Archive for the ‘Local Search Engines’ Category

The city portal Meinestadt.de has revealed a more user friendly self after a revamp. Through the 1024-Pixel screen resolution, the pages are much clearer and more modern and offer much more local and regional content. Read the rest of this entry »

What is a portal to do when its successful operating ideas are copied and shipped around the world wide web in order to get a piece of the growth? It’s actually quite simple: it just buys a couple of the phonies. At least, that’s how the coupon portal Groupon is going about doing it. With the purchase of the Russian Klons Darberry.ru and the Japanese Qpod.jp, Groupon is positioning itself for the Asian market and now operates in 29 countries. Read the rest of this entry »

Just how important the personal website is in the times of social media definitely brings up some opposing ideas, especially when discussing the involvement of a firm in the Web 2.0 world. When it comes to small- to medium-sized industries, Telegate (11880, Klicktel) has found an unusual answer – the Munich-based firm is helping online companies to build their own web presence. Read the rest of this entry »

Technically, Google seems to have finally gotten it: whoever wants to win over the middle-class has to work for it. Somehow, the idea has caught on that the world doesn’t belong to Google, as a new “service-offensive” shows. Read the rest of this entry »

Google is still treading on eggshells when it comes to its social media route. Wave has finally been put to rest and Places is getting an extra treat for business owners: they can now directly respond to user ratings. Read the rest of this entry »

Google seems to be unstoppable. A new Google Images-integrated product has been launched by the search engine giant: Google Image Search Ads. Advertising has now become much more efficient, accessible, and much more visual. Read the rest of this entry »

Foursquare was given an estimated net worth of 100 million US Dollars by investors, who decided to pump in an additional 20 million into the American company. With such a strong support system, the company can surely rest a bit more soundly, but the location-based check-in service will need to use their new capital wisely if they want to keep up with their competitors. Foursquare apparently is one step ahead of us and already has an idea of how to make itself stand out in the crowd: the gaming element of the service should be getting a major facelift to become more entertaining for the user. This information was confirmed by Foursquare engineer Anoop Ranganath in “The Big Money’s Disrupters” podcast. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, what is geofencing? Basically, it’s a series of virtual perimeters for real-world geographic areas. In other words, geofencing is the process of creating virtual borders for the purpose, of say, being alerted of events in your current area, or perhaps of friends who are around the corner. So what does this mean for location-based technologies? Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter posted recently about the new feature in their blog “Twitter Places”: with the new feature, users can post their mini-messages with their current location. So users no longer have to post their coordinates, as previously required, but can now pick out places such as cafés, or even directly from World Cup stadiums. Read the rest of this entry »

Using social media outlets as a way to draw in customers has pretty much become mandatory for even directories worldwide. Directories, local search engines, rating portals – they’ve all got the social media fever. An interesting example is the Herold in Austria, who introduced the Facebook application “Locations ilike”. Users don’t only have the capability to search, find, and save favorite locations, but can also rate them and share them with friends. Read the rest of this entry »