Yahoo! opens Panama ad canal

The new yahoo search market platform Panama has opened its service to new company advertisers. Yahoo’s goal with Panama is to make a more efficient and user friendly system for advertisers to maintain their accounts on the Web site. The plan also features test campaigns, organize budgets and track progress for advertisers.

The company has transformed thousands of search advertising customers in the U.S to a new platform on regional basis. Yahoo said after this changeover in U.S. it would begin to roll out the plan in other countries as well.

Despite a falling NASDAQ on Tuesday, Yahoo! shares closed up 1% at $26.75 and the stock had traded between $22.65 to $43.66 in the last 52 weeks.

A primary feature of Panama has Yahoo! ranking advertisers based on their “quality score” with their maximum keyword bid. Quality is normally based on factors like click-through rates.

IBM and Yahoo Try to Challenge Google

IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are partnering to offer a free data search tool for businesses; it is an idiosyncratic move challenging Google Inc. and also the other search specialist in this blooming market.

More broadly, though, Yahoo and IBM expect their partnership will shake up the field of “enterprise search”, in this biggest providers such as, Autonomy Corp. and Norway-based FAST are seeing forays from business software kings such as Microsoft Corp. Oracle Corp. and SAP AG.

Yahoo would focus on the Web search aspect of the equation and not on the venture enterprise search. Indeed Yahoo is only interested in using the IBM deal to make a stronger brand in business environments and get people using Yahoo Web search at work more often.

Google seeking more investment in S. Korea

Google has not invested much in South Korea till date, so it would expand its presence there through differentiation in niche markets such as mobile and online ad search.

Korea is among the top 10 Internet markets in the world, and Google is committed to growing its investment in this market. The company goes on to hire its research and development center and sales operations in the Seoul for development of new Korean products and extend business relationships countrywide. The move comes among rising efforts by Google to expand its company in South Korea.

Google goes open source with Web Toolkit

Google has recently released the source code for its Web Toolkit, as it hope to attract more and more developers to its technologies and prompt new Web 2.0 applications.

The current Java based Web Toolkit version 1.3, especially designed to easy the process of building AJAX based Web apps, which work efficiently in different browsers. Google had used the elements to build some of its own product such as Gmail and Calendar. Google developers write applications in Java, and GWT converts them into JavaScript and HTML for further deployment.

The latest GWT release, 1.3 is equal to 1.2, save for its source code being accessible a strategy Google adopted intentionally to avoid confusing the existing GWT user base.

Nokia mobile phones with Yahoo messenger

Nokia and Yahoo had extended their partnership to offer Yahoo’s branded service with Yahoo Mail and Messenger on Nokia’s wide range of mobile phone operating on the Series 40 platform. Yahoo service would now be available on Nokia 6300, Nokia 5300 XpressMusic and Nokia 5200.

Further these services has the ability to synchronize Yahoo’s contacts, tasks and calendar on the PC and phone would be added to an even huge range of Nokia’s Series 40 devices. These platforms enable a broad range of applications and features, plus messaging, browsing, music and video standards as well as personal information management.

Google to Put You to the Test?

Another Google service had been marked; it would issue tests and exams to students. This service will quiz prospective job candidates. Or it might do something else as well. But however screenshots of Google Online Assessments had proved that the service is in fact real.

Google Online Assessments site had been taken down now, and Google Press Center had been silent all the day, so the service apparently isn’t ready to go public yet. Anyhow these screenshot and those CSS class names have started up some very interesting possibilities.

Google Checkout opens up to other countries

Now Google’s Checkout service had been opened up to many other countries than United States. Regardless of where you reside, you could still purchase items with Google Checkout. Your account can be upgraded even if you do not stay in United States. The only remaining part that Google has to do is to allow global merchants as well.

Microsoft breathing new life into MSN

Microsoft has pushed its online services as a key to the future of Microsoft; they’ve almost always meant Microsoft’s “Live” services.

MSN.com now attracts 465 million users a month, at the same time; Microsoft is also planning to position MSN “as the best partner for current media companies”

Mr. Steve Berkowitz, Microsoft’s Senior Vice President of Online Services, had made few interesting observations about MSN.

Microsoft groups its Windows Live services into three categories:
1. Search/Inform
2. Communications/Connect
3. And Protect

Microsoft’s eventual goal with its Live.com is to flesh it out with its other Windows Live services, like Mail, Messenger and Spaces.

Microsoft talks about two kinds of search: Destination and Convenience. It believes it has change to make inroads in the convenience search space.

Microsoft further plans is to integrate its core Live Services into few other available Microsoft products, such as Xbox.

Berkowitz says that Microsoft’s aim will be to popper users in the “sticky apps and experiences”, which would make them less inclined to veer outside the Microsoft fence.

Google goes back to school

Google Inc., a company identical with searching the Internet hopes to define far more of the world’s computing experience with a helping hand for school kids.

It is giving an online word processor, spreadsheet and few other programs, which could perform tasks that are usually handled by desktop software. This program automatically store all in Google’s vast data centers so that the information could be seen on any Internet connected computer.

As it tries to escort in a new era in computing, Google is promoting its software applications in classrooms from playgroup to high school.

Google’s partnerships with Egypt’s Education Authorities

Google had announced that it is giving Egypt’s Ministry of Higher Education the ability to give the university’s 3 million students and Ministry of Education’s 8 million fresh students with Google’s applications for email, instant-messaging, and calendar.

The hosted communications services, Gmail, Google Talk would be free of charge to all 11 million students across the region from Dec 3rd, 2006. It gives benefits to students in Egypt, including 2 gigabytes of email storage per student, good search capabilities to locate important messages, spam filtering, and calendars, which can be easily shared with friends and across the groups.