Digsby is a wonderful application which allows you to manage your instant messaging, email notifications, & social networking applications from a single interface.

Instant Messaging

digsby is a multiprotocol IM client which allows you to chat with your friends or contact lists on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber.

Email Notifications

digsby is an email notification tool which alerts you of incoming email and allows you to perform actions such as ‘Delete’ or ‘Report Spam’ with just one click.

Social Networking

digsby is a social networking tool which alerts you of incoming messages or other events and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are doing.

Go ahead and give Digsby a spin.

Image source from Digsby.

Post from: EveryJoe

How about Some Digsby Love?

Nevertheless, I still wanted the deal to push through. Unfortunately I don’t have any yahoo shares. Too bad.

Post from: EveryJoe

What’s the Latest in Microsoft Yahoo Deal

I think there would be a lot of  mad Yahoo shareholders.

Check these out for more

eweek.com 

reuters.com

pcworld

So what do you think?    Did  Microsoft did the right thing?   Should  yahoo shareholders blame their board for this decision?  Did yahoo played too much hard to get?

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Withrew its $47.5 Billion Bid over Yahoo!

Apart from MS Office applications, Microsoft also included web based Exchange. This means companies no longer need to “host” these applications on site spending huge amounts on server, licenses, and electricity. This is truly Saas (Software As A Service).

Right now, Microsoft Office Live workspace is FREE. Yup, according to its FAQ, it may include advertising in the future (which is ok since they need to somehow monetize it).

Whatever happens, I think this new offering by Microsoft is going to be a big plus and a big win for all consumers.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Goes Head to Head with Google for Web Based Applications

There is no definite terms available yet as of now.

One thing for sure is that Yahoo has choices apart from the one given by Microsoft.  In fact even Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp also offered to buy  20%  of yahoo.

So far, based on comments and buzz over the internet,  some of Yahoo’s shareholders prefer the deal offered by Microsoft.

[via telegraph.co.uk ]

Post from: EveryJoe

AOL Joins the Game

From Bloomberg’s website it seems like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is proposing a partnership with Yahoo.

“Google CEO Eric Schmidt contacted Yang to suggest a partnership, the New York Times reported Feb. 4. A partnership with Mountain View, California-based Google may allow Yahoo to outsource its search service, shedding the costs of running its own search engine and sharing ad revenue with its larger rival.”

This is getting to be more interesting. I can’t pretty much say what would be Yahoo’s play this time. Could it be that Yahoo is testing if they can get more from Microsoft? If you think about it, who needs who? On the search front, I definitely believe that Microsoft needs Yahoo more than the other way around.

Now with regards to the move by Google CEO to suggest a partnership, it might cause worry since it will basically give rise to a search engine monopoly. That would definitely be a big issue.

Let’s get a feel of what others think about this issue. If you were Yahoo, what would you do and why? There’s no right or wrong answer here folks. Just go ahead and share your opinion.

Let’s start with my opinion on this. If I were a stockholder of Yahoo, I would definitely want to earn as much money immediately from this deal. If you look at Yahoo’s stock prices over the last 5 years, the highest so far was last Jan 6, 2006 which was 43.31 then it was primarily downhill from then.

A Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition would definitely be a good idea to give balance to the continually rising marketshare of Google. I don’t think Microsoft or Yahoo can do it by themselves separately but together, I definitely think there is a bigger chance.

How about you? What do you think?

[via bloomberg ]

Post from: EveryJoe

Yahoo Rejects Microsoft $44.6 Billion Offer

Among the 3 biggest search engines, Microsoft’s MSN.com/Live.com was the third. So far it simply can’t make a scratch to regain some of it’s search market share. Now that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is getting into Microsoft’s turf with free online applications rivalring MS Office, they need to do something about it.

Yahoo on the other hand is the biggest contender of Google but still lacks some of the technologies that google has. Google has been dominating the world of PPC with adsense and yahoo up until now hasn’t rolled out its international PPC platform to rival google’s adsense/adwords.

I think both Microsoft and Yahoo needed each other. This Microsoft + Yahoo move would produce a really big threat to Google. In fact, Google is starting to criticize the deal.

The balance of search engine dominance must be preserved. A lot of people were affected by “rules” being set by google specifically with regards to penalties imposed on sites sellling advertising. The whole link advertising economy was shattered by this move.

If the acquisition pushes through I just hope that it would not create another “monster”.

So what do you guys think? Are you in favor of the Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition?

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft + Yahoo vs Google

Yahoo’s score shows a 4 point improvement over last year while Google dropped 4 points. Microsoft improved 1 point to 75 and ASK with 75 points as well saw the most growth with 6 points:

“Ask.com is making huge inroads on the other competitors in the portal and search engine category,” said Larry Freed, Chief Executive of ForeSee Results, a closely-held company that provided the model for the report, in a prepared release.

Overall I was surprised by people satisfaction from Google. Surely the media hype around it had helped but still I thought it would rank lower than it did. Luckily for Google by next year’s survey people will forget about this slap in the face which it delivered to its users this week.

[via MARKETWATCH]

Post from: EveryJoe

Yahoo Delivers the Most Satisfaction

• What search-related data–including IP addresses, cookie IDs, user identities, and search terms–do you retain?
• How long do you retain those data?
• If you retain data for a limited period of time, is it completely deleted (in such a way that the data and backups cannot be recovered, even under court order) or is it anonymized instead?
• If the data are anonymized, exactly how do you do this?
• Do you do behavioral targeting, meaning showing ads to users based on their behavior across multiple queries?
• If you do, is there a way for users to opt out of behavioral targeting?
• Do you use knowledge about your users (such as ZIP code, e-mail address, gender, or birth date) obtained through user registration to deliver targeted ads on your search engine?
• Do you use knowledge about the identities of your users’ instant messaging or e-mail correspondents when using those services, or the contents of those communications, to deliver targeted ads on your search engine?

Interesting stuff…

Post from: EveryJoe

Engines Comment on their Own Privacy

Ever since Google Analytics became free, more and more webmasters have been counting on it as their sole stats provider and like any other free service out there, users start to realize that you always get “what you pay for” and in this case it is a very unreliable platform. As noted by Chrissy Icamina, web producer for FHM Philippines, “It’s quite inconvenient because my fellow producers and I file weekly reports of our statistics, and inaccurate statistics render our reports useless.”

I find it hard to believe that a world renown magazine relies on this platform for such reports, and am personally using two different ones (Google Analytics and a paid service) for my analytics, but these problems play directly to the hands of Microsoft and their new Gatineau platform.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Analytics Keeps Dissapointing