In honor of Tom Cruise’s historic visit to the people of Yahoo! (liveblogged for posterity on Valleywag) we name today’s collection of search news after the actor’s classic bartending flick. Enjoy responsibly, please.
“Yahoo is getting so phone-y” A BetaNews story says that Yahoo is adding voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) capability for its Messenger customers in the US today. The service, which has been reportedly testing well in several international markets since December, allows users to send calls to (and receive them from) more traditional landline and cell phones for rock-bottom rates. The prices are cheaper than those offered by Skype, a VoIP service owned by eBay – making calls over Yahoo! Messenger would cost less than 3 cents a minute to most places in the world, and the ability to receive calls will set you back either $2.99 a month or $29.90 per year.
“Don’t do it for us. Do it for the kids.” MSN has already tried a breakfast cereal-style sweepstakes scheme to get people to use their search engine; now they’re going for the ‘aww’ factor. According to the BBC, MSN has teamed up with NSPCC, a UK charity dedicated to eradicating cruelty to children. From now through the end of summer, NSPCC receives a cash donation (not sure how much) every time an MSN search is attempted on this site. Other charities could soon follow, although the report was scant on specifics.
VideoEgg hatches deal with a Popcast Don’t worry, we have every intention of explaining that header. We saw today on Marketing Shift that VideoEgg – one of the ‘net’s many sites vying to be the Flickr of video file sharing – has bought Popcast, which makes a video player that “allows you to view and broadcast Internet TV channels.” Presumably, Popcast’s juice will go down easy with VideoEgg, boosting its users’ ability to share movies across multiple platforms; VideoEgg already supports publishing to Blogger, Typepad and eBay, among others.
