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Archive for February, 2006

Review: Fujitsu T4020d TabletPC (TabNote)
Sunday, February 19th, 2006
Benjamin Higginbotham


I have been asked many times what the best laptop is.  My answer is
actually not a laptop at all, rather, a TabletPC.  Being a huge fan of
Apple Computer, this surprises many, but Apple has no product that can begin
to compare to the Fujitsu 4020 TabNote.





 4020 laptop mode







What is it I like about the 4020 so much?  Why would an Apple zealot
choose a PC over a PowerBook (or MacBook Pro)?  Allow me to break down a
few of the key things I love about this unit.




  • First and foremost, I can write directly on the display.  By simply
    swiveling the screen around, my laptop becomes a pad of paper that can be
    searched, archived and managed easily via OneNote.  I much prefer write
    my notes down over typing, and the 4020 allows me to work with my TabNote as
    if it were a pad of paper.

  • I can use this unit as either a standard laptop or as a TabletPC.  This
    gives me the flexibility to do whatever work I may need done. 
    Sometimes I simply need a keyboard, sometimes I need a pad of paper. 
    This unit does both.

  • 6 hours of real-life battery usage with the secondary battery
    installed.  I am in some very long meetings, and dragging my power
    supply from place to place can get annoying.  It?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äs nice to be able to
    sit in a meeting for 6 hours without needing to worry about my
    battery.  If I take my screen brightness down a bit, I can get even
    more time out of it.  On the standard battery I can get 2.5 hours, even
    when watching DVDs.  Now I just need to get those meetings to be a bit
    shorter since my brain only has a 4 hour battery.

  • I/O options.  I have a universal card reader (SD/MMC/Memory Stick) that
    allows me to take the card directly from my Treo to my TabNote, or from my
    digital camera to my TabNote without the need of any cables or external
    readers.

  • The screen is very bright and crystal clear.  I went with the
    indoor/outdoor display as the high-res screen was soft and hard to
    read.  I can read the display great indoors, and fairly well
    outdoors.  I can?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Ät read a PowerBook at all outside (or any other laptop
    that I have seen for that matter).

    At 2Ghz, this system is very fast for a TabNote.  While new dual-core
    systems will be out soon, for now this is one of the fastest Laptop/Tablet I
    have seen.

  • The keyboard is very sturdy and does not flex while I type.  I have
    found very few systems that have a keyboard as good as this TabNote.

  • The fingerprint sensor is just cool.

  • The controls on the screen give me quick access to tools I may need while
    either in laptop mode or tablet mode.

  • Unlike other TabNotes the 4020 is a very solid system which does not flex
    when carrying it.  Most laptops or TabNote systems will bend or flex a
    bit when carrying them, or the keyboard will bounce when you type?¢Ç«®¨∂ The 4020
    is solid and does none of this.




4020 laptop mode







As with any technology there are a few drawbacks.  The fingerprint sensor
is only available in laptop mode.  If you move to TabletPC mode the
sensor is covered by the screen.  This is silly since the sensor is more
useful in tablet mode than it is in laptop mode.  The screen resolution
also bugs me a bit.  The best looking screen they have is 1024×768. 
While a high-res version is available, it just looks soft and crummy. 
What I would love to see is a high-res screen that?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s as clear as their
1024×768 version.  The port replicator (dock) is also a bit?¬¢√᬴¬Æ¬®‚àÇ
lacking.  I use Skype a lot and would love to have audio input and output
on the dock.  This would allow me to keep my headset plugged in at work
without having to plug it directly into the TabNote itself.  Alas, the
dock only has audio output, no input.  My biggest complaint has to be the
speakers.  If you need to use a lot of audio on your laptop/TabNote, then
this is not the unit for you.  The speakers are horrid.  Whenever I
edit video or listen to music, I use headphones, the speakers are useless.





4020 laptop mode







The real testament to the 4020 is how I use it.  When going to a business
lunch I often find I am the only person with a laptop (or TabNote).  The
best part about this is that it?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s small enough where I can eat my lunch and
have the TabNote out while not taking up so much room that we need another
seat just for technology.  I can be taking notes, surfing sites, and
calling up info that other users simply can?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t do because their technology was
too big or too heavy.  I am the *only* person in meetings without a pad
of paper.  I am able to use my technology to take notes, or even draw out
pictures of designs and save them for later.  I even sign documents right
on my screen and e-mail, not fax them back to their originator.



 





This TabNote has changed the way I work for the better, and I would highly
suggest anyone looking at portable computing take a good, hard look at the
Fujitsu 4020.

Sprint PCS Wireless Requires a Home Phone?
Saturday, February 18th, 2006
Ed Kohler

While updating my account information on the Sprint PCS web site today, I stumbled across a perplexing required field:

sprint-home-phone-required.gif

That’s a strange request from a wireless company. Doesn’t Sprint realize that some of their customers, like me, don’t have a home phone, and haven’t for years?

Luckily, I was able to figure out a way to fulfill their request. The error message says the field “cannot be empty,” so empty it is not. Here’s my new “home phone”:

Sprint PCS Home Phone Number

Recognize it? That’s 800-SPR-INT1

Hey Sprint, don’t require information that you don’t really need. Just send a text message to my phone or email me if you want to chat.

Does Amazon Prime Change Online Shopping Behavior?
Friday, February 17th, 2006
Ed Kohler

Amazon Prime is Amazon.com’s pre-paid shipping program where customers receive free 2-day shipping (or $3.99 express shipping) on all orders (well, there are some exceptions) for a flat $79 annual fee. It’s an interesting concept, but does it work? Is it worth it?

Here are a few changes I’ve noticed in my own shopping behavior since becoming an Amazon Prime member:

  • I could go to Best Buy, or just wait until the day after tomorrow for a gadget to show up at my house.

  • I could save a few bucks at site X, but Amazon ships free in two days so I’ll go with Amazon.
  • Does Amazon carry ______? I’ll check there first since shipping is already covered.
  • Yeah, it’s just one item, but why not? Amazon will ship it for free.
  • How did I end up with so many unopened boxes with Amazon logos on them? Impulse buys?

Has Amazon Prime changed my shopping habits? Absolutely. Has it saved me enough to justify the costs? Maybe, maybe not. I haven’t kept a close eye on the numbers. However, the convenience of having my billing and shipping information stored with a site I trust, together with the trust Amazon has earned by consistently delivering orders on time has shifted a more of my online shopping to their site.

Further reading:

How Sony could take over the world
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
Benjamin Higginbotham

Microsoft?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s Xbox 360 and Sony?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s Playstation 3 are about more than just games. A lot more. I just recently got my Xbox 360 and have been playing around with some fun stuff involving media downloads. This whole experience makes me think about the future of television.

I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m watching my Xbox 360 download HDTV trailers to my hard drive attached to the gaming console. From here I?¢Ç«®Ç—¢m able to watch these HDTV videos on my 720p HDTV screen all via the Xbox 360. I didn?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t insert a disc or go to any web page, the content was part of a video trailer feed (RSS maybe) that just listed all of my trailer options. How cool is that? The Playstation 3 will be able to do the same thing, maybe even in 1080p.

The BluRay and HD-DVD wars will be obsolete almost as soon as they begin. Why would I want to go to the store, sift through a series of round discs, fight the crowds and pay $25.00 per disc to get HDTV content when I can just download it directly to my Xbox 360 or Playstation 3? Even if I have to pay to watch the movies, I would much prefer be able to download them rather than have a physical collection of discs.

I don?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t think many people question that we are going to see downloadable HD content, that?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s a given. How many people have thought of how we?¢Ç«®Ç—¢re going to get this content onto our HDTV screens? That?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s the big question. How many consumers are really willing to set a loud, buggy, ugly computer in their living room? Not many. I believe that the way we?¢Ç«®Ç—¢re going to start getting our content is not through computers, not through cable, not over the air or even satellite?¢Ç«®¨∂ I believe we?¢Ç«®Ç—¢re going to get nearly all of our HDTV content through set-top boxes and gaming consoles. Based on that, who is the big winner in all of this? Sony.

Sony has the studios to back this distribution method up. Sony owns a LOT of content that they can easily make available to willing users. Sony also has their location-free devices (which includes their PSP) allowing you to view your content on any device. The Playstation 3 could be an extension of Location Free, allowing you to download HDTV content directly to the console, play that content on your HDTV, a wireless LCD, your PSP or computer. No one else has all of the pieces like Sony does: content, distribution, and hardware. Microsoft simply does not have the media contacts that Sony has, and as such the Xbox 360 will probably have a hard time breaking from being more than just a glorified gaming console.

There are two potential competitors that Sony would face in the new HDTV arena: Cisco and Apple. Cisco recently acquired Scientific Atlanta, one of the top set-top producers in the US. Cisco now has all of the tools necessary to create on-demand HDTV content for millions of users. Unfortunately Cisco lacks the content to place on these boxes. I think everyone can see where Apple may go with iTunes. Look at the current MiniMac with FrontRow and you can already see the future starting to shape up. The problem is that I really believe consumers don?¢Ç«®Ç—¢t want a computer hooked to their TV and that the future is in dedicated devices?¢Ç«®¨∂ And that really leaves the Playstation 3.

This article is mostly speculation, but as I watch my 720p HDTV movie trailer, listen to my music collection, view my vacation photos all on my ?¢Ç«®?Ïgaming console?¢Ç«®¨˘ I see a very clear path laid out in front of Sony. Now the question is, will Sony take the jump and move to downloadable content before they even release BluRay, or are we going to be forced to wait as so Sony can get some money from BluRay first, before offering us the real deal. Thoughts?

Five Critical Considerations for Effective Website Design
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
Ed Kohler

If you build it, will they come? This is a question worth asking before building a web site. A website built without considering the resources involved in building, maintaining and marketing the site could end up hidden in a lonely corner of the web, falling short of the grand expectations it likely had before launch. To prevent that from happening, I try to picture how the web site will become a part of my business flow before building a single page. Here are a few considerations I’ve found valuable:

Five Critical Web Design Considerations

1. Will the site be valuable to users? If I can’t confidently answer “Yes” to this question, I know the site isn’t worth building. First, what’s the point in building something that isn’t valuable? And second, it’s nearly impossible to market a web site that isn’t considered to be valuable by users. For example, high search engine rankings are dependent on high link popularity (other sites linking to your site). Who’s going to link to a site that isn’t valuable?

2. Will the web site be more valuable than competing web sites? Web users tend to visit more than one web site when doing research or making a purchase. If my site is not the most valuable to consumers (information, best prices, easiest to use, fastest to load, etc.) how will I manage to be competitive?

3. Do I have the resources needed to continually improve the site? If I launch an incredibly valuable web site will my competitors shut their sites down? Of course not. So planning for future upgrades, additional content, analyzing site stats, usability improvements and other tweaks that will help me maintain my competitive edge is critical to the site’s long-term success. This involves a budgeting a combination of time, technical skills, and/or money.

4. Am I committed to marketing the web site? Without marketing, steps 1-3 are a serious waste of time. Why create something valuable if I’m not going to tell anyone about it? This also involves time, technical skills, and/or money, but it’s time and money well spent assuming I’ve taken the steps to create a valuable web site.

5. Am I committed to offline success? Having created a great web site and driven targeted traffic to it is really only half the battle. What happens when leads or sales start coming in? Am I prepared to respond to leads in a timely manner? Can I fulfill orders, deal with the inevitable customer service questions and keep inventories in stock? A web site is only a tool that works for a business. Is the underlying business sound?

Do you feel pumped up and ready to build an incredible web presence for your business after reading through the five steps? I hope you’re encouraged to use this information to building a website that’s both valuable and financially rewarding. Frankly, I think more than 90% of web sites are built without taking the five steps into consideration, which explains why there are so many marginal web sites. Please focus on building great web sites. For your sake and mine.

Google News and AdSense’s Role in Blog Spam
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
Ed Kohler

Technology Evangelist has been live on Google News for two weeks now, giving us time to analyze how this new syndication source has effected our traffic. While our traffic has increased significantly since being added to Google News, the most interesting thing we’ve learned is how Google News together with Google AdSense plays a role in blog spam.

Here is how Blog Spam using Google News is Done:

1. Spammer creates new blog

2. Spammer chooses theme for the blog.

3. Spammer scrapes headlines off Google News related to blog’s theme. Publishes headlines as blog posts.

4. Spammer syndicates their scraped content onto search engines, including blogsearch.google.com and Technorati.

5. Spammer places Google AdSense ads on their site.

6. Spammer makes money off the AdSense clicks. Since the content is marginal, the ads look particularly good to visitors landing on the pages.

This is particularly annoying for news junkies subscribing to queries on blog search search engines. It leads to hundreds of false-positive search results from republished news stories. Here’s an example:

Splog Example  

The above splog (spam blog) has page after page of scraped headlines from Google News with Google AdSense ads running in the right column. A story from our site was one of the scraped stories.

Here’s another example:

Another Splog Example  

And another example:

Yet Another Splog Example

Yes, that site really does post two huge Google AdSense ads blocks before showing any real content. Then they finally post the content they scraped from Google News.

Is this hard to do? Unfortunately, no. In fact, the scraping and publishing process can be automated to search, scrape, and publish new splog pages on regular intervals such as once an hour.

Clearly, the only reason this type of spam exists is because they can make money off Google AdSense advertising. This wouldn’t be a problem, except it wastes my time, and the time of anyone else who happens to end up on pages like this. Chances are pretty good that the advertisers paying for the clicks from sites like this are getting less qualified visitors for their money than visitors clicking through from sites with great content. This theory is based on the assumption that visitors will click on something, anything, once landing on such marginal web pages. A click away from a quality web site is likely a more considered click, thus offering a more qualified visitor to advertisers.

Why does Google Allow Splogs to Use AdSense?

Money. Money. Money. There was a time when Google hand approved publishers for inclusion in the AdSense program, but that no longer seems to be the case.

Blogsearch.Google.com is currently in Beta and will likely remain in Beta until Google stops allowing Sploggers to publish AdSense ads on their site. Until Google makes that move, Google Blogsearch will be overrun with too much splog noise to be a usable search tool. As soon as they do that, much of this splogging will disappear overnight.

Technorati Creates Effective Workaround

Technorati has recently added a new feature that helps blog searchers filter out the blog spam. Their new Authority slider allows you to filter out search results from blogs with low or no authority. Authority is measured based on the number of inbound links and splogs rarely have any inbound links (who would like to them?), so sliding the authority filter to the right quickly cleans up the results. Hat tips to Robert Scoble and Josh Teeters for pointing this out.

Update: This article has already been scraped and splogged to a site running Google AdSense ads:


splog-example3.gif

Google News and AdSense’s Role in Blog Spam
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
Ed Kohler

Technology Evangelist has been live on Google News for two weeks now, giving us time to analyze how this new syndication source has effected our traffic. While our traffic has increased significantly since being added to Google News, the most interesting thing we’ve learned is how Google News together with Google AdSense plays a role in blog spam.

Here is how Blog Spam using Google News is Done:

1. Spammer creates new blog

2. Spammer chooses theme for the blog.

3. Spammer scrapes headlines off Google News related to blog’s theme. Publishes headlines as blog posts.

4. Spammer syndicates their scraped content onto search engines, including blogsearch.google.com and Technorati.

5. Spammer places Google AdSense ads on their site.

6. Spammer makes money off the AdSense clicks. Since the content is marginal, the ads look particularly good to visitors landing on the pages.

This is particularly annoying for news junkies subscribing to queries on blog search search engines. It leads to hundreds of false-positive search results from republished news stories. Here’s an example:

Splog Example  

The above splog (spam blog) has page after page of scraped headlines from Google News with Google AdSense ads running in the right column. A story from our site was one of the scraped stories.

Here’s another example:

Another Splog Example  

And another example:

Yet Another Splog Example

Yes, that site really does post two huge Google AdSense ads blocks before showing any real content. Then they finally post the content they scraped from Google News.

Is this hard to do? Unfortunately, no. In fact, the scraping and publishing process can be automated to search, scrape, and publish new splog pages on regular intervals such as once an hour.

Clearly, the only reason this type of spam exists is because they can make money off Google AdSense advertising. This wouldn’t be a problem, except it wastes my time, and the time of anyone else who happens to end up on pages like this. Chances are pretty good that the advertisers paying for the clicks from sites like this are getting less qualified visitors for their money than visitors clicking through from sites with great content. This theory is based on the assumption that visitors will click on something, anything, once landing on such marginal web pages. A click away from a quality web site is likely a more considered click, thus offering a more qualified visitor to advertisers.

Why does Google Allow Splogs to Use AdSense?

Money. Money. Money. There was a time when Google hand approved publishers for inclusion in the AdSense program, but that no longer seems to be the case.

Blogsearch.Google.com is currently in Beta and will likely remain in Beta until Google stops allowing Sploggers to publish AdSense ads on their site. Until Google makes that move, Google Blogsearch will be overrun with too much splog noise to be a usable search tool. As soon as they do that, much of this splogging will disappear overnight.

Technorati Creates Effective Workaround

Technorati has recently added a new feature that helps blog searchers filter out the blog spam. Their new Authority slider allows you to filter out search results from blogs with low or no authority. Authority is measured based on the number of inbound links and splogs rarely have any inbound links (who would like to them?), so sliding the authority filter to the right quickly cleans up the results. Hat tips to Robert Scoble and Josh Teeters for pointing this out.

Update: This article has already been scraped and splogged to a site running Google AdSense ads:


splog-example3.gif

Google News and AdSense’s Role in Blog Spam
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
Ed Kohler

Technology Evangelist has been live on Google News for two weeks now, giving us time to analyze how this new syndication source has effected our traffic. While our traffic has increased significantly since being added to Google News, the most interesting thing we’ve learned is how Google News together with Google AdSense plays a role in blog spam.

Here is how Blog Spam using Google News is Done:

1. Spammer creates new blog

2. Spammer chooses theme for the blog.

3. Spammer scrapes headlines off Google News related to blog’s theme. Publishes headlines as blog posts.

4. Spammer syndicates their scraped content onto search engines, including blogsearch.google.com and Technorati.

5. Spammer places Google AdSense ads on their site.

6. Spammer makes money off the AdSense clicks. Since the content is marginal, the ads look particularly good to visitors landing on the pages.

This is particularly annoying for news junkies subscribing to queries on blog search search engines. It leads to hundreds of false-positive search results from republished news stories. Here’s an example:

Splog Example  

The above splog (spam blog) has page after page of scraped headlines from Google News with Google AdSense ads running in the right column. A story from our site was one of the scraped stories.

Here’s another example:

Another Splog Example  

And another example:

Yet Another Splog Example

Yes, that site really does post two huge Google AdSense ads blocks before showing any real content. Then they finally post the content they scraped from Google News.

Is this hard to do? Unfortunately, no. In fact, the scraping and publishing process can be automated to search, scrape, and publish new splog pages on regular intervals such as once an hour.

Clearly, the only reason this type of spam exists is because they can make money off Google AdSense advertising. This wouldn’t be a problem, except it wastes my time, and the time of anyone else who happens to end up on pages like this. Chances are pretty good that the advertisers paying for the clicks from sites like this are getting less qualified visitors for their money than visitors clicking through from sites with great content. This theory is based on the assumption that visitors will click on something, anything, once landing on such marginal web pages. A click away from a quality web site is likely a more considered click, thus offering a more qualified visitor to advertisers.

Why does Google Allow Splogs to Use AdSense?

Money. Money. Money. There was a time when Google hand approved publishers for inclusion in the AdSense program, but that no longer seems to be the case.

Blogsearch.Google.com is currently in Beta and will likely remain in Beta until Google stops allowing Sploggers to publish AdSense ads on their site. Until Google makes that move, Google Blogsearch will be overrun with too much splog noise to be a usable search tool. As soon as they do that, much of this splogging will disappear overnight.

Technorati Creates Effective Workaround

Technorati has recently added a new feature that helps blog searchers filter out the blog spam. Their new Authority slider allows you to filter out search results from blogs with low or no authority. Authority is measured based on the number of inbound links and splogs rarely have any inbound links (who would like to them?), so sliding the authority filter to the right quickly cleans up the results. Hat tips to Robert Scoble and Josh Teeters for pointing this out.

Update: This article has already been scraped and splogged to a site running Google AdSense ads:


splog-example3.gif

Tracking RSS Feed Subscribers Using Feedburner
Monday, February 13th, 2006
Ed Kohler

If you publish regular posts to a blog or news site, you’re probably interested in tracking whether anyone’s reading it, right? You’ve probably added a stats program to your site so you can find out how many visitors your site is receiving and what they’re looking at. But how do you track subscribers to your site’s RSS feed? This is a bit trickier than copy/pasting a couple lines of code into your site, but it’s not rocket science either.

The big challenge here is figuring out how many people are accessing and reading the XML file your blog publishes. If you’re running a Movable Type blog, your RSS file is likely at yourdomainname.com/index.xml and atom.xml, blogspot.com sites publish feeds to /atom.xml. If readers subscribe directly to your index.xml or atom.xml file, it’s almost impossible to accurately track how many regular readers you’re reaching through your feed.

Enter Feedburner

Feedburner has created a solution to this problem. By “burning” your feed through Feedburner then allowing readers to subscriber to your site through a unique Feedburner URL, you can track how many subscribers your feed receives, what they’re looking at and what they click on. This is clearly valuable information and well worth doing for anyone serious about blogging (or publishing other web feeds from news and retail sites).

“Burning” a feed on Feedburner is a very simply process. Simply paste the URL of your site’s feed into Feedburner, then swap the feed URL links on your site with the one provided by Feedburner (usually feeds.feedburner.com/yoursitemane).

Once you have a Feedburner feed in place, promoting your feed should help ramp up your subscribe rate. We do this on Technology Evangelist through a link on the header of every page of our site to our subscription options page. That page includes one-click subscription options for many popular RSS readers, including Bloglines, My.Yahoo, Pluck and NewsGator. Each directs users to the appropriate feed reader with our Feedburner URL attached. Quick clarification: directing readers through the custom subscribe buttons allows us to track how many and how our subscribers are consuming our content, but not who those subscribers are.

Catching Missed RSS Subscribers

Unfortunately, some readers of your site may still be able to slip past your Feedburner subscriptions. This is especially common when readers subscribe to your site using a client RSS reader, such as Firefox Live Bookmarks, Internet Explorer 7’s RSS reader (currently in beta) or Firefox’s Sage RSS reader extension. Programs like this detect whether your site has a feed and subscribes users to the feed the programs find. By default, this will likely be your /index.xml or /atom.xml file rather than the Feedburner version of your feed. This results in under reporting of your true subscriber numbers in Feedburner. Luckily, there is a way to prevent this.

Client feed readers look to a site’s meta content to determine your site’s feed location. Changing this value to your Feedburner URL will route the client RSS readers to your preferred feed URL. But how is this done? Here are the easy steps for Movable Type blogs. If you know how to do this for other blogging platforms, or have found a resource that does, please add it to the comments below.

1. Open Main Index Template

2. Find the following two lines of code (withing <head> tag):

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/atom+xml”
title=”Atom” href=”<$MTBlogURL$>atom.xml” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”
title=”RSS 2.0″ href=”<$MTBlogURL$>index.xml” />
3. Replace <$MTBlogURL$>atom.xml and  <$MTBlogURL$>index.xml with your Feedburner URL.

4. Save and Rebuild

5. Repeat in every Indexes, Archives, and System template containing the above code.

You’re almost done.

6. Log in to your Feedburner account and activate SmartFeed under the Optimize tab:

Feedburner Smartfeedf

This will allow your one Feedburner feed to publish in both RSS and Atom formats when appropriate.

7. You’re done.

There are more advanced solutions to this problem worth exploring for people interested in modifying their .htaccess files. Feedburner’s support forum has a lengthy thread on this topic, including tips for other blogging platforms.

Thanks to Frank Gruber of SomewhatFrank.com for bringing this to our attention. It’s an elegant solution to a nagging problem.

Yahoo Considering Search Incentives
Sunday, February 12th, 2006
Ed Kohler

Do you use Google or MSN as your primary search engine? If yes, what would it take to get you to switch to Yahoo? This is the question Yahoo is trying to answer through a poll of their email users according to a story late last week from CNET.

Incentives seem to be valued at approximately $5 per month and range from discounts on other Yahoo services to premium upgrades including ad-free email accounts. Michael Arrington considers this tactic a bribe while explaining the predicament search engines find themselves in trying to peel users away from Google:

Getting people to switch is not easy. It can’t just be about catching up, or being marginally better — but about being so overwhelmingly better that people can’t afford not to switch. Or, failing that, it’s good enough and it has kickbacks.


Flashing back to the Internet party that was 1999, a search engine by the name of
iWon.com took a similar approach but with higher stakes, giving away, “$10,000 every day, $1 million every month and $10 million on Tax Day” to site users who earned entries through search activity. They spent $40,000,000 in addition to the incentives to build awareness and traffic and actually managed to become a fairly popular site for a while.
 
iWon was acquired in 2005 by IAC as part of the Ask Jeeves deal and lives on to this day but never managed to provide a product close enough to what’s provided by the major portals to make it portal choice a question of incentives. iWon.com’s tag line played against the commodity status of search engines in with, “Why wouldn’t you?” Of course, that was 1999, search was largely being ignored by Yahoo, MSN, and AOL, and Google had just eight employees.

Jeremy Zawodny tackles the commodity issue on his blog by explaining that it’s what makes frequent flier miles such powerful incentives in air travel. He goes on to suggest that search may be returning to a commodity status:

You might not think that web search is a commodity service, but I’ve seen public and private data that suggests we’re headed that way. It was only a matter of time, right?

Will history repeat itself by search once again becoming the commodity is was perceived to be in 1999? With search playing such a vital role in how people use the web today, I have a hard time believing it will. If top search companies today are somehow lulled into believing that search is not the core driver of repeat traffic to their sites, the next Google will certainly be ready to step up to prove them wrong. TDavid offers the best advice I’ve seen for Yahoo’s marketing department:

Make your search the best.

It never hurts to be the best at what you do.

 
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