A Fuller View

Well, its another week or so since my last post and April was pretty low month for both the number of posts and the quality from A Fuller View. Lets see if the Arpil drought can bring some May sprouts…

Scanning around the blog-o-sphere here are some posts that I think are worth a read:

• On Screenwrek - Spot Runner just raised more money and this round included money from UK based Dail Mai Group (which is intersting).
• Buzz Machine - his Guardian column from last week. All about an interesting wine guy’s brand and what this means in the world of social media: “Your personal brand is now completely exposed to the world, 24/7. Everyone is media now.”
• AdViking - our sister site posts about the $300M deal for Adify. Wow that’s a lot offly paper.
• On Razorshine some intersting thoughts on Firefox 3 and much needed delicious plugin.
• RWW alot of traffic on myspace US. I wonder how much of that is search driven?

What else is on my mind? Well I need to finally blog about Venice - I have some notes stuck on my mobile Windows device that I can’t seem to easily get off (I am not a fan on Windows Mobile and my Palm Treo at the moment). I am aslo thinkming about the transient nature of instant messenger platform use and churn and what this might mean for socail media. But mainly, I am thinking about how nice it is that summer has arrived in London - at least for the moment.

Microsoft closed its acquisition of enterprise search company FAST last Friday. This deal was originally announced back in January.

I am a little bit slow posting about this news from UK based Multimap, which is now part of the Microsoft family - Multimap is now tightly tied to Live Search in the UK - which is cool! Here’s some details from the official blog:

First things first, Multimap is now the lead consumer mapping experience for Live Search in the UK, and we’re proud to welcome all the UK users of Live Search Maps to Multimap.com. It may have been a while since you last used Multimap.com, but we hope that you’ll find all the great features that you’re used to, plus much more.

For those of you not familiar with Live Search Maps, and the Virtual Earth platform that powers it, check out the fabulous Bird’s Eye images, which are now available on Multimap.com. Unlike normal satellite and aerial imagery that is taken from directly above, Bird’s Eye images are captured by low-flying aircraft and are taken from a 45 degree angle, facing north, south, east and west directions to give a unique perspective.

Read the full blog post here OR better yet use the new and improved Multimap directly. I’ve always found Multimap to be one of the best UK focused mapping sites and was always an early innovator. Its great to see that they are improving the product and taking back ground from Google maps.

Not a news story per say but still very cool… I have to say I like today’s Google logo supporting Earth Day 2008.

I will be heading to the Venice Media Festival (which kicks off this Sunday night) and will be reporting back here and on AdViking next week with views, analysis and insight from what looks to be a very exciting industry conference.

Lost of good stuff to read over on AdViking:

• Note to Google: You Can’t Please Everyone!
• Microhoo or is it YahAOL?
• OpenX is Moving to Hollywood

The OpenX move is a surprse but probably makes them a more serious play now. The Yahoo deal is like a great Espionage thriller – I can’t wait to read the final chapter.

I was reading Gapingvoid today as I was surprised to see he quit Twitter. Maybe there really is a trend toward real social networking? Anyway for this post I found kmy way to ChangeThis - an entire site of manifestos.

ChangeThis: is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread. We’re on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds.

Lots of cool content on this site. I think this will provide some good reading on my train trips over the next few weeks…

Globrix has added the MyGlobrix feature to the site:

This allows you to register and save your property searches, and allows us to deliver regular updates to you via email should any new properties come onto Globrix that match your needs.  We now have over 700k properties, and our search engine updates regularly through every day finding new properties that could match your criteria.

Globrix are also reporting they have more than 700,000 listings on the site. Pretty impressive. I’ll have to visit the site and report back with an update review. I am curious to see how the various property sites fair in a economic and real estate down turn…

This deal - Local Matters + Mobile People - will be of interest to people in the local search and IYP space. The deal had been rumoured for months now and so no surprise to see it finally announced. The combined company should be able to provide a more comprehensive solution to new and existing customers. There are no details on the value of the deal. If anyone has any info on the deal size or wants to speculate please comment… Note: Local Matters are a fairly significant partner with FAST in terms of using the FAST search platform for as a core element of LMI’s solution. It will be interesting to see how this relationship evolves once FAST is part of MSFT.

Here’s the full release from the LMI site:

March 28, 2008

For Immediate Release

Local Matters and mobilePeople Merger Provides Unique Offering to Directory Publishers

Copenhagen/London, NN March, 2008 – Local Matters, Inc., a Denver, Colorado based Media Technology Solutions provider, and mobilePeople a/s, a Copenhagen, Denmark based local mobile search and advertising provider, have entered into a Share Purchase Agreement on March 21, 2008. Under the terms of the transaction, Local Matters will acquire all of the outstanding capital stock of Mobile People in exchange for a combination of cash and Local Matters stock. The combined company would provide directory publishers, media publishers and directory assistance providers with media technology solutions that connect consumers and advertisers across digital channels including the internet, wireless and voice.

There are now more than three billion global mobile users, and local search ranks among the top content categories that consumers utilize on their mobile phones. Publishers are increasingly extending into Internet and mobile to capture users and local advertisers.

Local Matters’ CEO Perry Evans said: “We chose mobilePeople because we believe they have the best technology to create a mobile distribution presence for publishers. Its expertise, its track record and its innovation cycles set them apart from the many other companies in this space. Our aim now is to be the preferred one-stop shop for directory publishers and directory assistance providers for outsourced media technology solutions online, on wireless and on voice.”

The two companies formed a business partnership in 2006 and have several joint initiatives in progress. The closing of the transaction is subject to additional closing conditions and is currently expected to close in the second quarter of 2008.

Of course not. But get ready for April Fool’s Day (a nice post of RWW worth on the subject) on the web. I wonder what version 2008 will have in store for us and the USA? btw - this is just me trying to pad out the number of posts for the month of March. Enjoy.