afternoonbuzz

Bing, FamilySearch, Google, More: Afternoon Buzz, February 7th, 2015

Bing’s got a guide to the GRAMMYs and a bunch of predictions too.

Anytime anyone says “PowerPoint alternative” I just get all happy. Check out Bunkr. Read the comments on this article, though: I do agree about an offline mode.

YouTube has released a blog post of Super Bowl viewing stats.

Mashable has a brief overview of Tumblr’s new features.

FamilySearch has a new record add. “Notable collection updates include the 2,259,307 indexed records and images from the U.S., Massachusetts, Boston Passenger Lists, 1820–1891 collection; the 392,161 images from the United States, Freedmen’s Bureau, Records of the Assistant Commissioner, 1865–1872 collection; and the 49,136 indexed records from the El Salvador Civil Registration, 1704–1977 collection. ”

Windows XP and Windows 7 stubbornly hold on to market share, according to article in PC World (Warning! PC World!)

Ars Technica is reporting about a potentially-dangerous security bug in Internet Explorer. “The vulnerability is known as a universal cross-site scripting (XSS) bug. It allows attackers to bypass the same origin policy, a crucially important principle in Web application models that prevents one site from accessing or modifying browser cookies or other content set by any other site. A proof-of-concept exploit published in the past few days shows how websites can violate this rule when people use supported versions of Internet Explorer running the latest patches to visit maliciously crafted pages.”

Rumors: is Apple planning its own search engine? “After initially being the best of friends, Apple and Google are in the midst of a not-so-cold war, thanks largely to Mountain View’s decision to get involved in the smartphone battle. That’s led to Apple reducing its reliance on Google, even doing things that upset its users like removing Google Maps and YouTube as default iOS apps. More subtle changes have come through Siri, which taps services like Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia for information, rather than Google. These small changes have helped marginalize Google’s hold on iOS users, and flipping the switch on Apple Search in Safari would be a continuation of its efforts in this area.”

Google Registry has launched the .HOW domain. “We believe .HOW can become an intuitive way for creators and consumers to share, identify and discover some of the best learning content on the web. Now you can buy a simple, memorable and meaningful .HOW domain name of your own, sending a clear message that your content is there to teach people something great.”

More Google: Google and Twitter are getting together again, with tweets to start showing up in Google’s search engine. “In the first half of this year, tweets will start to be visible in Google’s search results as soon as they’re posted, thanks to a deal giving the Web company access to Twitter’s firehose, the stream of data generated by the microblogging service’s 284 million users, people with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday. Google previously had to crawl Twitter’s site for the information, which will now be visible automatically.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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