Search Headlines – Vista, Milk and My BlogLog

Life After Vista

Steve Ballmer says that Microsoft’s next move post-Vista will be to improve search and tackle the threat posed by advertising-supported business models. I wish he would have just said “to tackle Google” because that would have been far less words to type and it’s obviously what he meant.

Steve told the Financial Times that Microsoft has dedicated the past few years developing Vista and addressing open source software issues, but now its time to put the focus back on search, which according to Steve, leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t disagree with that statement, but he doesn’t actually say, explain, or hint as to how Microsoft is going to do any of this. Just that they will. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

It also doesn’t inspire confidence that Steve refers to Microsoft as being "the underdog" in this whole search thing. I just can’t seem to reconcile that image in my head. [Yeah, they’re definitely less an underdog than they are a “small, scrappy start-up” –Susan]

Jennifer Laycock is an evil, pork-hating breastfeeder

Don’t look at me like that. That headline is no less ridiculous than the pork industry threatening lactivist Jennifer Laycock with a trademark lawsuit for selling T-shirts promoting breastfeeding issues.

I’m (thankfully) childless but I’ve been to Jennifer’s The Lactivist site before and have forwarded it off to my friends with screaming, drooling, milk-sucking babies. Personally, I find Jennifer a great voice for the cause, but the National Pork Board seems to have taken offense to her shirt slogan "the other white milk", which they say infringes on their trademark. Jennifer wins my heart, explaining:

"Apparently the National Pork Board is worried that someone might come to my breastfeeding blog, check out the shirts and worry that when I say “white milk” what I really mean is “thick and juicy, straight from the hog PORK.” Come on now, be honest…were you confused?"

Even if their trademark concerns were valid, it just means Jennifer has to make sure there’s no confusion between breast milk and pork. Um, I’m pretty sure there’s not. It gets even more ridiculous because they also accuse Jennifer of attempting "to promote the use of breast milk beyond merely infant consumption". Uh? I’m not even going there.

Tell Technorati Where The Fire Is

Technorati WTF is officially up and running today. The site looks similar to Digg in that it lets users share and vote on what’s "hot" on the Web. I first spotted a link to it while searching around on Technorati this morning and it looks like I’m not the only one. I wonder if Steve Rubel’s post yesterday helped to speed the release along any?

I’ve read that some people are pretty excited by this, but to be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever use it. I’m not sure I get the point and I’ve never been the kind of girl to use Digg-like sites anyway. Technorati WTF is interesting to me only in that it provides another level to Technorati, which I do use daily and love. For now I’ll just watch this one from the sidelines until someone emails me to tell me what a goldmine I’m missing, kinda like they did with MyBlogLog.

Fun Finds

Since we all have MyBlogLog on the brain (well, except Susan. Susan is uninterested in anything I’m interested in), ShoeMoney offers 10 Things I Wish MyBlogLog Would Do. I wish it stopped tracking my movements throughout the blogosphere. You don’t realize how awesome anonymity is until you lose it. [And that’s why I didn’t sign up and why I hate personalized results. Also, you damn kids get off my lawn.–Susan] — Don’t laugh; Susan really is that old man sitting on his stoop with a shotgun. And she’s not firing warning shots.

Bill Slawski takes Loren Baker’s lead and dives into 13 New Yahoo Search Marketing Patent Applications in the hopes of getting some insight into how the new Y!SM system may work under Panama.

Kim Krause wrote an important post entitled Internet Life: When You Leave Us, Will We Know It that struck a chord with me. If you haven’t read it, go do it now. It’s important to remember who and what you leave behind on the Web. That’s all I’m going to say.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.