Monthly Archive for July, 2009

New updates on Mico-hoo

Published on July 29, 2009 in Google Microsoft and IT News. 0 Comments

I guess you guys already know from today’s Tech News about the official search partner between Microsoft and Yahoo. I did not want to talk more about it since it was only a inked agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo, and will not start till 2012(?) if the competitor (Of course, Google) won’t against through the regulators.  And what kind of happiness it would bring to us? After all, it was to combine two declining search engines together which might lead to more search engine market decline. Think about it, Yahoo search is in the distance second place compared to Google in the search engine market. And now if they use Bing to replace Yahoo search, it is hard to see these Yahoo users will buy it. Even they are on Yahoo portal sites, but Google tool bar is everywhere anyway.

And anyhow, since I traced Mico-hoo events before, let me continue this topic one more time.  There are some key components on the Microsoft and Yahoo deal:

  • The deal is for 10 years.
  • Microsoft will license Yahoo’s core search technologies for 10 years;
  • Bing is the “exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites’.
  • Yahoo is the worldwide sales force for both companies. Self-serve and search advertising will be built on Microsoft’s AdCenter platform.
  • Yahoo will own the user experience on its properties.
  • Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs to Yahoo at a rate of 88 percent of search revenue on Yahoo sites for the first five years. Yahoo will continue its search affiliate partnerships. On a conference call, Ballmer said: ”We paid a high TAC rate. There’s no question. He added that the upside comes as Microsoft improves relevance due to more scale. “Our upside comes as execution really builds,” he said.
  • “Some Yahoo engineers may move to Microsoft,” said Ballmer.
  • Microsoft guarantees Yahoo’s owned and operated revenue per search in each country for 18 months;
  • After 5 years, Microsoft can retake premium ad sales back from Yahoo.
  • The implementation will occur within 2 years after regulatory approval.

Now let us sit back and watch what Google will re-act in the next few months.

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Easy way to Format Strings with Capital Inital letters in VB.NET

Published on July 17, 2009 in ASP and ASP.net. 3 Comments

I am developing a web application with ASP.NET and Oracle database. In the Oracle, there is a table with a “City” field whose data is in Upper Case. To make the data look good, I format the city name in the Stored Procedure with InitCap function from Oracle as the blow:

SELECT DISTINCT INITCAP(F_city) AS CITY FROM CITY_TAB
ORDER BY CITY ASC;

Now, I need to accomplish the same in my VB.NET code. Of course, based on my previous knowledge I was not aware of  such String Function in VB.net the similar as the INITCAP. And I used to write a function to loop all strings and put the first letter in Capital when we were coding in VB script (ASP).

This week, I found out a easy way to do so in ASP.NET. Now you can use StrConv to get the formatted string. For example:

Dim strCity as String = strConv(strCity, vbstrconv.vbproperCase)

Enjoy programming!

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Atlanta Airport Free Wi-Fi Updates

Published on July 16, 2009 in IT News. 1 Comment

As I promised in my another post Hack the Wi-Fi network of Atlanta Airport is the old news I will keep you posted if I have some news about free wi-fi services in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Now here is the news, but actually it is not a good news. According to officials from ATL airport, they will postpone the free wi-fi offering till next year (2010). But, hi at least they are thinking about it (free Wi-Fi) now. Stay tuned.

The news excerpt is attached below. Continue reading ‘Atlanta Airport Free Wi-Fi Updates’

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