Microsoft Willing To Pay You To Use It's Searchengine

Microsoft is offering cash in the form of rebates to persuade users to shop online using it's Live Search engine. The scheme has Microsoft paying back to the consumer between 2% and 30% of the purchase price of over 10 million items from over 700 retail partners. Barnes & Noble, Sears, Overstock.com, Home Depot, J&R Electronics and a host of other retailers have signed on to the plan. The cash back will come in the form of a PayPal credit, cheque, or credit to the users bank account. In addition Microsoft is providing advertisers with incentives by implementing what it calls a Cost-Per-Acquisition approach rather than a Cost-Per-Click as used by Google. This approach means that advertisers will only pay when their ad results in a consumer actually buying something rather than clicking on something, that may or may not result in a sale.

CNET's Charles Cooper says: "Truth be told, it's not the worst idea. What's the harm in giving it a shot? In a recession consumers are open to bribes or rebates. But the reason people use Google is because it works better. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows this. That's why he still thinks making a move for some of Yahoo's assets makes sense."

BBC Story Here.

Wall Climbing Robot To Be Unveiled

SRI International has plans to unveil the design of a wall-climbing robot at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Pasadena, California later this week. “The principle of operation is similar to electrostatic chucks used to hold silicon wafers, or other specialized grippers for robotic handling of materials,” senior researcher Harsha Prahlad explained to Popular Mechanics in an email last week. “The technology uses a very small amount of power ... and shows the ability to repeatedly clamp to wall substrates that are heavily covered in dust or other debris.” Check out this video!

Twitter Attracting Venture Capital Attention

Gigaom is reporting that micro blogging service, Twitter has ignited a bidding war amongst venture capital firms who are hot to get in on the companies next round of financing. Twitter has been spreading like wild fire amongst the tech savvy but has had it's growing pains too. Some of the companies senior staff members have left, willingly or otherwise, due to difficulties scaling the service and numerous outages as the result. Nevertheless the valuations for Twitter are said to be upwards of $70 million, though there is no clear business model as of yet.

If you are yet to give Twitter a try I'd encourage you to do so, though be warned it is addictive. You can follow this blog by adding GreatBigGeek to the list you are following or message me direct @GreatBigGeek!

New iPhone On June 9th?

Gizmodo has posted that Apple will announce the second-generation iPhone at its Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco on June 9th, citing the ever popular "someone very, very close to the 3G iPhone launch,". According to this CBC article "Apple has sold more than 5 million iPhones so far and in the year since its U.S. launch has grabbed 28 per cent of the U.S. market in smartphones, or devices that offer data capabilities such as e-mail and web surfing." The launch of a next gen iPhone has long been expected and the rumors have been rampant with the recent news of first gen iPhone's being in short supply. We in Canada have suspected that the 3G iPhone was on it's way since Rogers announced a deal with Apple to finally bring the device north of the border.

Google Health Goes Live

After a year and a half in development and a 2 month trial at the Cleveland Clinic, which quickly attained it's limit of 1600 patients, Google is taking the wraps off Google Health. Available at http://www.google.com/health the service offers patients the ability to control personal health records on the Web. The patient has the ability to login to their record and make updates that they can send to their care giver of choice (doctor, clinic, pharmacy, etc.) or keep completely private if they so choose.

If you have a gmail account simply navigate to Google Health and login using your gmail address and password. You will be presented with a couple of agreements, that upon acceptance, will grant you access to your Google Health account. The site then allows you to import medical records, complete a comprehensive patient profile including known conditions, medications, allergies, procedures, test results, and immunizations. According to the Cleveland Clinic the trial was oversubscribed and C. Martin Harris, the Cleveland Clinic’s chief information officer said “It positioned our personal health record more into an activity that they use every day,” Time will tell whether or not the public is truly going to embrace the idea of personal medical information in the hands of a corporation, but it looks like Google is on to something.

NY Times article here.

Shadow Caddy - Robotic Golfing Assistant

An Australian company has created a robotic caddy that allows you to be free of carrying, pushing, or pulling your golf clubs around the golf course. For those golfers who still enjoy walking the course the Shadow Caddy may just be what they are looking for. The Shadow Caddy is a "hands free", three wheel electronic caddy that precisely follows you, and the clip on transmitter, around the golf course. The companies website indicates that it is currently only available in Australia and is for hire at a number of golf courses in that country. There is no mention of a purchase price and the "for hire" statement leads me to believe that it is purely a rental item at the moment. Check it out at www.shadowcaddy.com.au

A Facelift For Facebook

Facebook is set to undergo a facelift, the first major redesign of the social site since it launched. The big problem with facebook is the success of the 3rd party applications and the cluttered affect they have on the user's profile pages. I am often annoyed at the nonsensical messages from applications such as booze mail, that eat up the real estate on my screen. Facebook's answer is to split the main profile into five separate pages, all accessible through tabs at the top of the page. Thankfully, the BBC is reporting that it is likely "Applications like games and quizzes will also be moved on to their own dedicated page." You can read the entire story here.

Microsoft - Yahoo Back On Again?

In the statement on Sunday, Microsoft announced it was “considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo.” According to the New York Times, "The timing of Microsoft’s new approach may seem opportunistic. Yahoo has been racing to complete its own partnership with Google and was expected to announce a formal agreement as early as this week. A Yahoo-Google partnership, which is likely to face antitrust scrutiny, could make Yahoo a less desirable partner or takeover candidate for Microsoft." Yahoo is also said to be facing a great deal of pressure from it's shareholders, some of whom are said to be furious that the board didn't work harder to strike a deal to sell the company to Microsoft.

Google Treasure Hunt Contest Announced

Put your geeky knowledge to the test, Google has announced a treasure hunt on its' Australian site. If you think you have problem-solving skills in computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia you might like to give it a try. There are new puzzles posted every week for three weeks and and if you submit correct answers to every question you will be in the running to receive a prize. Check it out at http://treasurehunt.appspot.com/

The Un-branding of AOL

Time Warner Inc.'s AOL has long been synonymous with dial-up Internet connections, if you where around in the early days of the Internet you probably cursed your mailman every time an AOL disk filled your mail box. The brass at AOL are finally seeing the age of it's brand is not doing them any favors when it comes to eyeballs on websites. The AOL brand is becoming less relevant, particularly with the younger demographic and the company is allowing it's brand to take a back seat on some of it's new properties. According to reportonbusiness.com "AOL figures that to grow its audiences — and draw additional advertising the company crucially needs to offset plunging revenue from its shrinking base of Internet access subscribers — it must break from a one-size-fits-all model and let its specialty sites set their own designs and editorial tone, shedding the AOL brand when necessary." As AOL's parent, Time Warner Inc. has put it in a regulatory filing: “If AOL cannot effectively build a portfolio of alternate brands that are appealing to Internet consumers, AOL may have difficulty in increasing the engagement of Internet consumers on its Web products and services. AOL believes that the ‘AOL' brand is associated in the minds of consumers with its dial-up Internet access service.”

It's interesting to see how those properties that have been around for some time now are adapting to a maturing landscape on the Internet, one where the rules keep rewriting themselves and businesses need to be agile in order to remain relevant...