Ben Charny

There’s a new mystery to solve for fans of “The Da Vinci Code” who also use Google’s personalized home page feature. Google says it’s taking part in the marketing blitz for the “Da Vinci Code” movie by conducting a contest. Each day between April 17 and May 21, a puzzle based on the best-selling religious […]

Internet search giant Google introduced a free calendaring and day planner feature on April 13, one of the search giants moves to challenge chief rivals Microsoft and Yahoo. Google Calendar contains all the usual bells and whistles of such features. But Google has added a few new wrinkles, such as being able to share listings […]

Google Calendar is finally up and running after months in development. Some new features include being able to share calendar listings with friends, a tight integration with Google’s Gmail e-mail, a built-in search tool to find events, and cell phone text messaging notifications while on the go. With the move, Google leaves very little doubt […]

There’s a move afoot to significantly reduce the number of votes that Google co-founders Sergey Brin, Larry Page, CEO Eric Schmidt and others get to cast at Google shareholder meetings, according to this stock filing. If successful, the new voting scheme would significantly reduce the influence Google’s top executives now have at the meetings, and […]

Microsoft on April 11 unveiled a new Internet search engine to locate scholarly material, as it steps up its features war with rivals Google and Yahoo. Windows Live Academic Search, as the feature is known, “has some unique features, and is a worthy competitor,” said Dean Giustini, a reference librarian at the University of British […]

Vozin Communications, which makes Talqer, seems to be the perfect future Google acquisition target. The free Talqer download, now available, lets someone use the Google Talk instant messenging app to make and receive calls from traditional cell or land-line phones. In May, Vozin is going to introduce a $12-a-month unlimited North American calling plan. Google […]

Every now and then, Google reminds everyone of how some of its features depend on the kindness of strangers. Examples of this can be found by visiting the blogs of Google Base, a free classifieds listing feature, and Google Talk, which is Google’s version of an instant messenging app for PCs. Google left implicit instructions […]

Google co-founder Sergey Brin and three others on April 11 were granted a U.S. patent for technology to let the human voice command Internet search engines. In essence, rather than type in an Internet search query, youd literally be able to phone one in, or say it out loud toward a nearby personal computer, writes […]

Can technology be used to maintain a corporations particular work and office culture? Google Vice President of Engineering Douglas Merrill thinks so. He recently suggested theres indeed a connection between the kind of technology a company stocks its offices with and the companys look and feel to employees. The nexis is an unusual one and […]

Google continues to dominate the Internet search market, and has of late been taking market share away from Yahoo and Microsoft, according to some new data. About 60.3 percent of all Internet searches in February were done through Google, up about 0.3 percent from January, according to a new report from ComScore Networks, the Internet […]

Yahoo introduced two new features April 11, one being Yahoo Maps, which uses satellite imagery and appears to compete directly with offerings from Google and Microsoft. The Sunnyvale, Calif., companys other new feature is FareChase, a travel information and shopping search engine. Both FareChase and Yahoo Maps, a beta effort, are part of the usual […]

Microsoft is set to unveil a new Internet search engine to locate scholarly material, a source says. What Microsoft is expected to introduce April 11 is a competitor to Google Scholar, which provides access to peer-reviewed papers, abstracts and articles from academic publishers and other scholarly organizations. Windows Live Academic Search, as the feature’s known, […]