Podcast - August 2, 2007 - ESRNexus Overview of a new global medical reference coding project, ESRNexus (www.esrnexus.com), and reviews what the future holds for the literature search engine. Less

Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed When you open up your Web browser, what is your home page set as? I know that many of you will answer Google or Yahoo. Some of you may be using a site like Facebook or MySpace as your main page. Mine is often just blank (on purpose), but when I do use one, it’s the Mac page on Alltop. This is a Website that launched a few months ago, and is largely funded by our friend Guy Kawasaki. The idea behind Alltop is to really aggregate top resources and collections of information into a consice format, and target it to a specific audience. My homepage is set to the Mac section, as I mentioned. Just guess what’s on there? There’s links to Mac news, Mac Websites, and even Mac programs. It’s a great way to get the latest news from several places at once. If you hover your mouse over one of the story links, you’ll get a small preview box with the beginning of the article in it. When Guy first started talking about this, there were some naysayers. They didn’t see the point of it. However, I think it’s great. I like it so much, it’s my home page. What else is there to say? I haven’t had any issues or problems with it whatsoever. They’ve done an excellent job with it so far. They’re constantly launching new ‘divisions’ of the site, such as the Mac page I use. We help you explore your passions by collecting stories about “all the topics” on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — “aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs. You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In other words, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation” by providing “aggregation without aggravation.” So what’s your home page? Why did you choose that one? Jason Profit Moffatts Niche Browser. Buddy Browser - Safe, Educational And Fun Browser For Children. Stiqmo Mobile Desktop. Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video: <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/chHZ7EtSFbY"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/chHZ7EtSFbY" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a> Is This the World’s Best Metasearch Site? Are Personal Home Pages and Blogs Dying? Get Your Google On! Google Tips How to Track Things on Google Is SEO Good or Bad? 2 or More GB of Ram for Memory The SEO Industry is Full of Snakes The Politics of Security My Silicon Valley Chest a What is Your Home Page? Less

MOUNTAINVIEW, CA -- While the recently announced collaboration between Google, Yahoo! and Adobe to search and index Flash files could yield better results, the project is in the early stages and for effective search optimization, Webmasters have to think text. Here is our interview with Adam Lasnik, Search Evanglist at Google. -- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer Less

I’m trying a new experiment this month with the Financial Aid Podcast newsletter - instead of being traditional HTML or text, I thought I’d load up Pages on my MacBook and give it a whirl as a PDF. Please leave comments here with your feedback! Direct file download: PDF file Did you enjoy today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you . Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day. + + + Reminders + + Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com. + Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook + Open an FDIC-insured savings account today! + Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com + Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com + Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com + Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com + Private student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com + FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com + Get FAFSA news at the FAFSA blog + The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network. I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. ShareThis Less

This time, I and my coworkers at the Student Loan Network made a brief appearance on WCVB Boston 5 about the MEFA student loan issues. MEFA customers, make sure you’ve maximized your federal student loans such as the Stafford loan and the PLUS loan, and if you still need a private student loan, investigate ours at AlternativeStudentLoan.com. Did you enjoy this? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you . Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day. + + + Reminders + + Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com. + Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook + Parent PLUS loans + Open an FDIC-insured savings account today! + Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com + FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com + Financial Aid discussion forums + Get FAFSA news at the FAFSA blog + Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com + The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network. I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. ShareThis Less

e-commerce, Search, Advertising Wade Roush wrote: When we last wrote about Guidester, back in January, the merchandise search company had just hired a new CEO, John Federman, and was in the process of moving from New York to the Boston area. Now it’s going through another big transformation—changing its name (for the second time in three years), raising a $7.5 million Series C round, adding executives, and dropping its navigational software in order to focus on its paid search advertising business. From now on (or until the next name change), the Beverly, MA-based company will be known as Searchandise Commerce. The funding round, according to an announcement published this morning, was led by new investor Cloquet Capital Partners of Chicago, and included existing investors DFJ Gotham, Wheatley Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, Inflection Point Ventures, and Tim Draper. The company, which was founded in 2000 under the name Decidia and changed its name to Guidester in 2006, says it will use the money to expand marketing efforts around its search-based merchandising services, which allow manufacturers to bid for higher placement in search results when customers use the search engines built into e-retail sites such as Buy.com. Federman, when I talked with him in January, compared the paid search service to the in-store merchandising strategies long used by bricks-and-mortar retailers, such as charging product makers extra to give their products prominent placement on the end caps of store aisles. Now Searchandise Commerce will focus its business on this service, called HitList, and de-emphasize the online navigation aids, called “Guidesters,” that the company had provided to e-retailers such as RitzCamera.com to help customers narrow down their options when searching for products. To help promote HitList, Searchandise is bringing on a new COO, Laurence Stock, and a new vice president of marketing, Nancy Liberman. Both worked with Federman at his previous company, eStara, a click-to-call software provider acquired by Cambridge, MA-based Art Technology Group in 2006. Searchandise has also hired a former Google executive, John Kennard, as its new director of business development. At Google, Kennard managed strategic e-commerce partnerships and helped to develop the Google Checkout payment system. In the company’s announcement today, Federman said that, “It was time to build on the business lessons learned and the technical foundation and drive the company in a new direction. Keeping the core principles the same, we’ve added key expertise in the changes to our executive team. The company is poised for success and ready to transform the e-commerce and paid search world.” Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Internet, startups, Software Gregory T. Huang wrote: First of all, please don’t call it a search company. Not even a “semantic” search company (one that uses natural-language processing of text), which is what its technology is based on. Evri, a Seattle startup backed by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, is about more than search—it’s about browsing, understanding content, and “connecting the rest of the Web to the things you care about,” according to founder and CEO Neil Roseman. Plus, he said, “We have the most beautiful space of any startup in Seattle, and we’re hiring.” Looking around at the company’s digs, it was hard to argue with him. A wide-open loft space in Pioneer Square with huge, sunny windows (at least in summer), wood floors, and a ping-pong table covered by a lavish spread of hors d’oeuvres and chocolates. I was there yesterday afternoon to attend the latest Seattle Lunch 2.0 networking event, organized by Josh Maher, whom I met last week at WTIA’s summer party. Roseman, a former VP of technology at Amazon, gave a demo of Evri’s beta site (up and running for a month), which I signed up for earlier this week. As I understand it, the basic idea is to own the space between search, which Roseman says makes up only 5 percent of all page views, and content, which makes up 50 percent. “It’s called a Web browser, not a Web searcher,” he says. The point of Evri is to get more users to browse the Web continuously, jumping from article to article, Wiki to Wiki, without having to stop and do a bunch of separate searches for relevant information. Evri isn’t looking to replace Google or other search engines, but it hopes to cash in on another way of driving people to their destinations on the Web. To that end, Evri’s software analyzes content on the Web—news articles, blogs, Wikis, even videos and podcasts—and helps you find related pages about what you’re interested in. If you sign up for the beta, you can open up any article about Barack Obama, say, and Evri’s widget gives a list of recommended reading, organized by topics suggested by the specific article, and also shows you a graphical picture of which topics Obama is most strongly connected to at the moment—such as Iraq, Berlin, Europe, New Yorker, or Michelle Obama. More broadly, it also shows you what the most popular people, places, and things are on the Web (or its sample of the Web) at the moment. It does all this through natural-language-processing algorithms that analyze the semantic structure and meaning of text on the Web. “Most of how we understand the world is in terms of subjects, verbs, and objects,” says Roseman. The core technology comes from a division of Seattle-based Insightful that was bought by Vulcan. Evri’s software crawls websites, monitors news feeds, and does statistical analysis of content, updated every 10 minutes. It’s all done automatically, without a large team of editors or people interpreting text, says Deep Dhillon, Evri’s director of engineering, formerly of Insightful. He says the core technology is similar to that of Powerset, a natural-language search company recently acquired by Microsoft, but the application is very different. So where is Evri headed? The company has about 35 people now, and has received some $8 million in investment from Vulcan, including the intellectual property and talent from Insightful. In the next few weeks, it will roll out a new site with a smoother user interface and more features, such as a “find” box (not “search”) that you can type in that connects to pages indexed by Evri. Eventually the Evri network could be supported by advertising. The goal is “not to be a destination, but to be ubiquitous for people interested in how things are related,” says Roseman. “Step 1 was to find a great team. Step 2 is to build a great product. Step 3 is to make a lot of money.” Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS Less

Computing, Education, Corporate Partnerships Gregory T. Huang wrote: Last week, the University of Washington’s Computer Science and Engineering department hosted a special workshop sponsored by Google and the National Science Foundation. The goal of the three-day program was to instruct professors on how to teach Google-style computing—which includes harnessing huge amounts of digital data and doing “cluster computing” over large-scale, networked servers. The weekend before that, Google also sponsored a workshop at UW to teach high-school math and science teachers about computer science—everything from programming and robotics to cryptography and security. It’s an example of Google ramping up its local outreach as the search giant builds a larger presence in the area. Google Seattle, located in the Fremont neighborhood, has grown from 0 to 180 engineers in the past six months, while on the east side of Lake Washington, Google Kirkland boasts some 400 engineers. “Having Google in the Seattle area—and particularly having them in the city of Seattle—is huge,” says Ed Lazowska, chair of computer science and engineering at UW (and an Xconomist). He adds that he worked “very hard over several years” to encourage Google to open an office in Seattle proper. Not that Google’s relationship with Seattle is anything new. Lazowska’s department has 150-plus alumni working for Google—many based at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, but an increasing number in Kirkland and Seattle. “We have dozens of undergraduate students doing summer internships at Google, many graduate students carrying out their research at Google, and two faculty members spending the year there on sabbatical [Gaetano Borriello and Steve Gribble],” says Lazowska. And Brian Bershad, director of Google’s Seattle site, is a UW computer science professor on leave. Some would say Google’s main mission in Seattle is to compete for talent against a certain home-grown software giant that has done more than its share of outreach in computer-science education over the years. So while Google’s latest efforts are highly welcomed, it will probably take some time for the search company to become as deeply established in the community. “Despite all this, Microsoft is [still] the University of Washington’s #1 corporate partner,” explains Lazowska. “Google is fantastic, but they have a lot of ground to cover to catch up.” Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

A few brief thoughts on the way back from Orlando, Florida. Lots more in tomorrow’s episode. Did you enjoy today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you . Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day. + + + Direct MP3 file download: Click here to download the MP3 Reminders + + Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com. + Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook + Open an FDIC-insured savings account today! + Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com + Student credit card information at StudentPlatinum.com + FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com + Financial Aid discussion forums + Get FAFSA news at the FAFSA blog + Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com + The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network. I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. ShareThis Less

FAP835: Lynn O’Shaughnessy on Choosing the Right College Listen now: Expert Interview + Lynn O’Shaughnessy, author of The College Solution on college admissions + O’Shaughnessy on choosing the right school Did you enjoy today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you . Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day. + + + Direct MP3 file download: Click here to download the MP3 Reminders + + Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com. + Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook + Open an FDIC-insured savings account today! + Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com + Student credit card information at StudentPlatinum.com + FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com + Financial Aid discussion forums + Get FAFSA news at the FAFSA blog + Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com + The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network. I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208. ShareThis Less

deals, acquisitions, Internet Gregory T. Huang wrote: It reminds me of a playground tug-of-war between little kids. Only there’s $40 billion-plus at stake. In any case, the Microsoft-Yahoo battle is heating up again, and this time things could really get nasty. As you might have noticed, there has been a huge flurry of activity and coverage over the past day or so, and I want to point out a few observations that could be particularly telling. Yesterday, no doubt to help get things rolling, billionaire investor Carl Icahn published an open letter to Yahoo shareholders in which he described having talks last week with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, some of which he said lasted an hour. The gist of the letter was that he and Ballmer have gotten serious about putting a previously aborted deal for Microsoft acquiring Yahoo back on the table. Microsoft also released a statement confirming that acquisition talks with Yahoo could resume if Icahn manages to replace all or part of Yahoo’s nine-member board after the company’s shareholder election on August 1. Yahoo shot back with a statement of its own, saying it “continues to stand ready” for negotiations and adding that “if Mr. Icahn has an actual plan for Yahoo” other than forcing it to capitulate and accept Microsoft’s offer, then Yahoo would listen. On yesterday’s news, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) shares rose 12 percent to close at $23.91, and are up to $24.64 as of 4:45 pm ET today. Let’s back up for a minute. In early May, talks between Microsoft and Yahoo fell through after Yahoo walked away from the Redmond software giant’s $33-a-share, $44.6 billion takeover bid. Icahn, who has since amassed a small stake in Yahoo, then launched a bid to unseat the company’s management and board, claiming that the latter had “botched” the deal. There has been solid coverage in the Seattle P-I, Bloomberg, and many other outlets. Much of the analysis points to the increasing likelihood of a Microsoft takeover—because Yahoo’s profits are narrowing, its executives are leaving, and it can’t compete with Google on its own. (My informal chats with ex-Microsofties suggest that Yahoo should have seen this coming and is getting what it deserves.) For instance, David Kirkpatrick of Fortune argues that Microsoft needs to boost the number of Internet searches on its sites to compete with Google, and Ballmer and Co. won’t be denied: “The only way Microsoft can compete with what the business of Google really is—a large marketplace for advertising and searches—is to somehow achieve much greater scale. No method of creating dramatically greater scale seems available other than combining with Yahoo’s search.” And in another Fortune piece, Richard Siklos explains “why Yahoos shouldn’t underestimate Icahn.” Siklos argues that Icahn’s “brilliant touch for ferreting out weakness in big corporate situations” and public-relations savvy makes him a formidable opponent for Yahoo, which “might try to give Icahn a couple of seats on its board to make his proxy fight go away.” (He also points out that one of Icahn’s proposed board members is Mark Cuban, the outspoken and sometimes-controversial owner of the Dallas Mavericks—not sure how that one will go over.) But more interestingly, the opinion tide may be turning against Microsoft because of questions about its motives. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch writes that until today he’s been a big supporter of Microsoft’s takeover plan because the Internet needs competition in the search market, and “Google controls too much market share and too much related search revenue.” However, after yesterday’s “shenanigans” and “complete nonsense,” Arrington now says Microsoft and Icahn have crossed a line. His take is that Microsoft has been toying with Yahoo after taking its initial rejections too personally. “It’s no longer just about business, it’s about destroying and humiliating the people who embarrassed Microsoft,” he writes. Saul Hansell of the New York Times concurs, writing that one possible explanation for Microsoft’s actions is that “it wants to destroy Yahoo rather than buy it.” This is an interesting angle to watch, but I would say it’s still too early to tell what Microsoft really wants—and that’s exactly the way Microsoft wants it. In any case, Hansell concludes, “Microsoft seems to be neither a trustworthy partner nor a reliable bidder for Yahoo, no matter who’s on the Yahoo board of directors.” Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed Back in April, I shared a private invite to those of you who were following me on Twitter. Anytime I stumble across new websites, or get invites to pass out for something new, I try to pass them along right away. Even though you may think you have enough websites already, you really need to check this one out. Viewzi is a new way to search. I know, I know… you are a faithful Google user. But just take a moment to pay attention to this with an open mind. You may just find yourself using Viewzi often. Viewzi is Metasearch. It will change the way you think about search engines. Viewzi will then ask you how you want to view the data that is found. What types of views are there? Celebrity Photo View Web Screenshot View Simple Text View Viewzi News View Video x3 View Basic Photo View 3D Photo Cloud View Site Information View 4 Sources View The Weather View Album View MP3 Search View Everyday Shopping View Amazon Book View TechCrunch Recipe View Choosing one of the above views will give you different results, culled from different places. For instance, the Video x3 View will give you three strips of videos that match the words you searched for. It pulls in results from places like Veoh and YouTube. The really cool thing is that in those strips, the thumbnails are animated. Viewzi is amazing when shopping, because it will do the work FOR you. It searches places like eBay and Amazon and brings you only results that really work for you. It will fit your needs better than what Google does. Viewzi will change the way you view your search results. Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video: <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1pV3U3i29Cc"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1pV3U3i29Cc" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a> Get Your Google On! Google Tips How to Track Things on Google Is SEO Good or Bad? 2 or More GB of Ram for Memory TagJag in Firefox Happy TagJag’ed Publishers Over 300 Tag Searches in One Spot Ask.com RSS Search - NOT! Google Search Results Link Crap Chris Is This the World’s Best Metasearch Site? Less

http://live.pirillo.com - Back in April, I shared a private invite to those of you who were following me on Twitter. Anytime I stumble across new websites, or get invites to pass out for something new, I try to pass them along right away. Even though you may think you have enough websites already, you really need to check this one out. Less

On this week’s EIC squared podcast Dan and I talk about all the search happenings this week–Google and Adobe, Microsoft and Powerset and the never-ending Microhoo saga–as well as the Viacom vs. Google lawsuit. It was a busy week on the search front. Adobe kicked off the week by announcing Flash is more searchable now. It [...] Less

Software, Search, acquisitions Gregory T. Huang wrote: VentureBeat is reporting that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has agreed to buy California-based Powerset, a natural-language search firm. If the report is accurate, the deal will be worth some $100 million and will be announced next month. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

speech recognition, Mobile, Software Wade Roush wrote: Cambridge, MA, startup Vlingo announced back in February that it had built its speech recognition software into Yahoo’s oneSearch mobile search portal. Thanks to that collaboration, users of Blackberry smartphones could speak search terms into their devices rather than having to type them using the keypad. It worked great in our tests. And now Vlingo’s taking the next step, offering free software that lets Blackerry owners use voice commands to do virtually anything they want with their phones, such as launching applications, dictating e-mails and text messages, searching the Web, and, of course, making calls. The application, which is available for download here starting today, is designed only for the latest Blackberry models, including Curve, Pearl, and 8800-series devices. But Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan says the company is working on versions of the software for other smartphones, including Windows Mobile devices, the Apple iPhone, and eventually devices running Google’s Android mobile operating system. “What our company is really about is solving both the discoverability and usability problems,” says Grannan. What he means is that the tiny screens and navigation buttons on mobile phones sometimes make it tricky to find and open the application you want, such as the address book or the text-messaging interface. Then, because many phones lack a full QWERTY keyboard, you have to double- or triple-type inside those applications to get anything done. But using the new Vlingo interface, you can open an application just by holding down your Blackberry’s side button and speaking a command such as “Open address book.” Sending a text message is as easy as holding down the button and saying something like “Send message to Brian: Remember to pick up batteries on your way home.” And sending an e-mail is only slightly more complicated; you have to include some pointers for the software, thus: “Send e-mail to Brian, Subject: Batteries, Message: Be sure to pick up some fresh batteries at the store.” You can’t yet use voice commands to do things like creating new address book entries or calendar appointments; Vlingo would have to work directly with the developers of those applications to make that possible. But that’s exactly what Grannan hopes will happen: Vlingo’s business rationale for giving away the Blackberry voice application is that giving smartphone users a taste of its convenience will inspire the companies that make those individual mobile applications to license Vlingo’s speech-recognition system for their own applications. “This is one step better than what we have done already with Yahoo oneSearch,” Grannan says. “But the Holy Grail is doing everything with voice.” Vlingo is moving full-speed ahead with its product development plans in spite of the patent infringement lawsuit filed against the firm last week by Burlington, MA-based speech applications company Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN). Nuance says Vlingo’s technology for improving speech-to-text transcription over time—technology used in both the Yahoo oneSearch interface and the new Blackberry software—infringes on one of its own patents. Vlingo, for its part, says it’s using completely different technology. “It’s pretty black and white—the lawsuit is groundless, on the merits,” says Grannan. “They’re trying to bleed us to death and make our big customers nervous. What works in our favor is that Nuance has a history of doing this, and everyone knows it. It’s a business strategy for them.” Vlingo loaned me a Blackberry Pearl so that I could play around with the voice application. For the most part, it works as advertised. And when it does run into difficulties getting the right transcriptions, it learns pretty quickly. In my case, the device had the ill fortune to be tested on some uncommon names and words. It had a tough time with “Wade”—when I commanded the phone to “call Wade” (i.e. my personal cell phone) it kept trying to call Grannan, since “Dave” sounds a little bit like “Wade” and his name was already programmed into the address book. After about four tries, with me correcting it each time, it understood. The system does get a lot of messages right on the first try. For example, it had no problem with “I’m running out of cereal.” When I said “E-mail Wade, Subject: Battlestar Galactica, Message: I wish the next season wasn’t so far away,” it at least got the subject right. (The fact that it knows exactly how to transcribe “Battlestar Galactica” is undoubtedly a measure of how many sci-fi geeks like myself have been using Vlingo’s voice applications.) Unfortunately, the message itself came out a bit garbled—as the software was perhaps swayed by the earlier training I’d given it on my own name: “I wish text season wade so far away.” And perhaps it’s mean of me to harp on it, but Vlingo still has a lot of trouble with one of our favorite words around here, “Xconomy.” After about six tries and corrections, it continued to make wretched guesses like “x connie” and “ex con me” and “text tommy.” So, Xconomy readers, a plea: Since the Vlingo system learns by aggregating audio samples and corrections from many users, we need you to help train it to recognize our name. If all of you Blackberry owners out there wouldn’t mind downloading the Vlingo software and spending 10 minutes speaking the word “Xconomy” into your device, then correcting the transcription as necessary, we’d be much obliged. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Change. A word that sparks fear in many people. We work to get to that comfortable spot, and we want to stay there. “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Ben Franklin We think he got it wrong, not in the message, but in the semantics. We think he should have explicitly included change as something that is certain, rather than making it implicit in his quote.   Will you lead or follow? Even when it’s change that we’re creating ourselves, it can be scary. But it’s especially frightening when it’s a surprise. For example, picture Jane telling her boss that she’s accepted a new position. She’s going to experience change. But isn’t that more comfortable than Jane’s boss telling her that her job is being eliminated? It’s better to be a leader of change than a follower. Who’s in control? However, you can’t always control change. What you can control all the time is how you choose to respond to it. You can also try to anticipate it. For example, as technology continues to develop, change is occurring more and more rapidly. Isn’t it safe to assume that this will continue? So you have a choice to make. You either develop the skills to anticipate change so you get ahead of it or you just respond to it, after the pain becomes too great to do anything else. Bigg action item – Separate the change into fads and trends There are fads and there are trends. Fads come and go, so don’t worry about them. Trends are long-term. Get on board with them. Divide a sheet into two columns – one called “Fads” and the other called “Trends”.  In your chosen career, think about the things affecting your industry. Now start putting those changes into the appropriate column. What will affect your future income? Something will – for good or for bad! Is it a short-term phenomenon? Or is it likely to continue? You can position yourself properly by seeing the change coming. What opportunities will be created? What skills will be important? Do you have them? Can you get them? Develop a plan for what you need to do to position yourself to take advantage of the trends. Where do I get this information? We’ll look at two examples. Search for the name of your industry followed by the word “association”. For example, “beauty salon association” yielded a half-dozen or so associations in Google. You can also subscribe to magazines for your industry, or just about any industry you’re interested in following. They’re often free, supported by the advertisers. Amazon has an excellent resource that lists magazines by industry. It’s an extensive list! So there are a number of ways to get the information you need so you can embrace change rather than begrudge it. Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.  Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Related posts 6 Factors to Help You Succeed When Opportunity Knocks The Single Most Destructive Thought You Can Have   (Image by bob923) ShareThis Less

Global Competition, Olympics, Microsoft Gregory T. Huang wrote: Last Friday we reported that three distinguished Microsoft employees, all formerly of the firm’s Beijing research lab (Microsoft Research Asia), were slated to run with the Olympic torch in the lead-up to the Summer Games. On Saturday, we learned that Microsoft search VP Harry Shum’s run in Lhasa, Tibet, went off without a hitch, and that the other two are upcoming. Now we’ve learned that Kai-Fu Lee, the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia—and currently the founding president of Google China—beat them all to it, by serving as a torchbearer in Shanghai the last week of May. A bit of backstory: Lee was a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) vice president in Redmond from 2000 to 2005 before defecting to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), which spawned an infamous non-compete lawsuit that was settled out of court in December 2005. Before all that, Lee was a close friend and mentor to the Microsoft research guys; now he’s a competitor. It’s hard to say whether running with the torch earlier or later is the greater honor, though—either way it’s a big deal. (Ya-Qin Zhang, VP and chairman of Microsoft’s China R&D Group, is scheduled to run with the torch on the final leg of the relay, in Beijing.) The torch business isn’t just in good fun—it’s also symbolic of the global competition between the tech giants. The game within the game. Whether it’s hiring talent, selling ads, or global branding, whether it’s Seattle or Shanghai, the Bay Area or Beijing, these guys will do almost anything to one-up one another. And we’ll be watching closely to see who brings home more of the real gold from China. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

http://live.pirillo.com - BizBuzz, LLC was a presenter at Live Pitch 2008 in Seattle recently. BizBuzz has one goal: to unite all businesses within a community under one umbrella resource. Having a centralized community location for all businesses, people will be able to find what they need faster. Businesses will also be able to network much easier, to better meet the needs of their communities. Less