Tuesday - November 24, 2009
Google is amping up its display ad capabilities with the acquisition of startup Teracent, which has developed machine-learning algorithms that can create and customize an ad in real-time, based on user preferences and other characteristics. There are thousand of such "creative elements" that can be manipulated to create an optimal display ad. "These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the Web site, the time of day, or the past performance of different ads," say Google execs in a blog post.
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Tuesday - November 24, 2009
A Canadian woman on sick leave for depression said Monday she would fight an insurance company's decision to cut her benefits after her agent found photos on Facebook of her vacationing, at a bar and at a party. Nathalie Blanchard said Monday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits until payments dried up this fall.
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Tuesday - November 24, 2009
Interested parties the world over anxiously wait as the U.S. top court prepares its ruling regarding the patentability of business methods. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments in the matter of Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw v. David Kappos in an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which upheld the United States Patent Office decision last year.
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Monday - November 23, 2009
Roku is making additional types of content available via its set-top players with the introduction of the Roku Channel Store. Participants so far include Pandora, Facebook Photos, Revision3, Mediafly, TWiT, blip.tv, Flickr, FrameChannel, Motionbox and MobileTribe. Other providers are developing apps for the Roku Channel Store; as they are ready, they will appear there automatically.
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Monday - November 23, 2009
Call it the "New Moon" strategy at Microsoft. Team Google and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. are having a lovers' quarrel over search aggregation of news content; Murdoch claims Team Google is nothing but a bloodthirsty vampire draining potential ad revenue. So like a hunky werewolf in a certain blockbuster movie, here comes Team Bing to try and steal away News Corp. heart.
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Monday - November 23, 2009
While retailers are facing increased competition, many have recognized that the way to thrive today is to invest in new ways to engage and serve their customers. Many are taking a fresh look at one of the cornerstones of the online experience: site search. Good site search can enable more personal and transparent shopping and, in this way, play a central role in a retailer's merchandising strategy.
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Sunday - November 22, 2009
As the general notion of cloud computing continues to permeate the collective IT imagination, an offshoot vision holds that multiple business-to-business players could use the cloud approach to build extended business process ecosystems. It's sort of like a marketplace in the cloud on steroids, on someone else's servers, perhaps to engage on someone's business objectives.
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Saturday - November 21, 2009
Selling a home without a real estate agent can save thousands of dollars in commission fees, but it can also be a painstaking, confusing task. Foregoing an agent, however, is easier these days thanks to Web sites that help homeowners advertise their properties on the hottest real estate portals and even walk them through figuring out how to price their home to sell.
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Friday - November 20, 2009
The early indicators that Windows 7 is doing well seem to be piling up. CEO Steve Ballmer gave that perception a boost at the company's annual shareholders meeting on Thursday, announcing that Microsoft "has already sold twice as many units of Windows 7 than any other operating system ever launched in a comparable time." Do the early numbers indicate that Windows 7 may be strong enough to cheer the shareholders of other companies -- namely, battered computer OEMs like Dell?
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Friday - November 20, 2009
Many companies would give up their right to right-click to be able to duplicate Apple's success with iTunes. However, only one actually has the pieces already in place to do that, and its executives announced their intentions Thursday to take on Steve Jobs' company with its own online content service.
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Friday - November 20, 2009
European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle's planned US$7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems. The European Commission said Oracle had asked for more time "in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission's concerns."
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