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The formal explanation of what this whole glue thing is about. Well, Glue is the latest offering in the the search field by Yahoo!.

In Glue, the search results page has a classic search results section and a lot of visual information collected from various sites (not just Yahoo! sites) over the web. The results page has got information flowing in from everywhere (I am not listing the various Y! services here), player biography from cricinfo, google blog search results, lastfm music tracks, youtube videos, job results from monster, gaming information from various sites, information from howstuffworks.com, wikipedia & the list goes on and on. The more you search the more you will discover. I think they are fetching relevant information form all sources, be it cricinfo or for that matter google. The information displayed in search results page is highly relevant irrespective of its source. The complex search queries wont have a glue page, but the most common queries will have one.

I was amazed to see the content on the glue page for call of duty 4, there was a nice description along with the quick facts of the game from wikipedia, some youtube videos(which play inline), images (which link to various gaming sites), latest news about the game from gaming sites & this one surprised me the most, a set of images which link directly to the product page (not the lame search results page) on ebay. WOW! this is simply amazing.

Search results: The Classic search results are displayed on the left side of the page & all the rich information is in the right side of the page. The ‘related pages’ link on the top nav gives links to glue pages which are related to the search query. A tab on top of the page allows easy switching between the classic search results page & glue page.

After having a look at all the rich content on the page I was curious to know the yslow grade of the page. It scored  98 (Grade A) for the results page, I expected something like a ‘B’ for a page with so many images. Looks like a lot of effort has been put in improving the performance of the page.

They have a provision wherein you can request to put your website on the glue page. I have already submitted mine.

If given a chance to rename this product, I would call this ‘Open Search’

Technorati Tags: yahoo!, india, search, glue, social

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Yeah, Its been a long time since I’ve updated my blog. Lazy me, Too many things happening at the same time. Too much happening at the twitter front as well, holydevil - my twitter handle.

Yahoo! India has launched locals. I haven’t really done some serious digging, All the usual stuff like send email, send to mobile, auto complete for cities is all in place. I saw a new feature called ‘leave my footprint’, pretty interesting. They have integrated Yahoo! India maps (one of my favorites) with the listings. As of now there have listings for four major cities of India. Hope they cover the other cities along with Goa soon. Can’t wait to find some new places to eat yummy fish.
One thing which needs a mention here is, Adding new listings in Y! India locals is much much simpler compared to adding listings in Google local for India. Adding listings in Y! India locals is a one step procedure but the same process takes about 5 long steps (excluding the verification process) in Google locals India.

Here goes the url for Yahoo! India Locals - http://local.yahoo.in

That’s it for now. I have a nice topic to blog about, will post it (along with a screen-cast) in a couple of days.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, India, Locals, Listings, Search

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Its not the usual stuff which comes out from the Yahoo! camp, this ones a killer. It is a mobile product with an open architecture with support for communication tools like email, instant messaging, text messaging & more.
In simple words, Y! oneConnect is a mobile application which will enable users to access their mail (Y! Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL & others), IM (Y! messenger, Google talk, AIM, MSN). The open API’s will make way for integrating these services into Y! oneConnect.
Few of the features announced are:

• Socially connected address book - Will enable integration of the popular social networking services like Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, hi5, Bebo & more.
• Mobile messaging - IM & SMS integration of popular services like Y! Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, etc.
• Status - Get updates from your friends in real time from all the social networking sites.
• Contact card - Create customized cards and select the information like who & what will be shown in the card.
• Location sensing - Exchange information with nearby Y! oneConnect users. Proximity alerts will notify when a contact enters their vicinity.

Status update is my favorite as it allows to select the list of services & update the status on all of them at one go. See screen shot below.

oneConnect is expected to hit the market in Q2 ‘08. That’s all what I can recall from what I read.

Check for latest updates at the Y! oneConnect site.

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Flickr has integrated a kick ass online photo editing tool called Picnik. I’d love to edit my photos online without having the need to carry Photoshop/Gimp/<other photo editing s/w> along. Flickr has integrated picnik with two options, namely a free edition (which covers almost all the basic photo editing tools) and the premium edition. I’m a big fan of the ‘Auto-Fix’ button, I’m not an expert at photo editing but I feel that the auto-fix button does it (almost) all.
See the difference below.

Feature list for photo editing includes basic actions like rotate, crop, red-eye removal, sharpen, colors & many more.
Apart from the basic features there is an option to create effects, enter text, add shapes, touch-up images & Frames.
Photo editing can be done in full screen mode as well.

Done with photo editing, what next? We get two options. Either replace the old image with the new one (this option is available only for Flickr pro users) or add the new image to the existing ones.
Make sure you have Flash installed (picnik is a flash application)

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With the festive season(diwali) around the corner, Yahoo! India Movies kicks off with its kool new look. Not to mention there is tons of information you can find which will save your time which you would waste searching for information about Bollywood.

Its nice to see the movies front page so rich with information. Its got the latest movies featured as the eye grabber on the front page. After a close look it looks like all the information one would ever want about movies is right there on the front page. A showtimes module, event photos, movie stills, wallpapers. Explore movies section divided into three major sections as ‘In Theaters’, ‘Still Hot’ & ‘Box Office Top 5′. There’s an interview module which features a snippet of the interview of the latest celebrity. There is a poll module along with a rating & review module. Reviews again are critic reviews & user reviews. Videos module looks pretty simple, I’d prefer a video player which would play the video without taking me to a different page (may be that will follow by time). I’m not done yet, there’s this three-in-one module which lets me have a look at the latest bollywood news, top movies & top celebrities.

Phew … Thats a mouthful and if thats not enough to find what you’re looking for, they’ve got a handy search box (not the one on the top-right corner) right in the middle of the page. All this information without moving away from the main page.

There’s even more wrapped in this whole red carpet. Have a look at the moolah which speak for the verdict of the movie in the box office section. News, photos, interviews, videos and each section split gracefully. I’ve not seen a photos slide show so viral before - The last photo in the slideshow is followed by a bunch of options to see other photos. Something very similar to the youtube video player, making the user stick to that section for a longer time.

The A-Z tab on the top navigation comes very handy for searching movies by year/alphabetically, personalities. I tried searching for Don in the A-Z section and found some amazing results and relevant suggestions. A tag-cloud with the most searched movies is placed on the right.
A small note on the showtimes page says ‘Ticketing option coming soon’. Now thats some good news for people who like getting things done without moving away from the computer.

Bad things follow after the good (at least in my case). Time to look at the areas which need more attention.
I see some user’s posting reviews even before the movie has released. Having an option like preview/user expectations would make the movie statistics even interesting, something like an option to see what the people were expecting from the movie and what was the outcome.
There is no/very little space for the regional/Hollywood movies. I know, I know there is a movies site by Yahoo! for international audience.
A better video player will be expected by the people. Adding the viral effect (like the one in slideshow) to the video player will be a plus point.

There’s much more than what I’ve mentioned in my blog, not to mention the Yahoo! India Movies Logo has a Beta attached to it. That should give a rough idea that there’s more in store to come. If you have a word or two to say about the site then punch it here.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, India, Movies, Bollywood, Box-office, Videos

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