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<title>Haaze.com / johnydork / Published News</title>
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<pubDate>Thu, 19 May 2011 07:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Ask, by any name, is still a search engine]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ask-by-any-name-is-still-a-search-engine</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ask-by-any-name-is-still-a-search-engine</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 19 May 2011 07:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>johnydork</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ask-by-any-name-is-still-a-search-engine</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Ask has a good search engine. But its community-powered Q&amp;A feature leaves a bit to be desired.(Credit:Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)A new smartphone app for Ask coming out today reflects the service's renewed-again focus on Q&amp;A. Users may have noticed a few weeks ago that the &quot;search&quot; button on the Ask Web site was swapped out for one that says, instead, &quot;Ask.&quot; Nick McCann, Ask's VP of engineering, says the service &quot;got a lift&quot; on queries immediately after making that change.  But by any name, Ask is still a search engine. The new mobile app, which features a Q&amp;A system with a social component, is still better for searches than it is for personal queries. Indeed, when you first use the app to ask a question, it will return answers from its search engine, which includes more than 500 million Q&amp;A pairs from around the Web, according to McCann. As a search app, it's fine, on a level with Google and Bing. It has the nice voice query function that these apps have, too. As query engine, though, I find Ask unimpressive, both on the Web and on a mobile device. The quality of answers is not high. To improve answers, users can join networks of people and &quot;follow&quot; friends to see more answers from people they trust. Users can connect their accounts to Facebook or LinkedIn logins to join up with other Askers they know on those networks. But there's not nearly the same sense of conversation or journalism as you get on a the new hot Q&amp;A site Quora.  One useful feature that McCann promised in future versions but not here yet: location awareness. A geo-locating Q&amp;A app would be able to return targeted and useful results to McCann's sample query, &quot;How long is the line at the Apple store right now&quot; Ultimately the app will know where questions are being asked and be able to push questions to people in the appropriate regions to get good answers. That may elevate the Q&amp;A feature well above where it is now. Ask is two things, one of which is quite good. Its question-based search engine is strong and worth using. But as a community-powered Q&amp;A site, it has a lot of growing still to do.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft prepping 17 patches for 64 holes]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-prepping-17-patches-for-64-holes</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-prepping-17-patches-for-64-holes</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>johnydork</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-prepping-17-patches-for-64-holes</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Microsoft will release 17 bulletins next week to fix 64 vulnerabilities across a swath of products including Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer, the company said in its Patch Tuesday preview. Of the bulletins, nine are rated &quot;critical&quot; and eight are &quot;important,&quot; the company said in a TechNet blog post today.  In addition to all versions of Windows' IE6, IE7, andIE8' numerous versions of Office for Windows and theMac, affected software includes Visual Studio .NET and Visual C++, according to the advisory.  &quot;This month we'll be closing some issues that Microsoft has already previously spoken to, including the SMB Browser (Critical) issue publicly disclosed Feb. 15. Microsoft assessed the situation and reported that although the vulnerability could theoretically allow Remote Code Execution, that was extremely unlikely. To this day, we have seen no evidence of attacks,&quot; the company said in its blog post.  &quot;We are also planning a fix for the MHTML vulnerability in Windows, rated Important,&quot; the post said. &quot;We alerted people to this issue with Security Advisory 2501696 (including a Fix-It that fully protected customers once downloaded) back in late January. In March, we updated the advisory to let people know we were aware of limited, targeted attacks.&quot;  The release represents a large number of bulletins and vulnerabilities addressed at one time for Microsoft. The company issued 17 bulletins in December and plugged a record 49 holes in October.  &quot;Microsoft is planning to release 17 bulletins and a whopping 64 CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) this month, a new CVE record,&quot; said Andrew Storms, director of security for nCircle. &quot;That seems like a huge number of bugs but it's actually about what we expected. Ever since the middle of last year Microsoft's bulletin releases generally hit double digits every other month.&quot; <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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