1. Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), Google will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.


2. Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps Google to choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As Google has improved their understanding of web page structure, they are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.

3. Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: Google look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. Google found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so Google are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.

4. Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. Google will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.

5. Extending application rich snippets: Google recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.

6. Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, Google often revisit signals that Google launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, Google decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.

7. Fresher, more recent results: As Google announced just over a week ago, Google has made a significant improvement to how Google rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.

8. Refining official page detection: Google has tried hard to give the users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, they have adjusted how Google attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.

9. Improvements to date-restricted queries: Google has changed how they were handling result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.


10. Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.

If you’re a site owner, before you go wild tuning your anchor text or thinking about your web presence for Icelandic users, please remember that this is only a sampling of the hundreds of changes Google make to our search algorithms in a given year, and even these changes may not work precisely as you’d imagine. Google have decided to publish these descriptions in part because these specific changes are less susceptible to gaming.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) which aimed at demolishing the online freedom and spread of speech has fortunately been postponed on January 20, 2012 after US Government saw the biggest internet protest of the time. The protests were the biggest in Internet history, with over 115 thousand sites altering their webpages with black protest banners! With Wikipedia and reddit being the heavy protestors. As soon as FBI shutdown the largest free resource sharing website "MegaUpload" , tons of attacks were launched by Anonymous just after 70 minutes on government websites such as Justice Department, the FBI, Universal Music Group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and Broadcast Music, Inc.

What is SOPA and PIPA?

Facebook is the virtual home to more than 800 million active users, so any change to how the network operates is a big deal. And nothing could be bigger for the social hotspot than completely revamping everyone's front-facing profile page, and that is exactly what is happening today. Starting this morning, the new Timeline feature — that up until now has been an optional switch — is now mandatory.

The Timeline differs from the default profile pages we know and love in several ways. Now, rather than showcasing only your most recent posts, your personal front page can be scrolled back months or years at a time. Most importantly, this change can offer visitors a glimpse at your entire social networking past, all the way back to the day that you joined up. The revamp can be both a blessing and a curse for seasoned social networkers, as it can produce a bit of pleasant nostalgia, but also drag up some of your less proud public moments.
Left untouched, your Timeline may remind of you of breakups, job troubles, or even a few unfortunate party photos that you have long since buried. Depending on your settings, these black marks on your digital past could allow new followers — including friends or business associates — to see a side of you that was better kept tucked away.

Privacy is already a hot topic for Facebook users and the network's litany of sharing options can be difficult to navigate, even for the most experienced users. The company isn't oblivious to how the Timeline may drag up some unwanted past events, so a short buffer zone is in place to allow you to modify your online persona before making its new debut. You now have until Tuesday, January 31 to erase any past Facebook scars you'd prefer to hide.

The mandatory Timeline rollout will undoubtedly catch some by surprise, but you don't have to fall victim to the ghosts of past updates. Take some time to review your social networking history and don't hesitate to prune anything that you wouldn't want on the front page of a local newspaper. Because as of right now, the clock is ticking.

If Twitter defies a law in a country where it has employees, those people could be arrested. That's one reason Twitter is unlikely to try to enter China, where its service is currently block. Google for several years agreed to censor its search results in China to gain better access to the country's vast population, but stopped that practice two years after engaging in a high-profile showdown with Chain's government. Twitter said it hadn't yet used its ability to wipe out tweets in an individual country. All the tweets it has previously censored were wiped out throughout the world. Most of those included links to child pornography.

 

What is So.cl?

Website >> www.so.cl/


So.cl (pronounced "social") is an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.

• So.cl combines social networking and search, to help people find and share interesting web pages in the way students do when they work together.
• So.cl helps you create rich posts, by assembling montages of visual web content.
• To encourage interaction and collaboration, So.cl provides rich media sharing, and real time sharing of videos via "video parties."

Microsoft is officially launching So.cl, the social networking service it teased back in July. And it turns out, it’s not meant to be Microsoft’s version of Facebook, but a social networking service for students built on top of Facebook. The service is launching out of Microsoft Research’s FUSE Labs division, and is still being dubbed “experimental.”  Today, students at the the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University are being allowed to use the service, with other schools being added in the future.

We expect students to continue using products such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other existing social networks, as well as Bing, Google and other search tools. We hope to encourage students to reimagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved, by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives.

Jerry Yang, Yahoo's oft-criticized co-founder and former CEO, resigned from the board and will no longer be a part of the Internet pioneer, Yahoo said late Tuesday.  Yang, 43, also gave up "all other positions with the company," in addition to leadership positions within the company's subsidiaries in Asia, Yahoo said.
"My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo," Yang said in a statement.

Yahoo shares jumped 3%, to $15.93, in after-hours trading following the news. "This is the passing of an era, whatever one thinks about Jerry Yang and the mixed success of Yahoo over the years," Citi analyst Mark Mahaney says. Yang leaves a mixed legacy. Shortly after he founded Yahoo in 1995 with fellow Stanford University student David Filo, the company became one of the greatest success stories in the early days of the Internet. "Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, but Jerry Yang made it discoverable," analyst Jonathan Yarmis says.

But as CEO, he arguably committed a huge blunder when he repeatedly spurned Microsoft  $47 billion buyout of Yahoo. Today, Yahoo is worth $19 billion. Yang's exit comes less than two weeks after former PayPal executive Scott Thompson was named Yahoo CEO, succeeding Carol Bartz, fired in September.
Yahoo has 700 million online visitors a month and may ring up more than $1 billion in profit for 2011. Yet, Facebook has stormed past it in online display ads in the U.S. for the first time, says eMarketer, and Google is closing in.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, and charged its founder and others with violating piracy laws.


The indictment accuses the company of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment was unsealed Thursday, one day after websites shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to thwart the online piracy of copyrighted movies and TV programs.

Megaupload.com has claimed it is diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material. The indictment says at one point, Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.

The number of Internet users in China has surged past 500 million as millions of new Web surfers go online using mobile phones and tablet computers, an industry group reported Monday.

Apple Inc. postponed sales of its iPhone 4S in its mainland China stores Jan. 13 after angry customers and gangs of scalpers threw eggs at the company's flagship Beijing store.

 

Don't trash your keyboard and mouse just yet. But three companies at the International Consumer Electronics Show demonstrated depth-sensing cameras that let you to control your computer by moving your hands or body.

The Delhi High Court on Thursday warned social networking site Facebook India and search engine Google India that websites can be "blocked" like in China if they fail to devise a mechanism to check and remove objectionable material from their web pages.

"Like China, we will block all such websites," Justice Suresh Kait said while asking counsel for Facebook and Google India to develop a mechanism to keep a check on and remove "offensive and objectionable" material from their web pages.

The two companies had moved the High Court seeking a stay on summons issued to them by a Delhi trial court that is hearing a private criminal complaint against them. Justice Kait did not stay the proceedings against the two websites before the magistrate's court. The case comes up for hearing at the lower court today.

Former Additional Solicitor General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Google India, said the postings of "obscene, objectionable and defamatory" articles and other things cannot be "filtered" or "monitored". He tried to distinguish between Google India and its US-based holding company Google Inc. "The US-based Google Inc is the service provider and not me (Google India) and hence, we are not liable for the action of my holding company. Moreover, it is a criminal case where a vicarious liability can be fastened on a company which has no role, whatsoever, in the alleged offence," the lawyer argued.

Citing provisions of the Information Technology Act, the counsel for Google India said these websites are protected by the law in respect of such "objectionable" material so far as they are not the authors. The websites, he said, may lose that legal protection if they either modify or monitor an article or comments or fail to deal with the complaints of an affected person or the government on such issues.

Advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for Facebook India, questioned the authenticity of the documents provided by the complainant, Vinay Rai, to the magisterial court. "We do not know as to when, how and from where, the documents came into being. They are not the documents as per the provisions of the Evidence Act," he said. Mr Luthra also said the social networking site could not be held accountable for the acts of third parties.

The High Court fixed the next hearing in case on January 16. A Google spokesperson said, "We did file a petition before the Delhi High Court. The Court has now issued a notice to the petitioner. We can't comment further at this stage." The criminal case against the two Web giants and 19 other companies has been filed by Vinay Rai, the editor of an Urdu daily.  The case is scheduled to be taken up today at the Patiala House trial court, which had earlier summoned the representatives of the 21 sites named after taking cognizance of the private criminal complaint. It had also directed the Centre to take "immediate appropriate steps" and also file a report on January 13.

Taking note of Mr Rai's complaint, the trial court had held that the websites named in the complaint connived with each other and various unknown persons to sell, publicly exhibit and put into circulation "obscene, lascivious content." The websites have been booked under section 292 (sale of obscene books etc), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person etc) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. 

Intel Corp. is looking for ways to help famed British physicist Stephen Hawking reverse the slowing of his speech, according to a senior executive with the American chipmaker.

Satellite broadcaster Dish Network says it's launching a high-powered set-top box that can act as the central TV recorder for the whole home.

Other TV providers have so-called "whole-home digital video recorders," but Dish Network Corp. is taking the concept a bit further. The Hopper, for instance, will record each day's lineup of primetime shows on the major broadcast networks.

The "Hopper" box can record six shows simultaneously, and its recordings can be accessed from smaller boxes, called "Joeys," that can be distributed around the house.
The box will be free with a two-year contract, said Vivek Khemka, Dish's vice president of product management.

Dish is giving the press a preview of the Hopper ahead of the International Consumer Electronics Show, which starts Tuesday in Las Vegas.

Manufacturers are fond of playing with claims that their product was the smallest or the biggest in the market –and so, a company called Deonet could easily win the claims for the smallest USB stick in the world, how? The company have just introduced a 19.5 x 14.5 x 2.9 millimeters USB stick that comes in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB storage capacities.

We’ve just rung in another new year so it seems fitting to reflect on the past for a moment and spend some time looking to the future. Gaming has become a staple of many people’s entertainment consumption and the next 12 months will be extremely important as there is a possibility of two new consoles landing on the market from two of the industry’s leaders.

The world's largest OLED TV

LG Electronics will show off the world’s largest OLED TV at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. The drool-worthy 55" OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV has an amazingly thin 4mm profile, a barely-there bezel and weighs just 7.5kg. It sports the company’s 4-Color Pixels and Color Refiner features which help to produce a brighter picture and natural, more accurate colors. The 55" OLED TV is rumored to be landing in stores in Q4, 2012. No price has been announced. 

Samsung has now taken a shine to the previous model. We can see it, you can see it and it’s fairly likely the lawyers can see it too. We’re talking about the distinct design similarity between Samsung’s new Galaxy Ace Plus and the Apple iPhone 3G/3GS.

Yahoo Inc. has named Scott Thompson, president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal division, as its CEO, the fourth one in less than five years for the struggling Internet company.
But Thomson will be grappling with a much different business at Yahoo, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis. "Payments and ads are not the same thing," he said.

Apple may have just brought their first touchscreen phone to the market, but here is the original rendition of an Apple phone from 1983. Designed by Hartmut Esslinger—the same mind behind the Apple IIc portable computer—we don't think it was actually called an "iPhone," but it sure makes a hell of a headline. Hit the jump for a bonus shot.

Quad-Core Samsung Galaxy S III

Ring Clock



Samsung Flexible Screen


Xbox 720 in 2013

 
Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook

Batmobile Replica Costs $ 150,000
China's 310mph Train


iOS 5 Released Last Year & It's Rocking


iPhone With Amplifier Looks Like A Toaster
 
LG 27-inch 3D Monitor