Research

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--It only took a few years for the science of information retrieval to move from an obscure academic niche to the secretive research departments at the heart of multibillion-dollar Internet companies.

But one of those companies, Yahoo, is trying to give a little more power back to the professors and grad students through a program called BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service). The service lets academics and start-ups build their own search sites around Yahoo's search engine for free, manipulating results however they want.

Two dozen researchers and students from Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue, … Read more

Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, has projected that over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. But, he added in an interview with CNET News, 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures.

Sarner plans to present his results at the annual Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008, which takes place October 12-16 in Orlando, Fla.

"(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won't have a mutual purpose, and they'll … Read more

Genetic analysis start-up 23andMe, known for its star-studded "spit parties" and a controversial investment from Google, announced Thursday the debut of a new initiative to bring together women who have been affected by breast cancer or who may be genetically at risk.

October is the 23rd annual National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Using its Web-based social network, 23andMe hopes to "reach out to, and build a community around, women who have encountered breast cancer, thereby increasing the scientific understanding of the inherited aspects of a disease that affects 200,000 newly diagnosed individuals per year." Women … Read more

Danah Boyd, a researcher best known for her ethnographic studies of social networks, has been tapped to be part of Microsoft Research New England, the company's new research facility in Cambridge, Mass.

"Going to (Microsoft Research) will allow me to continue the research I do and it will give me a productive, collaborative, interdisciplinary environment in which to do it," Boyd wrote in a post on her blog on Sunday night. "There's amazing work at MSR concerning social media and even those at MSR-NE who are not working on social media are more than open … Read more

Acoustic Research announced two new specialty headphones models on Friday: a 5.1 USB solution and wireless headphones that offer uncompressed sound quality up to 100 feet.

The ARW200 5.1 Dolby Digital headphones connect to any PC or Mac via an open USB port and provide you with three separate speakers in each ear. The headphones also fold up in an included travel bag for 5.1 on the go. Also included is optional software should you want to save your personal treble and bass settings. Retailing for $100, the ARW200 are available now. We recently took a look … Read more

Are we finally seeing a truce called between software makers and security researchers? Security reporter Elinor Mills writes that although there is a long history of clashes between the two groups on the way software holes are reported, a few recent examples of cooperation between the two groups might be a sign of a more cooperative relationship.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating the hack of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account. TechCrunch is reporting that the HTC Dream, the first phone based on Google's open-source operating system, will set early adopters back $200 (… Read more

Longtime tech mainstay IBM has announced the creation of a Cambridge, Mass.-based research center for the development of "social software," from consumer Web apps to enterprise communication tools. At its launch, researchers from Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters' health care division have agreed to be "corporate residents" in the facility.

The IBM Center for Social Software, according to a release, will take on the lofty task of "creat(ing) a new type of collaborative environment to tackle some of the toughest questions about social software, identify new business models, help discover next-generation Web 2.… Read more

Forget differences in race, income or ethnicity--virtually all American teens play video games.

That's the verdict of a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project that renders the digital divide almost nonexistent when it comes to video games, including computer, console and mobile games.

In one of the first nationally representative studies of its kind, Pew's research also asked whether teens are being spoiled for community engagement and politics with video game play, something educators have feared as gaming's popularity has skyrocketed. The short answer: not anymore than they already were.

"Young people … Read more

IT spending got a dose of good-news-bad-news Tuesday, with Forrester Research nearly doubling its projections for increased U.S. spending this year and virtually slicing growth for next year.

IT spending is expected to rise 5.4 percent this year, revised from previous Forrester projections of a 2.8 percent increase.

But next year, growth in IT spending is expected to get whacked down to 6.1 percent from previous projections of a 10 percent increase.

Forrester, which revises its annual projections on a quarterly basis to reflect changes in the economy, attributed the changes to its most recent projections … Read more