Ask.Com Announces Research and Development Center in Germany
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OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 11  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ask.com, an operating business of IAC/InterActiveCorp , today announced the formation of a new development center in Hamburg, Germany.
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Germany gets a green light from the European Union to give $165 million for research on internet search-engine tech that could challenge Google. The Theseus project would develop an advanced multimedia search engine to translate, identify and index images, audio and text.
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Ask.com is set to give greater  prominence in Web search results to photos, video and related  searches, responding to growing consumer demand for more than  text links, the company said on Monday.
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Search site Ask revamps its results pages to set it apart from rivals such as Google and Microsoft.
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SAN FRANCISCOâThe co-founders of early search engine and portal Excite.com are bringing a new concept to the Web: the wiki as an application development platform.
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The fourth-ranked search engine behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, launches a new design of its default search page Tuesday called Ask3D. Ask.com's new page finds multimedia content and presents it alongside traditional text-based results in a three-paned web interface.
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(InfoWorld) - Ask.com is making another major attempt to attract more people to its search engine, as its years-long, unsuccessful struggle to boost its usage market share continues. On Tuesday, Ask.com will make a big splash with what it calls major enhancements to its search algorithms and user interface, with the hopes that these improvements will give its user base a substantial push. Despite a steady stream of upgrades and generally favorable reviews from industry experts, Ask.com routinely ranks as either last or next-to-last among the five major search engines in the U.S. This has been a source of dismay for company officials, who over the years have expressed frustration at a usage market share that they don't believe corresponds with the quality of the Ask.com search engine. For example, in April, U.S. users entered 5.1 percent of their queries on Ask.com, a virtual tie with the 5 percent attained by Time Warner Inc., which includes AOL LLC, according to comScore Networks Inc. The closes competitor, Microsoft Corp., more than doubled Ask.com's share with 10.3 percent, while the top two providers are worlds away: Yahoo Inc. with almost 27 percent and Google Inc. with almost 50 percent. In total numbers, this means that in April Ask.com handled 376 million queries to Google's 3.6 billion. More concerning is that the situation is worse today than in July 2005. Back then, Ask.com's share was 6.1 percent. Between then and now, Ask.com, Yahoo, Microsoft and Time Warner have lost share at Google's expense, which had a 36.5 percent share at the time. However, with the debut of Ask3D on Tuesday, Ask.com, which is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp., expects the tide to turn. The most visible highlight of Ask3D, which now powers the company's main search site , is a 3-panel layout. Suggestions to expand and refine queries appear on the left-hand column and results from specialty engines on the right-hand column. The traditional search results list sits in the center column. On the backend, algorithmic improvements will produce more precise results, particularly from the specialty engines column, Ask.com officials said. The idea is to complement the core list of Web sites with links to relevant news articles, video clips, images, digital songs, weather information, blog postings, local business listings, entertainment events information and the like. The specialty engines tapped for each query are decided on a case-by-case basis by Ask.com. Some queries may trigger links to digital songs and video clips, while others may generate links to news articles and blog postings in the right-hand column. The ultimate goal of Ask3D is to cut down on the frustrating trial-and-error method of searching, by delivering in a single results page what Ask.com considers to be the most relevant results and query-refinement tools. All of Ask.com's major rivals have been tweaking their search engines in order to provide a variety of relevant links in the first page of results. Most recently, Google unveiled its Universal Search project, a push to integrate results from a variety of its search engines on its main Google.com site. Search engine usage studies consistently have shown that most users never venture beyond the first page of results, and that many don't know that providers like Google and the others offer specialty engines to look for news, images, videos and the like. The enhancements in Ask3D will be familiar to those who tested AskX.com, which the company quietly put up in December to try out and preview.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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The search company debuts AskCity, a local search and mapping tool that lets users find neighborhood hangouts and generate custom maps, then use other web services to make reservations, buy tickets or invite friends to mingle. In Monkey Bites.
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An open-source search engine from Wikipedia creator is planned for launch at the end of the year.
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Ask.com enhances its search engine offerings.
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DynamicWebPages.de has a new posting today - an interview with Bjorn Schotte, a founder of the ThinkPHP group.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Union will provide a sizeable amount of money to research groups this year as part of a multiyear program to spur research in new information and communications technologies. More than 2,000 ICT researchers met Thursday in Cologne, Germany, to learn how they can participate in the E.U.'s 7th Framework Program for research and development, with a budget of â¬50 billion ($65 billion) through 2013. ICT research accounts for the lion's share of the framework budget at â¬9.1 billion, with â¬1.2 billion to be allocated this year. The E.U. is keen to fund research in areas where the region has a technological edge, including communications, software systems, networked media, and embedded systems. The European government also hopes to speed innovation in areas where companies in the region could gain a competitive edge, such as next-generation Internet technology. Early E.U. investment in digital mobile communications, the Brussels government is quick to point out, led to the development and worldwide adoption of the GSM standard, the most widely used mobile phone system in the world. Research organizations across Europe are encouraged to establish a research priority, form a consortium, and apply for funding. The E.U., which launched a call for proposals on Dec. 22, will accept proposals through May 8. While researchers team up in Cologne, other partnerships are already taking shape in the ICT area. Under aÂ new strategy for funding technology research announced in November, the E.U. has agreed to pool its vast resources with those from private industry and individual member states in a public-private partnership. The plan calls for technology companies and research institutes to marry their own R&DÂ investments with additional funds from the member states and the E.U. through new Joint Technology Initiatives (JTI). The first JTI, called Artemis, is focused on embedded systems, an area signaled by European ministers as being of strategic importance for Europe's economy. European industry's own research investment in this area is estimated at around â¬15 billion to â¬20 billion per year. Â
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MESAQIN 2005, a conference devoted to quality of service measurements in voice and audio networks, will take place in June in the Czech Republic; the conference will also host a free online discussion forum.
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Hoping to break into the nascent local search market, Ask on Monday introduced AskCity, an application that brings together several different search categories into a single service.
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AMD and Infineon are to spend â¬170m ($200m) between them to build a nanotech research facility. According to a Bloomberg report, the R&amp;D centre will be located in Dresden, Germany, probably not far from
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Ask.com's search engine is sharpening its focus on local results in an attempt to make a bigger splash on the World Wide Web.
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(InfoWorld) - Baidu.com, China's most popular search engine, reportedly plans to announce details of a European expansion later this month. The announcement will be made by Baidu CFO Shawn Wang at a Nasdaq investor conference this month, the U.K.'s Sunday Telegraph newspaper said in an online report. That event, where Wang is a scheduled speaker,will be held in London on June 19. The Sunday Telegraph report did not offer details of Baidu's plans, including when the company planned to launch a European site or what language the site would use. However, the report hinted Baidu's planned site will be targeted at younger Internet users in a bid toÂ compete with GoogleÂ in Europe. Baidu officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Earlier this year, Baidu set up a Japanese search engine, the company'sÂ first foray beyond its home market. Despite plans to spend around $15 million on the Japanese site, most of its early visitors came from China, primarily in search of access to pornography censored by Baidu's Chinese Web site. In response, Chinese Internet censors apparently blocked access to Baidu Japan in April. At the time of writing, Baidu Japan remains unavailable in China.