It’s a familiar pattern: another month, another increase in Google’s search market share.
Internet users performed 11.7 billion searches in the U.S. in August, choosing Google 63 percent of the time, according to ComScore’s monthly analysis released Thursday. That’s an increase of 1.1 percentage points from 61.9 percent in July, the analyst firm said.
Yahoo slipped from 20.5 percent to 19.6 percent, and Microsoft slipped from 8.9 percent to 8.3 percent.
Craigslist Reader Pro, published by CraigsPal, isn’t pretty to look at, but it does quickly hone your search to Craigslist’s key cities and categories, and displays results in one of the reader’s four program panels.
CraigsList Reader lets you manager listings and is easy on the eye, but has been known to return less accurate results.
If you’ve ever hunted for a job, housing, or furniture on Craigslist.org, you’ll appreciate the help of a devoted desktop reader to sift and sort through multiple listings. I’ve taken a look at two free Craigslist-helpers on CNET Download.com–Craigslist Reader Pro and CraigsList Reader. While neither one is perfect, we found Craigslist Reader Pro to be the stronger choice, though it would do well to learn from what CraigsList Reader has done right.
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CNET Networks)
Craigslist Reader Pro by CraigsPal is good at precision searches, but bad at presentation.
There are certainly some nice touches here–a search bar to help in choosing the location of the query, a chance to define positive and negative keywords, and choices to only read posts with images or search titles only. A list of extra variables appropriate to each category you’re searching is especially useful for whittling down results. For instance, you can tick a box to find pet-friendly apartments or nonprofit jobs.
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CNET Networks)
While I liked the filter menu to further attack ungainly results after you’ve launched a search, what’s sorely missing are management tools to slash entries you no longer want and to flag favorites one by one–it’s currently all or nothing. Without these, Craigslist Reader Pro remains a strong search engine that’s limited by the most basic of readers.
The ideal Craigslist reader would splice CraigsList Reader’s organizational tools and more advanced design with Craigslist Reader Pro’s superior engine. Until that happens, or until CraigsList Reader improves its precision and accuracy, we recommend CraigPals’ Craigslist Reader Pro, warts and all.
CraigsList Reader, on the other hand, achieves much more with design, but contains some worrisome performance omissions. The interface, a
Microsoft Office 2007 clone (and not the first we’ve seen), is much more legible and attractive than its rival. CraigsList Reader also tops the CraigsPal “Pro” reader in organization and customization, and for some that’s the lure. You can delete single listings or clear them all, and save individual data files on your PC. You’ll also be able to set notifications for incoming listings that match your criteria, and customize the reader’s display.
However, the tool is neither as advanced when it comes to picking out locations nor as adept at defining or narrowing searches. Most importantly, CraigsList Reader routinely failed to return as many listings, even when the criteria were equal for both readers.
Gain a few distribution partners for Android. I’m assuming that Chrome will be tightly integrated into Android. If Google can strike a deal with LG, Nokia, or Research In Motion, its
mobile browser may pave the way for Chrome on the desktop.
Aside from its search engine and Web advertising muscle, a lot of Google’s endeavors have been more sizzle than steak. We geeks will surely check out Chrome and may even decide to use it on a regular basis. Yup, Chrome may achieve the status of “geek chic,” but without a lot of partners and shrewd marketing, it won’t gain popular appeal.
Focus on security. The other side of running applications well is maintaining high levels of security.
Firefox gained popularity when Internet Explorer was deemed insecure by many security professionals. Google should take its show on the road to the RSA Conference and Infosec Europe to gain visibility with the security in-crowd. Before choosing this road, however, Google must be ready to talk about its development process, bug tracking, and software patching in an open and honest way.
So what does Google really need to do to make Chrome a success? Here are a few suggestions:
Google introduced Chrome with a ton of technical mumbo-jumbo about rendering Web pages and running applications written in Ajax and JavaScript. This dialogue may put most users to sleep rather than get them to switch browsers.
When Google announced its new Chrome browser on Tuesday there was a tremendous amount of buzz in the media, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. But what about John Q. Public? Average Internet users couldn’t care less.
Find a few killer applications. Whether its YouTube or some gaming application, Google needs an extremely popular Web application that runs demonstrably better in Chrome. This will attract a community of users that Google can learn from and build upon.
“This new space is the next step in our growth and positions us well to continue looking for a long term campus solution while also allowing employees to work together as much as possible,” a statement from Facebook read. The company plans to complete the move in the first quarter of 2009. They will, however, probably keep the downtown headquarters around, both for space and nostalgia’s sake.
Facebook has simply gotten too big for downtown Palo Alto, Calif., where it has been headquartered since founder Mark Zuckerberg uprooted the company from dorm rooms at Harvard. With over 600 employees now on its payroll, Facebook will be moving to a bigger facility at the Stanford Research Park outside town–a former Hewlett-Packard building.
Facebook has, however, gotten rid of a housing subsidy offered to employees who opt to live in Palo Alto.
“Palo Alto has been a great home for many start-ups and we are confident that with our move, other companies will occupy and thrive in the vacated spaces,” the statement read. “We will likely continue to have space in downtown Palo Alto as well. We have loved our time in downtown Palo Alto and consider it part of the DNA here at Facebook. Many of our employees live in the area and will continue to be a part of the downtown community.”
Note to other open-source projects: “Abstract” worked for Picasso. It won’t for you.
Perhaps the lesson in both Linspire and Chandler is just how hard it is to build a strong consumer-facing business. For those who pooh-pooh Microsoft’s success as “mere marketing” I have a suggestion: You need to get into this “mere marketing” business. It has a way of driving adoption. It matters.
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Of perhaps more note is the fact that the Open Source Applications Foundation finally released version 1.0 of its Chandler program. Glyn Moody tries to put a happy face on the release, but the fact is that it’s several years too late. It was a good idea back when it was launched but, as Glyn writes, as a “very definite, but *abstract*, idea” it failed miserably.
You may have noticed late last week that Linspire was officially retired. Or perhaps you didn’t. No matter. Given Linspire’s rocky history with the GPL and its inability to get traction with consumers, it’s an unsurprising move as Xandros seeks to consolidate its assets.
CNET News’ Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.
The three directors of E-Gold, in addition to its Gold & Silver Reserve parent company, were indicted in April 2007 after federal prosecutors accused the online payment site of being a haven for criminal activity like processing investment scams and payments for child pornography. They said its loose verification standards for users’ identity attracted criminals.
The three men and the companies pleaded guilty to the charges in July 2008.
Douglas Jackson founded the site on a philosophy opposed to government regulation, prosecutors said. “Dr. Jackson was very candid about his vision to create a version of a financial institution that didn’t have regulations,” prosecutor Jonathan Haray said.
The defendants were also ordered to obtain licenses to do business in the states in which a license is required, something the company had already begun doing. In September, E-Gold hired KPMG to aid its development of an anti-money laundering program; it has already contacted every state to determine whether a license is needed.
E-Gold remains open for business today, though Jackson said in an announcement on November 14 that it was still figuring out how to comply with the registration process for new accounts now that it’s subject to regulation as a “financial institution.” New account creation is “temporarily suspended.”
The prosecution questioned how useful E-Gold’s cooperation really was.
The company was incorporated in Bermuda, for instance, even though its operations are based out of Melbourne, Fla. Barry Pollack, Downey’s defense attorney, said the site’s offshore registry did not impede the directors from responding to subpoenas. (If the site had been entirely overseas, as GoldMoney.com is, it wouldn’t have had to worry about the feds. On the other hand, GoldMoney does demand proof of identity.)
“If he had thought it needed to be licensed, he would have done everything in his power to make that happen,” Federal Public Defender Michelle Peterson said about Reid Jackson.
Many of E-Gold’s users turned to it as an alternative to a bank account denominated in U.S. dollars, which lose money due to inflation especially when interest rates are low. By contrast, gold has zoomed upward from roughly $300 an ounce in 2002 to around $750 an ounce today.
Reid Jackson, Douglas Jackson’s brother, and E-Gold director Barry Downey were each sentenced to three years of probation, 300 hours of community service. They also were ordered to pay a $2,500 fine and a $100 assessment fee each.
Jackson was spared a heavier fine because, according to his attorney, he’s deeply in debt. “Dr. Jackson has suffered, will continue to suffer, and may never be successful with E-Gold,” the judge said.
WASHINGTON–A federal judge decided on Thursday not to impose a prison sentence on the senior directors of E-Gold, an Internet-based digital currency firm, who had previously pleaded guilty to violations of money laundering and running an unlicensed money transmitting business.
U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said the men deserved lenient sentences because they did not intend to engage in illegal activity. Even though, Collyer said, the U.S. Justice Department wanted to use the cases to show “this new day of Internet crime is going to be…vigorously prosecuted,” that alone was not enough reason to incarcerate the defendants.
E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve faced a maximum fine of $3.7 million, but because neither company could pay that much, they were fined $300,000 with the condition that $10,000 be paid on Monday, with further monthly payments to start in May 2009.
Furthermore, prosecutors said, the funds that flow through E-Gold, which launched in 1996, are significant. At its height, the site had more than 4 million accounts and facilitated more than $5 million fund transfers a day.
Supporters of E-Gold and gold-denominated accounts have suggested that enabling nearly anonymous transfers of money in and out of the banking system is what led the feds to target the company. For his part, Jackson initially blasted the feds, saying the Secret Service “deceived” a judge with “bogus testimony” so they could conduct a raid on E-Gold designed to put it out of business.
Gold & Silver Reserve CEO Douglas Jackson was sentenced to 300 hours of community service, a $200 fine, and three years of supervision, including six months of electronically monitored home detention. He had faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
Intentions and philosophies notwithstanding, the defense said, the defendants should remain out of jail so they could keep the site up and running and continue to help investigators track criminals. E-Gold’s records of IP addresses and timestamps provide a trail to criminals–and proof the company had no intention of inviting criminal activity, the defense said.
“The vast majority (of IP addresses from E-Gold) don’t have good identifying information,” said Rimon. “If an IP address leads to a P.O. box on a street corner in Estonia, that doesn’t do us much good, and that’s what we found in many cases.”
Federal prosecutors claimed there was no doubt the directors knew E-Gold facilitates criminal activity. An analysis in January 2008 of the 65 most valuable E-Gold accounts showed that more than 70 percent were involved in criminal activity, according to Laurel Rimon, a Justice Department prosecutor.
Though illegal activity continued on E-Gold well after Douglas Jackson acknowledged the company was under investigation in 2004, the defendants claimed that they received bad legal counsel, which convinced them the site did not have to be licensed as a money transmitting business.
The court also accepted the argument that Downey was unaware of the company’s need for a license, even though he is a practicing lawyer.
The defendants also argued they have worked to the best of their abilities to cooperate with investigators, but the prosecutors provided evidence that the directors may have been trying to circumspect government interference.
It seems to be the company’s new strategy: try everything, see what works. Netbooks are just the latest product category in which Dell is jumping into because it doesn’t want to lose out on any potential business.
Whether this category has much potential for significant growth depends on who you ask. Gartner is predicting 5.2 million Netbooks will sell this year, but reach 50 million in 2012. Rival firm IDC has a vastly different view: 3.5 million this year, 5 million next year, and 9.2 million by 2012.
That’s why Dell is taking pains to reframe consumers’ expectations of this type of device, and is throwing in a few different options.
A year after the Asus Eee PC began aggressively marking territory in the low-cost notebook business, the second-biggest PC maker in the world is finally ready with an answer.
In other words, if falling prices of traditional notebooks are a problem, why not innovate there? Come up with something interesting enough, and you’ll grab attention from your competitors.
This post was updated at 12:30 p.m. PT to reflect Dell’s announcement of partnering with Vodafone.
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CNET)
“It’s defensive. Everybody’s doing this because they don’t want to miss out on any opportunity,” said Richard Shim, PC analyst with IDC. “But they might be chasing the wrong rabbit.”
“We didn’t build a small PC, we built an ultramobile device,” said John Thode, vice president of small-screen consumer devices for Dell. “It does a lot of PC functions, but its intent was not to emulate a PC in every aspect.”
But from a business strategy perspective, it’s not clear how helpful this will be to Dell overall. It’s having some issues straightening out the core part of its business, as its latest earnings results showed, so why are they spending time trying to figure out a whole new product category?
Managing the expectations consumers have of a device in this category is a good idea, but it doesn’t change the fact that it falls into the category of a Netbook. (CNET Reviews like what the Mini 9 offers as a Netbook, and for a full rundown of the specs, plus a hands-on review, see here.)
Although Netbook brands are pretty hard to tell apart these days, Dell has made some smart moves here with the product itself: offering free online storage with Box.net, and adding a lot customization options.
But Dell’s not alone here. When it comes to Netbooks, everyone’s doing it because, well, everyone’s doing it.
Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and seemingly hundreds of lower-tier players jumped in months ago to what has been certainly the most interesting development in the PC business in some time. But is it too late for Dell to make a meaningful impact in the category? Furthermore, is it even necessary for Dell to participate?
CNET's hands-on with the Dell Inspiron Mini 9.
The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 will be formally announced Thursday, as CNET News reported Tuesday. It’s Dell’s first foray into the Netbook category–undersize notebooks powered by Intel’s Atom processor.
Dell is hoping to try something different in the category that will take care of the issue of low margins on these devices. Soon Vodafone will offer the Mini 9 with built-in mobile broadband when customers sign up for a 3G service plan with them. It’s only for Europe now, and won’t start until later this month. Dell declined to offer further details on pricing or in which countries the plan will be available.
The category can be confusing for the average PC user. A Netbook is essentially a notebook form factor shrunk down, but these devices don’t act as the average PC user would expect. It has a smaller screen, smaller keyboard, lower storage capacity, among other things.
Price is the other reason for the reframing. Dell hopes to sell this as an oversize Blackberry or
iPhone–a mobile device that you use simply to access the Web for short spurts, send e-mail, make some VoIP calls. When the cheapest version of the Mini 9 goes for $349 (4GB SSD, Ubuntu Linux), and the full loaded one (16GB SSD, Windows XP, Web cam, etc.) goes for $599, that almost reaches the same price category as Dell’s full-size traditional notebooks. A 15-inch Inspiron, for example, starts at $499, according to Dell.com. By selling it as “not a small notebook” there’s less risk of losing sales in their traditional notebook business at the expense of Netbooks.
“The general trajectory is it initially starts off steep and fast, and then it tends to peter out and lose momentum,” said Shim of IDC. “I don’t see that changing because the reason it flattens out is because it’s just not sustainable.”
But will that twist spell much-needed success for Dell? The subsidized notebooks-with-wireless-access model has already become popular in Europe, and though we’ve seen it here in the U.S. before, but it hasn’t really stuck.
On top of the basic layer of search interaction there’s also a paying element to the site. Every query you make has a certain point value, with interactions like commenting and voting giving you more points. Once you reach a certain point limit you can then convert points you have into a cash gift card. There’s also a referral program where you get a small percentage of the points from the searches your friends do.
I’ve embedded a demo video below. You can also give it spin here.
Scour is a search tool that blends results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN together in one stream. You can hot-swap between the three, or break out any single result into another search. If you come across a bad result, or one you think should go above the others, you can also vote it up (or down) or leave a comment–something similar to what Wikia did with its hackable search engine.
The user interface hasn’t changed much since Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, except to add a Security pull-down menu between Page and Tools on the main toolbar. In addition to blocking phishing sites, IE 8 now highlights the main domain of any Web site you visit. Thus if you think you are on eBay’s site and something other than ebay.com is highlighted, chances are you are on the wrong Web site.
Don’t count Internet Explorer out just yet.
Also, IE 8 Beta 1 included Microsoft’s own brand of malware protection. Earlier this year, Opera added Haute Secure malware protection, and Mozilla enhanced its Google and StopBadware malware protection in Firefox 3.
In another feature, known as InPrivate, Microsoft allows the user to suspend caching functions while you surf. The scenarios for using InPrivate include when you’re using someone else’s computer, like for instance, when you need to buy a gift for a loved one without ruining the surprise, or when you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person to know which Web site you visited. While you can currently clear the browser cache with a mouse click, it’s an all-or-nothing action. InPrivate temporarily suspends the automatic caching functions, allowing you to keep the rest of your browsing history intact. Apple Safari has offered this feature for a while, but Mozilla Firefox does not.
IE 8 also contains a cross-site scripting filter, one of the first in a mainstream browser. Cross-site scripting allows an attacker to execute script on a user’s browser without them knowing. When the IE 8 filter finds a Web page with a cross-site scripting request, it changes the content on the page with a notice. Users are not presented with an option; IE simply blocks the malicious script from executing and then displays the rest of the page.
IE 8 Beta 1 has already introduced several behind-the-scenes security changes. For example, ActiveX components will be installed per user, which eliminates the need for everyone to have administrator privileges. In addition, you must acknowledge or opt in for the component to run, eliminating drive-by downloads. Components will be per site and will only be available from the site of origin. Finally, site developers can request killbits from Microsoft which can be sent via Windows Update to terminate risky or outdated components.
On Wednesday, Microsoft released the second public beta for
Internet Explorer 8. If anything, this release brings IE up to par with alternative browsers such as Opera, Apple’s
Safari, and Mozilla’s
Firefox in terms of security and features. It also pushes Microsoft a little ahead of the competition.
See also:
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 screenshots
Review: Internet Explorer 8 beta 2
Daily Debrief video: The newest IE 8
Revenue from services also was on the increase, though not by quite as much. It was up 18 percent, to $1.26 billion.
For the quarter, which ended May 31, the enterprise software giant reported revenue of $7.24 billion, up 24 percent from the same period a year earlier. During that three-month period, revenue from new software licenses rose 27 percent to $3.14 billion, and revenue from software license updates and product support rose 25 percent to $2.83 billion.
Oracle said that its net income for May quarter was $2.04 billion, or 39 cents per diluted share, a jump of 27 percent.
In April, Oracle completed its $6.7 billion acquisition of BEA Systems.
Software licensing drove a healthy increase in revenue for Oracle during its fourth quarter.
In May, Forbes reported that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was the best-remunerated executive in the tech sector–and overall–with a total 2007 compensation package valued at $192.9 million.