Where Bing really steps it up, is for touch devices. Likely being aimed at the iPhone, Pre and Android, Bing Mobile provides some smooth glide controls for those looking to make their touch experience a bit more fluid.

Where Bing really drops the ball is ticking off folks overseas with yet more USA only Bing applications. This is sad as it is likely there are potentially millions of people overseas who would be thrilled to try Bing Mobile. Too bad it’s not available to them.

Further reading shows that apparently, the deal is not likely to be closed before 2010. Seriously, I am sure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are thrilled to see this deal getting such a high priority. Not.

Allegedly, the rumor is that the two companies are merely looking to get their ducks in a row due to problems with alleged click fraud issues on the Yahoo! side. But those are merely rumors. Yeah, sure…

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Where the app store fails for most companies looking to get something distributed is that Apple is not going to be of much help here. They will provide you with a platform and audience, but you will have to do your own promotion. Apple just makes it simple to access.

Now let’s imagine that we are talking about those failed brands of media know as newspapers. What if a simple subscription model is provided by the app store for a flat, reasonable monthly fee of $5. Many would avoid it, with more leaping to it like it was providing something life sustaining. Yet much of the mainstream media still does not get this.

Even then, those other search engines that provides results from everywhere are not really helping with the information overload. It’s just too much I am afraid. The sad state of reality is that search has remained entirely too lazy, in my opinions. Even Google, falls into this category to some degree.

Where do we go from here? Human powered indexes and real time results appear to be the future - unfortunately, this is not going to lead to accuracy. No, this will simply continue to lead to more confusion and general frustration.

I would point out that the same thing applies to Twitter as well. A great way to communicate, but there is no way that I have found ANY data from either source to be good for anything other than the occasional URL discovery. And even that is few and far between.

But this is hardly something that Bing is alone in. Google is also getting their feet wet with this social networking search nonsense. As stated previously, I love social networking. Just don’t mix it up with relevent search results and we’ll all get along just great.

Look, Google offering a new layout is fine. But at the same time, I think Google would be wise to continue using what works. Why start changing things about if it is not needed? This is something that Google might want to start asking themselves as newer UI is often time totally unneeded.

One the other hand, the inclusion of something called structured search might be of some value as Google pushes forward. Anytime you offer more ways to search content, that can be a good thing. But it should be by choice, not being forced upon anyone.

If anything, the above article should prove to be a reminder that even protected tweets, are easily accessible and that it is never a great idea to announce stuff you would not want visible to the world.

Does this mean we should avoid using Twitter completely? No, not at all. Rather consider the fact that Twitter is a public tool for communication, hence using our best judgment when utilizing such a tool. Really should be a matter of common sense.

As news came down the line of TownNews adopting the hnews format, I suddenly found myself wondering why this matters to the reader? Looking into the matter a bit deeper, I found that in truth, all that is being offered is a consistent read. Little more than that.

Yes, it means very little to the reader. But it matters to the publisher as this translates into seeking to meet with open standards, which in the end is actually good for everyone. And with TownNews supporting the online operations for something like 1500 newspapers online, standards are becoming increasingly important in this highly competitive environment.

Clearly living on kool-aid and VC money has gotten to Twitter’s head. Sure, I fully realize that they are waiting for some larger company to sweep in and buy them out. But one must ask themselves what kind of business is that? A sell out kind? Yup, pretty much.

Twitter is holding off for the big money. Obviously learning nothing from the dotCom crash, they are perfectly content to sit around and ignore any sustainable business ideas in hopes of being bought out for as much as possible. No interest in selling out to Facebook, clearly they are waiting for Google or Microsoft.

What is interesting about this is that there is a warning that appears when trying to use Google Wave on the iPhone, stating that the browser was not setup for it. Despite this, I believe we will see more mobile users jumping on board with this as time goes on.

In the end, it seems like the biggest target for Google Wave on the mobile front appears to be related to the iPhone specifically. And why not, considering the sheer number of users available able to run what the software provides.

What remains largely unclear though, is whether or not Moto is too late to the table. Some might say they are, as only the likes of Nokia could drag their feet this long and still come out on top.

No matter how all of this breaks down, I think it is safe to point out that Moto realizes that in order to compete in an iPhone kind of world, embracing open source options like Android is about the only hope they have to not become a second class solution in this ever-changing mobile market.

The differences are interesting. Where Wikipedia is editable by anyone, we all know it is the “powers that be” that will come about and determine whether or not something is factual regardless of your references provided or other documentation. Factual on the other hand, deletes nothing when someone makes a change/addition, instead allowing people to make up their own minds based on facts/data provided to substantiate something.

Certainly not going to be a replacement for Google, I see Factual as being something that with any luck, will help to get the “club” over at “Agendapedia” in gear to realize that providing “sources” does not always mean what is being offered as fact is indeed, true.

The thing is that while Bing-Hoo is hardly a threat to the mind share that is Google, it could very well be a threat to the ad revenue that Google has managed to enjoy largely unchecked. So clearly this has Google in alert mode to prepare as much as possible.

What is comical about all of this is that the US Justice Dept. is actively seeking Google’s opinion on the deal. Uh, wonder what that might be? Oh yes, that’s right, Google might have a strong problem with Bing-Hoo potentially knocking it off of its rocker. And rightfully so — no one wants to see one monopoly replaced by one with an even stronger control on the market.

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As for the site known as Searchtastic, the jury is still out as far as I am concerned. I can see some benefit in being able to query select keywords coming from specific users. But like so many other sites before it, how in the heck is this going to make money down the road?

And then considering the obvious downtime that Twitter continuously gives to anyone relying on it, I cannot help but wonder how well the results are going to be. Despite the great functionality, it is the business side of this that has me wondering…

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I might go so far as to say that Bing provides a good product, decent search results, and a unique way to present things. But I also think it is rather unrealistic to get us to believe that Bing is seriously that much better at providing search results than Google.

Truth be told, Google has mind share and market share. I see zero indication of either changing any time soon. but this is just my perspective. At some point, Bing may be able to change this, but not until its search results are significantly better than they are currently. As for the business side of things, same applies.

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Sadly rather than working to evolve their perspective business models, the two news agencies are content to whine about their collective advertising woes instead. Yes, because alienating your readers is definitely going to bring in the revenue. Not.

Now this is not to say that I have any problem with charging micro-payments for content. In exclusivity cases where the money spent is truly worth it, this makes a lot of sense. Sadly however, neither agency has news to offer that fits the bill for what traditionally works for micro-payments. It’s unfortunate that both companies will learn this the hardware way. Good luck with that.

In this article, we begin to see what I can malware 2.0. Instead of merely turning your PC into an infested wasteland, with popups and so forth, the above linked article describes a DNS poisoning scheme that leads you down a much more dangerous path.

Imagine browsing what you think is Google, complete with logo and seemingly organic search results. But the ads provided are actually for sites/pages not sanctioned by the given search engine. It’s rather frightening if you stop and think about how difficult it might be to detect this. Again, keep your security software up to date or better yet, choose a platform not targeted with this junk.

Existing Chinese Internet censorship has been described as a cat and mouse game. And this is just with keeping up on email, blog posts and so forth. Imagine the nightmare that would come up for government censors trying to keep tabs on a crisis happening in real time over the social media networks! It would be craziness - free speech would prevail and China’s government is not having it.

No, I suspect that China might eventually look into offering a single site destination where Twitter and Facebook APIs can be plugged into a government site where things are filtered and approved. Hardly real time, but I can see the censors going for something like this. It’s either than or they ban the social media sites completely.

Google maintains the argument that if we did support Ajax web crawling, it would significantly improve the web and search as we know it. After all, it is all about content and not how it is offered. But would this merely add to the problem seen with black hat SEO?

At the end of the day, I think we are a ways off before we will see any level of adoption with trying to spider through tons of Ajax websites. With things heating up in the search engine works however, it is possible that either Google or Bing might very well throw caution to the wind, but I think it is early yet.

The problem is that most people using a search engine do so looking to find out about specific info. And while this works well enough if you can combine social and typical search, going social search alone feels weak to me.

Assuming SU’s new toolbar efforts are half as successful as their previous work in the realm of popularity, it is likely that SU could become something of a valuable asset when combined with other search abilities. Say with Google or Bing, for instance?