WebProNews » MINI

Watch This Mini Land a Perfect, Unassisted Backflip

Josh Wolford — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:06:11 +0000

In snowy Tignes, France, Guerlain Chicherit has successfully performed a backflip in a car. Yep, a real, unassisted backflip in a MINI – and he actually lands it. According to MINI, it’s the first of its kind. Don’t try this at home. Come to think about it, don’t try it anywhere.

[MINI via Fark]

Google Search Appliance Purchase Leads To Links

Doug Caverly — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:15:08 +0000

Want someone to take you seriously? An effective (if inelegant) way of getting attention is to flash some cash. That practice may also, as it turns out, get you a link from Google.

Send $2,000 to Dell, which both manufactures and sells the Google Search Appliance, and you’ll get a yellow piece of hardware in return. You’ll also likely be listed on a page of “Mini Customer Success Stories.” Some of the companies named there obviously aren’t in it for the link – what does the Arizona Federal Credit Union care about search engine rankings? – but others probably are.

Barry Schwartz points to Neutralize, which is in the business of search engine marketing. And more than one company’s name ends in “.com” – it’s hard to believe they didn’t notice what they were getting into.

That’s not to condemn this practice – I find it more odd than objectionable, and Schwartz doesn’t believe any nofollow tags are necessary. He points out, though, “I think Matt would think otherwise.”

Whatever anyone thinks, a change in the near future is unlikely – Schwartz also points out that Scott Woodard documented this practice about six months ago.

Google Busted Laundering Links?

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:21:55 +0000

Because Google has neglected to make certain links from its site nofollow, webmasters are wondering how, exactly, they differ from paid links.

All you have to do to get a link from Google’s PageRank 7 Mini Enterprise Search Appliance page is buy the product, which runs just shy of $2,000. Buy a Mini and Google adds a link to your site along with your Google Mini "success story."

Would you call that a laundered link?

Search Engine Roundtable brought it to our attention, but we somehow missed Andy Beal dropping the dime back in June:

"While many of these success stories are for established and recognizable businesses who sincerely appreciate the advanced search capabilities the Mini provides, others are undoubtedly as pleased with their new link as their new Google Mini."

Google’s webspam team has been pretty vigilant this year about penalizing sites that buy or sell PageRank-passing links. And while this isn’t exactly a direct purchase, it is a bit ironic.

Dell Will Sell Google Search Appliance, Mini

Doug Caverly — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:26:09 +0000

If something’s both manufactured and sold by one company, does it make much sense to call it by another corporation’s name? I’m not sure, but it’s something Google and Dell may want to address; Dell now handles a lot of things related to the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini.

In June, we saw Mountain View hand over manufacturing responsibilities to Dell. Ingram Micro was picked as a distributor a few days later, yet the deal was, as this fresh development proves, not exclusive.

“Google’s turnkey search appliances align well with Dell’s priority to simplify information technology in the data center,” explained Terry Klein, vice president of Dell’s Americas Advanced Solutions Group, in a statement.

And in regards to the abundance of tasks Dell’s been given, Klein noted, “Having the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini available from Dell bolsters our enterprise offerings and helps simplify the search engine process for our commercial and public customers.”

Indeed, regardless of whatever behind-the-scenes shuffling has taken place, would-be buyers shouldn’t see much of a change in the products; from the interesting paint jobs (the Search Appliance is bright yellow, the Mini blue) to the pricing (starting at $30,000 and $1,995, respectively), everything should actually remain identical.

Google Gadget Ads Rolling Out

Andrew Goodman — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:48:57 +0000

Today Google is announcing the wider availability of Google Gadgets in ad format, something that has been in testing for months. Several advertisers are cited as happy beta partners, including Intel, Six Flags, and a fizzy beverage company.

They’re considered "non-traditional ad units with rich, interactive capabilities." Google further explains that you might want to think of these as "mini versions of your website" in any AdSense ad size.

At this early stage, I wonder if the poster examples – Pepsi, Intel, Six Flags – really make the most sense as "gadget oriented" or "widget oriented" players.

Also, positioning widgets/gadgets as paid ads puts a new spin on something that no doubt cropped up in the grassroots as a tactic for viral marketing. I come up with a widget that gives your website something unique & cool, like relevant content or a customizable toy of some sort… your users enjoy themselves… I get traffic and brand awareness in return.

The new math would be: I as a creator of said unit have to rely less on the compellingness of the widget/gadget to your user base, because now I’ll be willing to actually pay you to put it there. Where does Google come in? Well, they have a content network, so they’re facilitating the distribution of the ads, as usual.

Recall, flash and video ads were already part of the AdSense menu. So a gadget takes it up another level – offering custom functionality of some sort.

There are editorial policies governing Google Gadget Ads. These include "not exceeding 50% utilization of a user’s computer" through things like "heavy animation sequences."

More to come on this.

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Google Updates Mini Enterprise Search Appliance

Andy Beal — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:54:23 +0000

Google has taken the younger sibling of its Google Search Appliance for corporations, Google Mini, and added a number of new features.

According to the press release, new features include:

- Secure Search

Specially enhanced to support the information-sharing needs inside of small businesses and departmental workgroups, the Google Mini offers document and user-level security across all business content.

- Google OneBox for Enterprise

Introduced last year as part of the Google Search Appliance, the Google OneBox for Enterprise feature lets businesses provide secure access to any information – such as contact and calendar info, HR benefits, sales leads, or purchase order status – through the convenience of a Google search box.

- Site Search Improvements

Site administrators can now link the Google Mini search results page with Google Analytics to provide more detailed information about how people use search on their site in order to improve the overall site experience. The new Google Mini also automatically generates sitemaps.

Makes me wish I had an intranet and enough employees to warrant the $2k price tag.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Opera Mini Has A Ninjarific Birthday

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:03:45 +0000

The adoption of web browsing on mobile devices has helped Opera Mini enjoy a successful first year in and out of the pockets of people around the world.

Users around the world have dropped Opera Mini onto their mobile devices around the world. Opera said in its notes on the first birthday of the product that the free browser has had an impact on the mobile marketplace.

“This is a celebration for our users,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Thanks to the more than 10 million people who use Opera Mini, we’ve changed the way users and mobile operators think about the mobile Web. Because of the tremendous grassroots support, Opera Mini is now a movement.”

It’s not just the people and the mobile providers who have noticed such interest. The major Internet players – Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask – all have efforts of varying complexity and strategy aimed at mobile users.

Opera recently made a move involving two of those companies. Until January, Opera had Google as its default search. They switched to Yahoo as the default at the end of the one-year agreement with Google, and said Yahoo had the best proposal “both on a commercial and strategic level.”

To mark the first year of Opera Mini’s availability, the company invoked the spirit of the ninja to celebrate. Their birthday card features a crimson-clad ninja freeing people from the walled garden of the telecoms to enjoy the wonders of the Internet.

A big selling point of Opera Mini has been its ability to deliver complete web pages to mobile devices. Opera said its users have viewed 3 billion cumulative pages through the Mini browser, and their servers deliver 300 complete web pages per second to them.

If you are in the United States reading this article, there’s a good chance you are using a Motorola RAZR V3, BlackBerry Pearl or BlackBerry 8700 as the hardware containing Opera Mini. In Europe, Sony Ericsson or Nokia devices will be more likely. You could win a bar bet by knowing Brunei Darrussalam has the world’s greatest penetration of Opera Mini users per capita.

That’s a ninjarific fact to know.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

RFID Billboards Target Mini Audience

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:58:42 +0000

Drivers of the charming little Mini Coopers may be invited to sign up for an interactive billboard promotion called Motorby, where RFID equipped keyfobs will change the message as these drivers approach the billboard.

Do You Want Behavorial Ultra-Targeted Marketing?

The future is in personalization. While ‘Minority Report’ references will be everywhere about the program being promoted to Mini owners, the real news is the continued merging of technology, marketing, and personal information.

As an exclusive brand with the kind of cachet that Apple has in the world of consumer electronics, Mini can take advantage of that position and do these kinds of out of the box thinking experiments. While RFID has been used heavily behind the scenes in warehousing and inventory management, most people who know of it probably just heard how passports use them now.

Mini’s approach as detailed at MotoringFile takes a little bit of owner-contributed information, nothing too personal, and embeds it into an RFID chip. The RFID goes into a keyfob, and the keyfob goes to the owner.

The next time the owner drives the Mini past one of the electronic billboards in Chicago, New York, Miami, or San Francisco, and the message on the RFID chip appears on the screen. The billboards are placed over highways to pick up the RFID signal.

This application of technology and personalized information will be just for fun. Mini wants irreverence, to emphasize the quirky appeal of their little cars. It’s drive-by product evangelism, something that even Apple hasn’t pulled off yet.

We considered the prospect of changeable billboards back in 2005. That was from the context of Google driving its advertising to people everywhere, and the use of wireless technology and ‘electronic paper’ (which does exist today, developed by Fujitsu) to deliver ad messages to people anywhere that a paper ad could be posted.

Mini’s effort uses a digital billboard to display a simple text message. It’s a start, and one that we will probably consider quaint in five years. As for today, it’s a neat implementation of RFID, even though the privacy naysayers will express worries about it.

UPDATE!: I didn’t see this Engadget post about Google and billboards until a few minutes ago, but it looks like the future of Internet connected, interactive billboards could happen sooner than later. Could my prediction from August 2005 be closer to coming true?

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Yahoo Gets Around, A Lot, With Go 2.0

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:24:53 +0000

Yahoo! announced a flurry of new partnerships today as part of a global launch of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 (beta). The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company teamed up with Motorola, Nokia, Opera, Research In Motion, Samsung, and 3 Group, hoping to maximize exposure of the new platform and Yahoo!’s new oneSearch mobile search engine.

The new partnerships and products were unveiled en masse at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this morning. With them, Yahoo expects Go 2.0 and oneSearch to reach consumers in 60 countries on 70 separate mobile devices.

“Yahoo! intends to be the number one mobile Internet player globally,” said Marco Boerries, senior vice president of connected life, Yahoo!. “Today we are changing the game by putting the full power of the open Internet into consumers’ pockets.”

Go 2.0 will come preloaded on many new phones, which include models of Motorola’s RAZR and RIM’s BlackBerry. Or users can download the beta software from Yahoo!’s Go 2.0 website.

“The desire for seamless connectivity has never been stronger,” said Scott Durchslag, corporate vice-president of product and xperience invention, Motorola mobile devices.

Though oneSearch is available immediately for download, Norway-based Opera Software will be the exclusive provider of Yahoo!’s oneSearch on Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, when oneSearch goes live globally in the first quarter of 2007.

Yahoo says oneSearch “recognizes the intent of a search term and presents relevant content” rather than a list of links. For example, a sports fan can type in his favorite team and the mobile search engine will bring back the final score for the most recent game, information on the next scheduled game, as well as team profiles, roster, official Website, sports photos, and related news articles.

“Yahoo! oneSearch changes the mobile search game by fundamentally improving the way consumers’ access and use the Internet on their mobile phones,” said Boerries. “It delivers a mobile-optimized search experience that understands what consumers are looking for and presents answers directly in the results — not just a list of Web links to PC sites.”

Yahoo! Go Mobile 2.0 (beta) Features:

Local and Maps Widget – local directory information for US businesses, including ratings and reviews from Yahoo users, driving directions, real time traffic updates, event updates, local flavors like eateries and shopping.

News Widget- headlines from a “breaking news ticker” in news, sports, entertainment, weather and finance sectors; topic trackers and RSS reader.

Flickr Widget – photo-sharing integration from Yahoo!’s popular photo Website

E-mail Widget – for connecting to Yahoo! Mail; includes email search function

Products and Partnerships:

Motorola – available for MOTORAZR maxx V6 and MOTORAZR V3xx

Nokia – available for 6103, 6131 and Nokia 5300 Xpress Music phones; in the first half of 2007, available for Series 40 devices

RIM – on BlackBerry 8700 Series, BlackBerry 7130 Series and BlackBerry Pearl

Samsung – oneSearch, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger available first half of 2007

Areas:

United States, Bharti Airtel, DiGi Telecommunications (Malaysia), Globe Telecom, Hutchison India, Idea Cellular, Rogers Wireless, Smart Communications, Taiwan Mobile and 3 Group in the United Kingdom, Italy, Denmark, Ireland and Sweden.

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Opera Mini Socially Networks

Autumn Davis — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:08:58 +0000

Today Opera Mini launched an upgraded version of the popular mobile browser which enhances social networking on mobile phones.

Opera Software released mobile browser Opera Mini 3.0 today, which is enhanced with new features said to make social networking from a mobile phone easier .

“We are excited to improve on the mobile Web experience that has already been so well received by both end users and distributors”, says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software, in a company press release. “I think the main reason for Mini’s success is that it, for the first time, allows millions of people to use their mobile phones to access the same Web sites they do from their desktop.”

Opera Mini was released in January 2006, and is a free mobile Web browser designed to bring the real Web to mobile phones.

Today Opera Mini reaches over 8 million people who have viewed more than 2 billion websites, as Opera is free can be used on nearly any phone.

Adding to its user-friendly features, Opera Mini is “optimized to reduce the size of data transferred to the phone, which makes browsing fast and cheaper for users that pay per kilobyte transferred”, according to representatives of the company.

Pleasing features to the consumer prompted 9 major service carriers, including T-Mobile, to pre-install Opera Mini in some of their handsets.

The pre-installation of the program is also enables users to access social-networking and personal sites from their mobile device.

While Opera Mini already provided access to all web pages from a mobile phone, content download, data compression, and changeable skins, the upgraded version Opera Mini 3.0 adds several new features.

New features included in the upgraded version are photo sharing, RSS feed reader, secure connections, and content folding which can all be viewed at high speed and low cost.

The new features enable users to access their online community sites directly from their mobile phone, as well as post pictures from their camera phone.

Currently some of the most popular sites visited by Opera Mini 3.0 users are MySpace, Hotmail, GMail, Google, and other social networking sites.

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Autmn Davis is a staff writer for WebProNews covering ebusiness and technology.