It’s exciting to see how fast new search and social media technologies become integrated in the www landscape.  As online explorers and consumers we are always thirsty for more innovation and for ways to improve and add interest to our ways of interaction.  Companies and Governments are utilizing these new technologies for their benefit and the motion of the web accelerates, no one wants to get left behind.  This week, we’ve come across some interesting stories on the topic that we’d like to share.

Bing grabs 10 percent of search market

According to a recently released Nielsen report, Bing search service is the fastest-growing U.S. search engine among the top 10!  Google, of course, stays on top with 64.6% share and other players in the top 10 included AOL Search in fourth place with 3.1% share and Ask.com Search with 1.7% share.  We also hear that Microsoft is planning to launch Bing 2.0, releasing even more new features.

Read Full article on cnet>>


Facebook, Twitter and Social Media Marketing

In recession-stricken times companies are increasingly (some say aggressively) pursuing social media marketing efforts. Social media is proving to be a more affordable way to promote products and services compared to traditional advertising.

Not surprisingly, Facebook and Twitter see the highest adoption rate in social media marketing while customer reviews rank No. 1 for increasing sales and customer engagement, according to a study released this week.
Read full article on Internetnews>>

Why the White House is Hiring a Social Media Archivist

These days, as White House communication extends into areas of social media, and new challenges arise having to do with archiving this information.  Things like blog postings, Twitter messages, YouTube videos and even blog comments, cannot go unrecorded. Last month, the Federal Business Opportunities web site posted a notice seeking bid-proposals from and outside contractor do  just that.
Read full article on Mashable>>

We often tour the web to seek for interesting and exciting current stories. Traveling around our favorite online hangouts, we try to stay tuned with the latest buzz.  This week, we’d like to present a few stories that have sparked our interest.

WordPress Plugin Competition

Being WordPress fans and users ourselves, we’re always interested to hear about plugins and features released.  This time we’re excited to read about new plugins announced for the 2009 competition.  Some of these include:

Exploring the World of Google Search

As the Google and Bing battle progresses, Google has recently made its diverse search options even more accessible to online users by dedicating a page where it details a selection of 16 different search features.

Read full story on Mashable

Free People Search Engines

It’s a well known fact that in this closely linked web world, you can now connect with anyone you know or have known, in some distant past.  Care to reconnect?  FinderMind has aggregated a list of 25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone in the World.

Entertainment & Art

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland will be released in 2010, but we already got a glimpse at the wonder through some incredible pics that leave us craving for more…  It’s a shame we could not present all the images here, but we encourage you to pay a visit to Huffingtonpost and get a full view.

We’re glad to  inform that we’ve caught the social media bug with a running start.  We are excited to have found additional ways to connect with our publishers as well as the web community at large,  and using social media has proven very effective.

We have active accounts with Twitter, FaceBook, and Youtube which we’re updating regularly  in order to bring you fresh news, content, and insight—essentially everything Kontera.

Surf, tweet, follow, or tube your way to our pages and friend us to keep up with all the latest and greatest from Kontera (we’ll be sure to follow right back ).

In this closely connected-online-social-sharing-era, we too spend much time on the web, cruising and finding fun  content to spread around and link to. Every now and then we can’t help it but  share the cool stuff we found while digging, tweeting or stumbling, here’s a taste:

Some Great Twitter Tools
There are many Twitter tools to make your micro-blogging experience even more thrilling. Check out a cool list of innovative tools that will “makes your time on Twitter a pure joy.”
Read it on DelimitDesign

A Moment for Art Appreciation
Have you ever stopped to think about the infinite potential of windshield dust?  Well, someone has.  We found this impressive dirty car artwork by Scott Wade on allpics4u.com

See more Allan Wade Art

And finally, possibly the most innovative video creation we’ve seen in a while…

Incredible World Builder Video
This award winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit, widely known as the co-creator of ‘405′.

A man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves:

World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.

Watch it on Vimeo