Archive for January, 2008

Wikia Search joins Mahalo.com in the race to be the Web 2.0 generation search engine28th January, 2008

The advent of 2008 brings with it the promise of serious developments in the field of internet search provision. Could this possibly be the year that Google becomes old news?

…Well the answer is; probably not, though a revolution is definitely brewing if you ask Jimmy Wales (creator of Wikipedia), who recently announced the launch of his next big project: Wikia Search - a new search tool offering only 100% relevant, spam free, verified results. Along with Mahalo.com (a similar search tool launched a few months earlier), Wikia Search is basically an attempt to build a perfect search engine, immune to error or mis-interpretation of content. The main point lies in the fact that Wikia Search is not strictly a search ‘engine’ but…

Continue Reading »

Scrabulous in T-R-O-U-B-L-E, plus; the future of Facebook Platform?20th January, 2008

This week brings bad news indeed for one of Facebook’s most high profile third-party developed applications; the popular Scrabulous app. Designed by two Indian brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla in 2006, Scrabulous has now become Facebook’s ninth most popular application, with 2.3 million total users, 500,000 of whom play daily. Its addictive and simple version of the popular board game Scrabble offers users the chance to compete with friends and colleagues, and earns the brothers approximately $25,000 per month from advertising revenue.

However this success has not gone unnoticed by the toy-making giants Hasbro and Mattel, who both own rights to the Scrabble game format and now, rather predictably, are keen to capitalise on the financial potential of Scrabulous. A deal…

Continue Reading »

Mp3-playing personal tasers? Canine GPS? It’s time for this year’s CES…16th January, 2008

Last week Las Vegas once again hosted the annual International Consumer Electronics Show. This year’s event, stronger than ever, boasted more than 20,000 new gadgets, from over 2,700 different companies, showcasing the latest work from a global industry. Many of these new technologies are still some way off general public release, but all hope one day to establish themselves as worldwide consumer electronics must-haves. Still, not all of them are exactly the iPhones of tomorrow, so here is a select rundown of some of this years more exciting and bizarre highlights…

Slacker Media Player - Released in the US at the end of this month is a new portable media player from Slacker. What distinguishes the Slacker model from its many…

Continue Reading »