Google is still the number one Online

RESTON, Va., July 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly analysis of U.S. web activity at the top online properties for June 2011 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service. Several Travel subcategories ranked among the top-gainers in June as summertime officially began. Sporting Goods and Toy sites also saw gains as parents looked for ways to keep their kids occupied during the summer recess.

Google Sites ranked as the #1 property in June with 182.5 million visitors, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 178.4 million and Microsoft Sites with 173.6 million. Amazon Sites jumped 1 position to rank #6 with 95.8 million visitors, Disney Online jumped 8 positions to #32 (32.6 million visitors), and Twitter.com jumped 9 positions to #37 (30.6 million visitors). Expedia Inc appeared in the top 50 ranking at #39 (28.1 million visitors).

Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking

Google Ad Network led the June Ad Focus ranking with a reach of 92.8 percent of Americans online, followed by Yahoo! Network Plus (86.3 percent), AOL Advertising (85.9 percent), Yahoo! Sites (83.2 percent) and Google (82.2)

Click here for the complete detailed report.

Top Topics

Summer Heat

Debt Ceiling Debate

Statement from Bruce Bennett, Attorney for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Regarding the Order Issued Today by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware

AARP The Magazine Reveals its Annual List of the Top 10 Best Places To Live (and Retire) Affordably in the U.S.

Over Half of all Americans Favor National Recognition for Same-Sex Marriages

comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for June 2011

Economy Struggling to Regain Momentum According to Fannie Mae's Economics & Mortgage Market Analysis Group

Quarterly Earnings Reports

Microsoft Previews Next Release of Windows Phone

24 May 2011 15:00 Africa/Lagos


Microsoft Previews Next Release of Windows Phone
"Mango" to deliver smarter and easier communications, apps and Internet experiences and bring Windows Phone to more customers around the world.

PR Newswire

REDMOND, Wash., May 24, 2011

REDMOND, Wash., May 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. today previewed the next major release of Windows Phone, code-named "Mango," through a series of media events around the world. "Mango" will deliver more than 500 new features to push the boundaries of the smartphone experience around communications, apps and the Internet. The "Mango" release will be available for free to Windows Phone 7 customers and is scheduled to ship on new phones beginning this fall. More details on device update timing will be provided closer to availability. Windows Phone will also add support for additional languages, expand access to apps by launching Windows Phone Marketplace in new countries, and partner with new OEMs to enable expansion to new markets.*

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO)

"Seven months ago we started our mission to make smartphones smarter and easier for people to do more," said Andy Lees, president of the Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft. "With 'Mango,' Windows Phone takes a major step forward in redefining how people communicate and use apps and the Internet, giving you better results with less effort."

Communications: Easier to Connect and Share

The smartphone experience can be complicated by a sea of disconnected apps and accounts as people attempt to keep pace with all the ways they communicate — from calls, texts, email and instant messages (IM) to status updates, Tweets, check-ins, photo posting and tagging. To help people stay on top of that growing complexity, the "Mango" release organizes information around the person or group people want to interact with, not the app they have to use.

* Threads. Switch between text, Facebook chat and Windows Live Messenger within the same conversation.
* Groups. Group contacts into personalized Live Tiles to see the latest status updates right from the Start Screen and quickly send a text, email or IM to the whole group.
* Deeper social network integration. Twitter and LinkedIn feeds are now integrated into contact cards, and "Mango" includes built-in Facebook check-ins and new face detection software that makes it easier to quickly tag photos and post to the Web.
* Linked inbox. See multiple email accounts in one linked inbox. Conversations are organized to make it easy to stay on top of the latest mail.
* Hands-free messaging. Built-in voice-to-text and text-to-voice support enables hands-free texting or chatting.


A Smarter Approach to Apps

Windows Phone will challenge the way people think about apps. Today their usefulness is measured by what can be done within the app, but Microsoft sees the promise of apps in how they can be integrated directly into the core experiences of the phone. In addition to making it easy to get timely notifications and updates from apps right from the Start Screen, the "Mango" release also will surface apps as part of search results and within Windows Phone Hubs. As a result, a useful app is more likely to be right there when needed.

* App Connect. By connecting apps to search results and deepening their integration with Windows Phone Hubs, including Music and Video and Pictures, "Mango" allows apps to be surfaced when and where they make sense.
* Improved Live Tiles. Get real-time information from apps without having to open them. Live Tiles can be more dynamic and hold more information.
* Multitasking. Quickly switch between apps in use and allow apps to run in the background, helping to preserve battery life and performance.


Taking the Internet Beyond the Browser

In addition to including Internet Explorer, the "Mango release will connect the power of the Web to the unique capabilities of Windows Phones, such as location awareness, camera and access to apps, to present a way of viewing the Web that is more localized, actionable and relevant.

* Internet Explorer 9. A browser based on the powerful Internet Explorer 9 and including support for HTML5 and full hardware acceleration.
* Local Scout. Provides hyper local search results and recommends nearby restaurants, shopping and activities in an easy-to-use guide.
* Bing on Windows Phone. More ways to search the Web, including Bing Vision, Music Search and Voice so it's easy to discover and decide.
* Quick Cards. When searching for a product, movie, event or place, see a quick summary of relevant information, including related apps.


Strengthening the Ecosystem

The Windows Phone ecosystem has grown steadily since Windows Phone 7 first launched in October, with more than 17,000 apps currently available on Windows Phone Marketplace and Windows Phone handsets available from a range of partners worldwide, and Microsoft's recently announced partnership with Nokia. "Mango" will further expand and strengthen the Windows Phone ecosystem through new partnerships with Acer Inc., Fujitsu Ltd. and ZTE Corp., which today announced plans to deliver new Windows Phone devices in markets around the world. Furthermore, Microsoft announced it will support additional languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish, and will greatly expand the list of countries where consumers have access to apps via Windows Phone Marketplace. As well, a beta release of the free Windows Phone Developer tools, which will be used to create the next generation of "Mango" apps and games, will be posted for public download to Microsoft's website within 24 hours of today's events. More information about what "Mango" means for developers, the tools and a link to the public download page is available at http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2011/05/24/developer-news-beta-mango-tools-available-today.aspx .

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Some information relates to pre-released product that may be substantially modified before it's commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.

*Data plan required; carrier fees apply. Apps from Marketplace. Features and services vary by area, phone, carrier and service plan.

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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.
NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx

CONTACT: Rapid Response Team of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, +1-503-443-7070, rrt@waggeneredstrom.com

Web Site: http://www.microsoft.com

Top 10 Companies Using Social Media Strategies for Financial Success

1. Starbucks

2. Dell

3. eBay

4. Google

5. Microsoft

6. Thomson Reuters

7. Nike

8. Amazon

9. SAP

10. Yahoo! and Intel

The results are in and social media is a winner. Social media has been heartily embraced by most of the world, and a new study from Engagementdb shows that when companies use social media and use it well, they are almost certain to reap quantifiable financial rewards.
This truly groundbreaking social media study written by Charlene Li and Wetpaint, uses a robust statistical analysis to measure how Business Week’s top 100 brands are using social media to achieve financial success. The study’s goals were to measure “how deeply engaged the top 100 global brands are in a variety of social media channels and, more importantly, understand if higher engagement is correlated with financial performance”.

~ from Social Media Engagement Correlates To financial Performance


Another company thar has achieved remarkable success using social media is Nokia since the beginning of the Nokia Nseries Blogger Relations program.

View this video on YouTube - Blogger Meet-Up with Forum Nokia Champion Robin Jewsbury.

Virtualization Saves Microsoft Customers Nearly a Half-Million Dollars Per Year

Virtualization Saves Microsoft Customers Nearly a Half-Million Dollars Per Year

Businesses gain value via server consolidation, integrated management tools and application management.

REDMOND, Wash. - Feb. 9, 2009 /PRNewswire/ — Microsoft Corp. today announced that some business customers around the world have saved on average $470,000 (U.S.) per year through IT projects using Microsoft virtualization software. Microsoft's business customers have been able to use virtualization to help reduce operations and capital expenses via reduced electrical power consumption and cooling within datacenters, reduced hardware acquisition costs, automation of desktop and server management, and centralized application deployment.

The cost of running IT systems has increased as electrical power, cooling and physical space has become constrained. In his 2008 refereed journal article, "Worldwide electricity used in data centers," Jonathan Koomey, Ph.D., of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University concluded that total datacenter power was about 1.5 percent of all U.S. electricity use in 2005, with 80 percent of that amount going toward powering and cooling servers.

A separate report, by Gartner Inc., stated that "the effective use of virtualization can reduce server energy consumption by up to 82 percent and floor space by 85 percent" (Gartner: "Energy Savings via Virtualization: Green IT on a Budget"; Nov. 12, 2008).

"Businesses are looking to reduce and manage computing costs in datacenters and across server and client computing devices," said David Greschler, director of integrated virtualization at Microsoft. "Virtualization software allows businesses to pool computing resources to drive down IT costs, increase IT efficiency and be more responsive to business needs. Customers are getting a better bang for their buck with the Microsoft platform and virtualization solutions because virtualization is in both the operating system and in the holistic management tools. Customers can manage IT services and a broad set of applications across the datacenter and desktops. There is less of a learning curve for customers, and it eases interoperability with existing systems."

Savings Through Available Built-In Virtualization and Management Automation
Microsoft's approach to virtualization, which incorporates server and presentation virtualization into Windows Server 2008 and unlimited virtual machine management with Microsoft System Center suite license, is helping break down barriers to broad virtualization adoption.

"The VMware ESX solution would have cost $30,000 (U.S.) for four servers. With Microsoft, we have a service provider agreement that allows for monthly payments with no capital costs — costing us less than $1,000 over the life of the contract," said David Straede, president and chief operating officer for Santa Barbara Web Hosting. "Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V has the core features businesses need. It's the Windows people know, is installed just like other Windows-based applications, and works in a management console that IT staff are already using. The ESX feature set simply doesn't justify its additional expense."

If making it easy for customers to implement virtualization is important, making it easy to manage the environment is just as critical for saving time and money. With Microsoft System Center, customers have a single solution for managing the entire IT life cycle, from deployment and provisioning to monitoring and backup. Equally important, customers can manage both server and desktop resources, both virtual and physical assets, and both Microsoft and VMware hypervisors, all with the same platform.

These capabilities helped Banverket ICT choose Microsoft for its virtualization strategy. "We knew we wanted to build a compatible virtualization platform that would encompass server consolidation, Terminal Services and application virtualization that we could manage with a single set of tools," said Pontus Blomkvist, service design manager, Banverket ICT. "With Microsoft Application Virtualization for Terminal Services, we have been able to reduce the number of terminal servers because we can run many applications on any server at any time, without worrying about conflicts. With Hyper-V, we are now running 50 virtual machines in production, with a utilization rate of 80 percent for some of the servers as opposed to 15 percent before we deployed Hyper-V."

Savings Through Consolidation, Reductions in Power
By running multiple virtual machines on fewer physical servers, Microsoft customers are drastically cutting hardware requirements and easing server management. For example, Indiana University's Auxiliary IT Department went from 152 to just 32 servers, which it expects will save $85,000 (U.S.) annually. Saxo Bank had an average physical server utilization of just 20 percent and was deploying nearly 200 new servers per year before using server virtualization. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V allowed the bank to reduce the number of servers needed by 36 percent and realize savings equivalent to $1 million (U.S.), because of lower server hardware costs and associated reductions in space, power and cooling costs.

Many customers have realized similarly dramatic electrical savings as a result of server consolidation, which is a particularly important benefit in today's climate of volatile power prices. TALX expects to save approximately 50 percent in annual power and cooling costs by consolidating its server environment with Hyper-V. HotSchedules, which noted that its No. 1 cost in the datacenter is power, spent about $11,000 (U.S.) a month on datacenter power costs, but with Hyper-V it anticipates that this monthly figure will go down to $2,500. Santa Barbara Web Hosting uses Hyper-V to reduce its power consumption costs by $5,220 (U.S.) per month, helping the company provide more cost-effective services to its customers. And Slough Borough Council took advantage of the savings from eliminating 10 physical servers to preserve the electrical power needed to turn on a new storage area network.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see us virtualize 60 servers once our physical-to-virtual analysis is complete, which represents nearly half our server holdings," said Chris Wintermute, technical infrastructure manager for Slough Borough Council. "We've achieved hardware savings of $148,000 (U.S.), and we expect to reduce server deployment costs by $23,700 (U.S.) annually, based on rolling out 20 servers a year."

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft's corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.
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