The Seattle-Search.com Blog

Seattle-based iCopyright has launched a new initiative for publishers that pushes their web content into the e-mail boxes of savvy businesses and consumers with Clip&Copy®.

Clip&Copy, is a free news alert and press clipping service designed to extend the reach of content from thousands of Web sites while providing simple tools for managing the rights to copy and redistribute that content. Clip&Copy currently processes news feeds from the Associated Press, Reuters, UPI, and hundreds of business magazines and websites. Previously, publishers were required to enable the iCopyright intelligent licensing system on their own Web sites to enjoy distribution to Clip&Copy subscribers. Now they  can do without the licensing.

“The Clip&Copy service has become such a valuable tool for our users that we decided it was in everyone’s interest to open the channel to all publishers who can deliver an xml feed of their content to us, regardless of their status as iCopyright clients,” said Andrew Elston, Director of Publisher Relations at iCopyright. “Although Clip&Copy is free to users, we generate revenue by associating the content with advertising. We can share that revenue stream with publishers who are not already part of the full iCopyright service — and thus expose this content to even more revenue opportunities when the content is shared further.”

Earth mapping program with information about the U.S. congressional races coming up in two weeks.

The Google Earth 2006 election resource tool, unveiled early Monday, indicates the country’s 436 congressional districts with stars on the popular 3D map of the country. Clicking on a star pops open a bubble window that has information on the candidates in that race.
googlelect

The window also includes links to news, images and Web search results on candidates, as well as to information on where and how to vote and campaign finance reform.
“Our hope is that young people using Google Earth will…make better, informed choices,” said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps.

The project was the brainchild of two members of the Google Earth team who created it during the 20 percent time allotted each week for engineers to work on special projects of their own design, Hanke said.

The election-related material is a layer on top of Google Earth, Hanke said. Google has worked on other customized layers for the U.S. National Parks Service, the Discovery Channel and National Geographic.

On Tuesday, AOL launched an election-related blog called “The Stump.”

Now that Internet Explorer 7 has been released the world is making note of its position in the Net search hierarchy, starting with the fact that the browser has a visible search box built into the “chrome.”

On a new machine, where Google has no presence or partnership, Microsoft Live Search will be the default, only it’s called just Live Search which may be less familiar to some users. Google had suggested that users should be explicitly asked to make a choice from one of several providers. If a user selects Google or Yahoo! as the search engine default, Microsoft respects their wishes.

It’s uncertain whether the search box in the “chrome” is going to make that much of a difference. We’ll know in short order. IE7 is being rolled out in a mandatory fashion to Windows users beginning November 1 through the Windows update system. If Microsoft’s search share rises, the chrome search box may be working.

The free 5-megabyte Firefrox browser, whcih will be available in 39 languages for Windows, Mac and Linux computers, will be downloadable from getfirefox.com.

The new release incorporates anti-phishing technology to prevent the deceptive disclosure of personal information. It restores windows, tabs, in-progress downloads and text typed into online forms if any of those are interrupted by a system crash. And it corrects the spelling of words entered on Web pages.

Version 2.0 also improves on the tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated and that Microsoft introduced for the first time last week with IE7, its biggest upgrade since 2001.

The big question is whether it will stem Firefox’s growth at Microsoft’s expense. Firefox’s share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004.

TIME Magazine reports: “For budding internet entrepreneurs, the moral of Google’s $1.65 billion purchase of video start-up YouTube is simple: Build a real, functioning company, then sell it to a bigger one.” Google’s not the only shopper. Yahoo! has spent close to $100 million for start-ups Flickr and Jumpcut, among others. Facebook may be next, with Yahoo! said to be mulling a $1 billion offer. With investors on track to inject $500 million into new Net firms this year–twice last year’s total, according to a Dow Jones VentureOne report–this may be the start of a golden hunting season.

TIME cites the fact that there are more than 1,000 start-ups, but it picks several Seattle companies as the leader of that pack and the next runners-up to YouTube fame. First among them is Farecast.com which “uses fearsome computer power to predict the direction of plane fares.” Farecast was founded by UW professor and infopreneuer Oren Etzioni, who created the Web’s first meta-search site, Meta Crawkler, and first shopping-comparison tool, Jango, which became ShopBot when it was acquired by Excite. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you tried the new Web 2.0 “B.S. Generator” Web page? Click the button and popular catch-phrases fill up a Post-It note right before your eyes. Jargon like “aggregated semantic blogospheres,” “enabled Cluetrain Wikis,” “podcasting tagclouds,” and “rich-client folksonomies.” Funny, a “rich client” may be the only client to buy-in to any of these concepts.

Buzzwords aside, it’s easy to be cynical about Web 2.0, the term that has come to mean any Web service (or Web “self-service”) that relies on consumer-contributed content and social participation to create its social value proposition. The key word is “social.” Seattle’s social networking sites like 43things, Judy’s Book, BuddyTV or Jobster, social bookmarking sites like Blue Dot or Snapvine, social taggregators like TagJag, social voting/ranking sites like Newscloud, Musicmobs, Jookster or Vizrea, and contributed user content communities for blogs and podcasts like Pluggd, Melodeo, Newsvine, PiXPO or Weedshare, all mark this social groupware resurgence. Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Athletic Club is more than just a gym — it’s a miniature city
contained inside a 21-story building with restaurants, shops, bars, a
hotel, and many other amenities. To portray all this in a Web site required
special attention to the information architecture.

By working with the department managers, Seattle design firm Methodologie was able to design a new architecture that balanced the needs of each of the seven main departments inside the WAC. To ease maintenance, all content is managed by the WAC staff through a CMS especially customized for them. Visit WAC at http://www.wac.net/

PersonalInjuryTerms.com Helps Clarify Personal Injury Symptoms, Conditions, Rights and Resources

Putting the language of personal injury into terms people can easily understand is the first step toward recovery according to a new Website that presents “A Practical Reference Guide to Personal Injury Terminology, from A-Z.” Read the rest of this entry »

Enhancements Streamline Qualification Process for Members, Gets Products to Market Faster

Following months of beta testing and refinement, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group has announced the availability of an updated Qualification Program for member products designed with Bluetooth wireless technology. For member companies, the new program facilitates more efficient development of Bluetooth devices by automating many of the processes, increasing consistency in how the process is applied while reducing time and cost of the qualification process. The improved program better ensures interoperability among devices, verifies conformance to Bluetooth specifications and strengthens the Bluetooth SIG’s ability to enforce compliance.

“More Bluetooth products are being qualified than ever before and we wanted to streamline the process for members while continuing to improve interoperability between Bluetooth devices,” said Michael Foley, Ph. D., executive director of the Bluetooth SIG. “The improvements we’ve made accomplish both objectives.”

Approximately 90 Bluetooth products are sent through the Bluetooth SIG’s qualification program each month. The updated program will significantly shorten the amount of time invested by each company per product.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), headquartered in Bellevue, WA, is comprised of leaders in the telecommunications, computing, consumer electronics, automotive and network industries, and is driving development of Bluetooth wireless technology and bringing it to market. The Bluetooth SIG includes promoter group companies Agere, Ericsson, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Toshiba, along with over 6000 Associate and Adopter member companies.  For more information visit http://www.bluetooth.com/