Yahoo has highlighted a few more implementations of BOSS, the search API it launched in early July that allows third party websites to incorporate Yahoo search functionality seamlessly into their sites.

This is the second time Yahoo has showcased the fruits of BOSS developers. In early August, Yahoo drew attention to 4HourSearch, the Cuil knock-off formerly known as Yuil; PlayerSearch, a sports-focused search engine; Newsline, a tool for plotting news items on a timeline; and Tianamo, a 3D search visualization tool for Windows machines with Java installed.

Now we’re presented with three more implementations: 123People, askBOSS, and BuildaSearch.

Even though the drama surrounding Microsoft’s Yahoo acquisition has subsided, it looks like there’s still some bad blood.

A tipster yesterday sent us a screen shot of Yahoo’s front page running on Internet Explorer with a Firefox recommendation sitting atop the page. “Yahoo recommends upgrading to the NEW safer, faster Firefox 3,” the ad says.

The Japanese web market is just too big to be shrugged off: The country boasts one of the highest Internet penetrations worldwide (74%, compared to 70% in the USA), a $5.7 billion online advertising market (out if one estimated to be worth $45 billion globally) and is ranked No. 3 in terms of total web population (94 million, about as many as Germany and the UK combined).

So how does Google challenge Yahoo’s position as the hub of the Japanese Internet?

I may lose my “early adopter badge” for saying this, but I do not see how Ubiquity really helps anyone. Given that it is a 0.1 release, I know it is far from complete. However, it seems like there is a lot of development required to really make the browser a platform, and make it easier for people to use the Internet as a service. When I say a lot, I mean a minimum of two years until early adopters can praise it like they have praised services like Twitter or FriendFeed. For the rest of the mainstream, we are looking at closer to five years given the traditional adopter cycle.

Of course, the logical question is why do I feel this way? First, look at the examples from the user tutorial. Being able to type “email to Mike” so that GMail creates an email and sends it is not a huge advancement. The search examples are much of the same thing. You can type “wikipedia babel fish” and it will search Wikipedia for you. Obviously, this barely saves any time or mouse clicks. All of the examples are this simplistic, and this adds to my “shouldn’t there be more” feeling.

I am generally underwhelmed for a few different reasons. First, why make the browser the platform? Isn’t it easier to create a website that does all of the same things? Isn’t this what sites like iGoogle or any other personalized homepage with widgets are trying to do? Does this just mean we need better websites?The big question I have with this is “What are we trying to do?” My understanding of the “browser as a platform” concept is that we are trying to treat the Internet as a service or a data source. You can do interesting things when not constrained to a specific page. I think Ubiquity is meant to change the way we work, and that is what I want. The problem is that we are not there yet, and it takes a little imagination to get there.

“Summon Ubiquity” is used throughout the documentation. Why? The services should just be active and ready from a toolbar or even parsed in the address bar. The commands also need to be very generic. If I am searching for information, let me type “find babel fish.” The built-in services can search Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo and whatever other search services that support Ubiquity. The process should be meta-everything. If I need a definition, I can type “define ubiquitous” and the service would look for definitions on various reference sites like Dictionary.com and any other engines that support definitions. Another area that could benefit greatly from integration with Ubiquity is semantics and linked data. Both would provide plenty of context and data sources for some interesting applications.

There are a few features that I really like about the service as well. They have included a concept of context or “this.” If I have selected a large section of text on a Web page, I can enter “email this to Mike” and the selected text gets emailed to my contact named Mike. Context in any activity is extremely important, and creating a quick way to get the context is fantastic. The other extremely important feature is that new commands can be created with just some lines of JavaScript. This means that there is not a huge learning curve for the API, it is just a matter of linking together the right API calls. The fact that you do not need to restart Firefox while developing is a nice bonus as well.

Overall, it is fairly obvious that Ubiquity is an interesting technology, but it is still very immature. It is something we should keep an eye on in terms of the platform development as well as what commands and applications developers create on top of the platform.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Mozilla Announces Ubiquity for Universal AccessAdobe to Acquire Makers of Web-Based Word Processor BuzzwordMore Bad News for VonageThe Web 2.0 Office? Not yet…Happy 4th Birthday Del.icio.usSlacker Signs Deals with 3 Major Record LabelsBuzzword Launches Social Features with Zoho Writer Rival

Last May, Google announced the first set of winners in its two-part contest called Android Challenge, which is meant to kick-start the creation of 3rd-party applications for its nascent mobile platform by enticing developers with a total of $10 million in awards.

Today, Google is releasing the names of its second set of winners, 10 of which receive $275,000 and 10 of which receive $100,000.Source:TechCrunch
TechCrunch50 is just a week and a half away. The list of presenting companies is kept strictly confidential until the day of the event to ensure maximum audience attention. But we’re making one exception this year. Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg’s Katalyst Media will be launching Blah Girls, one of his new interactive online video products, at TechCrunch50.

Ashton recorded an intro video for Blah Girls letting us know how excited he is about all of the confidentiality and rehearsal requirements around the event.
Source:TechCrunch
In an email to users today, Yahoo announced that its year old social network Yahoo Mash will be shutting down on September 29. This was Yahoo’s fourth serious attempt at getting a foothold in social networking after Yahoo 360 and failed acquisition attempts of Facebook and Bebo.

While Bloomberg News takes a good amount of flack for yapping about a stone-cold Steve Jobs when it’s well known that the man’s blood is still rich and warm, another bigwig of the tech realm, Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked with the publication’s reporters Peter Cook and Crayton Harrison about his company’s fascination with Yahoo and the movements the two will make in the next 60 days. As Schmidt explains, Google “will proceed with the agreement by early October.”

The company’s reasoning is stated equally simply. In reference to the U.S. Justice Department’s interest in peering into the proposed Google-Yahoo search advertisement deal, which the two tested to the DOJ’s very vocal irritation, Schmidt said, “We are in the process of talking to the government. They’ve not indicated one way or the other how they’re dealing with us.” Indeed, the logic is very elementary. “Hey DOJ, while you’re there giving what we see as your silent treatment, we’re going to go ahead and start making more money, m’kay? Kay.”

Naturally, Schmidt isn’t totally gung-ho with an eye on its October non-surprise. “We always worry a little bit, but we think our arguments are pretty strong,” is his response to  judicial qualms over what some consider possibly imperialist tendencies by the “Mad Men” of Mountain View.

My take on this refresh of the dispute? Business is business, and if Google manages to pass go, well, who’s to say no. Chances are DOJ won’t remain silent ‘til the autumn push, though. If anything, this is a straight reminder sent the way of regulators to recall that the matter has yet to be resolved completely. In a manner of speaking: Get to it, guv’nors.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Yahoo-Google Deal Looking Good; Common Sense Packs Up And LeavesYahoo May Consider Letting Google Handle Paid SearchYahoo Math: $800 Million > $12 BillionPushed By Icahn, Yahoo Jumps Back Into Ad Deal With Google?Yahoo Starts Layoffs While Deciding What To Do NextYahoo Powering DivX SearchMASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion

FriendFeed, the social activity aggregator, has released a set of customizable widgets that will allow bloggers to make sure their readers can follow all of their activities across the web. While the site has provided some widgets in the past, this set includes some new widgets to facilitate story sharing and allows for more tweaking than was offered before.

Among the widgets offered are a new profile badge, a list of the most recent items in your feed, and a “Share on FriendFeed” chiclet that allows users to add an item to FriendFeed without leaving your site. You can grab the widgets here.
Source:TechCrunch
Mark Cuban will be joining the TechCrunch50 program on Tuesday, September 9 for a one-on-one interview with Jason Calacanis from the main stage. You probably know Mark as both the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Broadcast.com with Todd Wagner. They then sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in July of 1999 for $5.04 billion. Before Broadcast.com, Mark co-founded MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator, in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe.Source:TechCrunch
mass exodus of both execs and rank and file employees at Yahoo continues. In fact the real defections may just be getting started at a high percentage of employees vest on lucrative restricted stock units this month. Two new SVPs, Todd Teresi and Steve Boom, have now also resigned from Yahoo.

YourScreen is a new service that is announcing its upcoming beta today, and it’s set out to enable you to turn a television into a start page of sorts. Designed for use within schools, companies, and at events, YourScreen is a custom option for displaying your content on televisions. So what type of content can you post on these televisions?

Built on Adobe AIR, YourScreen comes with some ready-made content, like weather and a stock ticker, with more plug-ins on the way. You can use these plug-ins in conjunction with your own content or simply stream the content you’d like to display. This could be a live video of a speaker or an interview, an image slide show of companies presenting at a particular event, or other pertinent information regarding your company that you’d like to convey to your employees. So far, YourScreen doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of differentiating features that you couldn’t already take advantage of with a closed-circuit television system.

But as YourScreen grows, its aim is to provide a Web-based platform for easily managing content that is displayed across this television system. So you will be able to use the YourScreen Web interface to determine what content is shown in which screen. There are also tools for helping you create content, so you won’t have to rely entirely on third-party services to create a slide show. For instance, YourScreen can turn your collection of still shots and videos into a stream that can be broadcast across multiple television screens.

In targeting schools, businesses and events, I think YourScreen would also do well to partner with, or add integrated support for a wide array of content imports and compatibility. Services like Mogulus and Kyte offer platforms for creating content that is likely to be ideal for broadcast on custom systems like YourScreen, and also offer a good amount of tools for making multimedia content on the fly. Catering to users that may start with next to nothing when streaming with YourScreen as well as those that have already begun creating content with other Web apps would be a broader strategy for appealing to multiple types of users when promoting the YourScreen service. If you’re interested in the upcoming beta, see here for more details.

Source:Mashable!

Looking forward to spicing up your Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 installation with social goodness? Me.dium, a self-described social software company, will be standing aside the likes of Facebook, Yahoo, and eBay for Microsoft’s newest browser launch today. Me.dium’s role is essentially to, among other things, deliver a “crowd-powered” discover-share mechanism first touted at Microsoft’s MIX08 conference earlier this year.

Indeed, Me.dium is no freshman to IE8 or the broader Web browser market. Mashable’s Kristen Nicole made mention of the company’s participation in the IE8 Beta 1 push, as well as the debut of a Firefox 3 download. At that time, a number of the features in Me.dium’s plugin were already being promoted. The What’s Hot Webslice, for instance, is a recommendation component that offers users a quick glimpse of things deemed interesting by the collective mob. And the so-called Discovery Accelerator, which finds content deemed interesting via keywords gleaned from virtually any webpage, takes the recommendation concept further still.

The more personally social aspects of Search software are the toolbar’s “follow” feature and integration with Facebook. Also, a portion dubbed visual search, made possible by IE8, builds on a move made by Me.dium early last month, done in light of Yahoo’s launch of its BOSS platform (short for Build Your Own Search Engine) that, along with the standard display of news, reviews, pictures and videos, shows a certain hierarchy in various links’ popularity, albeit one that is eminently susceptible to change in behavior of the search crowd.

Me.dium CEO Kimball Musk makes a fairly convincing argument to Me.dium’s utility in the browser environment, and IE8 Betas 1 and 2 by natural association. Altogether, its social search feature set allows for users to keep better apprised of the often fast-shifting Web environment, particularly with concern for breaking news and viral oddities. And bridging the crowd’s tendencies with friend-enhanced extensions really just helps better fill the proverbial picture. Granted, there is a leap or two (or more) that the user must take to fully involve him/herself in these processes, but as is the life of most any people-powered invention of good repute.

The way in which such inventions have lasting impact is really a matter of how the give-take arrangement between a service and those its serves is balanced. Me.dium appears a generously worthwhile effort in that respect.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Me.dium Holding 5-Day Online Music FestivalMe.dium Adds Support For Songbird Media Player, Firefox 3Me.dium to Host Live Chat During Edwards MTV/MySpace AppearanceMe.dium’s Role Reversal: NeighborhoodsMe.dium Offers a Social Browsing Widget, and MoreMe.dium to Host Online Mosh PitMe.dium Chosen to Showcase IE8 Social Discovery

Compete is out with their latest analysis report — this time it’s regarding the online Olympics coverage across the Web. NBC spent $900 million for exclusive rights for broadcasting the olympics so an easy assumption would be that they lead the online traffic and engagement race for the Beijing Olympics online viewing but Compete says that assumption would be incorrect.

As you can see in the chart below, Compete measured reach (unique visitors) between the top 5 Olympic coverage sites. Yahoo leads with 1.5 million unique visitors while NBC comes in with 1.2 million. NBC leads in engagement (time on site) by 5% over Yahoo. It will be interesting to see how long the traffic and engagement remains high at NBC and the others once the games have concluded.

From a CenterNetworks perspective, the Olympics have provided a good stream of traffic since the opening ceremonies. The traffic has slowed over the past few days but during the first three days we were doing quite well. In fact, in my traffic and ranking analysis, Techcrunch would win the Gold and we would take the Silver. I will note that we have asked the IOC to take a look to make sure that no "faking" (heightening, lip synching, etc.) went on with that valley blog.

The one question I have after reviewing the Compete analysis is whether it includes views and engagement through the Microsoft Silverlight player which is required to watch the Olympics coverage on NBC.

More CN Coverage:
– Docstoc
– Scribd
– Twitter