In the quarterly rankings, conducted since 2000, all the major search engines/portals have improved their scores over time, with only Ask.com and AOL now below their highest historic rankings.

Overall, Google leads the pack, with an 86 percent satisfaction rating, the same as last year. Ranked number 2 is “all others” with 78 percent, up 2.6 percent from a year ago. AOL improved by 1.4 percent to a 70 percent satisfaction rating. (See chart for details).

The survey was conducted before the announcement of Microsoft’s Bing search engine as well as the deal that replaces Yahoo search with Bing.

Among the industries surveyed, Internet Portals & Search Engines did quite well, with an overall 83 percent satisfaction rate, up 3.8 percent from last year, based on the strong showing by “all others” and the 1.4 percent improvement by AOL.

I recently spoke at a regional event organized to decipher social media marketing. The address dealth with variety of topics and touched various aspects of going social, ranging from how to get started, tracking tools, history, pros and cons and how to measure the impact.

I discussed some tactics to get your company better engaged with social media. To start with I have assembled this list of more than 35 companies who are experimenting with social media in a host of different ways.

If you have other examples of corporate social media engagement, please share them in the comments.

Blendtec is famous for its bevy of inexpensive “Will It Blend” videos posted on YouTube and shared by millions.

Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the social bookmarking site Delicious.

Best Western sponsors a blog,”On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country writing about her experiences.

Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s community.

Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.

Coca-Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses on Coke collectibles.

Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.

Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media news release format to display them in their newsroom.

Fujifilm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts around its newest camera.

GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech.

H&R Block created a Facebook fan site to aggregate its social media activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.

HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference.

HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.

IBM was the first large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands of blogs related to every facet of its business.

Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities, which includes blogs, Twitter and virtual worlds.

Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can find and contribute to this resource for tax information.

Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr, the company’s MySpace and Facebook pages and a list enthusiast groups.

JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue University, as this video explains.

Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent video posts and interviews.

Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.

Marriott CEO Bill Marriott posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.

McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.

National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.

New York Times is beta testing a Firefox add-on that allows users to share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.

Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surfing, BMX bike racing and similar activities with the brand.

SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social media worldwide.

Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.

Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog can be.

Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company.

Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).

Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.

Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.

WWE has a Facebook application, among other social networking tools and widgets, to bring fans closer to the action.

Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.

Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions,” says a joint post from engineers Matt Cutts and Sitaram Iyer. “Web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

While the biggest visible changes in Microsoft’s re-launched search engine, Bing, are user-interface; Google is working towards retaining the user-interface and overhauling the mechanism of indexing pages.

In blog-sphere, opinions differ on how the new algorithm effects the Google’s Caffeine update affects the algorithm. For the sample searches I did there are some notable differences in the way results appear.

For instance a search for “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” on the current engine and the developer preview [http://www2.sandbox.google.com/] of Caffeine provided by Google and came back with mixed views.

Current Engine shows News Results on the Top, Videos towards the mid and Images towards the mid.

Caffeine Engine shows us News Results on the Top, Videos towards the Bottom and Images ignored.

We don’t find many User Interface or cosmetic changes.

What apparently changes is:

• Number of results
• Time taken to pull them out
• The position/ranks of results is apparently different, more so on second and consequent pages

We shall find more disambiguates as people dig deeper. One thing is for sure, this news is going to create quiet an anxiety in the webmaster communities.

Now, on paper when we compair the options available if price is the concern Tulip Residency seems like the best options to us. They are also not charging any club and parking charges bring the cost of ownership down to bare minimal.

GPL Builders have their flats under construction. This being thier first their project one can hope they won’t screw it up. But one can never be sure with these new developers.

Ninex Corona is also a cheap option but they are towards the pataudi road.The area in question is hot as hot as other in question.

People are buying Unitech Properties like hot cakes. Insiders say these projects are going to be delayed and money is being diverted by Unitech to other projects. Uniworld Garden II was a sellout. Sunbreeze is almost sold out. Reason, Unitech finances are in shape and in turbulant times people prefer depositing money with Builders they trust down go down the drain.

Emmar Emerald Hills near Ghata village is being constructed on proposed Metro Route, but is in a far flung area. It also is very far from NH-8 and Delhi. Its more near to Faridabad. But needs to live close to Faridabad? Anyhow the rates they have come up with are very costly considering 75000 RS for club membership and 250000 for parking bay. They are several notch costliet then the competition.

I personally have an appartment in Unitech Uniworld II. I have bought it for investment purpose.

Also, Google is adding the ability to migrate from another popular enterprise app, IBM’s Lotus Notes.

With punchlines like – spend your efforts in managing your business and not your mail-server, Google seems ready to face the IBM and Microsoft juggernaut.

Watch the Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQcwW9hNRMk

But is Google becoming overambitious by ramming heads on with its rivals and partners?

Case in point:

1. With Google Apps ad campaign targetting Microsoft Office Suite, Google is threatening Microsoft virtual monopoly in the arena like never before.
2. Anaroid Based Mobile Phones have stirred folks at Apple iPhone, traditionally considered a partner/ally of Google. Apple responded by blocking Google Voice and Eric Schmitt resigned from Apple board. This friendship seems to have been ripped wide open with both parties vieing for others blood. Users seem to be siding with Google in this case.
3. Google has announced Chrome OS. Microsoft would like to downplay it, but their hounchos must be loosing sleep withthis announcement. This has worried Intel as Chrome OS is expected to be less resource guzzler than Windows. Resulting in people using Chrome not upgrading their machines resulting in lower sales projections.. Moreover the lower resource usage would catapult small and cheap chip manufacturers into limelight
4. Google is getting aggressive in targetting partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft. Expect developements and discounts from Google to stop outflow of Adwords and Adsense users from its folio. This is big. Google largely earns all its earnings from Advertising. Any crack here and Google would be hardpressed to cut its cost of all the freebees its passing around
5. Google Chrome is getting popular, with each pasing day. Chrome doesn’t threaten Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera Browsers. Its Mozilla Who needs to be worried shit. Chrome is targetting largely the Mozilla community andpoaching on the same.

Google has opened many a warfronts. Every bit of its advertising revenue is being spent in producing and running the applications like Youtube, Orkut, Apps, Mailing, Maps etc. Hitler too did the same thing in not so distinct past. While fighting with Soviets his armies rammed in, while Soviet army invited him deeper into the territories and cutting in food and water supplies.

Would the battle with Microsoft drain Google and would ultimately lead to its doom?

Love Aaj Kal is an interesting movie. The film is narrated in a very special way. The Gen-Y always makes fun of the Gen-X, the way they lived and saved and loved only once. To wich Rishi Kapoor had a simple answer – We never had many choices in those days. Truly said. Those were the days, when there used to be one tea joint in city, one college in a region, one factory in town. Today we have choices and decisions need bring and not heart which is needed to put effrot.
Today they say career is more important that love. Saif proudly claims to have been in love 15 times in times to Rishi Kapoor in the movie.

Just yesterday I read somewhere Adhyatam Suman saying he and Kangana broke up because love can wait, career cannot.

For those who dream of making it big by climbing on top of mountain, the movie is a reminder that its very lonely being on the Top of the World if you are alone.

The movie is nice and must watch for all young souls and not so young souls.

SOme interesting facts:
1. Kareena is not in the movie but Neetu Singh plays an aged ‘Harleen Kaur’
2. Punjabi kudi ‘Harleen Kaur’ is not desi but actually a Brazilian model Giselle Monteiro
3. Thank You Imtiaz for not bowing to Saif and seeking Kareena in insead of Deepika Padukone. Deepika seems to be made of this role
4. Film costed 48 Crore INR to be made

Rating: 3.5/5

US Air Force is readying an unmanned drone that could fly over a target and then make the decision whether or not to launch an attack, all without human intervention. These drones laced with Artificial Intelligence [AI] would take combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints. Humans will monitor the execution and would have the authority and ability to overide the system.

The Air Force plans to have these dudes operational by 2047.

Ashwani Gujral [Jul 29, 2009]

Buy ICSA with stop loss of Rs 172 for targets of Rs 215
Buy Rolta with stop loss of Rs 130 for targets of Rs 160-Rs 175

VK Sharma
Technical Analyst

Reliance Infra 1209.95 3.91%
Buy Reliance Infrastructure around Rs 1209.95. Stop loss of Rs 1185.75

Hitendra Vasudeo

Bank of India 318.80 -4.21%
Sell Bank of India around Rs 324.70-Rs 332.90. Stop Loss of Rs 339, cover short at Rs 310.60-Rs

DLF 426.10 3.40%
Buy DLF around Rs 424.90-Rs 416.20. Stop Loss of Rs 412, book profit at Rs 434-Rs 453