We have two winning comments today, from Michael Lambie and Vibhu Norby. Michael’s comment was on our post The Best Things About Adobe’s AIR Platform. He suggested that AIR could be used to create an offline browser. Vibhu’s comment was on Microsoft: ROI Measurement is Broken – he thinks that “Microsoft is looking a step before the search”. Well done Michael and Vibhu, you’ve each won a $30 Amazon voucher – courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget.
Offline Browser
Michael Lambie wrote:
“I wouldn’t be suprised to see a next generation browser spawned out of AIR. I agree, sometimes my browser gets overloaded, and i’d like to just run things off my desktop. Imagine a light, rich, cross-platform browser that specializes in off-line behavior. I’d like to see that. I would not however, want to write it.”
Microsoft One Step Ahead of Search
Vibhu Norby wrote:
“It strikes me that this model is a much better metric for measuring ROI for social sites where influence matters… like Digg and Facebook…which, OH MY GOD – have ad deals with Microsoft!(Along with a third which is rumored to be in the works with MySpace.)
Microsoft is smarter than Google thinks. While Google sees a user’s search as the indicator of willingness to buy, Microsoft is looking a step before the search: Who and what brought that user to make the search in the first place?
And you better believe this is related to Yahoo! and their email service. Imagine: User receive email from friend about getting together for lunch at local restaurant. When friend leaves his email behind to “Google” the location of that local restaurant, who should really get the cut of the sale? Google, or the e-mail provider? Both. Right now it’s just Google.”
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)