MoMB’s Saurier Duval ranks the best betas of 2008

Written on 6th January 2009                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

One of our favorite sources for discovering new services is the Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB). It has an impressive track record, as the blog – founded and painstakingly maintained by Saurier Duval – reviewed the 6000th beta last October.

MoMB’s Duval is the perfect example of somebody who has put his heart in something and creates something really useful and beautiful over the years.

The betas blogger has the tradition of publishing a short list of the year. Although he skipped it in 2007, he did rank the betas of 2005, 2006, and now 2008. Here’s the top three, but make sure you browse to MoMB to check out the runner ups. They’re also rather interesting and different than the ones you see on the major tech blogs.

1. Goosh – The Unofficial Google Shell

This google-interface behaves similar to a unix-shell. You type commands and the results are shown on this page.
// Goosh.org

2. 280 Slides – Presentations made easy

Create beautiful presentations, access them from anywhere, and share them with the world.
// 280slides.com

3. Google Insights for Search – See what the world is searching for

With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.
// Google.com/insights/search

280 Slides, betas, Google Insights for Search, Goosh, momb, saurier Duval

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Google Insights: first spark of iPhone hype in September 2005

Written on 6th August 2008                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Google has launched a new tool that helps to gain insight in search terms, called – not surprisingly – Google Insights for Search. Google’s Trevor Claiborne wrote earlier today that the product was designed with the advertiser in mind:

It provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

Even though the service is aimed at people who have devoted their life to marketing, it doesn’t mean a blogger can’t play around with it as well. I thought of a nice search term, and – again not surprisingly, came up with the iPhone. And not just because an Apple story drives in clicks (somebody accused Om Malik of doing this).

Trinidad and Tobago and Hong Kong: iPhone countries

So here are some surprising facts:

• The first time a fair amount of people searched for the shiny object was in September 2005. Were that some iPhone visionaries? Or a secret Apple team looking for similarities?
• People from Hong Kong and Trinidad and Tobago hardly search for anything else but the iPhone.
• Lebanese iPhone fanboys rather have an iPhone for free

Apple, google, Google Insights for Search, iphone, marketing, search results, shiny object

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