BingTweets Goes down with a 404 Error on day of MicroHoo and Twitter homepage change

UPDATE: BingTweets just came back up around 3:30 PM EST. Wonder what happened?



Today was the day of the long awaited Microsoft-Yahoo deal materializing. It was also the day of Twitter's homepage change into a more search based page.

The headlines have already been made: Twitter goes Google, MicroHoo is a Done Deal, etc

But suddenly, BingTweets stopped working.

BingTweets was one of Microsoft's latest attempts to get an advantage over the search competition known as Google, by adding real time searching to Bing, albeit on another website: www.BingTweets.com

But what happened? This joint venture between Microsoft and Federated Media apparently no longer exists. Or at least, that's the error you'll get if you go to BingTweets.com

It was working fine only a few hours ago, so what happened?

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How Microsoft Forced Apple to Admit Their Fault

It was but a few months ago that Microsoft began their counterattack upon Apple with new advertisements. Though Apple reveled then at the thought of their provocation causing such a powerful reaction, one consisting of multiple advertisement campaigns that sought to lure viewers into using Windows and Microsoft products, they may perhaps regret it now.

Why? It's simple.

There once was a series of ads by Microsoft called I'm a PC. There were those that liked it, and those that hated it. But there definitely was one ad that stuck out to Apple.

Laptop Hunter.
This was an ad featuring somebody picking between Mac and PCs, and who decided to buy a PC for about $700, since she thought the PC offered more value for her money compared to the Mac that cost $2000.

Some people claim that this ad really did show the problem with Macs in general, and that it was very effective. Well it seems that it was quite effective after all, because Apple had a serious reaction to it.

Recently we've been hearing about how Apple lawyers sent Microsoft a cease and desist letter telling them that their ad was no longer true and that they cannot continue their false advertising.
Folks over at Microsoft jumped with joy that Apple had finally gotten enough of Microsoft's ads, thus showing they were effective, but after a while, Microsoft complied and changed up the ads.

But why did they do this? I see lots and lots of people out there commenting or posting that Microsoft was forced to change the ad, and that Apple won because Microsoft was too scared to continue and that they knew it was false advertising.
But wait, the whole reason this happened was because Apple lowered their prices.

Apple lowered their prices.

It seems that Apple has admitted that they were wrong about how people would still pay up for expensive computers Apple sells, and so lowered their prices. But another thing it tells us is that it was mostly the Microsoft ad at work, because right after they lowered prices, they go screaming to Microsoft to change the ad.

It seems more than likely that Apple got forced to lower their prices, and then ad became false because the prices got lowered, and that's why Apple sent the cease and desist letter.

Though many people want to claim that Microsoft submitted to Apple's demands, it's more like Apple was forced to do something they did not want to do in order to stop the super effective Microsoft ad.

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iPhone 3G S to be free in the UK, not so elsewhere

The 32 GB iPhone 3G S that will be released very soon will actually be provided for free to UK customers, except the monthly rate is quite high.
In fact, to get this deal, one will have to pay the operator O2 £73.41 (US$120) per month. With cheaper contracts, the phone costs up to £274.23.

In the U.S., the phones will cost $199 and $299 with a contract. In France, the cheapest contract is €39 per month but requires a two-year commitment.

But is the "free" iPhone actually worth it? If you just compare that with France's cheapest contract, it's obvious that the monthly rate is pretty much half (accounting for currency exchange). Extending two years, that could amount to much more savings than simply the free iPhone. For 24 months, if you save a mere $20 (you can actually save more...), then you save a cumulative $480. Now seeing as the price is actually about half, after accounting for the currency rates, I think it's reasonable to think you can save over $50 a month, which means you could be saving thousands with a cheaper contract.

Really, if you don't need all the stuff in the contract, just pay the money for the iPhone. It's not worth wasting thousands just to say you got a "free" iPhone that really cost you much more.

Did I mention that the iPhone OS 3 will be coming out in New York at about 1 PM today?

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iPhone OS 3 released at iTunes Store mistake, Real release later today

The iPhone OS 3 firmware was accidentally released yesterday in the iTunes Store, ahead of schedule. Or rather, the page was updated, but all the buyers got was a 0.4KB file.




(Click for better/larger image)

The error was detected yesterday and fixed, so that users attempting to go to that page are redirected. Unfortunately, many people have already purchased the "OS 3" and so Apple are probably trying to get back to the customers who paid by mistake.

Also, the real iPhone OS 3 firmware will be released today at around 1PM in New York (Eastern). You can stop pressing F5 now and wait 'til then for the firmware.

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iPhone 3GS at WWDC 09 will destroy Palm Pre, competitors

Today was the much anticipated WWDC of 2009 hosted by Apple, and their keynote was the longest one yet, clocking in at over 2 hours.
They announced a great many things, but one of the biggest announcements was the release of a new iPhone, just as rumored.



It was only this weekend that the Palm Pre started to sell, and now there's a new iPhone. I'm sure Palm can't be happy about that. This new iPhone is called the iPhone 3GS, and the S stands for Speed, and it really is quite fast. It also comes out with the announcement of the new iPhone OS 3 (If you want to see images + details on that, just scroll down).


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The new 3GS doesn't actually look all that much different from the old ones, but what's really changed is on the inside. Of course, speed is very much emphasized here, and Apple claims that it is more than 2 times faster for most tasks as compared with the iPhone 2.
There are two new available storage sizes, 16 GB for $199, and $32 GB for $299, with contracts of course.
Along with this are upgrade options to the iPhone 3G S, but still require some more time before they are available, due to AT&T's restrictions on it.
Tethering and MMS was also announced, and AT&T has said that they are going to be adding these features soon, with MMS coming later this summer.
More features include voice control as well as a new video camera. It offers autofocus, auto balance, 30 FPS and more. This is definitely a good hardware upgrade.

The release date for the iPhone 3G S has been set to June 19th, where it'll be available in the US. Then it'll be released in a total of 80 countries in the world in the following weeks.
The old 8 GB iPhone will be on sale for $99 after this.


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Before the release of this iPhone, they also announced their newest iPhone OS 3, which builds on much of the previous OS, and introduces lots of new features. Examples are shown in the following picture.




Also check out these cool new features.





There was also a much wanted feature introducing Find My iPhone which allows you to track your iPhone, send a message to it in case somebody finds it, and even in the worse case scenario, delete all the data on it.






Also, you can now buy movies and TV shows on your iPhone.



This new iPhone OS 3 will be available for free for all existing iPhone customers.

Though Palm had a pretty good start this weekend, they'll be facing tough competition from increasingly more sophisticated iPhones, and it looks as though the Palm Pre at this point probably isn't revolutionary enough to make people to switch, especially as iPhone buyers are usually loyal to Apple.
Overall, WWDC delivered on quite a bit, but without Steve Jobs there, it didn't seem like it was enough. Let's hope Steve Jobs can get well soon with lots of more exciting things to come.

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Bing overtakes Yahoo as new No.2 with 16% market share,new Bing-a-thon Campaign

According to recent statistics offered by StatCounter, Bing appears to have skyrocketed in market share to an incredible 16% in the US on Thursday June 4th, 2009.
This was just the day after Bing was officially released in the US along with a new TV commercial so it seems that it's really the hype that got Bing to this level. However, this kind of hype is exactly what Microsoft wants to achieve with Bing, and especially if they can keep this up with more advertising and other ways of generating hype.

It was on Thursday, the announcement of Bing that their old search engine Live Search also saw a spike up to 12%, but that was most likely because everyone wanted to try out Bing but didn't know where to go, so they wound up heading to the old Live Search.

If you head to GlobalStats Statcounter, you can see the latest daily statistics for the top search engines. The spike may be related to their ad campaign, but it may also have come as a result of the hype surrounding Bing. However, be careful when assessing that the "race is over", which I've noticed on multiple blogs/news sites. It is far from over yet, and if Microsoft cannot keep their customers coming back every time to Bing, then they'll just go to their old habits. We don't know yet whether Bing will true have the ability to intrigue customers and make them love it.

What we do know, is that Microsoft will not let Bing go down without a fight. Like I mentioned, they planned to spend $100 million with the release of Bing on advertising in various places. Today, we found out that they've decided to step up the advertising game with another set of ads to be released on Hulu and some TV shows.
A report by the New York Times says that their new ads will be in a "Bing-a-thon" format, and will be similar to a TV show, starring aJson Sudeikis, Olivia Munn and Fred Willard.

"The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising. You have to do something a little bit more surprising. It's a very tall marketing challenge and a very tall product challenge."

That was a statement from Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for the online services division of Microsoft. These ads will be integrated with TV shows and Hulu's shows, rather than standalone commercials like before.

It will surely be a challenge for Microsoft, but the innovations on Bing have paved the way for broader features on search engines and will eventually lead to a better overall experience for the users, as competitors and especially the market leader Google will have to respond to Bing's features.
Has Microsoft really shown that Bing will become the next No.2 Search Engine? That's something we can't say for sure yet, but perhaps we'll get a better picture of the situation after about 2 weeks, when the initial hype starts wearing off, and the tech crowd stops "trying it out" and decide whether they really like Bing or not.

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Activision asserts Brutal Legend rights, sues Double Fine

EA showcased and heavily promoted their new game Brutal Legends at E3 this year. This year's E3 has been arguably one of the best E3 displays for a long time, especially with all sorts of new innovations such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 no controller Project Natal motion sensing technology.

EA and Activision both had an impressive line up of games they would be offering, but Activion Blizzard has decided to take some decisive action against the EA and Double Fine deal of publishing Brutal Legends, a game that was had a $15 million investment from Activision Blizzard.

How did this happen? Well you may already know this, but Vivendi Games merged with Activision awhile ago but apparently Activision did not include Brutal Legend in their list of projects they would inherit. Double Fine thought this meant Activision no longer wanted Brutal Games, so they went looking for another developer, namely EA. Activision has previously threatened to sue if Double Fine didn't stop the publishing of Brutal Legends, and now that threat has become a reality.

The lawsuit claims that Double Fine missed a key deadline last year, and asked for another $7 million infusion. Then it claims that Activision was not compensated for their initial $15 million investment when Double Fine went to EA. Activision says that they never gave up their rights to the game, and was still in negotiations with Double Fine, but failed to reach an agreement.
In response, Double Fine President Tim Schafer stated,

"Hey, if Activision liked it, then they should have put a ring on it," "Oh great, now Beyonce is going to sue me too."

Later, EA also commented by comparing Activision to

"a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy."

Should Activision be able to keep their "rights"? It only seems natural that if Activision doesn't include the game in the projects they would inherit, that they mean to give up the game. On the other hand, if they really were negotiating, then perhaps Double Fine is at fault. However, I doubt this is the case, and it's more likely that Activision didn't care much about it until Double Fine was forced to find another publisher.

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