Microsoft Windows Vista: Peachpit Learning Series
by Larry Magid and Dwight Silverman
Microsoft’s Windows Vista offers users hundreds of new features, with a new user interface, new search features, and new security tools. Whether you want it or not, Vista is likely to be your next operating system if you buy a new Windows PC. Best-selling authors and respected tech journalists Larry Magid and Dwight Silverman will help you decide whether to upgrade and lead you through the new Vista capabilities, including the new UI, Windows Sidebar, Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player, and Windows Mail. Readers can learn lesson by lesson, or jump to the exercise they need at the moment.
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Once upon a time, over 40 years ago, Avis was drowning in a sea of red ink – 13 years of losses – as it struggled in the long shadow cast by Hertz. Then came the ad campaign that saved the day: “We’re Number 2 – We Try Harder.”
Today, Ask.com – the search engine that used to be called AskJeeves – is in a similar tight spot: dwarfed by competition from Google, armed with a site redesign it hopes will reorganize the online world into a far more financially favorable universe.
Ask is a lot older than Google, but its use and revenue pales by comparison.
And Ask.com truly is trying harder with a new release of its search engine that presents search results in ways that are far more accessible and user friendly than Google’s.
The new Ask.com, which has just launched, presents results in a three-panel display that lets you more easily narrow your results, see relevant hits and find related material.
Given that she’s just entered jail, I couldn’t resist trying out the new Ask by looking up everyone’s favorite socialite, Paris Hilton.
The left panel lets you expand or narrow your search and suggests related names like Nicole Richie, Carmen Electra and Jessica Simpson.
The middle panel lists the usual sites you’d expect – her official site and various sites that write about her. Like Google, it seems to be in order of relevancy and importance. Unlike Google, you don’t always have to click on a link to get a clue as to what you’ll find. On many links there is a little binocular to the left that you can mouse over to see a graphical preview of what’s on that site.
Click here to hear Larry Magid’s podcast interview of Ask.com VP Doug Leeds.
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Long before there was Google, two other guys from Stanford created a Web directory called Yahoo. Now, a serial entrepreneur with plenty of venture capital is doing it again, building what he calls “the first human powered search engine.” While I question whether it’s the first, it is certainly true that Mahalo.com is unique compared with today’s major search products because it’s compiled not by clever algorithms but by smart humans.Jason McCabe Calacanis, who earlier founded Weblogs that he sold to AOL, has hired a cadre of researchers who spend their time searching the Web to locate and vet sites that they then enter into their own hand-crafted search engine.
Calacanis, who introduced his new site last week at the D: All Things Digital Conference in Carlsbad, acknowledges that humans can’t create as many search results as machines, but claims that “humans using machines can create much better results.”
Currently, the company employs 30 researchers, called “guides” who use tools such as Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Delicious, Technorati and other services to locate and validate sites to include in their database. › Continue reading…
For the first time since 1983, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs were together on the same stage at the same time.
Some people expected fireworks at this historic meeting of the arch rivals, which took place Wednesday night at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Conference in Carlsbad, California. It was more of a love fest.
Although there were no arguments between the two men, there was an awkward moment when Jobs was asked about Apple’s amusing “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials. Jobs said the “PC Guy is great” and that the “commercials are not meant to be mean. It’s for the guys to like each other. The PC guy is what makes it all work.” › Continue reading…
The Web has long been a tool for social and political activists from all parts of the spectrum, and that’s especially true now that a gaggle of candidates are ratcheting up their 2008 presidential campaigns.The ability to play a role in electoral politics is not lost on industry-leading social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook. Both mega-sites are used by candidates to recruit and rally supporters, raise money and raise awareness.
Social-networking sites are also used by non-profit organizations. MySpace even gives out awards (myspace.com/impactawards) to non-profits involved in various causes.
But now there is a social network dedicated to helping people who want to effect change. San Francisco-based Change.org, which went live Wednesday, aims to “engage people in social issues and advance social and political change,” according to its 26-year-old founder, Ben Rattray.More…
Like other social networks, members can use profiles to reveal their hometown, age and other details, but unlike my MySpace and Facebook friends, I know relatively little about Rattray’s romantic and personal interests, and a lot about his political and social agenda. That’s part of the point.
“You’re excavating the knowledge of your community, people you know, for reviews of organizations and candidates,” Rattray said. › Continue reading…
