Posts Tagged with ‘AOL’

Today Caroline McCarthy reports that the rumors about AOL buying SocialThing have been confirmed. Frank Gruber has provided some of the background details about how the startup made its first steps and finally reached this acquisition.
SocialThing is a startup that serves as an aggregator for various online services (not many of them for now with a strange omission of regular RSS feeds). SocialThing is obviously one of the competitors to Friendfeed but even after some grudge on the launch date [...]

It looks like the Olympic Games is a focus of everyone’s attention anyway so I decided to collect the special themed Olympic logos on some of the websites - well, those I have managed to find myself. They are not numerous so I suspect that not every web compny can afford such things for every special even. Google is definitely leading the game since the internet giant seems to produce a new logo for every important event - this is [...]

I have bumped into a post by Mark Krynsky today titled "AOL launches buddyupdates Lifestreaming Service and Nobody Notices". Since I am far from a heavy AIM user myself (I only have 2 contacts and one of them actually forced me to get another IM protocol when I clearly felt I did not need one), I had not been aware of the buddyupdates existence neither so it was interesting to check it out, especially because it was [...]

How much do most of us think about the search terms we enter into our search engine of choice? Are there times when you hesitate entering a word or phrase? Do you ever wonder if someone out there, either an employee of the company that runs your search engine or some faceless researcher who gains access to that data, is wondering exactly what sort of weirdo searches for such things?
A new play in Philadelphia called User 927 wonders as well. [...]

Twing classifies itself as an alternate search engine and as it notes, only searches forums and forum discussions. Twing also notes that it "…aims to be the most comprehensive and highly targeted forum search engine for real people seeking real discussions and real information in real time." It will be interesting to see if it can truly bring into being what it suggests it can.
Twing, inside and out:
Not having a sufficient theory on just how Twing worked but interested enough to [...]

Twitter and tech news sites lit up like a Christmas tree with the news that Microsoft was pulling their bid for Yahoo. Game over. Money's off the table, Jerry.
And while MG Sigler thinks that there will be fallout for Ballmer , I think Ballmer made the right decision, and one I wish he'd done even earlier. Yahoo has spent its time since the bid grasping at straws to try to increase its possible valuation. The deal with Google for [...]

Yahoo is pulling out all the stops in its quest to either prove it can compete with the big boys like Google or at least convince Microsoft that they are worth more than the initial bid before turning themselves in for their Micro-Borgification.
Their latest move appears to be a release (or possible resurrection) of a long-rumored framework somewhat similar to Google Gears. Right on the heels of their official external launch of Fire Eagle comes Yahoo BrowserPlus, At the present [...]

Rumors started circulating earlier in the week, but today, Microsoft confirmed to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that it purchased Seattle-based Farecast at a rumored purchase price of over $75 million USD. Farecast has also confirmed the sale on their blog.
Farecast is a nifty little application that attempts to help you judge when the best time is to buy your airline tickets. They are also beta testing a version that does the same for hotel rooms. By entering your travel [...]

… in hating New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky.
Brodsky, a Democrat representing a Westchester County District, is sponsoring a bill that would limit the ability of companies to collect information for targeted advertising. Joining Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft in opposing the bill are AOL, Comcast, eBay, EDS, and Facebook.
Jim Halpert, general counsel for the State Privacy and Security Coalition, claims that the bill "is unnecessary, most likely unconstitutional, and would have profound implications for the future of Internet advertising and [...]