Google may get three times more search traffic than Yahoo, but, SearchWiki aside, most of the innovation seems to be coming from Yahoo and Microsoft’s Live Search as they strive to gain a larger slice of the search market share.

Last year Yahoo introduced Search Assist, an advanced autocomplete feature that recommends related searches as you type your query into the search box. Autocomplete isn’t a new concept - Google has offered it for years through Firefox and its browser toolbar (and recently integrated it into its homepage). But Yahoo takes it a step further, going beyond just guessing what word you’re typing by suggesting possible related searches.

Today the site is introducing thumbnail previews for its image searches, allowing users to see how they should modify their queries to get the set of images they’re looking for. For example, typing “Obama” presents suggested searches for “Obama family”, “Barack Obama”, and “Michelle Obama”, each accompanied by a thumbnail indicative of what the query will yield. After trying a few searches of my own it’s easy to see how this could come in handy, especially when it comes to searching for queries with multiple, very different meanings (like “Sierra Nevada”, the beer or the mountain range). That said, the feature is a little quirky - oftentimes I had to refresh the page if I wanted any suggestions to appear.

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my new haircut and randy showing his true colors

Author: yoyopirate1904 Keywords: fight kimbo slice barrack obama street fights awesome owned stupid people weird stuff AD3FC funny cool sam greg randy brandon Added: December 3, 2008

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/30491?ns=guardianpageName=Comment+is+free%3A+In+this+recession%2C+we+want+comfort+culture+to+go+with+our+comfort+foodch=Comment+is+freec3=The+Guardianc4=Recession+%28UK%29%2CEconomic+growth+and+recession+US%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CTesco+%28Business%29%2CSupermarkets+%28business%29%2CRetail+industry+%28Business%29%2CFilm%2CStage%2CCulture+section%2CBusinessc5=Credit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CTheatrec6=Jonathan+Freedlandc7=2008_12_03c8=1127725c9=articlec10=GUc11=Comment+is+freec12=blogc13=c14=Comment+is+freeh2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" //divpMan cannot live by bread alone - he also needs some shepherd's pie and a dollop of rice pudding. That, at least, is the word from Tesco, reporting an extraordinary surge in sales of comfort food. As we feel the first chill of the recession, and as American economists declare that the downturn in the United States began a full year ago, making the current slump already longer than the average recession since the second world war, the supermarket chain has noticed a run on its cosiest products./ppSales of lamb hotpot are up 615% on this time last year, while beef casserole and dumplings have leapt by 279%. Deep-filled pies are selling at more than double the usual rate, as is cheesecake. Hot cakes are selling like hot cakes. /ppCould that be down to the wintry weather rather than the frozen economy? No. Tesco saw the boom in reassuring ready meals and cosy grub during the period from May to October. This isn't about staying warm, says the store, along with other retailers who've noticed a similar pattern on their shelves. It's about Britons cheering themselves up, padding their tummies as they tighten their belts. And notice the dishes in demand: traditional British fare, as if we're fleeing scary global economic forces, seeking refuge in the familiar smells of mum's kitchen and school dinners./ppSo much for what we're putting into our stomachs as the economy plunges downward, with most forecasters expecting the thud to come once the fleeting lift of Christmas is over. What will happen to our other appetites, those located not in our mouths but between our ears? What is the brainfood we'll be seeking out as times get tougher? Put simply, what's likely to be the culture of this recession?/ppNot so different from the food, as it happens. While Waitrose reports an 80% increase in sales of loaf cakes, ITV is cheering a rise in the television equivalent: viewing figures for I'm A Celebrity are up on last year. The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are doing a roaring trade too. And what has just become Britain's fastest-ever selling DVD? Mamma Mia!./ppThink of it as comfort culture to accompany the comfort food. We want to be eased through the freeze, and Ant and Dec can be relied on to do that just as effectively as a slice of steak and kidney pie./ppOf course, this habit has a long history. Cinema audiences developed the desire to be transported into mindless escapism, watching Busby Berkeley's synchronised swimmers make pretty shapes in the depths of the Great Depression. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made their top-hatted and ballgowned debut in 1933, the same year unemployment in the US hit 25%. If today's audiences are blocking out all thoughts of the credit crunch in favour of watching Meryl Streep play the Dancing Queen on a sun-kissed Greek island where the skies are permanently blue, they are doing no more than honouring a tradition started by their grandparents. /ppBut it's not all mindless. Brucie and Cheryl Cole are far from the only cultural providers experiencing a boom during the bust. In a declining newspaper market, the Financial Times and the Guardian both saw their sales rise as the financial crisis hit. (The number crunchers on the Guardian's website have seen big increases - led by serious news, with massive leaps in interest in business stories.) Richard Reeves, director of the thinktank Demos, says he has spotted three different people reading JK Galbraith's The Great Crash on his morning train to work. "People want more entertainment," he says, "but they also want more enlightenment."/ppIt seems we either want to escape the current turmoil or understand it. The latter might not always mean digesting dense economic tracts. Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, has noticed the spectacular response the musical Billy Elliot has just received on Broadway. A tale of declining industry, hardship and the threat of joblessness, "It acknowledges pain, individual achievement in overcoming that pain and collective solidarity in the face of it," Hytner told me yesterday, suggesting that Billy Elliot had come at just the right moment for New York theatregoers. He has no plans to stage either a feelgood musical at the National - there will be no "sugar rush of escapism" - or an instant play about the recession. That kind of second-guessing of the audience never works, he says./ppStill, artworks that offer neither escapism nor explanation might struggle in the great freeze. There will surely be a diminished appetite for miserable stories that don't even offer the consolation of enhanced understanding of the upheaval. I'm told there were an unusually high number of empty seats at the Oxford Playhouse when the touring production of Liberty, set in the France of 1793, arrived this autumn. Apparently people weren't in the mood to spend an evening contemplating Robespierre's Terror. (Users of guardian.co.uk were similarly reluctant to wallow in the details of the Baby P case.)/ppTwo big movies were released last week: Four Christmases, a light comedy with Reese Witherspoon, went straight to number one. Trailing behind it was The Changeling, Angelina Jolie's grim tale of a mother's search for a missing child. Similarly, it will be fascinating to see if the publishing subgenre known as "misery lit" continues to enjoy its past dominance of the bestsellers list. Right now, the hardback non-fiction top 10 is entirely made up of the comfort food of celebrity biography, topped by Dawn French's Dear Fatty - surely the literary equivalent of a sticky toffee pudding./ppThere are other clues to the cultural future besides the twin paths marked escape or understand. Price is one. Just as local pizzerias are holding up while posh restaurants expect to struggle, so culture that comes cheap has better prospects for survival. Sky subscriptions and DVD sales are so far weathering the recession. When you're counting the pennies, a ready meal and a film on the telly suddenly looks like a good bet./ppParadoxically, that could tilt the landscape towards high culture. If government subsidies get cut, many in the arts predict it will be smaller, grassroots projects that feel the knife: they're easier to slice than the heavy-hitting opera companies and art galleries. And while commercial theatre might take a pounding, the major subsidised institutions will still be left standing. /ppBut what if things get really severe? Reading could make a comeback, predicts John Carey, former Merton Professor of English at Oxford. In the 1930s, he says, some of the poorest turned to books for diversion. "Reading is astoundingly cheap," he says. "Libraries must be the cheapest form of entertainment possible." Classics were especially popular: they were inexpensive and available. "Social histories of the time are full of references to Dickens," says Carey./ppStill, the biggest cultural impact of the recession may be unseen for decades to come. Hytner notes that the great plays of the depression era - by Arthur Miller or Clifford Odets - came years later. It is the children of the slump, those witnessing their parents losing their jobs or businesses, who we should be watching. The seed of their future work is being planted right now. /ppa href="mailto:freedland@guardian.co.uk"br /freedland@guardian.co.uk/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession"Recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomicgrowth"US economic growth and recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/tesco"Tesco/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/supermarkets"Supermarkets/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/retail"Retail industry/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YJLdrZRupLEbqAyvMC8RCxJtgGk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YJLdrZRupLEbqAyvMC8RCxJtgGk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

via Gizmodo UK


Apple isn't exactly used to eating humble pie but took in a slice recently when it was forced to remove its iPhone advert for misleading consumers.

Knife and fork at the ready then since one of the companies most notorious claims, namely that of the lack of virus threats on its computers, is now something that must be confined to the past.

In late November an update to Apple's support site saw it recommending the use of anti-virus tools to protect Macs for the first time, following a string of malware designed to target its machines.

It seems like a rather knee-jerk reaction on the part of Apple since you're encouraged to use multiple applications so that "virus programmers have more than one to circumvent", which does sound a bit overkill both in terms of affecting the performance of your computer and your bank balance.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/government-legal/" rel="tag"Government/Legal/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/ford/" rel="tag"Ford/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/gm/" rel="tag"GM/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a/pimg vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" align="right" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/onedollar_opta.jpg" /Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli was the only auto exec who readily offered to work for a buck if it meant securing federal aid from Congress in the form of bridge loans. Ford CEO Alan Mulally famously told the politicians sitting before him, "I think I'm OK where I am." We would be OK too with the tens of millions of dollars that Mulally has received as compensation so far from Ford. GM CEO Rick Wagoner was described as being "demur" when asked about lowering his salary to a $1. br /br /Now it seems that the boy from Boeing and the Ricker are reconsidering their previous reluctance to take a pay cut. The Detroit Free Press is reporting that both CEOs are prepared to tell Congress on Thursday that they would be willing to work for $1 if it meant getting the approval of Congress for federal loans. br /br /Congress had previously demanded the each of the Detroit 3 automakers submit a detailed plan to Congress outlining how they would use the federal loans to return to profitability and ensure the long term viability of their companies. Ford is the first to turn their homework in, which reveals the Blue Oval expects to be a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/"making money again in 2011/a and will have an a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/"all-electric sedan/a on sale by then. All it's asking in return is a $9 billion slice of the $25 billion federal aid package that would only be used if necessary. Ford already has enough credit to survive through 2010 and only envisions needing the fed's money if something happens to either GM or Chrysler.br /br /[Source: a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20081202/BUSINESS01/81202050/1014/rss13"Detroit Free Press/a]p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/mulally-and-wagoner-reconsider-1-salary-for-federal-aid/"Mulally and Wagoner reconsider $1 salary for federal aid/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:27:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/mulally-and-wagoner-reconsider-1-salary-for-federal-aid/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1388057/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/mulally-and-wagoner-reconsider-1-salary-for-federal-aid/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z0qRvKccUCTZo-Er87AHserSCx0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z0qRvKccUCTZo-Er87AHserSCx0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=tRRqEyum"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=tRRqEyum" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=octZeaLU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=octZeaLU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/fqTI3RKVzuM" height="1" width="1"/

Towleroad has learned that a religious group called the Becket Fund may be planning a second-round editorial assault on gays and the fight for marriage equality, condemning what they see as a "campaign of violence" following the passage of Proposition 8. What I've heard, from a fairly reliable source, is that they're calling around trying to get organizations to sign on to a full-page newspaper ad to run in major papers (more specifically, the New York Times, citing disruptions of worship and the singular isolated incident of white powder sent to churches (see last item) (the source of which has never been proven - it could have been the Mormons themselves). In any case, this type of slanderous attack has been known in the past to sway both our allies and folks undecided on the issue, so it's something to be wary of, and prepared for.

***

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg writes a column in the L.A. Times today that bears many of the hallmarks of this kind of attack, meant to make the victim look like the aggressor. He writes:

"At a pro-gay-marriage rally in Los Angeles after the vote, chants of 'Mormon scum!' were reported. Envelopes containing white powder have been sent to Mormon temples in California and Utah; vandals hit other temples. Lists of businesses to boycott -- essentially Mormon blacklists -- have sprung up on the Internet. The artistic director of the California Musical Theatre resigned because of pressure after it was revealed he gave $1,000 to a pro-Proposition 8 group.

"It's amazing. Hollywood liberals, who shout 'McCarthyism!' as a first resort, see nothing wrong with this. If Jews were attacked in this way for giving too much money to a political cause, Barbra Streisand would already have a French passport.

"Never mind that Proposition 8 carried nearly every demographic slice of voters. Put aside the fact that the Catholic Church and scores of other Christian churches supported it too. Discount the inconvenient truth that bans on gay marriage have now passed in 30 states. It's all the Mormons' fault.

"The argument is that Mormons used illegitimate power, in this case money, beyond their numerical standing in the population to secure victory for the measure. Golly, wealthy gay liberals would never do anything like that! I bet they're not giving a dime to the legal effort to overturn Proposition 8.

"No, it's just that Mormons are the most vulnerable of the culturally conservative religious denominations and therefore the easiest targets for an organized campaign against religious freedom of conscience."

***

Goldberg calls the gays 'the aggressors in the cultural war' while the Mormons funded Proposition 8 to the tune of more than $20 million. Millions of Californians lost their civil rights. Those are the spoils of a cultural war and the religious right fought tooth and nail to rip them from Americans, severing families and hurting children in the process.

Dan Savage, in a column published just before Thanksgiving, wrote, regarding the resignation of L.A. Film fest director Richard Raddon:

"Bill Condon, the gay guy who directed Dreamgirls, attempted to get Raddon's back: 'Someone has lost his job and possibly his livelihood because of privately held religious beliefs.' No. No. No. Raddon lost his job due to criticism of his public political actions, not his private religious beliefs, and his public political actions were a part of the public record. If Raddon wanted to go to church and pray his little heart out against same-sex marriage, or proselytize on street corners against gay marriage, or counsel gay men to leave their husbands and marry nice Mormon girls instead, that could be viewed as an expression of his 'privately held religious beliefs.' Instead he helped fund a political campaign to strip a vulnerable minority group of its civil rights."

And that is the real aggression in the cultural war. If the whispers I am hearing about the mounting campaign to smear gays publicly in major newspapers is true, we should be ready to defend it.

pWhy can mosquitoes carry deadly viruses without succumbing to them and live on to give humans West Nile, dengue fever, and a host of other fatal illnesses. According to new research, the insects primitive immune systems recognize that the viruses are dangerous and slice the microbes genetic material into harmless pieces. a href=http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=bug-vs-bug-how-do-mosquitoes-surviv-2008-12-01[More]/a

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Mac Internet share hits record 8.87%; Windows drops below 90%  —  Apple's (AAPL) slice of the Internet pie grew measurably in November as both the Mac and the iPhone hit record numbers in a Net Applications Web survey issued overnight Monday.  —  At the same time, Microsoft's (MSFT) …