Google has given Froogle an extreme makeover and changed it's name to Product Search. Danny Sullivan has an overview of the changes, including a better UI and integration with Google checkout.

But Google still needs integrate Google Base with Product Search. If you search for a product in each service, you different results in each instead of a comprehensive grouping. Google Base has more than just products, but if you are looking for products, you should be able to find everything from either service.

On the other hand, Google Maps and Google Local should be different services. While they are listed individually on the "more" section of Google, both links go to the same location. The interface does not work to promote local businesses. It was designed to help people find destinations and does this well. But Google Local does not offer a method of finding businesses by category, and the results are far from complete.

CitySearch and the yellow page services do a much better job of this. So while Google may still be rolling in cash with record profits, they are leaving money on the table by not doing a better job in connecting consumers with products and services.

Why oh why has the world's biggest software company been sitting on the sidelines during the resurgence of web application innovation?

The harsh reality for Microsoft is that they haven't produced a hit application -- for the web or otherwise since before there was a Google. The company's strategy for the past decade has been to acquire smaller companies that have already had some success (see TellMe Networks acquistion) and then incorporate the technology into their fold so that they have another tool to sell to current customers.

Or, they develop a "me too" product that is years too late and not necessarily an improvement over an pioneering product, as evidenced by the Zune. At least when Apple enters an established market they go all out and improve on existing technologies.

Despite the marketing power of Windows and IE, the search engine is losing turf to Google, and Live offers little new and hasn't generated much enthusiasm. Microsoft continues to feast on selling operating systems, Office, and programming languages, but the innovation of smaller applications that could lead to something bigger just isn't there anymore. Sure, they had a free web calling utility a decade before Skype (NetMeeting), but it was too early and too clunky.

So is it the Microsoft culture -- do visionary developers willing to take chances not care to work at the giant, or does the monolith suppress the ideas of those who have the talent to create something compelling and unique -- such as Flash, Digg, or Technorati?

Microsoft spends more money on research than all of the Web 2.0 companies earn in a year, yet they haven't done anything innovative in the web space other than plumbing in a long long time. Perhaps the company needs to launch more satellite offices that are outside of their normal processes and oversight and let their best minds free to explore new ideas. Or, maybe the company isn't interested in trying to break new ground and is happy to live by tweaking its existing cash cows. That would be a sad legacy as Bill Gates takes his leave.

Source: MediaPost.

It only took a few hours for video search engine blinkx.com to respond to TV Guide's new video search tool.

Today blinkx unveiled blinkx Remote, which enables you to find video that is available for free online as well as archived episodes that can be purchased on iTunes or Amazon. Blinkx has a browseable list of more than 100 shows, and also provides a search box that includes results about TV shows, including entries in the Internet Movie Database and Wikipedia.

The company is using display advertising (though not a lot of it presently) to pay for the service as well as acting as an affiliate.

Online video won't replace but is evolving into an important complement to TV programming. Since interactive TV continues to be more vapor than reality, viewers must go online to get involved with the programming. I'll go so far as to say when video search engines and distribution platforms such as Joost are fully realized, online video will generate more ad dollars than is currently spent on TV.

Gemstar-TV Guide now offers an online search tool that lets you search clips of TV shows as well as searching TV listings ala TiVo. While the site is limited to television (including entertainment news and reviews) and movies (theatrical and DVD), TV Guide will likely steal some thunder from Google Video and the other video search engines.

TV Guide has been the authority in print almost since TV began, so they will bring an audience to the web. You can see where an actor is appearing on TV and in the movies, but you can't search on appearances in online clips (such as talk show appearances), which is a significant oversight. Being able to program your TiVo through the site is a huge advantage over other online TV Guides.

The site doesn't provide access to user-generated content which will alienate some viewers while allowing others to find what they want faster. TV Guide doesn't index TV or online news, which also limits its appeal.

By partnering with the TV networks, TV Guide has created a one-stop destination for finding professional TV and movie content that saves time by going to the individual networks' sites. It shouldn't be long before it becomes one of the most visited video search engine sites.

Source: MediaPost/

The horrific events that happened at Virgina Tech University yesterday are a terribly tragedy and they could have happened anywhere at anytime. We live in a free society, the freest in the world, and the same event could happened tomorrow at your local Starbucks. It's the sad reality of it. The only thing we, Virginia Tech or anyone else can do is be prepared.

All over the news yesterday, today and in the future we hear and read about why VaTech didn't send out an alert email in the two hours between the first shooting and second shooting. Assuming that 100% of students would have gotten and received an email regarding a killer loose on campus, it may not have mattered. What were the kids supposed to do? It may not have changed the outcome but it would have been valuable information for the students to make their own decision about if they want to go outside or not. Sure an email is better than nothing but not everyone checks their email before they head out to class so its not very likely that it would have been very effective. According to the university President, 9,000 of the 26,000 students live on campus that leaves 17,000 students off-campus plus 10,000 faculty. How many of these students and faculty, who we can assume were in transit to campus would have received the email? Not many.

This past week I've been attempting to use Twitter in order to figure out what the real benefit and hype is, I even forced a friend of mine to sign up so I could have someone to experiment with. After a few days of fiddling around with it, overall I can't really see the benefit to using it. Until yesterday.

Twitter could be effectively used to instantaneously contact a majority of students at any university to alert them to the current state of affairs. Almost every student would check their IM in the morning to see if their friends have messaged them and not many students would head out to class without picking up their cell phone to take with them. When an incident happens students and faculty can be aware of the situation and also given directions in order to keep themselves safe. With a little work the system could be custom fitted for universities and corporations for this kind of situation allowing employees, students and faculty to help keep each other aware and safe in emergency situations.

Social networking is the keyboard to keyboard equivalent of word of mouth marketing, replacing distributors (like music labels or retailers) with advertising or commission-based vertical channels.

For example, eSnips is one of several social nets that enables artists of the musical and physical realm to upload their work and sell it directly to a target demographic. These networks, such as MySpace or Flickr, work in conjunction with ad networks to monetize the 90+ percent of traffic that doesn't turn into a sale, while enabling direct to consumers sales.

These vertical channels are like shopping assistants, helping to filter out the stuff you don't like and focus on delivering the good things so that you'll be more likely buy. In the case of eSnips, they've added customizable radio stations so that people can find indie musicians to match their taste. The ad revenue pays for the website, while the revenue from any sales will help the musicians to buy their groceries.

Hence the rising importance of vertical ad networks. By winnowing down the list of advertisers to those that appeal to a demographic, transaction rates should increase along with consumer satisfaction.

LeapTag has released the beta of its self-named RSS reader and ratings tool that joins the ranks of applications that use personalization to tailor web content to individual needs.

LeapTag is a browser plug-in that lets you assign categories to websites and vote thumbs up or down on pieces of content. The software is free and ad supported, so while having ads in your RSS reader might not be your first choice, the ratings engine also works on ads, so at least you can say no to have irrelevant ads removed. Tags can also be shared with others, so it's sorta like NewsGator meets Del.icio.us by way of TiVo.

RSS readers are a tremendous time saver, and working as a plug-in and being free will save time and money from loading separate download applications. I love NewsGator/FeedDemon, but it is a memory hog -- I had to buy more memory because running it and office at the same time was unacceptable.

RSS readers such as LeapTag are important to marketers because they indicate that people will be spending more time with the sites and content that match their interest and less time searching for things. This means advertisers will have to find more vertical methods of finding customers.

I've been looking for someone to allow for advertising ratings for some time. While LeapTag will provide a better ad match, you'll still see the same old ads when you click through to the full articles.