Posts Tagged ‘mobile phones’
Microsoft: Half of mobile searches have a local intent
BizReport : Mobile Marketing : November 15, 2010
by Helen Leggatt
You’re ambling around town when suddenly you crave Chinese dumplings. You whip out your phone and after a couple of local searches you’re well on your way to getting your fix.
A similar scenario plays out day after day as mobile users refer to their devices for local information – information that will help them navigate their immediate environment and solve their real-time needs and wants.
It’s not surprising, then, to read of recent data from Microsoft that shows over half (53%) of mobile searches on Bing have a local intent.
Hence the development of ads that, quite literally, guide consumers from “search to store”. Such ads, including Google’s Expandable Map ads, appear both on the mobile web and in apps and, when clicked, provide the user with directions to a store.
“Mobile user demand for information that can be acted on in the real world, in real-time is, well, very real,” writes Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling, who uncovered the data in a recent chat with Bing’s Director of Search, Stefan Weitz.
“That’s what this Microsoft stat reflects. If that’s not an argument for mobile advertising in general and mobile search in particular, I don’t know what is.”
Read the rest of the story…
How one company games Google News
Red Label News is not exactly a household name. But yesterday afternoon, it was one of the top news sources on Google News for stories about Apple’s iTunes song previews.
How’d that happen? Red Label News, it appears, is a cleverly designed collection of links and headlines meant to game Google News rankings.
CNET stumbled upon Red Label News after doing one of the most basic Google searches: the vanity search. In this case, we were attempting to figure out how many news outlets were writing about
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20021840-265.html#ixzz14MAAOd9i
Facebook Deals: Bargains are enticing to those who’ve resisted location-based services
Google’s Schmidt: Computers, not humans, should be driving cars
By Sam Diaz | September 29, 2010, 4:00am PDT
Will white space change the way people live, work and play?
When wireless hot spots cover entire neighborhoods rather than one or two buildings, who needs a mobile-phone contract? A smart phone running Skype or something similar would be essentially free of usage charges and free of all the restrictions that carriers impose.
VHF TV never used all the channel numbers between 1 and 13 because the channel between two analogue channels had to be left unused to separate the channels so they would not interfere with adjacent ones. When UHF came along, empty guard bands were added to each channel for the same reason.
These unused frequencies separating working channels are called white spaces. These white spaces are as much as 70% of the total bandwidth available for television broadcasting. Digital signals, unlike analogue transmissions, do not bleed into each other so they can be closer together leaving white spaces unnecessary.
The FCC voted unanimously Thursday Sept. 23, 2010 to allow the use of white spaces in the broadcast TV spectrum to deliver broadband connections that can function like Wi-Fi networks on steroids. The new technology is called super Wi-Fi.
TV stations, wireless microphone makers and sports leagues have been against this because of interference since they already operate in the white space spectrum.
By using white spaces large markets could be covered by only a handful of base stations. Using these channels, signals can travel for miles instead of yards, can carry lots of information, weather and landscapes do not affect them, plus signals can easily go through walls. This will allow mobile carriers to cover up to ten times the area from a single tower. Dropped calls should then become a thing of the past.
The spectrum could also be used to deliver low-cost wireless broadband to rural and poor areas. Leading technology companies, including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc., are eager to develop the market.
According to the PC World Business Center as white space wireless devices hit mainstream, businesses will be able to replace the current wireless infrastructure with a fraction of the hardware. Microsoft is already experimenting with white space Wi-Fi at its Redmond campus and can replace thousands of current wireless access points with just two white space Wi-Fi routers.
Less than 200 miles from West Palm Beach Florida an emerging company named Spectrum Bridge has installed several demonstration systems which use white space technology to blanket whole communities. View the available white space by clicking here and using an address, zip or other combination.
By opening up television’s white space to the public, the FCC hopes to trigger another wireless revolution that could be bigger than the wave of innovation seen a decade or so ago when Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other wireless technologies entered the unlicensed 2.4 gigahertz band reserved previously for microwave ovens, baby alarms and remote garage door openers. This time the frequencies being released will allow larger chunks of data to be moved further and faster.
Opening up white space will also make things like transmitting traffic videos, building electric-utility smart grids and faster home networks possible.
We are reaching out in a grass roots effort to help communities of minority-owned small businesses around the country to build an online presence with free & low cost resources
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