Technically Speaking

Quintura.com, a visual-based search engine backed by Mangrove Capital Partners, has launched new features:

- Halloween-related search cloud specifically designed for upcoming holiday. The related search results are based on Quintura index.

- Hot news search cloud to easily discover the hottest news on the Web

- Embed it! After running a search, you can embed a search cloud to your blog. For example, try searching for your name or blog name and copy & paste embed code to your blog.

Technically Speaking, nothing like capitalizing and leveraging a holiday to bring attention to your service.

Google, who’s stock closed this past week over $600 per share seems to have the interest of many including the NYT and Fortune. While I believe in a free market, I also believe that Google is doing what it does best by being Google. I really hate it that the next steps might be a court date, but that is what is seemingly wrong about this sue happy country we live in.

The potential threats, according to industry analysts, fall into three broad categories: those from inside the company, those from rivals, and public policy challenges that could bring regulatory controls and tarnish Google’s reputation and brand.

Any big, fast-growing company confronts the “law of large numbers” — that is, growth rates naturally tend to slow as a company gets bigger. That should not be a real issue for Google, analysts say, until it gets to be about twice its current size.

There is absolutely no reason why another competitor can’t out-Google Google. It can be done, but as shown by the several choices for search engines out there such as Yahoo, Ask.com, and smaller search engines like Collarity, each has it’s own niche. Is that any reason for the government to intervene? Oh who’s behalf are they really going to intervene in?

I feel that the only thing the government wants to stop is the free enterprise system we have. They aren’t out to help small businesses succeed. Oh, I take that back, succeed but don’t get too successful is the motto that Washington carries.

If you get too big, or successful, big brother will step in and decide to shut you down cold. Or at least tie you up in court for years over nothing. Success is a good thing, and the government sees it as a bad thing. Little gains, ok. Big gains, you are in trouble.

Now the flip side of this thought of course is for helping the little guy have a chance. Google wasn’t the first search engine out there, and they won’t be the last. They just took the technology and marketed it well. I see nothing wrong with smart branding of the search name. You don’t go online to search and “Yahoo” or “Ask“. You go online or tell someone to go “Google it”.

Why should a company be penalized because they branded themselves well? Before Google I was a big user of Alta Vista. One day a co-worker said “Check out this Google, it’s the bomb!” After that I switched. Simple, word of mouth told me to use Google. No men in black came to my door and forced me to use it.

At the time I switched, it was before broadband was plentiful and I appreciated the simplicity of the landing page. That sold me. It wasn’t because they were any better, I just liked that it loaded fast. Nothing else really. After awhile, it became a force of habit and I was Googl’ized.

No men in black. No gun to my head to use it.

A good case in point is the whole social networking phenomenon. If Friendster would have been the be all, end all of social networking, there never would have been a MySpace. Let’s not even mention that Harvard drop out and Facebook. Neither of these social networks would have thrived without the ability to go just be successful as you can. Killing success is what worries me.

The next generation is watching closely, and I think most of them are very skeptical of the way the system works. I can’t quite blame them, since I am highly skeptical of those in charge. Can we change it? To be quite honest in this election year coming up, we think we can, but the candidates from both major parties are closer than ever before. There is not a distinct difference between any of them. Of course I have to plug Ron Paul here, as he is talking the only difference and change in the way Washington runs. Of course he is also being buried by the mainstream media.

Technically Speaking, if you develop a product that receives word of mouth traction, be prepared for a level of success. If you have no ambition to succeed, than get out of the business entirely.

Test is known for preparing students for Cisco certifications with tests such as 642-901 and 350-018. Another Cisco related test is 642-825. Test king offers students with training sessions and practice tests regarding Microsoft certifications with tests such as 70-536 and 70-296. Other popular tests among the Microsoft training are 70-290 and 70-271. Test king is known for the leading services in the testing sphere from which a lot of students are benefitting.

Collarity, a main sponsor of this blog seems to be gaining traction with this latest article that was written about them. It appears they are making their presence felt on MyFoxDFW.com:

When you type “rangers” in the search box at MyFoxDFW.com (for Dallas-Fort Worth), all the search terms it recommends relate to baseball, given that the Texas Rangers play in the DFW Metroplex. Yet when you enter “rangers” as a search at MyFoxNY.com, the first suggestions are “shanahan” and “lundqvist,” players on the New York Rangers hockey team. Even more generic search terms show differences; while a query on “crime” brings up terms related to hate crimes for both cities, DFW’s results also refer to “crime spree” and “crime scene” while NY’s refer to “crime stoppers” and “violent crime.”

Technically Speaking, I have a sidebar with some really good sponsors. You should go visit them, or at least sign up and GMAFB today!

Quintura, a search engine which I have talked about before just received Series A funding from Mangrove Capital. The press release says “several million”, and hopefully I will have an amount soon to update you with.

The search engine is unique looking as it displays an interactive search cloud of related keywords and phrases to easily refine and narrow down searches. They have a unique twist by being the first company to embed graphical icons in the search cloud. They plan to start selling graphical advertisements such as images, logos, and icons within the Quintura search cloud.

They will shortly offer an affiliate model for web-sites and blogs to replace a site map with a Quintura interactive cloud for site search and navigation. The web-site publisher can index the site content and display the Quintura cloud on its site. The affiliate model will be either free/ads-supported or subscription-based.

Quintura has a version for kids - Quintura Kids.

Technically Speaking, I hope to have an amount as to how many million soon.

Mahalo Greenhouse sounds like a great plan. In fact, since I do sort of qualify according to what Jason listed as qualifications, maybe I will help out. I think that actually empowering those that are online a lot, such as myself, is a great way to give Mahalo some traction over other services.

It is not easy to launch a concept that is already out there, and I do admire Jason for taking all the early flack very well. A Greenhouse sounds like it could be fun. Now, the bad part of that is there could be a lot of junk that his staff may have to weed through. Of course, I’m sure they already expect that with this announcement.

Technically Speaking, if you are online a lot and want to contribute to a new start up in search - Mahalo - go over and check out what this Greenhouse is all about.

What is Yahoo thinking by announcing this? Search is over? I really don’t think so. I mean as boring as search can be, there are still companies such as Collarity, again a sponsor of this blog, as well as the new Jason Calacanis startup Mahalo. Even though I don’t think human search is the answer, I don’t believe for a minute that search is over.

If search is so over, how come Microsoft is making secret plans to do a search engine? Why would the big guy spend money on something that supposedly is so over? I agree that personalization may be the key to the future of being online, but people will always want to search. Whether it’s for hobby, research, blogging, or just plain looking something up, search is going to always be on the forefront of “why people get online”.

It goes back to my story of the people of Potosi, MO; Scotland, SD; and Alhambra, IL. When that demographic jumps online it’s going to be for a few reasons. 1. To check e-mail. 2. To search for something. 3. Login to their social networking account.

Technically Speaking, Yahoo seems to be disconnecting themselves from the very people they need to plug in with. That group is the group from the above small towns that still are not online and plugged in as everyone out in Silicon Valley is. To win the battle online, for supremacy, you must gather in that group of demographics. For a company to ignore that group, is quite unwise and fool hardy.

That is the latest unconfirmed rumor that is making the news rounds this morning. What will this show the rest of the search universe? Should be quite interesting considering the number of players already here doing search right. You have companies such as Collarity, who is a sponsor here, already innovating things as far as search goes.

The youngest project lead at 23 years old has yet to respond to Mike’s inquiry. Hopefully there will be more news on this development later today.

Sanaz Ahari down to Silicon Valley to lead the project. Ahari was previously on the Live.com team, and was reportedly the youngest lead product manager in Microsoft history at 23.

Technically Speaking, she may be young, but she has real world experience already working on Live.com, before it was called that.

Even though the article states that this isn’t official yet, I can bet if Google does it’s market research, they will find people wanting this feature. I think there probably are other little hidden tricks within Google searching. One thing I like about a computer doing my search, even though it can get it wrong a lot of the times, it seems to bring back more results.

Now some people will argue that they’d rather see less results, but if I am searching for something I’d rather see more options. Now a lot may be totally off the mark, and that is fine in my opinion. If you are doing problem solving type of searches, it’s better to have more data then less.

Now this human face recognition thing looks really cool. Here is how you do it

This feature is not in general release yet, but you can play with it. Here’s how: Do an image search. For example, try a search on “CNET.” You’ll see a lot of pictures of products, buildings, and screenshots. Now go into the address bar and stick this on the end of the URL: &imgtype=face. Go to that URL and you’ll see just CNET image search results of people.

You can also search for news results: Append &imgtype=news.

This isn’t an official Google search feature yet, which is why you need to hack the URL to see it.

Technically Speaking, I think this will be something that Google implements officially very soon.

Allen really slammed Mahalo and for good reasons. I check things out as time permits, and I just did my acid test. Well what test is that? I searched for me, that’s what I searched for. “Rex Dixon“. Guess what? Not one result. Then below it, it has “our friends at Google“, which has it correct of course.

Where does this leave Mahalo? Is it Jason’s way of just jumping in and doing as suggested - the biggest SEO ploy site of all time? Maybe. I won’t go that far and say that, but others may be thinking that. I know that Jason or whoever when they read this will go “Who the heck is Rex Dixon?!?”

Well type it in Google, Ask, Yahoo, or whatever search engine that is out there today. You will find the correct results, stacked the way they should be. Why do I use it? Eight letters I have to type. It saves time, it’s easy for me to remember, and I know how to test a search engine.

Technically Speaking, if you can’t produce the same results that the big boys do, why bother? Allen is right, grandma and the rest of America will never jump on this idea. Let me know when you have “Rex Dixon” listed out like Google, Ask, Yahoo and the rest of the big boys and I’ll come back and check it out further.

Marketing and branding is the key to success of any internet company. While Allen posted this yesterday, I thought I’d chime in a few thoughts.

He did nail the head on the first strike. He hit it dead on. Ask.com needs to get out of their offices and see some of the world. I am in agreement as I see people every single day that have no clue what this internet is all about.

Outside of girls in the elevators talking about blogging on MySpace, and the occasional overheard conversation of eBay, people do not know the internet. To them it’s about MySpace, Google, Yahoo, eBay, CNN, IM/chatting, and the weather!

Seriously, if you want to have your finger on the pulse of America, you need to travel outside for a minute or five. Go to a local diner or travel to the outskirts of the cities. Stop in a local hardware store. Yes, go even to the middle of nowhere. Travel out into the countryside.

Casually ask someone what they think of Ask.com algorithm versus how Google does things. I can bet you will get a blank stare right back at you. They might smile and feign that they know what you are saying. For the most part you may as well be speaking Chinese. They will nod their head and go, “Oh, I think Google is great!”

Marketing and branding. Advertising down to the masses is what Ask.com needs to accomplish. If your goal is to further the distance between Ask.com and the average person, just go ahead with your statements about algorithm. This will enable your company to only further the gap distance.

The average person who does have internet access isn’t concerned about algorithm. When they type in a search online, they want to find a cool MySpace code to snazzy up their pages. They want to find a dating site that is for real. They want to find an address or phone number. They want to map something. They want to find out if it’s going to rain. They go to Google and Yahoo to do that.

Technically Speaking, it is something that can be overcome. I wish Ask.com the best of luck, but really think about how effective your marketing would be on say someone that lives in Potosi, MO as an example.