Earlier this summer, a teaser page appeared at Socl.com revealing Tulalip, an oddly named service from Microsoft promising a new way to “Find what you need and Share what you know.” Facebook and Twitter sign-ins were offered, and the design was reminiscent of Windows Phone’s tiles. It turns out Microsoft has been testing this service with a select group of “friends,” and this week, I got an early look at Socl — “Tulalip” appears to be dropped — a curious site that’s coming out of the FUSE research group that will eventually be rolled out to the public. The site mixes search, discovery, and, go figure, a social network. How’s it hold up? Read on.
San Francisco – Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL are joining forces in an online advertising attack on Google and Facebook.
The alliance, announced on Tuesday, is designed to sell some of the less-prized ad space that Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc and AOL Inc have had trouble filling on their own.
If you check Facebook today for real-time updates in its Ticker feed, you may find yourself staring at ads instead. Some Facebook users are now seeing a redesigned version of the home page that places ad units at the top of the right sidebar. Ticker, Events, and birthdays have been moved down beneath these ads. Similarly, some now see ads relocated above the Timeline profile’s navigation column in the right sidebar. Those in the test with windows wide enough for Ticker to be snapped to the far right see ads above everything else in the sidebar.
Google is launching a new native Gmail application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch today, which is now available in the iTunes App Store. As recently revealed by TechCrunch writer MG Siegler on his personal blog, one of the app’s most important features is its ability to do push notifications. The app will also include search, autocomplete, support for attachments, priority inbox access, labels and other standard email features like archiving, deleting and reporting spam.
Google has announced the ability for advertisers to bid for phone calls, in addition to bidding for clicks, for Google search ads on computers and tablets. Currently, only advertisers maximum CPC bid for phone calls factor into ad rank. With bid-for-calls, these bids can also factor into ad rank as well. Higher ranked ads surface higher in search results, and can therefore generate more phone calls (and clicks, too).
The ability to use language and the capacity to translate between languages is one of the characteristics that define us as humans. Over the last decade, world class researchers – both at our own research labs and around the world have been working on the problem of machine translation, the results of which you are able to enjoy today on Bing and in many other Microsoft products.
