STOCK QUOTES     More market data...

Download
Interesting bits and bytes

By CompiledTimes technology Staff

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

The service, launched in test form last week, purports to give restaurant listings, word definitions and product prices to people who send text-message queries over wireless devices to the code 46645 (GOOGL).

On a tip sheet at www.google.com/sms, Google suggests finding pizza restaurants by texting the word "pizza" with a ZIP code.

We tested pizza 98101 and got three listings back within a minute. One was for a place in the food court of the Washington State Convention & Trade Center.

The second was for Abruzzi Pizza House on Pike Street, which closed in 1994. The final listing was for a place called Pizza Pizza, at 580 Jarvis St. — in Toronto. But a search for pizza 98109 yielded some accurate results.

Google said it will evaluate user feedback to improve the service.

In buzz mode

Search king What's the No. 1 search term in the shopping category in September? Try ebay, which accounted for nearly 1.5 percent of all major search-engine queries in the category. Source: Hitwise

Microsoft showed some public-relations savviness last week when it flew in nearly 30 bloggers and other Internet influencers for a two-day discussion about search. The group, to which the company assigned the not-so-subtle name "Search Champs," heard about some of the work being done on search by MSN and Microsoft's research team.

Microsoft was able to grow its cachet in the blogosphere by staging the exclusive event, and then it stoked the fires of curiosity by prohibiting attendees from disclosing what they had learned.

According to the blogs of some "champs," Microsoft reserved rooms for attendees in the chic Monaco Hotel in downtown Seattle and gave out the following gifts: copies of the Money, Office and Flight Simulator programs, a windbreaker, a sun visor, a golf shirt, a data-storage device, a backpack and a $120 gift certificate for use at the company store.

The result? Microsoft's search efforts received plenty of buzz last week, and the "champs" will likely be paying closer attention to the company in the future. One attendee was candid in his blog about the event's effect:

"Because I am a pushover with people who are nice to me, my views on Microsoft will be biased until the red-carpet treatment effect wears off in a couple of weeks," wrote blogger Don Park.

Digital thievery

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had some harsh words for Apple Computer's iPod last week or, more specifically, the content on it. Speaking to reporters in London, Ballmer said the most common form of music on iPods is stolen music.

That didn't sit too well with some iPod users, who groused online that Ballmer was calling iPodders thieves. And Ballmer seemed uncharacteristically rueful the next day, when, at a keynote speech in the Netherlands, he remarked about the incident, "I don't know what I said exactly, but it was bad."

One of the Search Champs, blogger Chris Pirillo, promised to buy Ballmer one of Apple's music players. He'll appreciate that.

No longer rough

By a 399-to-1 vote, the House of Representatives passed legislation last week banning the transmission of spyware to computers unless someone wants to receive it.

So who was that "1"? Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who says on his Web site that he never votes for anything unless the proposed measure is authorized by the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution mentions piracy on the high seas, but nothing about spyware. We called Paul's press secretary, Jeff Deist, for the lowdown.

"In my boss's view, the government isn't going to solve this," said Deist. "Any solution that does come is going to come from a private sector innovator."

Deist seemed nostalgic about the tech's "rough and tumble" 1990s. "It's a little disheartening, to say the least, that the tech community has lost its libertarian fervor of the '90s," he said.

Download, a column of news bits, observations and miscellany, is gathered by The Seattle Times technology staff. We can be reached at 206-464-2265 or biztech@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More business & technology headlines...