I have three that I regularly look at and all three for different reasons.

Firstly, the BBC has also had a pretty nice website, Functional and easy to navigate.  They really stepped it up a notch when the redesigned the Formula one page to coincide with BBC taking the event from ITV.  Their World Cup page hasn’t quite matched the sleek design of the F1 section but the functionality and ease of use is second to none.

You can easily navigate between the main news section, a full overview of groups and fixtures and a day by day results section.  This makes it very easy to see the exact piece of information you are looking for.

Next up is the excellent oval site at Marca.com.  Marca is the leading Spanish sports daily newspaper and I doubt their website has had as many hits as it has over the last 4 weeks.   Surprisingly for a news site, this page has no news on it.  All it does is show information according to round, team, schedule and stadium.

The way it does it though is something special.  Using flash in a very very pretty way, you can see all this information with just a mouse hover over the correct section.  Hovering over the outer ring of each section fills the gap with a relevant round up or map of that particular topic.

So they are both very useful in their own way for looking up current and past events, but what about the future?  Worldcupchart.com has a very nice predictor that allows you to put in your own results to see how the World Cup folds out in your view.

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This is great for plotting out the route your team will take to the final.

Google had planned to add a full page background picture, one that changes daily, to highlight their latest ‘customisable’ options.  This also seemed another step for Google to look even more like Bing.  The Googlers backlash started from minute one with angry Twitter users opposing the change.  Google reacted a few hours later and the familiar plain white homepage was returned.

Marissa Mayer, Google Search Vice President said, “”We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it, in the form of a link on our home page,” Marissa continued “Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our home page.”

For those of you, which includes me that actually LIKED the change you don’t need to worry.  Look for the ‘Change background image’ link in the bottom left of the screen.  You will need to be signed in to see this; also, if you’re in iGoogle you will need to revert back to classic view.

There are 4 different options to choose from.

‘From my computer’ is pretty obvious with the ability to upload your own image as long as it is larger than the 800×600 pixel minimum.

‘My Picasa Web photos’ simply allows you to use the images you have uploaded to the Google Web Album, assuming they are big enough to use.

‘Public gallery’ is again fairly straight forward with a range of optimized images from Google.  They range from an Umbrella to your usually cityscape\Forest scenes.  The sort of thing you see on wall art in high street stores.  My favourite is the smiley post-it-note on a plain wall.  It’s fun and unobtrusive and can cheer you up.

The last section ‘editor’s picks’ is not too much different to the previous section but whoever the ‘editor’ is must really love colour.  They are pretty crazy.  There is a lovely rainbow over a forest and also a really quaint looking aerial English Countryside scene.  You can also choose from a few plain colour backgrounds.

Of course, you can always just use the search function until you find one that suits your style.

The changes arrived as promised. Dubbed “Google Jazz” by web experts, the new design closely resembles Microsoft’s newly re-branded ‘Bing’ search engine.  Last June Microsoft re-branded the ‘Live Search Service’ to ‘Bing’ and its tag-line ‘decision engine’.  A large advertising campaign has followed.  It contained a left hand nav and a more graphic interface.

This may have been the reason for the redesign from Google that includes everything including the logo.  The logo now features brighter blue, red, and green and is now showing in a standard font without the logo and shadowing.  The left hand side nav has been added that allows for differing search features and filters.  Each individual option then opens for a wider range of settings within.  This is sure to help the reader’s fine tune their searches.

This is now the third time in three years that Google has redesigned and this time it appears to have had the purpose of making the vast set of search filtering tools more available to the everyday googler.

Qualifications: 9 A-Levels in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Music, Law, Criminology, Sociology, Psychology and General Studies

Work experience: An Account Manager for Smart Source UK between 2006 to 2008, Catherine worked on accounts for a number of clients including Rentokil, Pirtek, Terrapin, Chelsea Artisans, South Leicestershire College and Woodteam Ltd

Joined Soula: 2008 as a New Business Assistant, Catherine progressed to the position of SEO Executive towards the end of 2008

Hobbies: A member of the Nottingham Arts Theatre as a rehearsal pianist and Music Director, Catherine loves to scuba dive, read graphic novels and watch Japanese films in her spare time

Catherine’s darkest secret: “Cat hates bunnies after watching Watership Down. In all honesty who wouldn’t after watching all those evil bunnies?”- Katie Clarke, SEO Executive

Interesting fact about Catherine: “She’s hard-core! She did ballet for 12 years, is a grade 8 pianist, appeared on ‘A song for Christmas’ when she was 15 and has got more qualifications than you can shake a stick at!” –Rowena

Microsoft have designed IE9 to load JavaScript faster, after IE8 they have improved performance (massively – demonstrated by the graph).   The graph shows that IE9 is now on a par with the current version of Firefox and are still working on speeding up the rendering time before launch.

Another major improvement from IE is “hardware acceleration” which to you and me means that images and text will be displayed a lot faster meaning the overall page will be loaded and displayed quicker than before.

Microsoft are still working to improve performance but if you can’t wait for the launch then you can test drive IE9 although this is only a preview to the new IE9 it definitely gives you an understanding of what they are wanting to achieve and the fact that they have progressed a lot since IE6.

Qualifications: BA (Hons) English, MA in Creative Writing (both at Nottingham Trent University)
Work Experience: involved in the writing, editing, proofreading and publication of her Universities MA anthology, Rowena has worked in a variety of fields – library assistant and retail – before joining the Soula team

Joined Soula: 2008 as a Copywriter

Hobbies: Keen to publish her MA dissertation as her first novel, Rowena loves spending her free time doing anything creative – painting, writing and organising her wedding.

Rowena’s claim to shame: “I have got devil horns, no joke. After my sister dropped me on a concrete floor – head first – when I was six, my forehead became more angular forming 2 distinct points at the side.”

Katy on Rowena: “Rowena is the number one person to sit next to at a dinner party. Because of her job she knows a bit of something about everything… from property prices in Kent to the latest Celebrity diet – this girl is like a fact machine!”

Picnik was originally started back in 2005 and has been a great alternative for those not wanting to invest in Photoshop and with two million US visitors monthly wanting to edit their photos and with the easy integration into social networks via Facebook or MySpace it is no wonder that Google saw its potential.

In a statement on Picnik’s blog “Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome.”

Google have stated that there have no immediate plans to change anything and that the service will continue to support existing partners although Yahoo’s Flickr might have different thoughts…

If you haven’t tried Picnik then I suggest you take some photos and upload them and see what you can create.

Qualifications: BSc Hons Multimedia Computing at Staffordshire University

Work experience: Prior to joining the Soula team, James spent a year out in Munich, Germany (during his sandwich year) working for the IABG, a Ministry of Defence contractor. Required to maintain and develop their department’s internal staff information portal, James worked on numerous other projects including improving communication between departments.

Joined Soula: 2008 as a Developer

Hobbies: An avid follower of extreme sports, James can’t seem to get enough of them. From exercising at the gym to playing football, if he could he would go snowboarding all the time. Outside of work, James likes listening to music and messing around with graphical design and digital art – anything do with multimedia

Some interesting facts about James: “I have got so many stories it’s scary. To sum up my best one though: I nearly became a fighter pilot in the Royal Navy; I once fell asleep while running home drunk (never a good idea); the first time I did a skydive my parachute failed and I once ate a fruit pastel sandwich – yum.”

Thinking on James when speaking to a female interviewee: “Yeah, I do the same as Chad, but better (flirt much!)”

Well after the TED conference this month I think we have found the next thing to be on top of. Bing’s map section specialist Blaise Aguera y Arcas talks us through the extremely exciting changes they have planned for the Bing maps system.

I found the video very interesting. There is a whole new level of interaction here and one of the first major projects from the big three (Microsoft, Google and Yahoo) to take Augmented Reality to the next level.

How does this technology open new marketing angels however? Well firstly these is the potential for static image or video advertisements. I am pretty confident M$ will eventually integrate this into the map system but there is nothing stopping companies sponsoring live webcam feeds from city centres or putting a billboard across from a popular landmark or even get a team photo wearing branded clothing in front of them.

Google are already starting to monetize their Local Business Centre and the paid potential for these new AR maps is even bigger. Think about company sponsored areas or webcam feeds officially endorsed by Bing as well as relevant display advertising and commercials that could be integrated. This kind of tech would also work really well on PS3 and X-Box if they can get it working in their browsers, I would love to see them do some specific functions for looking up gaming friends etc.

Of course there is always some potential problems, the big one here being privacy. People were up in arms after Google did street view, that was only static images, imagine the effect when there is live streaming involved! Hopefully people out there will see how amazing this technology is and embrace it however if the wrong types of press get involved I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The other massive marketing potential from this is of course mobile support. We are already seeing mobile AR apps and if Bing offer mobile support for this too then I can se eit being very useful for when you’re touring new cities or sightseeing in general.

One of the benefits of Buzz is you can link your account to your Picasa, Twitter and Flickr account showing all your updates in Buzz. There is also the option to set individual posts to public or private or even to specific groups you have set up in Buzz so if you wanted to let a certain customer base know about the latest product release or sale you could easily share this information to all your followers. One of my current favorites is that you can associate pictures with Buzz in Google Maps and conversations will appear on Google Maps, allowing you to see what other people are saying nearby.

Although Buzz has got off to a slightly shaky start as some users were automatically connected to those they emailed frequently on Gmail and then those connections were showed publicly to everyone. The problem with this for some users which include doctors and solicitors is that it publicly showed their patients / clients to their other contacts which could lead to clients and patients to feel exposed. On a personal level one Buzz users abusive ex boyfriend was added so he was then able to see all her current contacts. These security issues have lead to a privacy review and Google have been in talks with Federal and Provincial Privacy Officials in Canada and other countries. Google will need to address these as quickly as they can to satisfy users and keep them hooked.

I am undecided about Google Buzz at the minute but I have been using it a little this week and will continue to use it, I will keep you up dated.

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