Download Squadhttp://www.downloadsquad.comDownload Squadhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/media/feedlogo.gifDownload Squadhttp://www.downloadsquad.comen-usCopyright 2008 Blogsmith, LLC. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Yoozila: Google's Hot Cousin?http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/08/yoozila-search-google-hot-cousin/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/08/yoozila-search-google-hot-cousin/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/08/yoozila-search-google-hot-cousin/#commentsFiled under: ,


Ok, ok, we know that when something is as powerful and useful as Google that looks shouldn't matter, but come on. Would it really be too much to ask for her to doll herself up a little? Just a little. Throw us a bone!

Fortunately, Yoozila has arrived on the scene, all AJAXed up, and shiny web 2.0 graphics to top it all off.

The results page can be quickly - and usefully - customized. Turn thumbnails on or off, filter your results by region, language, file type and license type (though it doesn't work that well on some searches yet), and of course you can search within your results.

The thumbnails can be incredibly useful; they're a good way to spot scam sites before you get suckered in to visiting or give you a visual reminder of sites you're visited before.

It's built on Google code, so you'll get the same web, image, blog, news, and other results either way. Yoozila's done an excellent job updating the old, saggy Google interface.
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]]>googlesearchweb 2.0Web2.0Lee Mathews2008-07-08T17:30:00+00:00Twitter reportedly buying Summizehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/07/twitter-reportedly-buying-summize/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/07/twitter-reportedly-buying-summize/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/07/twitter-reportedly-buying-summize/#commentsFiled under: , ,

There have been reports flying around Twitter and several prominent blogs that Twitter is making a move to acquire Summize, a popular Twitter search engine. In case this is the first you're hearing about Summize, here's a rundown of what it does. It can search Twitter for any string -- most importantly, an @name -- which makes it indispensable when Twitter's tracking function is down. Second, it aggregates and lists the most popular search terms, so you can get a sense of the Twitter zeitgeist.

It's too early to speculate about what effect the acquistion could have on Twitter itself, or how the resulting service would look with Summize's features integrated. We do love the idea of combining two services we use every day, though. Basically, we're keeping our fingers crossed that these rumors are true.
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]]>acquisitionbusinessbuyoutSummizeTwitterJay Hathaway2008-07-07T22:30:00+00:00Glubble and Kidzui - good kid browsers, silly names http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/07/glubble-vs-kidzui-kid-browser-wars/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/07/glubble-vs-kidzui-kid-browser-wars/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/07/glubble-vs-kidzui-kid-browser-wars/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , , , , , ,

kids browsing
There is a battle for the hearts and wallets souls of our young surfing children on the interwebs. Parents are obviously concerned about the appropriateness of the world wide web being a kid's playground, so are looking for suitable controls to help them feel their children are protected online.

We looked at 2 kids browsers, Glubble and Kidzui, and gave them a test spin as well as subjected them to an unscientific kid focus group. Check out our results after the jump.

Continue reading Glubble and Kidzui - good kid browsers, silly names

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]]>childrens browserChildrensBrowserFirefoxGlubbles vs. KidzuiGlubblesVs.Kidzuikids browserKidsBrowserKidzuiparental controlsParentalControlssafe browsingSafeBrowsingDolores Parker2008-07-07T14:00:00+00:00Opera partners with Ask.comhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/06/opera-partners-with-ask-com/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/06/opera-partners-with-ask-com/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/06/opera-partners-with-ask-com/#commentsFiled under: ,

Although it doesn't always get the most attention, Opera is a solid browser that continues to improve with each version. While they work on their next version, codenamed Peregrine (like the falcon), subtle improvements are being added to the current release, 9.51. The latest addition is Ask.com for the search bar.

What do we think is so interesting about that? First, it's a step toward competing with Firefox's search engine plugins. Although the promotion is focused on Ask, it also shows off Opera's expandable search bar to users who might not have known about it. Second, it's another option for people who don't want to rely exclusively on Google for their search results. We're looking forward to more from Opera in the near future.
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]]>Ask.combrowsersOperasearchsearch enginesSearchEnginesJay Hathaway2008-07-06T19:00:00+00:00Whipping Your Website into Shapehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/03/whipping-your-website-into-shape/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/03/whipping-your-website-into-shape/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/03/whipping-your-website-into-shape/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

No more excuses: let's get your small business Website whipped into shape. People who are moderately online use the Web as their first search source. Phone books are dead trees; if your business is not online with an easy-to-find phone number, I'm clicking elsewhere. People spend money in browser-based shopping sprees and your Web site has to compete.

Let's whip your site into shape. We've already discussed how you can grade your own site; offered tips for upgrading your site; and suggested ways to increase your search-engine ranking. Let's take the next step and whip your small business Website into first-class shape.

What do your site visitors want most of all from your site?

LET ME SEARCH!
I want a search box, plain and visible, preferably at the top of every page but definitely at the top of the homepage. If you don't have a site search, you can get a great free search tool in phpDig but you'll probably have to pay someone to make it work. It's worth your money. Put it at the top of your list.

TALK TO ME!
Company contact information belongs on every page, preferably in the footer. The footer area should also tell me a mailing address, a fax number and not merely supply a link to a contact page. Think: single-clicking! One click to get where you most want to go should be a navigation goal.

HELP ME!
You can add online help to your site through volusion's Live Chat (free edition) or through the Open Source PHP Lively at Sourceforge (the holy grail of Open Source apps to try). Of course, you have to make an employee available to respond, even if only a few visitors click the icon. Surely, someone sits at a desk during the day. Think how important they will feel!

FEED ME!
I want to know what your company is up to and what new products you have that will benefit me. Send out an RSS feed of new information or products. The nitty-gritty of RSS is here and if you're not into coding, try one of several free Open Source apps to generate RSS from your Web site.

Pheeder claims to be easy to implement and has loads of documentation. RSS Genesis works on any type of server and is PHP4/5 compatible and RSS Feed Creator claims simply to generate RSS feed.

While you're at it, how about offering RSS feeds for companion products that might interest me? There are some free RSS services that enable adding feeds to your site relatively easy and, of course, FeedRoll.

While you're RSS'ing, you can create a feed of any Web page that interests you. Feedity is a free service that will create a feed for any page and alert you to changes or updates to any site's page. Keep on eye on the competition or sites of businesses that impact what you sell through easy RSS reading.

WHOLE PACKAGE ME!
Robert Scoble, an online evangelist, lists his best practices for your business cards. Why not incorporate these ideas into your small business Web site?
  1. Start the conversation - make your site engage the visitor.
  2. Make it a standard size and shape but be different - that's why you need a Web development firm with creative builds in their portfolio.
  3. Make sure the basics are easy to find.
  4. Tell us what you do. Unless your business is globally recognized, we need to see what you're selling in clear language on the home page.
  5. Break some rules but stay on the good side of obnoxious.
  6. Highlight your corporate tag line. Don't have one yet? Get one.
  7. Use language options if appropriate.
Use the rest of 2008 to build a plan for your small business Web site to move toward as many best practices as possible. A site re-design isn't free and is also not a silver bullet that will increase sales dramatically in the first week. You still have to market your Web site. Stay tuned.
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]]>small businessSmallBusinessweb site best practicesSue Polinsky2008-07-03T12:00:00+00:00Adobe makes Flash searchable, Flash designers rejoicehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/01/adobe-makes-flash-searchable-flash-designers-rejoice/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/01/adobe-makes-flash-searchable-flash-designers-rejoice/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/01/adobe-makes-flash-searchable-flash-designers-rejoice/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

UPDATE: E.W. Scripps SEM Manager Paul Petersen weighs in on the SEO impact of Adobe and Google's announcement.

Adobe's Flash technology has long been the bane of efforts to create a Web site or application that can be indexed by Google, Yahoo! or other search engines. What it lacked in search engine optimization (SEO), Flash made up in offering designers an infinite playground for creating rich-media apps, games and video.

But what good is an application that users can't find?

Yesterday, Adobe and the two search engine leaders came out with an answer: A special Flash player that opens up content within applications and translates it for search engines. Flash content owners and search-engine users should notice results immediately.

This news was also mentioned in today's Googleholic.

Continue reading Adobe makes Flash searchable, Flash designers rejoice

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]]>flashseoPatrick Beeson2008-07-01T15:15:00+00:00Put Wikipedia In Your Pockethttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/30/put-wikipedia-in-your-pocket/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/30/put-wikipedia-in-your-pocket/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/30/put-wikipedia-in-your-pocket/#commentsFiled under: ,

Pocket WikipediaSure, Wikipedia may be one of the best places on the internet to find information on just about anything in a hurry, but what about when you're stuck in an elevator during a blackout and you can't remember who wrote The Republic? Relax! Pocket Wikipedia provides quick access to important articles offline - and on just about any kind of device.

The download includes about 24,000 images and over 14 million words covering about 5,000 articles. Each one has been carefully hand-picked from Wikipedia's massive repository of community-assembled knowledge to avoid some of the more important omissions from Wikipedia's own Cd-Rom version Pocket Wikipedia is currently available for Windows, Linux, and PocketPC only.

Want it? Keep in mind the old adage "All good things come to those who wait." None of the mirrors we found were all that fast, but it's too good a download to ignore.

[via Best Freeware and Lifehacker]
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]]>freewarepocket pcPocketPcreferencewikipediawindows mobileWindowsMobileLee Mathews2008-06-30T17:00:00+00:00Search YouTube for music by artist, album with Joglihttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/30/search-youtube-for-music-by-artist-album-with-jogli/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/30/search-youtube-for-music-by-artist-album-with-jogli/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/30/search-youtube-for-music-by-artist-album-with-jogli/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,

Jogli
We'll let you in on a little secret: There are a ton of music videos and live performances on YouTube. What? You knew that? Well, then you also probably know how hard it can be to find every song on an album and play it in order. YouTube is really designed for searching for videos one at a time. But Jogli helps organize the mess.

Jogli is basically a search engine and music video player. Search for an artist and Jogli will bring up a list of possible results. Click an artist name and you'll find a list of albums. Click an album and you'll be presented with a list of songs. In many cases not each song is clickable, but many are.

When you hit the play button, a YouTube video will start playing in the corner. But you can also queue up additional songs and even search for new songs without stopping your recording. Jogli is a lot like MyStrands, another site we covered earlier this year. But the way Jogli organizes songs by artist and album sets it apart from the competition.

Thanks Chen!
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]]>joglimusic-videosyoutubeBrad Linder2008-06-30T13:00:00+00:00Acronym Finder helps you make sense of the senselesshttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/27/acronym-finder-helps-you-make-sense-of-the-senseless/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/27/acronym-finder-helps-you-make-sense-of-the-senseless/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/27/acronym-finder-helps-you-make-sense-of-the-senseless/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Acronym Finder
Ever wonder what FISA, NSA, or AFL-CIO stand for? Sure, you know they're acronyms, but each letter's supposed to mean something, right? Acronym Finder can help you figure out what acronyms mean. It's sort of like an online dictionary, but instead of typing in words and getting definitions, you type in a series of letters and get a series of words.

Of course, knowing that AFL-CIO stands for American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations doesn't necessarily help you figure out exactly what the organization does.

And like any good internet tool, you don't have to use Acronym Finder for its intended purpose. You can type in your initials and see what organizations or technical terms share a set of letters with you. There are more than 4million acronyms and abbreviations in the database.

[via MakeUseOf]
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]]>acronym-finderacronymsBrad Linder2008-06-27T12:00:00+00:00Keeping tabs on your friendshttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/27/keeping-tabs-on-your-friends/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/27/keeping-tabs-on-your-friends/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/27/keeping-tabs-on-your-friends/#commentsFiled under: , ,

With all the social networking sites out there it's hard to keep track of who's on what site and what are they doing. Whoisi is attempting to bring everything together so that keeping track of your friends doesn't feel like a second job.

Just enter their user name and have it added to the whoisi database. From there add them to your "follow" list and every time you visit the site it will display their latest activities. Keep in mind that once added, anyone can follow them from the whoisi site.

An interesting feature of whoisi is the ability for anyone to edit information about any user. You can add additional sites that this person is a member of or delete the site. Currently whoisi supports information from Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, LinkdIn and rss feeds.

Once you get over that whole privacy thing of anyone can add you to the site, the convenience of being able to follow all your friends on a simple website is quite appealing.

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]]>searchsocialnetworkingJoey Celis2008-06-27T10:00:00+00:00Need help finding pdf files online?http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/26/need-help-finding-pdf-files-online/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/26/need-help-finding-pdf-files-online/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/26/need-help-finding-pdf-files-online/#commentsFiled under:

Pdf search engine bills itself as a search engine to locate ebooks on the Internet. Enter in the title you are looking for and it scour the world wide web displaying links to pdf files it comes across that matches your search term.

But you'd be wrong if you thought pdf search engine was just a one trick pony. While it does call itself a book search engine, the site can also locate any pdf document that's out there. In our testing, we were able to locate tax return forms, DMV applications for specific states and other pdf documents floating around the 'net.

Powered by google, pdf search engine might be the site to visit when you're looking for pdf documents on the Internet. Or you could simply just enter what you're looking for plus filetype:pdf in google and achieve the same results.

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]]>ebookpdfsearch enginesSearchEnginesJoey Celis2008-06-26T19:00:00+00:00Twellow the twitter directoryhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/26/twellow-the-twitter-directory/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/26/twellow-the-twitter-directory/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/26/twellow-the-twitter-directory/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

With Twitter, you generally follow people you know or at least have heard about from others, but that limits your social circle. Twellow attempts to change how you find people to follow by indexing all the publicly available messages floating around the twitter network into searchable categories.

Twellow's website is laid out so you can click on a category and it will display all the members that have expressed some interest in that particular subject. In addition, Twellow also provides a search box for more free form searching.

But if the idea that your messages are being indexed so that others can find you is a bit unnerving, just make sure you send your twits in private.



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]]>microbloggingtwitterJoey Celis2008-06-26T12:00:00+00:00SearchMe visual search engine adds media search, bookmarkshttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/24/searchme-visual-search-engine-adds-media-search-bookmarks/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/24/searchme-visual-search-engine-adds-media-search-bookmarks/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/24/searchme-visual-search-engine-adds-media-search-bookmarks/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

SearchMe Media
Visual search engine SearchMe is out of private beta and now has two nifty new features: Media search and stacks. Stacks is a fancy way of saying bookmarks, while Media Search lets you interact with online videos and images all from the SearchMe interface.

While traditional search engines like Google and Yahoo! present you with a list of text-based results, SearchMe shows screenshots of web pages matching your query. For example, searching for "Download Squad" would bring up a screenshort of our home page. When you click on the image you can visit the original page.

Now you can also click the video or images tabs and pull up screenshots of YouTube videos or Flickr images. When you click the play button you can even watch a video without leaving the SearchMe page. So you can flip through videos much like you would using the PicLens browser plugin, but without installing anyting.

The Stacks feature lets you organize collections of bookmarked pages. For example, you could create a list of your favorite tech news sites with thumbnails for easy reference. You can also share your stacks via email or social networking sites.
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]]>search-enginesearchmevisual-searchBrad Linder2008-06-24T14:30:00+00:00Facebook adds inbox search, makes inbox actually usefulhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/21/facebook-adds-inbox-search-makes-inbox-actually-useful/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/21/facebook-adds-inbox-search-makes-inbox-actually-useful/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/21/facebook-adds-inbox-search-makes-inbox-actually-useful/#commentsFiled under: ,

The only thing Facebook messages have ever been good for is getting a friend's real contact info so you can talk outside of Facebook. But what happens when you lose that critical message with your buddy's new address or screenname? Facebook fails you, and you have to scroll back through all your messages to find the right one. Not anymore! The 'Book has introduced a search bar for your inbox.

Rejoice! A new feature that should have been there all along! We think this is a step in the right direction, even though it's not exactly the highly-touted data portability we're still waiting for. At least this gives us something better to do on Facebook than tend to our very impressive L'il Green Patch.
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]]>facebookinboxsearchsearch boxSearchBoxJay Hathaway2008-06-21T14:00:00+00:00Google takes on Compete, Alexahttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/20/google-takes-on-compete-alexa/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/20/google-takes-on-compete-alexa/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/20/google-takes-on-compete-alexa/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Google trends websites
Everybody knows that Alexa, Compete, and other web services that track web site traffic are inherently flawed. Because they compile third party data instead of looking at your actual server data, you can never be sure that the statistics you're reading are accurate. But hey, if you really want to see whether Engadget is more popular than Gizmodo, they're the only game in town, right?

Now there's a new player in the web traffic comparison game. Google has added the ability to search for websites in Google Trends. While there's no guarantee that the stats Google spits back are any more accurate than the ones you'll find from Alexa or Compete, the service does give you one more source for comparison.

Search Engine Land reports that Google grabs its numbers from a combination of sources including search traffic, anonymous Google Analytics figures and other third party marketing data.

[via VentureBeat]
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]]>alexacompetegoogle-trendstrafficweb-trafficBrad Linder2008-06-20T16:00:00+00:00Spickr: another unfortunate name, this time it's a startpagehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/16/spickr-another-unfortunate-name-this-time-its-a-startpage/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/16/spickr-another-unfortunate-name-this-time-its-a-startpage/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/16/spickr-another-unfortunate-name-this-time-its-a-startpage/#commentsFiled under: ,


"Flickr" is a great name for a photo-sharing site. Displays flicker sometimes, right? Maybe you flick through your photo album? Recently, we've reviewed a couple of neat services with "add an r to the end"-style names that didn't quite work as smoothly: DeskLickr and Dumpr. Not exactly the kinds of names you want to tell a friend about.

Continuing our ongoing coverage of interesting, useful websites with extremely unfortunate names, let's try this one on for size. Your friend sees your fancy-looking startpage and asks, "What's that cool site?" "Oh," you casually respond, "that's Spickr!" SPICKR? Did someone really name a slick, search-based startpage after an old-fashioned, patently-offensive racial slur? It turns out that, no, no they did not. The official explanation is that the name means you can "PICK" the information you want, and the "S" is for "search."

If you can get past the name, Spickr is a decent startpage. It does 1-click searches on Google, YouTube or Wikipedia, has a nice list of popular sites in the sidebar, and the ability to navigate your del.icio.us from within its interface. The site is clearly targeting iGoogle users, with a bare-bones "no widgets, no RSS" message - if that appeals to you, give it a look. Maybe send them an email, while you're at it, and suggest they come up with a better name for their product.

UPDATE: The folks at Spickr noticed this post, and the service is now called FastEagle. We've updated the URLs for this post appropriately.
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]]>Spickrstart pageStartPageunfortunateJay Hathaway2008-06-16T10:00:00+00:00Now that Microsoft's out of picture, Yahoo! rebounds with Googlehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/now-that-microsofts-out-of-picture-yahoo-rebounds-with-google/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/now-that-microsofts-out-of-picture-yahoo-rebounds-with-google/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/now-that-microsofts-out-of-picture-yahoo-rebounds-with-google/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

Yahoo! AdSense
Now that Yahoo! has finally decided things are really over with Microsoft, the company has found room in its heart for a new love: Google. The two companies today announced an advertising partnership that will basically place Google AdSense advertisements alongside Yahoo! search results.

The deal isn't exactly comprehensive. It covers "some of" Yahoo!'s web properties, and the ads will only be displayed in the US and Canada. The agreement is non-exclusive, which means that Yahoo! may display its own ads or ads from other parties as well.

In a press release, Yahoo! says it expects to raise about $800 million in revenue per year from the deal. Google, in return, posted a blog entry saying the deal is "good for users, advertisers, and publishers." The US government isn't quite convinced yet. Back in April, the Justice Department responded to a test run of a Google/Yahoo! partnership with an investigation. And today the chairman of the US Senate Antitrust Subcommittee said the Senate will be closely examining the deal.
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]]>adsenseadvertisinggoogleyahooBrad Linder2008-06-12T23:00:00+00:00Yahoo! and Microsoft are so over each other, it's not even funnyhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/yahoo-and-microsoft-are-so-over-each-other-its-not-even-funny/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/yahoo-and-microsoft-are-so-over-each-other-its-not-even-funny/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/yahoo-and-microsoft-are-so-over-each-other-its-not-even-funny/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Talks Concluded
If you thought things were over between Microsoft and Yahoo!, you ain't seen nothing yet. Because now it's really, officially, super duper over. Yahoo! issued a press releases this afternoon making it clear that that not only will Microsoft not be purchasing all of Yahoo!, but Yahoo! won't be selling Microsoft even a part of its business. Not its search engine; not its email service; not even the key to replace the toilet paper and paper towels in the company restrooms (although honestly, we're not sure that was ever on the table).

According to the Yahoo! press release, Yahoo! board members decided that it would not be in the company's best interest to sell its search business. Microsoft, on the other hand, released a statement saying that such a partnership would have provided value for Yahoo! shareholders while ensuring a competitive marketplace.

Oh, and while Microsoft has withdrawn its proposal to buy all of Yahoo!, if Yahoo! decides to change its mind and come crawling back, Microsoft says its offer to buy just the search engine "remains available for discussion." So umm, yeah, maybe it's not really over yet.

[via Techmeme]
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]]>acquisitionmergermicrosoftsearchyahooBrad Linder2008-06-12T17:30:00+00:00HotPads shows real estate rents, foreclosure, demographic heat mapshttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/hotpads-shows-real-estate-rents-foreclosure-demographic-heat-m/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/hotpads-shows-real-estate-rents-foreclosure-demographic-heat-m/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/hotpads-shows-real-estate-rents-foreclosure-demographic-heat-m/#commentsFiled under: , ,

HotPads
Looking to buy a house or rent an apartment? There are hundreds of web sites that can help you in your search. But HotPads takes a rather unique approach with its real estate search engine. Not only can you search by price, location, and number of bedrooms, but you can also apply a series of heat maps that give you a better sense of the neighborhood.

Want to know how crowded the area is? Just click the population density heat map option and you'll get a good idea of how many neighbors will be sucking up your oxygen. You can also apply heat maps for per capita income, household income, median age, and median rent. There are even heat maps that show you the foreclosure rate per household, and the rent ratio. What's rent ratio? It's a comparison of rental rates versus mortgage rates in an area. In other words, if you see lots of blue, it means you'll probably save money by purchasing a home, while if an area is red, you're probably better off renting.

If you're looking for more mundane information, you can also plot schools, universities, and subway stops on the map.

[via TechCrunch]
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]]>heat-mapshotpadsreal-estaterentalBrad Linder2008-06-12T16:00:00+00:00Out of Beta: Gettin' Twingly Wit Ithttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/out-of-beta-gettin-twingly-wit-it/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/out-of-beta-gettin-twingly-wit-it/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/12/out-of-beta-gettin-twingly-wit-it/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

TwinglyToday, the blog search engine Twingly has officially come out of beta.

Twingly allows you to search for the "Best of Blogs", with spam free results, the company says.

The folks at Twingly are also announcing their new widget platform that lets you turn any search result into a widget quickly. See an example here.

We're not sure how "spam free" this is, or what type of technology they use to make this claim, but the results didn't look that great when we did a search.

The saving grace here is that you can vote a result as a "like", which will bring it up in the ranks. A little Digg style there thrown in. It's going to take a lot of early adoption on Twingly's part to make that system work.

Along with the search, you can translate results into other languages, as well as subscribe to an RSS feed of any search as well. That's pretty standard stuff.

The Hot Right Now feature that shows up under the search bar could pick up some steam though. With all of the content out there, the trend seems to be towards companies trying to find a way to bubble up the most "important" or "interesting" content. We'll watch to see how this evolves and to see how accurate and/or helpful it is.

Twingly admits themselves that they're focusing on European blogs even though they're indexing worldwide, so that's something to keep in mind too.
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]]>blogsearch engineSearchEnginetwinglyDrew Olanoff2008-06-12T13:00:00+00:00