Brewed
Week of 7.11.05
Picture-Perfect Pixsy Finder
Even with the Net's leading stock photo houses camped right here in the Northwest corner of the national viewfinder, it can sometimes be a trek of Lewis & Clark proportions to find pictures for special subjects in the Web's image archives. A new Seattle start-up by the name of Pixsy intends to fill in where other image searches now leave off. Pixsy finds photos you can't find anywhere else on the web. Google, Yahoo!, and all the other major search portals use something called a "spider" to crawl the Web and index photos. Pixsy, however, accesses special databases of images thru XML feeds that cannot be crawled by spiders. These data troves include blogs, mobile blogs, social networks, and sites that generate large amounts of photo content. The results are unique photo "finds" and a new method for discovering content on these emerging networks. Take your pix. [24x7]
Microsoft Thinks Small...Biz
While Microsoft has sold millions of copies of business programs such as Word and Excel, it has yet to devise software that is customized for individual companies. On Sunday, presidential Microsoft-y Steve Ballmer signaled that Redmind has its eye on that market.
The company has hired more than 200 "consults" such as doctors, bankers, and plant managers to help it write software for specific industries, and it plans to roll out a program called Small Business Accounting this fall that will compete with accounting programs such as Intuit's QuickBooks.
Ballmer said he believes business software will increasingly become a product that's ready to use off-the-shelf, rather than needing to be written for individual businesses the way it is now, often by small software firms.
Ballmer said the additions Microsoft plans are natural fits with its current Office software. Still, some competitors are wary.
Brad Allen of Dublin, Ireland-based IT Force said that since most of the world's companies are small businesses, Microsoft's move makes sense. IT Force helps smaller businesses outsource their technology work.
Allen admitted he'd be more nervous if IT Force competed directly with Microsoft. As it is, Allen said Microsoft's marketing efforts to woo small-business owners helps him convince those same owners that he and Microsoft can come up with solutions for them.
Ballmer also pledged that Microsoft's Internet search engine would catch up with Google and Yahoo! in coming years. Its MSN search engine currently lags both.
"We're very serious about investing in a way that puts us out in front of Yahoo! and Google," Ballmer said.
He admitted that when he wanted to know which Microsoft employee manages its Ford Motor Co. account, he doesn't know how to use Microsoft's corporate search program. [24x7]
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