Archive for the ‘Blogroll’ Category

With the growing threat of a financial crisis in Europe, it’s easy to think that this would hinder the development of the tech sector. Fortunately, this is far from the case. As Ben Broshi reported at the beginning of October, Berlin has been gaining international attention for its rampant growth in the tech world, especially for new startups. Now, the German news provider Der Spiegel has also turned its head towards the Hauptstadt. Read the rest of this entry »

Being eco-friendly is certainly nothing new, but very few know just how much impact they really have, especially when it comes to travel. rome2rio, a search engine startup created by two ex-Microsoft engineers, hopes to change that through a new partnership with Offset Options, a company that describes itself as being “committed to environmental and social sustainability.” Now users can search for ways to travel all over the world (hence the name, Rome2Rio) and search for the most eco-friendly way to get from A to B. Read the rest of this entry »

The Internet giant Google introduced two updates for its mobile version at the Inside-Search-Event in San Francisco: shortcuts simplify the local search according to providers in the vicinity and suggested terms save the annoying process of manually typing in everything out, especially useful for longer searches. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh boy…it’s not really that much of a surprise, right? But the outrage is still quite prevalent. At a conference in the USA, IT specialists revealed that iPhones and iPads with UMTS interface save the locations of their users using mobile networks. What really gets the blood boiling is that this data is not encrypted and can be viewed by just about anyone with the help of some special software. Read the rest of this entry »

While Microsoft is worrying about dealing with German data protection agents for its geodata-service Streetside as part of the local search engine Bing Maps, Google’s panorama view service is worrying about much different things. Media reports have reported that the company will be putting a stop to its project Street View in Germany. This isn’t the case, however. The quote from a Google representative was misinterpreted. Read the rest of this entry »

The French data protection agency CNIL has issued a fine of 100,000 Euro against Google. The reason is that Google Street View vehicles did not only record French streets, but also gathered data from WiFi networks, .
Investigations began at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 into the allegations that Google had violated data protection laws. In May 2010, CNIL demanded that the internet giant terminate all collection of data without explicit permission from individuals, as well surrender the gathered information from France. Read the rest of this entry »

An intense fight has broken out between Google and Microsoft. The search engine giant has accused their competition of taking Google search results and using them on Bing. Microsoft has vehemently denied the accusations and is now claiming that Google is guilty of manipulation through click-fraud.

One allegation after another. Media reports are discussing the possible name-and-shame campaign going on between the two internet giants. Rather than behaving like adults and discussing the issues in a factual manner, the accusations are beginning to sound like childish reactions in the style of “a Roland for an Oliver”. Read the rest of this entry »

Our expectations for the new year: in 2011, the previous development in the local search realm will be continued and expanded upon. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about search engines, city portals, online directories, or social networks: the importance of location-based services will not only continue to grow, but it will become more personalized and custom for its users. Read the rest of this entry »

The US publication Time Magazine honored Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with the title of Person of the Year 2010. He has connected more than half a billion people and has expanded their social relationships, according to the publication. With the invention of a new system for information exchange, the 26 year old has revolutionized the lifestyles of countless individuals worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft’s Bing has been using free map material from the community project OpenStreetMap for their local offering with Bing Maps for a while now. The data exchange is now being intensified due to Steve Coast’s, OpenStreetMap’s founder, new job at Microsoft. Coast, as a leading manager, will be responsible for the integration of the Open Source Maps (OSM) to Bing Mobile, according to the Bing Blog. In return, OpenStreetMap will have access to the high-resolution aerials from Microsoft as well as a supporting software which would help simplify the mapping process through OpenStreetMap. Read the rest of this entry »