Yahoo SearchMonkey gallery now live

If you want to try Yahoo's SearchMonkey technology to spruce up your Web search results, the Internet company has launched a beta version of its Yahoo Search Gallery featuring plug-ins from LinkedIn, Yelp, Epicurious, Last.fm, IMDB, and a few dozen others.

This SearchMonkey add-on shows star ratings for Firefox browser plug-ins.

(Credit: Yahoo)

SearchMonkey lets developers write software that augments Yahoo's search results, for example offering ratings by movie titles or addresses, phone numbers, and maps next to restaurants. A more elaborate option involves building an "infobar" around the result that can let the user expand it into what amounts to a miniature Web page.

Clicking an extension gallery option takes the user to a page that shows a sample result, a button to enable the option, and a link to try it out in a live search. Users can choose to enable or disable various add-ons.

Three SearchMonkey extensions, all developed by Yahoo's own search programmers, are enabled by default for Yahoo search: a video player that lets people watch videos within the search results, a Yahoo Travel infobar that shows detailed hotel information, and a Flickr viewer to show images from the Yahoo photo-sharing site.

It remains to be seen whether SearchMonkey will ignite developer interest and help Yahoo reclaim search query market share lost to leader Google, but some programmers are getting involved. For example, a SearchMonkey add-on that shows rankings for Firefox plug-ins was added Thursday.

So far, the most popular SearchMonkey add-on is one from LinkedIn that adds details from LinkedIn profiles to the search results.

The LinkedIn option seems like a good idea to me, so I enabled it. However, for reasons I haven't dug into, I'm not actually seeing the LinkedIn SearchMonkey add-ons in my results. Maybe it's just me.

Another caveat: Using SearchMonkey technology isn't necessarily snappy. For example, I enabled the Amazon SearchMonkey add-on that shows Amazon product details for relevant searches. The Yahoo search result showed as fast as before, but it took a few seconds sometimes to show the extra Amazon information below. (Also, the Amazon add-on integration leaves something to be desired, I think.)

CNET Blog Network blogger Harrison Hoffman would like to see SearchMonkey-augmented results rise in the search rankings, but I disagree. I don't want a poor search result artificially elevated just because a fancy wrapper can make it more useful.

Read more!

Windows Live Expo set to expire next month

Chalk one point up to Craigslist: Microsoft has decided to shut down Windows Live Expo, the classifieds service that it originally launched in February 2006.

Expo will disappear on July 31, a notice on the site explains. Until then, no new listings can be posted or extended, and no new accounts can be created. Microsoft representatives could not immediately be reached regarding further information, and the most recent post on the Expo blog is from last September.

Online classifieds continue to be dominated by Craigslist, a scrappy start-up with a hippie attitude and a user interface worthy of 1997. The company is currently ensnared in a legal tiff with major investor eBay over the auction giant's in-house classifieds site, Kijiji.

Read more!

German scientists developing green bombs

New environmentally friendly, nitrogen-based explosives could deliver more of a bang while being safer to handle than traditional charges, according to chemists at the University of Munich in Germany.

When detonated, common explosives now used in military and industrial applications such as TNT and RDX generate toxic gases that pollute the environment. They're also dangerous to handle: They don't like to be dropped or bumped and are super sensitive to electrical sparks.

To make them safer and reduce environmental dangers, German scientists have turned to tetrazoles--synthetic compounds that derive most of their explosive energy from nitrogen instead of carbon, as do many conventional explosives. Tetrazoles are already used to generate the gas to fill the airbags in some cars.

Chemists at the University of Munich made tiny bombs from two tetrazoles called HBT and G2ZT, which not only proved more stable than conventional explosives but more powerful as well, according to researcher Thomas Klapötke. Here's a video that shows it in action.

Read more!

Firefox's market share climbs toward world domination

Firefox is set to top 20 percent global market share in July, continuing its steady trend toward world domination through, er, open-source liberation.

Unlike Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which relied on all sorts of tricks and tying to achieve its dominant status, Firefox's gains seem to be coming for two reasons:

1. It works better (Better security, better performance, better functionality).
2. It's much more customizable.

As ReadWriteWeb points out, the game is increasingly Firefox's to lose. Internet Explorer used to command 96 percent of the market. Now it's struggling to hold onto 80 percent, with Firefox chipping away, 1 percent at a time.

Better software doesn't always win. In today's market, in fact, the superior marketing budget generally wins.

But not in the IE versus Firefox war, for some reason. Firefox continues to gain market share. Perhaps this time "better" really will translate into market share.

Read more!

Pentax announces new 17-70mm f4 lens

Pentax has announced the release of the Pentax SMC DA 17-70mm f4 AL SDM lens for Pentax digital SLR cameras. First shown at PMA 2008, the 17-70mm lens has a constant aperture of f4 through the entire zoom range, with a working focal length of 26-107mm. It has Pentax's SDM system with built-in supersonic motor for quiet and responsive auto focusing when used on a compatible Pentax DSLR. The lens is compatible with the K20D, K200D, K100D Super and K10D (with firmware v. 1.30 or later). When used on other Pentax bodies the focus is automatically switched to manual. Featuring Pentax's Quick-shift Focus System that enables you to switch from auto to manual focus with a turn of the focus ring. A minimum focusing distance of 11 inches. Weighing in at 17.1 ounces with a length of 3.7 inches. It will be available in July at around $600.

Read more!

Yahoo-Microsoft talks continue

Yahoo President Sue Decker says the Internet company remains in "engaged" in "ongoing" discussions with Microsoft, according to a CNBC report Wednesday.

Decker, who is serving as a keynote speaker at Advertising 2.0 in New York, reportedly made those comments during the event.

Shares of Yahoo were up 2 percent to $26.68 in early-market trading. The broader markets are mixed.

Decker, meanwhile, is scheduled to appear on CNBC's "Power Lunch" at 9 a.m. PDT later Wednesday morning.

Read more!

Five start-ups to watch at Under the Radar / Social Media

On Tuesday I will be moderating part of the Under the Radar: Social Media and Entertainment conference in Mountain View, Calif. Several of the 47 young companies presenting at the event have never been seen in public before, so this should be an interesting show.

Of the companies I haven't seen, these are the five I'm most interesting in learning about:

• CrowdSpring: Another piecework job marketplace for creatives, but this one is focused on illustration and design. What makes it a bit weird is that bidders submit actual mock-ups to get job, not just proposals.
• Ffwd: This is a video content site with "social awareness and predictive recommendations." Its first public showing will be at the conference.
• Lil'grams: An online baby book. Somewhat more sophisticated than just e-mailing yourself cute reminders. As the father of a two-year-old, I have a vested interest.
• SocialMedia Networks: Attempting to build an advertising network for social platforms and apps.
• Xumii: A utility that gives you access to your social network contacts on your mobile phone.

Some of the start-ups that will be pitching at Under the Radar have already been covered on Webware. I'll be curious to see how they have developed since we last saw them:

• Animoto
• Aviary
• BigStage
• Jacked
• Loomia
• Mochi Media
• Wetpaint

Read more!

Intel announces 4 Series desktop chipset family

ntel has four new desktop chipsets to show off from this year's Computex trade show in Taiwan. The G45 and the G43 focus on HD video playback by way of a new Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD integrated graphics chip. The P45 brings support for faster memory and is the first mainstream Intel-made chipset with two graphics card slots. A scaled-down P43 chipset rounds out the new 4 Series. All of the chipsets use Intel's familiar LGA 775 processor interface, which means support for Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad desktop CPUs. Intel has also added a 1,333MHz front side bus to each chipset, as well as support for DDR3 RAM, as well as DDR2 or DDR3 RAM at speeds up to 1,333MHz.

The new integrated graphics chip in the G45 and G43 is probably the most significant part of this announcement. First, according to Intel's claims, the GMA X4500HD chip gives the G45 and the G43 chipsets the ability to play HD video without requiring a discrete graphics card. The new chipsets include support for HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, making them ready out-of-the-box to connect to HDTV and new PC monitors. AMD already has an HD-capable chipset in its AMD 780G circuitry, but that chipset has not achieved broad mainstream adoption.

And as usual when Intel announces a new integrated 3D chip, it also points to increased 3D game performance. In particular, Intel boasts that the X4500HD chip

Read more!

Pageonce personal assistant opens for business

Pageonce, which bills itself as a personal Internet assistant, has entered its public beta phase. (We covered its February debut here.)

The service lets users aggregate all of their Web accounts from a single dashboard. Users submit their user names and passwords for services, including finance, shopping, utilities, social networks, travel, and e-mail, into a Pageonce master account. After the accounts are activated, Pageonce can let users know how many minutes they have left on their cell phone account, and send notifications about flight itinerary changes, credit limits, friend request, bill payments, and other account activities. Pageonce also provides a proactive function, making it easy for users to monitor their accounts for fraudulent activity. A version of the Pageonce for the iPhone is also in development.

Pageonce provides a dashboard and notifications of changes in accounts.

The utility of Pageonce is obvious, but it requires a level of trust for users to give up their access information to a single Internet service. Pageonce applies military-level security, Pageonce CEO Guy Goldstein told me, with multiple security layers, including 256-bit data encryption, SSL systems, and multiple firewalls. "All the data is encrypted, and we have hired hackers to try to break into our systems," Goldstein said. Financial accounts are read-only, so from the Pageonce site a user's accounts cannot be changed. Goldstein said Pageonce is also looking into token-based security solutions to provide great security assurance to users. Even with all the assurances of security, Pageonce must overcome a trust perception hurdle to gain acceptance.

Prior to the public beta, Pageonce had 20,000 users and 60,000 accounts. The majority of the accounts cover e-mail, financial services, and social networks so far. The company plans to generate revenue from advertising, primarily via customer retention promotions, which represents about half the marketing spend at most consumer companies. Anonymized benchmarking data could also provide another revenue source.

Pageonce was founded by ex-Mercury (sold to Hewlett-Packard for $4.5 billion) executives and is planning a Series A investment round. The company was private funded with $1.5 million in May 2007

Read more!

Sony to make low-cost mini notebook

Sony is prepping a notebook based on Via's OpenBook reference design, PC World is reporting.

At the WiMax Expo taking place in Taipei, contract manufacturer Quanta Computer showed a mini-laptop based on Via's just-released design that will be out in the third quarter of this year. A sharp-eyed reporter spotted Sony as the listed manufacturer for the device. When questioned, Quanta representatives apparently clammed up, and it doesn't appear Sony will be commenting either.

The mini notebook has an 8.9-inch screen, at least an 80GB hard drive, will use a 1.6-Gigahertz C7-M processor from Via, and sports a VX800 chipset. The prototype on display was running Windows Vista Home Basic.

So has the Vaio maker finally caved? In February, a Sony exec said if the Eee PC started to do well, and major PC makers started to chase the low-cost laptop market, it was the beginning of "a race to the bottom."

Too late. Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and maybe even Dell, are joining the low-cost, lightweight computing fray. And those are just the big names. Asus continues to crank out Eee PCs, and similar devices from no-names like MSI are widely anticipated.

Sony likes to position itself and its products on the high-end. But it started producing a line of its Vaio notebooks last year that sold for as low as $800. At the time, the company said it wasn't interested in going any lower.

Read more!