Fusion: Room With a View
4/17/2004
Paris Hilton led the top 50 list at Terra Lycos last week (five most popular search terms).
DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS / PRN
ROOM WITH A VIEW
From roadside rat holes to five-star resorts, TripAdvisor users weigh in with a vengeance on their favorite and not-so-favorite resting places. TripAdvisor, with more than 12 million unique visitors in February, aggregates other third-party synopses of properties and destinations and generates a “Hotel Popularity Index” based on all the positive and negative information it can find.
GOOGLE BRAINS
Google is now scouring treatises, academic papers and articles in the text treasuries of colleges and universities. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of 16 schools that have opened their on-campus repositories to Google s technology, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. A pilot is under way, and, if it works out, the search service could be added to Google s offerings in a few months. MIT, for its part, developed DSpace (www.dspace.org/), a free software program that sets up archives with which Google can work.
Paris Hilton led the top 50 list at Terra Lycos last week (five most popular search terms).
TOP 50
The top 50 list at Terra Lycos last week (five most popular search terms). As far as important events, Iraq was No. 49.
• 1. Paris Hilton
• 2. Easter
• 3. Britney Spears
• 4. Spring break
• 5. Atkins diet
BILLION WITH A B
Weekly online retail sales have regularly been topping $2 billion this year, according to ComScore Networks. Total online sales for the first quarter were $13.72 billion (excluding travel), up 26.4 percent from a year ago. The latest week, ending March 28, showed merchandise (nontravel) sales of $1.06 billion and travel sales of $921 million, ComScore said.
XBOX TO $149?
Microsoft recently said it would cut the price of the Xbox to $149. Then it said it would not release any sports games from its XSN line this year, instead taking the time to perfect its franchises. Now there s word that a limited edition, translucent green Xbox will come bundled with the system s flagship game, “Halo,” for $169, starting this week.
TOLEDOBLADE.COM
Follow The Blade s coverage of motor sports in Speed, including NSACAR standings, MIS and Toledo Speedway info, schedules.
Ron Musselman covers college sports for The Blade. His online column will appear this Monday on toledoblade.com.
FROM THE BLADE S WIRE SERVICES AND STAFF.
CONTACT FUSION AT KCESARZ@THEBLADE.COM