Fingerprints & Skype for the iPhone?


Labels: iPhone, skype, technology
Labels: iPhone, skype, technology
Labels: copyright, Courtney Love, Mark Cuban, Twitter
Labels: crowdsourcing, Dolores Labs, marketing, research
Labels: Bank of America, bonuses
For example, if you search for 'principles of physics', our algorithms understand that 'angular momentum,' 'special relativity,' 'big bang' and 'quantum mechanic' are related terms that could help you find what you need," wrote Ori Allon, technical lead of Google's Search Quality team, and Ken Wilder, team engineer at the company's Snippets project...
There is an entire field of Google competitors that are busy developing and perfecting semantic search engines, betting that they will be able to deliver on the promise of this technology: to let users type in queries in natural language and have the search engine understand their meaning and intent.
Microsoft last year acquired Powerset, one of these companies, in order to improve its Web search engine with semantic search technology.
Google also rolled out on Tuesday another enhancement to its search engine: longer "snippets," which are the text excerpts Google extracts from Web sites to show in search results where the query keywords appear."
Further coverage:Labels: AIG, Angels and Demons, bonuses, media, President Obama, Tom Hanks
To find a microlender, contact your local SBA office or check the Association for Enterprise Opportunity's searchable database.
2. Peer-to-Peer Networks: Business owners might also try tapping peer-to-peer lending networks, such as Prosper, Lending Club and Zopa. Here's how it works: borrowers list the amount they need, details about their business and why they need the loan. Some borrowers claim they need a cash fix (these loans usually cap out at $25,000) to expand product offerings or move into new locations; others are seeking capital to cover start-up expenses, such as advertising or web site costs. Then, individual lenders decide whether or not to offer them funding. In many cases, these lenders are fellow entrepreneurs looking to make a nice return while assisting other business owners.Labels: fundraising, raising capital, startups
Labels: fundraising, marketing, presentations, raising capital, startup, the pitch, venture capital
Labels: development, fundraising, marketing, nonprofits
Labels: IRS, non-profits, rich, taxes
Labels: China, Coke, raising capital, trade
Labels: iPhone, iPhone 3.0, technology
---
I think we can all agree there have been worse stimulus ideas being tossed around.
Labels: advertising, economy, stimulus
Labels: Berkshire Hathaway, economy, shareholder letter, Warren Buffet
Nissan has announced plans to cut its Sunderland workforce by 1,200. Thousands of unsold cars are stored around the factory’s test track.
Newly imported cars fill the 150-acre site at the Toyota distribution centre in Long Beach , California.
The build-up of imported cars at the port of Newark , New Jersey
Thousands of new cars are stored on the runway at the disused Upper Heyford airbase near Bicester, Oxfordshire (UK).
Mike Hughes, president and creative director, The Martin Agency: "As powerful as advertising and marketing are, they're not going to save the American car industry. What the industry needs is a vision. The kind Bill Gates had for software, Steve Jobs has for Apple, and, yes, Henry Ford had for automobiles. Don't just give us what you think we want; give us what we should want.
Don't keep telling us your cars are every bit as good now as Toyotas or Hondas. That's probably true today, but you've been trying to sell us that line for far too long. Tell us why we should want your cars. If you can't figure out what makes your product special, then it's probably not special. When you do have something to say, market the hell out of it. Boy, would I love to do that campaign."
"The U.S. auto industry will need to follow a model similar to what we see in Europe, with the planned rollout of pure electric vehicles for everyday and commuting needs, and of super fuel efficient turbo-diesels for long distance driving, in order to meet the needs of the average family. In addition, the US government will need to play an active role in encouraging increased battery manufacturing by investing in commercially viable technologies and in providing incentives to consumers to purchase electric cars."
Labels: auto industry, economy
Labels: economy
2. "When Netflix’s streaming service, Watch Instantly, launched in 2007, streaming numbers were just a tiny blip compared to DVD shipments. In 2008, they drew closer, as streaming became roughly half as popular as DVDs. But in the past several months, Netflix has aggressively expanded to get the Watch Instantly service off of the web browser and onto living room devices. This started with the Roku box (Wired review here) and continued with Blu-ray players, TiVo and the Xbox 360 gaming console last year."
[2009 data below is year-to-date]
3. "When you start using Watch Instantly, and see all of the content available at your fingertips, it’s hard to stop — which the data also seems to suggest. I definitely stream more movies than I get through the mail now, and I would hardly consider myself a heavy user of the service. The trend is pretty clear that as Netflix continues to expand the service onto more devices in the living room, streaming will quickly outpace DVD rentals for anyone who has access to it.
And if Netflix is ever able to get new releases (it currently offers mostly back catalog films) onto Watch Instantly, the growth of streaming ought to be exponential."
Labels: film, movies, NetFlix, streaming video
Email threads can be annoying to follow. Cc:Betty provides a single view of an entire conversation, and an overview of any files, places, images or videos included in the exchange.
"Its beauty is simplicity. The only thing you have to do is cc your emails to Betty, and they’re collected automatically by its eponymous virtual assistant and presented to you on a centralized web page. Betty offers you a link to this site whenever you correspond with her, so that you can go there seamlessly during your work flow.
There’s no download, and it only requires your email address and password for registration. The person you’re emailing with doesn’t even have to be registered for the product to work.
It also collects all of your files under tabs, so that you can find maps of locations contained in your correspondence and related attachments in an orderly way."
3. The NY Times DealBook recently announced that Vidyo, an online video conferencing start-up, has landed $15 million in a third round of funding, led by Menlo Ventures.
The previous backers Rho Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and Star Ventures also ponied up for the round. Vidyo, has raised a total of $38 million in funding to-date.
From the Vidyo site: "VidyoConferencing solutions just work. Easily. Reliably. Inexpensively. Pleasingly. From anywhere. And that’s because Vidyo provides for high-quality, low-latency, highly resilient, broad-based deployments over general-purpose networks with the introduction of the first multi-point video conferencing solution designed to work like the Internet itself.
That’s right — out is the old MCU-centric model and in is the first solution for video conferencing designed specifically for the world of distributed computing — all thanks to Vidyo’s unique intellectual property and the advent of the VidyoRouter™."
Labels: apps, financing, iPhone, raising capital, technology
Labels: marketing
<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&showPlaylist=true&from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>
Labels: future, Microsoft, technology
Labels: Warren Buffet
Labels: leadership, marketing, sales
Labels: Google, grandcentral, technology, voice
Labels: marketing
Labels: tech support, technology
Labels: economics
Labels: economy
Labels: entrepreneurs, Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, success