Paid Search grows and IBM enters Enterprise Search

Paid search is expected to grow faster than any other sector of online advertising, increasing from $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, according to a new study.

In addition, the search market is expected to become more specialized, as search focuses more on specific categories, according to JupiterResearch.

Specialized search in four categories--retail, financial services, media and entertainment, and travel--accounted for 79 percent of the paid search market in 2004, Jupiter said. Jupiter predicted that the online travel market will grow from $54 billion in 2004 to $91 billion in 2009, for instance, and online shopping will grow from $66 billion in 2004 to $130 billion in 2009.

But fearing a slowdown in online advertising, an analyst downgraded the stocks of search giants Google and Yahoo.

"We had hoped that momentum in paid search from the fourth quarter would carry through to first-quarter results," Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said in his research note on Yahoo. "But now we believe otherwise."

In the case of Google, Rohan projected the company would increase its first-quarter revenue 5 percent from the previous quarter, rather than the 13 percent jump he previously forecast. Wall Street expects the company to generate a 13 percent increase.

While uncertainty rules the Web search market, IBM's mission to spice up corporate search and become a "Google for the enterprise" continues in earnest. By the end of the year, Big Blue intends to release an update to its corporate information-management tools, which are designed to bring order to potentially thousands of data sources in a company's network.

Code-named Serrano, the product will use technologies including artificial intelligence and data mining to derive more meaning from corporate documents. It will also have a revamped search engine and front-end tool designed to make hunting for company information as straightforward as searching the Web, according to IBM.

Vivienne the virtual girlfriend

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Virtual girlfriend Vivienne loves flowers and chocolates just like a real girlfriend, but doesn't cause heartache.

The so-called "girlfriend," developed by software maker Artificial Life Inc. of Hong Kong, is the product of computerized voice synthesis, streaming video and text messages and will be available to third generation, or 3G, cell phone users, according to the New York Times.

For a monthly fee of $6, not including the airtime costs paid to cell phone operators, 3G cell phone users can talk to Vivienne any time, buy her virtual gifts, marry her in a virtual ceremony and even get a virtual mother-in-law, the newspaper said.

Some virtual gifts are included in the monthly fee, but others can cost 50 cents to $2 extra, though the mother-in-law is no additional charge, the report added.

The 3G technology allows cell phone system operators to transmit voice and data faster and cheaper than existing systems once the initial investments are made.

With the advantage of faster data transmission rates made possible by the technology, Vivienne appears to be three-dimensional and moves through many different settings including a restaurant, shopping mall and airport.

She can converse on 35,000 topics and can translate six languages, according to the report.

Although 3G phones currently account for less than 2 percent of all handsets, they are growing quickly, according to industry specialists cited in the report.

Vivienne is scheduled to become available in Singapore and Malaysia by May, in western Europe by late spring and possibly in a few American cities by the end of the year, according to the report.

Vivienne may be followed by a virtual boyfriend for women and then a virtual boyfriend for men.

VOIP At 80 MPH: World's First Wi-Fi Highway

I-19, the Canamex Interstate Highway, is the home of the "world's first highway Wi-Fi mobile voice and high speed data network," from Rio Rico to South of Green Valley, Arizona according to New Zealand based RoamAD, which supplied the Wi-Fi mesh software used in the network's infrastructure.

In a live demo users were able to make multi-party VOIP conference calls at over 80 miles per hour across the network.

The network is being built by the Wi-VOD Corporation under a grant from the US Department of Homeland Security, and uses RoamAD's mesh technology for scalable metro Wi-Fi networks.

Initially the network will serve police, fire, ambulance and US Border Patrol operations. Later, according to RoamAD, other "community agencies, schools, business and local residents" will be added as the network expands.

Rio Rico Fire Deparment Chief Mike Foster said that "Having mobile voice and high-speed Internet access in our mobile units on the highways delivers what we are looking for. The speed at which the mobile VOIP worked was very impressive."

The network will cover 32 miles of the highway by May this year. It is unclear if Wi-VOD's demo of VOIP at highway speeds occurred on more than the initial 4.9 mile phase of the network, which was completed earlier in February.

RoamAD said the network includes a node "on average 1.2 miles apart and interconnected wirelessly."