Google users may have already spotted the carousel design on search results while browsing on Nexus slates or the iPad, but, as of today, you can also expect this layout to show up on the desktop version of the site. Essentially, this new feature blends results in a much sleeker way, allowing you to view what you're looking for (hotels, bars, etc.) in more presentable fashion and in congregation with Google Maps. The only caveat is that it's only available in the US and in English at the moment, however the search giant did say we can expect "more features and languages over time."

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google

Microsoft wants Bing Desktop to transcend the limits of web-based search, and that's especially clear with a newly posted app update -- it's all about doing what most browsers can't. The software brings inline searching that lets users run Bing queries on websites, PDFs and Word files just by selecting text. Newshounds also don't have to wade into every article now that there's both at-a-glance previews and a trending stories section. We suspect most users won't mind the real-time weather forecasts and live Facebook notifications, either. Existing Bing Destkop users should automatically receive the new features in the days ahead, but those who refuse to wait can grab the upgrade straight from the source.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft, Facebook

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Via: Bing Search Blog

Source: Bing

Yahoo has been a busy little bee recently, updating its various properties and snatching up new ones. Now its giving its Bing-powered search page a facelift. The redesign is actually quite subtle. The color scheme remains the same and there's still a sidebar, though, the various search tabs have all been pushed to the left rail. The look is flatter, boxier and more modern with quite a bit of empty space. In fact, the padding on the right side has been expanded, leaving much of the screen strangely bare. In addition to the updated aesthetics, the company has introduced a new navigation bar that sits glued to the top providing shortcuts to the homepage, your mailbox, Flickr and other Yahoo-owned properties. The nav bar will also be rolling out to these other services soon, providing a Google-esque way to quickly hop around. Now Yahoo just needs to figure out how to serve up actually useful results. When our search for sushi on Staten Island turned up only one restaurant actually in the borough and a query for "old fashioned recipe" spit out a pile of pancake plans, we knew that there was still quite a lot of work to be done.

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Source: Yahoo

Google can already answer plenty of questions for you without requiring you to delve into the actual search results, and you can now add yet one more category to its knowledge base. The company's today announced that it can answer a range of nutrition-related questions for over 1,000 different food items -- everything from the amount of protein in a particular fruit or vegetable to the number of calories in a given dish. That naturally works in both mobile and desktop search, but it will remain confined to the US (and English answers only) for the time being. Google says you can expect it to roll out over the next ten days, and promises that it will be adding "more features, foods, and languages" over time.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google Inside Search

Microsoft's Bing may be a boy among men in the search-engine wars, but that's not stopping it from piling on new features. The latest are in its news search, where it just added a "trending topics" carousel that shows timely info in the same category as your query (see the above image), along with a sidebar that displays personalities "you might also like." Clicking on either will bring up further news results, and Bing also said it's now extended the article index several years back in time compared to the curt two-week period it had before. It's an interesting change-up over Google's Knowledge Graph, and Microsoft needs all the help it can get in search, given recent survey results.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft

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Source: Bing blog

Tags are so 2008. Google doesn't want you to waste time tagging your photos, except for the people in them. The web giant wants to be able to recognize more abstract concepts like "sunset" or "beach" automatically and attach that metadata without further input. In yet another post-I/O update, Google+ photos now uses computer vision and machine learning to identify objects and settings in your uploaded snapshots. You can simply search for "my photos of trees" or "Tim's photos of bikes" and get surprisingly accurate results, with nary a manually added tag in sight. You can perform the searches in Google+, obviously, but you can also execute your query from the standard Google search page. It's pretty neat, but sadly Mountain View seems to have forgotten what cats look like.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Inside Search

In October Google started a field trial that allowed users to peruse their Drive files and Calendar entries straight from the Gmail search box. Apparently the test was a rousing success, as the company is rolling the feature out to all US accounts, in English. The feature hasn't changed since it made its debut late last year -- simply start typing and your autocomplete results will include your next homebrew meeting, your epic beer inventory spreadsheet as well as emails from family members suggesting you seek help for your new "hobby." If you don't have access just yet, be patient, Google says it'll roll out slowly over the next week.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Gmail Blog

Instead of waiting until the end of the year for Google's annual Zeitgeist, you can now find out what's trending in any given month with a new Top Charts feature from Google Trends. Updated monthly and going back to 2004, Top Charts is built on the Knowledge Graph, so it's smart enough to house related keywords under one term for more accurate rankings. For example, searches for "giants baseball" and "sf giants" would go toward pushing "San Francisco Giants" up the ranks in a sports-related chart. Right now there are more than 40 top ten lists with more than 140 time periods available for your perusal. In addition to the charts, the Trends team has also rolled out a new visualization tool for "hot searches" that displays trending topics in a large colorful layout -- as seen below, you can customize it to display up to 25 searches at a time that endlessly shift and refresh, thus consuming our attention for the entire day.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Official Google Blog

Foursquare knows that there's a lot more to a night on the town than a good search keyword. Accordingly, it just updated its Android and iOS apps with location search filters that narrow the results based on familiarity and price. At times, the terms can get very specific: if you want to try an expensive Korean barbecue that only your friends have visited so far, you can. While there isn't much more to the update than that, those prone to cravings (or just curiosity) should get their fill at the source links.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: Foursquare

Source: App Store, Google Play

After revealing it at I/O 2013 only days ago, Google's new conversational voice search function is up and running on Chrome 27. If you've got that version, you'll now get a spoken response on top of a web page display when using the voice search function (the microphone in the main search window), for starters. More interestingly, the new feature also includes semantic search, meaning you can ask follow-up questions without repeating needless info -- for instance, "who's the CEO of GE?" can now be followed up with "how old is he?" and Google will know who "he" is. We gave it a spin for ourselves and found that when it worked, it worked well, however, the system may be overwhelmed by the launch and is giving us a "no internet connection" message most of the time -- not exactly what we're looking for.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Google

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Via: Search Engine Land

Call us crazy, but it sure feels like Yahoo's had one heck of a spring. When it comes to spending, anyway. Just as soon as it can get one check to clear, the search icon is breaking the ink back out to write another. According to a breaking tweet from CNBC, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is scheduled to speak at a "product-related" event in New York City this coming Monday. It's tough to tell what kind of surprise will be in store, but we wouldn't be shocked if it involved the word "Tumblr." We're digging for more as we speak, and will most certainly be on hand to see what comes to fruition.

Update: We've just heard back from Yahoo, and the event is indeed going down in order to "share something special." And yes, we'll be there to bring whatever happens to your browser of choice.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: CNBC (Twitter)

We're used to Google's mobile search apps letting us ask questions as we would with real people, but the desktop has usually been quite stiff. That's changing today: Google is bringing conversation-like voice search to our computers through Chrome, with no typing required. Web denizens just have to say "okay, Google," ask their question, and get back a spoken response similar to what they'd hear on their phones. The company hasn't said just how soon Chrome will incorporate the new voice features, however.

Gallery: Google I/O 2013: Google conversational voice search

Filed under: Internet, Mobile, Google

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If you're still wielding a basic feature phone, you may be familiar with Google SMS Search: it's a handy tool that lets you text a search query and get a quick result. Or rather, it was a handy tool. Google now confirms that it quietly dropped the service within the past few days, delivering an automated shutdown warning to anyone messaging the short code. A Google employee explains the closure as a simple "streamlining" effort, although we've reached out for greater detail. It makes sense that Google would drop SMS Search when basic phones are quickly becoming the minority in a world full of web-friendly smartphones. However, the lack of advance notice could have some in that group upgrading their devices sooner than expected -- if that's even an option in the first place.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Google

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Google Product Forums

Competing with Google for search traffic is no easy task, even for a software giant like Microsoft. Unique features and customization have helped keep Bing afloat, though -- and now, MS is counting on some more comprehensive Facebook integration to boost appeal. Beginning today, the site's "Social Results" sidebar will be pulling in a bit more Facebook content, including posts from your friends that the tool deems relevant to the search at hand. You can also pub directly to your timeline from within the tool, sharing search results with your online buds. It's hardly a revolutionary refresh, but if you haven't yet managed to annoy your friends with posts about your favorite Spotify tracks or those shoes you just purchased online, Bing's now ready to step in by making your search habits public, too.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft, Facebook

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Source: Bing

BlackBerry isn't done with improving the BlackBerry 10 editions of LinkedIn and Twitter -- not by a long shot. The company has once more upgraded the two social apps, this time with an emphasis on search. LinkedIn now lets users import contacts to find people they already know; in Twitter, meanwhile, universal search now shows photos, profiles and tweets on a single page. There's more than just these two upgrades, of course. LinkedIn reveals more about companies and carries a slew of minor UI tweaks, while Twitter keeps content fresher with automatic caching. If the new versions are tempting, they're waiting at the source links for Q10 and Z10 owners alike.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Blackberry

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Via: Inside BlackBerry, Phone Scoop

Source: BlackBerry World (1), (2)

Well, it looks like you can soon expect to see yet more information to the right of your Google search results. The company's announced today that it has begun integrating activity from certain apps into its results, with a number of music and movie services the first in line. Expectedly, the common denominator among them is that they all use Google+ as a sign-in option, which lets Mountain View pull together things like aggregate user activity and the most popular movies and music from Fandango, Deezer, Flixster, SoundCloud and a handful of others. As usual, those features are getting rolled out gradually, with the initial batch of app results said to be rolling out to desktop search over the next few weeks, and additional apps and improvements promised over time.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Google+ Developers Blog

As you may recall, Wolfram Research signed a deal with Microsoft a few years back that saw some Wolfram Alpha functionality integrated into Bing. As it turns out, it very nearly found its way into a certain other search engine as well. In an interview at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam today, Stephen Wolfram revealed that his company had tried to work with Google and "almost had a deal," but it "blew up." Unfortunately, he didn't provide any further details about when those talks took place or exactly what the potential deal entailed, and it doesn't sound like we can expect that deal to be revived anytime soon -- especially considering Google's own efforts that are increasingly overlapping with Wolfram Alpha. As Wolfram himself notes, though, the two companies do have something of a longstanding connection: Google co-founder Sergey Brin was actually an intern at Wolfram way back in 1993.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: The Next Web

When Pinterest unveiled its big redesign last month, it took the sort of gamble on feature trade-offs that we've seen before: some big leaps forward at the expense of a few leaps back. Much to the relief of many, the company is already doing what it can to restore what was lost while still forging ahead. Veteran users can once again see pins they've just posted, mention friends and find would-be contacts on Facebook on Twitter. As for the less nostalgic among us? The progress isn't as dramatic, but it's there: Pinterest has reworked notifications to show their history, and searches now include as-you-type keyword suggestions. More updates are on the way, including notifications for new pins, so we wouldn't worry that Pinterest is spending most of its time mending broken fences.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Pinterest Blog

Word that Google has snapped up natural language processing startup Wavii first came from TechCrunch, and now the Wall Street Journal is chiming in with its own sources claiming the deal has in fact been struck, and that an announcement is imminent. In its current form, Wavii parses a personalized news feed and distills text into a summary for the top stories, similar to Yahoo's recently-purchased Summly. TechCrunch reports that Apple and Google were locked in a bidding war for the outfit, but the web titan ultimately won with a bid in the neighborhood of $30 million. According to the WSJ, the fledgling firm's talent will join Page and Co.'s web search team, which means the language detection technology may bolster its Knowledge Graph, giving users better results (and direct answers) for their queries. As language recognition permeates Page and Co.'s projects, Google Now and Google Glass could potentially benefit from the acquisition as well. Mountain View has yet to acknowledge the reported purchase, but if the tea leaves are being read correctly, expect that to happen soon.

Filed under: Google

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Source: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal

While everyone else speculates about new Nexii and what sweet treat the next version of Android will be named after, we're anticipating some exciting news about Now at Google I/O. Specifically, that it might be coming to both iOS and the desktop. We've already seen quite a bit of evidence that the virtual assistant app will eventually land on Apple's mobile platform and maybe even Chrome. Newly discovered code in a Google page hints that it might just become part of the standard web search interface -- provided you opt to turn it on, of course. Source code for the page in testing encourages you to, "get started with Google Now," because it provides, "just the right information at just the right time." It also offers you the opportunity to change you home and work locations because, as the explanation goes, "Google Now uses your Home location to show relevant information like weather, traffic conditions, and nearby places." As you dig through you'll also find plenty of references to "now_card."

If Now becomes a standard part of the Mountain View lineup, regardless of platform, it could be huge for a company which already dominates the search market. Not to mention, it might satiate those seven people out there still mourning the loss of iGoogle. We won't know anything for sure until the wraps are taken off and have reached out to the company for comment, but we anticipate the response will be predictably non-committal.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google Operating System, Google

Jolicloud's missions have been many over the years, from its initial open-source Joli OS ambitions to its brief stint as netbook manufacturer and now an identity as a cloud-based services aggregator. But one thing's remained consistent for the Paris-based outfit: a willingness to listen to user feedback. This is what prompted Jolicloud to once again update Jolidrive, a dashboard for third-party cloud apps, with search. As you can see from the image above, users will now be able to index any of the cloud-based apps they've integrated into their "dashboard," making the service a truly convenient multimedia hub. This updated search functionality is just the latest in a string of tweaks (e.g., the ability to share and like) Jolicloud's been rolling out to improve its cloud drive in recent weeks -- all thanks to the clamoring of users like you.

Filed under: Internet, Software

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Jolicloud

Continuing its efforts to speed up the way we find things when searching the web from our smartphones, Google is rolling out expandable sitelinks. Instead of wasting time sifting through a website trying to locate a specific page, this new feature generates a list of related quick links that allow you to jump directly to what you're looking for. Already available in desktop results, expandable links are hit or miss when used on mobile. Not stopping there, Google also announced the release of its new Quick view badges. This experimental project produces highlighted links from Wikipedia, which offer snippets of information relevant to your query. Pictured above are results for different types of poker hands. It won't stop you from losing your money, but now you'll always remember a flush beats a straight. As of now Quick view is only available in English search results, but Google is working on adding support for additional languages.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google

Google has no doubt been on pins and needles wondering whether or not the European Commission will accept the search engine changes it's proposing to avoid an antitrust showdown. If what we're hearing is right, Larry Page and crew might just get to relax in the near future: sources for the New York Times claim that the EU agency has accepted Google's proposal. Reportedly, the terms of the deal are close to what had been mentioned last week. Google would have to explicitly label search results that come from its own services while sometimes showing those results from others. It would also have to test the results in the field to get feedback from both the Commission and competitors. While neither Google nor European officials have confirmed the apparent leak so far, any truth to the story could mean the long-running saga might draw to a close before it gets ugly.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: New York Times

Companies know how important it is to make their products as friendly as can be with third-party social websites, and Microsoft, for one, has done a pretty fantastic job at making sure the team behind Bing's doing exactly that. To wit, the Surface maker is, as of today, also starting to cater to the Pinterest crowd, announcing that it's now allowing users of the recently redesigned site to share Bing image search findings via a simple click -- assuming you're logged in, naturally. The new sharing feature might seem like a rather minor one on paper, but for avid Pinners, it'll certainly come in handy as they can keep their precious boards stocked up with a little less effort. And, well, you know what that means: more cats.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Bing

We had hoped that the dispute between Samsung and LG over their OLED tech would be resolved soon but recent developments suggest that may not be the case. Bloomberg reports Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency investigators entered the Samsung Display HQ in Asan as they look into the possibility that LG partners may have leaked secrets of its technology. A Samsung spokesperson denied any involvement, and an LG spokesperson is quoted saying the police made the allegation themselves. This comes after Yonhap News reported last month that LG accused Samsung of illegally using its patented technology and demanded Samsung Display and Samsung Electronics pay for the rights. While these two continue to duke it out legally, we have yet to see an OLED HDTV from either arrive in the US and it seems like it may be quite some time until that happens.

Filed under: Displays, HD, Samsung, LG

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Source: Bloomberg