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May 19th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
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Microsoft refines search for Yahoo deal

Marketplace, National Public Radio, Monday May 19th

KAI RYSSDAL: Here’s what we know for sure about the new Microsoft overture to Yahoo. All Microsoft will say is that it would be a “transaction” that falls short of an outright aquisition. Yahoo says it’s open to talking about a transaction. So what do you suppose it could be? Something about search, probably. Advertising, almost definitely. Starring Google as the evil empire is a good bet. So, since we’re just throwing around ideas here, why don’t we have Marketplace’s Jeff Tyler consider some of the possible permutations.

JEFF TYLER: Microsoft looks to be after Yahoo’s search business and a minority stake in the company. That would give Microsoft a bigger piece of the $20 billion online advertising market. The move could also be defensive. Yahoo has been talking to Google about a deal where Yahoo would display search ads sold by Google.

Gary Arlen is a tech industry analyst.

Gary Arlen: One of the opportunities is for Microsoft to acquire the pieces it needs to really go head-to-head with Google. And, more importantly, keep Google away from Yahoo.

Billionaire Carl Icahn may help keep Google away from Yahoo. As a big shareholder, Icahn has been pushing Yahoo to reconsider Microsoft’s merger offer. But even if Microsoft and Yahoo do combine forces, it may not be enough to slow Google.

BOB MONROE: It rarely turns out that if you take a couple of also-rans and put them together, that you beat the champion.

That’s Bob Monroe, associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He thinks a Yahoo-Microsoft partnership would flop if it’s only purpose is to challenge Google at what it does best — search-related advertising. But Monroe sees huge potential in developing the next generation of ads, on sites like YouTube and MySpace.

Monroe: Instead, if they could find a way to target video ads — the way Google currently does targeted keyword advertising, to actually insert different ads for different viewers — that’s where I think there’s a really interesting opportunity. But nobody’s really figured out how to do that right yet.

Monroe doubts a Yahoo-Microsoft combination will pose a strong threat to Google.

He expects new competition will come from a start-up company nobody’s heard of yet.

Searching for the Next Search Engine

May 19th, 2008 by Guest Author
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Written by Nicole Ferraro

They may just be startups, but two new search engine companies at last week’s Web 2.0 Expo last week hope to put the fear of God in to Google. <Web 2.0 Expo SF>

Twing.com, an alternative search engine for online forums, launched in March and already claims 1 million users, according to Scott Germaise, director of product management. Twing’s also added 10,000 forums (or, fora, as I like to call them) to its directory in its short lifespan.

Read the entire article here:

Go3R – Search to Avoid Animal Testing

May 19th, 2008 by Rafi Farber
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In development for 4 months, the German company Transinsight has released Go3R, the first worldwide knowledge-based search engine for alternative methods to animal experiments. Using the search engine, scientists from all over the world can take advantage of the benefits of semantic searches for the area of alternative methods in scientific testing following the “3R’s” Principle.

Go3R is designed to locate information on replacement, reduction, and refinement (the 3Rs) of scientific methods so they require less animals for testing, or none at all. It also helps researchers locate information on existing alternative methods to refrain from using animals when alternative methods are available.

“With our information technology Go3R, we are pleased to be able to present scientists with a tool that enables them to determine the indispensability of animal experiments more reliably…In the medium term, this will lead to a significant reduction of animal experiments. Achieving a world with less and less animal experiments is the worthwhile goal that Transinsight is happy to make a contribution to with all its might”, says Dr. Michael R. Alvers, CEO and Co-Founder of Transinsight.

Go3R was developed in cooperation with scientists from the Technical University of Dresden and the National German Centre for Documentation and Evaluation of Alternatives to Animal Experiments (ZEBET). With its expertise in the area of alternative methods, ZEBET has provided the specialist know how for the search machine. Go3R is now being extended to become a community platform enabling global cooperation without language barriers. Its goal is to achieve maximum availability of information with simultaneous transparency for scientists and researchers all over the world. The service is available free of charge.

MediaMill’s Semantic Video Search Engine

May 19th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
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The MediaMill semantic video search engine is bridging the gap between research and applications.

It integrates the state-of-the-art techniques developed at the Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam of the University of Amsterdam and applies it to realistic problems in video indexing. The techniques employed in MediaMill originate from various disciplines such as image and video processing, computer vision, language technology, machine learning and information visualization.

Four Interesting Videos from MediaMill courtesy ReelSEO

A German search engine for cheap flight tickets

May 19th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments »

Billigflieger-portal.de is a simple meta search engine designed to create transparency in the German market for air tickets.

It is free to use and very easy to handle. The meta search comprises the offers of cheap airlines as well as the ones of the main German travel-websites.

Once you filled in your travel details and initiated the search, the engine generates deep-links to the live-results of the airlines and providers, which then can quickly be looked through by the user of the vertical.

It saves you a lot of time searching and gives you a reliable overview of what is offered by the different airlines. By using the engine you should always find the cheapest flight tickets for your destination.