but one of my problems was I found it sometimes was slower than IE. I did a bit of tweaking and found some great tips for you to try out and to increase the overall speed of you Firefox.
Just follow each of these tweaks and you will get a much faster firefox;
Pipelining
- Open up you Firefox browser
- In the address bar type about:config
- In the filter section type network.http.pipelining
- Double click the false value to make it true
- Done
Maxrequests
- In the filter bar type network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
- Change the value from 4 to 8
- Done
Proxy
- In the filter bar type network.http.proxy.pipelining
- Change the false value to true by double clicking on it
- Done
DisableIPv6
- In the filter bar type network.dns.disableIPv6
- Double click on the false value and make it true
- Done
