TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

If you needed any more proof of just how large and important social networking has become, the following bit of news should convince you. When you think of online video, sites like YouTube and Hulu probably come to mind, but you should add Facebook to that list. The social networking giant is ranked number three for video streams worldwide, according to research by Nielsen.

The firm looked at statistics for various video sites in October, and YouTube came out as the top provider. They had a monumental 6.6 billion streams delivered, which put their closest competitor to shame -- Hulu netted around 632 million streams. Surprisingly, however, the number three spot went to Facebook, who served 217 million videos. Further, Nielsen found that the amount of time actually spent on Facebook for the purpose of viewing videos increased a massive 1,840% over the past year. That surpassed the growth in online video viewing as a whole, which roughly doubled.

The speculation is that Facebook has evolved beyond social networking, and is instead morphing into a media hub. Nielsen may be right, and with hundreds of millions of subscribers already, Facebook has the userbase to try nearly any service they want.

Sony is reportedly gearing up to launch an online portal for digital entertainment. The new store, named Sony Online Service, will sell music, movies, and books along with other downloadable applications for mobile gadgets. The company's new service will enter into a competitive market, with Apple's iTunes and many other digital content providers.

The Sony Online Service will bring much needed change to the company's portfolio. Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer has sought after a software strategy since taking over in mid-2006, and analysts believe the company has been too focused on hardware, saying "it has to focus on networked products [and] delivering digital entertainment to consumers."

Sony hasn't disclosed any hard details, but the Sony Online Service is supposedly going to be based on the PlayStation Network. The service is also expected to allow users to upload content, such as videos or images, and Sony may let third-party developers create apps for the store.

The Mozilla Foundation has revealed some financial figures from last year, showing 5% rise in revenue to $79 million during 2008. Much of that money came from the foundation's search ad deal with Google, which currently lasts through 2011.

Unfortunately, that growth has tapered off dramatically in the last couple of years. For comparison, in 2007 the Mozilla Foundation reported $75 million in revenue, a 12% increase over 2006. Mozilla chairperson Mitchell Baker goes into much greater depth on her blog, if you are interested.

Dollars aside, Mozilla's Firefox has steadily climbed to the world's second most used Web browser, chipping away at Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Firefox currently holds approximately one quarter of the global market share, and recently surpassed IE6, the most used version of Internet Explorer.

In somewhat related news, a rumor sprouted today which suggests that Sony may have plans to use Firefox on its PlayStation 3 console. The move is surely welcomed by most, as the PS3's built-in browser is considered to be less reliable and accurate at handling websites than a desktop-grade browser.

Computer giant Dell took a huge hit in profit for the previous quarter, following a slump in sales. Overall, Dell says their profit has been cut by more than half, falling 54% below the previous quarter. The largest losses have primarily come from enterprise and business customers, which represent the bulk of Dell's profitable sales.

Companies simply have lower budgets for new technology, and that has affected Dell's loss more than increased competition from the market leaders, HP and Acer. The bad news also set Dell stocks back a bit, falling about 19 cents a share, though they are still doing better than they were in the first quarter of this year. While they may not be a bulk of the issue, Acer has been putting incredible pressure on both them and HP, so it's understandable that Dell is struggling.

Dell does have a lot on the horizon though, introducing several new products this year, such as the Inspiron Zino HD nettop and the ultra-thin Adamo XPS. Still, they will have to work harder than that to recover ground lost to Acer and HP.

Research outfit comScore has released the US search engine rankings for October 2009. During the month, Americans conducted some 14.3 billion core searches, the majority of which (9.4 billion) were through Google, which held 65.4% of the search market, up from 64.9% in September. Yahoo served some 2.6 billion searches, trailed by Microsoft with 1.4 billion, Ask with 552 million, and AOL with 412 million.


It was a rough month for Google's closest competitor, Yahoo, which accounted for some 18% of the search market share, a 0.8% loss from the month prior. Microsoft sites grew 0.5%, making up 9.9% of the search market -- a noteworthy increase, though Redmond is surely bummed about not chipping any figures away from Google's presence. Meanwhile, Ask remained flat at 3.9%, and AOL lost 0.1%, settling with 2.9% of the market.

Microsoft's re-imagined search engine is doing rather well for itself, following recent indications that it has managed to take nearly ten percent of the market in the U.S. That puts it well above competitors like AOL, and much closer to the number two player, Yahoo, who has been struggling and slowly slipping since the start of the year. The latter is not necessarily bad news for Yahoo, as they already have tied themselves to Microsoft and Bing.

To Microsoft's dismay, Bing's gains aren't coming at Google's expense. The search giant held on vigorously to their share, climbing since the beginning of the year and holding on to more than 65% of all Internet searches in the U.S. Bing's growth is coming largely due to Yahoo's loss, which tells us that most people who are hooked on Google are not switching.

Even if Microsoft has something going good for it with Bing, it's not yet enough to entice Google users to jump ship. Microsoft is likely now pushing for more integration and "default search provider" deals with other software companies. Google capitalized on that with things like Firefox, which definitely helped bolster their share.

Microsoft' strategy from here isn't clear. They have a lot to consider, especially if they truly want to erode Google's share. Advertising deals seem likely, though the larger issue is convincing people that Bing has something better to offer than Google.

A newly discovered flaw in the Flash suite could put both users and servers at risk, according to some recent reports. Adobe has verified the hole, which lies inside any Flash-based application that allows people to upload their own content. Though some details are omitted, the flaw would allow someone to upload a malicious Flash object to a site, which in turn would be downloaded and processed by people visiting the site. According to one security expert, any site relying on user uploads through Flash could be vulnerable.

Adobe is contending that it is not entirely their issue. Other active scripting could also be made vulnerable, such as JavaScript or Silverlight, along with any site that relies on these to provide a mechanism for users to upload files. Because of that, Adobe said the problem is not fixable through a Flash update. Instead, it is on the shoulders of administrators whose servers use Flash. Adobe also suggests it is the responsibility of app developers to be security-minded and prevent this sort of thing from happening.

This isn't the first severe flash flaw to emerge this year. Only a few months ago, a "critical" vulnerability was discovered and published. Earlier in the year, Adobe was tackling a host of other security issues with Flash as well. This newly-discovered vulnerability could prove to be the worst yet -- and it doesn't help that Adobe is claiming the flaw is "unpatchable". A solution must be discovered, but it may be something that has to happen on a developer, browser or OS level instead of through Flash.

It wasn't all that long ago when YouTube moved past the grainy, low-resolution limitations they started with and began offering "High Quality" video streaming. With high-speed broadband becoming ubiquitous and capable of supporting higher quality streams, people want more -- and Google is set to deliver. Starting next week, YouTube will begin offering the ability to upload and stream 1080p resolution videos, making fullscreen YouTube a pleasing possibility.

Users have already delivered 1080p content to YouTube, but it has always been re-encoded to be scaled down. Rather than make users go back and re-upload anything, YouTube is going to automatically sort through their entire library and bump up any content that is 1080p to the full viewing experiencing, upgrading from the existing maximum of 720p.

Though not all of their over one billion videos served up each day are going to be in high quality, it does bring to mind how they plan on making money with ever-increasing bandwidth costs. That is, without charging people for the service.

Google is bringing a significant update to the free Latitude application, a location-awareness app available for many mobile devices. The update will allow people to track everywhere they've been, and how long they stayed in each location. Coupled with Google Maps or Google Earth integration, it even lets people "replay" a trip they took.

Before foul cries of "big brother" begin to run rampant, it's important to note that Google, at least currently, only makes this information available to the individual user. Further, it is something you actually have to enable manually on a device that has Latitude installed. Unless you make it a habit to give others your smartphone, the feature is unlikely to be turned on accidentally. You also have the option of deleting your history later on.

However, privacy advocates will undoubtedly raise concerns over potential uses of this technology in company-provided equipment or instances where someone doesn't know they are being tracked. Still, Google's inclusion of Latitude's new feature is coming primarily at the behest of user requests -- and what the people want, the people get (according to Google).

The beta "Location Alerts" feature is also included, which allows your "Latitude Friends" to flag you down through alerts. The idea is to prevent someone from constantly checking Latitude to see if friends are nearby, and instead have their phone issue a reminder. It's staggering to think of the amount of data analysis required to make this work on your phone, but it does -- and it's free to try, if you so wish.

This week marks an important milestone for Mozilla, who is celebrating five years since the initial release of Firefox. Version 1.0 made its debut on November 9th, 2004, seeking to replace the Mozilla browser with a lighter, quicker alternative. It soon became clear that Firefox wouldn't be up against just Mozilla's own software, but also a direct competitor of Internet Explorer -- and for the first time since Microsoft ousted Netscape Navigator, a third party browser proved to be a serious contender on the desktop space. That fight is still ongoing, Firefox holding on to varying degrees of market share ranging from a quarter to a half of the entire market based on where you are looking.

Originally a branch of the Mozilla SeaMonkey suite, Firefox's initial intentions were to avoid the bloat and feature creep of browsers at the time. Keeping in tune with the original Mozilla browser, Firefox was built with cross-platform functionality and extensibility in mind. The latter played a huge part in Firefox's success with the sheer number of browser extensions available for Firefox being staggering.

Five years after launch, Firefox has made a name for itself and earned a reputable position as the number two browser in the world. Only time will tell if Firefox has the staying power to remain on top (or close to the top), and whether or not Microsoft can out-gun Mozilla as the evolution of browsers continue. Given that the nature of the Internet is likely to be vastly different five or ten years from now, it's hard to say for certain if any software we use today will still be around.

Earlier this week, Google announced it had agreed to purchase mobile display advertising firm AdMob, for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the $750 million range. Well, apparently the shopping spree didn't stop there as the search giant is now putting down another $30 million for VoIP provider Gizmo5, which employs the SIP protocol to allow users to place calls over the internet.

Google has yet to formally announce the buyout, but many industry watchers think it is a done deal. If true, the acquisition could potentially provide integration across the company's communications tools, like Google Talk and Google Voice, which would result in users being able to make and receive calls to landlines and mobile phones.

It would also see Google compete directly with established VoIP call providers, such as Skype. Besides potentially turning the Google Voice platform into a more robust communications offering, recently leaked documents suggest the company may take the service global shortly.

One of the primary reasons many people initially switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox in the early days was security. Internet Explorer has often been ridiculed as one of the least secure browser platforms around, and several years back that was most likely true. ActiveX was considered by many to be a dangerous technology, and Firefox enjoyed a substantial user growth in part due to that.

A recent study by a security vendor offers another, more updated perspective on browser security. Research conducted by Cenzic earned Firefox the number one spot in 2009 for total security vulnerabilities reported, taking a 44% stake all around. That was put in comparison to Apple's Safari, which had 35%, and Internet Explorer, which weighed in at a meager 15%.

At first glance, you might question the numbers. Is Cenzic a reputable source? How were those figures derived, and how do they compare to previous years? All are fair questions. One of the reasons cited was Firefox's ability to foster plugins. Arguably one of the best features Firefox has to offer, plugins also pose an interesting challenge to security. Most plugins are crafted by third parties, and the approval process for them doesn't generally worry about security concerns.

The safeguards in place can't protect people from writing insecure code in the first place, so a lot of it may be out of Mozilla's hands. Mozilla is well aware of this problem, of course, and has been working for quite a while on improving the state of security in third party plugins.

Cenzic also noted that just because Firefox had more reported vulnerabilities, it wasn't necessarily less secure. Mozilla has fixed or disclosed many of the bugs discovered by the group. Further, there's no breakdown of how many of those reported flaws could result in system compromise, or how many were just annoyances.

Given the very public nature of Firefox development, I wouldn't call this news as a setback to Firefox at all -- or even bad news. I take it as an encouraging sign that Mozilla is very actively developing Firefox, and tackling security issues nonstop.

Google announced today that it has agreed to acquire the mobile display advertising startup AdMob for some $750 million in stock. Founded in 2006, the AdMob is a mobile advertising marketplace that connects advertisers with mobile publishers.

The deal comes as Google looks to decrease its reliance on desktop Internet ads, where growth is waning. AdMob has been a hit with advertisers interested in the mobile arena, and has benefited from the popularity of devices like Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry handsets. The US mobile ad market is expected to reach $2 billion to $3 billion by 2013, up from less than $1 billion now, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Data from Morgan Stanley shows that iPhone and Android users browse the Web more than anyone else, and have contributed to Google's five-fold mobile search growth over the past two years. Users of those popular smartphones spend an average of nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices. Google says that while mobile usage has taken off, the mobile Web is still in its infancy.

The company believes this deal will benefit publishers of mobile websites and applications, as well as advertisers. The former can look forward to better products and tools as well as more effective monetization of their content, and the latter can expect the deal to bring better, more relevant ads and greater reach. Meanwhile, users will gain access to ads that deliver more useful information.

Looking to alleviate growing concerns from privacy advocates around the globe, Google has launched a new service that's designed to show its users how much the search giant knows about their individual online activities. Dubbed Dashboard, the service provides information about the several Google products the account-holder might use, from which YouTube videos have been viewed to details of their Gmail conversations.

The search history tab, for example, shows the last several queries performed from that Google account. Users can simply peruse the information, adjust their privacy settings or delete some of their stored data. Google hopes that by consolidating information relative to their services in a single place people will also rediscover accounts that they had forgotten about -- I for one just closed an Orkut account that was never used.

The new service should provide users with greater transparency and control over their data. However, while much of the concern about Google's data storage practices revolves around how and what exactly the company does to analyze and profit from user information, Dashboard offers little insight into that. More details on Google Dashboard can be found in a blog entry here.

Last month, Netflix announced that they'd be adding a new piece of hardware to the growing list of gadgets that support Netflix streaming. That device was none other than the PlayStation 3, a suitable choice for growth given that Netflix is already supported on the Xbox 360. The only really surprising aspect of the whole affair was the timeline Netflix put forth, and as of tomorrow many PS3 owners who are also Netflix subscribers will be receiving the installation disc to make this all possible.

If you're a Netflix subscriber and asked for a disc, Netflix has already mailed them out, and will get into most people's hands by tomorrow. The PS3 will then join the Xbox 360, the Roku, TiVo DVRs, some standalone Blu-ray players and of course the PC as devices which can access streaming video through Netflix.

Netflix claimed recently that nearly half of their subscribers have used the streaming service within the past three months. That's a substantial amount, which is good news for those that pay for the service -- it means that Netflix will no doubt have a keen interest in expanding it.

Though the online movie market is still arguably in its infancy, Netflix clearly has a huge advantage over existing and potential competitors, such as Amazon and Hulu.

October 2009's browser stats are in, and while Microsoft's Internet Explorer still lead the pack, IE6 has finally been surpassed by Firefox. Internet Explorer continued its descent, losing 1.07% browser share (from 65.71% to 64.64%), Firefox's share grew .32%, from 23.75% to 24.07%, Safari's share rose .18% to 4.42%, and Chrome furthered its lead on Opera, with the former gaining .41% (from 3.17% to 3.58%) and the latter declining .02% (from 2.19% to 2.17%).


IE6 is still accounted for some 23.3% of total Internet Explorer usage -- more than any other version. IE7 claimed 18.16%, IE8 18.12% and IE8 compatibility mode had 2.42%. Firefox 3.5 has taken off, accounting for 13.9% of all Firefox use, version 3.0 was attributed with 8.79%, and Firefox 2.0 only held a 1.14% sliver. Safari 4.0 (3.52%) and Chrome 3.0 (3.14%) are almost entirely responsible for their individual shares.

BitTorrent Inc. is preparing to launch a redesigned implementation of the BitTorrent protocol that could benefit both ISPs and users. Internet providers have long been interested in having a tighter grasp on bandwidth consumption, so heavy users of P2P networks are a natural enemy. Many providers throttle BitTorrent connections by arguing that they affect the speed of other traffic.

Recognizing this, BitTorrent Inc. has been working on a solution that should please both the throttlers and the throttlees. BitTorrent 2.0 -- or "uTP" -- supposedly senses congestion by calculating the time it takes for packets to reach their destination. If a major delay is detected, the protocol automatically adjusts upload or download speeds.

This new feature is present in uTorrent v2.0 beta, and according to BitTorrent VP of product management Simon Morris, a couple hundred thousand people are already using the client. Would you be ok with running a uTP-enabled torrent client, and do you think this will get service providers off the backs of heavy downloaders?

Facebook has been awarded $711 million in damages against spammer Sanford Wallace for bombarding the social networking with phony wall posts and messages. The so-called “Spam King” was sued in February along with Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw for allegedly obtaining login credentials for other users' accounts, and sending out links to phishing sites and other websites that paid spammers for referrals.

While Facebook isn't expecting to receive the full amount of the massive award, the company says they'll work hard to get everything they can and hope this will serve as a deterrent to all spammers. In addition to the damages, Judge Jeremy Fogel of U.S. District Court in Northern California's San Jose division referred Wallace for prosecution of criminal contempt of court, which means he could face jail time.

This isn't the first time Wallace has been targeted and fined. In May 2008, he was found guilty of violating the CAN-SPAM act and was ordered to pay $230 million for spamming and phishing on MySpace. Wallace was also hit with a nice $4 million fine from the FTC in 2006 and has faced numerous other suits in between.

Microsoft and Yahoo have postponed finalizing their search deal, according to an October 28 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The companies intended to complete the deal by October 27, but have apparently run into some issues. "Given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some details to be finalized," said the filing, adding that both parties are working as quickly as possible to reach agreements, and have made good progress to date.

The pending deal was first announced in July, and will see Microsoft's Bing as the exclusive search provider for Yahoo's sites. While a delay may seem like bad news, Yahoo and Microsoft have plenty of time to sort things out. An initial roll-out isn't slated until next year at some point, and it has been said that full implementation won't occur until at least 24 months after regulatory approval. The companies are now looking to close the deal by early 2010.

With the holiday shopping season almost underway, Amazon has launched a new payment system it hopes will make it simpler for customers to make online purchases on partner sites. The PayPhrase service works by keeping credit card information, shipping address and shipping preferences on record, and letting online shoppers invoke this information via a phrase and four-digit PIN of their own choosing.

While having to remember multiple customized phrases instead of just entering card numbers seems overly complicated, Amazon believes it will actually make your life easier and online shopping more flexible. For starters, it will allow users buy items without having to give critical information to third-party sites, while eliminating a few steps from the check out process -- you just need to click on the PayPhrase button, enter the phrase and four-digit PIN, and upon confirmation the purchase is automatically sent to the associated address.

PayPhrase also allows parents to set monthly allowances and preview and approve purchases for their credit card-less kids. It supports subscription payments and charity donations as well. For merchants, the obvious advantage is being able to incorporate Amazon’s proven checkout system into their own sites. The feature currently works for U.S. users with both Amazon and Amazon partner sites like Buy.com and J&R Electronics.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- ICANN for short -- is reportedly in the final stages of a plan that will allow the use of Web addresses with non-Latin characters. First approved last year, the plan will allow for domain names to be written in Asian, Arabic and other characters from various languages.

The group intends to finish the plans on Friday and said, "This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented 40 years ago." The new concept will roll out sometime in the middle of 2010, but applications for non-Latin domain names will be open next month. ICANN president Rod Beckstrom noted that of today's 1.6 billion Internet users, more than half use languages that have scripts which are not Latin-based.

Along with the multilingual web addresses, ICANN says that addresses ending in ".bank" will be reserved for authorized banks.

Google Voice is a free service that lets users combine work, home, mobile and any other phone under a single number for all of their incoming and outgoing communications. Among its highlights are free SMS messages and cheap long distance calls, as well as automated voicemail transcriptions, conference calling, and advanced call screening features.

The service has been getting plenty of buzz around the web, and rightly so. Its main drawback is that signing up for an account required you to pick a new phone number, and then pass that number around to everyone who’s likely to call you in order for it to be effective. That is no longer the case, however, as Google has now enabled users to keep their existing phone numbers and get some of the features Google Voice offers.

Going for this "lite" version will basically give you access to international calling and Google’s voicemail service -- including the ability to have them transcribed and placed online for later review or sharing with others. Meanwhile those using the Google-provided number will retain the full array of features that come with the service. The company has published a help page explaining the differences between the two options.

The service is still not widely available to the public. If you're not yet using Google Voice, you can request access here or ask a friend with a Google Voice account to send you an invitation.

A few months ago it was revealed that Yahoo had sealed the fate of GeoCities, one of the pioneers of the emerging Internet years ago. Fifteen years of service came to a halt when Yahoo told everyone still using the service that it would be shutting down, encouraging them to move on to something better. Now, true to their word, Yahoo has finally pulled the plug on the free web-hosting service. Where the Geocities homepage once stood, Yahoo has substitute a placeholder that confirms today as the final day for service.

The shutdown date has been available for some time, giving anyone who was still relying on the service a chance to fetch any data they wanted and make plans to move on. There's no mention of just how many people still used the service, though I imagine it wasn't very many. Numbers aside, there's still a feeling of nostalgia I get when thinking about GeoCities. For many of us, it was one of the most common first experiences on the Internet, and was one of the first services that ever tried to cater to neophyte web users who wanted to make a name for themselves.

Yahoo is offering to migrate any existing users over to their hosted services. Their disposal of GeoCities is part of their greater plan to improve company profits, which has been an important concern after a series of failed mergers and service cuts.

Nine million PlayStation 3 owners in the United States will now have the option of streaming movies and TV shows from Netflix's online catalog as long as they are subscribers, of course. Just last week we reported that Netflix enjoyed of strong Q3 financials and that a non-US streaming service was being planned for 2010. The company claims it has over 11 million subscribers in the US.

Although the "Watch Instantly" streaming service got off to a slow start with a very limited library, most recently the company stated that 42% of its subscribers had used the streaming service in the last quarter. In addition to the PC, the PS3 joins the leagues of other consumer electronics devices that already supported Netflix's service including Microsoft's Xbox 360, Roku set-top boxes, TiVo DVRs, and a number of Blu-ray players.

The PS3 Netflix application is expected to become available next month.

During the recent OnScreen Media Summit, News Corp. exec Chase Carey made it known that users of Hulu can expect to pony up for some content by next year. "I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content," Carey said.

He added, "I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value...Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business." Carey was later asked when Hulu would begin charging, to which he replied that there was no concrete timeframe, but that 2010 seemed likely.


While it seems inevitable that Hulu will adopt some form of subscription model, Carey and others suggest that not all content will be behind a pay wall -- which could indicate some form of tiered access. One thing is certain though, the majority of Hulu's appeal stems from the fact that it is ad-supported, and otherwise free.

Will you resort to some other method of obtaining content for free (such as torrents) if Hulu starts charging? Will another service rise in Hulu's place?

Mozilla has announced a new open-source, experimental communication platform called Raindrop. Built around the idea that "email isn’t fun anymore," the service is meant to act as a mini Web server to fetch your conversations from different sources (email, social networks, blogs and more) and then intelligently sort them so that personal messages "bubble up" while minor messages and notifications are pushed to the sidelines.

The idea is to separate emails from people you actually know or conversations in blogs and social networks you may want to participate in from, say, online promotions, countless newsletters and Facebook notifications.

It shares some similarities with Google Wave in its attempt to re-imagine web communications from the ground up and the ability to extend functionality through an open API -- thus many are already calling it a competitor. However, from what I can understand looking at this video, Raindrop is more about streamlining conversations and making sense of the huge influx of messages coming our way, whereas Google Wave seems to focus more on facilitating real-time collaboration within a (preferably modest-sized) group of people.

Both products are still at a very early stage so it will be interesting to see what parallels might emerge between the two besides using modern JavaScript libraries and CSS. For now Raindrop is only available to developers, but if you know your way around Python, you can download the code to start tinkering with it.

Update: In a blog post, Google also announced an agreement with Twitter that will also include real-time updates from the micro-blogging service in Google's search results. Google says it is looking to launch a tweet-filled search product in the coming months.

Original story: Microsoft has reportedly agreed to a deal that will include real-time updates from Twitter and Facebook in Bing's search results. The non-exclusive arrangement may pose a threat to Google, which dominates the search market. For the first time, data will be available through Bing that is not present in Google's search results -- that may change, however. Both Twitter and Facebook are supposedly talking with Google to arrange a similar deal.

According to AllThingsD the integration won't occur for a few weeks -- possibly months. In the meantime, Redmond launched a beta page today, which shows popular topics on Twitter, and Facebook update feeds are to be added at a later date. During a demonstration, the latest incarnation of the company's search engine was called "Bing Wave 2," and was said to be about real-time information.

When asked whether the real-time Twitter feed would influence actual Bing results, Microsoft's vice president of online services, Qi Lu, said "This is just the beginning. There's a lot of signal from Twitter, but the signal is still evolving. We can use them to augment today’s search experience, but it’s very early to say what we want to do with this." Lu also hinted at other possible deals with Twitter.

Google is reportedly on the verge of launching a new search product rumored to be called "OneBox" that will better organize results around music artists with background information, song previews, graphics, videos and more. The company will not become a music retailer or host any content itself, however, but rather stream songs from Lala.com, MySpace-owned iLike.com and other services.

Google’s music search service is expected to be officially announced next week and will include music from all four major labels. Further details remain sketchy at this point. As far as I can tell, Google will just be making it easier to find music that's legally available elsewhere on the web (and probably make some revenue-sharing deals) instead of directly competing with Apple’s iTunes and similar services -- sort of like Yahoo has been doing with RealNetworks’ Rhapsody.

Regardless, the idea sounds like an important (if not late) step into music for Google that should help it harness more traffic from music fans looking for information on artists.

Google reported its third quarter earnings this week, marking the search giant's largest-ever profit. Google's quarterly net income rose 27% to $1.64 billion ($5.13 per share) from $1.29 billion ($4.06 a share) a year ago, beating analyst's expectations. Revenue climbed 7% to $5.94 billion -- 53% of which came from outside the US.

The company's sales rose 7% to $5.94 billion, hinting at a growth in demand for online advertising, which many see as a sign of economic recovery. Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, offered his take on the economy saying, "While there is a lot of uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future."

Being at the heart of the Internet's largest advertising network (and the Web itself), Google's search engine is often considered a barometer for e-commerce. The company's number of paid clicks (including those on Google and partner sites), rose 4% on quarter, and 14% on year. The average amount paid per click increased by about 5% from the previous quarter, but was down 6% from last year.

Amazon has introduced a new same-day delivery service for customers in select cities and areas. The e-commerce company will offer their new "Local Express Delivery" option to customers in Baltimore, Boston, Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and Washington, as well as some surrounding areas. It will expand to Chicago, Indianapolis, and Phoenix in the coming months.

Naturally, this comes at a cost. Amazon Prime members (those who pay $79 per year to receive unlimited two-day shipping), will have to pay $5.99 per item for the service. Regular old non-Prime customers can expect to pay $15 or more, and can view a full rate chart here. Along with the additional expense, all customers must place their orders by a defined cutoff time, which ranges from 10AM to 1PM depending on the city -- regardless of membership status.

Amazon has also expanded its Saturday Delivery options, which means that items ordered with two-day shipping before the cutoff time Thursday will be delivered on Saturday instead of Monday. This is an extension of the standard two-day option, making it free for Prime members, and the usual price for everyone else. Saturday Delivery is also available for orders placed before the cutoff on Fridays at a cost of $6.99 per item for Prime members, and other customers will have to pay $3 on top of standard overnight shipping rates.