Google

The web is in trouble. Big trouble. It’s not the first time. It was also in trouble in the mid '90s. But then Google saved it, ushering in a new era of search. People forget how impossible good content was to find in those days. Critics routinely lambasted the web for the rubbish on it. Those were the days of Altavista, Hotbot, Lycos and a host of search engines that would regularly return results of dodgy, random websites. It’s not ...

There are some articles that you have to write because they are timely, relevant and newsworthy. And there are some you are compelled to write because you have witnessed something new, beautiful and extraordinary and you want, in some small way, to be part of it. The Wilderness Downtown falls squarely into the second category. It's a labour of love. Here's the official line on what it is: "

Traditional forms of advertising like TV, radio and print have pushed often irrelevant and unwanted messages out to consumers of media for over five decades -- and been paid a fortune to do so. This ineffective "spray and pray" format of advertising assumes that one in a certain number of people will buy a product or service and that if the message is disseminated far and wide enough, it will eventually lead to sufficient procurement of that product or service. Before the ...

Tara Brabazon colonised the stage at the Gartner Symposium's Innovation ITXpo at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre on Monday with a passionate plea for us all to go on a "digital diet". The eccentric, flamboyant Australian academic is the Professor of Media at the University of Brighton in England, and spoke eloquently on “information obesity”, Google, and the problems of web searches in an educational environment. Brabazon began with a food analogy, citing a study that discovered how everybody makes ...

Gmail users have just received a completely new weapon to add to their arsenal of total communication: The ability to make cheap voice calls from your Gmail account to mobile phones and landlines. Before this new development, the ability to communicate using voice required both Gmail users to be logged in and sitting in front of their computers. All that has changed and the folks over at Skype must be shifting nervously in their chairs. In a bid to encourage ...

The internet has been buzzing lately with talk of the threat to net neutrality posed by the proposal between Verizon and Google, which proposes a framework for regulations to ensure net neutrality, through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Although the policy is only a proposal and is not yet legally binding, it has caused uproar from net neutrality proponents. The criticism has largely been levelled at Google for selling out their cause. Google has long been a staunch advocate ...

Has Google lost the battle against the companies that game its system of ranking search results? It certainly seems that way from my anecdotal usage. John Byrne, the former BusinessWeek editor seems to feel the same. He recently launched a site that looks at business schools: Poets and Quants. He published a post detailing his frustration at Google's listing of the site, or rather its failure to list the site. C-Change Media Inc.: Google? Where are you? "One of the most fascinating aspects ...

According to Richard Waters in an FT.com article (subscription required), "Groups magnify chances of Google hits". The FT articles says: "Companies with a high page rank are in a strong position to move into new markets. By 'pointing' to this new information from their existing sites they can pass on some of their existing search engine aura, guaranteeing them more prominence." The article says that this helps companies such as AOL and Yahoo as they move into the low-cost content business as ...

So you've spent a fortune on search engine marketing, but you're not getting the results that you had hoped for. You think you’ve covered all your bases and no search entries could possibly escape the broad net you’ve thrown out. Understanding how people search could be the first step to significantly improving your results. The real magic in search engine marketing lies in the user telling the search engine exactly what they are looking for: ‘pizza in Randburg’; ‘cheap flights to Paris’; ...

The vuvuzela has certainly been one of the biggest talking points of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and has since crossed beyond South Africa's borders into other countries. Even celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio have been spotted with their lips around the plastic phenomenon. Google Zeitgeist, a service that provides insight into global, national, past and present search trends, has revealed a few surprising findings about what interests us about this World Cup. For example, some of the findings reveal that the ...