July 2, 2009 11:55 PM ET

IDG News Service - In the story "Ask.com bets on semantic search, targeting special audiences," posted on Thursday, the last name of Ask Networks President Scott Garell was misspelled.

The story has been corrected on the wire and the paragraphs 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 and 16 now read: Scott Garell, president of Ask Networks, views things from a different perspective, pointing out that Ask.com's queries are growing. The search engine handled 486 million U.S. queries in May 2008 and 555 million in May of this year, according to comScore. "In a very tough and competitive market, we're holding our own," he said in an interview.

Garell also points out that Ask.com and the other sites that make up the Ask Network, like Dictionary.com, are collectively the sixth-largest Web property in the U.S., ahead of powerhouses like eBay, Facebook, Wikipedia and Amazon, according to comScore. Garell is particularly encouraged by Ask.com's advances in semantic search and in its attempts to attract specific audiences like NASCAR fans to the search engine. "People don't talk in keywords," Garell said.

According to Garell, that perception persists, although after the dot-com bubble burst, Ask Jeeves abandoned the consumer search market for several years to focus on enterprise search, before reversing course in 2003. Garell thinks Ask.com can pursue this "audience-centric" strategy with eight to 10 vertical markets per year, having seen that it's an effective and interesting approach to promoting and growing usage of the search engine.

By Sylvie Barak
Thursday, 2 July 2009, 16:42

RUMOUR HAS IT the next version of Nvidia's Ion platform will pack a much stronger performance punch and come with twice the number of shaders. The first we heard of the plan was at Nvidia's analyst day a few weeks back, when the Green Goblin mentioned it would be releasing two more versions of the modified GeForce 9400M processor it calls Ion, although it stingily neglected to give out either dates or specifications.

Our sources expect products based around Ion 2 to be available before the end of the year, however. New details have tipped up on the tech news site Fudzilla, claiming that the green machine's second generation integrated graphics platform will come complete with a die shrink and twice the shaders of its contemporary. Since the Ion 1 currently boasts 16 shaders, that means the Ion 2 will have 32 shaders, for all of you who forgot your calculators today.

The increase in shaders is apparently aimed at upping the system's 3D rendering capabilities, although why this would be so essential on a netbook or dirt-cheap notebook is a bit beyond us. But the die shrink should mean that the platform's current low power draw remains unchanged, and it probably also means it will be cheaper to produce, although it seems highly unlikely that price cut will filter down to consumers.

When the INQ asked graphics analyst Jon Peddie about the speculative specs, he heaved a heavy sigh and told us ""We are for better or worse trapped in the mantra of Moore's law," adding "We have to do more, make better, faster, and less expensive machines and components under the guise that if you build it they will come." How very fatalistic. Elaborating, Peddie explained "someone will see the new capabilities and say, 'Hey, I can use that to...' and then we get new exciting software developments. It's an act of faith, not a consumer demand."

by Marguerite Reardon
July 2, 2009 2:25 PM PDT

Net neutrality advocates got a boost of support Wednesday from the Obama administration when it released grant guidelines for spending the government's $7.2 billion broadband stimulus package.

Companies winning grants to help build new broadband infrastructure will have to follow the Federal Communications Commission's Internet Policy statement, which prohibits companies from deliberately blocking or slowing Internet traffic on their networks.

Proponents of that concept, Net neutrality, have been pushing the government to pass laws or set stricter requirements to ensure that consumers get access to content they want and that competitors are not run out of business by network operators. The phone companies and cable operators have opposed such legislation, a sentiment that seemed to be shared by the Republican-controlled FCC under the previous presidential administration.

But now that Democrats are in charge, Net neutrality advocates have been looking for indications of how the new FCC led by recently sworn-in Chairman Julius Genachowski will handle the issue. It is still too early to know whether Democrats will push for new laws. But it's becoming more clear that protecting access on the Internet is an important issue to many. Consumer and advocacy groups, such as Public Knowledge and Free Press, applauded the decision to make Net neutrality a condition of the grants.

By Chris Foresman
July 2, 2009 3:47 PM CT

Rumors concerning the latest negotiations suggests Apple is none too thrilled with NVIDIA, despite its 9400M chipset being the basis of nearly all of Apple's machines save Xeon-based Mac Pros and Xserves. Apple has nearly turned its entire line of computers over to NVIDIA-based GPUs, thanks mainly to the vastly improved graphics performance of its GeForce 9400M chipset over comparable chipsets from Intel.

However, rumors suggest that recent negotiations between the two companies over next-gen hardware have soured to the point that Apple may give NVIDIA a complete cold shoulder. According to SemiAccurate (the irony of the site's name isn't lost on us), Apple is supposedly done with the "arrogance and bluster" that NVIDIA showed in its proposals concerning chipsets for Apple's next-gen hardware, which should include Nehalem-based Intel CPUs.

According to the site's sources, the language used in Apple's rebuke was forceful and unfriendly, and amounted to Apple telling NVIDIA to "get lost" for three or four years. At issue is a major problem with previous-generation GeForce GPUs used in Apple's MacBook Pros. Due to a flaw in some of the materials used to make those chips, the GPUs have a significant chance of failing after extended periods of use.

Despite NVIDIA's claims to the contrary, Apple identified the GPUs as being defective after an internal investigation into the problem. The problem has become so widespread that Apple has already extended the period under which affected machines can be repaired or replaced, whether or not the owner has AppleCare for the machine or not. NVIDIA is still dealing with issues surrounding the GPU failures from a number of different fronts, including at least two lawsuits.