Results tagged “google”

The Washington state Department of Information Services has chosen Binghoo! to serve as the search engine for the state's website, says TechFlash. But the DIS spokesperson claims it wasn't about snuggling up to Microsoft: "the bottom line was to get the best search engine we can get." Seriously? What were your fucking metrics? Bing is almost two months old, and Google's search dominance is unquestioned. (We're fine with them picking Binghoo!, btw--just try to be proud of it.) We note that this is the same DIS that thinks access.wa.gov is a better URL than wa.gov. That "access" makes all the difference--it's...um..."accessier."

After 18 long months of on-again, off-again online business romance, Microsoft and Yahoo have final sealed the deal. The two announced today they will team up in an effort to chip away at Google's dominating lead in the search engine marketplace.

The Examiner reported yesterday that Google is purging their Seattle and Kirkland offices. "A source said the layoffs are coordinated in a fashion to avoid showing up on the radar of governmental, business, and media reporting agencies," writes Steve Speigel. "In other words, the layoffs are below the threshold of the various state and federal rules to avoid being identified and therefore having to pay large severances."

This was Google's first attempt at a public meetup (they're doing meetups in several cities), and no one really knew what to expect. It turned out to be a fairly informal happy hour--Googlers circled the room wearing nametags (see Exhibit A, right) and you'd just flag one down and say something like, "So, like, explain this API thing to me."

• Playground purse snatcher on the loose! A woman reported her purse stolen today at 11:30 a.m. from West Seattle Gatewood Elementary. A young man (late teens/early 20s) jumped out of a car, ran into the park, and grabbed the purse---which was sitting on the ground near the woman.
• The next bus King County Metro purchases should come with spell check, because "Freemont" is inexcusable.

Google invited us to a media lunch but we were messing around with Slacker radio and missed it. Luckily, TechFlash's John Cook was there, tweeting about it, so look for a post from them later on. It'll be a TechFlash! We have a screenshot of the relevant Tweetery. But if you want to buttonhole Google yourself, drop by the Red Door tonight at 6 p.m. (to 8) for a happy hour meetup!

TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft's decision engine Bing has decisively leapfrogged Yahoo! search traffic for the second time (post all the what's-a-Bing? search traffic just after launch). 12.9 percent, says StatCounter.com. What a horse race! It's like Mountain Dew battling it out with Dr. Pepper! Bing's boost is suspiciously close to the appearance of NYT tech-guy David Pogue's "Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better," which says Bing can save you a few clicks. Yahoo! aside, mighty Google dipped about three percent, to 75 percent of search traffic. No benchmarks were provided on which surfaces more free HD pr0n.

Attempting to compete with the wide world of Google search, this morning Microsoft introduced their newest (overhauled) search engine, Bing. The new engine has been designed as a "decision engine," to help navigate through the ridiculous amounts of trash we have cluttering the Internetz and provide a more productive and highly organized Internet search experience, as fast as computer-ly possible. The new search-a-roo, at www.bing.com is expected to be live on June 3.

Sometimes we like to see what the rest of the world has to say about Seattle, so we go to Google News and search for "Seattle". This is what's currently available--the upteen-millionth priest who molested kids, and pages and pages of sports. How is it in this day and age of declining newspapers and traditional media that sports reporters still have work?

Tuesday night, 15 teams competed for first place at Seattlest trivia. In the end, it was a tight battle between the top two: Donner and Blitzen Party and Team of Rivals. Team of Rivals pulled it out with 70 points, to D&B's 67. Third place went to Sexy Shoeless God of War, 8 points back at 59. Prizes: $100, $50, and $8, respectively.

Awwww, cute: "Seattlest" as Google search term in 2001. (Try plugging in "Department of Homeland Security," "9/11 Truthers," "Perez Hilton," or "Sarah Palin bikini." Oh how the times have changed!) As a bonus, laugh with us at how chunky Google's logo looked back in the day.

Or at least ours is, along with a bunch of folks who are freaking out via Twitter. Is your Gmail suffering a Temporary Error (502) too?

We just got this message after logging in to Scrabulous on Facebook: "Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here." To which we say: KHAAAAAAN! We've also just had to switch back to Firefox 2.0. Any page with Ajax was giving Firefox 3 fits--since we usually have at least three Ajax-heavy Google and Gmail pages open at one time, we were constantly getting error messages, having to resend, and having to log back in to accounts. Firefox 3's tendency to bonk on Ajax and its javascripts is kind of a huge oopsie, but we haven't heard anything from Mozilla about how they missed noticing the problem. Maybe they don't use Gmail.

When we were dissing Clearwire the other day, we had no idea a deal this big was in the works. In fact, plenty of people thought the writing was on the e-tablet for Clearwire after its WiMAX deal with Sprint fell through six months ago. But you can't count Craig McCaw out.

Employee number 53, Charlie Ayers was hired in 1999 to run the lunchroom at Google. Before that, he'd been catering for musicians (including the Grateful Dead) around San Francisco. By the time he left six years later, still a hippie at heart, he had a staff of 150 and was feeding 4,000 googlers a day at 10 locations. ("Well, wouldn't you know it, some people got fat.")

No, Seattlest is not just a fan of alliteration and 80's slang, as the headline might suggest. Burying the beef, is the current plan of the Seattle Public School District to rid itself of 230 cases of possibly contaminated beef. The beef, provided to school districts through a USDA lunch program, came from a California slaughterhouse in the center of the largest beef recall in USDA history.

Downtown's Southern-esque restaurant Sazerac had the misfortune to open in 1997, which meant its decor ten years on -- velvet drapes and cushy banquettes -- looked as dated as a Google-cached snapshot of your homepage. In its review, the Stranger sharpened its claws on the surroundings: "There is some evidence in the tea-dark interior that the decorator was going for a New Orleans-inspired elegance, but somewhere along the way he or she got waylaid at Mervyn's. Light fixtures from Kandinsky's notorious 'game board' period shed wan light on the open dining room."

Yahoo has denied Microsoft something it wants, and Microsoft is none too happy. Today Yahoo Corporation officially rejected Microsoft's 45 billion dollar unsolicited buy-out offer as insufficient. 45 Billion?!? Every time we heard the offer, we thought to ourselves, that reporter must have made a mistake - he must've meant 45 million. Guess not. Even that astronomical number, according to Yahoo "significantly undervalues [the company's] worth."

What with the Internetz, the Google and the digital camera, a new generation of wine touring guides is long overdue.

Economic downturn? Recession? Job losses? Really? Sure, Seattle's housing market finally cooled a bit, but listening to business news this morning you'd be excused for thinking all this talk about a bad economy is a crock of shit, at least here in Seattle.

When that 25-cent fare increase hits in March...let's see, gotta calculate up...carry the exponent...Metro could be making 1,925,000 extra dollars per year (not really, we're just multiplying 0.25 by 7% of total boardings, for a quick estimate). A peak 1-zone fare will be $1.75, so make sure you're carrying around three quarters during commute times.

Hey, Seattlest!

Just in time for MLK Day, a friend emailed us this WTF? moment, brought to you by the automated internet. He's been researching old advertisements for slave auctions, and a Google search brought up this text ad for eBay:

The Craigslist ad reads:

Do you want to earn extra cash blogging about your community? MyZip.net is building the first nationwide network of neighborhood blogs. We will pay you $50 per month for writing about your neighborhood on your own ZIP code site (example http://www.98122.net).

Boeing's announced yet another delay in production of its Dreamliner jet. It's the third such delay, almost sure to push back completion and require late delivery penalty payments to customers.

If you are anything like us, you frequently read glowing recommendations of fine little eateries on the outskirts of Seattle and think: I really should check that out sometime. But the truth is--urbanite that you are--you only vaguely know where places like Kent and Burien are (south?) and rarely take the time to actually venture out of your cozy little city.

The dispiriting weather forecast--below, via Google.

Realizing we’re in the midst of the “R” months, we had a sudden craving for happy hour oysters. But where? Recalling a recent review, we Googled “shucker's happy hour oysters” and quickly jumped on a bus after reading the first result: a June reprint of a 2006 rave in the Seattle Weekly about Shucker's fifty-cent oysters, two-dollar margaritas, and free parmesan crisps.

Running text ads on your blog never really struck us as the Get-Richest-Quickest path; we used to have Amazon ads on a book review blog and after a year or two and no checks, we decided we could better use the real estate and quit the program. A few months later we got our first and final check for...$6ish? But Seattle's Furious Seasons blog has just discovered firsthand the pain of algorithmic rejection. The email...