Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

Mashable!:
Powerset, the company that was acquired by Microsoft in an attempt to shore up its search, may be more lucrative than originally thought.  According to reports, Microsoft may be tapping Powerset’s technology to improve advertising in search results and in the process, change the way advertising is done.
Right now, advertisers bid to display their ads on search results pages containing specific keywords pertaining to the product or service they’re advertising.  For certain, niche products, that’s not so bad — fewer keywords mean more chances of targeting the right audience.  But for larger companies like Dell, which need to worry about countless keywords, the process can be far more taxing.  But Powerset believes that its natural language processing could change the way ads are displayed and enhance the profitability for all parties involved.
I think Powerset is totally wrong.
If a particular company sells sneakers, they can bid for placement on search results pages pertaining to “sneakers,” “shoes,” “footwear,” “socks,” “feet,” and the company’s and its competitors’ names.  But with natural language processing, as Powerset proposes, that company would need to bid on search concepts where people ostensibly ask for the best kinds of sneakers or where to find sneakers.
Powerset’s belief that this new type of ad-placement mechanism is game-changing may be true, but it’s wrong in believing that it would work better for advertisers.  How could it?

Keywords may not be fool-proof and may tend to make things more difficult for advertisers, but we can’t forget that bidding on them works for one reason: it simplifies a process that is extremely hard to gauge.  More often than not, people that search for sneakers will use some of the keywords listed above.  And while they may use others, a company is almost guaranteed that anyone even remotely fond of…

Top 10 Online Note Taking Applications

Mashable!: Many of us prefer using online note taking applications for research, bookmarking sites, or quickly jotting down ideas. While there are many online note taking applications, we searched around the Web and compiled a list of those we felt were richer in features and usability. Here are the top ten, in no particular order.
Which note taking applications do you use and why? Let us know in the comments.
Evernote

Evernote is one of the most talked about online note taking applications. One special feature here is the drag-and-drop desktop version that allows you to see your notes and clips offline. You can use the Evernote mobile application for your Windows Mobile phone or iphone to capture pictures and record audio to send to your Evernote account. You can also email notes to Evernote using a secret email address.

Google Notes

Google Notes has some nice features including collaboration among multiple users, a publishing feature, integration with Google Bookmarks, the ‘Unfiled bookmarks’ link on the left sidebar of the Google Notes Web interface that sorts and displays all the urls you have saved, quick clippings of Web pages with the ’star’ button, and the export to Google Docs feature.
UberNote

UberNote works in the same manner as Google Notes. However, one neat feature here is that you can add your tasks in any note that you are working on. Later, you can view the ‘Open Tasks’ link on the sidebar of the UberNote interface to open all notes with incomplete tasks. Similarly, you can integrate your bookmarks with any note and find it later with the ‘Bookmarks’ link. Other nice things to know about UberNote are that it runs on AJAX and has a history feature that will save all the revisions you make on your notes. You can clip notes with…

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