When working with system fonts, you need to stop and ask yourself, is this something I can even work with? I have selected the top three system fonts based on accessibility, history and functional properties. Don’t get me wrong, I am not head over heels for any of these fonts. But based on my limited selection I have chosen Helvetica, Georgia, and Verdana.

I have not included any of the new Windows Vista fonts because they have not been made accessible to me. In the words of Adam Gedde, the Great, “Don’t rely on anything from Microsoft to be free, available or to work”. I see some of the new Windows Vista fonts have a contemporary look and functional properties. However, I am not willing to pay $299.00 for system fonts when I would rather be spending my cash money on fonts from Emigre, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, 2Rebels, or Under Ware, just to name a few.

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Is MSNBC running Apache? While browsing the popular news site for more tidbits on the big game today, I came across this screenshot (at about 2:45PM CST on 2/3).

Of course, it could’ve been faked, but I assure you it wasn’t. A quick test on Netcraft revealed the site had been running IIS 6.0 as of October 2007.

A hoax? Or maybe they’re ramping up capacity in preparation for the Super Bowl.  Then again, maybe this is old news…

Microsoft released it’s adCenter Excel Plugin. Ok, so it’s not really a true Microsoft product, but at this point who cares? This is the kind of functionality that search marketers have been waiting for - the ability to tie the wealth of data available in the search platform with the analysis and modeling capabilities of Excel.

The Excel plugin ties in to the MS Keyword Services Platform. Originally developed by ad Sage, this plugin allows search marketers direct, integrated access to Microsoft’s Keyword Services Platform - which is the holy grail for all things related to MS’s keyword intelligence.

Our first thoughts - VERY impressive. The ad-hoc querying ability encourages exploration (not to mention that the big buttons are easy to understand). It’s pretty straightforward to drill down into deeper intel. Excel automatically puts differing dimensions of keyword research onto different tabs making it easy to organize your research.

The only downside we can see at this point is that this data is coming from the Internet’s #3 (or lower) ranked search engine. So this really only represents a fraction of the keyword intel that’s available.

Still - it’s a huge step in the right direction, and kudos to Microsoft for being the leader. Google and Yahoo have the capabilities to do this, perhaps they’ll follow suit?

Back in March, Microsoft announced the release of a limited public beta of their new mobile browsing platform through the Live .com Labs division of the Redmond giant. The application aims to bring the desktop browsing experience to the mobile platform by offering fully-rendered versions of a webpage within the Deep Fish browser.

We were included in the beta release and had a chance to preview the Deep Fish experience on our mobile platforms here at Azul 7. First impressions were, unfortunately, not good.

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Upsetting those who were may have been looking for something more uncivilized, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made nice during their much touted dual interview at the Wall Street Journal’s “All Things D” Conference.  Watch the video after the jump.

Apple’s Jobs, Microsoft’s Gates Make Peace at “D” Conference via [Appleinsider.com]

comScore has released its latest search engine rankings for April 2007. Not surprising, Google continues it’s march towards search dominance, moving up 1.4% from the previous month to 49.7% of all US internet searches.
Both Yahoo and Microsoft’s search sites declined slightly, as did Ask’s rankings. It will be interesting to see how Ask’s numbers move (up or down) as they move forward with their “algorithm” advertising campaign here in the US.

comScore Releases April U.S. Search Engine Rankings via [www.comscore.com]