Abdou's Blog

Google a volé la première place à Microsoft en termes d’audience. Le moteur de recherche est en effet passé, pour la première fois en mars, devant Microsoft, notamment grâce au rachat du site de clips YouTube, selon les derniers chiffres du cabinet de mesure d’audience américain Comscore, parus mercredi 25 avril.

Créé il y a seulement huit ans, Google est aussi devenu cette année la marque mondiale la plus puissante, devant General Electric, Microsoft et Coca-Cola, avec une valeur de marque de 66,4 milliards de dollars, selon le classement annuel du cabinet Millward Brown, paru lundi.

Google et ses différentes sites (dont cartes, images, vidéos, Google Mail, ainsi que YouTube) a reçu 528 millions de visiteurs uniques en mars, contre 526,9 millions pour Microsoft (moteur de recherche Live Search, site d’assistance technique, etc.), selon Comscore. Par rapport à mars 2006, l’audience de Google a augmenté de 13 %, contre 4 % pour celle de Microsoft, a précisé Comscore. Une hausse largement due au succès de sa filiale YouTube, rachetée fin 2006, qui a reçu 160,8 millions de visiteurs uniques en mars 2007 contre 22 millions en mars 2006, a souligné Andrew Lipsman, analyste de Comscore.

YAHOO! EN TROISIÈME POSITION

Dans le classement de Comscore, viennent ensuite les sites de Yahoo! (portail d’information, Yahoo! Mail…), en troisième position avec 473,3 millions de visteurs uniques, soit 1 % de plus en un an, puis ceux de Time Warner (dont le portail et site de courrier AOL) avec 272 millions (+21 %). L’audience de eBay, cinquième du classement, est restée quasiment inchangée à 256 millions. Le site de l’encyclopédie en ligne Wikipedia a fait un bond de 82 % avec 212,1 millions, et Fox Interactive Media (dont le site de socialisation MySpace) a vu son audience quadrupler à 151,2 millions. Les trois suivants sont Amazon, le site de high tech CNET et le moteur de recherche Ask.

Comscore, qui évalue le nombre d’utilisateurs d’Internet de plus de 15 ans, connectés depuis leur domicile ou leur lieu de travail, estime que l’audience totale d’Internet a atteint 762 millions de visiteurs uniques en mars, soit 10 % de hausse en un an.

Google devenu n°1 des sites Internet les plus fréquentés au monde.

Beginning today, song lyrics for hundreds of thousands of songs from major publishers will be incorporated into Yahoo! Music through Gracenote’s growing database, thanks to a new licensing deal between the companies. Through the agreement, consumers can search for song lyrics from the Yahoo! Music Search bar, simply by entering even a partial lyric from the song.

“You mean Bob Dylan isn’t actually saying ‘The ants, my friend, are in a bowling pin?’” asks Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo! Music. “Finally, a free, legal and definitive way to settle a bet with the guy sitting next to you at the bar who is certain the Ramones’ most famous anthem declares, ‘I wanna piece of bacon.’”

All is not beer and skittles with the new lyrics service, however, as the database is far from complete. Yahoo! says it has lyrics for over 400,000 songs, and a quick test reveals that it contains lyrics for only four songs from The Doors, while Justin Timberlake has 15, and Jessica Simpson has 40 songs.

Even having officially licensed lyrics does not guarantee accuracy. Harry McCracken posted on his PC World blog that there are still common errors, for instance, Yahoo’s version of The Ronettes’ You, Baby has Ronnie Spector singing “Baby, baby now you’re gonna know/All the ways I’ve had to throw you so,” when she really says, “All the ways I plan to thrill you so.”

One other interesting thing to note is that the licensed lyrics come with its own version of DRM – you are not allowed to casually cut-and-paste any of the lyrics text.

Yahoo! Music Launches Licensed Lyrics Service.

Today we reach another major milestone on the road to Windows Server « Longhorn » with the availability of Beta 3. In addition to being feature-complete, Beta 3 is also our first public release, meaning that millions of IT professionals and developers worldwide can now begin evaluating the product simply by downloading it from our web site. Beta 3 is released in English, German and Japanese, with five separate editions available to download today.

Of course, with so many people eager to get their hands on the product, we’ve had to come up with some interesting ways to distribute Beta 3. Downloads are only one option, so in the coming weeks, we also will offer the ability to order a Beta 3 Evaluation Kit DVD for those of you who can resist the overpowering urge to download right away (hey – the x86 editions are only 1.78GB – what are you waiting for?) and for those of you who just like receiving shiny round things in the mail. You’ll also see Beta 3 DVDs given away at upcoming events around the world, and we’re even working with some of your favorite technology publications to have Beta 3 included with them too.

We also are making sure that once you get your copy of Beta 3, you’ll know what to do with it. We’ve launched a new Windows Server « Longhorn » Technical Library on the Windows Server Tech Center, we have a detailed Reviewers’ Guide available to download and read, and perhaps coolest of all, we’ve teamed up with the folks in our Microsoft Learning group to develop free (that’s right – FREE) self-paced e-learning clinics. These interactive, multimedia-based clinics provide eight hours of training on topics like server management, centralized application access, branch office management, and security and policy enforcement. They keep track of which sections you’ve completed, so you can start and stop them whenever you like, and you can even download them for offline use to keep you company on transatlantic flights.

For those of you who are MSDN or TechNet subscribers, you’ve been watching our progress in the eleven months since our Beta 2 release by availing of our Community Technology Preview builds, but if you haven’t been keeping an eye on the changes, there is a ton of new stuff to experience: Server Manager has been revamped; the Server Core installation option has a bunch of new roles and features; Windows PowerShell is now in the box; Terminal Services gets TS Easy Print and the new TS RemoteApp management interface; Network Access Protection has greatly improved setup and integration; IIS7 does XCOPY deployment; and lots, lots more…

Speaking of IIS7, another thing we’re announcing today is the general availability of the IIS7 « Go Live » license – this will allow anyone to take advantage of the improved security, reliability and manageability of IIS7 in a live, production environment. This license only covers web workloads, but if you think we should offer a « Go Live » license for other server roles, leave a comment below to let us know.

Another way that you can provide feedback on the product is through a new thing we’re doing, called Customer Scenario Voting. It’s a web-based system that establishes a direct connection between the product team and our customers by providing a list of featured end-user scenarios and then allowing them to « vote » on their experience. Each vote reflects their satisfaction with the scenario, its importance to them and additional comments to describe what most influenced their decision.

I might be biased, but having played with the product over the last year-and-a-half, and watching us get closer to Beta 3, the quality and performance improvements have been dramatic, and I think you’ll agree when you download it, order it, receive it at an event, or have it dropped on you from a bi-plane… It’s evaluation time – have fun :-)

David Lowe.

Pour avoir gratuitement la version Beta Rendez vous à l’adresse suivante : http://www.microsoft.com/getbeta3

Windows Server Division WebLog.

It wouldn’t be the first time when Google tests new designs for the (classic) homepage or the search results pages, but this time someone saw a radical change. The links to Google’s services were detached from the search box and were moved in the top left corner. Because there’s no visible connection between the links and the search box, this move allowed Google to add non-search services: Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. Now that anyone can get a Gmail account and services like Calendar and Docs & Spreadsheets have matured and reached a wider audience, Google plans to make them even more visible.

Google Tests a New Design for the Homepage.

The latest version of Thunderbird, Mozilla’s email client, lets you add a Gmail account without entering any other detail than your email address. The account wizard’s poor wording might mislead people into thinking that Gmail is not a mail service, and it also forgets you to tell you how to enable POP3 in Gmail.

Among other new features, Thunderbird 2.0 adds message tagging, saved searches, more descriptive alerts that include email snippets.

Even if you like Gmail’s web interface, a mail client is still useful to backup your email and for reading your messages offline. If you use multiple email clients, your Gmail messages are available only to the first client that requests them. To change that, replace name@gmail.com with recent:name@gmail.com in your client’s settings.

Mozilla Thunderbird, Integrated with Gmail.

Google announced that they acquired Marratech, a video conferencing software company.

Google said this acquisition will « enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there’s an Internet connection. » I suspect it will also enable Google Docs users with Google Presentations to do the same, in the future

Google Acquires Marratech, Video Conferencing Software.

Google Web History is a reality starting today. This replaces the previous search history service that was limited only to queries and search results. If you want to add the web pages you visit, you need to have Google Toolbar with the PageRank feature activated and to enable web history here. It’s just the regular toolbar, but you’ll have to explicitly allow Google to use the PageRank feature to record all the visited web pages and associate them with your Google Account.

The listing mixes visited web pages with Google searches, as you can see in the screenshot below:

« You know that great web site you saw online and now can’t find? From now on, you can. With Web History, you can view and search across the full text of the pages you’ve visited, including Google searches, web pages, images, videos and news stories. »

Besides keeping track of all the web pages you visit and making them searchable online, Google Web History is used to improve the personalized search results.

« Web History uses the information from your web history or other information you provide us to improve your Google search experience, such as improving the quality of your search results and providing recommendations. »

Google says they encrypt all the data and you’re the only one who can access it (they even ask your password multiple times during a session). Web history is a feature implemented in most modern browsers, but the storage is limited and the history is usually deleted after a small number of days. Google’s new feature lets you store your entire web history online (and that sounds pretty scary).

Of course, you can pause the service at any time and even delete the entire web history, but the big question is: do you trust Google enough to send it all your online activity?

Google Operating System: Google Web History.

Froogle vient d’être renommé « Google Product Search ». Le design du service a été renové et les résultats apparaitront également en haut de page de la recherche classique quand cela sera pertinent.

C’est donc la fin de Froogle en tant que marque. Le service avait été lancé en 2002 et n’avait jamais vraiment décollé. Il avait été même supprimé des liens présents en page d’accueil de Google et remplacé par Google Vidéo. Le trafic du site avait litéralement dégringolé.

Adieu Froogle.

Toshiba vient d’annoncer avoir mis au point une puce de mémoire flash regroupant plusieurs modules sous une seule enveloppe physique. Les 8 modules de mémoire flash NAND de 2 Go, gravés en 56nm, accompagnés de leur contrôleur forment ainsi une seule puce mémoire de 16 Go. Ce sont les téléphones mobiles, les caméras numériques ainsi que tous les périphériques embarqués gourmands en mémoire flash qui vont être contents…

Si cette puce de 16 Go devrait être produite en masse à partir du mois de décembre, les premiers prototypes de puces de 8 Go devraient voir le jour ce mois-ci, la production de masse la version 8 Go étant attendue pour le troisième trimestre. Reste une inconnue de taille : le prix…

Une puce de mémoire Flash de 16 Go chez Toshiba.

Nokia estime que l’année 2008 sera le moment propice pour lancer ses équipements mobiles WiMAX.
Cette fois, c’est sûr : la technologie WiMAX a pris suffisamment de poids pour considérer la commercialisation d’équipements compatibles avec sérénité. Alors que le temps était encore à l’observation prudente début 2006, où Nokia n’évoquait son implication dans des terminaux WiMAX que si la technologie était suffisamment soutenue, le salon 3GSM 2007 de Barcelone a montré que les différents acteurs de la téléphonie mobile étaient prêts.

Nokia peut donc annoncer son intention de lancer ses premiers appareils mobiles compatibles WiMAX début 2008, espérant damer le pion de son principal concurrent Motorola, qui a indiqué également sa volonté de commercialiser des produits WiMAX au cours de l’année 2008.

L’irrésistible attrait du WiMAX
Le WiMAX est cette technologie sans fil de la famille IEEE 802.16 soutenue par Intel qui permet d’accéder à Internet, de faire de la VoIP ou de relier des réseaux sur de longues distances. Si son fonctionnement est complémentaire des réseaux cellulaires, elle peut se comporter dans certains cas comme un véritable concurrent des réseaux 3G.

Pouvant offrir des débits allant de 4 à 20 Mbit/s, les infrastructures WiMAX sont surtout moins chères à entretenir et les matériels moins coûteux que leurs équivalents 3G. De quoi faire réfléchir.

D’autant plus que la roadmap des technologies 802.16 comporte un volet 802.16m dit Gigabit WiMAX, qui assurerait au WiMAX mobile des débits de 1 Gibabit/s, complément idéal pour un futur réseau 4G…

Nokia : commercialisation de mobiles WiMAX en 2008.