Thursday, April 17. 2008

Microsoft Updates Live Search News - With Geo

Perhaps lost among all the data and client updates of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft recently was this tidbit:

Another feature of the service presents local news stories based on a user's IP address, so users based in Washington will get a strip of results from Washington newspapers and television stations on one side of the page.

Not huge nor unique, but at least Microsoft is looking into local/hyperlocal for news. My first experience with Live Search News was not great - while the IP address of my machine did put me in Massachusetts, all the articles were from the Worcester Telegram. That's a fine paper, but based about 45 miles away. Only one of the 10 stories listed was "near me" in Boston.

- Seattle Times

Nokia Misses Analyst Estimates; Stock Drops

Net income rose 25 percent to 1.22 billion euros ($1.95 billion), but the company missed anaylysts expected 1.38 billion-euro prediction (as calculated by Bloomberg). Nokia dropped as much as 11 percent in European trading, the biggest slide in almost four years. The weak dollar and slowing growth in sales due to economic woes were blamed. There was no mention of NAVTEQ acquisition, save that it's being investigated by the EU.

- Bloomberg

Salesforce.com, Google Build BI Sales Dashboard; Maps are Bolted On

The one thing I find missing in evaluating whether to move from MS Outlook to apps provided by Google as a complete SaaS model is integration. The Calendar doesn't talk to email very well; adding contacts is clunky, etc. Perhaps the entire model is just not as clean as Outlook. But after watching the demo of Salesforce.com working with Google, I may be more convinced that a switch is coming. Of course, I'm looking at the demo for when maps will pop into the dashboard that you can create showing sales progress, etc. Ok, the demo didn't give maps any attention but someone else has. There have been mashups around for a few years but the recent announcement between the two companies have indicated that the integration is already there. SaaS in a Web 2.0 world is nothing new but the latest solution from Salesforce.com/Google is making an even more convincing argument for shelving client side apps.