InternetMicrosoft pursues search improvements, sans Yahoo (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld - While the company only has a 10 percent share of the search market with its Live Search technology, Microsoft has big plans to enhance its platform regardless of what happens with its now-dormant proposal to buy Yahoo.

San Francisco - While the company only has a 10 percent share of the search market with its Live Search technology, Microsoft has big plans to enhance its platform regardless of what happens with its now-dormant proposal to buy Yahoo. At the Search Engine Strategies 2008 conference in San Jose, Calif. on Tuesday, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, vice president of the company's search, portal, and advertising platform group, discussed the company's goals for search but did not want to talk about the company's Yahoo plan. "At this point we're focused on building our organic strategy," Nadella said when asked about Microsoft's current interest in Yahoo. Nadella emphasized that search has become easy but there is room for improvement. "The ability to talk to a search engine is perhaps the simplest it's ever been," Nadella said, adding that search has become a $15 billion market in the United States. More than 50 percent of search sessions are more than 30 minutes long, Nadella said. The questions now are whether search will change and improve, he said. Nadella cited three trends affecting search: user intent and the ability to understand user intent better; content and context and the ability to understand these better and drive individual search experiences and, lastly, what is the frontier for advertising efficiency and yield for publishers. "Those are the three things that I believe are going to cause search to... [ Read more on www.yahoo.com ]

InternetFriendster supports applications for rival sites (AP)

AP - Friendster, an early online social network that has faded in the United States but remains strong in Asia, has begun letting programmers create photo-sharing applications and other programs that work on Friendster as well as rival sites.

InternetPCI Standard Widened for Better Security

Laptops, iPods and better wireless encryption.