Category: Archive

Where Google is a search engine, and Bing is a "decision engine," Ask.com seeks to be an answer engine. Ask thinks the future of search is in questions and answers. This means, you should be able to ask a direct question and get a specific answer, rather than pages of results, which can lead you to finding the answer on your own.

The desire to integrate products is strong at Google; it’s not hard to imagine that the company would eventually like to offer one great, big search/video/email/advertising ball.  And today, it took a tiny step along that path by rolling together some analytics products.

Global mobile phone sales reached 308.9 million units in the third quarter of 2009, a slight increase of 0.1 percent from the third quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Gartner.

Smartphone sales showed solid growth with more than 41 million units sold for a 12.8 percent increase from the same period last year.

A new report has shed some light on the habits of Twitter users.  The good people of Pingdom tracked the number of tweets sent over the course of three weeks, and today, released their statistics regarding what days and times folks most like to send messages in under 140 characters.

Apple has launched iTunes Preview, which is a means of showing what music is available on iTunes right in the web browser. This seems like an incredibly obvious way to do it, and one that many have been waiting for way too long, but now if you want to look at the iTunes catalog, without having to install iTunes, you can do so.

You can’t listen to song previews without installing iTunes, but at least you can see what they have. You do still have to download iTunes to purchase music.

The Boston Globe has launched a digital version of its newspaper called GlobeReader, which can be read online or offline.

GlobeReader replaces the preview edition that launched over the summers and was available to subscribers for free. The GlobeReader is still available for free to Boston Globe’s seven-day newspaper subscribers.

For non-subscribers the GlobeReader is offered for $4.98 per week. A bundle including home delivery of the Sunday Globe along with 7-day access to the Globe Reader is offered at the same price.

Before you read any further just lean back and take a deep breath. You are about to enter the “Research Zone”. You know the place well. It’s where we give you shocking numbers that someone has come up with using their “methodology” and it is then used to create shocking headlines around the Internet for your reading enjoyment. It’s almost like having an informant who whispers something in your ear then you get to blab it all over the place and set the masses running.

Dell said today it plans to introduce smartphones based on Google’s Android platform in Brazil and China.

The company said it plans to sell its new Mini 3 smartphones through China Mobile, the largest telecommunications firm in the world with more than 500 million customers, and Claro, which has more than 42 million customers in Brazil as part of the America Movil network.

The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner of Switzerland, Hanspeter Thür

, still isn’t happy with Google.  Thür

Microsoft has officially launched the UK version of its search engine Bing, taking it out of beta where it has been since late May.

During the past several months of beta testing, the Bing team has been working on making its search features more relevant for UK users.

"Bing is ready for the UK consumer, with our revolutionary way of searching the Internet proving very popular," said Ashley Highfield, vice president of Microsoft UK’s Consumer and Online Business.