Yahoo may be dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on its ten-year search deal with Microsoft, but the company apparently isn’t giving up on enhancing its own search capabilities: Reuters and other industry sources are reporting that Yahoo is conducting tests with OneRiot and a handful of other potential partners to add real-time results to its Internet search feature.
Real-time searches focus on the so-called “social Web”—services like Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Digg, YouTube, and blogs—to provide a picture of what Internet users (and various online communities) are buzzing about at any given moment. Real-time searches have proven to be more valuable than conventional search engines when tracking events in real-time, whether breaking news in a particular area (like an earthquake, political protests, or major public events) as well as site- and place-specific events like concerts, sporting events, and even traffic.
Last month, both Microsoft and Google announced enhancements to their search technology that would make Twitter posts available to their search engines.
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.