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Q&A search site Quora opens to everyone

A new search site is hoping it has the winning answer.

Launched to the public on Monday, Quora is a Q&A site where people can ask and answer questions among a community of fellow users. The site falls into the broad category of "social search," relying directly on other people for information rather than database-generated search results.

The goal of the site is to help users grab information they can't easily locate through a traditional search engine such as Google. Users will find not only direct answers to questions but also opinions, advice, and recommendations.… Read more

Get a free .com domain name registration

You know me: I like free. Domain registrations aren't exactly pricey (many places will set you up for under $10), but when I can get one for nothing, well, I'll take it.

If you're looking to carve out your own personal corner of the Web, start a new business, set up an e-mail address for life, that kind of thing, 1&1 Internet is offering a free one-year .com domain registration.

Yep, free. This is good for new domains only, not renewals, and it's limited to one per customer. After the first year, you'll … Read more

Groupon crosses Atlantic, buys Euro 'clone'

One way to deal with all of those pesky competitors in the online daily-deals market is to buy them. And likewise, one way to expand overseas is to acquire the European version of yourself.

Both apparently made sense to Groupon, which announced Sunday that it has acquired European-based CityDeal, "the world's largest Groupon clone," as it was described in a press release.

"That means we're operating in 18 countries, 140 cities, and we have over 900 employees in about a dozen offices across two continents," Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason, said in a … Read more

Tip: When troubleshooting, sometimes it's the unexpected

Sometimes when troubleshooting aspects of programs or OS features, we may assume some things are not related to the problem we are experiencing, either by dismissing them or more commonly by just overlooking them as a potential contributor to the problem at hand.… Read more

Poll: More people using government Web sites

Did you renew your driver's license or pay your last parking ticket online? If so, you're part of a growing number of people in the U.S. taking advantage of government services on the Internet.

A poll of more then 2,000 American adults late last year found that 82 percent of Internet users, or 61 percent of all U.S. adults, looked up information or made a transaction on a government Web site in the past year. The results of the poll, conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and released Tuesday, also discovered that … Read more

Microsoft to fix IE8 cross-site scripting problem, again

Microsoft will plug a hole in a built-in filter in Internet Explorer 8 that can be used to launch the very types of attacks on Web sites it was designed to help prevent, the company said on Tuesday.

The company will update the IE cross-site scripting (XSS) filter in June to fix a hole that researchers warned about at the Black Hat Europe conference in Barcelona last week. The researchers showed how problems with the filter could be used to inject malicious code onto sites including Google, Microsoft's Bing search site, and Twitter.

"A June release is what'… Read more

Google adds site speed to search mix

Google's famous recipe for determining how sites get ranked in search results has a new ingredient: site speed.

Two of Google's top search engineers--Google Fellow Amit Singhal and principal engineer Matt Cutts--announced the addition Friday, after hinting it would be coming for several months. It's actually been live for a few weeks, they said in a blog post Friday, and Google is using a variety of components to ascertain how much faster one Web page responds compared to another.

In general, one of Google's operating philosophies is that faster is better. It's not just them, … Read more

Watch Flash content only when you want

ClickToFlash is a free plug-in for Safari that can--in the words of the developers--"block evil Adobe Flash...the scourge of the Web." Indeed, ClickToFlash does an excellent job of blocking unwanted Flash video while still letting you watch Flash when you want to, which can result in better browser performance, fewer crashes, cooler running temperatures (and hence lass fan noise), and in the case of laptops, longer battery usage (in both the short term and over the life of a battery).

ClickToFlash is easy to install and use. Once installed, ClickToFlash blocks all Flash video, instead showing … Read more

Will MSN 'Glo' with launch of new, different women's site?

AllThingsD

It's more than a little ironic that the new "Glo" Web site--a highly stylized women's lifestyle destination that MSN just debuted after midnight today in partnership with Hollywood's BermanBraun and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.--will likely be one of the online media sites that shine best on the new Apple iPad.

Even though it was conceived before the tablet was even announced and currently uses Apple-barred Adobe Flash in its headline rendering (soon to be adjusted), Glo is actually more aimed at upending the notion of what makes a good women-focused Web site.

With … Read more