At the beginning of the year, Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst for Internet and media marketing and managing director of Piper Jaffray, made the bold prediction that Google would hit $600 a share in 2006. At the time we wrote, "The primary reason Mr. Rashtchy is so enthusiastic about the stock is that he expects …

… are here.

Judy's Book and Local.com announced a partnership earlier in the week to syndicate the former's local reviews and user blogs on the latter's local search site. Since Judy's Book was already syndicating blog content of its users’ existing blogs (rather than creating its own platform), this is a syndication of a syndication …

When Greg and I were up at Microsoft a few weeks ago, we discussed the integration of search macros into the company’s Live Search Product, which will power MSN Search and Windows Live.
Yesterday, search macros were introduced on the MSN Search blog. Macros allow users to build advanced search queries and save …

President of Verizon's Internet division Eric Chandler announced a partnership between SuperPages and Google on Day 1 of Drilling Down On Local, as mentioned earlier by Greg.
The deal will position Verizon as an authorized AdWords reseller and give it an additional platform to offer its SME customers part of a bundled ad …

Great shower here at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. And lots of good stuff yesterday at the show and in the exhibit hall. Safa R. was very good as a keynote speaker (predicting that the further development of local search may actually hurt e-commerce). So was SuperPages President Eric Chandler, who made an announcement …

Google appears to have introduced — or more likely be experimenting with — a new AdSense-like format for search results, placing ads in a box above the "organic" Web results. Here’s "Hotels New York." Here’s "Health Insurance." (If you’re seeing what I’m describing, you should see four ads at the top of the page in …

There are maybe eight firms out there enabling Yellow Pages, Web hosts, verticals and newspapers to sell simplified search distribution to local businesses. One firm, which is doing well under the radar, is Kevin Dufficy’s LocalLead.com. Dufficy was in on all this early but hasn’t taken any VC money (but is now looking for angels), …

A few weeks ago at SES, Google told me they were going to be allowing advertisers to add logos and graphical images to the mapping balloons that appear on Google Local. I looked for them but couldn’t find them. Today, apparently, they started appearing. This blog has a screenshot. I was unable to find …

There’s an incredible amount of hype and anticipation among marketers and the mobile industry in general around ad revenue projections and the anticipated size of the mobile TV/video market. This mostly bullish BusinessWeek article does a nice job of assessing the state of mobile marketing.
But, in reality, mobile is still years away. Most people …

Just got my hands on a copy of the "Style at Home Special Issue — Home Improvement" produced by Canada’s Yellow Pages Group and media partner Transcontinental Media. The product was recently distributed in Toronto. The joint venture between the two publishers is aptly called "Vertical Guides Limited Partnership."
Briefly, the guide is exhibit A (or …

Here is what we have found about the bids that have come in for the 60 percent stake in Spanish publisher TPI currently owned by Telefonica, Spain’s leading telecom.
This is from the AFX news service. Note an apparent contraction with earlier reports that the Italian publisher Seat PG was not planning to put in …

Fast Search & Transfer has announced it landed a deal with the Finnish directory publisher Fonecta, which is part of the PE-backed European Directories organization.
Here is the release from FAST.
Here is what we picked up from Norwegian News Digests:
Norwegian real-time search and filter technology company Fast Search & Transfer ASA said on March …

Yellow Book continues its stready pace of acquiring independent directory publishers — large, small and in between. The company just announced the acquisition of Banana Publishing in Springfield, Mass. This is not the Springfield of "Simpsons" fame (at least we don’t think so). It is, however, the largest and oldest of the countless …

Found a couple of new items on the results from the Yellow Pages Market Reporter, the syndicated usage measurement product from KN/SRI. One is a press release from BellSouth touting its results from Birmingham, Alabama. And another is a news story from a Pittsburgh paper on the industry’s syndicated research effort …

Found this press release interesting. One independent publisher is suing another in federal court for allegedly copying ads for a competing publication. This is not such a big deal as a business dispute, but it does offer a small glimpse into how the directory world is changing in the United States.
There was …

Each year I attend a few conferences put on by other companies, both because they tend to have different speakers, but also because it enables me to pick up some ideas that can enhance our events.
Today I went to the 23rd annual Kagan Radio/TV Values & Finance Summit. Robin Flynn, senior analyst for Kagan, …

The appeal of Sling Media’s Slingbox is that you can use it to tap into your home television’s broadcast feed from remote locations (great for catching a local sportscast if you are on the road). It has introduced the term "place-shifting" to join "time-shifting" in the new media lexicon.
Now it’s gotten even …

Search Engine Journal reports on a few Google Base sightings.

Google has added a social tagging feature to Google Reader. After setting up RSS feeds in the reader, users can tag articles or Web pages and share them with friends via e-mail or syndicate them on a blog.
Just as Google Reader seemed to have been an answer to MyYahoo!, This feature …