After years of hype, wireless users in the United States are waiting for all the technology pieces to come together to make surfing the Internet from their handsets as easy as it is on their PCs at home.

So how close are we to simple and robust Web surfing from a cell phone?

The answer depends on whom you ask. Some experts say the mobile Internet is already here. Millions of people throughout the world are accessing wireless application protocol, or WAP, Web sites–stripped-down sites specially designed for mobile handsets. But other experts argue that WAP sites are too limited. Some people say an entirely new domain name, called “dot-mobi,” should be used for Web sites that are optimized for mobile surfing. Still others propose using intelligent browsers to turn traditional Web sites into something that can be viewed on a small handset.

“I think what people really want is to be able to access the same sites they access on their PCs, but from their phones,” said Matt Hatton, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group based in the United Kingdom. “Once we can get the experience to look and feel more like the traditional Internet, more people will be willing to spend the money to pay for the services.”

While there is still a lot of disagreement over how subscribers should be accessing mobile Web sites, there’s almost complete agreement that when the mobile Internet finally hits mainstream adoption, it’s going to be big.

The largest U.S. mobile carriers–Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless–are already seeing huge growth in data usage. Together they generated more than $6.3 billion in wireless data revenues for the first half of 2006, said Chetan Sharma, an independent mobile wireless consultant. Overall, wireless data service revenues, which also include several regional carriers, exceeded $7 billion in the first half of the year. Mobile carriers in the U.S. could generate more than $15 billion in data revenue for all of 2006. This is almost a 75 percent jump from 2005, when data services for the entire year accounted for $8.6 billion.

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While most would agree that Google has set the current standard for Web search, some technologists say even better tools are on the horizon thanks to advances in artificial intelligence.

Search is like oxygen for many people now, and considering Google’s breakthroughs in Web document analysis, supercomputing and Internet advertising, it can be easy to think this is as good as it gets. But some entrepreneurs in artificial intelligence (AI) say that Google is not the end of history. Rather, its techniques are a baseline of where we’re headed next.

Think asking your customers directly is the best way to understand their needs or the market’s direction? Think again. More and more companies are gathering client feedback by checking out Web-based discussions. Here are a few reasons to monitor the Internet for customer insight:

1. Instant Data
Traditional market research can take weeks and months. Culling online resources for the latest conversations, opinions, and issues about a particular industry are instantaneous.

2. Trendspotting
Debates on blogs and other online forums deliver honest, insightful information about product and service trends and, more importantly, which of those trends seem here to stay.

3. Presentation Preparation
By monitoring online industry discussion sites and knowing ahead of time the day’s or week’s hot topics, sellers can appear more fresh on their sales calls. Being aware of the latest market concerns means they can anticipate prospects’ fears about purchasing products and prepare answers to their objections in advance.

4. Competitive Advantage
Knowing what a market’s hot-button topics are not only helps sales teams be more prepared on calls, but helps them keep tabs on what the competition currently provides—and what they have on tap for the future.

Until that morning, the site had often ranked in the top-ten nonpaid results for search terms such as “free cell phones” and “family plans.” And like thousands of other businesses, Keiter’s company relied on free Google searches to drive customers its way.

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Most people assume search marketing works only to reach consumers, but it’s actually quite effective for businesses wishing to connect with other businesses, as well.

How are business-to-business companies tapping into the B2B audience via search? For those who stayed to see the last session on the last day of the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, there were plenty of lessons to be learned and examples to examine in the B2B Case Studies session moderated by Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner at Beyond Ink.

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A lawsuit that had the potential to define how far trademark infringement can go when applied to subdomains has been settled out of court. The lawsuit was filed by California non-profit religious organization Jews for Jesus against Google in response to a blogger who set up a blog critical of the group at jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. Read it all at the Original post here 

A few members of the Yahoo! Autos team created a new feedback and suggestion system during a recent company Hack Day incorporating some of the bubble-up recommendation system to their own support and feedback loops. Instead of submitting yet another request for motorcycle coverage on the site, the existing request is shown on the Yahoo! Autos feedback page allowing anyone on the Internet to +1 the recommendation. (via Y! Cool Thing of the Day)

Apparently there is uproar about the “discovery” that people are getting their friends and cow-orkers to Digg their stories. Whoah, stop the press!

Even worse (!), Weblogs Inc, owner of Netscape, an alleged Digg-clone no less, has been accused of using this exact tactic to boost their own stories!

Even even worse (!!), there are secret cabal email lists with the aim to share links and get certain Diggers submissions pushed to the front page.

Oh my days what is the world coming to, people gaming Digg in an organised fashion. OMG, WTF, YMMV etc.

Urm, apparently this is new to some people. Read the Original post here

Tonight YouTube went down for a few hours for scheduled maintenance and came back up with a few new features. First is customized URLs, which allows you to “choose a customized URL for your channel, to make sharing your videos and favorites with friends easier.” As I understand it this will allow video publishers to ditch URLs like youtube.com/profile?user=someuser and replace them with something more memorable. The second is YouTube Music, a new section for musicians to post their music videos. This presumably fits in with YouTube’s plan to host “every music video ever created” and compete with MySpace Music, but so far it seems pretty incomplete–the YouTube Music section looks just like other channel areas on YouTube, making it very difficult to find your favorite artists. I can only assume this is slated to improve soon.

While a lot of people are out to optimize their sites/blogs, most everyone seems to skip over CSS.

I have been spending some time looking at CSS Optimization tools today. I wanted something free, online, and easy to use. And of course, something that worked. There are actually quite a few websites that fit the bill, and some of them are easier to use, produce more friendly code, and others are a bit harder to use, but can produce amazing results.