A better text input experience may be coming to Android.  Late last week, Google announced that it has acquired BlindType, a company that specializes in touch typing software for mobile devices. The BlindType system aims to solve all the problems brought on by small screens, larger fingers, and unsteady hands.  According to the company, it "[c]onstantly adjusts to the user's 'perceived' keyboard and typing style." This doesn't involve inflating commonly used characters to cartoonish ...

Touch screen technology startup, BlindType, announces that they have been acquired by Google. If you are unfamiliar with BlindType, the short and long of it is that you are suppose to be able to type anywhere on your touchscreen device and the technology will KNOW what you are trying to say and automatically correct it [...]Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.Touch Screen Startup, BlindType, Acquired by Google

Life is all about the lessons; the things we figure out through trial and error along the way. At its core link building is a simple concept; get people to link to a web site. But the actual task of making that happen can be somewhat epic. In my years of doing this work, I’ve [...]Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.3 Things Link Building has Taught Me about Life & Vice Versa

Verizon Wireless reportedly intends to pay millions of dollars in customer refunds to customers who were charged for unintended web access and/or data usage. Amounts vary by source. The Wall Street Journal pegs the total at about $50 million. Some have the total as high as $90 million. Verizon says the charges occurred as a result of software on some phones, but apparently only decided to issue the refunds after the FCC started poking around. Matthew Lasar at Ars Technica quotes a statement from ...

There are three key reasons to go to SES Chicago 2010. Actually, there are more than three reasons to attend the leading search and social marketing event this year, but let's start with the top ones that were identified in a Tradeshow Week survey conducted last year, entitled, "The Value of Attending Conventions & Tradeshows in a Recession."Click to read the rest of this post...

LinkedIn has launched a new beta product called Career Explorer, aimed at college graduates. "Students now have the ability to explore different career paths based on their school, level of education, and desired industry," explains LinkedIn's DJ Patil. "In addition to visualizing various career paths, they'll also be able to find relevant job opportunities, top companies, estimated salary ranges as well as the people in their network who can get them there." The tool provides recommendations ...

The Social Network led the box office over the weekend. The film, which opened on Friday, took in $23 million, opening in 2,771 theaters, according to BoxOfficeMojo.  The film grossed more than doubled the number 2, 3, and 4 movies - Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and The Town. There were only two other major releases to open at the same time: Case 39 and Let Me In. These both brought in only just over $5 million a piece.  Catfish, the ...

Here are the columns and news stories for the week of Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, as reported by the Search Engine Watch team of experts. SEM Basics 5 Common Mistakes Bloggers Make by Bas van den Beld Here's how you can avoid common blunders when writing blog posts and ensure what you write benefits your readers.Click to read the rest of this post...

News broke yesterday that Microsoft was suing Motorola for Android-related patent infringements. Microsoft said in a blog post that its patents cover a range of software functions used by Android devices (presumably this would apply to the iPhone as well): The Microsoft innovations at issue in this case help make smartphones “smart.”  Indeed, our patents [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***

I reload web pages in FireFox constantly: usually when adding some tweaks to the page code and checking how it looks, also when a page won’t load or loads improperly (with broken design or images). I am sure you reload a lot as well: so here’s my detailed guide on how to optimize, enhance and [...]Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.How to Optimize, Enhance and Supercharge Reloading Web Pages in FireFox

It’s been only 7 weeks since we’ve launched the Google Analytics Management API and we’ve heard a lot of great feedback. Thanks! Since Python is one of our more popular languages, we’ve updated the Google Analytics Python Client Library to access all 5 feeds of the Management API. Now it’s easier than ever to get your configuration data from the API. Awesome. To show you how simple it is to use the library, here is an example which returns all the goal names for a ...

For reasons that remain unknown - and are quite hard to guess at, for that matter - Facebook has split its private market stock.  More specifically, the company announced this afternoon that it's conducting a 5-for-1 split. If Facebook were going public, this would make it easier for the average investor to buy a share.  But rumors indicate the per-share price is only around $80, anyway, and Peter Thiel pretty much promised just this week that Facebook won't go public before ...

New research from the NPD Group indicates that nearly 90% of initial iPad sales are incremental and are not cannibalizing the PC market.  "Contrary to popular belief, the iPad isn't causing cannibalization in the PC market because iPad owners don't exhibit the same buying and ownership patterns as the typical consumer electronics customer," the group says.  NPD found that only 13%t of iPad owners surveyed bought an iPad instead of a PC, while 24% replaced a planned e-reader purchase ...

Bing’s answer to Google Trends, xRank, is officially no more.  The search service that was launched in 2007 has been on the back-burner, so to speak, since Microsoft Live Search became Bing. xRank was described as “a cultural snapshot of who’s hot and who’s not!” and highlighted what the hottest search queries of the moment [...]Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.Bing Announces the Death of xRank.

Feed the Children is asking people to help launch a social media campaign for National Hunger Awareness Month via its “Take Action” promotion. People can take 10 Take 10 minutes to join and follow Feed The Children's Facebook and Twitter accounts, give $10 to help feed children and families, and tell 10 friends. "It is so easy to make a difference in a child's life with the click of a mouse," said Tony Sellars, spokesperson for Feed The Children. "There is no better time than ...

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Pulls Dead Body Images From Street View Brazil Google has removed Street View images in Brazil that showed dead bodies on local streets. One image showed a partly-covered body lying on the side [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***

Upon the announcement of Google Instant, the company said that they would be rolling out the feature to mobile and browsers (search boxes and Chrome Omnibox) in the next few months. We asked Google how it would work with the browser, and they told us, "It's premature for us to get into details about future implementations." We can now see how it works, thanks to a beta developer release, which allows you to enable it. "Just launch your beta/dev/canary release, type about:labs, enable Instant, ...

Two weeks ago, the CFO of the Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft hinted something dramatic would happen.  Now it has: Microsoft announced this afternoon that it's suing Motorola over nine (alleged) Android patent infringements. Let's dive straight into the official version of events.  Microsoft said in a statement, "Microsoft filed an action today in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola, Inc. for ...

Google has released a new version of Car Home for Android, aimed at making customization easier and information retrieval faster. Users can customize shortcuts for one-touch access to apps and info on the phone. You can now also set your own wallpaper for the app and customize the color of the shortcut icons. Car Home lets users access apps like GPS, voice-activated commands, contacts, etc. while placed in a car dock. Another new feature is the ability to automatically switch to Car Home when your ...

Touting it's stability, security, and speed, Google fully launched it's URL shortener, goo.gl, yesterday. First introduced last December, the new website turns long URLs into short URLs (e.g., http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/100930-143738 becomes goo.gl/p7th), a popular way of sharing links on social media sites like Twitter. So how might goo.gl influence SEO, search, and even Google's algorithm? Click to read the rest of this post...