Newspaper sites have done a lot of window dressing with “hyper-local” by adding neighborhood blogs and whatnot. But now some papers are challenging themselves to embrace hyper-local in all things, as they seek to tame Google and Yahoo! in search, take on the Yellow Pages in certain categories, and win back reader loyalty.
A lot of …

The highlight of Day 2 of the NAA show was a local search panel. The length of sessions (90 minutes) results in a lower number of sessions than I’m used to attending, but the quality has in most cases made up for the quantity.
Local search has many applications to newspapers in the many forms it …

Back in 1999, Microsoft sold a small business called Sidewalk because it didn’t fit into its core software business at the time. In a lengthy story in Sunday’s New York Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted: “but Sidewalk was really aimed at what we now call local search. Sidewalk is one (business) we should not …

Fox Interactive Media, the home of MySpace, Fox Sports, Fox News and other sites, definitely has local on its agenda and is rolling out several new features to bring users more in touch with their communities, says Dan Strauss, VP and general manager, who was speaking on a panel at the NAA Marketing Conference in …

There have been lots of newspaper news and announcements in and around the NAA show so far, and I imagine much more to come. Here is a sampling:
 LostRemote reports that The San Francisco Chronicle is experimenting with podcasts of users that call in to express thoughts or give feedback. This could be an interesting …

I’m at the Newspaper Association of America’s annual Marketing Conference in Las Vegas this week, where there have been lots of interesting sessions that I’ll break down in individual blog posts later. Most of the sessions were breakouts involving five different tracks, which presented the always-tough trade-off between the benefits of variety, and the reality …

Yell.com, which calls itself the United Kingdom’s local search engine, is working with Oodle.co.uk, a search engine for local classified advertisements, which will enable people who access Yell.com to post their own free advertisements on the site.
While Yell is certainly not the first Yellow Pages publisher to offer classifieds (not to mention newspaper publishers that …

From Nokia’s 4Q earnings call transcript (courtesy of 123Jump.com):
“Nokia, the maker of mobile phones, reported profit growth of 19% to EUR 1.27 billion from EUR 1.07 billion a year earlier, exceeding analysts’ forecasts. The company shipped 106 million handsets, up 19% sequentially and 26% from a year ago. The estimated market share was 36%, unchanged …

AP reported that Copiepresse, a copyright protection group that represents 17 French and German-language Belgian newspapers, asked Yahoo! to remove links that point to the newspapers’ content. At issue is whether a cached page (a copy of content that is hosted on a search engine’s server) constitutes copyright infringement.
Groklaw’s Sean Daly interviewed Margaret Boribon of …

Nielsen/NetRatings has announced U.S. search share rankings for December 2006. Google Search tops the list with an estimated 3 billion search queries, representing 51 percent of all search queries conducted last month.

There is a marketing guy who is trying to build his business by telling people that the best way to get more golden eggs is to kill the goose that laid them. Larry Bodine’s LawMarketing Blog recommends that lawyers do just that. He says, “cancel that #*$%! expensive Yellow Pages ad” and brags that he …

When Freedom Communications recruited Michael Mathieu, the monetization leader from United Online (Classmates.com, NetZero, etc.), it was opting for change with a capital “C.” Freedom, of course, is the longtime libertarian owner of 70 properties, including The Orange County Register, a bunch of small papers, a number of magazines and specialty publications, and 21 TV …

Gary Arlen, the longtime media pundit (and my former business partner), says in a new article for TV Technology that he is expecting newspapers to use the Web to shove their way into the television industry and “become significant online HDTV purveyors.” Newspaper HD production efforts reflect an array of approaches to broadband video, and …

The Los Angeles Times Online will roll out two new e-commerce-oriented verticals in the midst of a ripping internal report that says its online strategy is nowhere near where it needs to be for the paper to have a future, according to an article by James Rainey in today’s paper. The verticals are a new …

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (sub required) about a dilemma that is starting to face many newspapers amidst falling revenues and readership; the need to divert finite editorial resources on local rather than global coverage. The article examines The Boston Globe, which recently had to say goodbye to its three remaining international bureaus for …

Following in the footsteps of The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, the Los Angeles Times will bring its print and online newsrooms closer together in order to have better around-the-clock coverage.
This could improve Internet content by giving print editors oversight of the online editorial product. It could also add a dynamic …

Gannett, via its Planet Discover subsidiary, says it will start providing its newspapers and TV stations with search marketing help. The newly formed “Market Development Group” will be run by Stanley Gauss, the former online general manager of The Press of Atlantic City. Planet Discover head Terry Millard says Gauss and his team are going …

I’m a bit late to this item (again, I’ll blame being out last week), but The Wall Street Journal (sub. required) reported over the weekend that Google is in talks with in-game ad placement firm Adscape Media. Here is Red Herring coverage if you don’t have a WSJ sub.
This is reminiscent of Microsoft’s acquisition last …

U.K. publisher Yell’s online directory operation, Yell.com, has expanded the capability of its mobile directory platform with a new service being offered both in application- and browser-based modes through a deal with the Danish mobile search firm mobilePeople. Here is the announcement.
Yell.com mobile will now allow users to search for local information free of charge, …

Recently I had the chance to catch up with Mark Sigal, CEO of online video distribution platform provider vSocial. The company provides a platform for advertisers and video publishers to publish and brand videos on existing Web sites, social networks or customized video channels. The key is that it bakes in the functionality to monetize …