An interesting new experiment by Microsoft, Ms. Dewey, offers a truly original search interface. Using heavy Flash design, a fully animated, photo-realistic librarian responds to your typed search requests. What gives the site even more of an edge is that the librarian is a sexy young woman in ...

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Despite the mind-numbing frequency of political ads in our TV market, Apple is still establishing a lot of views for its amusing series of commercials featuring the Mac Guy and PC Guy. Naturally, the Mac guy is cool, laid back, and clever, while the PC Guy is a stiff, ...

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ZDNet blogger David Berlind made an interesting post, iPods vs. everything else: An audio quality arms race? More like a fashion arms race, about why the iPod has succeeded and why everyone else in the market is an also-ran. He thinks Sony’s attempt to gain market share from iPod ...

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A few years ago, Krispy Kreme went public and began moving into northern markets. Then, they nearly imploded with an accounting scandal involving padded sales and a near-default on corporate debt. Now, according to It’s North vs. South in doughnut civil war, Dunkin’ Donuts is counterattacking by moving ...

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Just in time for Halloween! Amidst all of the gushing in the press over Web 2.0, a dark side is emerging. One issue that may not be too startling is that while having users add content to sites is indeed wonderful, it also lets users add ...

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article by Julia Angwin, “Boston Globe Doesn’t Deliver For the Times.” It’s a cute title, but the content of the article may be a harbinger of what awaits traditional media: loss of revenue to Web-based media. The article notes that the ...

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A couple of days ago, and odd announcement hit the Web: Reuters, the big news agency, has opened a “virtual news bureau” in the online community, Second Life. We scanned a few versions of the story from MSNBC, Editor and Publisher, and Reuters itself, and we’re still trying to ...

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One of the more bizarre concepts to come down the Web 2.0 highway is PayPerPost.com, which links up advertisers and bloggers. Bloggers can earn money when they post about a product that an advertiser is paying to plug. The concept is interesting, but the execution and ethics are ...

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Shortly after we reported that Web productivity suites aren’t ready for prime time, Google has upped the ante a bit by integrating their word processor and spreadsheet programs into the awkwardly-named Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Computerworld reports in Google gives Writely and Spreadsheets a common platform, Noticeable changes will include ...

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I’ve been travelling for a few weeks, and have been catching up on stuff I missed while I was gone. One interesting article from last week was a detailed experiment by Infoworld writer Oliver Rist, Can Web-based applications outwit, outplay, outlast the desktop? Rist’s challenge was to ...

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