We thought he’d been retired and sent off to an old people’s home to be looked after by kindly searchbots, but Ask has brought back Jeeves in an attempt to claw back some market share from the all dominating Google.
Named after PG Wodehouse’s fact-stuffed, smartarse butler, Jeeves formed the face of Ask’s search engine until 2006 when he was unceremoniously booted off after an interface overhaul.
Continue reading Ask Jeeves Returns As Search Engine Battles Against Google
The UK’s Information Commissioner has ruled that Google’s Street View is not a threat to privacy after mulling over an official appeal by privacy campaigners, Privacy International.
Launched in the UK last month, the nifty add-on to Google Maps and Google Earth lets users view an unfurling panorama of pannable, zoomable street-level photographs of major streets and cities.
Continue reading Google Street View Gets OK; EU To Sue UK Over Privacy
Following the piece we wrote on AudioBoo, there’s been a development.
Mark Rock, CEO of Best Before, told us that they have a new service in Beta that lets any phone – not just iPhones, as is currently the case – call in to leave a Boo. They’re playing with the name PhoneBoo to describe it.
UK Channel 4 has finally sorted out their video catch-up service.
Channel 4 previously only offered 4oD which only ran on PCs running Windows, because it uses Microsoft’s DRM.
Well done to the Best Before team who are behind AudioBoo, they’re really building user numbers and adding features.
AudioBoo, if you haven’t come across it already, lets you record and post audio entries from your iPhone. These messages live on AudioBoo and can be integrated into your own blogs – giving you an audio blog post.
An official appeal by privacy campaigners has been made to the Information Commissioner’s Office to close down Google’s UK Street View service.
Launched in Britain last week, Street View serves up pannable, zoomable street-level photo views of major cities, allowing curious punters to take virtual strolls around towns and have a good nosey about.
Continue reading Privacy International Calls For Google Street View To Be Closed
BT has unfurled their list of locations which will be first to enjoy connectivity to their forthcoming high speed fibre network.
The first 29 exchanges will hook up around 500,000 homes and businesses during the initial rollout, with the bods at BT expecting work to be underway by early next year.
Well done to Cadbury (well known UK chocolate maker) for committing to take their Dairy Milk chocolate to be Fairtrade certified from Autumn 2009.
Their approach to releasing the information is also refreshing – they’re carrying out a live webcast as we speak/type at Cadbury Live.
Cadbury is also opening themselves up to questions from the public, while the live webcast is going on.
All good news, but quite quaint to see that incoming questions are being read from a piece of paper rather than the expected laptop screen.
Thanks to for alerting us to this.
When it comes to facts, stats and figures, you can always rely on research house Forrester Research to serve ’em up by the plateful, and their bods have just unleashed their white-coated bods on the matter of online UK retail and travel sales.
Continue reading Online Retail UK Sales To Hit £56bn by 2014
A new UK based survey has found that nearly half of web users have used illegal file sharing sites to help themselves to free content.
A study involving over 1,000 consumers by Tiscali.co.uk and music site DrownedinSound (DiS) found that 46% of users had used peer-to-peer sites (P2P), with Limewire (34%) and BitTorrent (25%) being the most popular.
Continue reading Nearly Half Of UK Web Users Have Illegally Downloaded Music