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Source:Mashable!

Remember the days before the Internet when you would go to the library to browse old microfilm of newspapers and magazines for research? I don’t either, but in any event, Google’s latest initiative looks to bring all of that content online and make it searchable. The company is adding digital archives to Google News, allowing you to see full scans of original newspapers from the pre-Web era in addition to being able to search the text of them.

To use the new service, you can either go to the Google News Archive, or search Google News and switch to the “timeline” view. When a story is viewable in its original format, the search result will list “Google News Archive” next to the name of the source.

It’s not clear how much content has been indexed so far, but searches for huge events like “Kennedy Assassination” and “Pearl Harbor” don’t seem to yield any digital archives yet, so I’d assume the index is still fairly small. As an example of a search that does show some results, Google suggests “Americans walk on the moon” which brings up original articles from a number of newspapers on July 21st, 1969.

Google already makes historical content from The New York Times and The Washington Post available in search results, though the publishers generally charge you money to access it. For its new effort, Google has partnered with the likes of ProQuest and Heritage, two of the companies responsible for all of that microfilm you find at the library.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Google News Goes LocalGoogle To Launch Google WikiGoogle News Now Looks Beautiful On Your iPhoneBreasts on YouTube, Archive.org Sued, Ask Turns EvilGoogle Ditches Video Link, Replaces It With ProductsMySpace News: The Digg Killer?All New Mashup Matrix!

Source:Mashable!

The Echo Nest and its “Musical Brain” developer website was introduced at DEMOfall 08 today. This so-called Musical Brain is really an open API platform for developing rich new musical experiences. There are more than 30 tool sets available for developers on their DeveloperNest. Here are the three primary API platforms:

- Recommend: Powers recommendations for users by understanding songs, reviews and articles from a target music site.

- Analyze: Generates an XML musical score for uploaded songs analyzing details such as beats, time signature, song sections, timbre and other attributes.

- Feed: Aggregates information about every musical artist on your website including all audio, video, reviews, blog posts and more.

A Piece of their mind

The Application Showcase shares several examples of what can be created with the Echo Nest. There are some silly fun apps such as More Cowbell which allows you to upload a song and actually adjust the amount of cowbell you want to hear for that particular song (based on the famous Saturday Night Live sketch). You can then share the results with anyone.

Here are some others:

- The MyXdup app seems to have broader appeal. It uses the Echo Nest’s API to create an app that can combine two separate YouTube music videos and create a new one.

- The Echo Chamber is a personalized radio station application for imeem’s members. It analyzes your listening history to make suggestions for new music to hear.

- Recomme is a Twitter bot with musical memory. Send tweets to @Recomme and it’ll reply with links to music resources on the Web based on your request. If you follow @Recomme then you can send private direct messages to the smart bot that will reply with the information you want.

Conclusion

The tools from Echo Nest will definitely help create entirely new experiences for music fans online. Making the process easier and less expensive than traditional methods, we can expect a great deal more original Web apps that will enhance our music listening experience. I guess one could say this is a no-brainer?

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Caught in the Echo Chamber - Insights into the Marketability of Tech CompaniesReport: CNET Cuts 10 Percent of StaffRecently Acquired Sling Media Making a YouTube Killer Too?BBC iPlayer Opens Up To Open-Source: Access Granted To Firefox UsersEcho Versus Insight Within The World Of BlogsTV Guide’s Upcoming Video Search Filtering ToolObservations from Outside the Echo Chamber

Source:Mashable!

Real estate prices are low, and to say that the real estate industry in the US is facing a crisis is an understatement. So, what do you do if you have an online real estate community with 5 million unique monthly visitors, like Zillow? You combine it with 282 newspapers from 11 companies to form the largest online real estate advertising network. Because, you know, sooner or later people are going to start buying houses again.

The terms of the deal are as follows: newspapers will be able to reach Zillow’s respectable user base, while Zillow advertisers will gain access to the users visiting real estate sections of the newspaper’s Web sites. The newspaper companies in the consortium include Hearst Newspapers; Lee Enterprises, Incorporated; Media General, Inc.; MediaNews Group, Inc.; Morris Communications Company, while newspapers include The San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, The Tampa Tribune, and many others.

Greg Schwartz, vice president of advertising sales at Zillow, said this about the agreement: “The Zillow Advertising Network gives local and national advertisers unprecedented access to the largest online audience of home buying and selling consumers available, including the loyal, engaged audiences visiting Zillow and our newspaper partners. This affluent and qualified audience of consumers making major home-related purchases is extremely valuable to advertisers and can now be targeted across a range of geographic considerations.“

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Zillow Taps Newspapers for Real Estate ListingsZillow Gets First Official Real Estate Listings through ERAZillow Adds Listings from RealogyZillow Q4 Report Says: Housing Market Still Declining. Is it Good for Zillow?Zillow Growing Fast with RE/MAX ListingsOnline Real Estate Sites Work To Get A Listing StandardZillow Banned in Arizona

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 1:32 pm and is filed under News, social networking, advertising, web 2.0, web, newspapers, Real Estate, Zillow, ad network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.