CNET News has this story about the advent of mobile visual search, a technology that lets consumers with camera phones use snapshots of products to receive various freebies as well as promotions and directional advertising.
It is based on image recognition software that identifies specific patterns in images and has heretofore been used mostly in …

Recognizing that video search is an increasingly important product feature, Ask has a deal with multi-media search engine (already in process) GoFish.

As is being widely reported, BrightCove has received a $16.2 million investment from IAC, Hearst and AOL (and has a distribution deal with the latter). These guys want to do for video online what Google has done for PPClick advertising — be at the center of a very powerful model.

John Battelle has an interesting discussion regarding the impending launch of genuine video on Google, what it might mean for third parties, and how it might integrate with Google's new payments system.
Google has been inviting people/organizations to submit video for some time. We said before that this might be the Sundance Film Festival meets …

… Or is soon to be in its hometown of Mountain View, California. Next up, San Francisco?

Eurekster got into social search before everyone else but didn't really have success with consumers, who might have been confused by what the company was trying to do. Eurekster has had B2B success with publishers, however. Along those same lines, the company has now launched swickis, which is a search box for small publisher sites …

There are lots of people running around saying things like "Google Base squarely takes aim at Craigslist and eBay …" That is both narrow and largely incorrect. Google Base (and the related content that becomes available on Google) may ultimately have an impact on those sites. However, the company has a much larger and …

Here's a roundup of news:

Judy's Book grabs US$8 million in series B funding from Mobius Venture Capital, with contributions from Ignition Partners and Ackerley Partners.
Google 10Q facts (sliced and diced by PaidContent): "'AOL is responsible for roughly 10 percent of all [Google] revenue. That's down from 12 percent in 2004 but still real money — …

My colleague Neal Polachek is attending Yellow Pages Today in Austria, where he heard someone talking today about how eBay is a burgeoning Yellow Pages competitor.
Quite coincidentally, in today's Wall Street Journal, there's an article about eBay and Google Base. Specifically the article discusses how eBay may become a directory alternative as the company …

BellSouth Adveritsing & Publishing is about to launch its first new advertising campaign in three years, this one aimed at users, carrying the line, "May the Best Choice Win." We haven't seen the ads, but it sounds like BellSouth will be taking aim at its growing list of directory competitors, at least in part, with …

There's lots of interesting search/local search-related discussion going on at the CNET Japan Innovation conference.
Search Engine Journal's Loren Baker is covering most of the sessions:

Google Local and Google Base discussed
Yahoo! and social search
Mobile & Local search
Blogging
Ask's view of the world and next-generation Internet (aka "Web 2.0") developments

R.H. Donnelley Corp.'s proposed acquisition of Dex Media cleared a significant hurdle today when the waiting period required by the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust law expired, leaving no futher antitrust approvals in order for the deal to move forward. You can read the press release here.

Judy's Book, fresh from its $8 million round, has announced that it is offering PPCall (similar to InsiderPages) as an advertising vehicle. Dubbed "JBCalls," the service uses infrastructure from ZiffLeads.

Ten years ago, when The Kelsey Group more closely covered the newspaper industry, we conducted annual research among both dailies and weeklies to judge their overall opinion of or interest in electronic services. Every year daily newspapers said that their primary reason for introducing electronic services of all kinds was to “remain the No.1 information …

Search continues to show big gains among U.S. users. According to comScore data comparing September 2004 with September 2005, the average daily use of search engines was up from 49.3 million users to 60.7 million. Separately, the Pew Internet & American Life Project said in its most recent survey that the daily use of search …

TiVo announced TiVoToGo, a service that will put TV on iPods or Sony PSP devices. Also, Skype announced a deal with U.S. electronics retailer RadioShack to sell/distribute the broadband phone service in the chain's 3,000 U.S. stores. This is a smart move that will help raise awareness and demystify VoIP for many consumers.
Even though …

Seeking to bring more control/choice to advertiser-buyers of its AdSense program, Google has offered advertisers the ability to bid for inventory directly on particular network sites. This capability is one of the ways that competing contextual ad providers Kanoodle and Quigo have been selling against Google — more control, more transparency.
This move follows on the …

Former NYNEX Information Services (now part of Verizon) CEO Matt Stover finds himself back at the helm of a Yellow Pages publishing company, albeit a much smaller one. Yesterday, Texas-based independent publisher ypOne announced that Stover has taken over as chairman and CEO of the company, which has operations in the United States and …

How do we solve the vexing problem of online advertiser and audience fragmentation? Why, the network, of course. Aside from a few big names, very few sites today have the quality and reach that advertisers want. (In many cases they would just settle for low volume, high quality.) This is another angle on the …

I was never a patent attorney, but I think that the USPTO is going too far in granting certain "business method" patents. Case in point: According to this InternetNews article, Amazon was recently awarded a patent covering the collection of user reviews.
Huh? Come again? Apparently, yes …
Here's how the article describes the patent:
The third …