Thursday, December 09, 2004

Yahoo Local: Who Needs the Yellow Pages?. Some time ago I was briefed on Yahoo Local, and as the team was putting the service, which I think is quite good for a first effort, through its paces it became increasingly clear to me that were I a small business owner, I'd want the ability to edit my listing so I could make my business look more appealing. In fact, if Yahoo Local were sending me leads, I'd very much want to be able to buy my way into a better listing - perhaps post stellar reviews of my establishment, snappy come ons, the like. I asked Yahoo if and when they planned to launch such a service, and they gave me a rather tight lipped smile. Clearly, the answer was "as soon as possible." There was clearly the issue of conflicting with Overture's revenue stream, but it seems the company has worked through that. I noticed today (and in various press reports yesterday) that Yahoo has launched this feature. For $9.95 a month a business owner can create a "premium" listing. For free, they can update the current one. It's not quite what I imagined - the premium listing is pretty rigid in its design - but it's certainly a good start. I will be very interested to see how these listings do for Yahoo.... [John Battelle's Searchblog] 11:16:19 PM    comment []

SyndicateIQ. Have not had time to grok, but this new feed service plans to " manage, measure, and monetize syndicated content." From the home page: As more publishers, marketers, and enterprises utilize blogs and syndicated content (aka RSS) solutions, the importance of accurate measurement becomes paramount to justify continued investments. Any strategy to monetize syndicated content begins with analysis and data on who, how, and when the content is consumed including the distribution channels. Syndicate IQ experience and technology enables a set of robust, accurate, invaluable services allowing clients to evaluate and implement the best strategy for utilizing syndicated content. I can't tell who is behind this, but time will tell.... [John Battelle's Searchblog] 11:15:58 PM    comment []

CalDAV. Yesterday's item drew comment from the Chandler team. In email (quoted with permission) Jeffrey Harris wrote: Are you familiar with CalDAV? At OSAF we're very interested in getting a workable standard going for iCalendar over WebDAV, Lisa Dusseault has put time and energy into creating a draft standard. I've been working on a Python vCard/vCalendar parser (vobject.skyhouseconsulting.com) as a prelude to writing the iCalendar import/export code for Chandler. For the moment, we're just going to do the dumb publish-a-monolithic-calendar thing so we can do the baby steps of getting Chandler's calendar client interoperating. But in the long term, we want CalDAV! Lisa Dusseault, who is also an OSAFer and who has written a book on WebDAV, explains the motivation for CalDAV in a blog entry which says, in part: Calendaring interoperability has languished except for that burst of productivity back in 1998. People are locked into one calendar application depending on what server technology they have available, since there's no common calendar access standard. [Not Invented Here] Amen. It's a train wreck, in fact. ... [Jon's Radio] 11:15:12 PM    comment []