Web metrics firm Hitwise has released its figures for the U.S. Internet search market during April 2010, and has found that Google picked up two percent of the search market compared to March…and Microsoft’s Bing lost the same among. Bing wasn’t the only loser, though: Yahoo saw its share dip one percent, and Ask.com saw a proportionately huge drop in its share month-to-month: down 37 percent.
According to Hitwise, Google accounted for 71.40 percent of U.S. Internet searches during April, up from 69.97 percent in March. Yahoo remains the number-two search destination, with a 14.96 percent share of the market, down from 15.04 in March. Bing, conversely accounted for 9.43 percent during April, down from 9.62 percent during March. Ask.com saw its share drop from 3.44 percent of the market in March to 2.18 percent in April.
Hitwise also finds that U.S. search traffic tends to be of the two-word variety: some 23.06 percent of all search queries were two-word searches. One-word searches dropped one percent during the month, where queries for three to eight words were flat from March 2010.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.