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Late night food runs 2.0: GopherNow

GopherNow is a simple mashup--mix maps with store hours to help people find eating establishments that are open or delivering late. The service is aimed mainly at teenagers and college students, but for many, the long days of summer can bring unexpected late eating.

Users can search by keyword and location, and a Google map will show up with various restaurants, listing their hours, delivery availability, and for a select few--complete menus. If a restaurant is missing, users can add it in, along with their personal review.

Yelp actually added a similar feature early last month that lets you filter … Read more

Powerset: Re-indexing the Web

My first thought when stepping into the Powerset offices: "Overfunded." The company, which aims to create a better search engine than Google, already has some of the search giant's trappings: fancy offices (though rented), a game room, and a victor's arrogance. Yet if the Powerset team can pull off what it's set out to do, it will indeed revolutionize search and the way people use the Web, not to mention its economics.

Only natural Powerset is "natural language search." What that means is that instead of searching the Web based on keywords, like … Read more

Google fourplay: From Russia with questions, maps, stats, and Linux lovin'

Google has been pretty busy in the past few days. There have been changes or tweaks to three of Google's product offerings, as well as the unexpected resurgence of one product that many thought would never return. We've broken the news down for you below.

1. Google Answers is back--in Russia. I guess Google figures Russia to be an inquisitive bunch, since it's re-launched its defunct (read: dead) Answers service there. According to a post from Google Russia's blog, it's the first country to get the service, despite the fact that the previous version was … Read more

Find a bathroom or a significant other for you and your gerbil

Two start-ups that caught our eye at last night's SFbeta here in San Francisco were MizPee and DateMyPet.com. Not so much for their services, which to be honest, aren't the most necessary we've seen, but rather their ingenuity for finding some interesting ways to direct people towards something they're looking for.

In the case of MizPee, that direction comes in the way of bathrooms. Yes, MizPee helps you find and rate public bathrooms. Like HotSpotr, another SFbeta demonstrator of the past, users can login to the service on their mobile devices and hunt for available … Read more

Google News offers image view

Google News is offering a new Image View that displays photos linked to news items with scrolling headlines in a column on the right.

"In looking at how people use Google News and based on feedback we've received, we've found that many people prefer to read the news in a more visual way," the company wrote in the Google News Blog. "The Image Version of News lets you view and explore the top headlines of the day through photos instead of just text."

Mousing over an image displays a summary of the news item … Read more

Marchex spawns 100,000 local search sites

Seattle-based Marchex is launching more than 100,000 Web sites on Wednesday that are designed to serve as online yellow pages for all types of services and covering all of the United States. They also offer targeted ads.

There are more than 15 million business listings across more than 20,000 categories, everything from suntan parlors and auto repair to pest control and baby sitters. Sites run the gamut from the general to the specific based on city and category, such as: www.cuisine.com, www.podiatrist.com, www.dallasdoctors.com and www.90210.com.

Unlike many online business listing … Read more

YouTube meets Craigslist in new site

There's a new Web site called Real People Real Stuff where anyone can post a classified video. As expected, there are plenty of bad-quality clips and boring infomercial-type stuff, selling real estate, cars and even Shih Tzu puppies. But there are also some hidden gems.

For instance, some guy in Alexandria, Va., wrote a song about his company's "Dog Guard" invisible pet fence. "We keep your hound aroundddd. We keep your hound aroundddd," he croons as he strums his guitar.

In another charming and informative video, a Canadian woman illustrates the "lack of … Read more

5 things you probably didn't know you could do in Google Docs & Spreadsheets

I spent part of today at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., talking to some of the folks behind Google Docs & Spreadsheets, part of Google's Web-based office suite. I asked the product experts I met for their favorite features that often don't get the limelight or that people simply don't know about. I picked five that I thought were worth sharing:

1. Live lookup via Google and Google Finance. This is only available for Spreadsheets, but it's one of the neater advanced tidbits that makes use of Internet connectivity. Using two special formulas, users … Read more

Google's search lead grows

Google now has 56.3 percent of the share of Web searches in the United States, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo's share is 21.5 percent, followed by Microsoft at 8.4 percent, AOL at 5.3 percent and Ask.com at 2 percent. Google had nearly 45 percent growth year over year in the number of searches conducted on its site.

Hitwise's latest figures give Google even greater U.S. market share--more than 65 percent, with Yahoo at 20.9 percent and Microsoft at 8.4 percent.

Yahoo turnaround in five easy steps

Yahoo's got a new leader now -- co-founder Jerry Yang took the reins from Chief Executive Terry Semel on Monday -- but is that enough to hasten a turnaround at the company whose revenue growth and stock price have slipped over the past 18 months?

Not at all, say experts. Yang has to have a plan, one that people can get excited about, articulate it well to restore employee confidence, and then executive. No more dropping the ball (Google and search and search advertising) and missing the boat (social media), they say. And what should that plan be? Well, … Read more