Archive: June, 2006

A colleague recently sent over a link to a letter written by Google’s Eric Schmidt. The letter is a call for help on Net Neutrality, and contains contact information for congress and links to online petitions. The issue: the House of Representatives in the US might potentially pass a bill that will create a two-tiered system of high speed and low speed Internet lanes, granting the cable and phone companies control over access. Effectively this gives these companies the power over what people get to see and do online. Check it out. This is pretty serious stuff.

There are a couple of new search engines to briefly report about today. The first is Zumber, based out of Australia. Zumber was created in early 2006 and is still in beta. The default interface is clean and simple, and there’s a nifty style selector that lets you create your own look. Being the guy that I am, I chose one of the sexy girl screens, but to be honest the blue feather was my favorite. Zumber also offers pay-per-click advertising, and has a keyword directory that lists the most commonly used search terms. This is great for both searchers and marketers.

GenieKnows local search is the other new engine, also still in beta. This one works by entering a string of phrases into the search bar, including the city or location you’re trying to search. For example, “Starbucks in Seattle” returns a list of Starbucks locations including a map of where they’re located. The problem is, it currently only works for US locations. The SERP is divided into sponsored listings, business results and web results.