Sunday, April 17, 2011

Yahoo's Difficult Position

Yahoo, the biggest giant on the web ten years ago, is now in a quite difficult position. Microsoft and Google, two other giants on the web, are declaring "war" against Yahoo. The two giants offer services some of which are similar to what Yahoo offers.

Google, for example, released their search engine which is now most widely used, replacing Yahoo's search engine. Google also released free email service with unlimited space. Their email service is also much cleaner from spams than Yahoo Mail. Although many people keep using Yahoo Mail, but an increasing number of people also rush to use Google Mail (GMail). Recently Yahoo has offered a new free email service using ymail.com address in order to compete with gmail.com.

Microsoft is Yahoo's second "enemy". After its search engine was beaten by Google, Yahoo began focusing on some other services. One of them is news service. Unluckily, Microsoft also offers news service. Yahoo offers global and local news service, and Microsoft does, too. Moreover, Yahoo offers weather forecast service, and Microsoft does, too. Yahoo offers Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft offers Hotmail. Yahoo offers Yahoo Messenger, and Microsoft offers MSN Messenger (or called Windows Messenger). Yahoo is really in a difficult position. Yahoo has to face two "enemies" at the same time: Google and Microsoft.

What is Your Favorite Search Engine?

Ten years ago, Yahoo was the most popular search engine on the web. Accompanying Yahoo, Lycos was also widely used. Some years later, the trend changed. Today, Google is the most popular search engine, not Yahoo anymore. The domination of Google Search Engine has been lasting for several years. This made Microsoft releasing their search engine named Bing. Accompanied by exotic photographs changing everyday, Bing looks more eye-catching. I don't know how Microsoft is able to supply all the photographs in daily basis. Perhaps they hire a number of professional photographers to do that. Unfortunately, I find it's quite difficult for Bing to beat Google. Probably because most people are already too addicted to Google, and they don't have enough time to try Bing and find its uniqueness.

Search engines are not only Google, Yahoo, and Bing. There are a great number of search engines on the web. Wikipedia made a list of them. More than a list, Wikipedia also categorized them. You can check it if you want. Among all, Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com are at the top-rank.

Yahoo's Evolution

Which is richer: Yahoo or Google? I don't care. In this post, I want to share a little bit about Yahoo in a chronological timeline. Yet I won't tell you a detail timeline. Instead, it's only a brief story as far as I'm concerned.
Ten years ago, Yahoo might be the biggest giant on the web. Its search engine was the most widely used by netters across the globe. Anytime the netters wanted to find something on the web, they went to Yahoo Search Engine. But now the most widely used search engine is not Yahoo anymore. It's now Google.
Facing this change, I find that Yahoo has made some change on their concept and design. It's simple. Just take a look at Yahoo's homepage, and compare it to its homepage ten years ago. The difference is there.
Ten years ago, search engine service - including Yahoo's Directory - was the most important part of Yahoo. Another important part is Yahoo Mail. After Yahoo was beaten by Google in search engine service, Yahoo began focusing on other things.
Certainly Yahoo is still focusing on its mail service. But they began offering some other services and put them as their new focus. You can find this focus shift on Yahoo's homepage design.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Using CMS or Writing Your Own Code?

First time making a website, I wrote my own code. To help me design the website, I also used some web builder applications like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Indeed I needed more effort to deal with the codes. However, there was a kind of satisfaction after finishing that quite difficult job.
To this extent, everything was okay. But I was not an advanced and experienced code writer. Hence, the problem began appearing when I wanted something that needed more sophisticated coding skill.
Some years later, a friend of mine told me that making a website is not that difficult. "To make a professional-look website easily, we can use a CMS," he said.
"What is CMS?" I asked him curiously.
"It is Content Management System. It's like a magic machine, or an empty house in which you can put all of your furniture. You don't need to build the house from scratch. The Aladin's magic lamp will give you the house, but it's still empty. What you have to do is only putting everything you want inside the house," he said.

Learning from Google's Success

Almost everybody today will say yes if you asked him whether he knows Google or not. Yes, Google now may be the most popular internet-related-company. Most people use search engine to find what they need on the internet. And I dare say that the most widely used search engine today is Google Search Engine. As a consequence, many people set Google Search Engine as homepage on their internet browser. It means that Google Search Engine always appears first anytime the people open Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Chrome.
Starting with its successful search engine, Google has been extending its products. Certainly some of them succeed and some others fail. Google Earth, Blogger, and Gmail are some of the successful products. On the other hand, I think Google Talk can not replace the popularity of Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. Google Talk fails.
Google Earth becomes the most popular map service. Although it gives one-week-ago map, many people really like it because the map is presented as aerial photograph. It's real. We even can make it larger using zoom. Really fantastic!
Blogger is also one of the most popular free blogging service. Blogger is now competing with Wordpress, another popular free blogging service. Although some people said that Wordpress has more features than Blogger, we all know that Wordpress free blogging does not support adsense. Luckily, Blogger fully supports adsense. For this reason, many people blogging for money purpose prefer Blogger to Wordpress.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Having More Than One Blog: Good or Bad?

Do you have a blog or personal website on the internet? Since a couple years ago, blog has been so popular among the people that today almost everybody has his own blog. Some people create blog and function it just like his diary or daily journal. They write their daily’s experiences, even small things such as what they eat at lunch and where they go on weekend. However, some others write more serious topics. No matter what the people write on their blogs, it is obvious that blog becomes today’s people lifestyle.
Now, let me ask you how many blog you have. I have seven blogs (or personal website if you want to call them so), excluding my facebook account (because some people consider it microblog). How about you? You have more than one blog just like I do? Or you only have one? Or you haven’t had any? If the latest is your answer, I recommend that you should create one immediately. If you don’t do it, some people probably will call you an old-fashioned person. Do you want to be called so?
In condition that someone has more than one blog, how does he make everything work? This is what I will focus on in this post.

How to Deal with Facebook?

Who doesn’t know Facebook today?  Almost everyone across this country as well as the globe, even an elementary school student,  knows this popular social network service. Furthermore, that Facebook now can be easily accessed via mobile phone makes this service much more popular, even among those who are not accustomed to internet. Yes, this is ‘Facebook Fever’ that everybody is suffering from.
Many people admit that they spend hours on computer, only to ‘play with’ their Facebook. They enjoy that activity so much that they don’t realize it has been hours they are playing with Facebook.
Certainly Facebook gives many benefits. However, just like the two edges of sword, it also can be no use or even not good for us if it’s used not wisely enough. Using Facebook, we can get connected to many people across the globe. Even, we can reconnect to old friends after we haven’t met them for a long time. For some people, Facebook can be the best way to share whatever they feel, or to tell others whatever they do in their daily life. And you can guess, they are always waiting for some new comments. They login to Facebook many times a day just to see the new comments.