Yellow Pages iPhone App Gets Voice Search

Voice search is one of the more convenient features of phones these days (at least when it works). AT&T Interactive has launched the latest version of its Yellow Pages app YPMobile, and it comes with voice search, which should make the app a great deal more useful. “As mobile consumers increasingly rely on their mobile device to find and immediately use local information, we are focused on integrating new features to help users easily navigate their everyday lives,” says David Williams, vice president of mobile product management at AT&T Interactive. “The addition of voice search complements the text-based local search experience by expanding the situations in which users can use the YPmobile App, making finding nearby businesses even easier.” In addition to Voice Search, the app also comes equipped with new map-based search functionality, and integration with Facebook and Twitter – users can broadcast their newly-discovered “hot spots.” Given the popularity location sharing is attracting these days, some may go for this. The app is available for free at Apple’s App Store . Recently AT&T Interactive also made its Buzz.com social local search product available to the public. Read my interview with the company about that here .

Tags: Buzz, David Williams, Facebook, Interactive, interview, iPhone, popularity, product management, Search, voice, voice-search

Lists Of The Most Important Internet Personalities

Internet Evolution has come up with their first-ever list of the top 100 most innovative and influential people in the Web 2.0 world. In the social networking category, Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder of Facebook , beat out Kevin Rose, the Founder of Digg . In the search category, the heads of Google , Microsoft , and Yahoo! were named, but surprisingly Jason Calacanis of Mahalo was named, as well. Internet Evolution has narrowed down the list into 10 different categories, which include the most innovative and influential people in each category: Social Networking Enterprise & Cloud Computing News/Media Greentech Wireless & Gadgets E-Commerce Search Security Digital Entertainment Most Over-Rated I am particularly interested in the Search category , where Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Founders of Google , were named first. Stefan Weitz of Microsoft and Carol Bartz of Yahoo were also named, and Jason Calacanis was also named in the Search category. Here is the list of the top 10 most innovative and influential people in search: 1. Larry Page, Founder, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) 2. Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) 3. Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) 4. Jason Calacanis, Founder, Mahalo.com Inc. 5. Robin Li, originator of Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) search technology 6. Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia 7. Vipul Ved Prakash, Founder, Topsy.com 8. Jack Ma, Founder, Alibaba.com Hong Kong Ltd. 9. Alan Emtage, creator of pre-Web search engine Archie 10. Suranga Chandratillake, CEO, blinkx Being in the search industry, I’m not sure if I totally agree with this list, as there are some websites that are in the list that I don’t necessarily think are really “search engines”. I would also name a few individuals like Danny Sullivan to the search category before I named Jason Calacanis to the search category. I agree that Calacanis should be named somewhere, but not in the search category. Here is the list of the top 100 most innovative and influential people in the Web 2.0 World: 1) Social Networking 1. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Facebook 2. Kevin Rose, Founder, Digg 3. Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) (MySpace ) 4. Philip Rosedale, Founder, Second Life 5. Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn Corp. 6. Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr 7. Adam Christensen, Social Media Communications Manager, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) 8. Jonathan Abrams, Founder, Friendster 9. Mark Goldston, CEO, United Online Inc. 10. Jason Rosenthal, CEO, Ning.com 2) Enterprise & Cloud Computing 1. Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) 2. Bradley Horowitz, VP, Product Management, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Apps 3. Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) 4. Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) 5. Amitabh Srivastava, SVP, Server & Cloud Division, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) 6. Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO, Salesforce.com Inc. 7. Simon Crosby, CTO, Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) 8. Randi Levin, CTO, City of Los Angeles 9. Andrew Brown, Managing Director, Bank of America 10. Manesh Patel, CIO, Sanmina-SCI Corp. (Nasdaq: SANM) 3) News/Media 1. Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) 2. Fiona Spruill, Editor, Web Newsroom, The New York Times 3. Arianna Huffington, Founder, Huffington Post 4. Jim Walton, President, CNN Worldwide (including CNN.com) 5. Matt Drudge, Founder, Drudge Report 6. Michael Arrington, Founder, TechCrunch 7. Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired 8. Julian Assange, Co-Founder, WikiLeaks 9. Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix 10. Cory Doctorow, Editor, Boing Boing 4) Greentech 1. Steven Chu, US Secretary of Energy, DOE 2. Hal La Flash, Director of Emerging Clean Energy Technologies, PG&E 3. Guido Bartels, Managing Director, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM); Chairman, GridWise Alliance Inc. 4. Elon Musk, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Tesla Motors 5. Chuck Powers, IT strategist, National Renewable Energy Laboratory 6. Paul Maritz, CEO, VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) 7. Joel Selanikio, software developer 8. Lisa Wood, Executive Director, Institute for Electric Efficiency 9. Andres Carvallo, EVP, Chief Strategy Officer, Grid Net 10. KR Sridhar, Co-Founder & CEO, Bloom Energy Corp. 5) Wireless & Gadgets 1. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) 2. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) 3. Kevin Dallas, General Manager, Windows Embedded Business Unit, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) 4. David Yach, CTO, Software, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; Toronto: RIM) 5. Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman & CEO, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) 6. Greg Brown, Sanjay Jha, Co-CEOs, Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) 7. Min Kao, Chairman & CEO, Garmin Ltd. (Nasdaq: GRMN) 8. Jeff Hawkins, Palm Inc. 9. Don Eigler, IBM Fellow, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) 6) E-Commerce 1. Jeff Bezos, CEO & Chairman, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) 2. Pierre Omidyar, Chairman, eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) 3. Craig Newmark, Founder, craigslist 4. Barry Diller, Chairman, Expedia 5. Scott Thompson, President, PayPal 6. Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL) 7. Raul Vazquez, President & CEO, WalMart.com 8. Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp Inc. 9. Greg Blatt, CEO, Match.com 10. Joey Levin, CEO, MyFunCards.com (Mindspark Interactive Network) 7) Search 1. Larry Page, Founder, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) 2. Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) 3. Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) 4. Jason Calacanis, Founder, Mahalo.com Inc. 5. Robin Li, originator of Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) search technology 6. Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia 7. Vipul Ved Prakash, Founder, Topsy.com 8. Jack Ma, Founder, Alibaba.com Hong Kong Ltd. 9. Alan Emtage, creator of pre-Web search engine Archie 10. Suranga Chandratillake, CEO, blinkx Security 1. Robert S. Mueller III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 2. Scott Charney, Corporate VP, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) 3. Al Zollar, General Manager, IBM Tivoli 4. Whitfield Diffie, cryptography expert 5. Art Coviello, President, RSA Security Inc. (Nasdaq: EMC) 6. Dave Cullinane, Chairman, Cloud Security Alliance; CISO, eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) 7. Richard Clarke, Chairman, Good Harbor Consulting 8. Jeff Moss, Founder, Black Hat Inc. 9. Jeremiah Grossman, Founder & CTO, WhiteHat Security 10. Bruce Schneier, Blogger 9) Digital Entertainment 1. Eddy Cue, VP, iTunes (Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)) 2. Mitch Bainwol, Chairman, RIAA 3. Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu LLC 4. Chad Hurley, Founder and CEO, YouTube Inc. 5. Bram Cohen, Founder, BitTorrent Inc. 6. Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix Inc. 7. Rob Pardo, Executive VP, Blizzard Entertainment Inc. 8. Tim Westergren, Founder, Pandora Media Inc. 9. C

Tags: $100, bidu, chairman, commerce search, director, energy, friendster, Microsoft, president, Search, search industry, social networking, yahoo

Yahoo Search Results to Include More Sponsors

Yahoo has launched a pilot program called “More Sponsors” in which it will add links at the bottom of Yahoo search results for more PPC adds. When a user clicks on one of the links it will bring up a page with nothing but sponsored search ads. The feature is supported by Yahoo’s Search Assist features (the search engine’s suggestions feature). “For example, the consumer might type in ‘Hawaii vacation,’ and Yahoo! might suggest vacations packages or resorts,” explains Laurie Sullivan on Yahoo’s Search Marketing blog. The More Sponsors feature will appear on Yahoo Search to begin with, but Yahoo will spread it across more of the Yahoo Network where ads appear. Sullivan says the ads may include images or logos in the future, and that if the ads are ranked highly in standard sponsored results for a given search term, they will likely be shown in sponsored-only results for that same search term. Once Yahoo and Microsoft get integrated with one another per their big search and advertising deal, Microsoft will take over execution of ads. Yahoo will still maintain control of the user experience, as the company has repeatedly pointed out, and that includes how the ads look on the page.

Tags: Advertising, get-integrated, images, images-or-logos, marketing, Microsoft, says-the-ads, Search, search-assist, vacations packages, yahoo, yahoo network, yahoo search

Google To Show Bazaarvoice Reviews In Search Results

Social commerce applications provider Bazaarvoice has partnered with Google to share product reviews in Google searches and advertisements. Retailers and manufacturers using Bazaarvoice can use their product review content to drive more traffic from Google as well as provide brand exposure to shoppers. Consumers will be able to access opinions from other customers as they research and complete purchases, adding more relevance to the process. Google says the program will feature full-length product reviews and user ratings from retailers and manufacturers to help with the shopping experience. “In the past four years, there has been a tremendous change in consumer shopping behavior as people increasingly rely on information from their friends and peers to make purchase decisions,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice . “Our clients’ innovative use of the voice of the customer has helped Bazaarvoice become one of the fastest growing technology companies today. Now, Google is affirming the power of social commerce with this partnership to integrate Bazaarvoice reviews content into Google.com – the heart of its business – as well as throughout product search and advertising vehicles. It is a big honor to be Google’s partner in this industry first, and this will be transformational for our retail clients and their suppliers.” On Google Product Search, Google will feature a brands logo beside reviews from the brands website with the goal of increasing both exposure and conversions. Some of Bazaarvoice’s clients include Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, Proctor & Gamble and QVC.

Tags: best buy, commerce applications, google searches, google-product, partnership, product review content, Search, Search Google, social-commerce, technology companies, voice, voice of the customer

Bing to Appear on Women’s Basketball Jerseys

Microsoft announced today that it has signed a multiyear marquee partnership with the Seattle Storm and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). A representative for Bing tells WebProNews that the following will represent the following opportunities for Bing: – Bing will be able to share its brand with a devoted and passionate fan base. – Bing will be the official decision engine of stormbasketball.com. -

Tags: basketball jerseys, bing bing, decision engine, dedication, hits-the-court, hometown, major sports, partnership, phoenix mercury, respective, Search, wnba, wnba champions, women