A Napster for Games? OK, Not That Fun! Driven by its ambition to move beyond software for broadcasting audio and video over the Internet, RealNetworks is entering the online games market by introducing RealArcade – a powerful new end-to-end platform for the digital distribution of PC games. The new venture – previewed two weeks ago [...]
[Editor's Note: Practically no one who covered the tumultuous WTO protests in Seattle in late 1999 knew of the guerilla tactics that were being instigated, not on our city streets, but in Seattle's illustrious corner of cyberspace. I happened to file this report at the time for Courtney Pulitzer's Cyber Scene: "Despite repeated attacks, the [...]
By Soula Jones 12.18.2000 “Does anybody want to split a cookie?” meekly asked a guy without a name tag at the Seattle Online Network (SON) second-annual holiday party. That one line (or was it a one-liner?) pretty much summed up the mood of this year’s event, held at the Experience Music Project. (Kudos to SON [...]
By Larry Sivitz 10.24.2000 The 911 Media Arts Center has been an organic part of Seattle’s burgeoning multimedia scene for more than a decade. In digital terms, it’s grown up like a prehistoric Web portal in real, Seattle brick space, linking the creative community to its numerous in-house workshops, special events and the latest tools [...]
By Larry Sivitz 9.12.2000 Tuning in the Emmy Awards gala over the weekend brought to mind a definite incongruity between Hollywood’s production community and Seattle’s own populace of web-development and multimedia talent. Look behind the scenes, or screens in our case, of a Web “production” and you’ll find a diverse team at work. Indeed, everyone [...]
By Larry Sivitz 7.24.2000 Getting 300 Internet people together in one place, at one time, on a sultry July night, on a Sunday, for an awards gala, would be a midsummer night’s dream for most of the nascent online trade associations. Ask the same group to purchase a ticket and turn out in black- tie [...]
“Startup Junkies” Takes Audience Behind the Scenes of Entrepreneurial Startup Earth Class Mail™, a global service that delivers postal mail online, will be the focus of an upcoming new television series called, “Startup Junkies.” The program has just begun production and is scheduled to debut January 2008 on MOJO, one of the most widely distributed [...]
By Soula Jones 3.31.2000″Party with Us in a Shower of Golden Glitz,” said the official invite to Loudeye Technologies‘ IPO bash on March 30. Hmm…have the words “golden” and “shower” ever appeared in the same business-generated sentence? But Loudeye (NASDAQ: LOUD) always does like to push the envelope. Arguably, it is our most-stylin’ local Internet [...]
by Soula Jones 3.15.2000It’s the Ides of March, and at some local Internet companies the heady pre-IPO days have been replaced with silence and surliness. Evidently, some of our recently public stocks have failed to live up to workers’ expectations. The IPO price may have doubled or tripled. But even that is not enough. To [...]
By Soula Jones 2.15.2000 If Shakespeare were an Internet consultant, perhaps he’d pose this question: “Does rose.com capitalized smell as sweet?” And the answer would be: “Of course, you idiot!” Yet our dotcom companies insist on toying with their names, causing us to waste great amounts of time. This, by the way, is just another [...]
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May 14 2012
Google Blinks! Bing Sings, and Slings the Arrows of Social Interface Discontent! Amazon’s Social “Denny Triangle!”
At last week’s Bing Search Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft took the wraps off a brand new Bing featuring a new, right-hand social column (“The Sidebar”) that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. The new Bing search even offers a way to ask questions on your favorite social network, directly through Bing. “The search engine has been reinvented!” wrote Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff.
In total, there are three new Bing columns in all:
* Core Search: minus many of the social annotations that Bing has added over the years (that have been relocated).
* Snapshot: providing additional information about a particular search listing, without having to leave Bing
* Sidebar: serving as the new home for social integration with search
“With this update, the competing search philosophies are clearer than ever,” opined Mashable. “Google sees the world as a deep blend of data, people and activities, all of which can be mined simultaneously for a rich and useful experience. Bing sees a more structured world, where social interactions, while extremely helpful, are kept a safe distance from the core results you desire.”
How does Bing build these “Friends Who Might Know” lists? Microsoft execs explained they’re leveraging as much publicly available data as possible from Facebook (for now) and soon Twitter and other networks. Inclusion in the list is not necessarily based on something you posted about the topic.
The sidebar includes people you know through your social networks that have, say, posted a photo about the topic, liked a certain relevant topic or searched for a similar topic in Bing, and people you don’t know, who are, for example, known Topic Experts and Enthusiasts (identified by Bing). All of them could be considered helpful in your quest for knowledge. Conversations revolving around a query topic are viewable through the social pane — you just hover over the activity and a small box will slide out to the left with the original post. You can add comments in any conversation in the activity pane or see the conversation in the slideout.
For example, a search for “Seattle restaurants” might pull up Facebook friends who have “liked” dining establishments in the metro area under a header that reads “Friends Who Might Know.” Bing users can also post comments or queries in the sidebar interface that will automatically be published to their Facebook page (provided they’re signed into Facebook) and could hypothetically flag their Seattle-based friends in posts seeking advice on where to go for dinner.
To see the new pane at work, you have to sign into Facebook and install the Bing App in Facebook. With that done, your social pane will be filled with recent Bing activity that’s also been shared on Facebook. When you enter a search query in the Bing interface on the left, the pane will also display a list of Facebook friends, and topic experts who might be able to assist with your query. Note: The Bing App defaults to sharing your posts with Everyone. If you do a lot of searching, you may want to dial that down a bit.
This deep integration with Facebook isn’t the first time the two have collaborated, and Bing has been adding social recommendations powered by Facebook to its search results for the past year. But it’s a sure sign that Microsoft — which bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million in 2007 — will lean on a company it’s heavily invested in to improve on the social-search product Google introduced in January. “Search Plus Your World” pulls up Google+ content deemed relevant to signed-in Google users and has gotten a tepid reception, said Adage. [24x7]
Amazon Advances Its Vision for a Social Campus Compass, Not an “Apple Circle,” but a “Denny Triangle.”
The City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development has posted the latest renderings of Amazon’s proposed Denny Triangle campus.
At a public design review board meeting, attendees liked proposed amenities that include outdoor artwork, a playing field, a dog park and space for food trucks.
The venue also incorporates a healthy measure of social engineering into the design. To ensure public open spaces between buildings are both lively and safe, buildings are designed so that people who park their cars in the underground garages will have to walk outside to get from the garage elevators to the elevators in the building lobbies. “That will help ensure a steady flow of people moving through the plazas.”
The project will also be a haven for bicyclists. Each of the three blocks will have a dedicated bike entrance and storage for as many as 400 bikes. That could allow as many as 1,200 Amazon employees to bike to work. [24x7]