Ask.com’s ‘Top Questions for 2009

On a different note, Ask.com has released the top questions that were searched in their search engine during the year 2009. Some of these are similar to the usual popular search keywords that are regularly searched by Internet users while some are quite crazy too! Though ‘Michael Jackson’ seems to be the most popular search keyword for most of the search engines, here in case of Ask.com the legend could not be a part of toppers list. Just to console the soul of the ultra famous Jackson Ask.com has listed the question “Who is the father of Michael Jackson’s children?” as part of the top 10 list.

Other usual questions that made to toppers list were “How much should I weigh?”, “How do I get pregnant?” and “How do I get out of debt fast?”. Other then these some of the weird search questions were “What is Miley Cyrus’s phone number?” and “What is twitter?”. Quite tricky questions, eh?

Ask has also compiled list of top 10 questions for various categories like beauty, traveling, personal finance and pets etc. I couldn’t resist listing some of the questions that have made to the top of various sections. Have a look at them, enjoy reading them, and use them in your blog so as to hit the top of the ask’s search result pages.

• How much should you tip a hairdresser?
• Why do cats purr?
• Can dogs take asprin?
• Which came first the chicken or the egg?
• What is the best way to pack a suitcase?

Bing’s popular search keywords for the year 2009

The popular search keywords within Bing were the usual ones with Michael Jackson topping the list. Twitter, Swine Flu, and Stock Market were the others in the toppers list. ‘Cash for clunkers’ was another popular search keyword that stood at number 7 place this year.

Top Yahoo Keywords For 2009

The top three spots were bagged by Michael Jackson, Twilight, and World Wrestling Entertainment respectively. Rest two spots in yahoo keyword were bagged by Megan Fox and Britney Spears. These two have been part of this list since the year 2001 when Yahoo originally started to release such data. The ghost of recession kept looming on the brains of different Internet surfers and henceforth Yahoo! compiled the list of top economy related yahoo keywords. The yahoo keyword that topped the list was ‘coupons’. Obama was the top searched politician for 2009 and hence an top 10 Obama-related yahoo keywords was also compiled. The very famous inaugration was at the top followed by biography, speeches, and stimulus plan.

The year started with people madly searching for “What is Twitter?” but later on the topic changed to discussions related with Twitter. Seems like search results helped the planet quick enough so that they can move to better queries!

Google Zeitgeist!

Well, it’s Google and it has to be different. So the name Zeitgeist! As even a kid will guess, Michael Jackson topped the popular search keywords list for 2009 while facebook bagged the second spot. Surprisingly, Spanish social networking website Tuenti bagged third spotwhile Turkish based social networking website Sanalika bagged the fifth spot. Twitter settled down with fourth spot. Barack Obama was at number four position in the fastest falling search keywords just because his presence in News Channels made it easy for people to keep track of his activities. Real Madrid bagged the number 1 spot for those fastest rising in sports while acai berry bagged number one spot in food and drinks list.

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Their had to be some catch in this free hosting service and I was quick to grab that. They give you the above mentioned stuff for free during the first year. After that you need to pay them $14.95 per year for the free hosting service and of course the domain charges after the first year. But hey that isn’t any huge amount for such a cool hosting service? Finally, I will admit that Microsoft has come up with something which is a must grab for newbies and will truly prove to be profitable for Microsoft in the long run.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business

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Around 36 leaked images of Windows 7 have been posted on Think Next website and here are their previews. Click on these images to see the larger versions. And switch to Think Next for the complete package of the screenshots.

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• Support for the Encrypting File System (EFS)
• Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost)
• Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
• Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations
• Improved indexing performance
• Faster previewer updates for Windows XP
• Per-user Group Policy settings
• Windows software updates for Watson errors

These and many more facilities in the upcoming version are set to ease your life.

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Now it looks like Microsoft has waited a lot for Yahoo! to respond and finally they have given Yahoo a three week time period after which they say they will directly approach their shareholders instead of the Yahoo Board of Directors.

This is what the letter has to say:

Dear Members of the Board:

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we’ve seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo! management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo!’s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.

By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.

Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.

Sincerely,
Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Office
Microsoft Corp.

What say? Are you ready to see the face to face WWE between Microsoft and Yahoo!?

This time I will keep you updated with the happenings..

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The Redmond company made SP3 beta (build 3205) available for download (via Microsoft Connect) for its 12000 testers, most of them being already involved in the test-driving of the development milestone of Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. However the number is considered to jump up considering the leak of Windows XP SP3 (build 3205) to torrent websites.

The information associated with the downloads points to the fact that the torrent delivers Windows XP SP3 Beta Build.5.1.2600.3205, 2007.9.1, KB936929. Additionally, the file offered via torrent trackers weighs in at 334.9 Mb, while the English language standalone installer for XP SP3 Beta Build 3205 is windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe 334.92 MB.

Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with all-new features - not just patches and hot-fixes, most of them back-ported from Windows Vista:

• New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product key during setup. Thank God for that!
• Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista. You can read more about NAP here.
• New Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module – the Windows XP SP3 kernel now includes an entire module that provides easy access to multiple cryptographic algorithms and is available for use in kernel-mode drivers and services.
• New “Black Hole Router” detection – Windows XP SP3 can detect and protect against rogue routers that are discarding data.

Windows XP SP3 is compatible with all versions of Windows x86, included Embedded, Fundamentals, Start, Professional, Media Center, and Home Editions.

Windows XP SP3 now contains 1,073 patches/hot-fixes, not including those in previous service packs. Of the 1,073 included updates, 114 are for security-related issues. The remainder are updates to performance & reliability, bug-fixes, improvements to kernel-mode driver modules, and many BSOD fixes.

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Microsoft very well knows how to create buzz among people with a service which gets love by the users. Microsoft India now offers custom email IDs for Indians using there new project coolhotmail.com. The website offers around 250 custom email IDs of your choice and I am very sure that you will get the one of your choice!

Few rocking examples of the IDs which you can get are:

• yourname@mumbaimail.in
• yourname@clubaishwarya.com
• yourname@clubsachin.in
• yourname@iamsingle.in
• yourname@shri420.in
• yourname@clubkajol.in
• yourname@ilovekabaddi.in

There are so many more interesting ones that you easily get engrossed in it and won’t leave without getting one personal email ID.

Microsoft India will also look at feedback received from users and communities so that they will be able to provide users more personalized email ids on demand. So go and make this awesome service a hit!

For our international readers check the almost similar service from AOL.

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Here goes an awesome opportunity from Microsoft for students to buy MS Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for just $60.To be eligible, Microsoft said students have to be “actively enrolled” in a higher education program and have an e-mail address from that school.

The promotion runs through April 30 and starts Wednesday in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. It launches next week in France, Italy and Spain.  Microsoft tried the promotion earlier this year as a pilot program in Australia, before deciding to offer it in the U.S.

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According to the information that can be extracted from the screenshots, Vista SP1 is now at build 6001.16549. In the About Windows image for example the version of the operating system is 6.0, however, the build is 6001 and Service pack 1 is reverenced with v.165. Additional information about the first beta builds of Vista SP1 reveal the fact that Microsoft is not releasing the refresh as an update but as an ISO image. In July Microsoft served SP1 ISO files weighing in at 3.07GB for Vista 32-bit edition and 4.3GB for Vista 64-Bit edition. Vista SP1 beta was delivered in both 6,000 RTM and 6,001 Windows Server 2008 kernel versions.

Still the Microsoft and beta participants are denying the program’s existence, as expected. We’ll have to suffer with our malfunctioning Windows Vista installs for just a tad longer.

[please click on the images to enlarge them]

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With Vista not bringing the expected bucks for Microsoft, The Redmond based company is bound to try new ways to “force” people to start thinking about “WOW”! Oh sorry Windows Vista. But sometimes one can really make a mess of things if its too eager to win a prize (even a consolation prize will do at this stage for Microsoft. Read how Bill Gates welcomes Microsoft software piracy in china).

See what (the rich) Microsoft wants you to do. In a new press release yesterday Microsoft wants its Windows Vista buyers to start preparing for Christmas from today itself. They have released a series of laptop options which Windows Vista lovers would love to give out as gifts (for the “SO CLOSE” December Christmas).

And to my surprise nowhere in this press release Microsoft talks about the Vista WOW factor. Instead they give you options to empty your pockets at these hot looking laptops:

Be Memorable:

Dell XPS M1330, from $1,299

Dell Inspiron 1720, from $769

Be Inspired:

Asus Lamborghini VX2, from $2,899

Be Connected

HP tx1000, from $999.99

Be Dynamic

Sony Vaio CR, from $1,140

Sony VGC-LS37E, from $1,899.99

Be Daring

Toshiba R500 Protégé, from $2,149

Wanna go on an “early” shopping, the “cheap” Microsoft style?

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