Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Things aren’t looking good for Yahoo right now.  Google has pulled out of the advertising deal that looked so promising for both companies citing potential antitrust issues.  Now, CEO Jerry Yang is saying that the Microsoft buyout was probably the best thing that could have happened.  This coming even after a rumor saying that Microsoft and Yahoo “were in advanced talks to sell the company for between $17 and $19 a share,“ that Yahoo discredited.

Aside from turning down the Microsoft deal, Yahoo’s problems aren’t necessarily its own fault.  It is slowly rolling out the new Yahoo homepage to compete more against iGoogle.  It still owns Flickr, one of, if not the most popular photo hosting site.  Yahoo Answers seems to have grown quite a lot as well. 

MORE »

Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Google

Google launched the redesign of its popular iGoogle portal last week and the complaints began almost immediately.  Users are upset with the new look and furious that the redesigned interface was sprung on them with no prior announcement. 

The interface allows users to collect web “gadgets” such as map and weather apps, organize RSS feeds and aggregate info such as news, sports and GMail.  The revamped interface includes a new “canvas” view that allows gadgets to be displayed full screen and new navigation bar.  Find out what else has changed after the break.

MORE »

Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Websites, Google

Yahoo is making good on its promises to overhaul their site into a better, more accessible version of what it is now.  It’s looking to make the main page into something of a cross-breed between the MyYahoo page and the current main page.  It will essentially try to act as even more of a hub of your web browsing, with the ability to add bookmarks and web services like Gmail to the sidebar.  You apparently won’t even need to leave Yahoo to view the content of some of these pages, though it isn’t outlined how that’s possible.  Yahoo will also implement a system they call “Content Optimization Knowledge Engine” (hopefully COKE for short) that will be able to recommend sites to users based on past web activity.

MORE »

Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Websites

Google has just introduced two enhancements to its mobile service to provide users a faster mobile search experience through a fast loading mobile homepage and better iGoogle gadget management.

First, they updated their mobile homepage to make mobile access faster than before. When users visit google.com using their mobile browser, Google will cache the homepage so that when users bookmark the homepage, they will have quicker time when loading it during their next visit. This is possible no matter where users came from, whether through the mobile browser or through Google’s mobile search plug-in.

MORE »

Sections: Communications, Mobile, Web, Websites, Google

Yahoo! announced it’s new OnePlace service that will be live in Q2 of this year.  At it’s basic level, OnePlace allows you to access bookmarks and various links anywhere on any machine or mobile device. 

The example Yahoo! uses is a trip you are about to take.  You do research beforehand, noting some places you’d like to check out.  When you arrive at your destination, instead of relying on memory or a new search, you just look up those links you saved and you are good to go.

MORE »

Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Websites