Smaaz’s Blog

Porn site operator jailed for life

The operator of China’s largest pornographic Web site “Pornographic Summer” was jailed for life on Wednesday, state media reported. The judges at the Taiyuan Intermediate People’s Court in Shanxi province gave the life sentence to the 28 year old Chen Hui and handed down terms of 13 months to 10 years to eight others after they were convicted of profiting from pornographic dissemination. 
Chen and his accomplices started the Web site in 2004, and opened a further three porn Web sites, attracting more than 600,000 users.
According to the police the site contained more than 9 million pornographic images and articles, when it was closed in October last year.

Add comment November 23rd, 2006

Yahoo! and Answers.com cooperate

Answers Corporation today announced the launch of question and answers content from Yahoo! Answers on Answers.com. Answers.com users can view relevant questions and answers - both specific questions and topic-related categories - from Yahoo! Answers directly on Answers.com’s own pages. In addition, users can click directly to Yahoo! Answers to ask any question.
Yahoo! Answers was released in May this yearly and has more than 60 million users globally. Answers.com was started back in 1999 and has around 3 million hits a day.

Add comment November 22nd, 2006

Google still is the most used search engine

According to the latest ranking of Nielsen/Netratings, an estimated 3.0 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 50 percent of all search queries conducted in October 2006. At the same time Yahoo! Search handled 1.456 billion requests, which is a plus 30% since October 2005. MSN/Windows Live Search has lost 8% and made it to the third place with 538 million requests.

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, November 2006

 

Add comment November 21st, 2006

Yahoo cooperates with US newspapers

The Internet portal operator Yahoo closed a strategic co-operation with eight US-American newspaper publishers(Belo Corp., Cox Newspapers Inc., Hearst Newspapers, Journal Register Company, Lee Enterprises, Incorporated, MediaNews Group und The E.W. Scripps Company). Yahoo wants to create an advertising network, which will consist of over approximately 150 daily newspapers. Yahoo will place local search functions on their website and also manage the advertising placement. 

1 comment November 20th, 2006

Google bought the Israeli company iRows

Google has added the Israeli company iRows to their purchase list. iRows is a Web-based spread-sheet analysis software similar to Googles Docs & Spreadsheets service. Seems the iRows site will be shut down later this year and the members will be moved to the Google service.

Add comment November 18th, 2006

MySpace is worth six billion dollar

According to Rupert Murdoch the Social Networking portal MySpace would be worth six billion dollar at present. In the past year, Murdochs News Corp has paid $580 million US Dollar for the popular website. With its more than 130 million users and the $900 million dollar deal with google, the sites actual value is more than the tenfold, Murdoch said.

1 comment November 17th, 2006

Yahoos new map service with satellite photos

Yahoos new map service and route planner is out of beta phase now. The application which is based on Flash now also includes satellite photos. If you prefer conventional road maps instead, you can also switch the view and with the hybrid opinion you can mixes both types. You can find the map service here.

Add comment November 17th, 2006

Microsoft & Sprint cooperate for mobile search

The two companies plan the common development of new services for Sprints mobile customers. The windows live search service is immediately available for Sprint PCS vision and Sprint Power Vision and can be used on all mobile devices with appropriate technical equipment.

Add comment November 16th, 2006