More Arabic....

We are pleased to announce 6 new weekly columns on AME Info Arabic:

- Business highlight - Saudi Arabia
- IT Update
- Window on Kuwait
- Oil Weekly
- UAE Trends
- Executive Interview

We are proud to have such distinctive writes from around the Arab world contributing to AME Info Arabic - your comments are as always welcomed.

Google Click-to-Call

Another one from the Google team:

When you click the phone icon, you can enter your phone number. Once you click 'Connect For Free,' Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party.

The product is only being tested in some states in US at the moment - but suddenly internet calls and Google Talk makes a lot of commercial sense..

Reference:
http://www.google.com/help/faq_clicktocall.html

October audit released

I am pleased to announce that the October 2005 audit has been completed:

October 2005:
651,193 Unique Users
4,209,634 Page Impressions

Compared with:

May 2005:
236,238 Unique Users
2,349,226 Page Impressions

In my view the number of Unique Users in the May 2005 audit was under-valued - ABC ELECTRONIC excluded a number of Users based on the fact that a lot of IP addresses were resolved and it was impossible to determine if they were unique or not and hence excluded them - so conservatively we should "only" look at this as ~100% growth on the Unique User side of things.

For those of you interesting in the actual certificate, you can download it from the ABC ELECTRONIC website

Podcasts and blogs in MediaCentre

We have added three more keyword based search services to the MediaCentre:

Icerocket
This is a service that allow you to search blogs only - by entering a few keywords in your MediaCentre Add Feed page and selecting Icerocket you can generate a feed based on your search query from blogs around the world (beware - there are some really strange ones out there).

PodZinger
Same as the above but this time only podcasts - PodZinger claim that all transcripts and other brief descriptions are being used to index podcasts from all over the place and that they will become the "Google of podcasts" - so give it a go from:

http://www.ameinfo.com/mc/add and select PodZinger

I was happy to see that AME Info was already indexed in both Icerocket (this very blog) and in PodZinger with our podcast feed (soon to be expanded)

Moreover
Finally we have added Moreover as a search option as the seem to provide some alternative sources to both Google and Yahoo. The reason we have not added MSN Search (beside the fact that it is down ever so often) is that their news results appear to be exclusively from Moreover at the moment.

If you feel that there are other services out there that we should include please do not hesitate to drop me a line via http://www.ameinfo.com/contact/

Happy content hunting

Klaus

References for the sake of good order:
http://www.icerocket.com
http://www.podzinger.com
http://www.moreover.com

Watchlist > MediaCentre

You can now add your AME Info Watchlist to your MediaCentre page so you get updated on all the news sections you have selected on AME Info.

All you need to do (beside having a Watchlist and being logged in) is to click on the Add Feeds tab and click the link to add your Watchlist to the MediaCentre.

If you want to share your Watchlist with a colleague - you can simply copy the URL and send it across and as soon as your colleague click the link - your watchlist will be added to his or her MediaCentre.

Anyone up for making industry specific Watchlists?

AME Info MediaCentre Launched

Information overload is rapidly becoming part of our everyday life. AME Info MediaCentre helps you keep up with it all by organising and managing all the content you are interested in - in a central place and with a quick overview of the latest content across all your favorite sources.
Instead of continuously checking your favorite sites for updates, you can let AME Info MediaCentre do it for you. From news sites to your friends' blogs and podcasts, AME Info MediaCentre keep you up-to-date with content that matters to you - and the service is free

A few interesting hacks:

Getting the latest news from a given publisher:
Search in ex Google News for source:publisher topic and then sort by date - and then hit the RSS link on the left for a perfect RSS feed sorted by date.

EX:
http://news.google.com/news?scoring=d&q=source:fortune+-hjf&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

Link your feed to AME Info MediaCentre
Simply prefix your RSS feed with http://www.ameinfo.com/addfeed? to make a link that automatically add your feed to AME Info MediaCentre.

EX:
http://www.ameinfo.com/addfeed?http://today.reuters.com/rss/oddlyEnoughNews


Visit AME Info MediaCentre today.
http://www.ameinfo.com/mc/world

BCS - (Blog Comment Spammers)

The trend to spam in the comments of a given blog seems to really catch up - they typically start of with a compliment and then sneak in a nice keyword loaded anchor link to their "services" and hence turning your blog comments into a link farm.

For samples - have a look at the comments to the previous stories in this very blog which is by no means a busy blog. I guess we will soon be at a level where all comments will have to be monitored before actually going live - keeping each other busy...

Google Print is live

Google announced the availability of the first large collection of public domain books on Google Print. This collection, scanned as part of the company's book digitization project with several of the world's largest libraries, includes works such as U.S. Civil War history books, government documents, the writings of Henry James and other materials.

As usual it is a BETA product - but looks like a direct competitor to Amazon.com as one is just given a teaser of what to buy - at least that is my first impression.

"Google Print helps you discover books, not read them online. To read the whole book, we encourage you to use the "Buy this book" link to purchase it online or the "Find this in a library" link to look for a local library that has it. "

It seem the objective is to make more money and not "index the World's information" as this turns out to be one of the biggest affiliate sites in the world - but hey what is wrong with making money...

http://print.google.com/

Microsoft announces "Windows Live"

Microsoft Corp. announced online enhancements to its Windows operating system and other popular software programs, hoping to defuse a growing threat from Google Inc. and other fast-moving challengers.

With a new Web site called "Windows Live," Microsoft hopes to create a new platform that will unfasten some of its applications from a computer hard drive. The change reflects Microsoft's recognition of the growing demand for applications and services that can be used from any place, at any time, as the lines between the home and office blur and portable computing devices become more powerful.

Check it out
http://www.live.com - looks like a very familiar concept that "someone" else is rolling out soon in a region near you...