The Seattle-Search.com Blog

The final build of Internet Explorer 8 has been released in 25 languages. You can also grab the download directly from these links: Windows XP 32-bit (16.1 MB), Windows XP 64-bit (32.3 MB), Windows Server 2003 32-bit (16.0 MB), Windows Server 2003 64-bit (32.3 MB), Windows Vista 32-bit (13.2 MB), Windows Vista 64-bit (24.3 MB), Windows Server 2008 32-bit (13.2 MB), and Windows Server 2008 64-bit (24.3 MB).

IE8’s new features include Accelerators, Web Slices, and visual search suggestions, which improve how quickly users can get typical browsing tasks done. Accelerators allows users to get—or pass on—information like a map or a definition by right clicking a word on a website and choosing a service from the drop down menu, without ever leaving the page. That means getting directions to the party, figuring out what your friend means when he says he’s an “aficionado,” or even sending something on the page to a friend via e-mail, all from the right click menu.

A Web Slice grabs specific information from a website (like the top stories from Digg or the weather forecast) and puts it in a drop-down menu, eliminating the need to browse to the actual website. ”

An improvement to the search box in the top right: users can get their answers without ever hitting enter, thanks to the drop-down menu that grabs information from the search engine without ever going to the site. The address bar also looks through favorites and history, and opening a new tab shows you a list of tabs you’ve closed recently, making it easier to find the site you visited earlier.

eWeeks Labs calls IE8 a “Must Upgrade.” After its debut last Thursday, those who use Microsoft Internet Explorer as their browser are proving reluctant to adopt the new IE 8. On Friday afternoon, StatCounter Global Stats reported that IE 8 only accounted for about one and a half percent of all internet traffic. That was an increase of less than one and a half percent over Thursday. [24x7]

The Fareologists at Live Search Farecast have issued the 2009 Spring Break Forecast, which uncovers a much-needed break in airfare and hotel rates.

Live Search Farecast, which is known for telling travelers when to buy based on airfare predictions, is currently recommending “Buy Now” 29 percent more often than at this time last year for spring break flight searches. Similarly, premium hotel rates in U.S. spring break destinations have decreased 15 percent since last year. Savvy travelers can maximize their budgets and save more than 20 percent on the total trip cost by choosing the right travel dates, destinations and hotels.

Fares for spring break travel — Feb. 28 through April 5 — are down more than 15 percent from 2008, reaching roughly the same price points as spring break travel in 2007.

Microsoft has released a “Technology Preview” of its new Microsoft Recite application, which will officially be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week.

Recite is an application for Windows Mobile that uses voice search technology to let users record notes for themselves and then later find those notes by speaking back to the application. Here’s an example. You could first tell Microsoft Recite: “Emil’s birthday is February 23″ as well as “Emil wants a 16GB Zune for his birthday.” When you later want to figure out what to get me for my birthday and when it is, you can simply say “Emil’s birthday” into the search function. Saying “Zune” would also bring up the second message, as well as any other entries that also mention “Zune.”

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is using Twitter to broadcast Seattle area traffic incidents and other statewide related traffic and travel information.

The Seattle area incidents service also includes a link to a traffic camera image if one is available.

Direct messages are in the works which will return current mountain pass conditions, Seattle area travel times and Canadian border wait times.

Visit <http://twitter.com/wsdot>

In a Wall Street Journal interview on Friday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and new online services chief Qi Lu, talk about the possibility of a search deal with Yahoo.

Ballmer expressed his belief that a search deal wth Yahoo! would provide Microsoft with “critical mass in the advertising marketplace.”

Some excerpts:

WSJ: Steve, should a Yahoo search deal come to pass with Microsoft, would Qi’s hiring make it easier for Microsoft to integrate whatever assets it acquired from Yahoo?

Mr. Ballmer: I think a search deal makes great sense for Microsoft, and Yahoo, and I think I’ve been very open about that. That’s as true with Qi joining us as it was before Qi joined us. Obviously the logistics of any such integration…can only be simpler by having somebody who will know both sides. But, that was not a factor in hiring Qi.

WSJ: Do you feel like you’re in a situation where you can go slow with regards to Yahoo and any conversations, or do you need to move quickly?

Mr. Ballmer: We’re fully prepared to compete without any partnership with Yahoo. We don’t need to act. Would it be advantageous for both of us to make a deal? Look, the fundamental basis for doing the search deal with Yahoo has to do with critical mass in the advertising marketplace. It doesn’t have to do with technology, or any of these other things, it really is a market phenomenon… We’d have higher monetization levels possible in front of us because there would be more people bidding on more key words. Most importantly, Google would have perhaps a real credible competitor sooner.

I think good ideas are usually better done quickly than slowly, so it would probably be better for both us, and certainly for Yahoo, if we were to do it sooner than later. But at the end of the day, that would have be something Yahoo would be as interested in as I have expressed our interest.”

Lu, who was appointed to his new post on Thursday said he was impressed by the amount of resources Microsoft was investing in its online business.

Microsoft today announced BizSpark, a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage software Startups. . BizSpark includes over 300 Network Partners who are incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters who are vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship and can offer the program directly to startups.

VentureBeat describes BizSpark: It’s an enticing free upfront three-year package, bundling together software, support and promotion for no upfront cost — requiring merely a $100 payment when you leave the program. It’s an aggressive move by Microsoft to ensure that technology startups at least consider using Microsoft’s tools when they are putting together their initial infrastructure — and comes a time when competitors are bidding for the business of those same startups by offering them low cost, often open source initiatives.

By joining BizSpark, Startups get:access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and unlimited production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. Startups will also get access to the community technology preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Azure Services Platform. A dedicated online startup directory, BizSparkDB, on the Microsoft  Startup Zone website (www.microsoftstartupzone.com) will highlight  promising companies from around the world, including the “BizSpark Startup of the Day”. Through their relationship with Microsoft and BizSpark Network Partners, startups will achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners.

Can a mosquito be transformed into a “flying syringe,” so that when the insect bites a human, it delivers a vaccine instead of transmitting a disease?  That is one of the ideas which received a $100,000 award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this week. The awards were made to 104 scientists from 22 nations in the the first round of what is to become a regular practice as the foundation seeks to develop transformational ideas that will help revolutionize health care. The notion  of a mosquito as an airborne syringe  was submitted by Hiroyuki Matsuoka from Jichi Medical University in Japan and was one of 4,000 proposals considered.  Evidently, that high-flying proposal had more bite.

When Seattle’s SEOmoz decided to “go private” last year by taking on over a million dollars in venture capital investment, the search world saw a fly in its alphabet soup.  Just what ROI could the VC’s see from SEO services that would warrant that kind of investment?  First came SEOMoz fee-based “membership” and the monetization of tools which SEOmoz had previously offered to SEO’ers for free.  But the skunk works projects are just getting started and the mozzers hope they will come out smelling like a rose. This week, SEOmoz built on its reputation as the Web’s most prolific link-baiters cum search tool makers by unveiling their most ambitious product yet. The name of the service borrows liberally from the ancestral “Moz”-illa and Netscape  brand DNA — it’s called Linkscape.

Linkscape offers two types of reports that detail inlinks to a URL, anchor text distribution, domain and overall link metrics including comparison reports that compare link metrics and anchor text distribution of a small group of URLs.

Embracing and extending the moz namespace, the Linkscape reports also encompass two new, branded indices. The fitst is mozRank™ - the raw link popularity of a URL or domain based on analysis of the links pointing to it (similar to global link popularity metrics used by the engines). The second is  mozTrust™ - an estimation of how trustworthy a URL or domain is in the eyes of the search engines based on the quality and quantity of trusted links pointing to it.