According to the study, if you are a user of Bing, you’re probably an early adopter, but you also prefer to visit, shop and ultimately make purchases from Walmart when compared with other search-engine users. Google searchers, on the other hand, are customers of Target and Amazon, and Yahoo searchers have a strong preference for wireless service provider AT&T and Sprint.

Advertising Age reports:

The study, being released next week, was conducted by Wunderman (an agency partner of Microsoft), along with BrandAsset Consulting, Zaaz and Compete. It is intended to determine the profile of search-engine-brand loyalists and identify how search engines are changing consumer behavior and helping to build brands.

“It’s going to wake people up because it’s a new wrinkle,” said David Sable, vice chairman-chief operating officer, Wunderman. “What this means if you are managing a brand is that you need to know how consumers relate to Bing, Yahoo or Google and how that reflects on you.”

It is very interesting that the findings sort of indicate that the different search engine consumers has a different perception on the big brands and the search engines really influence their decisions that they make while they are on those sites. The study found different degrees of consumer engagement, from visiting to purchasing, based on the search engine used and the brands and vertical categories studied — automotive, travel, retail and wireless.

Below is a small summery of the findings:

• Google users are more likely to book a flight online at JetBlue or make a reservation on Hotwire.
• Google users tend to do research on a Lexus, while Bing users tend to like Toyota cars more.
• AOL customers feel less intellectual than their peers and are usually 55 and older. They spend their money more responsibly, want to blend in to the crowd, feel like they’ve gotten a raw deal out of life, expect less from their future and, believe it or not, still use dial-up modems.
• Bing users are middle-aged, highly educated tech-savvy individuals who consider themselves to be average and spend more than 10 hours a week online.
• Googlers tend to be the average internet Joe. They are usually conventional people yet open to trying new things, believe in following rules and don’t consider themselves any smarter or less intelligent than the person next to them.
• Yahoo users tend to be 55-plus, reserved and a less-independent group with little faith in imagination. They feel they have little control over their future and are skeptical and cautious of new or untried ideas.

Discussion on Techmeme

If you are a Firefox fan like me that you will be happy to know that the Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate (RC) is already out! I’m particularly excited about this version of Firefox is because its very fast compared to the previous version of Firefox (They mentioned that its 2 times faster than Firefox 3.0). The official final release has been scheduled for the end of June but you can just go ahead and download the RC version which works just fine. Read ahead for the download link..

What’s New in Firefox 3.5

There are quite a number of improvements and addition in this new Firefox. Firstly, the thing that really irritated me over the years about Firefox is its poor memory management & leaking problem. I tested this new version vigorously and I feel that it is much more stable than any other Firefox versions ever released. I could easily open 20 over tabs and load videos, java script & ajax on them simultaneously without any lag or memory issue.

I have also noticed a significant increase in Speed on this new release, however having said that – Google’s Chrome is still the fastest in my opinion.

New feature wise, Firefox 3.5 has a private browsing mode – the so-called ‘porn mode’, or as Mozilla’s engineering vice president Mike Shaver called it, in an interview with IT PRO a ”job-hunting mode.” For people who are concerned about their privacy, Firefox 3.5 has a very neat tool that lets users to clear all private data or activity over the past few hours.

It also has ‘tear off tabs’ feature, which basically lets users to drag a tab out of its existing spot and open it in a new window (This has been in chrome and opera for a long time). Firefox 3.5 users can also watch videos inside Firefox browser without the need of installing any plug-ins using open format Ogg Theora files.

Download Firefox 3.5 RC

- Just visit the official Firefox 3.5 RC website – http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.5/releasenotes/

- Click on the “Download Now” link on your right!

What others are saying about Firefox 3.5 RC

An early look at Firefox 3.5
http://blogs.computerworld.com/an_early_look_at_firefox_3_5

Firefox 3.5 RC released to the world
http://www.itpro.co.uk/611809/firefox-3-5-rc-released-to-the-world

Firefox 3.5 RC1 Is Here
http://mashable.com/2009/06/17/firefox-3-5-rc1/

Firefox 3.5 RC Available: Stable & Fast

Head of Google’s Web Spam Team, Matt Cutts recently spoke on a panel about “Preventing Virtual Blight” at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. So for those of you who couldn’t attend that conference, Matt cutts has recorded a special summarized version (“director’s cut”) of his presentation and made it available for Free (~ So nice of you Matt).

Its a 20 minutes videos, where Matt explains how you can use some common ways to prevent spam and also protect your site & domain from usual spammers & hackers. If you own or maintain any Web 2.0/3.0 service or even just a blog, this video is a must watch.

And here is the actual presentation slide:

Matt cutts writes in the Google Web Analytics blog:

One of the things I’m thinking about in 2009 is how Google can be even more transparent and communicate more. That led me to a personal goal for 2009: if I give a substantial conference presentation (not just a question and answer session), I’d like to digitize the talk so that people who couldn’t attend the conference can still watch the presentation.

Well this is certainly an excellent move by him or by Google (who ever made the actual decision). I hope that this move by Matt Cutts will open eyes of other key individuals, who holds important position in big organizations and possesses a lot of experience & knowledge but are reluctant to share anything with the public.

1. Techfuga

Techfuga is a relatively new website that aggregates technology news from other tech news aggregator (like – Techmeme) as well as other hand-picked technology sites, blogs etc. If you go to techfuga, you will notice that they have special tabs for each of the technology sites that they are monitoring (e.g. Digg, Techcrunch, Slashdot etc). So if you click any of the tabs, the news from that particular site would be displayed on your screen. This will definitely come handy if you want to browse through the top technology sites quickly. At the bottom, they also have a popurls like design where a user can glance through all the top technology blogs. What I found most interesting about techfuga is its actually monitoring social sites like – twitter & friendfeed and adding related feeds directly with the news.

2. Alltop: Technology

Alltop is a nice site that is inspired by Popurls. The creator Guy Kawasaki took the concept of popurls further by making dedicated pages for different topics. So for instance, if you are interested in technology just visit – Alltop Technology category, and you will find all the latest blog posts and articles from over 100 top tech sites.

3. Megit

Megit is yet another news aggregator that works like techmeme. But Megit has not limited themselves to technology news only. They have dedicated pages to cover news on – Entertainment, Politics, Business etc.

4. Techmeme

Techmeme is the most famous Technology news tracker that probably has the nicest interface. Their design is very clean and readable without any ‘ads’ around the news. The only thing they have is “Sponsored posts” which are all relevant, technology related posts from some of the big industry players.

5. Digg – Technology

I’m sure you all know about the popular social news site – digg.com. If you are interested in Technology news, there is no better place to find them than the Technology category in Digg – http://digg.com/news/technology. Digg has a very strong & active community. So within minutes of a news/story posted somewhere, Digg is usually the first one to pick that up. Digg’s Upcoming section lists all the news that are upcoming and still not popular. Usually you should keep an eye on this area for finding the ‘fresh’ tech news stories.

And thats not all! There are tons of other sites that can get you all the breaking technology news in your fingertips. Such as: Reddit Technology, StumbleUpon Technology Tag, Mixx Tech, Yahoo Buzz Sci/Tech, Propeller Sci/Tech.

Did I miss any? Share your favorite tech news sources in the comments!

LeWeb is Europe’s largest tech conference, bringing in over 1,600 attendees from 26 countries worldwide. Everybody will be able to follow LeWeb conference live and for free just like every year. The main sessions – the startup competition in the first day and the sessions in the 400 seats second room (on the second day) will be streamed live by LeWeb’s Partner Ustream.

Catch all the action Live Here – LeWeb Conference 2008

Freckle is an awesome web-based time management service that lets you do just that! The best thing that I liked about freckle is its easy to use interface and their thoughtful implementation of Ajax throughout the site.

So all you need to do is, enter the time you spent on a particular project and tag it accordingly. So for instance if you have spend 2 hours writing a report for Project X, you can just write 2h in the first column and Give a Project Name or Client Name in the second column and lastly add multiple tags or a good description to log it in your account.

Currently they have different types of account and all of them has a 30-day Free Trial period. So you can try out their service, and you can pay and continue after a month only if you find it useful for you. They also have a personal account which is 100% Free but only allows you to manage one client with one user access. Some of their more advanced accounts allows multiple users thus you can sign up for an account for your business and give Freckle to all your employees.

So head over to letsfreckle.com to sign up for a risk free 30 days trial account.

My Two Cents

Freckle is a really cool web service that I myself will be using for keeping track of my time. The only downside of this service is they don’t help you with counting the time. So for instance, If I’m working in a project I need to manually keep count of how many minutes/hours I have worked on it and then log it inside freckle. But if Freckle could give me a stopwatch which could do the counting for me then it would have been really cool. But I understand that they are new and they are going to improve their service based on the feedback they receive from their customers. I have already suggested some features to them via their Feedback form and I hope to see some of them included in the next version.

Update: Amy Hoy from Freckle’s support team recently emailed me and said that they are already working on a timer and it will be included sometime in January. So i guess this is a great news for all Freckle users! I’m really looking forward to it.

What Is Small Basic?

Small Basic is a free programming language by Microsoft that is aimed at kids. Unlike other tools that has been previously designed to teach kids programming in a ‘codeless’ environment, Small Basic is essentially a small version of the popular BASIC language.

Drawing inspiration from the original BASIC language, but based on the newer .Net Framework, Small Basic has many useful features that will definitely help your kids to learn programming in a more professional but easy manner.

Some of the highlights of Small Basic are:

• Small Basic Language: The Small Basic Language consists of just 14 keywords, that is extremely easy to learn and remember. Small Basic is pure imperative code that runs on the .Net Framework.
• Programming Environment: Small Basic’s development environment is simple but provides features that professional developers have come to expect from an IDE including Intellisense (Intelligently detects error and suggests you different variation of code)
• Small Basic Libraries: Small Basic also comes with a set of libraries, and allows you to create your own libraries or modify existing ones. It also allows third-party libraries to be plugged in. (Hint: So if you are a developer and would like to do something nice for the young generation of programmers, here is your chance!)

Free Resources for Small Basic – Programming For Kids

If you are interested to give Small Basic a try or if you wish to introduce it to your kids you don’t need to go and buy any expensive books. Just download a comprehensive and easy to read, FREE SmallBasic Introductory Ebook (PDF) that introduces the reader to this new language and to programming in general.

Even though Small Basic is primarily made for children, it just may be the ideal way for anyone interested in programming to dip their feet in the cold water.

Memiary.com provides a free online diary services and lets you record down the 5 things you did today in a very simply & clean interface. The signup takes less than 10 seconds and after signing up it lets you go straight to business.

Memiary is a creation from Sid Yadav who is a long-time app reviewer at Rev2.org. On his blog he wrote an interesting post about the process of creating Memiary and how proud his mom was of him who happens to be the very first user of memiary.

My Two Cents

As shown in the screen shot, I tried out Memiary and so far I have found it to be an excellent app. There may be too-many online diary sort of app on the web now, but I have found this to be the most simple. However there are few things that they can improve on, such as:

• They should let the user to export this data out
• Send a Auto Reminder (SMS/Email), asking the user to update the notebook.
• Give more space to write! Incomplete sentences aren’t pretty.
• Give user the option to add more than 5 items
• An option to change the Password