Say it ain’t you, Yahoo.

And yet, here’s one of the major new conceptual directions of the troubled Internet giant’s next pricey marketing campaign, aimed at recovering from its first advertising foray, which is widely considered a failure: A full frontal attack on search leader Google.

BoomTown posted several weeks ago that the new effort was being rolled out.

And now it’s here–and, in part, it’s an odd attempt to mock the simple and elegant white box that allowed Google (GOOG) to steal Yahoo’s thunder many years back, as well as lightning and any other weather system worth owning.

“There’s nothing to look at but a box and a button,” says the voice-over in the Yahoo (YHOO) marketing video–which you can see below–about an unnamed, but obvious, Web site. “When you look at this homepage nothing looks back at you. You come to this place so you can leave.”

Well, yes! Because it’s a search page!

No matter, according to Yahoo, which remains intent on pushing the idea of being “the center of your online life.”

Which has, of course, increasingly become Facebook. The social networking giant has done exactly zero advertising to get its 500 million users and has been steadily surpassing Yahoo in a number of key consumer metrics.

In fact, Facebook is Yahoo’s true nemesis, although the new ads push Facebook, as well as Twitter, in order to focus on Yahoo as the place to interact with a lot of different sites and services in one place.

“Today we are excited to preview the next phase of the Yahoo! marketing campaign, showcasing the amazing content and experiences people can find only with Yahoo!. We want people to experience first-hand how Yahoo! is the place where all the things, people, experiences, information–everything you care about–come together,” said Yahoo marketing head Elisa Steele in a blog post on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog tonight. “It’s a place that gets to know you, a place that surprises you. And we’ll demonstrate it by letting you sample the products, see them in action and have experiential encounters.”

Well, at least that sounds better than the willfully vague $100 million campaign Steele launched with noisy fanfare last fall with the motto: “It’s Y!ou.”

Yahoo never really answered what exactly “you” was, which is why CEO Carol Bartz finally admitted to a group of reporters in March that the effort “didn’t have a really good call to action.”

Actually, it had none and–more important–did not increase traffic in the key U.S. market (as you can see in the chart), although Yahoo execs tried mightily to spin it as successful in some international markets and as an opening effort to revive the tarnished brand.

A pretty pricey effort it was, causing Yahoo to pretty much dump the WPP Group (WPPGY) ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, and hire Omnicom Group (OMC) unit Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the new work.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal tonight, Yahoo will spend $75 million to $85 million on the renewed multimedia campaign, although it seems to be part of the original outlay of $100 million.

The Journal said there was a new slogan: “Your favorite stuff all in one place. Make Yahoo your home page.”

The more specific effort will show off partners that Yahoo has been integrating into the service, as well as its own properties.

And as it turns out, that’s why the “It’s You” tagline is remaining, with a spate of efforts to make it more specific and product-centric.

According to the article in the Journal, there will be a lot of marketing gimmicks, such as kiosks, giant Apple (AAPL) iPhones with a huge Yahoo search app, and photo booths.

While that is all well and good, Yahoo’s key issue–besides its talent brain drain–remains its lack of new and innovative products, which are being pumped out aggressively by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft (MSFT) and, yes, Google.

At least we now know why Bartz took aim at Google’s search business model in a BBC interview recently, noting it was one-note.

As Yahoo is now trying to paint Google’s main product offering in its new marketing materials and, presumably, its upcoming ad campaign.

But, in fact, touting its simple search box on its own, Google spent very little on its utterly charming “Parisian Love” commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl and scored off the charts in a number of surveys.

It’s about exactly how useful one box can be.

Compare that Google marketing video with Yahoo’s effort below and decide for yourself which marketing material works better:

Here are more new Yahoo ad examples:

And here is the full text of Steele’s blog:

A Sneak Peek of Exciting & Fresh Stuff from Yahoo!

Posted May 5th, 2010 at 7:11 pm by Yahoo!, Blog Editors

Odds are that sometime in the last six months you have experienced the Yahoo! “It’s You!” campaign somewhere in your world: reading the news you crave every day, during your favorite television show, searching on why lady bugs have spots, on the side of the bus you take to work. Our goal with this campaign was to make a connection with our hundreds of millions of users over the world and have fun with your favorite stuff, all in one place!

Today we are excited to preview the next phase of the Yahoo! marketing campaign, showcasing the amazing content and experiences people can find only with Yahoo!. We want people to experience first-hand how Yahoo! is the place where all the things, people, experiences, information–everything you care about–come together. It’s a place that gets to know you, a place that surprises you. And well demonstrate it by letting you sample the products, see them in action and have experiential encounters.

Keep in mind, this is just a sneak peek into the fun ideas and experiences we are dreaming up. Starting May 18th and throughout the year, you will begin to see finished new elements of the campaign, with many fun surprises across the Y! network, web and within venues such a cinemas, television and even in the air (on planes!).

The Yahoo! marketing campaign will show users how to tap into Yahoo’s industry-leading products and make the Internet far more personally relevant. Starting a band? Yahoo! Search–a smarter, more personal search, will help you find the gear, gigs and guitar heroes you need to rock out.

Going to the movies? Yahoo! can entertain and enhance the cinema experience. Starting in the lobby before the movie starts, we will showcase Yahoo! products and properties through interactive panels. Using the new Sketch-a-Search app we can help you find a restaurant for after the movie. At the start of the film, we’ll integrate Yahoo! Search into the movie trailers, simulating a Search Wow Module.

At 30,000 feet, Yahoo! will make it fun to travel. As passengers relax on airline flights, we entertain by showing how Yahoo! brings my world and the world together through our creative campaign and tailored Yahoo! content. Each flight will feature our full video campaign, and depending on the flight and time, Yahoo! content such as Funny or Die and other pieces of Yahoo! entertainment.

Keep track of the highest bid on a vintage skateboard on eBay, share your latest photos showing you landing that kickflip on Flickr and find out who’s dating who on Facebook–all from the comfort of your Yahoo! Homepage.

We can’t wait to share the new campaign where you spend a lot of your time- online. While scrolling through the “live” images you can add all your favorite items to your Yahoo! homepage. Making it relevant and personal.

So the next time you hop on a plane, check your email or go to the movies. Yahoo! can bring YOUR world and THE world together in one convenient place–wherever you are.

Elisa Steele, Yahoo! EVP & Chief Marketing Officer

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates–who has been devoting most of this time to philanthropic work via the Gates Foundation–has just launched an ambitious blog and information site.

He is calling it “The Gates Notes: An Inside Look at Global Matters,” but BoomTown has officially nicknamed the site–which you can see on a screen grab below–All Things B(ill) or perhaps the more hip-hoppy All Things G(ates) today.

Here’s a note about the effort, sent out today:

Today, Bill Gates launched The Gates Notes (www.gatesnotes.com), a website designed to share his learning and excitement with his new foundation work along with his personal interests in areas such as energy and the environment. Bill has been spending time learning a lot from thought leaders in their fields. He has been taking notes and sending emails, and the site is a collection of the conversations, books, articles, trips and people who have inspired and informed Bill. The site is designed to encourage people to dig deeper–to explore questions from multiple angles. Bill will update the content on an ongoing basis, and we also plan to add some features in the near future to make the site more interactive such as RSS and commenting/discussions.

And in a welcoming note on the site, Gates writes:

Since leaving my fulltime job at Microsoft to dedicate more time to our foundation, a lot of people have asked me what I’m working on. It often feels like I’m back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I’m passionate about.

I’m fortunate because the people I’m working with and learning from are true experts in their fields. I take a lot of notes, and often share them and my own thoughts on the subject with others through email, so I can learn from them and expand the conversation.

I thought it would be interesting to share these conversations more widely with a website, in the hope of getting more people thinking and learning about the issues I think are interesting and important. So, welcome to the Gates Notes.

The site has a spare and elegant look–dare I say, it looks as if it could have been designed by Apple (AAPL)? Interactivity is limited at this point and social networking nonexistent.

The site includes several sections: “What I’m Thinking About” (cheery things today like pandemic response and Haiti), “What I’m Learning” (He loves the book “Super Freakonomics” and lectures from global health professor Hans Rosling), “My Travels” (a video about a recent trip to see health clinics in India), “Curious Classrooms” (questions Gates answers from students), and “Infrequently Asked Questions” (more questions he answers).

Yesterday, Gates officially joined Twitter and restarted his Facebook account.

This has all been in anticipation of this site’s launch, which appears to be part of an effort by Gates to raise awareness of what he has been up to since he stepped down from day-to-day involvement at Microsoft (MSFT) in mid-2008 and stepped up his ambitious philanthropic work.

Here’s the homepage screen (click on it to make it larger):

Yesterday, BoomTown asked a question on Twitter about what grade people thought I should give Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz for product innovation.

I began handing out marks to Bartz last week, after she gave herself a B- for overall performance for the year since she took over the troubled Internet giant.

But I decided to be more specific, splitting the grades for Yahoo (YHOO) in 2009 into five categories: Management, financials, product innovation, deal-making and moxie.

So far, I have given her an A- for management and a C+ for financials.

But I resorted to the lazy reporter trick of using Twitter, because I was torn when it comes to product innovation.

One main reason: Bartz inherited a company that has been suffering from a serious and chronic case of product constipation, after many years of leading the Web in new and innovative offerings.

In fact, from its amazing content products to its early attempts at personalization to its way-ahead-of-the-pack email to its cool design breakthroughs, Yahoo had always been the one to beat when it comes to the consumer Internet in Silicon Valley.

But that has decidedly not been the case for many years now, even as other key players have been very busy inventing some cool stuff.

Consider: Facebook with The Wall, News Feed, pokes and friending; Google (GOOG) with Chrome, Android and a plethora of major search innovations; Amazon (AMZN) with Kindle, Prime, EC2, S3; Twitter (the whole dang idea of it); and Apple (AAPL) with the iPod, the iPhone and, soon, the iPad–have you heard of them?

And–yes–even Microsoft has jumped in with a saucy new Bing search service in 2009, and it has been introducing features regularly, despite its weensie market share.

Product innovation also includes keeping a sharp eye out for new companies to snap up, and Yahoo used to do that, grabbing innovative start-ups, such as Flickr, Del.icio.us and many others.

But Yahoo made both of those purchases in 2005, and the entrepreneurs from those start-ups have since exited under a cloud.

In 2009, Yahoo made a few minor acquisitions, focusing instead on shedding and closing down former purchases it could not successfully integrate.

That kind of cleaning up is doubtlessly a good thing for Yahoo, and I did not think it completely fair to ding Bartz for a situation that obviously requires a lot of fixing, made even harder since there have been a lot of other issues to deal with at the company.

Nonetheless, as the year ticked on and other Web players marched ahead with all due speed into a range of new arenas, it has become increasingly worrisome to hear not a peep out of Yahoo or see any true spark of innovation, even as Bartz hired a passel of new execs, most of whom have more enterprise than consumer Internet experience.

While Yahoo did complete a significant overhaul of its homepage and launch a new marketing push, competitors such as AOL (AOL) and Microsoft did much the same.

As to the variety of key fixes across the site that should happen as a matter of course at any company, all of which were necessary–that’s great. But while Yahoo is in the midst of a brand revitalization, it simply does not get credit for keeping its existing properties properly updated.

Thus, my grade comes down to a C- in product innovation, since I cannot point to a single unique and striking innovation from Yahoo in 2009. Neither can I call its two very decent acquisitions–photo organization start-up Xoopit and Arab Internet portal Maktoob–game-changing in any way whatsoever.

My grade is better than the dozens of suggestions I got from readers in tweets, direct messages and emails, most of which rated Yahoo’s innovations effort of late at a D or D- grade (with one F–Hello, Keith R!).

Wrote one smart techie I know well, in a typical sentiment:

I’ll give them a D for product innovation. They have outsourced search to Microsoft. They made so many small, smart acquisitions over the years, but they killed them first and now looking to divest every one of them. They want to get into the social game, but have had Delicious, MyBlogLog, Upcoming for all these years and did nothing with it. They incubated Y! Pipes, same result.

And now their big game is social activity aggregation. They have the right assets–mail and messenger are still popular, news is still popular and they just renewed their deal with AP, users are still on Flickr, don’t agree with their home page strategy but with that and the Facebook Connect integration, Y! has the potential to know a lot about a user. They’d then be able sell targeted display ads for a premium, that Facebook has been (so far) reluctant to do. We’ll see how well they execute this year. I’m not very hopeful though. They have lost their product DNA.

We’ll have to see about that in 2010.

And, to be fair, Yahoo PR exec Sheila Tran respectfully disagreed with my assessment and sent me a cogent and well-argued email about how Yahoo did a lot better in this area than you might think, awarding it an A.

Here is her email in its entirety, so judge for yourself:

High-level Points

· Product innovation is not just about launching “new” products. We focused on continually innovating on our core/leading products/properties.
· Making these updates are key to our brand revitalization and core to our success moving forward.
· Other competitors may have updated some similar products this year but they don’t have the reach and leadership we have. Our updates in several areas such as the homepage, search, mail, mobile and messenger were differentiated from others.
· We have innovations that span across the consumer AND advertising experiences
· We’re focused on innovating globally ie launch of Meme

Product/Property

New Homepage

· In the US, we’ve seen a 12% year over year increase in UU’s on our homepage (Dec 08-09, comScore).
· The web is open and in 2009, Yahoo!’s homepage opened up, too. With the integration of the Yahoo! Application Platform and the new homepage (September 2009), we gave developers the ability to get in front of one of the largest daily audiences on the web.
· The new homepage takes the number of codebases from 33 to 1. The benefits of moving towards a single code base are many–faster time to market, less duplication of efforts, and a more robust technology platform to operate from, to name just a few.
· We expanded the use of our content optimization technology to the Today module, helping fill the page with more relevant and engaging content. While this isn’t always apparent to users, our content optimization algorithms work behind the scenes to help us fine-tune how we identify and display the most popular content. We are now testing how we can use the engine to help us personalize content to peoples’ interests–for example, if you’re a sports junkie we might increase the amount of sports news you see when you visit the Yahoo! homepage.

Mail
· Launch of open apps which is aligned with what we have done across the homepage and search.

Messenger
· Yahoo! Messenger has seen video instant messaging minute use grow 3x since its introduction last year.

Search
· Launch of SearchPad: online personal research assistance when people search. Only one that offers this
· Continued success with SearchMonkey and BOSS which resulted in a differentiated search experience on Yahoo! Search and outside of Yahoo!
. BOSS: more than 30 million queries a day
. SearchMonkey: live in more than 23 markets, more than 70 million enhanced searchmonkey results are viewed daily
· Launch of the new search results page: open apps, blended results, 3 column look and feel which google then announced, enhanced results with search monkey
· Launch of video and image search refiners: no other competitor has taken our approach which really provides a more relevant experiences for people.

Artist Pages
· Launch of the artist pages consumer experience that aggregates the best music products, services, information, and content the Web has to offer about more than 500,000 artists. Pulls together “best of the Web” music products such as iTunes, Amazon.com, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Pandora and others in one place.

Connected TV
· In 2009, Yahoo! revolutionized the TV experience by making the connection between TV viewing and the Internet a reality and signing distribution partnerships to embedding the Yahoo! Widget Engine directly in TVs from Samsung, Sony, LG and Vizio.
· In 2010, we continue to expand partner distribution globally (new partnerships with Hisense, MIPS, Viewsonic and Sigma), and move beyond the TV (into set top boxes, blu-ray players and more.) We also opened the WDK and introduced new Widgets providing users with thousands of content channels.

Mobile
· New Y! Mobile Homepage–33 countries across 1,900 devices; tighter PC to mobile synergies (http://m.yahoo.com)
. Over the past two years, we have seen the usage of our homepage more than triple – globally. (Yahoo! Internal Data)
· Adds voice search for iPhone and increases availability across other mobile devices
. Emerging markets are a key growth driver; for instance, in Indonesia we see nearly twice as many more mobile search users than we do on the PC. (Yahoo! Internal Data)
· iPhone / BlackBerry Apps for Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Fantasy Football and Flickr (iphone only, as there was already a BB app for Flickr)
· New Y! Mobile Homepage for US Hispanics
· Continue to sign strategic partnerships for leading mobile services, including Chunghwa Telecom and o2 Germany (mobile search, displacing Google)
. We have over 100 mobile operator and OEM partnerships around the world.

Advertising
· Rich Ads in Search: Most innovative way to bring display benefits to search and launched before any other search engine could have.
· Search Retargeting: Yahoo is the only media company that can leverage display and search effectively, as such Search Retargeting (uses a recent search query to serve up a relevant display ad) is something only we can do and do well.
· Innovative Strategy: Right Media going upstream. We have the largest ad exchange, in 2009 we decided to make it all about premium to have our exchange community be more appealing to big brands and publishers.

Acquisitions
· Xoopit–2008 Hack day winner. Brings phenomenal photo organization, improved photo sharing, and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo! Mail.
· Maktoob–Acquisition accelerates Yahoo!’s strategy of expanding in high-growth emerging markets where we believe Yahoo! has unparalleled opportunity to become the destination of choice for consumers.

[The C- photo is from Yahoo's still-terrific Flickr.]

Uh-oh, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was expected to appear on the Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings call, but she has apparently “came down with something,” according to CFO Tim Morse.

BoomTown is sending over chicken soup right now, but let’s hope she gets her vaccinations tout de suite!

Worst of all, no sassy quotes or cursing, replaced by a very earnest Morse, who sounded like he was once a Boy Scout.

After the markets closed, Yahoo reported better-than-expected earnings on still lackluster revenues.

Overall, the conference call boiled down to one quote from Morse that seems to have been selected as the Yahoo (YHOO) buzzword of the moment:

“The theme for third quarter was stabilization.”

2:02 pm PDT: Investor stuff from guy who sounded like a robot that I completely ignored, since I was much more interested in a conversation between two women about a bad date this past weekend, which I eavesdropped on in its entirety while liveblogging from a Starbucks (SBUX) in San Francisco.

By the way, the man whom the ladies are ripping was a very unstable date!

2:04 pm: Morse jumped on and gave everyone the bad news about Bartz being sick and the good news about the better-than-expected net income, while also updating all the various happenings of the quarter.

“I am happy to report that our Q3 revenue came in above our guidance range,” said Morse, who sounded somewhat jaunty.

Morse reeled off numbers, numbers and more numbers, some stuff about the new marketing campaign ($18 million spent so far and $45 million in the next quarter!) and other stuff about the cost cuts and fourth-quarter guidance.

Also, no sale of the company’s Alibaba in China or the Yahoo! Japan stake, thank you very much!

2:12 pm: Morse also gave a quick update about the search and online advertising partnership Yahoo has struck with Microsoft (MSFT).

His message: The Silicon Vally Internet icon is not out of search, because it is not about the algorithm, but a better search product.

Tim, you might want to roll that claim back, especially since you also might want to notice how well Google (GOOG) has done with its giant math-brains in the search business.

Morse tried mightily to channel Bartz on search, using a comparison she has made about the Intel (INTC) chip, which is widely used by computer makers. Said Morse, it’s the “differentiation” that matters!

I wonder if Yahoo will keep repeating that one, even as its search share continues to decline.

But Morse did make a funny about how many ex-Yahoos are on the Microsoft payroll now, so the partnership transition should go smoothly.

Well, there’s that!

2:28 pm: Morse mentioned Yahoo’s analysts day next week, and then opened up the call to questions.

Analysts always ask very dull questions at earnings calls and this one proved no different.

The first was about display run rate and about the search market in comparison to Google.

What’s the good word? Stabilization, of course!

The next question was about eBay (EBAY), which seems far from the point.

Morse agreed and cut it short.

Then, a question about guaranteed placement and stock buybacks. Zzzzzzzzz–even Morse sounded bored.

The Starbucks lovelorn ladies had left by now, so I was too.

2:37 pm: The next question concerned the affiliate business and how it might be affected by the Microsoft deal.

I immediately summoned the barista, since it was clearly time for a double espresso!

A question came next about when the display ad business would recover from the econalypse. Morse: Stabilization!

Then, a query about gross margins and whether they can be maintained. Morse was not saying, except to point out that there was a “good, old-fashioned, get-your-hands-dirty” attitude at work at Yahoo now about watching costs.

I was suddenly worried about dirty-handed Yahoos, just when the CEO is sick!

Use Purell, please–or suffer the wrath of Judy!

2:43 pm: Another question on ad sales and quality. Thus, I moved onto mainlining coffee beans en masse. I long for a visit from Juan Valdez!

Then, a question about Q4 guidance, which was not good enough for one analyst, who wanted more.

Morse did not really bite, although he talked a lot.

Next, a question about slow-growing page views and what was Yahoo planning to sell of its various assets.

Morse tried to be all silver-lining about page views and would not talk about specific divestitures (nor did he mention the appointment of a new head of Yahoo M&A).

“We continue to look at the landscape,” he said.

What about more job cuts or hiring, since Yahoo added 200 people in the quarter? Morse noted Yahoo was staying strong in tech talent and was “putting feet on the street” in advertising.

Also something about paid inclusion, but a new person at Starbucks was having a really good cellphone argument, so I zoned out of Morse-talk for a second!

2:56 pm: A question about premium and nonpremium inventory. Looks good on premium, said Morse.

The next query was about the different metrics between the new and old homepage, as well as a request for more info about the analyst day next week.

Morse refused to “steal my own thunder” on what is going to happen there. But, there will be thunder? I am always dubious when it comes to Yahoo and thunder.

As for the homepage, Morse said Yahoo was still evaluating the performance.

2:58 pm: Mobile. Aaaaaghhh, another chance for Morse to say not much about anything substantive. Morse: Better and more established! Translation: No moolah yet!

A head count question. Will improvement come from cost cuts due to the Microsoft deal or revenue improvements?

Three guesses and the first two don’t count. Thanks for the row-boatloads of money, Microsoft!

Something about bookings and small-to-medium businesses. Morse did not understand the question and neither did I.

Next, a question on search monetization, which has weakened. Answer: Stabilization!

3:02 pm: A question about the new $100 million branding campaign. Morse: “It’s very, very early.”

Some deal question and then one about behaviorial targeting, which Morse said will apparently be a “lifeblood” of the future.

Incredibly, Morse has gone hog-wild chatty with Bartz laid low and is asking for more questions, without making one good joke or salty remark yet.

I was completely losing it when it gets to ad exchange details and not as coffee-saturated as I needed to be.

Finally, the LAST question: Another one about divestiture and acquisition.

As if Morse was going to answer, referring instead–as he has many times in the call–to his “script.” Yahoo will buy stuff, Yahoo will sell stuff, but pretty much a no-comment!

And on that note…Carol: Please, pretty please GET WELL SOON!

Until then, here is a minidose of Bartz, via video snippets from an interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Her lively tone seen here at D7 would have been a good thing at today’s earnings call:

(And, here is a link to Yahoo’s presentation of its financial highlights, for those with a hankering for even more numbers.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091020/liveblogging-yahoo-third-quarter-conference-call-bartz-comes-down-with-something-and-cfo-carries-on/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091002/gandhis-head-starring-as-the-g-in-google/ http://allthingsd.com/20091002/gandhis-head-starring-as-the-g-in-google/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:14:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=19062

For the last month or so, the Google homepage has played with the famous colored-letter logo by morphing it into a sci-fi in-joke and later adding another “l” to indicate the company’s 11th birthday.

The former–which included logos with alien spaceships and crop circles–was to honor writer H.G. Wells, author of “War of the Worlds” and other science fiction.

Now, a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi–the Indian leader whose 140th birthday anniversary is today–has become the “G” in the logo. (If you click on the image, it links to a search for his last name.)

While the impulse to do so seems hard to resist, I am not quite sure I much like Google (GOOG)–even with good intentions to educate and honor–using the image of one of the world’s great political leaders and peace advocates as a letter on a search service homepage, even if it will be seen worldwide.

(The poor Gosselin kids as a “G”? Oprah as an “O”? Liza Minelli as an “L”? I am totally down with that!)

Then again, I might be a tad grumpy on this issue since I also didn’t like Gandhi’s photo being used in that “Think Different” Apple (AAPL) marketing campaign more than a decade ago, which made him seem like some sort of advertising pitchman.

In any case, here’s the real thing to truly appreciate his impact on this world–Gandhi’s actual voice in his famous “One World” speech in 1931:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091002/gandhis-head-starring-as-the-g-in-google/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090728/the-new-twitter-home-page-is-as-reported-search-alicious/ http://allthingsd.com/20090728/the-new-twitter-home-page-is-as-reported-search-alicious/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:22:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16616

BoomTown reported last week that Twitter was planning on debuting a new homepage this week.

And presto–it’s up!

You can see the new page above (click on the image to make it larger), which is heavy on search, as well as topic trends.

I am not sure this makes the site a “Google-killer,” as some have predicted, with Twitter dominating real-time search.

But the blue is a very pretty shade, although I still want the microblogging service to 86 that annoying Twitter bird (alert PETA stat!).

In an interview with BoomTown last week, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the homepage was rejiggered “to better show who we are.”

Stone said the old welcome page was essentially confusing to the masses of people who came to the innovative start-up, made aware of the microblogging service by the massive media hype it has received over the last year.

“You can try it out without having to sign up, so you can get an idea of what Twitter is before you use it,” said Stone last week. “We need to do a better job of explaining ourselves to people who hear about us and then have no idea what do to.”

Stone was right, as you can see from the image of the old homepage below (click on the image to make it larger).

Stone also said in the interview that the goal is to make the page as lively as Twitter is.

“We have to turn a lot of awareness into engagement,” said Stone. “Our front page is not reflective of that right now.”

Now, it presumably is, bird by irksome bird.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090728/the-new-twitter-home-page-is-as-reported-search-alicious/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090728/yahoo-renovates-its-home-page/ http://allthingsd.com/20090728/yahoo-renovates-its-home-page/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:52:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090728/yahoo-renovates-its-home-page/ Makeovers are always fun to watch. Someone swoops in on an unsuspecting fashion “don’t,” improves him or her with a new hairstyle, makeup and wardrobe, and presents the finished product to overjoyed friends and family.

Last week, Yahoo (YHOO) unveiled the results of its latest makeover: the revamped home page. Carol Bartz, the company’s relatively new CEO, has said that Yahoo’s home page needed just such a makeover. After not changing significantly since 2006, the home page fits the role of a fashion don’t. And consumers, like family and friend observing the aftermath of a makeover, will either be overjoyed or nonplussed by the finished product.

Yahoo’s cleaner, streamlined home page emphasizes its ability to view content from other Web sites.

I’ve been using this new home page for over a week now and I can report that Yahoo followed one of the most important makeover rules by doing more with less. Gone is the busy screen saturated with advertisements and clutter. The new home page is clean and easier to absorb.

Favorite ‘Apps’

Yahoo’s home-page makeover goes beyond surface improvements. Its most useful feature is a list called My Favorites, which contains a variety of Web sites from within and outside of Yahoo. When your cursor hovers over one of these entries, which Yahoo calls “apps,” a pane opens with a preview of content from that site. This turns your Yahoo home page into an aggregator of information, bringing glimpses of information to you in one place so you don’t have to waste time navigating to other sites.

But if a greater number of these apps were more robust, you would be able to do more right within the hover pane, like watch videos or play a game. Currently, the hover preview pane only lets you see content, update social-network statuses and enter search terms, the results of which are shown on a new Web page.

This makeover comes at an interesting time in the world of online news aggregation. Competitors like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) incorporate data from all over the Web into iGoogle.com and MSN.com, respectively. And the concept of the home page as a starting point isn’t as popular as it once was: Many people now start browsing the Web by first clicking on a link in an email or in one of many social-networking sites, like Twitter.

Traffic Driver

Of course, Yahoo plans to use this redesigned home page to drive traffic to the company’s own sites like Shine, Answers, Health and OMG (a celebrity gossip site). These Yahoo sites make up half of the 65 apps designed especially for My Favorites. Yahoo says that its apps for other sites, including WSJ.com, were made by Yahoo and the outside company running the Web site. An ad runs on the hover preview page of each app and the revenue for this ad goes to Yahoo, not the content provider.

Yahoo will use your list of My Favorites apps to learn about what sites you use so as to target ads at users. This proved true for most of the ads I saw on my home page, but strangely, the AllThingsD.com app displayed ads for Mars chocolate and Del Monte fruit snacks rather than technology products.

Module Thinking

My Favorites is fixed on the far left of the Yahoo home page and a large search box sits prominently at the top of the home screen.

The top middle section of the screen shows a carousel of images and current news that Yahoo calls the Today Module; below this is the News Module, which houses tabs labeled News, World, Local, and Finance. The Local and Finance tabs can be customized by entering a ZIP Code and stock tickers, respectively. The Today and News Modules can switch positions if you click on a small arrow.

The revamped home page will serve as a starting point for the Yahoo Application Platform, or YAP. Sometime around late September, Yahoo will open its YAP (no pun intended) to software developers so they can make all kinds of apps with a variety of functions for the home page, not just apps that are tied to Web sites.

You can customize the home page for style or content changes if you sign on using a user ID and password. Changes should appear the next time you log in. But this didn’t work as well as it should. I set my page to display in a tangerine color, one of six colors offered for customizing the page, but the home page wasn’t tangerine-colored the next time I logged in.

Some Problems

I had trouble logging into my Gmail account using a special Gmail app, but this and the color problem were fixed by the time this column went to press.

Some apps didn’t work at all, like the Facebook app, which couldn’t connect to my Facebook account. Yahoo said the problem should be fixed this week.

The home page seemed to have a longer memory when it came to the list of My Favorites. I edited my list, adding more pre-made apps and creating some of my own using a built-in tool that lets you enter a Web site. Yahoo has preloaded icons for some popular Web sites such as cnn.com; otherwise, it will use a generic star.

Permanent Apps

Two apps are permanent fixtures at the top of the My Favorites list: One shows a list of all Yahoo sites and the other shows Yahoo Mail. Everything else can be deleted, added and moved around in the list. One of my favorite apps was for Epicurious.com, the food and recipe site. When I hovered over the Epicurious app, images of food with recipe names appeared in the hover preview pane. One click on an image sent me to the Web site for the full version of the recipe.

After adding many of my own apps to My Favorites, I wished Yahoo had a one-click tool for converting my browser bookmarks into apps. Yahoo says this is something it hopes to introduce in the future.

Mobile Rollout

This week, Yahoo started rolling out a mobile Web site made to run on the iPhone’s Safari browser that coordinates with the more robust version of the home page. I used this Yahoo home page on the iPhone and liked that it immediately pulled up the My Favorites list I had carefully constructed on my computer. Similar offerings will soon be available for other mobile devices.

The new Yahoo home page is a refreshing way of bringing content to you rather than you chasing around the Web looking for it. The My Favorites apps need a little more power to be truly useful and to encourage people to use the Yahoo home page every day, but Yahoo hopes to solve some of that problem in a couple of months when it opens the site to developers.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com edited by Walter S. Mossberg

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090728/yahoo-renovates-its-home-page/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090728/the-yahoo-microsoft-deal-tick-tick-tickboom/ http://allthingsd.com/20090728/the-yahoo-microsoft-deal-tick-tick-tickboom/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:49:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16544

Things are as tight as a tick over at Yahoo and Microsoft about the deal the pair have been discussing over the last months–as execs shuttle back and forth and forth and back and their boards deliberate on what will surely be one of the most important decisions for either company for the near-term future in the digital space.

And, if the pair don’t succeed in doing a deal this week, as many sources at both companies had thought they would, it will be interesting for those headed to Microsoft (MSFT) for its annual analysts meeting–including BoomTown–to poke at its execs until they give as to why.

It’s probably unfair to put such a focus on this possible partnership to join together on search and online advertising, but it’s also hard to resist handicapping it like a horse race.

That’s a mistake, because–while experts in negotiations often warn that the longer any deal takes to strike, the chances it will be struck become more remote–sources close to the Microsoft-Yahoo talks said the struggle to come to terms is due to the extreme complexity of the possible union.

And, as various reports debate the terms of the deal–from upfront payments to revenue share to the amount of data exchanged to branding issues–it is critically important to remember that, done badly or with too much haste, this massive deal is one with even greater potential to tank.

“It could be game-changing or it could be one the biggest bombs ever,” said one exec close to the situation. “So, obviously, everyone is treating this very delicately.”

So, when BoomTown dubbed Microsoft and Yahoo (YHOO) the Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson of the Internet–as in, either break up or get together, but this endless back-and-forth is killing us–I was mostly kidding.

Even though, like clockwork, after looking happy together, Lohan and Ronson had a meltdown in recent days.

So too did Microsoft and Yahoo, when things looked great last week after a contingent of major Microsoft execs visited the Silicon Valley digs of Yahoo, in what sources close to the situation described as the final round of talks among execs before a board look-see.

Well, close but no cigar, in this case, in a deal that most agree the pair desperately need to strike for a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, it is simply because winning in search has everything to do with volume. As in: More Search Queries+More Ads=More Profits.

And, even at 20 percent share, Yahoo does not have enough of that, and what it has is getting less lucrative, even as its rival, Google (GOOG), surges.

Leaving aside all the money Microsoft has blown in the arena, that was clearly the message I got after rereading some of Yahoo’s financial screenshots from its second-quarter earnings last week (which you can see below in the two charts; click on them to make them larger).

And while Yahoo makes a lot of profits in search and it needs to keep that record up, its recent record has been lackluster.

In the chart above, for example, revenue in owned-and-operated search’s year-over-year growth declined 15 percent in the quarter, after growing 18 percent the year before.

(In fact, all Yahoo’s O&O businesses–display, listings and other marketing services–were also down significantly.)

This is not the way you want to see the trend lines going, even in a weak economy.

And, in another worrisome trend, there was also a decline in page view year-over-year growth, which went from 23 percent up in the quarter a year ago to only seven percent in the recent one.

While the new update of the homepage and a renewed marketing push will surely improve that, Yahoo has to once and for all figure out its core goals–which I think have to be clearly aimed at innovating in making everyday digital life easier for online consumers.

As one smart observer told me this week:

“Let Microsoft and Google duke it out in technology….Yahoo’s white space is to simplify everything for its users and neither one of them is as good at it as Yahoo.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090728/the-yahoo-microsoft-deal-tick-tick-tickboom/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090721/liveblogging-the-yahoo-second-quarter-2009-earnings-call/ http://allthingsd.com/20090721/liveblogging-the-yahoo-second-quarter-2009-earnings-call/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:21:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16166

If there’s an earnings call at Yahoo, you know BoomTown is going to liveblog it!

Will Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz say something naughty? (Nope!) What is new CFO Tim Morse like? (Nice!) Will they say anything about the talks with Microsoft (MSFT) about a search and online advertising partnership? (No!)

Oh, it might be a corker!

The earnings results for the second quarter certainly were not.

As I wrote in a previous post:

Yahoo reported so-so second-quarter earnings results today, with a decline in revenues, but with a slightly stronger-than-expected improvement in net income.

For the three months ended June 30, the Internet giant said it had revenues of $1.14 billion, excluding traffic acquisition costs, down from $1.35 billion in the same period a year ago.

That profit was up eight percent, due to cost-cutting. Yahoo said it earned $141.4 million, or 10 cents a share, in the quarter, compared to $131.2 million, or nine cents.

That’s not really saying much, since Wall Street analysts had such low expectations, estimating Yahoo would earn eight cents. But, with a weak advertising market, it is also not that bad.”

Here’s the conference call, updated as it happened:

2:02 pm PST: Music followed by investor relations lady, who had a very nice voice.

She was quick and to the point, and soon enough Bartz was on.

First, she welcomed Morse as CFO, noting he was strong in “efficiency and process.”

Then she pointed out that the new home page for Yahoo–pictured here and you can read about it here–was “available…starting…today.”

Bartz dragged out the words, with a small dramatic flourish.

Then, it was right to the results, which Bartz was bullish on: “Considering the economy, I am pleased with the results.”

Bartz noted that “overall, we are seeing less fear in the marketplace,” although she added that she had no idea when the econalypse would be over.

“It’s easy to see it bumping along the bottom, but it’s too early to call…so, we’ll leave economic predictions to others,” she said.

She moved onto her being happy about all the new execs she had hired, noting that Yahoo was “closing in” on picking an international head (note to myself, get a Yahoo to leak the news to me asap).

2:07 PST: Morse (pictured here) came on and introduced himself. He looks like a CFO and also sounded like one too–calm, cool and collected, as it should be.

After a short talk about his background, he moved onto all the particulars of the quarter–results that had already been released, but Morse repeated them with verve.

I try to listen carefully in these explanations, but I confess that I actually don’t, unless something new happens. It didn’t.

Then Morse was looking forward, including talking some more about marketing spend coming up, as well as explaining what kind of CFO he was going to be.

2:18 PST: Back to Bartz, who started talking about well the long-troubled Silicon Valley icon was doing, even in the weak economy.

She kept calling Yahoo the “world’s biggest Internet media company,” and then said that Yahoo was an “Internet kingmaker” for other Web sites.

Well, it’s kind of true on both counts, so we’ll overlook the bragging.

Bartz then quickly moved through all the various arenas at Yahoo–from advertising to the home page to mobile–where Yahoo was trying to improve and increase its business.

She apparently is aiming to make online ads less annoying–if successful, I propose that Bartz should be awarded some medal of honor.

“We have a clear simple vision to be the center of people lives online,” said Bartz in conclusion, throwing in “kingmaker” again. “At the end of the day, we know who we are and know what we need to do to win.”

2:33 pm PST: Question time!

The first was about what Bartz thinks about Bing, the new Microsoft search engine, because it might take a while for these Wall Street analysts–reporters don’t get to ask questions–to screw up the courage to ask her outright about any Microsoft deal.

Bartz was unusually cordial, which is how someone about to be hitched needs to be.

“I think Bing is a good product…I think Microsoft should be given kudos for Bing,” she said. Hmmmm….

The next question was about the intent of Yahoo to invest in search, as opposed to display advertising. Another veiled Microsoft search deal question.

Bartz noted that Yahoo was investing in the user. Nice way not to answer the question!

2:38 pm PST: A question about spending and if there was going to be more.

Bartz noted that Yahoo was restructuring costs, rather than cutting and burning. She noted, for example, that more marketing spend was part of the plan.

Morse used a bucket analogy, and talked about draining costs back and forth, which was apt.

The next question was about advertising revenues, and whether they would grow. Also, more questions about costs.

Morse noted good strength in a lot of areas in the premium sector. As to cost structure: “We’re repositioning the business.”

2:48 pm PST:

Another cost question. I am officially ignoring it.

The next question was about how Yahoo was going to keep fixing APT, its newest advertising platform, which some think is too hard to use.

Bartz, who has insulted it in the past, was now kind of nice about it, noting that they were working on making it better.

A question about owned-and-operated search and its relationship with Yahoo’s affiliate search, which had been stronger. Not a trend, said Bartz flatly.

More about search and whether scale matters in search (another sneaky way to ask about Microsoft). “Of course scale matters,” said Bartz, who joked she would be happy to switch share positions with Google (GOOG).

A question about the new home page and its monetization and why it was announced today, as opposed to the fall, as planned.

Bartz did not really explain why or about revenue, but she sounded good.

The last question was about improvements in search share and monetization (translation: I want to ask about Microsoft, but I am too much of a wimp).

Bartz talked about better targeting, improved experience, driving relevancy and the prominent position of search on the front page. That will lead to more money, she noted.

Again, it’s not exactly an answer, but it sounded good.

Then it was over, although Bartz ended by urging everyone to “go look at the new home page.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090721/liveblogging-the-yahoo-second-quarter-2009-earnings-call/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/ http://allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:02:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/ The war of the Web browsers has taken another turn with the release of a major new version of Mozilla Firefox, the No. 2 browser in market share, but No. 1 in the hearts of many of the most knowledgeable computer users.

This new edition of Firefox is the third big new browser release this year, following new editions of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer and Apple’s (AAPL) Safari. Unlike Firefox, these two browsers come bundled with the two major computer platforms, Windows and Mac. By contrast, Mozilla must convince users to download Firefox, which comes in essentially identical versions for both systems. And it has done a reasonably good job, garnering by most estimates around 23% market share, versus between 60% and 70% for IE, which is by far the leader. Meanwhile, Google (GOOG)—a former Firefox supporter—has joined the battle with its nascent Chrome browser, which so far runs only on Windows, but is due on the Mac one day and is to morph into a whole new operating system next year. And there are other very capable browsers with small user bases, the most notable of which is Opera.

I’ve been using Firefox since its inception years ago, and have been testing this latest iteration, version 3.5, since it emerged June 30. I can continue to recommend it as a fine way to surf the Web. The new version is improved, and worked very well for me on both my Windows and Macintosh computers.

But, in this round of the war, Mozilla’s product no longer stands out as clearly superior, for two reasons. First, Firefox has lost its traditionally biggest advantage: greater speed than its rivals. While Firefox 3.5 is about twice as fast as the previous version 3.0, and handily beat Internet Explorer 8 in my tests, it lagged behind both Safari 4.02 and the beta edition of Chrome 2.0 a bit in most test scenarios. Overall, Safari was fastest in most of my tests, both on Mac and Windows (yes, Apple makes a little-known version of Safari for Windows).

In fact, Mozilla no longer is claiming to be the fastest browser. It now prefers to say it is one of what it calls the “modern” browsers, along with Safari and Chrome, whose under-the-hood technologies make them better at handling a growing breed of sophisticated Internet-based applications that mimic traditional computer programs like photo editors and word processors and spreadsheets.

Second, this version of Firefox has relatively few new features, and some of them are merely catch-ups to those introduced earlier by Microsoft and Apple. Most notable among these is a private browsing mode, first popularized in Safari, and greatly expanded in IE, which allows you to traverse Web sites without leaving traces on your computer to show what you’ve been doing.

Mozilla says its main goal from now on will be to turn Firefox into the ideal platform for running Web-based applications. It shares the belief, also fervently embraced by Google, that consumers will gradually migrate away from programs stored on their computers’ hard disks to those stored in “the Cloud,” the industry’s term for the servers that run the Internet.

To show this, the new Firefox can do a few new tricks, like streaming video directly from Web pages without requiring plug-ins like Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash. Alas, this works only with obscure video formats little used on the Web at the moment.

Firefox 3.5 does include some new features, in addition to private browsing. It can pinpoint your location, so that any properly configured Web site can serve up locally relevant content. It has a nice option that lets you “forget” any Web page in your history, wiping out all traces you’ve been there, even if you neglected to turn on private browsing mode beforehand. And it can recover your open tabs after a crash.

Also, Firefox continues to lead its rivals in the number and variety of third-party add-ons that enhance browsing in myriad ways, such as adding features to sites like Twitter or making bookmarking easier.

As for speed, I tested Firefox 3.5 against its main rivals by timing how long it took to launch into the same home page, and how long it took to completely load popular Web sites like Facebook and YouTube. I tested how long it took to completely load folders containing numerous sports and news sites simultaneously. I also ran an industry benchmark test that measures the browsers’ speed at handling an important Web language called JavaScript. I did these tests on the same home network on both a Dell (DELL) and an Apple computer.

While Firefox won a few of these tests, Safari and Chrome won more of them. In most cases, the speed differences weren’t large, except in the case of IE, which was dramatically slower than the others. But this is the first new version of Firefox I’ve tested that didn’t win most of the tests.

Firefox is still a great Web browser, and still much faster than its main rival, Internet Explorer. But its edge is being eroded.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090715/in-browser-warsthe-new-firefoxloses-some-edge/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070926/printing-parts-of-the-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20070926/printing-parts-of-the-web/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:01:00 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20070926/printing-parts-of-the-web/ There’s no denying the Web’s value as a resource, but the temptation to quickly navigate from one site to the next makes it challenging to remember where the content was found.

A query on hotels in Italy might lead you to select a link about Florence, then two links about Michelangelo and four links to Italian Renaissance art. Suddenly, the home page for a carefully researched hotel is forgotten. It’s especially tough to backtrack through research using new sites with rich Web 2.0 features that display extra data directly within a Web page.

Some people try to organize Web research by opening Microsoft Word documents alongside their browsers. They copy and paste data from sites into the documents, but this is usually a messy process that traps users into wasting time fixing formats and deleting ads. Others press Print whenever a helpful site appears, resulting in wasted paper and ink. Savvier users create folders within their Web browsers that hold multiple URLs about a research topic, but these data can’t easily be shared or printed for use away from the PC.

The HP Smart Web Printing Software gathers Web content into one document that can be printed.

There’s a better way, and this week I took it for a spin. I tested the HP Smart Web Printing Software, a free program from Hewlett-Packard Co. that aims to help users compile a virtual clip book of content from Web sites while they’re browsing, within the same window. Using a tool in the browser, users highlight and copy images and text from a Web page and add them to the clip book. These clips can be edited, enhanced, saved as a PDF or printed out, without excess banner ads or sidebars.

I tried a version of this program that will be available for download at the end of next month from www.hp.com/go/smartwebprinting. It improves on the first version of the program (available now using the same URL) in various ways, including allowing you to add your own text to the clip book and crop clip-book items.

HP Smart Web Printing Software isn’t without its quirks: It only works on Windows computers, not Macs, and only with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0. Not everything copies over to the clip book perfectly. Also, typed-in text has its limits: changing the font type, size or color of one word changes all words in the text box.

But all in all, I found this smart program to be a real boon. It’s unobtrusive enough to stay hidden until used, and you’ll remember how it works even if you only use the program once in a while. It functions as a printing assistant, helping to send certain sections of a Web site to the printer, and it will also save whatever you’re working on as a PDF — the universal format for sharing with others.

H-P likes to tout its HP Smart Web Printing Software’s environmentally friendly qualities, namely its ability to print just what you want, without wasting ink or paper on extra pages that would otherwise print. But make no mistake about it: This product, while helping users not to print extra items from Web sites, still encourages users to print, thus helping H-P sell more of its high-margin ink and paper.

I used the program to trim content from Web sites, printing more of what I wanted to read in fewer pages. I focused on this program’s clip-book functionality, which works as a bare-bones virtual scrapbook to organize research.

I downloaded and used the newest version of this free program on computers running Windows Vista and XP operating systems. I came across a few items that, when highlighted and moved over to the clip book, didn’t actually move, but most of the text and image clips moved without a problem. H-P explained that some images are rendered on Web sites in such a way so as to not be copied for copyright and protection purposes.

A small HP Smart Select icon appears in the Internet Explorer command bar after this program is downloaded; selecting it toggles its highlighting capability on or off. By default, the clip book is hidden from view, but a quick change in settings opens this on the right edge of the Internet Explorer window.

The HP Smart Web Printing program proved useful for online-shopping research. I’ve been gathering a lot of information from various Web sites to find a special new handbag for work, including which bag is sold where, how much it costs and what it looks like.

When I saw a bag that interested me, I selected it by holding the left mouse button down and moving my cursor over the text or image. Releasing the left mouse button automatically opens a tiny drop-down menu with two simple options: clip (place in the clip book) or print (send directly to the printer). Items that I clipped were moved into the right panel clip book in order of most recently added items at the top.

A helpful checkbox appeared beside each item in the clip book; items without checkmarked boxes weren’t visible when I edited clips. Within the editing screen, I dragged and dropped images around the page, organizing bags in ascending price order. I resized photos to make them smaller or larger and cropped a couple shots such as an image of a black leather bag with an unrelated text description below it.

I filled the equivalent of two clip-book pages with images of bags and brief descriptions of each, copied directly from store sites. I added my own text boxes in to write my impressions. As I worked, opening the edit screen and closing it to return to the browser, I clicked on a simple Save button so my work wouldn’t be lost each time I closed this screen. When finished, I selected one button to save the document as a PDF, which I could email to friends for their feedback on which bag they liked best.

In another test, I assembled a clip book filled with various news blurbs about presidential campaigns from online sites including WSJ.com and CNN.com before printing a single page that included bits and pieces from each in a neat format without ads on the page.

I also tried organizing a few maps in the clip book; these copied from Google Maps and Yahoo Maps without a problem, and in one instance I cropped a map to include just the section of Manhattan where The Wall Street Journal is located.

The more I used this program, the more I wished it offered the ability to work with two clip books at once. For instance, if I was planning a trip and was researching hotels and tourist attractions at the same time, I could clip the hotel data into one book and store the touristy information in the other.

H-P says it will release a version of this program for Mozilla’s Firefox browser sometime in the next six months, and it also hopes to introduce a version that is compatible with Apple’s Safari browser within a year.

The HP Smart Web Printing program is a useful free solution that organizes online research right in your browser. Its ability to modify and preview documents before printing is also a help.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

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