The most recent articles from IT Week

Web 2.0 does the business

David Neal and Madeline Bennett — 2008-07-31T12:48:00.000Z

David Neal and Madeline Bennett, IT Week, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 12:48:00

It is time for IT leaders to harness social networking tools as a means of boosting productivity

Social networking continues to arouse mixed feelings among IT leaders. On the one hand, IT managers may feel obliged or pushed into banning such applications because of the perceived time-wasting effect that they have on employees. But on the other, they are faced with new products from software vendors that suggest that Web 2.0-style tools are the future of enterprise IT.

Jeremy Burton, chief executive of Serena Software, certainly thinks there is a place for social networking in the enterprise. In fact, when he first joined the company he spearheaded a push for its use, recommending that all employees adopted Facebook, and shared as much of their business and personal information on it as possible.

The reason for this was simple, according to Burton: people like to feel informed. “The most popular tool at the place where I worked before Serena was the office organisational chart. People like to know what is going on, and who works where,” he explained.

The very nature of these online, use-from-anywhere social sites and applications was another factor behind Serena’s decision to embrace the technology, added Burton.

“Facebook was a free tool for us to use and we could get going with it right away. It let us expose our interests to other folks in the building, and find out things we might have in common with them,” he said. “One per cent of staff might abuse it, but why stop everyone else from using it? There are millions of other ways that people might be wasting time in the office. Banning it is very short-sighted.”

Alistair Mitchell, chief executive of Huddle.net, which develops enterprise-oriented social networking and collaborative tools, said that this type of package appeals to many business customers.

“People at home use social networking tools, but what happens when they go

to work? They want to try to carry that on. We combine productivity tools with social networking techniques, and we do this in a very business-focused way.

We are helping to make people work better,” he said.

The influence of Web 2.0 technologies has become increasingly apparent at business management software developer Managed Objects. “Someone suggested we try applying social networking, and having got over the initial repulsion we really started to think about it, and could see that it would work,” said Managed Objects business technologist Jim White.

One of the firm’s most recent beta launches, myCMDB, has a very obvious Web 2.0 look and feel. “We haven’t replaced the interfaces, just added new ones that people can use if they are more comfortable with the format. It’s a very good way of broadening out the number of users of an application,” said White.

Oracle is also pushing the social side of enterprise applications. Earlier this month, the software giant launched its first “social CRM application”, Oracle Sales Prospector.

According to Mark Woollen, Oracle’s vice president of CRM, Sales Prospector brings Web 2.0 social networking capabilities into the traditional enterprise applications space.

“The overall user experience is not that of an enterprise application, which typically will have lots of tabs, views and sub-views,” Woollen said. “Sales Prospector is about prospecting for new sales opportunities without having to scroll through a lot of lists and forms.”

Finding out what makes customers click

Phil Muncaster — 2008-07-30T16:41:00.000Z

Phil Muncaster, IT Week, Wednesday 30 July 2008 at 16:41:00

Usability expert Mona Patel discusses the role psychology can play in web site design

Mona Patel has over a decade of experience in the evaluation and design of web sites, and for the past six years has been helping usability consultancy Human Factors International (HFI) develop and implement new technologies for testing and improving a wide variety of organisations’ sites. The discipline required to improve sites is somewhere between engineering and psychology, according to Patel, which is why HFI employs several practitioners who have degrees in cognitive psychology.

One of the firm’s primary aims is to help customers get to the bottom of any issue they might be having with their web presence. For example, the consultancy could help a firm figure out why its site is attracting thousands of visitors to the checkout stage but only 10 per cent convert.

HFI’s customers include a host of well-known retail companies, as well as banks, manufacturers, telecoms firms and government bodies. One of the company’s biggest successes in the area of web site usability involved office supplies specialist Staples.

The two firms spent hundreds of hours evaluating users’ work environments, decision-support needs and tendencies when browsing and buying office products and small business services through the web. The research resulted in a host of web site enhancements, including more intuitive searching capabilities, personalised shopping lists for frequently purchased items and comparison charts. The result was a 67 per cent increase in repeat customers, said Patel, and a 42 per cent reduction in drop-off rates.

“After research we turn the principles into the design,” said Patel. “We also have strategic guidelines to offer executives guidance on how to build usability programmes into their firms: it’s not about doing projects but creating a programme, so usability is built into the development process.”

Patel pointed out that many people wrongly believe usability is something that should be done once a site has been designed. She argued that it is actually better to understand how people think before designing a site.

“If a client has a problem with the checkout, for example, or wants to improve the way users navigate round the site to increase cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, we need to understand the stakeholder vision for the site and what the hurdles are in getting there,” said Patel. “Getting stakeholder insight is important because it helps us design a methodology for that site.”

The next step taken by HFI is to conduct an expert review of the site, which usually results in a redesign. A vital part of this involves one-to-one interviews with end users, the idea being to get to the core of how they think. This includes asking whether they have visited rival sites, and what their expectations are.

“The design is almost an extension of the data-gathering activity,” she added. “End user research makes sure that what we’re doing is going to meet their needs, and ironing out the kinks beforehand gives us a greater chance of success.”

Unlike market research surveys, which seek to identify the percentage of people that think a certain way, the one-to-one interviews that HFI carries out involve only a few individuals. This is because, according to Patel, it only requires one person to flag up a particular problem for that problem to be deemed worthy of further investigation.

A new technique to evaluate usability being pioneered by HFI is known as Petscan, with Pet standing for persuasion, emotion and trust. Applications such as checkout processes are designed for efficiency and so regular usability techniques are usually enough, Patel explained.

“But when trying to identify what makes people convert, it requires a different approach. We look at persuasion, emotion and trust the flow of an experience versus the flow of getting a task done,” she added. Important questions the Pet technique aims to answer include:

Is the content making sense to the user?

Do they know where to click?

Does the site’s design help to entice a user to click?

The same kind of research was first used with bricks and mortar store design, said Patel, to help determine the best lighting to use and what type of background music to play, for example. Applying this same logic from the physical world to the web is what differentiates Pet from other usability techniques understanding what experience people have of web sites and how it plays into their conscience.

A good example of how HFI uses such techniques to improve conversions on a customer site is the work the company did for a professional chemists’ organisation.

Patel said the customer had noticed that the number of new members signing up had dropped off after its site was redesigned. HFI research highlighted how some of the images on the site showing young professionals with chemistry apparatus in the background were discouraging younger visitors and alienating older members, because they felt they did not identify with the images displayed by the site.

Amazon spruces up Mechanical Turk tools

Gareth Morgan — 2008-07-30T13:14:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Wednesday 30 July 2008 at 13:14:00

Web giant makes it easier to recruit an on-demand workforce

Web giant Amazon is to make it easier for businesses to employ its army of volunteers, who are willing to carry out mundane tasks for a pittance – but this is far from sweatshop labour.

Amazon has released a new set of web-based tools that make it easier for businesses to access its Mechanical Turk service.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk allows users to volunteer for tasks, known as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs). These can range from categorising and arranging blog posts to rating baseball players. In return volunteers receive a modest stipend.

The system is designed to make it easier for businesses to outsource simple but useful tasks as and when needed. But until now, the process of creating a HIT required some programming skill.

"With these new web-based tools, any business, in just a few minutes, can submit work that requires human intelligence to a workforce of hundreds of thousands workers from over one hundred countries," said Sharon Chiarella, vice president of Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Upstart aims to upset Google's cool

Dave Bailey — 2008-07-28T11:23:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Monday 28 July 2008 at 11:23:00

New search engine, Cuil, goes live

Several former Google engineers have today launched a search engine rival, which promises to provide users with greater control over their privacy.

Start-up Cuil, which goes live for public use today, hopes to compete with Google through the use of content-based relevance methods, organising search results by ideas and does not attempt to identify users nor record what they have searched for.

“Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user," said Tom Costello, chief executive of Cuil.

Cuil – pronounced "cool" is run by Costello, a former search engine researcher at Stanford University, along with Anna Patterson and Russell Power, both former Google engineers.

UK online banking use soars

Phil Muncaster — 2008-07-24T14:21:00.000Z

Phil Muncaster, IT Week, Thursday 24 July 2008 at 14:21:00

New Apacs research shows figures now top 21 million

The number of people banking online in the UK has increased by over 500 per cent in the last seven years, according to the latest figures from UK payments association Apacs, but fears persist over card-not-present fraud - especially that committed online.

The new stats from Apacs show that the number of internet bank users has risen from less than 3.5 million in 2000 to over 21 million by 2007, highlighting that usability issues and fears over security have largely been overcome.

However, phishing attacks have grown significantly in recent months, with over 20,500 attacks in the first half of this year, an increase of over 180 per cent from the same time last year.

And new research from fraud prevention firms 192business.com and The 3rd Man has illuminated the true picture of fraud in the UK. Unsurprisingly, the study of over 30 million good and bad card transactions over the past six months found that the most densely populated spots were the hottest for card fraud.

London's Thamesmead came top of the list with postcode regions SE18, SE15, SE6 and SE17 comprising the top five worst areas.

192 director Dave Pope argued that the card-not-present fraud figures put out by Apacs are only "the tip of the iceberg" as far as the true picture of online fraud in the UK goes. He added that the research found evidence to suggest local policing in UK regions could help in the fight against internet crime.

"Even an over-reaching national body and national database means preciousn little if there aren't more bobbies on the beat," he added.

Microsoft announces online shake-up

Gareth Morgan — 2008-07-24T10:46:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Thursday 24 July 2008 at 10:46:00

Online leader departs Microsoft

Software giant Microsoft has announced a major restructuring, which will see it splitting Windows from its online business, as well as the departure of Kevin Johnson, who was president of the Platforms and Services division.

Johnson had been a driving force behind Microsoft's attempts to buy all or part of Yahoo; he leaves to join telecoms equipment maker, Juniper Networks.

The move comes at a critical juncture for Microsoft: it faces unprecedented challenges in its Windows business, while its online unit has never gained the traction Microsoft leaders crave.

"This new structure will give us more agility and focus in two very competitive arenas," said Steve Ballmer Microsoft chief executive.

Ballmer is to take a more hands-on role in running the Windows division.

Yahoo reaches Icahn settlement

Gareth Morgan — 2008-07-21T14:30:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Monday 21 July 2008 at 14:30:00

Seat on board persuades Icahn to drop proxy fight

Yahoo's management team has seen off a potential proxy fight by agreeing to add activist shareholder Carl Icahn to join the board.

The announcement came just days after one of Yahoo's largest institutional investors, Legg Mason, said it would back the existing board in the forthcoming proxy fight.

Icahn will now join Yahoo's management board, replacing Robert Kotick, who has decided not to stand for re-election at the forthcoming shareholders' meeting.

“We are gratified to have reached this agreement, which serves the best interests of all Yahoo stockholders,” said Roy Bostock Yahoo Chairman, in a statement.

Icahn had originally intended to capitalise on shareholder concern that Yahoo's current board had failed to strike a deal with Microsoft over selling all or part of its business to the software titan.

" I am happy that the board has agreed in the settlement agreement that any meaningful transaction, including the strategy in dealing with that transaction, will be fully discussed with the entire board before any final decision is made, " said Icahn, in a statement.

Yahoo will also add two further board members. These will be chosen from a list of eight candidates originally proposed by Icahn as an alternative management team and Jonathan Miller, currently a partner in venture capitalists, Velocity Interactive Group and a former chairman and chief executive of AOL.

Have TLD strategies been spoilt by choice?

Phil Muncaster — 2008-07-18T12:05:00.000Z

Phil Muncaster, IT Week, Friday 18 July 2008 at 12:05:00

A ruling by Icann may make it harder for a firm to be the master of its own domain

Domain name governance may rank alongside intelligent compression, enterprise resource planning and dynamic configuration in the sexy technology list, but it’s probably one of the most important ways IT can support the business.

Things used to be pretty simple, back in the day: you’d decide which name or names to register for your organisation and then go out and do it. And with only a handful of truly popular top-level domains (TLDs), the management process was not unreasonably complicated.

But then folks started to realise the value of domain names and the money-making opportunities of the internet, and consequently we saw the much-lamented arrival of cyber- and typosquatters.

Although these monikers conjure up rather disturbing images, the truth is more mundane. These domain name speculators are buying up names they think they can make a fast buck from maybe a domain name similar to, but not quite the same as, a well-known brand. They’ll then try to make money out of the site by parking ads there, and hoping unsuspecting users will mistype the URL of the web site they want to visit. So the only way to protect a brand is to defensively register as many permutations of it as is practicable, across all the major TLDs.

Or at least that was the case. Internet overseer Icann recently made a ruling that has changed everything. Thanks to this decision, there is now the potential for companies to register literally any domain that takes their fancy. So in the future we could see regional generic names such as .sco for Scotland and .lon for London, or even .partridge for Norwich. And we could see popular brand names such as .Polo, .Mars and so on, and other more unusual or generic names.

But how on earth do you go about defensively registering a potentially limitless number of permutations of your brand name? The answer is, of course, you can’t, so businesses will have to re-evaluate their domain name strategies.

The IP law experts believe that rather than defensively registering, firms will instead need to be more proactive grabbing the domain that best fits their brand or organisation. The idea is to put all your marketing efforts behind that name and only go after speculators if they are found to be infringing on your brand rights.

This strategy could hypothetically be a good solution to the problems Icann is creating here. If the permutations of domains are increased to such an extent, the value of most names will decrease, although the .polos and .mars of this world are still likely to be fought over like a doughnut at a WeightWatchers meeting.

Interestingly, analyst firm Gartner, and less interestingly yours truly, thinks that this is far from game over for the traditional domains such as .com and .uk. In fact, as the picture becomes more complex and the possibilities for your domain name multiply, companies may ultimately decide that they’d rather just stick to the suffix it has taken many years and marketing budgets to build up. The most important thing for any enterprise on the internet is to be found, and firms will not want to risk that for the sake of a cute customised TLD. Much has yet to be decided before this hypothetical scenario becomes a reality, so it’s probably not time to start panicking just yet. But IT shops should be liaising with legal and marketing teams, and keeping one eye on the changes that are coming.

The possibilities are endless, but so, it seems, are the pitfalls.

Yahoo tries to drum up support

Gareth Morgan — 2008-07-17T13:06:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Thursday 17 July 2008 at 13:06:00

Urges shareholders to vote down Icahn proposals

Yahoo has written an open letter to its shareholders urging them to support its current management board, ahead of a showdown vote scheduled for 1 August.

The letter urges shareholders not to vote for an alternatives slate of managers nominated by billionaire Carl Icahn, warning them that Icahn cannot deliver them the best returns.

"Icahn has made it clear that his only objective is to sell part or all of Yahoo to Microsoft. That fact, combined with his lack of an operating plan going forward, means that he will have no leverage to negotiate a fair deal with Microsoft. He has set himself up for failure," said Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock in the letter.

"We believe you cannot count on Microsoft to bail out Mr. Icahn’s misguided agenda, at least not on terms that are in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders," Bostock added.

Icahn wants shareholders to vote out Yahoo's current management team, which he believes blew takeover negotiations with Microsoft.

Many shareholders have expressed similar concerns about Yahoo's failure to conclude a deal with Microsoft, but it unclear whether they will be willing to vote for Icahn's slate.

Microsoft had recently said it would be prepared to reopen negotiations over a transaction for all of part of Yahoo, provided Icahn's management team were voted in.

But subsequently it made a renewed bid for Yahoo's search businesses, which was again rejected.

Microsoft launched its original bid for to acquire all of Yahoo for a deal at the time worth $44 billion. Microsoft then withdrew its offer, only to come back with an offer for Yahoo's search business. That too was rejected, as was the recently revised offer.

If Icahn is successful in his attempt to oust Yahoo's board, it is to be expected that some sort of deal could be reached – although whether Icahn can negotiate the best deal remains open to question.

If Icahn is unsuccessful, Yahoo's current board has confirmed they remain open to offers, and indeed would sell the company for $33 per share. But after months of fractious negotiations, concluding a deal with Microsoft will prove tough.

Microsoft: Yahoo came crawling

Gareth Morgan — 2008-07-15T13:33:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Tuesday 15 July 2008 at 13:33:00

Microsoft claims latest offer resulted from an approach by Yahoo

Microsoft has issued a statement to challenge what it sees as inaccuracies in Yahoo's version of its most recent takeover talks. The move highlights the increasing poisonous relationship between the two firms.

Yahoo recently confirmed it had rejected Microsoft's latest offer to buy its search business. But Microsoft now claims that Yahoo's version of those talks is inaccurate.

Microsoft said its latest offer was made at the behest of Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock and denied that the offer was either dependent on a change in company governance or that a 24-hour deadline for a decision had been set.

Yahoo had cited both the unreasonable deadline and the proposal for a change in management as two of the reasons for declining the offer.

The latest wranglings suggest that the possibility of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo's search business is still alive, if a price can be agreed.

But the situation is clouded by the bad blood that exists between the two company's management teams, and the presence of Carl Icahn, the billionaire shareholder activist.

Icahn had held long discussions with both Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer and Yahoo's senior management, in an attempt to broker a deal.

But in an open letter to Yahoo's shareholders, Icahn revealed that the deal he had brokered would have resulted in top-level changes – seemingly contradicting Microsoft's version. "We were willing to discuss keeping a number of the current board members and Jerry Yang as chief [executive of] Yahoo," the letter stated.

Since the latest talks broke down, Icahn has stepped up his efforts to oust Yahoo's management team.

The proxy fight will take place at Yahoo's shareholder meeting scheduled for 1 August.

Interview: An international enterprise

David Neal — 2008-07-14T14:56:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Monday 14 July 2008 at 14:56:00

The head of e-payments specialist Moneybookers explains why the firm decided to move its IT function to Bulgaria

Martin Ott, managing director at London-based online payment services provider Moneybookers, started his career in 2000 in Tokyo, working on a user-generated opinion-sharing site in the mould of consumer journalism pioneer Epinions. It was in Japan that Ott became an advocate of mobile services, which prompted his next career move.

“I joined Jamba Jamster, creating content services for Vodafone Live,” he said. Jamster offers mobile services, such as ringtones and games and in 2006 made close to £300m in sales.

Jamster’s success reflects the recent rapid growth of mobile commerce in general a trend that Moneybookers, which offers e-payment services to businesses and consumers, is determined to capitalise on.

When Ott joined the company last summer, Moneybookers was in the middle of a major IT restructuring programme in an effort to cut costs and boost efficiency. This initiative saw the firm move its IT functions to Sofia in Bulgaria. Ott said the country has a lot to offer UK businesses.

“Bulgaria is only two hours ahead of the UK, and compared with some other offshoring destinations, it is a much better cultural fit. Also, thanks to its numerous universities, Bulgaria produces some very smart IT people, and it is still very cheap,” he added.

Ott said the firm tries hard to integrate its Bulgarian staff with its other teams. “Our chief technology officer is based over there, but he also sits on the board in London. Parts of his team are based over there, while other parts are based in the UK, and we make great efforts to foster a common work culture,” he said.

This internationalism is highly appropriate for a company that has to cope with numerious cultural and regulatory differences for supporting its online retail customers across various markets. For example, German shoppers tend to pay for goods in a different way to shoppers in the UK, mostly using direct debit payments, while in Poland there are some 21 different local financial systems. “We have had to make available some really different payment options, all of which are dedicated to different countries,” Ott said.

This ability to deal with payments in a wide number of locations is one of the firm’s biggest selling points, according to Ott. “Usually when a firm wants to move into a new location it has to enter into a number of different local deals and have separate solutions for all the different local payment options. With Moneybookers, you have a single solution, and we offer services in over 30 currencies.”

Given the nature of Moneybookers’ business, security is obviously a major priority. “We look at IP addresses [in transactions], we do real-time risk assessments, and we have a lot of internal security systems and algorithms,” Ott said.

One area that Ott expects to see a lot of growth in is micropayments, small financial transactions that may only involve a few pence. “Micropayments used to be a big buzzword, but it has never really been big business. Now though, with services like iTunes and the growth of Second Life-style virtual economies, we are definitely seeing a move towards it.”

Yahoo spurns Microsoft-Icahn offer

Gareth Morgan — 2008-07-14T10:39:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Monday 14 July 2008 at 10:39:00

Revised offer for search business rejected

Yahoo's management board has rejected a further proposal for its search business from Microsoft, made in conjunction with activist shareholder Carl Icahn.

Under the terms of the proposal, made on Friday night, Microsoft would have acquired Yahoo's search business and provided Yahoo with guaranteed revenues for the next five years. A management board hand-picked by Icahn would also have taken control of the remaining Yahoo business.

"It is ludicrous to think the our board could accept such a proposal," said Yahoo's chairman, Roy Bostock, in a statement. "While this type of erratic and unpredictable behaviour is consistent with what we have come to expect from Microsoft, we will not be bludgeoned into a transaction that is not in the best interests of our stockholders."

Earlier last week, Microsoft had issued a statement confirming that it would revive its interest in acquiring Yahoo or some part of it if its current management was replaced. Previously, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer had insisted he had moved on from his attempts to buy Yahoo or its search business.

Yahoo's current board met on Saturday, before rejecting the latest offer.

It now faces a proxy battle at its forthcoming stockholders meeting, where Icahn is campaigning for the board to be sacked and replaced with a slate of his nominees.

Long queues to access Sainsbury's web site

David Neal — 2008-07-04T16:38:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Friday 4 July 2008 at 16:38:00

The Sainsbury's web site has suffered another outage says Keynote Sytems

Keynote Systems has reported that Sainsbury's, which last month found that its e-commerce business was offline, is still suffering from availability issues.

In a note released today Keynote, which specialises in improving online performance, said that the supermarket's web site was down today between 12.45pm and 2.10pm. During this time, the firm explained, visitors could not access the site at all. In the previous outage the supermarket was forced to stop running its home delivery shopping business because it was unable to access its received orders.

"This is the second outage Sainsbury's has suffered in as many weeks, and while the retailer is reported to have lost nearly £1.5 million in sales last time, this is the least of its worries," said Martin Stern, regional manager for Europe at Keynote Systems. "Visitors to the site this afternoon are not going to be impressed when they can't order their shopping - one outage can be forgiven, but repeated problems will severely test the customer's loyalty."

Stern added that the timing was particularly bad as it happened at a time when people would be using the internet, a fact that could cost the company dearly.

"Friday lunchtime is likely to be a busy time for online shopping as workers around the country take the time to order in their food and drink for the weekend," continued Stern. "Missing out on this traffic is likely to have driven many online shoppers to competitive websites, and the danger is that they simply won't come back."

Leader: Is PCI asking too much?

IT Week staff — 2008-07-03T10:09:00.000Z

IT Week staff, IT Week, Thursday 3 July 2008 at 10:09:00

New legislation may not be high on retailers agendas

More regulation for online retailers came into force last week, courtesy of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) section 6.6.

The question is will online retailers rush to implement the recommendations – namely secure code reviews for self-written web applications and tacking a web application firewall onto their web server front ends?

Given the rocketing number of public-facing retail web sites, there might not be enough experts to do such a code review across all those sites, never mind the small matter of how much they would charge for such a service. And there is also the issue of how often these code reviews would need to run to be valuable, whether annually, quarterly or even monthly.

Add on the cost of a properly maintained web application firewall, and the cost to retailers could be something that they just would not countenance, even though the web’s share of total retail sales is increasing fast. Also taking into account in the shockwaves from the credit crunch and oil price increases, and retailers may elect to pass on this one – again.

Last August credit card giant Visa relaxed the PCI-DSS regulations after seeing that it would have had to penalise a massive number of online retailers for non-compliance. Has anything changed? Well, yes – the global economic situation has deteriorated considerably and the payment card providers might need to be as understanding once again.

Microsoft powers up search business

David Neal — 2008-07-02T11:30:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Wednesday 2 July 2008 at 11:30:00

Microsoft will acquire Powerset in a bid to boost search business

Microsoft has signed an agreement to purchase Powerset, a semantic web search company.

Powerset, in its own words, is "a small company with big dreams". It licensed technology from PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, and has been working on software that can search by indexing pages based on the meanings expressed in them, as opposed to the words contained in their pages.

PowerSet announced the deal last night on product manager Mark Johnson's blog.

"Microsoft shares our goal to improve search through deeper analysis of queries and documents, and understands that our technology and expertise will play a key role in the evolution of search. With an existing search infrastructure, incredible capital resources, unlimited data, a leading search team, and clear mission to revolutionize the search landscape, Microsoft can rapidly accelerate our progress in building semantic search technology and bringing it to full Web scale" he said.

While the related post on Microsoft's Live Search blog talks of a shared vision which, "is to take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages."

Together the firms will attempt to tackle unsatisfactory search results, adding a semantic layer that can group words by context and association and provide much more tailored results. "We will use knowledge extracted from webpages to improve the result descriptions and provide new tools to help customers search better" the blog post concludes.