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Google surfaces your photos in search

Looking for a picture you took at your sister's bridal shower? Google's search engine will now help you find it -- so long as you've posted the shot to the company's companion social network.

The company announced Thursday that Google+ members can log in to Google.com and search for their own photos or query for a buddy's pictures stored on the social network. Just plug in queries such as "my photos from Vegas" or "Angie's wedding photos" and Google will scour through Google+ photo albums and return matching images … Read more

Search is on for lost first draft of first Web page

The first draft of the World Wide Web has gone missing, with perhaps one of the only copies of the very first Web site floating around the world's drawers or attics on a floppy disk somewhere.

Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first version of the very first Web page back in 1990 as a way for scientists to share information at CERN -- the European nuclear physics lab and particle accelerator site on the border of Switzerland and France. But it wasn't until 1992 that he actually saved a copy of that early CERN page.… Read more

Microsoft to take Bing deeper into Windows Blue, Xbox One

In all the talk about Microsoft's makeover into a devices and services company, one service many forget the company has in its back pocket is Bing.

Bing is evolving into more than "just" a Web search engine for Microsoft. It's also gives the company a way to harness and make use of data using Microsoft's myriad machine learning and computation capabilities. And though it may be hard to see through all the "Scroggled" fog, Bing may be more important as a service than a "mere" search engine to Microsoft going … Read more

Girl's winning Google Doodle shows her dad home from war

A picture depicting a girl's reunion with her father returning from war has won the top award in a Google Doodle contest.

On display Thursday at Google's home page, "Coming Home" is a simple but powerful piece of art that portrays a young girl holding an American flag and running to reunite with her father. The returning soldier appears. They exchange a glance. And finally they fall into a deep embrace as they treasure their moment together again.

Created by 12th grader Sabrina Brady of Sparta, Wisc., "Coming Home" faced great competition in being crowned the 2013 U.S. Doodle 4 Google national winner. Google received more than 130,000 submissions for the contest, which garnered millions of votes. But in the end, Sabrina's drawing clearly moved the voters.… Read more

Foursquare gets better at local search with new filters on mobile

Foursquare released new versions of its iPhone and Android applications to help people narrow their searches and find just the right bar, restaurant, or coffee spot.

Application users can now fine-tune their place queries and use the filter button to tick off a number of attributes to find venues that are open now or places where friends have been in the past. People also can search by price range and sort results by best match or distance.

"When you're looking for somewhere to eat, sometimes you know exactly what kind of place you want -- cheap or fancy, … Read more

Google Top Charts show world's searches for whiskey, more

Google's top dog for last month was, once again, the pitbull. Having taken the title for most-searched breed away from the bulldog in January, the pit has stayed in the top spot for the past four months, but the German Shepherd is looking to make a move after overtaking the Siberian Husky to advance to the No. 4 position.

At least, this is what I was able to learn from my first five minutes using the just-launched Top Charts feature of Google Trends. An expansion of Google's annual Zeitgeist report of most-searched topics, Top Charts has monthly search data and rankings for dozens of categories from actors (Selena Gomez took No. 1 for April) to businesspeople (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are both gaining on Oprah) and even whiskeys (Jack Daniel's dominates).… Read more

Zite update aims to better highlight stories, publications

Zite, the personal news aggregator, released on Wednesday a new version of its app that aims to help people discover more stories relevant to them, while better highlighting publishers.

With version 2.3, which is now available on iOS devices, the CNN-owned Zite is trying to make its personalized magazine work better for users, especially those new to the service.

As a result, explained CEO Mark Johnson, Zite will now gray out articles that have already been read and make publications' titles appear in what's called the "topic drawer," the list of topics that show up when … Read more

Google's conversational search arrives with new Chrome

Google is enabling a more naturally spoken question-and-answer interface to its search service for people with a new version of Chrome.

Google demonstrated conversational search at Google I/O a week ago, a style of search designed to be more like natural human speech than the technically constructed search queries that people often use today to retrieve information from a search engine.

It's all part of the gradual arrival of Google's vision to build a Star Trek-style search engine, in which the computer grasps what people want and answers them. Eventually, expect Google to let people initiate a … Read more

Yahoo's big lean into content to fuel growth

One of perennial questions about Yahoo has been, "What is Yahoo." As the pioneering Web brand slid downward, rebuffed Microsoft's generous acquisition offer and was overshadowed by the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon, the question morphed into  "Is the beleaguered Yahoo going to fade away?"

Marissa Mayer, the fifth Yahoo CEO in five years, seems to have a clear view of what Yahoo is, and a plan remove the word "beleaguered" as an adjective preceding its name.

The stock price is up over 70 percent since Mayer took over in … Read more

2013 is the year of the voice command

"Ok, Glass -- take a picture!"

"Xbox, what's on HBO?"

"Siri, play Angry Birds."

During the reveal of the Xbox One, I was struck by just how many voice commands Microsoft programmed into the device. Kinect brought a rudimentary set of commands to the gaming console, but now everything from opening movies to launching apps can be done via voice. "Xbox, Live TV" may be my new favorite phrase in the living room.

Microsoft's not the only one who's betting big on voice commands. The vast majority of Google Glass'… Read more