** Update: While preparing this post for publishing, news reports confirmed that there are indeed talks between Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch regarding entering a search deal. Obviously, as we said below, he had something up his sleeve! Let’s wait and observe how all of this will unfold!
Rupert Murdoch
With the increased popularity of the web, came the demise of the news industry as we know it. Reports have shown a serious decline in newspapers’ profitability in the past couple of years as they struggle to keep up the number of their subscribers at a time people moved toward the web and no longer expect to pay for news content!
The threat is very bad; the news industry is seriously at risk. Interesting enough, the decline in profitability, at the news content providers side, is matched with an emergence of a profitable model of web news aggregators led by Google. Rupert Murdoch, the founder and CEO of the world’s second largest media conglomerate, News Corp, has been dismayed with the course of events and the amount of money news aggregators – especially Google – have been making at the expense of his news corporations. He is all set up for some action and is ready for the big fight!
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Twitter has been used in many ways as an excellent platform for marketing and promotion. Twitter contests emerged to be one of the simplest and most efficient means for companies and brands to promote their products. They are usually entered with a simple tweet, one that gives the participants a chance to win a prize. Tweets serve as a viral element for the contest holder to promote his/her services; the better the prize offered, the better chance for the promoter’s message to reach more people.
Last month we compiled a list of 15 running Twitter contests which caught the attention of many people, it motivated us to repeat the list and schedule it as a monthly post. Below are the most recent Twitter contests running for November:
1. Win a Family Getaway Vacation for 4 at Almond Resorts in Barbados or St. Lucia
Follow @LongIslandPress on Twitter and tweet the following message to your followers:
Win a trip to Barbados! Follow @LongIslandPress and RT this to be eligible! Details: http://tinyurl.com/lipcontest
Ends November 12th, 2009.
Tweet to win a trip to Barbados!
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Web 2.0 was all about getting people to connect with one another and establishing a presence for them on the web. Now that you have gotten the chance to get to know each other through the web, it’s time for our computers to socialize. The aim of the next iteration of the web, Web 3.0, is that computers will be able to understand the content and the information they contain. Rather than the data just being a document, it will be put within context helping the computer to relate pieces of information and present them to you accordingly. Therefore, you will no longer have to sift through a pile of search results, some of which are irrelevant, to get the information you want.
While most of the semantic technology is still pretty much underdevelopment and improvement, we at the Thoughpick blog came up with a list to whet your appetite on, in no particular order.
For all the denizens…
- Bing’s reference search – Bing has a lot of hidden gems, one of those is its use of semantic technology. For Wikipedia results, you can click on the “enhanced view” and browse the Wikipedia article with a nifty vertical menu from within Bing.
Also some searches will provide you the option to “reference” search, which appears on the left pane. By selecting it, you will be able to access relevant Wikipedia articles, image results and more. Try it out, some of the searches that trigger this are Facebook and squirrel monkey.
Bing Search
- Wolfram Alpha – This is an interesting search engine. It recognizes your queries and will bring you relevant information regarding it. For instance, if you put “new york” you will get information about New York city’s population, weather, and location with a couple of other options at the top for disambiguation.
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