Search engines have been evolving a lot in the past couple of years. In the start of the decade, searching the web was seen as a rather mundane thing to do. There were various engines, and each simply indexed pages and posted them in a somewhat intuitive way. But then, Google came in and changed everything with its page ranking engine, along with the many other improvements they added, quickly becoming the dominant search engine on the web. But lately, things have started shifting again. The old search style of the early decade no longer holds true, and now a new startup out of Dublin called Yokie is trying to capitalize on this.

When someone searches for a nearby restaurant, or a meal they would like, or even a recommendation for a movie to watch, they no longer rely solely on Google. Instead, social networks are starting to take a major part in people’s lives. It can be a lot more fruitful to ask your friends to get a recommendation, rather than trust the word of strangers on Google, which is now well known to be filled with SEO enhanced pages. This is the concept that brought the creation of Yokie. They call themselves a people-powered search engine. In reality, they rely on Twitter in order to return relevant results to any query you have. Instead of crawling the web for sites, they crawl Twitter for tweets, and give you a current depiction of what the world is thinking.

Visit http://yok.ie/

The startup was founded by Owen Phelan as a school project, and is now hoping to turn it into a business. Going to the site, we can quickly see that Yokie is a different breed of search engines. They clearly expose in a few slides what their engine does, and why someone would want to use it. If you need to learn about something that requires recent results, for example, Twitter will always be more accurate, because people are typing in tweets all the time, whereas Google needs to crawl sites at regular intervals. But does this type of engine work? Google tried something very similar a few months back, integrating Twitter results within their main search page. Due to a conflict with Twitter, they ended the service, but there was no evidence that the real time search was missed. Also, Yokie only relies on Twitter for now, not Facebook or Google Plus, so the results are limited.

There’s no question that social search is a big part of the future web, and Google knows it, since the whole point of starting Google Plus is to try and get a piece of the action. But as for Yokie, right now its purpose is limited. They will have to increase its range to become useful for more than just a couple of targeted niches. If they were to integrate all social networks, along with regular search, and then have a great algorithm to mash everything together in a way that makes sense, then it may just become the holy grail of search engines.

Visit http://yok.ie/

Nokia announced some new apps coming to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. Some of these apps will be exclusive to the Lumia initially.

The applications that will be exclusive to the Nokia Lumia include:

-          PGA Tour

-          ESPN

-          Groupon

-          AOL Entertainment Hub

-          Tripdots

Apps available on all Windows phones include:

-          Box

-          Time Magazine

-          PayPal

-          Gaming from EA

-          Angry Birds maker Rovio.

Only time will tell if Windows and Nokia will catch on, but nobody can say they aren’t here to compete.

Seattle upstart iHear is launching an app. for Android similar to an iPhone app. called Snackr. If the web site Appbrain.com is any indication of iHear’s quality they give Snackr (Apple’s version) 4 out of 5 stars.

http://www.ihearnetwork.com/

iHear, run by CEO Paul Simons, takes your personal social network and turns it into a streaming audio news report. Think of Pandora for your social networks.

The iHear app. does appear to be even better. There are multiple voice options, some costing some money. Also, the app. pulls from both Facebook and Twitter.

The benefit of this app. is you can have your ear buds in while walking the dog for a walk and still hear your social updates. My question is do you really need to be that closely watching your social media feeds? Some people may find that a necessity, but I see it as more of a novelty.

It may seem fairly obvious to say that doing some exercises is good for the body. But what about the brain? In many ways, the brain looks like a muscle as well, and can use some exercise, but what type? According to a recent study, it seems computer use can be good for the brain, and protect your memory, thanks to some interesting activities that goes on when you’re in front of that monitor screen. So let’s see some useful information that you should know in order to keep your brain active and your body in good health.

The study basically spoke of the useful activities that can stimulate your brain, and help keep it in good health. Studies about the brain are not new, and they have been conducted for many years now. Typically, the results always point at mental exercises as the best way to keep your brain in good condition. The idea is that the human brain is made of connections between each of its parts. As you work your brain, by doing maths, logic puzzles, or anything that make you think, more of these connections are made. So if your brain is filled with connections, everything works much better, your memory stays more vivid, and you run a lower risk of getting any of the aging related brain problems, like a loss of memory. If each cell in your brain that contains an important memory is linked by 3 or 4 connections instead of one, it’s easy to see that it’s going to last longer and be more solid. This is the basis for this latest study, and the results it showed were very similar.

Basically, when you sit in front of your computer, you always make use of your brain in some way. You’re reading text, using a complex software program, or trying to understand a problem that requires you to think. Just like doing logic puzzles in a book, being in front of your computer will help your brain in some ways. Of course, if you just watch a video or play a shooting game, maybe the benefit won’t be that great. But if you play an interactive puzzle game, do some programming, or learn a new software, then all these things are useful, because they make you use your brain, and in turn they create more connections. So even playing a game, something that may seem like pretty much a waste of time, may have some good side effects. This may not all be intuitive, but that’s what the study showed, and it’s in line with previous research which showed that it doesn’t matter what you do, the important thing is to make your brain work in some way.

Of course, that’s not a license to spend all your time in front of a computer. The rest of your body needs to work out also, and staying sitting doing nothing is not good for it. You need to stand up, move around, do some regular exercise. But if you can mix the two, sitting in front of a computer and going out for some fresh air, then it’s probably the best of both worlds.

Nokia is looking to sell the $300,000 diamond encrusted phone designer Vertu. The Vertu brand is popular among rich Chinese and Russians. Permira is buying this Nokia business for $260 million.

Vertu’s most expensive phone ever was 2006’s “Signature Cobra,” priced at $310,000. The phone featured two diamonds, two emeralds and 439 rubies. The problem I think with combining technology and jewelry is that tech. is considered old so fast. That once cool 2006 state-of-the-art cell phone , now looks like junk. If that outdated phone has jewelry on it cool turns to laughable. It seems like they are doing well so if you have that kind of disposable income more power to you.

The $260 million price-tag values Vertu at about 65% of 2011 sales.

I actually just signed up for Voodoo.com last week. The Voodoo interface is awesome! Adding domains to your account is fast, the parked domain pages look nice and have proven to have a high click through rate. The only problem so far is payout is averaging about $0.10 per click. Google recently ended its domain parking service so I had to switch to a new company. So far the look and ease of use of the account is better than Google, but payout is lower.

Domain parking is a very unusual part of the Internet, something that’s in used for thousands, perhaps millions of domains, yet only the most savvy Internet marketers really know what goes on behind the scenes. The concept is simple, you have a domain name, but you don’t have any site to put up on it, or you simply don’t have the time or desire to build a site. So normally, that domain would sit there, being useless. So a few years back, the concept of domain parking became popular. Anyone with domains they aren’t using could park them, where some relevant links would populate a computer generated page, and any traffic that happens to come onto that page would see these links. The owner would then be paid as visitors click on the links. Needless to say, this quickly turned out to be big money, and many companies wanted in. Voodoo.com is one such site offering parking services, and here is a quick review.

Domain parking isn’t new, and by now pretty much every domain registrar offers to their customers the option to park their domains until they are ready to use them. But each company provides slightly different features and incentives. After all, the main purpose behind this is to make money, so that’s why Voodoo is putting a lot of efforts into that aspect of the service. When you go to the site, you can see right away a list of features, along with why you would want to use them as opposed to your domain registrar. So the first point they repeat several times is how good their ad provider is, and how they can get you the best ads for your parked page. Obviously that’s important, so as long as that’s the case, you can expect good financial results. They also offer tracking, which is usually something you find in most tracking services and is also very important.

Another feature they have is the ability to customize your parked page. This is something you don’t find often so it can be a positive element for Voodoo. You can select from one of several templates for your page. Finally, they provide full API access for customers. So as you can see, they do have quite a few features, and everything you could expect from a domain parking service, which frankly isn’t all that much. But what about actually using them? Are they reliable, more so than your domain registrar? For that, it’s easy to look through customer reviews. Overall, they seem pretty positive. One thing that’s mentioned is that they pay via PayPal and don’t keep any fee, however some have mentioned that because they are a somewhat new service, sometimes the income can seem a bit lower than some other options.

So should you use Voodoo.com? There’s no question that if you have the opportunity to build an actual site on your domains, then that’s always more desirable than parking. However, if you have those old domains you simply aren’t developing anymore, then yes, a Voodoo account may just bring you a couple of extra bucks at the end of the month.

Visit Voodoo.com

Wavii is one of those startups we don’t hear about until it has started to gain momentum. Founded by ex-employees of Amazon and Microsoft, the media kept a close eye on this one, and now the service has been released in beta to the world. Basically, Wavii is a system not unlike Facebook, where people have feeds that they can follow. Except rather than following people, you can follow topics of interest, such as the latest celebrity gossip, tech news or political results. It’s an innovative concept from people who have a long history in the business, and made something that may become very popular.

Right now, Wavii is available both from their web site and a smartphone app. The way it works is fairly simple. Users go in and create feeds based on key topics. Then, the platform scours the web in search of news articles, blog entries, videos and any recent item of interest to this topic. They remove duplicates, and organize it all into an easy to follow feed. The similarities with Facebook’s timeline are striking, and even in their video they use that example to introduce Wavii, which is smart since most people know how the giant social network works. In fact, some pundits predict that this new startup may become an acquisition target just like Instagram recently was. While Facebook is mainly focused on friend updates, in this case, Wavii aims more at news and recent events.

According to the company, their service attempts to look at patterns while crawling the web, and surfaces the most useful news items it can find. They look at everything that’s going on and map it into story types. It even has the ability to detect users’ likes and interests based on their previous Facebook activity. Apparently, their system processes over a thousand articles every minute and can detect duplicate, and eliminate rumors from untrusted sources. Their algorithm is intelligent enough to surface the useful bits of information from the sea of data that comes out all the time through online sites. That’s what makes it so powerful, and why feeds are so valuables when you want to follow a particular topic at any given time. In some ways it’s not unlike Google attempting to rank the entire web, but here they focus on just relevant news.

It’s hard to say how much of a splash Wavii will make on the online world, and perhaps on Facebook and Twitter as a potential competitor, since the service has only been live for a few days now, but it’s certainly worth watching. The startup has the right minds and technology to make this into a very worthwhile product, and now it’s a matter of attracting users to this new way of gathering news.

Visit Wavii

People often have obsessions with one of those drinks, sometimes both. Coffee and soda can be found everywhere, and are enjoyed by people around the world. Unfortunately, they don’t act on your body in the same way. In fact, many studies point at coffee being the winner, at least from a health standpoint. One recent study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, confirms that coffee can in fact help save your life, by reducing the chance that you would get a stroke. On the other hand, soda increases that chance, so they stand at opposite sides of the coin here.

So, it’s not a big surprise. Coffee is good for you, while soda isn’t. Even when it’s low calorie soda cans, it doesn’t matter much. Whether there’s a lot of sugar in your soda, or a bit less, it’s still not very good for your health, and in particular your heart and cardiac system. Because of this sugar, the risk of getting a stroke goes up, while coffee on the other hand is free of the nasty ingredients in soda, and instead contains some natural substances that does the opposite, and decreases that chance. This study seems solid as well, going over 30 years and more than 100,000 people who drank either soda, coffee, or both, and measuring their actual results. Trends got analyzed, and the results came out in the report, which shows pretty convincingly which of the two habits you should adopt.

Soda also has other bad side effects. People who drank more than one can of soda per day were more likely to suffer from higher cholesterol levels and high blood pressure, both being linked with the higher chance of a stroke. So what makes coffee so good? Most studies seem to point at lignans, chlorogenic acids, magnesium and other antioxidants that can be found in various brands of coffee. Whether you take yours black, green, or with milk, it doesn’t really matter, you’re always going to find some of those good ingredients. What you should avoid however is adding the bad ingredients, like salt or sugar. After all, you wouldn’t want to turn this coffee into a soda. Also, while this was about just one particular drink, that doesn’t mean this one change in your diet suddenly ensures long and healthy living. You still need to get a healthy diet to go along with that.

Note that while the study goes after generic soda brands, those filled with sugar, it’s mostly this one ingredient that’s to blame, and you don’t have to start thinking a triple mocha latte with syrup and whipped cream is suddenly good for you. Any meal with a lot of added sugar is likely to result in the same thing as the soda cans from this test. So in the mean time, if you get thirsty, drink some coffee. It’s good for you.

When Facebook launched, it used to be a site where people would go to meet friends or post photos. Now however, with over 800 million users, it’s a major destination for advertisers. Sure Facebook itself does have some self serve advertising tools, but they are mostly manual and aimed at small businesses. There’s no large automated tools available to all, for those who need to run many campaigns and get a lot of flexibility. Anyone who tried to setup a large series of ads and compare demographics, image copy, bidding price and so on, knows that the native platform isn’t ideal. That’s where Qwaya comes in. This service builds on Facebook’s platform and adds much needed features for those looking to manage a large quantity of ads.

Go to Qwaya now!

The first benefit you can find when you register for an account is the ability to create an unlimited number of ads and templates. These templates can be stored in folders and quickly reused to create new campaigns. The actual ad creation isn’t different from Facebook’s platform, and simply asks you to use an image, title and description, but at least you can save them and go back when creating new ones. The other feature is the ability to bulk create. So if you need to have a lot of marketing done with slightly different demographics, it would be very painful to use the Facebook system. Qwaya makes it a lot easier. It’s also a nice way to test a large number of ads.

One area where Qwaya is providing a lot of options is with campaign analysis. Facebook’s results are fairly simple and not presented in an easy to understand manner. With Qwaya, you get full graphics which you can customize. You can compare factors like clickthrough rates, total impressions, and even import Google Analytics results from your site. There’s also a keyword tracking tool, something any Internet marketer would be familiar with, and this one allows you to track ads and see which keywords get you the most attention. You can get a good idea of the whole conversion process from a single interface, which is pretty nice.

Go to Qwaya now!

Overall, Qwaya is a good tool for people who want more flexibility when placing Facebook ads, and who have to run a lot of different campaigns. The service makes it a lot easier to keep track of what’s been going on and how it’s affecting your sales. The basic plan is available at $79 per month and allows you to place 50 ads per day. The premium plan is $149 and goes to 1,000 ads. With things like fast ad creation, bulk editing, scheduling, and advanced analytics options, it may be something you or your company needs if you really want to spend some time doing Facebook campaigns.

As everything moves online, people rely on physical goods less and less everyday. Our postal service still delivers daily mail, but chances are you and most of the connected world now rely mostly on email and other online communication mechanisms. But there are still cases where physical mail is needed. Whether that be to receive packages, or even letters from some sources that haven’t adapted yet, like bills or official correspondence from the government. That’s why a new service called Mailbox Forwarding exists. This is a review of this innovative solution, and what it can do for you.

The idea behind Mailbox Forwarding is that the company provides you with a mailing address, and then scans your mail as it comes in, then shows it to you as email. It’s a bit like a PO Box system, except more convenient, because you get an actual address, and you don’t have to go and check the box, everything is shown to you on your screen. There’s no question that it’s a lot more convenient, especially if you don’t have a mailbox right at your doorstep. Every type of delivery is accepted, from normal postal service letters and packages, to UPS and FedEX. Packages are also no problem, and a description is shown to you on your interface. Everything is accessible online from the moment it’s received at your remote address.

The cost structure is reasonable at $15 per month to get your own personalized address, and the ability to receive an unlimited amount of mail, which all gets scanned by the system and can be managed online. In this web interface, you have several options as to what you want to do with the item. You can get details about it, you can have it forwarded to your home address, or get them to shred it. On top of an added convenience, it’s also more security, since you don’t have to give out your home address. Simply give this one and people can send you mail without knowing where you live. As an added feature, you even have the ability to receive faxes through a shared or dedicated line. So this is an additional bonus that the company provides.

Overall, it’s a very interesting concept. For people wanting more security, or convenience, or simply somebody who travels a lot and can’t keep the same address all the time, this can be a useful tool. Whether it’s worth $15 per month is up to each person to decide, but it’s easy to see how it might be for those who need that type of service.