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Microsoft has extended its revenue guarantee with Yahoo, according to an SEC filing. The revenue-per-search guarantee, part of the ten-year deal the two companies struck in 2009, will be extended by one additional year, allowing Yahoo to earn more revenue than it otherwise would have if the guarantee fully elapsed.
A Japanese court has ordered Google to censor terms used in autocomplete that relate to one specific person. The ruling by the Tokyo District Court also awarded the unknown person 300,000 yen ($3,100) for the "mental anguish" endured, caused by the association of his name with various criminal acts in autocomplete-derived searches.
Google claims to have refused government requests to remove videos showing police brutality, however the search giant complied with the vast majority of inquiries regarding user data. Law enforcement agencies in the US made a total of 5,950 requests for user data between January and June, involving more than 11,000 separate accounts, marking a significant year-over-year increase.
Devon Technologies has renamed their internet search agent program to DevonAgent Pro to further distinguish it from the Express and Lite editions, and updated it to version 3.0 following several betas. The new version is compatible with OS X 10.7 Lion, and supports 64-bit mode for better memory management on machines with large amounts of RAM. The company have added three new plug-ins, and made a host of minor improvements.
Most of us ask family and friends for their advice before we decide what movie to see or new restaurant to try, because getting feedback from others is part of the decision-making process. Bing is a big believer in getting opinions from people you know, too. That's why they've chosen to show what your Facebook friends like in your Bing search results.
DevonTechnologies has brought DevonAgent Express, a new menubar utility, to the Mac App Store. The program, which draws on the menubar elements of the forthcoming DevonAgent 3, offers users an affordable tool that provides not only menubar searching of the web using a number of standard search engines, but also easy access to a number of specialist resources such as medical or legal dictionaries, blogs, image or video sites, forums and social networking sites, patent libraries and many other specialist search options.
DEVONtechnologies has released a third beta of its DEVONagent 3 intelligent-search software. The app uses standard and specialized search engines, returning focused summaries or a wide swath of results in a topic map. It can also archive search results or add them to a database. The latest beta sees the app move into the menu bar for constant availability and easy access. Search results can be launched into the full DEVONagent app or into a web browser with one click.
Users of DevonTechnologies' document management, search analysis and note-taking tools are getting an update that brings support for Microsoft Outlook '11 and better "smart group" handling, says the company. A second public beta of DevonAgent v3 also brings new plug-ins for Gutenberg.org and ACM Digital Library, along with a new navigation bar, making it easier to directly access search results or add them to DevonThink with one click.
Houdah Software are testing a new Mac file-finding utility called Tembo inspired by the Spotlight interface of OS X 10.4 (Tiger). The public beta, hosted at the "Made at Gloria" software "brewery," is intended to make finding files even easier through the use of re-orderable categories, which can be enabled or disabled at will. The intent is to make zeroing in on a precise "hit" from a long list of results faster.
The Mac beta build of Chromium, the open-source engine behind Google's Chrome browser, has added the ability to use Google Instant, the company's recently-introduced search-as-you-type feature. Based on the speed at which Google Instant went from testing in Windows Chromium to a standard feature in Chrome for Windows, Chrome users on the Mac could be seeing it in the very near future.
CHS Systems has launched a new search app on the iTunes App Store, Search DuckDuck Go. The app grabs snippets of text from the websites it finds during searches and displays them as part of the results. It also displays summaries from Wikipedia and other sources such as CHS, WolframAlpha and others. The app also provides mobile-formatted content pages, related topics and links to other pages.
DEVONtechnologies has released two freeware updates, launching XMenu 1.9 and EasyFind 4.5 with new features and bug fixes. XMenu has new menu icons for easier recognition and also adds a snippets menu in a cascading structure that supports the user's inserting plain and rich text snippets, clippings, and Internet location files as single menu choices. From that point large numbers of rich text can be quickly accessed for retrieval and use. Meanwhile, EasyFind 4.5 adds Quick Look support and adds extended Boolean operators found in DEVONtechnologies' lead applications.
Microsoft is attempting to convince Australian users to use its Live search engine by offering products from industry competitor Apple as bait through a local venture with the Nine Network, Ninemsn. The Brisbane Times reveals that the software giant is offering the iPod nano, Shuffle, and Touch to users who perform searches through Ninemsn. Ninemsn head Alex Parsons said that it would have run the contest using the Zune, but the Microsoft-made player does not currently sell in Australia.
Helped by the hype of iPhone 2.0 platform and a buzz over the pending iPhone 3G announcement, the iPhone generated huge traffic for internet search engines in April. ComScore, which provides market research for advertisers, says 1.3 million Americans conducted 6.9 million iPhone-related searches in April. The word “iPhone” was the most popular term, with nearly 1.5 million searches, followed by “iPhone 2.0” and “iPhone 3G.” The vast majority of those seaches -- 88.4 percent -- went to Google, Yahoo got about 7 percent, with MSN getting less than 3 percent.
Geneva-based CTM Development has released FoxTrot Professional Search aimed at legal, news media and mobile users who need to find “needle in a haystack” content in large collections of data. CTM says the product is aimed at users with collections of documents saved for future reference, including PDF, HTML, word processing, e-mail and rich media metadata files. FoxTrot Professional Search is the third commercial application based on CTM’s FoxTrot Search Engine, which include CTM PowerMail 5.6.5 and FoxTrot Personal 2.0.
Yenco.com has updated two of its flagship products, Agenda and Magic Dice. Agenda is a calendaring and event/take management tool. The new release, version 4.0, features multiple calendar view, repeating events, task management, a reminder application, journal editor, built-in iEvents to create calendar or journal websites, quick searching, monthly scenes, multiple window sizes, iCal import and export, and more. For a limited time users who purchase Agenda 4 will get a free Magic Dice registration code. The tool is priced at $40. Registered Agenda 3 and iEvents 2 users can also enter their existing code into the registration window for a discount.
Nisus Software has announced the upcoming release of Nisus Writer Pro 1.1 Preview, the latest version of the company's alternative word processor. This release adds several new features including Comments, Mail Merge, Go to Page, and more. Also added is a Large Caret option, as well as several additions and enhancements to the Nisus Macro Language. Nisus Writer Pro 1.1 will be available later this Spring for only $80. A CD version is available for an additional $10. A three license Family Pack is available for $100. Nisus Writer Pro uses the same core as Nisus Writer Express, but sports several additional or expanded features including a Table of Contents generator, indexing, bookmarks. There's also attribute sensitive search, that allows you to locate items in documents based on their formatting.
Baidu.com, the leading Chinese search engine, has hired Apple Inc's head of China operations for the role of chief operating officer. Reuters reports that Peng Ye, who oversaw all business operations in China for Apple as the U.S. firm's country general manager, is joining Baidu, right after ex-General Motors executive Jennifer Li accepted the post of chief financial officer. Ye will officially joing the company on April 25. Baidu is bigger than Google in China, the number 2 Internet market in the world behind the United States.
RAGE Software today released RAGE SEKeyword 1.1, a free application for website owners designed to discover niche keywords among Web searches. The software uses Yahoo! Search technology to find the most relevant keywords for a particular website, according to RAGE, and suggests the most popular searched keywords based on site content. RAGE SEKeyword 1.1 informs users about what search engine keywords competitors are targeting by reading the meta keywords of competing sites. The software is available for free, and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
In brief: Apple jumps to number 10 in search activity, a new book on backing up in Leopard debuts, a user has compiled a list of closed-captioned movies on iTuns, Encore and PlayFirst are teaming up for Mac games, and Rocket Raid cards are now certified for Matrox ... The unveiling of the MacBook Air has caused a surge in search activity for Apple, which ranks #10 on the Lycos 50 top 10 search terms for the Week Ending Jan. 26, 2008. Apple jumped from the number 17 spot on last week's list. In other news, former President Bill Clinton sees more search interest this week than his wife, presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton. Search activity for Mr. Clinton is up 1,400 percent.
Yahoo recently introduced Yahoo Go 3.0 at CES 2008, an update to its suite of internet utilities for mobile devices. Revisions to Yahoo Go were based on customer feedback, such as an updated user interface with many new features, a personalized start page, and support for third-party “widget” plugins. The new interface is designed to be both aesthetically pleasing, while maintaining a high level of functionality, optimizing the small screen on most cell phones. Users can view available components in either the traditional icon view, or the new carousel layout.
Efiko Software recently unveiled iClueless for iPhone and iPod touch users, a web-based software suite that enables users to find near anything on the internet. iClueless can find both the standard and mobile versions of a web page, enabling it to customize the browsing experience for either WiFi or the 2G network. The application can search Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, ESPN, Amazon, and many other service listings. iClueless is available free of charge, and works through the embedded Safari browser on either device.
Search terms involving the iPhone have placed extremely high in Google's 2007 rankings, the company has announced. As a part of its Zeitgeist 2007 report, it notes that "iphone" was the fastest-rising search term of the year, in the US and worldwide, beating out "badoo," "facebook" and numerous other competitors. The term also did reasonably well as one of the most popular news searches of the year, coming in at number six; "american idol," "youtube" and "britney spears" represented the top three.
