tales from the central european web

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

...or Name that Hungarian bridge after Jon Stewart!

Success!

Check out the list below: all the propositions which are meaningful for foreigners are currently ranked best, thus occupying the first five positions:



Stephen Colbert híd86604[53%]

Jon Stewart híd31610[19%]

Perl-Script híd9704[6%]

Hacker híd8711[5%]

Chuck Norris híd7865[5%]



source: http://www.m0hid.gov.hu/toplista

Friday, August 25, 2006

Google Inc. acquires google.cz too

Just as I had predicted, google.cz was the next target of Google Inc. after taking google.hu. Google.cz now redirects to www.google.com instead of Google Czech; similarly to google.hu. Unlike Google Hungary (Google Magyarország), Google Czech Republic never existed, so it will be also an interesting issue when will the next steps be taken by Google in order to acquire higher market share in Czech Republic.

If you are curious how google.cz looked like before, visit http://www.globalsearch.cz/

As a sidenote, two Hungarian domains have been shut down recetly where a proprietary search engine was delivering its own search results:

  • hoogle.hu
  • magyargoogle.hu (=hungariangoogle.hu)
In addition to the slightly deceptive domain names, both sites looked almost identical to Google's websites.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Name a real bridge after Stephen Colbert or Chuck Norris!

Hungarian government was letting people vote on a web site for the name of a new bridge crossing the Danube river. Site administrators decided to let visitors vote in the first round without registration as many times as they liked, so quite a few people have launched their voting bots and asked others to vote for names like "Chuck Norris bridge". This quickly became a viral phenomenon, so even the international news agencies have picked the story. Then came Stephen Colbert and called his audience to promote the idea of "Stephen Colbert bridge" by voting on the site.
The first round is over, 25 candidates have been elected (Colbert finished the first round on the first place, but the results have been reset for the second round.) Now you can only vote after registration. This tutorial will guide you through the registration process so that you can still have influence on the name of this new bridge! It's easy anyway, and only a valid e-mail address and a password is needed!

How to vote to name a new Danube bridge after Stephen Colbert or Chuck Norris, etc.:


First step


Visit http://www.m0hid.gov.hu/regisztracio , enter your e-mail address here, choose a password and enter it twice.

Second step


You will see this page if your registration was successful, there's nothing important here.

Third step


Wait a few minutes then open your mailbox. A short e-mail will be waiting for you: click on the link and you will be forwarded right to the page where you can cast your vote, let your voice be heard! (The translated message is: Please click on the link to confirm your registration. Next line: Your password is: ...)

Fourth step


Please vote for Stephen Colbert or Chuck Norris! Click on the corresponding radio buton and push the button "Elküld" at the bottom of the site. You might want to consider voting for "Perl-Script bridge" (híd means bridge), "Hacker bridge" or "Ferenc Gyurcsány the Just bridge" (note: he is our Prime Minister)

The standings of the bridge naming contest can be seen at the "Toplista" menu entry or clicking here: http://www.m0hid.gov.hu/toplista

Thank you for helping us making our politicians a bit more ridiculous! (Some say that the sole purpose of this poll is to hide the fact that the completion date of the bridge was postponed again...)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

miner.hu - New Hungarian Blog Search Engine



Now that miner.hu has been launched, Hungarian users can search in Hungarian blogs with two blogsearch engines:

miner.hu is marketed as "The Second Hungarian Blog Search Engine", and currently crawls more than 30.000 sites.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Google Desktop Ads on Hungarian SERPS too

This Google Desktop ad is appearing on Google Hungary's search engine result pages, advertising the Hungarian version of Google Desktop in Hungarian. Why am I emphasizing this? GDesktop ads appearing on English SERPs were first reported in December, so it took just a few monts to localise this particular ad. Seemingly this product has much more importance than Picasa for instance: we have been waiting for months to have a Hungarian AdSense Referral button available for Picasa referrals...