The Seattle-Search.com Blog

A new community guide called Zigogo, has positioned itself as an online concierge who knows all of the best restaurants, clubs and shops in the neighborhood and delivers searchable, relevant and real-time calendars, menus and special events information directly to customers online or on their mobile phone. Customers can watch videos, browse pictures and even get door-to-door driving directions for businesses in their neighborhood–all available wherever they are and whenever they want it! Visit Zigogo today!

Did you catch Redin CEO Glenn Kelman on Sunday’s 60 Minutes? “Real estate, by far, is the most screwed up industry in America,” said Glenn. “And we feel like things that Amazon or eBay or Yahoo have done of other industries, we can do for the real estate industry.” The CBS News blog lit up after the show, fanning the flames of the fight between traditional Realtors and online innovators over the coveted 6% of a property’s sales commission.

[Update: Marriage plans have been scribbed for now, but the happy couple amicably announced plans to "live together" before entering into a larger commitment. What that suggests is some sort of strategic partnership to challenge Google's hegemony. The bridal registry is temporarily closed! Note: Yahoo CEO Terry Semel happens to be speaking at a Microsoft online advertising conference in Redmond this coming week. Semel has actually spoken at the same event in the past, but maybe this time he'll have something more interesting to discuss than general industry trends.]

Microsoft is resuming its pursuit of search-engine operator Yahoo! that could help it better compete with Web search leader Google, published reports said today.

Yahoo! shares surged about 17 percent in midday trading in New York.

The New York Post reported today that Microsoft has asked Yahoo! to enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. Yahoo!’s market capitalization was about $38 billion on Thursday.

Microsoft had no immediate comment on the report, spokesman Lou Gellos said today.

The Wall Street Journal said executives of the two companies are looking at a merger or some other kind of matchup and said the talks appear to be early-stage discussions. It said the companies explored the idea of combining last year, but the talks led nowhere.

The newspaper reports each cited unidentified people familiar with the situation.

Industry analyst Matt Rosoff with Directions on Microsoft in Kirkland said a huge takeover is unlikely, noting that it would duplicate services MSN already provides, such as instant messaging and e-mail.

It is possible, Rosoff added, that Microsoft and Yahoo! might be talking about a deal involving only online search advertising.

Microsoft is feeling increasing pressure to compete with Google, which plans to beef up its portfolio with a $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick.

Earlier this week, Yahoo! said it would buy 80 percent of advertising exchange Right Media for $680 million, increasing its stake in that company to full control.

Yahoo! shares were up $4.81, or 17.1 percent, to $32.99 in midday trading in New York, while shares of Microsoft were down 46 cents, or 1.5 percent, at $30.51.

Wetpaint Wiki Users Can Now Send Single or Multi-Person Private Messages to Connect and Collaborate With Others About Their Most Passionate Interests

Wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com), the consumer-friendly Wiki for collaborating and publishing online, has announced the availability of its person-to-person and multi-person messaging service. Wetpaint now offers the first consumer Wiki that empowers one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many messaging capabilities. Consumers can use the feature to
privately communicate, share ideas, and coordinate on topics of interest.”When people collaborate, good things happen, whether that collaboration is taking place for the world to see or between two people wishing to have a private dialogue,” said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. “By empowering users to send private messages, Wetpaint furthers its commitment to providing the easiest and most convenient means for consumers to collaborate online.”

Since the June 2006 launch of the Wetpaint consumer platform, more than 300,000 user-generated community Wikis have been created. These sites have joined together people from all over the globe to collaborate on topics ranging from politics and social causes to reunions and weddings.

Early-Stage Northwest Technology Companies from the Northwest’s Digital Media, Web Services, Software and Wireless Industries to Present to Venture Capitalists

The WSA, the state’s oldest and largest technology trade organization, today announced that it has filled its line-up of presenting companies for the 14th annual Investment Forum 2007, the organization’s annual event that matches venture capitalists with early-stage companies from around the Pacific Northwest.

Directly after each company’s presentation, a panel of VCs and industry experts will offer straightforward feedback to the presenters, enabling them to get a sense of how the market may react to the validity and saleability of their products and services.
The following companies are slated to present at the 2007 Investment Forum:

Digital Media:
– Alphabet Lane, Inc.
– FlowPlay, Inc.
– Mixpo
– RIPL Corp.
– Smilebox Inc.
– Yodio

– Web Services / Software:
– Attenex Corporation
– Bag Borrow or Steal
– Centeris Corporation
– Escapia, Inc.
– Klir Technologies, Inc.
– Mercent
– Trailfire

– Wireless:
– Mixxer
– Mobile Semiconductors
– Ontela
– Perlego Systems, Inc.
– Treemo
– ZenZui

The 14th annual Investment Forum will be held on May 2, 2007 at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center at Pier 66 on Seattle’s waterfront from 7:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. PT.

Isilon Systems , Seattle’s leader in clustered storage, has announced 10 new additions to its growing community of customers who are driving innovation in the emerging world of Web 2.0 content and services. Linden Lab (creator of the Second Life 3D virtual world), Current TV, Dailymotion, FlipClip, Imeem, Jump TV, Pandora TV, PhotoBox, Revver and Skyrock are the latest companies to select Isilon IQ clustered storage as the core technology for access and storage of the ever-expanding user-created digital content assets that are a hallmark of the next generation of Internet interactivity.”The emergence of Web 2.0 is ushering in a breakthrough in human-Internet interaction that is marked by massive amounts of content — content created not just for users but by users. This has far-reaching implications for commerce, human relationships and the role of technology in people’s lives,” said Sujal Patel, founder and chief technology officer, Isilon Systems. “The continuing trend of Web 2.0 innovators basing their digital content storage and access solutions on Isilon IQ technology is validation of our scalable, reliable software-based clustered systems.”

The digital content explosion is manifested not only in the immense size of digital content files, but also by the graphically-rich, highly-interactive nature of the Web 2.0 world. The emergence of photo- and video-sharing sites, such as Current TV, Dailymotion, FlipClip, Imeem, PhotoBox, Revver and Skyrock, and the creation of interactive communities and 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, all involve producing, storing and accessing immense volumes of digital assets — in the form of images, textures, audio, video and other types of digital content.

As a video game town (Nintendo, Microsoft, Real, EA), and a search engine capitol, you’d think we would’ve connected the two fields a bit sooner.  But in a first step of many more to come,  StumbleUpon Video will soon be available on the TV via a customized version made for the Nintendo Wii.

StumbleUpon is a cross between personalization and serendipity that  takes you to unexpected web pages that fit your interests as defined by your self categorization and your subsequent thumbs up or thumbs evaluation.  The company is celebrating its 5th anniversary tonight and is also releasing version 3.0 of its browser toolbar, which will integrate video along with standard web page stumbling.
Sending video from the web to the TV is something that no shortage of companies are doing or are seeking to do. More than 6 million Wii consoles have been sold since they went on sale last Fall.

When famous Microsoft computer scientist Jim Gray went missing a few days ago, the coast guard launched a large scale search that found absolutely nothing. On Thursday, they gave up.

As reported by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch,  Amazon then stepped in. They arranged for a satellite sweep of the area and stored the images on their S3 storage service. They then created a task on their Mechanical Turk service to allow volunteers to scan the images to look for the boat. It’s a tough task - the boat would only be about six pixels in size in an image, and there was a lot of cloud cover obscuring large parts of the area scanned. But volunteers are pouring in to help out.

If you’d like to help, go to this task on Mechanical Turk. You’ll be asked to view five satellite images and note any that should be looked at more closely.

Here’s hoping that new web technologies will make helping people more common in the future. When tragedy strikes, people may be able to help in an effective and organized way instead of simply watching events unfold on their television.