Mike Blumenthal

Update 11:30 8/2- I just completed a phone conversation with the CEO of TechPros who noted that they had the listings removed. The interview will be posted later today. An alert reader, earlpearl, has noted that as of today at 6:30, Google had removed the offending listings from Google MapsThe event brought several issues with …

In the past there have been tales of skullduggery (see: Beware: Competitor Hijacks Google Local Business Listing? Maybe, Maybe Not!) at Google Maps which have proven to be false. It appeared that Google Map’s verification system was robust and while there may have been algorhytmic problems, there had been no reports of abuse….until recently. It …

The new Street View has once again raised the spectre of privacy concerns. I have trouble worrying about photos invading my privacy. I try not to walk around in public naked. On the other hand there has been an informative and provocative discussion at the Goog-411 Google Group about the privacy implications of Goog-411 and …

Google Maps launches Street View, Greg Sadetsky has some interesting technical background on the new street view feature. it appears that 5 cities are available: Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco with more likely to appear shortly. The underlying images are supplied by Immersive Media. Th

Keyword research tips for Local, Mike The Internet Guy Google Local for Mobile Patent Applications, SEO By The Sea Google makes neighborhood search easier than the competition, Ars Technica

At the Google LatLong blog, Google announced that Maps now offered a neighborhood search capability. From the post: You can now do searches such as bagels upper east side new york and restaurants, over the rhine, cincinnati on Google Maps. Additionally, this capability allows you to do city-level searches where the city is uniquely named, …

I was sitting at my daughter’s soccer match yesterday and slightly bored, I started to play with the browser on my old Nokia 3600 cell phone. I explored MSN (it didn’t work) and the Yahoo interface (not bad) but I was struck by the incredible improvement to the speed and quality of the interface to …

This just in from the San Jose Mercury News: Google aims for 3D World From the article:The Mercury News has learned that Google has quietly licensed the sensing technology developed by a team of Stanford University students that enabled Stanley, a Volkswagon Touareg R5, to win the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge…. The technology will enable …

Interesting Forum conversation on the impact of the Huge Expansion of the Google Onebox at SEORefugee. Local businesses in Universal search from Google LatLong. Note the comment: We’re excited about this first step in the integration of local results in Universal search and will continue to let you know about developments in this area over …