Search

Foursquare debuts venue pages to share with non-members

Foursquare launched its shareable mobile venue pages for non-members today, as it continues down the path of becoming less of a social network and more of a recommendation search engine -- a la Yelp.

"Foursquare has tons of helpful information about places, like photos, menu items, and great tips from insiders and local experts," the company wrote in a blog post today. "When you Tweet, post to Facebook, email or text about a place with friends who don't have Foursquare on their phones, they'll be linked to a shiny new page showing all the most … Read more

Eric Schmidt cashing out 42 percent of his Google stock

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is planning on selling off about 42 percent of his stock in the search giant, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Today, Marketwatch reported on the expected sale, suggesting that Schmidt -- currently Google's chairman -- will try to net as much as $2.51 billion from the sale of the stock. To date, he owns as much as 2.3 percent of Google's stock, and has 8.2 percent of the company's voting power.

Schmidt currently owns 7.6 million shares of Google's Class A stock, … Read more

Bing falls to 5th global search engine, surpassed by Yandex

Yandex is probably the biggest search engine few people have ever heard of.

The Russian search engine has surpassed Microsoft's Bing in the world's top search engine rankings, according to Search Engine Watch, which got its data from ComScore.

Coming in first place is Google with 114.7 billion search queries and 65.2 percent of the market share. China's Baidu ranked second with 14.5 billion queries and 8.2 percent share. Third was Yahoo with 8.6 billion queries and 4.9 percent share. And, fourth was Yandex with 4.8 billion queries and 2.… Read more

Twitter to enable searches for tweets older than a week

Twitter said today that it has begun slowly rolling out the ability to search for tweets older than a week.

In a blog post, the social-networking giant said it plans to enable users to find more than just the most recent tweets.

The announcement is the second this week aimed at letting users surface more content on Twitter. Yesterday, the company rolled out updates to its iOS and Android apps, as well as to mobile.twitter.com, designed to streamline the discovery process on Twitter.

As we roll this out over the coming days, the Tweets that you'll see … Read more

Montana for badasses? The USA according to Search Assist

Poor Missouri. The Show Me State is also "The Worst State," according to Yahoo Search Assist, as compiled in the above map by FlipCollective.

We've seen other such fun stabs at merging Google's autocomplete with digital cartography, but the results gathered from FlipCollective's methodology are the most entertaining and nonsensical yet. For example, while I have no idea why Yahoo thinks my home state of New Mexico is best described as "stretching," it does explain why I've been feeling so limber lately.… Read more

Twitter streamlines mobile apps, adds search button to iOS

Twitter has streamlined its mobile apps to make it easier to find any kind of content, and has added a search button to iOS that can be used anywhere in its mobile apps.

The social-networking giant said today that it is updating its iOS and Android apps, as well as its mobile.twitter.com offering, in an attempt to make it easier for users to find the things they're looking for. The update is the latest in a string of tweaks Twitter has made in recent months presumably aimed at improving users' content discovery experience.

Perhaps the most important … Read more

M&M's, Beyonce top Google searches on Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl fans took to the Internet yesterday to search for both people and products highlighted during the big game.

Sponsor M&M was the top search item on Google as it tried to woo people with its "Love Ballad" commercial. Singer Beyonce, who performed during the halftime show, took second place.

The teams actually competing in the game were next, with the Baltimore Ravens No. 3 and the San Francisco 49ers No. 4. And 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick rounded out the top five list.

Other searches that popped up on Google's radar included the half-hour … Read more

David Gelernter: Bring on the 'stream browser'

Close your eyes and look beyond the Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Safari of today. Do you see a "stream browser"? David Gelernter does.

The Yale computer science professor has been musing about what comes next for all the digital information that swarms and surrounds us, and it has led him to write an op-ed piece on Wired called "The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It." The emphasis in the online time/space continuum, he says, will be shifting from the "space-based web" of the present day to a "… Read more

Vringo subsidiary sues Microsoft over search patents

A subsidiary of intellectual-property firm Vringo is suing Microsoft for allegedly infringing two of its patents, Vringo said today.

Wholly owned subsidiary firm I/P Engine filed the suit in the Southern District of New York.

I/P Engine is seeking a judgment from the court declaring that Microsoft did infringe its patents and requests the court to award past and future damages through royalties and "any form of recoverable economic injury."

The two patents relate to U.S. Patent No. 6,314,420 and U.S. Patent No. 6,775,664, which detail essentially the foundation framework … Read more

Bing rolls out five apps for Office 365 and Office 2013

Microsoft launched five new free Bing apps for Office 365 and Office 2013 today. These apps are geared toward integrating work templates with search functions. The apps include Bing Finance for Excel, Bing Maps for Excel, Bing Image Search for Word, Bing News Search for Word, and Bing Dictionary for Excel and Word.

The software giant released its 2013 version of Office and its subscription-centric version of Office -- Office 365 Home Premium -- just this week. The latter of these two products is downloadable and can be locally installed on versions of Office 2013. Users are charged annual or monthly fees … Read more