First, Matt McGee reports on Search Engine Land that Bing now provides search history with their auto-suggest feature that appears when the search box “drops down” and offers search term suggestions.

Queries from your search history will appear in purple, while other queries will show in blue. The auto-suggest box offers options like “Manage History” and “History Off” for searchers who don’t this feature enabled.

See Also: Official Announcement from the Bing Blog

Second, Twitter is now allowing several search tools to have access to their “firehose” feed. This feed provides access to EVERY TWEET in real-time. Some Twitter tools don’t have Firehose access.

From The Next Web:

Twitter has long kept a very tight grip on just who can have access to the stream of Twitter updates. All of them, that is. Limited access is open to anyone and everyone who wants to play.

According to the company, some 50,000 are using the rate limited APIs. Twitter was long rumored to give out very limited access to the firehose (all tweets in real time) due to scaling problems. More people pulling in data means more server load, something which Twitter always has too much of.

Whatever is true, Twitter is finally loosening their grip, and giving some new companies access to the firehose. All the data as it comes in, it’s a potential goldmine.

Beginning today, Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn Search are now accessing firehose access.

From the Twitter Blog:

Recently we’ve announced partnerships with Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft. These Web leaders gained access beyond our free offerings—we licensed them the full feed of all public tweets.

[Snip]

More than fifty thousand interesting applications are currently using our freely available, rate-limited platform offerings. With access to the full Firehose of data, it is possible to move far beyond the Twitter experiences we know today. In fact, we’re pretty sure that some amazing innovation is possible.

From Venture Beat:

Companies like Google and Microsoft have already gotten a headstart on mining Twitter’s data after signing agreements to incorporate tweets into real-time search. Terms were not disclosed, but Bloomberg reported that the deals made the company profitable with $25 million in additional revenue. Some of the larger startups in Twitter’s ecosystem like Seesmic and Tweetmeme also have had financial arrangements for deeper data access for some time, although they also have not disclosed details.

Finally. this will not be the week Google doesn’t make an acquisition.

This afternoon we learned that Google had acquired Picnik, a web-based photo editing service.

From the NY Times:

The Picnik service is offered through Picasa, Google’s photo storage site. Although the company says users will still be able to access other social networking and photo storage sites from Picnik, the sale leaves an open question about how long the service will continue to run on some of its competitor sites in the future, including Facebook, Flickr and Photoworks.

The sale puts Google in yet another competing business with Adobe, going up against Photoshop.com, and with Apple and the basic photo editing tools within iPhoto.

See Also: Google Blog Post re: Picnik

Beginning today, when you search for anything on Google, as part of your search results you will see live updates from MySpace users, including news, photos, and blog posts that they have chosen to publically publish. Further, all of these updates will be ranked to reflect the freshest, most relevant results, making it easier to find the latest information on anything you’re searching for on Google, including the music and artists you enjoy most.

This blog post has more info along with a couple of screenshots.

Source: MySpace Blog

1) Database and Basic Profiles of Every Athlete Participating in the Vancouver Games
2) Database of All Olympic Medalists (All-Time, Summer and Winter)
3) Database and Directory of All National Olympics Committees

Now, Elisabeth Osmeloski at Search Engine Land has compiled a wonderful collection of resources Bing, Google, and Yahoo will be offering for Vancouver 2010.

Here are a few highlights. Make sure to visit the actual post to review it all.

Bing (Gold)

Bing Visual Search (which requires installation of Silverlight) has added two galleries, one for the 86 Olympic events, and the other, a visual search gallery of 664 Olympic athletes. Athlete data is not a complete picture by any means, but it does include more than just Team USA data, and is also sortable by a number of criteria, including age, sport, hometown/country, and will update medal counts on an individual basis.

Bing Maps has also created a new application, Winter Games, which will provide real-time information on event venues, medal counts by country, and Winter Games tweets from Vancouver, using their Twitter Maps application to filter out Olympics related commentary. Bing Maps previously announced StreetSide coverage of Vancouver and Whistler with enhanced imagery of the Olympic scenes in Canada.

Google (Silver)

Over at Google, an international landing page has been created to help users Explore the Games with Google, aka, “Google.com/Games10?, with Google Maps being a main component to track medal counts by country, and special “Street View” coverage with the use of a snowmobile to get around the games’ event venues.

Real-time and Google News Search are two of the more prominent features as well

Yahoo (Bronze)

Yahoo has unveiled its official sports site for the games at: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics.

You’ll also learn about FanCouver, an entertainment center Yahoo is sponsoring at the Olympics.

Access the Complete SEL Post

Word of a new iPhone app from Sunlight Labs/Foundation named Real Time Congress.

We want to make data about what’s happening inside Congress more available to the public. It isn’t just who your member of Congress is that matters, but also what they do. It’s also important to see what they’re reading and who they’re listening to, and what the process looks like.

Our new app, Real Time Congress does just that for the iPhone. It doesn’t care so much about who your rep is as it does what they do. Inside the app you can follow live floor proceedings of both chambers of Congress. You can get leaked CRS reports to see what your representatives are reading on the hill, and if you’re on Capitol Hill (or just an avid C-SPAN viewer), you can get a schedule of upcoming hearings from the House and the Senate.

Note: The CRS Reports listed are just some of what’s available sources like OpenCRS. Remember, the report you’re reading might not be the most current version of the report available. Be careful. That said, it’s still great to have some CRS reports iPhone ready.

Other Reports Available via Real Time Congress Come From:

+ GAO
+ OMB Memos
+ Democratic Policy Committee
+ Republic Policy Committee
+ Joint Committee on Taxation Reports
+ CBO
+ Statements of Administration Policy
+ Statements of Republican Policy

The News Section of the App Includes Headlines From:

+ Roll Call
+ Politico
+ Open Congress
+ The Page
+ New York Times
+ The Hill

Source: Sunlight Labs

FlightCaster takes data from multiple sources – some historical, some real-time – and crunches them in a database with a patent-pending algorithm and process. We use 10-years of flight data along with current and near-term forecasted conditions to establish likely delay factors and assess the impact they will have on your flight. Our results are based on predicted arrival delays – when you will pull into your arrival gate.

At the present time, the service only works for U.S. flights.

Using FlightCaster couldn’t be easier. Simply enter the flight info and click “FlightCast It.” You can access a specific flight by flight number and air carrier or by route. Here’s what a sample results page looks like.

The FAA has offered on-time and delay causes information for years but FlightCaster takes that info, combines it with more data and makes its prediction. In other words, it puts the government data to work.

Btw, FlightCaster is free to use.

Today, we learn that TrafficLand cameras will now be a part of Bing Maps.

From an Announcement (PDF):

TrafficLand developed a Microsoft Silverlight application for use within Bing Maps to display live traffic video from thousands of cameras showing real-time traffic, weather conditions and major news events. In addition, the TrafficLand application gives Bing Maps customers’ access to “Top Local Cameras.” This feature displays the most viewed cameras from TrafficLand.com, and serves as an indicator of important events (traffic/news/weather) that are of interest to customers.

+ To Access Bing Maps with TrafficLand, head to the Bing Maps Beta (You’ll Need To Have Silverlight Installed)

+ On the Left-Side of the Page, Look for an Arrow Pointing to the Right.

+ Click It

+ Select TrafficLand

+ TrafficLand Camera Icons will Be Visible Where They Are Available (Here’s a List of Cities)

+ Don’t Want to Access TrafficLand This Way? No Problem? Head to TrafficLand.com for Maps and a List of Available Cities.

The summer flick “Transformers 2,” most agreed, was terrible. So naturally, one wonders: how much better would the movie be playing on the 2.6-inch screen of a mobile phone?

On Tuesday, mSpot, a five-year-old mobile entertainment company based in Palo Alto, Calif., will resolve that pressing question with a new service making full-length feature movies available on demand to 40 million cellphone subscribers. Owners of 30 different high-end phones, including the iPhone, Palm Pre, BlackBerry Tour and Storm, on all four wireless carriers, will now be able to enter m.mSpot.com into their phone browser for the pleasure of streaming what the company promises will be an expanding roster of films.

The company says it has signed deals with Paramount Studios, Universal Pictures and the Weinstein Company. It also says it is in talks with the other major studios. Movies will be available a few weeks after they become available on DVD, just as the pay-per-view movies are.

The rental charge is $4.99 per film. The amount of time you have to view the film varies by film and studio. At the present time, the service is only available in the U.S.

We wonder when services that offer downloadable digital movies to library patrons will begin doing the same thing. It was just a few weeks ago when nwe posted the Overdrive will begin offering over the air downloads of digital content with an iPhone app is in the works.

Source: Bits Blog (NY Times)

CrowdEye, one of the new Twitter-based real-time search engines that has launched this year, has just upgraded its service with several new features that will remind you of … Google? It’s true. The service now includes a PageRank-like measurement system, a customizable home page (sorta like iGoogle), and the ability to perform site: searches like you would on Google.

Matt continues to review (with screen caps) the new features including:

+ Personalized Home Page
+ CrowdEye Rank
+ Site: Searches

Source: Search Engine Land

Surchur has been around for more than a year, but its recent facelift aims to take real-time search toward a new idea: real-time discovery.

[Snip]
…Surchur is going a lot further with its new home page. Founder Todd Hogan calls it a merger of real-time search with real-time discovery.

The home page is now positioned as a “Real-Time Board” that shows trending topics from Google Trends, Yahoo Buzz, Bing xRank, CNN Popular Stories, Twitter, and Technorati. This is the discovery aspect: There’s no need to search for what’s hot when Surchur is doing it already, and ranking what it finds from a number of sites. The hot terms are divided into two categories: Hot Topics, which is based on an overall score, and Catching Fire, which lists the fastest-growing terms. As you’d expect, there’s occasionally some overlap in the two categories.

Hogan says the Real-Time Board is updated every 20-50 minutes. For each term, it ranks the popularity on a scale of 1-10, with separate marks for how hot the term is on Twitter, in the blogosphere, and on Surchur itself. A fourth column reveals where Surchur found the hot term.

Access Surchur

Much more in the review (with screen caps) here.

Source: Search Engine Land

+ A location-aware homepage greets you with a real-time traffic summary for your city or most recently viewed city area

+ An enhanced easy-to-use interface gives you quick links to site features and content

+ New “Search Map” and “Browse Traffic” tabs allow you to easily find the information you need

+ One click “Save This Drive” buttons make it fast and easy to personalize your MyTraffic alerts

+ New, more detailed maps display color-coded traffic flow and new incident icons pinpoint hotspots

+ A real-time news ticker alerts you to severe incidents in your city

The NAVTEQ Traffic.com website is part of the NAVTEQ product family. And, as part of the new website design, you’ll see new links to NAVTEQ.com resources, as well as a new NAVTEQ Traffic.com logo.

In addition to new traffic features, you’ll find familiar traffic planning tools like “Check Your Drive Time” for traffic-informed alternate routes and driving directions.

To learn more about our new features, browse our Features overview webpage.

Direct to Traffic.com

Source: Traffic.com

See Also: Phone-Based Customized Traffic Reports at 1-866-My-Trafc

Orb Networks today announced the availability of Orb Live Events, a customizable iPhone application that enables any content owner to broadcast their live content on these popular handsets. Live Events provides content owners with a proven iPhone player, already approved and available in Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. In contrast to using other solutions, which can cost millions and take months to implement, a content provider or broadcaster can get up and running in as little 24 hours with the Orb solution.

Learn More About Orb Live Events

Source: Orb

Here’s Web 2.0 at its finest: A Yahoo programmer has combined his own project, Yahoo BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), with Twitter and Google App Engine to create a new way to determine what news is both new and important.

The service, called TweetNews, presents Yahoo news search results in a different way, using results from the same search on Twitter to determine what should get high placement, according to a blog posting about it by BOSS engineer Vik Singh.

Direct to Tweet News

Source: Webware

pack your social networks in one box

+ mulist

mulist is a web widget, where you can create any type of list you can think of

+ tweetAhead
Coming at the end of the month.

+ monitter

Real time, live twitter monitor and live twitter embed widget. It’s a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying.

Source: MoMB & FeedMyApp

21st Century lifestyles and business practices demand value delivery on the move and in many situations. An explosion in mobile services is being fuelled by the availability of powerful media-rich mobile devices and pervasive networking. Successful solutions in this high growth area will be those that can deliver ‘the right thing in the moment’. That is, high value services will be those that are tuned to the user’s situation and so deliver the best experience. Delivering the right thing in the moment changes the way content is consumed and the timing of its availability. It changes the use of space and time and so: the way the creative industries think about delivering content, the way advertisers think about just in time messaging and tracking; and the way information is accessed throughout an organization. This paper considers the implications for technology and application research. We describe the need for: an extensible and scaleable context framework with privacy, trust and security policies embedded; new modes of interface between the physical and the digital environment; and a programme that builds expertise amongst practitioners as the technology develops in its early stages.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 99 KB)

Source: HP Labs

The Los Angeles Fire Department has been the toast of the blogosphere in recent weeks after its efforts at using the micro-blogging site Twitter came to light.

Twitter allows users to post short (140 characters or less) notes. The fire department uses Twitter to post information about fires or other emergencies that it is responding to. These messages are then sent to users signed up to receive the information on their mobile devices.

Source: PC World

The PROFIT 100 table ranks the 100 fastest-growing companies in Canada by percentage revenue growth from 2002-07, while the Next 100 table features companies ranked from Nos. 101 to 200.

Sort tables by:
* Rank
* Alphabetical order
* Revenue 2002
* Revenue 2007
* Growth 2002-07 (%)
* Profit margin
* Employees (number of)
* Exports as % of sales

Source: Canadian Business

+ New Content on Ancestry.com

+ Australian Academic Press reaches preservation agreement with Portico

+ [NY] Times Reader Beta for Mac Coming This Month

Air travelers whose flights have been canceled or diverted can now greatly improve their chances of finding a seat on the next available flight thanks to a new flight availability service from FlightStats.com and mobile.flightstats.com. FlightStats’ availability service will show available seats by class and cabin on planes that are either at a nearby gate or will soon arrive, giving those who use the service a head start and reducing the risk of becoming stranded at an airport.

Direct to Both Services via web and mobile web:
http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightAvailability/flightAvailabilityByRoute.do

Mobile:
http://mobile.flightstats.com/go/Mobile/flightAvailabilityByNextAvailableFlight.do

Microsoft on Thursday plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams.

The new service’s software technology, called Clearflow, was developed over the last five years by a group of artificial-intelligence researchers at the company’s Microsoft Research laboratories. It is an ambitious attempt to apply machine-learning techniques to the problem of traffic congestion. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets.

Source: NY Times