Mike Blumenthal

Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative, is at the moment vaporware, more ideas and flows charts than a product. Perhaps the reason for its yet unfinished status is that the office is but a corner table at a cafe in Freeport, ME. Or at least according to the Google PlusBox, that is the case. When …

Dr. Larry Cornett on Universal & Blended Search – Manoj Jasra, WebProNews A brief but interesting interview with Yahoo and how they view universal search and how they plan to gain leverage in the search market. Argentina Finally has Street Maps – Google Maps Mania A long time in coming but Argentina’s major cities now have …

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Tivo was now offering up the ability to order a Domino’s Pizza from your couch. Apparently the pizza offer pops up if you fast forward thru a Domino’s advertisement (that will teach you). You can choose pickup or home delivery via a simple pop up screen. If you …

Some of us are Map junkies. Now we can have all Maps all the time. You can experience your fix without needing to leave whatever site you are browsing at the moment with a newly announced Google Maps gadget for use on the  Google Toolbar 5 (for Internet Explorer or Firefox). The gadget sits neatly tucked away until you click on …

My family lives out in the country. There are deer, turkey and bears wandering through our front yard. Even though we live in the boonies we are only 10 minutes from my office in Olean, 90 minutes from Buffalo, 3 hours from Toronto and only 5.5 hours from NY City. We have the best of …

Update 11/17/08 9:00 pm: The BBC has chimed in with an excellent summary of the issues at in the battle between the OS and Google. Google apparently called the BBC: to stress that they believe Ordnance Survey has misrepresented its terms and conditions. They say that when we hand over data to Google Maps, they are …

According to Wired.com, Anthony Michaels received an email last December from Classmates.com advising him that his former classmates were trying to contact him. He proceeded to upgrade to the premium Classmates.com  membership so that he might contact his long lost school mates. But Michaels learned that no one that he knew was actually trying to contact …

Why Wikipedia Accuracy Won’t Cut It For Google Local – Miriam Ellis, Searchengineguide.com A great summary of the contradictions that Google Maps faces between its supposedly wiki nature and the reality of local business listings. Google, by not prioritizing record accuracy in Local, has created a less than ideal platform for local in many ways. Read …

The nearby.org.uk blog has a good piece on the new Google Maps API Terms of Service agreement: Basically its laid out pretty clearly (see section 11.1) that if you use the API to display *your* data, then you grant Google a irrevocable licence to do as it sees fit with your data.  Sure it says “You retain copyright …