Category: Websites
Ask.com gets niche as the search engine relaunches
Search engine to the elderly Ask.com has announced the relaunch of its site refocusing on the premiss upon which it started – answering questions.
After surveying users, Ask discovered that what people wanted was faster, more accurate searching with correct results first time. Should we be surprised?
The revamped pages take the to web today…
O'Malley's Mashup: Enhance your Twitter feed
Twitter‘s great. It’s like a secret club where people in the tech sector go to talk about the inanities of their lives… and it’s horrendously addictive. It may surprise you to learn though that Twitter can also be used for some genuinely useful things.
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Okay, that was obviously a lie. But there are many things you can do that will enhance your Twitter feed, and give it the virtual 140-character equivalent of bells and whistles. For this week’s mash-up, I’m going to go through some services that you can hook into Twitter.
UPDATE: Stroppy Apple threatens to close iTunes in MASSIVE SULK over royalty payments
There are two very important financial rulings being voted on today. One is something to do with banks and mortgages and the world not ending, which we couldn’t care less about and certainly don’t intend trying to understand.
The other is to do with Apple and the amount of royalties it pays to record labels in return for selling their music on iTunes. Three Copyright Royalty Board judges are meeting in Washington today, to decide if Apple should be forced to boost its royalty payments from 9 cents a song to 15 cents a song for each track sold via iTunes – a 66% increase.
Apple has, incredibly, threatened to CLOSE iTunes…
eBay Nutcase of the Week: Woman buys house she hasn't seen for $1.75
No, that is not an error. We didn’t mean $1.75m. We really do mean $1.75, as in about 90p at today’s rapidly-plummeting exchange rate. Less eBay fees and PayPal commission, of course, but they won’t be that crippling considering the buyer’s getting an entire house.
The woman in question is mature student Joanne Smith. She was browsing eBay for “PlayStations,” when she noticed an alert for a house on sale with no starting price. So she placed a bid of $20 – eventually winning the auction for $1.75…
Microsoft SearchPerks: a blatant attempt to gain market share
Microsoft have always done things a little bit differently. Sometimes that’s great, like the Zune. Other times it’s awful, like this. To try and get some more market share, Microsoft are basically paying people to use their search…
Yahoo! in 2009: More social, and more open
I’ve just returned from a delightful morning with Yahoo!, who gave me a preview of all the exciting stuff they’ve got planned for 2009. They’ve innovating in several key areas, but the push is on making the user experience more social and more open.
UPDATE: Oasis teasing new album 'Dig Out Your Soul' for free via MySpace today
Guess what, everyone? MySpace is still going!
And guess what, everyone? Oasis is still going! The two dinosaurs of social networking and 1990s pub rock have teamed up, with the Manchester band dumping the entire content of its new album “Dig Up Your Soul” for listening to on MySpace right now. I am, at this very minute, listening to a turgid reinterpretation of some Beatles songs, much to the anger of everyone within earshot.
The new album’s not officially released for traditional “buying” until next Monday…
New Facebook homepage – I can hear the sound of protest groups forming…
Facebook have suddenly, without warning, updated their homepage. It’s nice, too. Gone are the bullet points on why you should sign up, and in their place is a nice map emphasizing the global nature of the social “utility”.
RUMOUR: Microsoft to merge Zune and Xbox Live
As a Zune owner, I got an email late last week telling me that the Zune store was going to be down for 48 hours, starting today. Not a problem for me, given that I don’t use it, but a bit of a pain for American Zuners, I would have thought. It would be like the iTunes Store going down for two days.
Facebook iPhone application hits version 2.0
Facebook’s just launched its second version of its popular iPhone application. Most mobile versions of Facebook are very limited, but this new release removes a lot of the restrictions of the first version of the application…
