Microsoft Virtual Earth and Local Search Patent Applications

Microsoft’s Live Local (now Bing Maps) is powered by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform (now Bing Maps for Enterprise). Five patent applications were published at the US Patent and Trademark Office this past week which detail aspects of how Microsoft’s Virtual Earth works, including roof-top overlays, virtual Earth images, real time driving information, user privacy, … Read more

Building Links with Creative Commons

One of the members of Cre8asite Forums has a couple of sites that he’s filled with images of the locations of his sites. He’s a talented photographer, in addition to a skilled webmaster, and the pictures he has on his site are terrific. He has also placed those images under licenses from Creative Commons. Because … Read more

Flickr Interestingness Rankings Patents Released

I’ve posted some pictures to Flickr, but I’ve never really paid much attention to the “interestingness” rankings the site uses. Interestingness and clustering were first used in August of last year, as announced by Stewart Butterfield on the Yahoo Search Blog and the Flickr blog. Blog posts about Flickr’s interestingness, and a February Flickr forum … Read more

Amazon Acquisitions and Investments

Amazon Acquisitions I tried to find a list of companies that Amazon.com had acquired or had invested in, and couldn’t find any lists that looked close to complete. So I decided to create my own. I hunted down a number of their investments and acquisitions, which I’ve included below. Chances are that I’ve missed some, … Read more