Following previous improvements made to Yahoo Image search in March, Yahoo decided to further improve it by adding a new function which allows searcher to select a picture free from copyright.

The principal is simple, when you are looking for a picture on Yahoo a filter bar shows up with different options. You can select a picture by size, colour, from Flickr or not, all of these option are very classic, however Yahoo! includes a re-use option. When you select this new option you have two more different choices; either select image free to reuse for commercial reasons or the one that can be modified.

Yahoo! Image Search - Reuse

The Yahoo! filter uses a Creative Commons license in order to select the copyright free images.

My question is what stops a user using a not copyright free image from a third party element and post the picture under a Creative Commons license…

Anyway, this new function of Yahoo! Search Image is pretty interesting and for once different from Google!

Last tuesday the Vatican launched its new website Pope2you.net for the 43rd World Communications Day. This new website offers the user a bunch of Social media applications such as iPhone and Facebook applications, video and blog.

Pope2You Website

The idea from the Catholic Church is to reach young people and change the image of the Church. Pope2You is more a portal for the different online applications.

Unfortunately the Facebook application wasn’t found by Facebook when I tried it… not a very good sign.

WikiCath (probably Wikipedia Catholic? ) is more or less a blog (or at least this is what I understand of it). In the business world it would be the company blog. It is a good idea and makes it easier to follow the news from the Vatican.

WikiCath

The iPhone application is a nice application which allows you to receive news, pictures and video from the Pope (Vatican). There is not much to say about it, except that this application does the job!

iphone Pope2You

And finally the YouTube Channel which is pretty well customised with links to the different Vatican websites. Once again nothing new here but nothing is missing as well.

Youtube Pope2You

This new campaign updates the Vatican’s online presence. At the end of the day the Vatican was not trying to be original or revolutionise the web but they have done a lot better job at it than most of the companies online…

Anyway, all these applications definitely facilitate communications with the Catholic Church and this is a pretty good idea for the 43rd World Communications Day

Yesterday, Google updated the Google Suggest search box. Google Suggest proposes or completes a keyword when someone is searching on Google. The two most interesting development are the ‘Navigational suggestions’ and ‘Sponsored links in suggestions’

Navigational suggestion not only proposes a keyword to you but also provides a direct link to a website. For example, if you enter ‘cra’ in Google search box, Google will put forward a link to Craigslist.

Navigational suggestions - Google

The second unusual update, is the sponsored link suggestion. Very similar to the ‘Navigational suggestion’, Google proposes a commercial link to your search inside the search box. This PPC ad on the Google search box is a little bit too much. Google is clearly trying to make easy money but I think that Google’s success is based on the fact that the user is not bombarded with advertising (and never on the first page)! With this update it is not really the case anymore.

Sponsored link in Google suggest

I think that Google should focus more on the user experience, to retain traffic to make profit with the regular PPC, instead of focusing on where they can place some ads

Today M&S (Marks and Spencer) is launching a campaign to celebrate it’s 125th birthday. All the stores across UK will host a Penny Bazaar Bonanza (1p Sale).

M&S - 1p Sale Website

Shoppers can buy a range of twenty items for 1p. M&S’s selection is composed of cuff-links, socks, scarves, purses and underwear.
 

This offer is part of the M&S charity program ‘125 Charity Challenge’.Charity Challenge’.

The M&S 1p sale has had a large effect on the online community, especially on Twitter where M&S is the number one topic! M&S has also set up a Facebook group for this event…

M&S -Trending Topic in Twitter

M&S - 1p Facebook Group

There has been a lot of online noise  for this offer…very good marketing!!!

Eight months ago, Ford started a social media campaign called ‘This is Now’ for the launch of the Ford Fiesta. The principal is pretty simple, upload a picture, video or song representing the concept ‘This is Now’. Ford uses the famous Flickr which is an image and video hosting website. This campaign is managed by We are Social which is a social media agency in London.

Flickr - This is Now

The ‘This is Now’ Flickr group is composed of various metaphoric pictures which represent the theme ‘This is Now’. As you can imagine there are a wide ranging number of representations of this motto, some of them very impressive.

To promote the Flickr group, they have set up a blog, a Facebook group and a Twitter profile! They have also contacted an impressive number of blogs, starting with the main marketing blogs and after fashion, art and photo blogs. The goal was to involve people who are not familiar with the automobile industry.
 

This is Now - Blog

‘This is now’ is a very interactive campaign with the usual elements such as photo posting, a blog (which allows guest writers to promote the events and pictures), Facebook and Twitter conversation.

After only eight months, the campaign is a ‘success’ according to Sandrine Plasseraud who is in charge of the Ford campaign for We are Social. With more than 40,000 pictures and reaching over one million people across Europe this campaign is definitely well managed.

Most of the online campaigns which include involvement/engagement of the public are normally the most successful and cost efficient. The blog, Facebook and Twitter were also an excellent choice of social media support to the main activity (uploading pictures on Flickr).

Ford has done an excellent job so far, let see what they will add (if any) over the next few months…

This weekend Wolfram Alpha (the new search engine) opened to the public. Wolfram Alpha is supposed to be the most accurate search engine due to the fact that it compiles data from a number of different sources.

A few weeks back I wrote a post about Wolfram Alpha and said that Wolfram Alpha wasn’t the Internet revolution expected by some. I maintain that this new search engine is a good evolutionary step but is far away from a new internet age.

Wolfram Alpha is easy as Google to use. Just enter almost any question and it is going to find the answer with a lot of extra detail. For certain topics Wolfram Alpha offers some interesting graphs.

Wolframe Alpha

Graph Wolfram Alpha

Sometimes, however, the answers are not the most obvious. For example if you are looking for information on‘Clovis’ (who was the first king of France), Wolfram Alpha will provide information about the town ‘Clovis’ in the California. Even with the keywords ‘Clovis France’ Wolfram Alpha does not bring up the expected link, contrary to Google’s results.

Wolfram Alpha - Clovis

Wolfram Alpha seems more like a Wikipedia search engine with exception that the information is accurate but also with less detail. Wolfram Alpha is a good tool with excellent technologies but once again it is not a revolution….

Today we have over a thousand confirmed cases of swine flu around the globe. The swine flu is huge news event covered comprehensively by the different medias (TV, Press, Radio…) and a large part of the population wants more information on it.

Based on Google traffic estimation, there were over three million online searches in April 2009 for keywords relevant to the swine flu.

Swine Flu - Traffic Estimation

The weird thing is that Google is making an incredible amount of money with this enormous number of searches via its Pay per Click (PPC) service. For example in England, the NHS (National Health Service) and the Directgov (official site of the English government) are the top PPC results, many others also bet on swine flu related keywords, the face masks manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, online newspapers et.c.

Swine Flu - Google Result Page

With an average of $0.5 per click, over 140 bidders and three million monthly searches you can guess how much money Google is making.