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After merely splitting U.S. market share with its Yahoo! search engine partner, Microsoft’s Bing came to its own decision. It’s “splitsville” for “Bing, The Decision Engine,“ and full-speed ahead with a more active, verb-oriented approach (an interesting Facebook paralell) that Microsoft launched with a different kind of television spot during the NFC championship football game on Sunday. [...]
Cashing in on online poker may still be illegal in the state of Washington but free-to-play Video Poker, Blackjack, Slots, Roulette and other online casino games have hit the virtual jackpot for Seattle-based Double Down Interactive (DDI). The Seattle startup has been acquired by International Game Technology for $500 million. Counting up the chips, the deal includes $250 [...]
Recently named one of the best places to work in the Puget Sound, perking employees talents with such amenities as a free on-site gym, staff lunches, chili cook-offs, a virtual bowling competition, and the less visible rewards of 100% medical, tuition reimbursement and stock options, Metia Seattle, (the ‘geo-marker’ is “officially” planted in Kirkland), has [...]
For the opening chapters of his professional life story, Joe Justice assumed the lead character’s role of software consultant, writ large. So when Joe set out down the road to solve a classic hardware problem like how to build a motor vehicle that could exceed 100 miles to the gallon, his mechanical thinking gave equal [...]
UW’s Shwetak Patel, a faculty member in Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering, has been named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow – colloquially known as the MacArthur “Genius” Award. Each year, the MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships of $500,000 to roughly twenty “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a [...]
Ten years ago Charles Brennick returned from Costa Rica with a desire to help underserved communities around the world gain access to technology and the Internet. Starting with a handful of volunteers and his laptop, he created InterConnection. Today, the organization has shipped more than 25,000 computers to organizations in 40 different countries and given [...]
As Internet Websites were being blacked-out on Wednesday, January 19th, in protest of the controversial SOPA legislation more reminiscent of the days of governmental blacklisting, Seattle was being blanketed in a coat of frosty white. Mayor Mike McGinn activated the Seattle city government’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) after the National Weather Service forecasted several feet of snow and icy road [...]
After a 14 year tenure as the opening act in the tech world’s largest new product extravaganza, it seemed only fitting that American Idol host, Ryan Seacrest, would be on hand to send Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s back home after in his final star turn as a CES keynoter. While the Redmond brigade says its marketing [...]
How would you interact with an Online Voter’s Guide that lets you register your approval by degree (with a slider) and add your opinion to others on an election issue? CityClub of Seattle and the University of Washington’s Center for Communication & Civic Engagement and its Department of Computer Science and Engineering have collaborated to [...]
“Amazon has spent more than 15 years tackling the challenges of database scalability, performance and cost-effectiveness using distributed systems and NoSQL technology,” explains Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon. “Amazon DynamoDB is the result of everything we’ve learned from building large-scale, non-relational databases for Amazon.com and building highly scalable and reliable cloud computing services at AWS.” “With [...]
Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, Tacoma MayorMarilyn Strickland, Tacoma School Board President Kurt Miller, Tacoma Urban League CEO (and City Councilwoman) Victoria Woodards, Tacoma Housing Authority Executive Director Michael Mirra and Comcast Washington Senior Vice President Len Rozek have introduced a best-in-class broadband inclusion program for the state of Washington. At a technology center in Hillside Terrace, a Tacoma Housing Authority neighborhood in the Hilltop area [...]
Call for Entries: A Social Innovation Fast Pitch Event (SIFP), the first of its kind in Seattle to combine nonprofit and for-profit organizations in a single event competition, could net your social business idea up to $150K in grants and investments. But you’ll need to act fast! Applications are due between now and August 22nd. [...]
by Larry Sivitz, Seattle24x7, Editor in Chief The process of link building for search engine optimization and traffic building is time-intensive, but just how long should it take for targeted link building actions to take hold? Planning is essential and, based on your roadmap, your speed and mileage may vary. Link building involves multiple “channels” [...]
By Rod Rasmussen, IID President and Chief Technology Officer The numbers are truly staggering. More than 100 million people’s names, home addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and more were stolen at Sony, while tens of millions of additional email addresses were stolen during a data breach at marketer Epsilon. And what is [...]
by Tom Metz, Author, Investment Banker, Founder, T.V. Metz & Co., LLC. Selling a company at the right time can make a big difference in the price. The reason for selling can also affect the timing. One of the primary reasons that a technology company sells is that it has reached an inflection point. A [...]
A new era in television begins this holiday season where your entertainment becomes instantly searchable, easily discoverable and enjoyable in extraordinary new ways from a single device — Xbox 360. Microsoft has announced plans to roll out the next generation of TV entertainment on Xbox LIVE, the online entertainment service for Xbox 360. Nearly 40 [...]
Microsoft unveiled the new Windows 8 OS yesterday at its annual Build Conference, but you can get the early preview right here. You can install this Developer version on a 32-bit or a 64-bit x86 machines and activation is not required, but don’t assume there won’t be many changes to come. A landscape view [...]
The extended weather forecast may be for “cloud-based” storage of your valuable computer files, but if you plan on interacting with those files anywhere under the stratosphere, like your computer desktop for instance, we would advise adopting an “umbrella strategy.” This is not a “bald” (eagle) assertion. For example, the ballooning size of music and [...]
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Jan 23 2012
Techspresso Shots: Zillow, Expedia & Urbanspoon Crowdsource, Bing is for Doing!Will the last Seattle Internet company to add a structured social media program to its online offering or outreach, please turn off the lights? Wait, reverse that. Social engagement can be a very luminescent idea to build traffic, heigthen awareness, elevate search ranking and propel your marketing message and sales momentum!
Zillow has just announced the launch of Neighborhood Advice, a social home-shopping experience that helps buyers and renters learn about neighborhoods from their Facebook friends.
While shopping on Zillow, users are prompted to activate Facebook® Connect and then see locally where their Facebook friends live or “check-in” the most. As shoppers search for homes in a specific city or neighborhood, Neighborhood Advice will recommend Facebook friends connected to the area to contact for personal tips and advice.
For example, if a user is searching for homes in the Green Lake neighborhood of north central Seattle, Neighborhood Advice will identify friends who have shared that they live in Green Lake, or who frequently “check-in” to places in Green Lake. The home shopper can then send these friends a private direct message on Facebook to ask questions about the neighborhood.
“When people are looking to rent or buy a new home, they always ask friends, family and co-workers questions about different neighborhoods. Neighborhood Advice takes this further and deeper by allowing shoppers to quickly and easily tap into their broader online social network as they shop for homes on Zillow,” said Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow. “Integrating social media tools and friend networks into the core Zillow home-shopping experience is yet another way we are giving our users access to previously hard-to-find, yet sought-after, information.”
Expedia’s new ”Last-Minute Deals” program is now crowdsourcing travel planning by letting customers share the best deals with one another.
Unlike other flash sales programs, which are trypically driven by suppliers and based on inventory, Expedia Last-Minute Deals showcase deals found by other customers. The key parameter is point of origin. To access Last-Minute Deals, travelers visit www.expedia.com/lastminute and either the site will auto-detect the customer’s location or people can enter their own home city. Last-Minute Deals then springs into action, surfacing the best deals found by other travelers to different destinations. With a quick click, travelers can make those deals their own.
“In a sense, the millions of people who come to Expedia® are now serving as your own personal travel agent, helping you find the best and most popular deals from your home city,” said Joe Megibow, vice president and general manager, Expedia.com. “So many customers travel with Expedia every month that it puts us in a great position to deliver this type of service to our customers. With Last-Minute Deals, you can get the best deals available by letting everyone else do your research for you.”
Expedia’s Last-Minute Deals program is the latest offering in the company’s robust portfolio of ways to find travel value on Expedia.com. In 2011, Expedia launched both the ASAP program – which, as the acronym suggests, delivers trips featuring A Sudden Amazing Price®, live and bookable for up to 12 hours – and the hugely successful Groupon Getaways with Expedia partnership, which couples the flash-sales expertise of Groupon with Expedia’s unparalleled global network of travel suppliers. Groupon Getaways with Expedia follows Groupon’s voucher model, where travelers book a hotel room or package at an exceptional rate, then travel when the time is right. Groupon Getaways with Expedia deals are also transferable, allowing consumers to give the gift of travel to a friend or loved one.
Urbanspoon, a leading mobile restaurant app and reservation management system, has announced its popular app can now be added to Facebook Timeline to enable people to share their dining experiences with their friends. The new Dineline feature allows people to track restaurants they visited as well as what meal they had at that eatery, upload photos and share memorable meals on their Facebook Timelines.
Even Microsoft’s Bing is changing its tune from the ‘Decision Engine’ that “Helps you Decide,” to the search engine for “#Doing!” The “ing” in doing is mean to echo the “ing” in “Bing…”The new tagline was unveiled during the NFC championship football game on Sunday.
The campaign, from Publicis Groupe’s Razorfish, will feature winter-sports athletes. The first spot uses Bing searches to tell the story of American snowboarder Kevin Pearce, whose tragic accident quashed his Olympic hopes. Ad Age reported in September that Bing was ready to kill the “Decision Engine” tagline created by former agency JWT and used since the relaunch of Microsoft search in 2009.
Microsoft has made fairly modest gains in its share of the U.S. search market. Google leads, with a 65.9% share in December, according to ComScore. Microsoft holds 15.1% vs. Yahoo’s 14.5%. [24x7]
