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JUNE 2005
Welcome to the Rockbridge Global
Village, Inc. Newsletter. We have selectively found
information and articles that may be of interest to our
customers. We hope that you find
information and topics within this newsletter interesting
and useful.
Topics in this newsletter:
Satisfied Online Shoppers Adding Up
Ask Jeves Zooms in on Relevance
Yahoo Movies Get Personal
Legislation Aims to Stop Muni Wi Fi
McAfee Buys Wireless Security
Ask Jeves Zooms in on Relevance
May 26, 2005 By Susan Kuchinskas
Ask Jeeves (Quote,
Chart)
unleashed Zoom, a related-search tool to help searchers
narrow or expand the topic, and Web Answers, which
provides answers to explicit or implicit questions.
Two new features that went live on Ask Jeeves reflect
enhancements of the search service's core technology as
well as a push to help users find relevant results faster.
Zoom is a navigation tool that appears to the right of
search results, letting the user zoom in or out on the
concept. When appropriate, it lists topic suggestions
appear in three categories: Narrow Your Search, Expand
Your Search and Related Names.
"For us, related topics is second-most used
product on our site, so it's really important to us to
make the product better," said Ask Jeeves product
manager Young Mi Chun.
Zoom uses the clustering ability of the company's Teoma
search technology, which breaks the Web into
"communities" of topics. The technology
identifies relationships between the communities, and then
groups them conceptually.
For example, when a searcher types in an ambiguous word
like Bush, if natural search results relating to the U.S.
president aren't what's wanted, Zoom can help narrow the
search to information about the band, song lyrics, the
White House and something else.
On the other hand, the searcher could widen the topical
net to include Iraq, the American flag or the Republican
party. Since there is plenty of Web material showing this
word is a name, Jeeves also returns related names, in this
case including Kerry, Saddam and Clinton.
Other search providers, including Vivisimo and Grokker,
also group search results by topic. (Grokker delivers
results in graphical maps rather than lists.) In January,
AOL revamped
its search, licensing Vivisimo's tech to provide a list of
topic groups to the side of natural results.
Chun said that Ask Jeeves communities differ from
Vivisimo's clusters because Jeeves analyzes the contents
of Web pages to identify concepts, while Vivisimo uses
keyword frequency to name its clusters.
Search rival Yahoo (Quote,
Chart)
also offers related topics. In the Raleigh search, Yahoo
offers a list of associated topics, such as Raleigh bikes
and Raleigh chopper, at the very top of the results,
followed by two sponsored results. Google Suggest, still
in beta, automatically fills in a list of expanded queries
that appear in below the query box, using a predictive
text method. Users can scroll down through the list to
find the town, the bikes, etc. AOL offers a similar
feature in its search.
The other search enhancement is Web Answers, which aims
to provide direct answers to questions contained in
queries, rather than supplying lists of links to pages on
which the answer might be found. Jeeves already offers
Smart Answers, which are pulled from third-party
structured data sources. Web Answers are culled from the
Web itself.
"With our Smart Answer technology, we're finding
partners and content that is very structured," said
product manager Ryan Massie. "Web Answers uses our
knowledge of the Web to find answers from the communities
Teoma is building and from Web content. It identifies that
a snippet is the mostly answer to the question and brings
you back the answer to the query."
In addition to the Web Answer the technology identifies
as most relevant, a link to more Web Answers is included
directly to the right.
Web Answers may be triggered by questions or words such
as who or where, as well as by superlatives such as
longest or deadliest. Like Smart Answers, when the
automated technology identifies a potential Web Answer,
it's labeled as such and presented as the top organic
search result. In company tests, Web Answers improved the
click-through rate on the top search result by over 200
percent, indicating that the top result was the most
relevant.
"They started off with the promise that you could
ask a question and get an answer," said Chris
Sherman, editor of SearchDay, which is owned by the same
corporation as internetnews.com. "They've
finally realized that vision in a true technical
sense."
It's unclear, however, how big a role search technology
plays in attracting users. According to Internet market
research company Nielsen NetRatings, in March 2005 Ask
Jeeves was a distant fifth in share of total searches,
handling just 1.8 percent.
"I think Jeeves users are a lot like Apple (Quote,
Chart)
users," Sherman said. "They're not in the
majority, but they tend to be very loyal." Still, he
said, the new functions are genuinely useful. "Google
doesn't offer this; Yahoo doesn't offer this. It might
encourage some people to try Jeeves."
There's another reason Jeeves needs to highlight
concepts: Often, natural search results are all but
obscured by sponsored links, which appear at the head,
sometimes pushing all organic result off the screen.
"They've acknowledged the problem, and they're
grappling with it," Sherman said, adding that the
pending acquisition
of the search provider by IAC/InterActive Corp. could lead
to more changes. Said Sherman, "I think the intent is
to build Jeeves into a true contender."
Legislation Aims to Stop Muni Wi Fi
June 3, 2005 By Roy Mark
U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) wants
to take state and local governments out of the broadband
business. It's for their own good, the former Southwestern
Bell executive said.
Under the terms of the Preserving
Innovation in Telecom Act (H.R. 2726) introduced by
Sessions, state and local governments would be prohibited
from offering telecommunications, telecommunications
services, information services or cable service in any
geographic area in which a private entity is already
offering a substantially similar service.
Governments already offering telecom
services would be grandfathered under Sessions'
legislation. The bill also provides that in markets where
private entities fail to offer service, municipal
governments would be permitted to build networks and offer
service.
"Rather than investing in vital
public works projects, some local and state governments
are investing their limited funds into telecommunications
projects and putting taxpayer dollars at risk," the
five-term congressman from Dallas said in a statement.
"By choosing to invest their limited resources in
telecommunications infrastructures, municipal governments
often duplicate services already provided by a private
entity."
Gina Vaughn, Sessions' communications
director, told internetnews.com in an e-mail
response, "We believe ... that under normal
circumstances private providers are the ones with
resources at their disposal to make the upgrades that come
with continually evolving technology."
She added, "Municipal governments,
with the many public works demands they face, are not in
an ideal situation to be pouring money into continued
telecom infrastructure updates."
Over the last several years, numerous
cities, most notably Philadelphia, have considered
launching their own wireless networks in direct
competition with local providers. Republicans in
particular are opposed to cities competing with private
enterprise.
Earlier this week, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
signed a law similar to Sessions' national proposal
prohibiting Florida cities from offering broadband if
competitive services already exist.
Pennsylvania pushed through laws in
December restricting municipal-backed broadband services,
with Philadelphia receiving an exemption from the new law.
The city plans to sell its wireless broadband service to
homes and businesses, while providing free access in
public spaces.
"My goal in introducing this
legislation is to discourage municipal governments from
wasting taxpayer funds on building duplicative
infrastructure, while at the same time encouraging private
companies to offer continually innovating service in
underserved areas by removing the specter of government
competition," Sessions said.
Before winning election to Congress,
Sessions spent more than 16 years at the Bell Labs in New
Jersey, and served as a Southwestern Bell district manager
for marketing in Dallas.
McAfee Buys Wireless Security
June 2, 2005 By Tim Gray
Security software vendor McAfee (Quote,
Chart)
gave its credentials in the Wi-Fi security market a boost
on Thursday with the acquisition of Wireless Security.
The Calif.-based Wireless Security already provides
McAfee with the scanning technology it offers free to
consumers. The service allows users to check their
wireless connections and hardware to see if intruders have
tried to breach their wireless connection points.
"The world we live in has become increasingly
wireless, yet most users do not have the proper security
enabled and additional protection installed to secure
their wireless networks," George Samenuk, Chairman
and CEO of McAfee, said in a statement. "This
acquisition builds on our existing security technology and
enables us to further protect the growing wireless
environment."
Wireless Security's technology will be bundled with
McAfee's core products, including its Internet Security
Suite, VirusScan and Personal Firewall, according to
McAfee.
The move is also expected to increase the number of
security services that McAfee can now offer through its
reseller channel.
"McAfee is committed to providing innovative,
comprehensive solutions that protect customers from
security threats at all access points," Samenuk said.
Research firm IDC has predicted the worldwide adoption
of wireless access points will continue to increase. In
the next four years, IDC researchers say, these access
points will get a 36 percent bounce annually.
The prime factors credited with this growth include a
higher share of households with multiple computers,
increased broadband access, and more users adopting
notebook computers rather than desktops.
McAfee said a round of internal McAfee testing showed
that, of 60,000 opt-in wireless networks, 47.9 percent
were unprotected.
Wireless Security's technology already supports WEP and
WPA-PSK, as well as nearly 100 percent of network cards,
said McAfee. It also supports the most popular routers
from the large vendors such as Linksys, D-Link and Netgear,
the company said.
The technology, which will be developed by McAfee, is
expected to launch as a consumer product in the fall. The
company also plans to integrate the technology into the
small business Managed VirusScan solution to provide
comprehensive protection for the business user that is
automatically delivered and managed to protect against
evolving threats.
McAfee also announced a partnership with Bitfone to
deliver security protection for mobile phones over the
air.
According to McAfee, Bitfone will offer an embedded
McAfee scanning engine as part of its device management
solution, allowing mobile operators to detect, recover
from and prevent security threats to mobile phone software
from viruses, worms, auto-dialers and spyware.
"There is no doubt that mobile security will
become a real issue with monetary consequences for
operators and enterprises alike," Victor Kouznetsov,
senior vice president of mobile security solutions at
McAfee, said in a statement.
"By partnering with Bitfone, we can embed our
scanning engine into a broad base of OTA-enabled devices,
laying the groundwork for operators to implement an active
threat-management strategy using our proven security
engine with Bitfone's leading mobile device-management
solutions," he said.
Rockbridge Global Village, Inc.
312 S. Main Street
Lexington, VA 24450
540-463-4451
www.rockbridge.net
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