Thoughts on Building Technology Products and Businesses
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photo credit: Peter Ito The Guardian’s Oliver Luft reported on Wednesday that the Trinity Mirror-owned Liverpool Echo has launched a map-based news service where they are geotagging news stories and allowing for postcode-based searches. According to the article, Trinity Mirror…
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Is there an Opportunity for Low-Cost Local SEM?
Greg Sterling has an interesting post on his Screenwerk blog on the challenges of selling SEM to small local businesses. He argues that most small businesses don’t understand enough about SEM and all the metrics involved to evaluate an SEM…
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UK Advertising Industry Statistics
This data has been out for a few months now, but for anyone whose business depends on advertising, it’s worth a second look. It’s from the World Advertising Research Center’s Advertising Statistics Yearbook 2008. UK Advertising Expenditure at current prices,…
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MapQuest Local: Where Have You Seen this Before?
MapQuest recently launched a new local service called MapQuest Local that more or less follows the Localmouth pattern. Like Localmouth, they’re aggregating content from a number of local information providers to provide guides to individual places. Currently, the information they’re…
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HelloMetro Wins Hyperlocal Trademark
According to their own press release, HelloMetro has been awarded a trademark from the US patent office for use of the term ‘Hyperlocal’. In a comment on Search Engine Watch, their CEO explains that their use describes their service of…
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The Business of Selling Expensive, Niche Software
photo credit: wit Here’s a nice article on selling expensive, niche software.
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Is Screenscraping Legal? Ryanair Versus Bravofly
photo credit: mattbuck4950 Out-Law had an interesting article yesterday about how Ryanair is taking a Dutch fare comparison website to court in Ireland for screenscraping. If I understand rightly, Ryanair’s case hinges on whether or not the terms of use…
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Government Launches Competition to Mashup UK Public Information
photo credit: alexliivet It’s time to put your thinking cap on. The UK government’s Power of Information Taskforce last week launched a £20,000 competition for good ideas about how to use a raft of public information. Alongside the launch, the…
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Brownbook – a Crowdsourced Yellow Pages
I just came across these guys: http://www.brownbook.net/ They’re a sort of open yellow pages where anyone can add, edit or review businesses. This is very similar to what sites like WeLoveLocal and Yelp are already doing, but in a world…
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Will the UK Start Regulating Social Networks?
photo credit: Urbankudos “Nine out of 10 say rules should govern social sites” According to Bobby Johnson in yesterday’s Guardian (Facebook Information Should be Regulated, Survey Says), “89% of those surveyed by the Press Complaints Commission said there should be…