My favorite new technology I saw at Mix 06 was their Live Search platform. In particular, their Live Search Macros which will allow users to very easily create sophisticated targeted search results.

Live Search Macros is one of the smartest things Microsoft is doing in the Web 2.0 space. Today, with their search macro technology, users can easily create a vertical search results that both filters and ranks results. This will allow subject matter experts to define the sites, keywords, resources, links in/out and more to bring in a tailored search result.

The filtering and ranking parameters that can be placed in a macro are extensive and can be configured with sophisticated and/or combinations.

One of the more interesting modifiers is the ‘prefer’ modifier allowing a site to turn up more often or higher in the results. For example, placing the following modifier would make any results from web2.0central.com come up higher:

prefer:site:web2.0central.com

This could just as easily be used to prefer sites that have rss feeds:

prefer:hasfeed:

UPDATE: Live Search Documentation is now posted.

Currently use of the macros is limited to within the Live Search Toolbar. The groundbreaking piece is the forthcoming integration of the macros into the search API. This will allow anyone to create a vertical search engine to integrate within their website that can spin the results specifically to the authors desires.

Use of this macro search API will be freely available for non-commercial use. When getting clarification on commercial use, I was told that you can use it on a commercial website, as long as you’re not directly monetizing the results. Cool!

For those wanting to monetize the results and create their own search engine, currently they are only equipped to do this for major partners though there are plans to open this up broadly to the community.

Though this wasn’t expressed as their intention, the biggest opportunity I see is to allow anyone to create their own search engine embedded into their website or service and monetized by Microsoft’s new Ad Center service with a revenue share model. This would not only further the adoption of Live Search but also their Ad Center service. For those that don’t want to monetize with Ad Center, then a more conventional per search licensing fee could be followed and the user could results however they want.

You can get more macros on the Microsoft Gadgets site and within the week they should be launching a web based tool to make it easy for anyone to create their own search macros.

Technorati Tags: api, live, livesearch, macro, macros, mashup, microsoft, mix06, search, web 2.0, web2.0, web20

It looks like Toronto is becoming a bit of a Canadian hub for Web 2.0 action.

Tonight in Toronto is DemoCamp4 looks like over 100 people will be attending.

On April 18th, Toronto Venture Group is presenting at a full day seminar entitled “Funding Facts and Fictions: The Truth About the 6 ways to Fund Your Company for Growth.”

The following month the Toronto Venture Group is also presenting the Canadian Venture Forum from May 10th to 12th. My friend Sean Wise is particularly interested in finding Canadian Web 2.0 companies that might want to present at the event. Presenting companies at the Canadian Venture Forum have received funding of over $1 billion since 2000. If you’re a Web 2.0 company interested in this opportunity, email me and I can make some introductions.

On May 15th & 16th, Toronto will be hosting the Web 2.0 Mesh Conference at the MaRS Collaboration Centre. Looks like it will be well attended with luminaries including Om Malik, Steve Rubel, Paul Kedrosky, Stowe Boyd and dozens more. The event is being put on by Mark Evans, Mathew Ingram, Rob Hyndman, Michael McDerment, and Stuart MacDonald and an impressive list of sponsors.

Technorati Tags: canada, democamp, events, mesh, meshconference, toronto, web 2.0, web2.0, web20

I’m not much of a ‘photo guy’ which has probably led to me being delinquent in posting about Bubbleshare.

It’s not for lack of visibility as I seem to run into Albert everywhere I go. Being a fellow Canadian, it’s amazing that we keep bumping into each other in California (multiple times) and Las Vegas at Mix 06. I’d think Albert was stalking me if it weren’t though after him having lunch with Bill Gates. I might have to consider that it’s me stalking him.

I finally got a chance to really play with Bubbleshare and play seems an operative word. Bubbleshare makes lowers the barrier to managing photos, as Albert puts it “It’s Flickr for Moms”.

Bubbleshare lets you get started uploading photos super quickly. No need to setup an account, just drop in your name and email and you can start adding photos.

Visually it’s very impressive. It allows you to view all the photos in an album and scale them with a slider similar to iPhoto, easily drag and drop photos to organize them in an album and slick transitions between photos when viewing a slideshow. Bubbleshare also allows you to add audio captions to each photo which allows you to verbally or musically annotate your photos.

Getting photos into Bubbleshare is simple. From the standard HTTP upload, to a plugin for iPhoto Bubbleshare is making it easy for anyone to add photos.

BubbleZoom recently added a cool feature that allows you to easily zoom in on an area of your photo reminiscent of Apple’s Aperture eyeglass feature.

Despite it’s array of features, it’s impressively approachable and something I’ll be recommending to my photo happy friends.

Here are some photos from one of my notorious July 1st Fireworks parties. You’re all invited to the next one! Bubbleshare makes it a snap to add them to your blog.

Technorati Tags: photos, web20, bubbleshare, flickr, web 2.0, web2.0

I leave tomorrow morning for Las Vegas and Microsoft’s Mix 06 conference. The conference is all bout IE7, Atlas, Windows Live and how Microsoft fits into the whole Web 2.0 world. This isn’t strictly a Microsoft event as there are presentations from Amazon, Yahoo, eBay and dozens more. I’m particularly excited to see Bill Gates, Tim O’Reilly and Marc Canter present.

At this moment, Edmonton is getting hammered with a foot or two of snow so the timing couldn’t be better to get away somewhere warm.
If you’re attending, send an email to rcheramy@web2.0central.com and we can get together.

I have to thank Robert Scoble for sending the right Microsoft people my way. I had a brief chat with Robert in Vancouver at Northern Voice about how Microsoft should adopt the Firefox XPI format in IE7 and of course I pitched him on a little about what Zigtag is building. Shortly after returning home, Microsoft was inviting me out to Mix 06. Thank you Robert and thank you Microsoft for sponsoring Web 2.0 Central’s attendance.

Note: The sponsorship puts me under no obligation to post about Mix 06 but expect I’ll see plenty of interesting people, places and things there to blog about.

If your Web 2.0 company, event or related service is interested in sponsoring the spot above next, send an email to: sponsor@web2.0central.com

Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, zigtag, microsoft, LasVegas, web2.0, mix06, web 2.0, zigtag, Edmonton

Techcrunch got the scoop on which company from the Under the Radar Conference that Fox bought (full length interview) and it turns out it wasn’t one of the 32 presenting companies, in fact it’s a company that is still hasn’t even launched their product Newsroo. Talk about WAY “Under the Radar.”

Google has been busy with the acquisition of Writely and today they announced the purchase of the very cool SketchUp which has some nice synergies with Google Earth. I’ve previously played around with SketchUp and it’s the most approachable 3-D design application out there.

Microsoft hasn’t been sitting still either with their purchase of Onfolio which they intend to tie into their Windows Live Toolbar.

Someone should start an acquisition game like Alexadex where people predict which company is next Web 2.0 acquisition target.

Technorati Tags: acquisition, fox, Google, microsoft, newsroo, onfolio, sketchup, web 2.0, web2.0, web20, writely