The Seattle-Search.com Blog

Online Revenue News relates an interesting case study on why now is a great time to convert a popular, parked domain name into a retail business with an Amazon aStore.

The aStore model allows you to setup a site with any number of products or categories of products from Amazon;s inventory. There’s lots of room to add a creative touch with customization including colors, links, and sections that are displayed.

You can create an aStore in as little as 5-10 minutes. In this case, the stores are:

* GPSOnline.net - A GPS Superstore
* WCWineCellars.com - Wine Cellars & Wine Accessories
* MamasGiftBaskets.com - A Great Selection of Gift Baskets Online

It would be interesting if Amazon allowed the actual domain name instead of having to 301 redirect the name or implement them in a frame.

Speaking of Amazon, the world’s largest Web retailer launched Askville.com, an information-sharing Web site where users can ask questions and answer queries from others, today.

The site, open to all of its customers, has been in beta testing since December 2006 and has already been open to a few users, Amazon said. Similar services are offered by Yahoo Inc’s Answers and other Web sites such as AnswerBank. Google Inc also had an “Answers” section, which has been discontinued.

Microsoft Gatineau Analytics Beta Open to US Residents
If you’ve been have been anxiously awaiting the launch of Microsoft’s new Web Analytics suite, named Gatineau, the time is now to now sign up. The sign up form is here and is available only for US subscribers for the time being.What is the benefits of Gatineau, you ask? Project Gatineau is closely related to Microsoft adCenter – for example, adCenter customers will be able to use their existing account to access Project Gatineau if they choose to use the web analytics service.

But it also a full-fledged web analytics offering with a lot of great reports and tools for measuring your site traffic and understanding your visitors including click and visitor tracking, marketing campaign reporting, conversion tracking, demographic and geographic segmentation, paid and natural search analysis, visitor information including browsers, languages, operating systems and resolutions. You will need to create an adCenter account but you won’t need to buy any advertising – the account can be used for Gatineau only.

Microsoft Corp. and the SEMPO Institute have announced an education alliance in which personnel from 20,000 affiliates of the MSN search engine will have access to SEMPO Institute’s online learning program designed to provide in-depth knowledge of best-practices in search engine marketing.As part of the new alliance, personnel from the MSN affiliates will be able to take SEMPO Institute’s Fundamentals of Search Marketing class. SEMPO Institute also offers online classes in Advanced Search Engine Optimization and Advanced Search Advertising. Fundamentals consists of 14 lessons intended to give the student a high level understanding of the essentials of search engine marketing.

Since SEMPO Institute launched in early 2007, the student feedback has been very positive – 80% say they would recommend the Fundamentals course. “All companies need the fundamentals of search marketing in order to implement an e-marketing strategy,” says SEMPO President Jeffrey Pruitt. [24x7]

In the trend to keep up with a wired clientele, Seattle’s Hotel 1000 is leading the pack, at least on the West coast, according to the LA Times’ Travel editors. It’s more than the 1000’s ability to deliver high-definition movies from the Internet to a giant flat screen in your room.

A variety of the hotel’s services are connected to a single fiber-optic backbone, including the Internet-based TV system, electronic do-not-disturb buttons and room phones that offer free Internet-based calling to anywhere in the U.S. — doing away with the traditional practice of jacking up in-room calling rates in search of profits.The avant garde leadership is not without a few bug fixes. French press coffee makers with six-step instructions could perplex operators, crtiicsd opined and the TV remotes, must be pointed at an infrared sensor instead of the television screen. In spite of the vagries, Hotel 1000 can still fulfill at least one ultimate geek-on-the-road fantasy. A recent guest’s call to complain about a broken remote was met with a peculiar response from the front desk clerk: “I’ll send an engineer right up.”

Google’s stock will top $900 next year. Online voting won’t happen in our lifetime. And Microsoft Corp. will make a big push into virtualization, possibly buying Citrix.

Those were among the forecasts Tuesday night at the WSA annual predictions dinner as five panelists from the Pacific Northwest technology industry — Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group; Kelly Smith of Curious Office Partners; Jonathan Sposato of Picnik; Enrique Godreau of Voyager Capital; and Steve Lidberg of Pacific Crest Securities — fielded a variety of questions about the future of the industry.

Moderator and P-I columnist, John Cook, has the story.

Yahoo is staking its claim to an expanded role in the Puget Sound thanks to former Microsoft Windows GM David Sobeski, a Yahoo senior VP, who is playing a formative role in formation of the new Yahoo office.

Sobeski disclosed to the Seattle P-I’s Todd Bishop the basics of the new office — 115,000 square feet at Bellevue’s One Twelfth @ Twelfth, enough space for 500 to 600 people — but declined to talk in detail about hiring plans or the work that will take place there.

Sobeski’s remarks on the region were particularly trenchant: “”You’ve got Microsoft, you’ve got Amazon, you’ve got Google, you’ve got Adobe. You’ve got all these guys up here. Now you have us, and you have a pretty good talent pool. You’ve got the University of Washington. … The Pacific Northwest actually has a huge concentration of engineers, of technical people. And it’s not the old COBOL kind of guys. It’s the guys who can go figure out these hard algorithms, be it search, be it contextual advertising, be it data mining, be it any of these things. Because what you really want are just smart algorithmic people. That’s what you’re going for. Is there any difference between writing Windows kernel and writing a great data algorithm? Well, yeah, I get that there’s a difference, but you know what? It’s those smart guys who can build those algorithms, who can do it efficiently, that you want.”

Making the first acquisition in its 11-year history, MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft and the NBC Universal division of GE, is diving into citizen journalism and social media by acquiring Newsvine.com, a six-employee startup that has helped pave the way in what is known as “participatory journalism.”

Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson will report to Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC Interactive News and publisher of msnbc.com, but otherwise, Newsvine will continue to operate independently.

Tillinghast said msnbc.com was racing to foster a community among its readers and to exploit the power of unmoderated user commentary and ranking of the news. Ideally, he said in an interview, the site would design and build its own tools, but Newsvine, headquartered in downtown Seattle a few minutes from msnbc.com’s newsroom, “is just a great fit.”

Costco.com is the newest member of the online billion dollar sales club.

For the year Costco Wholesale Corp. grew its e-commerce sales by about 39% to $1.22 billion compared with web sales of $880 million in fiscal 2006.

At the same time total revenue rose by 7% and same store sales by 6%. The company, No. 21 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, reported net income of $1.08 billion on revenue of $64.4 billion for the 2007 fiscal year compared with net income of $1.1 billion on sales of $60.1 billion in the prior year. Amazingly, the Web still accounted for only 2% of total sales.