The kids today have no idea what’s going on the world. Snack culture has made them all a bunch of zombies, but don’t worry The New York Times has launched a new Facebook app that will test their news knowledge and drive traffic back to the Times site where the kids can be properly educated.

Or at least that seems to be thinking here. The pretty simple new Facebook application from the Times is a daily five question quiz with selections chosen by the New York Times editorial staff.

If you add the application to your Facebook page you’ll be assigned a “Times IQ,” a score that shows how up-to-date you are with what’s goings on in the world. Or at least how up to date you are with what the editors of the New York Times think is going on the world.

Continue Reading “Old Gray Lady Joins Facebook” »

Google has shut down Facebook Secrets, the Blogger blog that gained notoriety when the anonymous author posted code from the recent Facebook server snafu. The mysterious owner of Facebook Secrets is not going down without a fight, however. S/he has posted a new site called Facebook Secrets Again, though the Facebook code is not included.

Instead there are two DMCA notices from Google. The second, which appears to be a response to some sort of challenge about the site removal, reads:

As mentioned in our previous email, we work with a third party to post DMCA notices we receive. The notice we received because of the content on your site can be found here (once the notice has been posted):

http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=3836

We have had to remove the content mentioned in the complaint from your blog. If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits.

Continue Reading “Facebook DMCA Notices Silence Digg and Google” »

Yahoo customer satisfaction topped Google for the first time ever according to new figures from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The ACSI, which is run out of the University of Michigan, found that Yahoo’s search portal topped the field for the first time, gaining almost four percent over last year while Google fell roughly the same amount.

Other interesting tidbits from the survey include Ask which tops Microsoft, though rather confusingly ranks just below “all others.” Also worth noting is that Alta Vista, the one time leader of search engine traffic is no longer reported in the ACSI index, though the last time it was, in 2004, it ranked dead last.

According to ASCI the means of measuring customer satisfaction is a “set of causal equations that link customer expectations, perceived quality, and perceived value to customer satisfaction. Satisfaction, in turn, is linked to key outcomes, defined as customer complaints and customer loyalty.”

Continue Reading “Yahoo Trumps Google In Customer Satisfaction Survey” »

The New York Times reports that both Google and Microsoft may soon be entering the online health care market. Will there be a link to “Google Health” at the top of the company’s home page? According to the Times, the project is still an internal prototype and unlikely to be available even as a beta for some time.

The article does, however, offer a tantalizing glimpse at what Google Health could look like:

A presentation of screen images from the prototype ??? which two people who received it showed to a reporter ??? then has 17 other Web pages including a “health profile” for medications, conditions and allergies; a personalized “health guide” for suggested treatments, drug interactions and diet and exercise regimens; pages for receiving reminder messages to get prescription refills or visit a doctor; and directories of nearby doctors.

Google executives would not comment on the prototype, other than to say the company plans to experiment and see what people want. “We’ll make mistakes and it will be a long-range march,” said Adam Bosworth, a vice president of engineering and leader of the health team. “But it’s also true that some of what we’re doing is expensive, and for Google it’s not.”

Continue Reading “Google And Microsoft Looking To Change Health Care” »

With a nod to rhyming poets everywhere, Microsoft has unveiled Windows Live SkyDrive, a new online hard drive storage service. Previously known as Windows Live Folders, the service was first announced earlier this summer as a private beta.

Today’s announcement doesn’t remove the beta label, but the service is now open to the public. And the new SkyDrive isn’t just about the name change, there’s also a revamped UI and some new features as well. Among the changes are support for drag-and-drop file uploads to ease batch transfers, the addition of a “Also on SkyDrive” which shows the folders of other Skydrive users that you’ve browsed and a new embed option for sharing files on your blog or website — similar in function to Zoho’s new Viewer, which we reviewed yesterday.

But SkyDrive isn’t really a Zoho Viewer competitor, rather it competes with the likes of Omnidrive, Box, Google’s new paid options and others in what is already a crowded market.

Continue Reading “Microsoft SkyDrive Offers Online Document Storage Options” »