Items tagged with Ask
Ask.com's service might annoy many today thanks to its uncanny ability to show up as a toolbar option in many installers, but back in the day, when it was still known as Ask Jeeves, many considered it to be one of the coolest services going. Amidst much competition, Ask's usage declined over time, and as it became clear that the company wasn't exactly winning its battle as a search engine with the likes of Google, it decided to become more of a Q&A service. As of the time of writing, it enjoys 180 million regular monthly visitors. Latvian-based Ask.fm, launched in 2010, shares similar goals, and also happens to have the under-18 demographic account for 40% of its overall userbase. Not surprisingly,...
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The Rocket Man, Yves Rossy, known by those in the know as Fusionman, took flight today in a successful voyage across the English Channel. He was the first man to ever do this with a self-contained, homemade jet pack. That's right, we said jet pack, people.A former Air Force pilot, Yves Rossy has spent much of his career flying thousands of people around the planet as a captain for SWISS. But when Rossy is not flying planes, he is jumping out of them. Freestyle, skysurf, freely – you name it, he has done it. But no matter how daring, these adventure sports never fulfilled his childhood dream: to soar like a bird. Not with a glider, but with a propelled fixed wing. Appearing live on...
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We're not 100% sure if we think these are in poor taste based on 9/11 (OK, they likely are), but they are still ... well, interesting.A few years ago--specifically, after Sept. 11, 2001--something like a jewel-studded gas mask would have been considered to be in poor taste, to say the least. And it still is, in our opinion, but that doesn't count for much when you're talking about obscenely expensive designer items showcased at the Luxury Show 2008 in Bucharest. That was, after all, the site of such egregiousness as a 24k-plated Hummer.The gems pictured here are the products of artist Diddo Velema' along with Gucci and Louis Vuitton, according to Dvice, some even encrusted with diamonds. Velema...
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Yet more search engine news: Online search site Ask.com is laying off 40 people and running up the white flag in its quest to challenge Google for market share. They've decided to concentrate on their core users, who they have identified as women in their late thirties in the Midwest and Southeastern states, according to their new chief executive Jim Safka. Safka said it could take a few more months before the company articulates how the new view of its business will affect actual products, but its study of users already pointed to some important differentiating factors.In terms of habits, Ask.com found that its users are three times more likely to conduct their search in the form of a complete...
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While mice and keyboards don't typically get reviewed as often as new video cards and CPUs, they are still a major part of the computing experience. Those who've plunked down a little extra money and purchased a product from one of the major players in this arena such as Logitech, don't often go back to bargain basement equipment. Microsoft also knows this, and there has been a seriously rivalry for many years between the two firms.Microsoft itself may prefer Logitech as stock traders speculated that the software giant would launch a takeover bid for the Swiss-based peripherals maker.Shares of Logitech surged up to 12 percent based on the trader talk, despite comments from Logitech’s...
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Ask.com is the fourth most popular search engine in the United States, accounting for 4.7 percent of all web searches. They've decided to differentiate themselves from the rest of their competitiors by offering AskEraser -- a widget on their service you can use to direct the search engine to discard information like search term, user's Internet address, and other identifying features immediately after your search. If you're worried about what search engines do with the archived information they glean from your searches, this is the service for you. Maybe.“It works like a light switch,” said Doug Leeds, senior vice president for product management at Ask.com. Mr. Leeds said the service would...
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I knew it felt crowded here on teh intarnets. They're a series of tubes, you know. According to a new Harris poll, 79% of American adults are currently using the Internet. And they report that they're spending an average of 11 hours a week online. Slackers.The results reflect a steady rise since 2000, when 57 percent of adults polled said they went online. In 2006, the number was 77 percent.When Harris Interactive, a market research firm, first began tracking online use among adults in 1995, the group found that only nine percent of the population -- or 17.5 million -- said they went online.The poll also found that adults are spending more time online at home and at work, up two percent each...
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Alaska Airlines today announced plans to become the first U.S. airline to offer in-flight wi-fi. While this would keep people like us from becoming bored on a flight, it does have its downside.Seattle-based Alaska plans to install Westlake Village, Calif.-based Row 44's broadband service on one Boeing 737 jet next spring.Row 44's system Manage remotely with one interface -- the HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server. is designed to work over water and across international borders. Alaska Airlines said the service is intended to work on all its routes, which include flights within the lower 48 states and to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico.If it works, Alaska may add the service to all 114 of its aircraft.So...
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The United Kingdom plans to make its PCs go green after the realization that PCs across the globe contribute significantly to carbon buildup in the atmosphere. As a result a task force named "Green Shift" has been created in the city of Manchester with the goal of reducing computer energy use in the UK by 98 percent. Green Shift will offer environmentally friendly services such as hosting e-mail, office applications, and web surfing on data centers to consolidate the jobs of individual PCs. Local Government Minister Phil Woolas described cyber-warming is a "massive issue". He said the taskforce was the first of its kind in the world and a sign of how serious the UK is about tackling this threat...
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Dell has acknowledged the fact that some consumers want laptops and desktop pre-installed with Linux and has launched a poll to ask what Linux features consumers want most. Dell has not announced a definite commitment to selling PCs with Linux pre-installed, but the Linux survey may bring the company one step closer to embracing the penguin. In February, Dell said it would certify Novell's (Nasdaq: NOVL) Latest News about Novell Suse Linux on business desktop and laptop PCs, but stopped short of saying it would offer Linux on consumer-oriented PCs. Now Dell has returned to the Linux discussion table. In a survey that Dell posted on its Web site Tuesday, the company says it is "listening"...
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While we may not see him playing a character opposite Jack Sparrow any time soon, Mikhail Gorbachev is doing his part to save a Russian teacher accused of piracy, Alexander Ponosov. The teacher, accused of using pirated software at his school, is seen by many Russians as the unfortunate sap who Microsoft has chosen to go after in order to set a precedent when it comes to piracy in the region. Gorbachev asked Bill Gates himself to personally intervene in the case and show mercy to Mr. Ponosov, since he only meant to help his students. In a response Gates said that Microsoft did not initiate the prosecution and that due to the small scale of the event, criminal proceedings would not be necessary....
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Panasonic has been working on a new approach to the design and production of litium-ion batteries that seems to have solved the pesky problem of having them burst into flames from time to time. The battery is protected from overheating by the addition of a heat-resistant insulator to the battery cell. Normally, a li-ion battery would only have a thin separator between the cathode and the anode that could easily be punctured by a short-circuit. And as we are now painfully aware, short-circuiting batteries can sometimes lead to bad things such as fires and explosions. The additional heat insulator, according to Matsushita, has better insulating...
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Three little letters separate "bye" and "die". Happy Saturday night folks. We thought we would share with you one of our personal favorite episodes of "Ask A Ninja". Here we get a good ol' fashion history lesson on the number "3". Why is it the magic number anyway? All secrets are revealed, if you can handle it... Thr33, the original L33T... nuff said....
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VoodooPC CEO, Rahul Sood, has an editorial posted on his blog with his thoughts on NVIDIA and ATI and how their respective platforms are utilized on VoodooPC's high-end PC. He also speculates on what the upcoming Intel Conroe launch could mean to NVIDIA's and ATI's chipset business. "First of all, what people need to understand about the GPU business is historically a major slaughtering of the competition only occurs when the other falls flat on their face. So if the green team falls flat, the red team skates by, and visa versa. As an example, let's look back a few years ago when Nvidia lost two product cycles. Back then Nvidia failed simply because they fell flat on their face...
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