What’s so special about Microsoft’s Bing search engine?

Microsoft tried, with overall mild resolve, to compete with Google and Yahoo! in the search engine arena. Its Live Search service, by all means, didn’t deliver the kind of user experience that generated repeat uses. So they killed that service.

That’s right, the Live Search service is gone!

How’s that for big news?

But there’s even bigger news. The old “live.com” service is officially set to be replaced tomorrow by a new search service called “bing.com“. Another 4-letter .com which is easy to remember and cool to bookmark. That’s pretty much as far as the similarities go, however.

The Bing.com search engine is built, from the gound up, so to speak, to be completely different than Live.com in the sense that it’s more mature and precise. A lot of testing went on using the Live dataset so expect to find in Bing what was available through its [now retired] predecesor.

Steve Ballmer said this about its new web destination: “Bing [will] enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.” at last week’s All Things Digital conference, in Carlsbad, CA.

And gosh, is Ballmer ever fired up about Bing!

According to Microsoft, in addition to offering search by category, Bing will offer…

• more relevant search results;
• snapshots of search results’ Web pages;
• color-coded search results; and
• search tools on the left side of the page.

This new search engine is also set up to organize query results in relevant groups rather than as a series of links. Google might want to pick up on this! So, for instance, a search for “travel to Seattle” may return Seattle destinations like hotels, restaurants and museums as almost a guidebook page. The same search on Live generated straight individual links that users had to go through one by one.

Microsoft has looked for ways to improve its search advertising revenue for years and maybe Bing will give them “more bang for their money”. It’s hard to imagine that advertisers will be leaving Google and Yahoo! for Bing anytime soon but overtime, maybe some people will get curious and want to see if Microsoft go its new search service right, this time around.

Everyone “in the know” regarding the search engine wars was aware that Microsoft’s search market share had been slipping for more than two years. It struggled to make its online advertising unit profitable but that wasn’t going too well. According to comScore, Microsoft maintains a meager 8.2% share of the market for core searches compared with 64.2% for Google and 20.4% for Yahoo!.

After trying a few searches in Bing’s “preview” search service for “new technology“, “local pizza“, “alternative cancer treatments“, “free education” and “open source scripts” yielded impressively relevant results which actually made sense. The pay-per-click results were generally related but not always useful. Maybe when Microsoft convinces more advertisers to sign-up, those results will become more interesting.

You may also appreciate the “quick information” that’s displayed at the right of the hyperlinks [and descriptions] to give you a sort of preview of what you’ll find, at any particular web site. Here again, Google and Yahoo! should send a few spies to check it out.

We’ll need at least a few months to see if Bing has what the users are looking for but until then, it’ll be interesting to see what the competition does to make sure they stay on top.

Tags: bing, about bing, bing.com, bing search, bing search engine, microsoft bing, steve ballmer, ballmer about bing, allthingsd, all things digital, live, live.com, search engine war, google, yahoo!, competition, users, visitors, internet, web, online

The Oracle and BEA middleware

Have you been following the Oracle and BEA saga, lately?

It seems many concerned customers are still unsure about what the recent acquisition of BEA by Oracle means to them but until the air is cleared out regarding this major transaction, perhaps a good way to make sense of it all is to take a look at the merged middleware offerings.

For good measure, we’ll also take a peak at service-oriented architecture and developer tools but the bulk of the offerings remain confortably nested in middleware so here’s a look at what you can expect.

Middleware

• Application server
  • Oracle JRockit - The industry’s highest performing Java Virtual Machine now built into Oracle Fusion Middleware;
  • Oracle JRockit Real Time - Deterministic-GC and Latency Analysis Tools help monitor and tune applications;
  • Oracle JRockit Mission Control - Tools to monitor, manage, profile and eliminate memory leaks in Java application;
  • Oracle WebLogic Server - Fully-featured, standards-based application server delivering compliance with open standards, multi-tiered architecture and support for component-based development;
  • Oracle WebLogic Application Grid - An extreme scale-out grid platform.
• Identity Management
  • Oracle Entitlements Server - Externalizes and centralizes administration of enterprise entitlements, simplifies authorization policies and enforces security decisions;
• Transaction Processing
  • Oracle Tuxedo - Platform for building large-scale distributed enterprise applications that enable businesses to reduce development and deployment, while preserving existing assets;
• User Interaction
  • Oracle WebCenter - Open, comprehensive and standards-compliant user interaction product suite providing web integration and interface services for deploying a broad range of solutions;
  • Oracle WebCenter Interaction - Formerly called BEA AquaLogic User Interaction, it’s an integrated, comprehensive collection of components used to create enterprise portals, collaborative communities as well as composite and social applications;
  • Oracle WebCenter Services - Integrated set of products designed for creating dynamic user work environments that take advantage of SOA while enabling business users to bring complete context to their daily work tasks;
  • Oracle WebLogic Portal - Formerly BEA WebLogic Portal, it’s a portal framework for creating highly interactive composite applications in a SOA environment with an integrated set of design-time tools for Java developers.

Service-Oriented Architecture

• Oracle SOA Suite - Suite of products that help build, deploy and manage deployments ranging from department-level to enterprise-wide systems.
• Oracle Service Bus - Accelerates configuration and deployment while simplifying management of shared services across the SOA.
• Oracle BPM - Modeling, implementation, execution and monitoring of end-to-end business processes.

Developer Tools

• Oracle Workshop - Extends Eclipse and Web Tools Platform with tools for Java, Java EE, Object Relational Mapping, Spring and Web Applications.

Quite a line of products, to say the least!

As you can see, Oracle has been busy integrating the BEA products to provide a unified line. It will take some time to getting use to but over time, customers using these technologies will benefit from enhanced data management technologies.

To make sense of this extensive line of products, Oracle provides documentation, sample code, technical whitepapers, demos and viewlets, internet seminars as well as discussion forums directly relating to Oracle products, on its own web site so you can also review them, if necessary.

This world-class combination of data management products is a fine choice for the Fortune 500 but it could also help you mid-sized or smaller company, just the same.

Tags: oracle, oracle middleware, oracle fusion, oracle databases, oracle development, oracle tools, oracle products, oracle technology, oracle network, soa, developer tools, internet, web, weblogic, portal, web server, webcenter, oracle tuxedo, oracle jrockit, java development, bea, bea aqualogic, jvm, java virtual machine

Huge growth expected for new extensions

There nothing like bad debt to force non-profits, like the ICANN, into dubious decisions which are, in the end, motivated almost entirely by greed, whatever the risks to “the rest” of the business model.

The ICANN has announced its plans to greatly expand the domain name extension market, way beyond .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .name and such, to include just about anything a registrar is ready to pay between 150k$ to 500k$ for.

So we might assist to a giant IT business like IBM, for instance, paying the ICANN to establish a new domain name extension labeled “.ibm” which could then be resold to anyone interested in paying the yearly registration fee, which would be likely left entirely to the discretion of the registrar.

Imagine an online web where almost anything of any significance has its own domain name extension — it could get very confusing, very fast. As soon as early 2009, actually since that’s when the ICANN plans to fast track the approval for such extensions. The astute domainer should therefore understand that the ICANN needs lots of new money, fast.

Name extensions like .london, .melbourne, .islands, .vehicles, .loveable, .unbelievable and just about anything out there are expected to pop up faster than we can count them, changing the online landscape forever.

The ICANN believes in “choice and opportunity” as the two main lines of thought behind their move but the idea of letting registrars expand the domain name extension pool ad infinitum also holds great risks of overly diluting the current domain name extension momentum.

Individuals won’t be allowed to establish new domain name extensions as only companies with very deep pockets and the resources to operate such a service will be fast tracked through the approval process. Under these conditions, it’s obvious that Network Solutions and GoDaddy, to name only those, will be well positioned to launch a slew of domain name extensions.

Forget the principle of fairness in the creation of these extensions. The ICANN has decided to unilaterally favor the rich registrars because this, for all useful purposes, is a huge money grab for the folks at ICANN who will surely vote themselves a nice salary increase to cover for the added workload of managing this new mess. If university students want to study a case where a non-profit corporation ditches coherence in favor of sheer greed, this is it.

From a legal standpoint, if you have a brand that you need to protect in the digital realm, expect to be financially fleeced out by the seemingly never-ending multiplication of domain name extensions, in the years to come. Keep in mind that the ICANN has no “overall” rule that’ll protect your brand within all domain name extensions since every single registrar may rule over their extension as they please. So unless you want to be sending nasty cease and desist letters all the time, paying your lawyer premium fees to do so, you’ll probably end up buying out your brand name in all of these extensions — in both cases, the ICANN has setup a system where almost everybody has to become paranoid about protecting their brand.

Examples abound. Think of Apple Computer. They have their “apple.just-about-anything” brand established worldwide but what happens when .london pops up. They’ll probably want to buy apple.london. And then, what if 250 more popular european cities pop up. Apple will almost certainly want to buy apple.paris, apple.lyon, apple.rome (or apple.roma, for the locals) and if certain cities don’t see their extension purchased by such industry heavyweights, will they turn their back on them? For instance, if Apple chooses not to buy apple.prague, will the people living in Prague see this as an offensive gesture?

This is just one example among countless others that’ll make domaining a new, uncharted world of utter confusion, frustration and exploding costs.

Some domainers might get their hands on interesting domain names, like gamers.london or visiting.london but overall, there’s no guarantee these new extensions will draw natural visitors. The mainline .com will likely remain “king of the hill” for many years to come -but- seeing the failure of the much hyped .biz might send a chill down the back of those registrars who feel they can push any extension down potential domain owners’ throats.

It’s already expected that some of these new domain name extensions will be more attractive —and expensive— than others but if the ICANN allows for a seemingly uncontrolled expansion of the extension pool, it’ll almost certainly backfire and the internet, as a relatively healthy entity, could be hardly hit.

Let’s hope for the best with this latest ICANN move but at the same time, let’s also (discreetly) brace for a bumpy ride.

Tags: icann, new domain name extensions, new extensions, registrars, domain names, domains, domainers, domaining, rich registrars, expensive extensions, greed, internet, naming system, root dns, new names approval

Verisign yanks up domain name fees — again

If you own a “.com” or “.net” domain name, this is very bad news, on all fronts.

Verisign, for the second time in just 6 months, is asking every single domain name owner to shell out even more money to register, transfer or renew their “dot coms” and “dot nets”.

Take notice that starting October 1st, 2008, California-based Verisign which operates the “.com” and “.net” domain name suffixes will raise the fees required to own them. And these aren’t insignificant raises, we’re seeing the “.com” increase from 6.42$ to 6.86$ per DNS (a 6.86% raise) and the “.net” go from 3.85$ to 4.23$ (a 9.87% raise).

Non-content of taking in astronomical amounts of fees for the “.com” and “.net” namespaces, Verisign says that rising traffic on the internet, allegedly from web-connected wireless devices, new technologies that use DNS and demands on improving net security, drive the newly imposed increase.

Domain name owners would be entirely justified, yet again, to interpret this latest increase as sheer greed on the part of Verisign, an incestuous monopoly that’s been decried by both domain name owners and ICANN representatives alike.

Without any dependable independent audit being conducted, Verisign alleges that it handles approximately 33 billion DNS queries daily, with a maximum potential volume of 400 billions — which shows, among other things, how very, very far we are from putting any meaningful stress on Verisign’s current technological setup. Furthermore, Verisign intends to expand that DNS handling capacity to 4 trillion per day, within a couple of years.

For those who keep tabs of Verisign’s arrogance and greed, keep in mind that the last time the billionnaire company bumped up the “.com” and “.net” fees was October 15, 2007 when the “.com” rose from 6$ and the “.net” from 3.50$. Prior to the latest “greed shots”, fees had remained stable since 1999, when the ICANN first set up a DNS pricing scheme.

Because of arrogant price hikes like this one, both Verisign and the ICANN, a for-profit firm that works with the U.S. Department of Commerce to set DNS policy, are continuing to meet with significant resistance from the internet community, as a whole, who view such price hikes as unjustifiable taxation.

Tags: .com, .net, domains, domain names, verisign, icann, internet, price hike, fees, greed

Future net connectivity initiatives

While more people are enjoy high-speed internet every day, from their school, from the office or from the comfort of their home, there are other people who are currently preparing the future of net connectivity.

Here are the projects you should learn more about if you’re serious about “insanely high speed” for you digital data packets transport:

• Coronet – Code name for the Darpa project looking to provide highly secure, multi-terabit core optical networks to the telecom industry.
• GENI – Next generation master plan for tomorrow’s internet, as envisioned by the National Science Foundation.
• Internet2 – Well established academic group focused on building high-speed networks for distributed computing, namely between universities.

There are quite a few more projects out there looking to build (somewhat smaller scale) very high speed networks but these three should, in and of themselves, get you excited about the internet’s capability to sustain our future needs to convey ever heavier information loads, from and to countless access points, domestically and abroad.

Furthermore, lots of R&D is going on alongside these great initiatives and perhaps you should explore those areas too, especially if you’re interested in learning what the future has in store for internet connectivity!

Tags: coronet, geni, internet 2, high-speed internet, connectivity, universities, military, fiber optics