Archive for the ‘Search Technologies’ Category

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 »

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 »

Foursquare has been at somewhat of a standstill for quite some time now. The check-in features, which have already been outdone by social-network Twitter’s location features, rating service Yelp’s check-ins, and will probably be looking at the same situation when Facebook releases their own check-in service. So how exactly does Foursquare plan on surviving? The answer is quite simple: gaming. 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 »

Location-based news from messaging portals have been available from meinedtadt.de for some time. Now there will be blogs from cities and communities through “Stadt Aktuell” (Eng. Up-to-date City). So there won’t be just information from local interests, but even content from private blogs and from clubs. 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 »

For a long time, users could only perform location-dependant search in the individual theme channels – which can be considered idle. This should now change: the city-based portal has edited its local internet search and would like to make the entire deal more user friendly with the new “Universal Search” function. Read the rest of this entry »