Facebook Challenges Google’s Tech Dominance by Partnering With AOL, Adobe | Adweek

Facebook and Google aren’t exactly besties, and the social giant’s latest move won’t help matters. In recent weeks Facebook has made two friends through moves that will simultaneously help its own advertising business and hurt Google’s.

Last month, Adobe and AOL joined Facebook Exchange, the social network’s display retargeting platform beloved by direct-response advertisers who are typically big-time Google buyers. Google was conspicuously not included.

via Facebook Challenges Google’s Tech Dominance by Partnering With AOL, Adobe | Adweek.

Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie • The Register

“Apple is a terrible Google, which is a terrible Amazon, which is a terrible Apple.”

It’s become a truism that the way to win in mobile is with an end-to-end, hardware-to-software-to-cloud strategy. I just wish this were as good for consumers as it seems to be for vendors. If I could get any wish fulfilled for 2013, it would be to have Apple and Google, in particular, go back to doing what they do best – rather than doing “all the things” in an attempt to squeeze out maximum value from a captive consumer.
via Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie • The Register.

BBC News – Brazilian newspapers pull out of Google News

Newspapers accounting for 90% of the circulation in Brazil have abandoned Google News.

Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers says all 154 members had followed its recommendation to ban the search engine aggregator from using their content.

The papers say Google News refused to pay for content and was driving traffic away from their websites.

Google said previously that the service boosted traffic to news websites.

“Staying with Google News was not helping us grow our digital audiences, on the contrary,” said the association’s president, Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto.

via BBC News – Brazilian newspapers pull out of Google News.

bing is for #fail

bing are rebranding from “the decision engine” and have chosen to have people search for the phrase “bing is for doing” sadly on their own site the auto-suggest feature suggests a lot of rather negative things before you complete your phrase. Among them ” bing is useless” and “bing is rubbish” – someone in their marketing team should really have checked that. Still slightly better than the first auto-suggest on google.
bing is...

Mac OS X and Lotus Notes

It’s interesting that there doesn’t seem to be that much information about Notes and Mac OS X since this site now seems to attract a lot of visitors from Google because of this post about gripes with Lotus Notes on OS X maybe I’ll slowly build up a resource page for things related to Notes.

So anyway todays problem with notes is that when you open a zip and expand it all works fine – only problem is I have no idea where it has downloaded to. It’s not Desktop – default for most programmes. It’s not Downloads – the new default for Tiger and 10.5 systems.

Lotus Notes stores temporary files on a hidden temp folder when you double click on attached file : /private/var/folders so to find it you need to use terminal to show hidden files see this post on how to show finder hidden files or you can press Command+Shift+G when in finder to open the “Go to folder” menu item, and manually type the path to /private/var/folders/

Simple eh? Grrrr

cool new browser plugin

Thanks Dave for sending me a link to cooliris which is a great browser plugin – I love Flickr and now with the help of cooliris browsing photostreams is much more fun and so much easier – cooliris works on hundreds of sharing and web 2.0 websites, including the likes of Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Google, Yahoo and Photobucket oh and not forgetting YouTube
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Yahoo year in review 2008

As mentioned in the top searches from 2008 on google top tens though work well as proven editorial technique alongside top trumps and image galleries.
So it’s no surprise that Yahoo have also created their top ten lists of searches for 2008 – although rather than being a zeitgeist they call it a buzz or year in review 2008.

No surprise either that the results are similar top ten news searches on yahoo in 2008;
1. Hurricanes
2. Caylee and Casey Anthony
3. Election 2008
4. Pakistan
5. Pregnant Man
6. China
7. Iraq
8. Shelley Malil
9. Patrick Swayze
10. Afghanistan

On a slightly more morbid note though they have the top 10 farewells as stated by yahoo

“Everyone’s time comes up sooner or later, and a personality’s passing prompts respect be paid to his or her legacy. Departures that shock the Web world-like that of wildlife expert and…”

1. Heath Ledger
2. Bernie Mac
3. Paul Newman
4. Randy Pausch
5. George Carlin
6. Estelle Getty
7. Tim Russert
8. Brad Renfro
9. Isaac Hayes
10. Boyd Coddington

Head on over to Yahoo Buzz the year in review 2008 for more top tens including the celebrity brat pack, economy, politicians and olympians.

Top ten searches of 2008 on google

It’s that time of year again when Google release their zeitgeist listing the most searched for terms of 2008 split out by country – it’s like having your very own research director except you don’t get to ask specific questions.
Top tens though work well I find – it’s a proven editorial technique alongside top trumps and image galleries.

I’m always amazed though how much information the search giant is prepared to share with us the general public. Obviously it’s an edited set of data – I know for instance despite appearances some terms searched for will never appear on this top ten list.

Unlike the AOL search data nothing personally identifiable is available – although this is more to do with it being aggregated and not the raw data.

Google is in a unique position to show trends but importantly as a yearly round up this also gives us a great insight into the hopes and fears of the online population.

In the UK for instance there has been a lot of press about the banking crisis and this has meant that banks and banking in general have been popular search terms – icesave for instance was in the media for weeks so it’s no surprise that it appears top of the financial institutions list. I’m surprised though that Northern Rock hasn’t made it into the top ten considering it’s plight earlier in the year.

Fastest rising finance-related searches in the UK
icesave
hot uk deals
natwest
hmrc
hbos
money saving expert
halifax
barclays
rbs
lloyds tsb

The most searched terms in the UK for 2008 though are
Facebook
BBC
YouTube
eBay
Games
News
Hotmail
Bebo
Yahoo
Jobs

Although if you are interested the fastest rising search terms in the UK which might indicate trends for 2008 are
iPlayer
Facebook
iPhone
Youtube
Yahoo Mail
Large Hadron Collider
Obama
Friv
Cam4
Jogos

If you are interested in the most searched for politicians or recipes then you can find the rest of the top ten search terms over at Google zeitgeist