Media Search:



Yandex Unveils Social Networking Search

MOSCOW, Feb. 20, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yandex (Nasdaq:YNDX - News) today announced its social networking search program, aimed at enhancing its search engine's quality by adding content from social networking websites. Today, Yandex rolled out a beta version of its people finder. Yandex web users in Russia can now view all public profiles of a person with accounts on the country's most popular social networking and blogging websites, such as VKontakte, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Odnoklassniki.

Yandex processes over two million people searches daily. About one half of these search queries are to find information about celebrities, while the other half ask about someone's friend, a contact, an employee or a partner. In response to these queries, Yandex delivers links to personal profiles on social networking websites available for public access -- only those pages that can be indexed by a search engine. Currently, Yandex's index has about 250 million personal profile pages hosted on various blogging platforms and social networking websites.

If more than one personal profile matches the user's search query, Yandex adds one of the profiles to the top of its search results page and shows all others on a separate page. This page also features search options such as age, location, or workplace to quickly refine search results. If multiple profiles exist for the same person, they are grouped together in the search results.

"It is so much more convenient to see multiple profiles of the same person grouped together," says Alexander Chubinskiy, Project Manager at Yandex. "Yandex does this grouping with care -- only those profiles that refer to one another get grouped. Web users can choose if they want their profiles on different websites to appear in search results separately, or as grouped together. So, if one of your personal profiles refers to others, the icons of those websites on which they are hosted will appear on the same thumbnail. Conversely, the user can remove cross-reference from their personal pages so that each of the profiles appears in Yandex's search results independently."

In addition to finding old friends and contacts, Yandex's people search offers web users an opportunity to see their online profiles the way other people see them, and either edit them or change their privacy settings on the website that hosts the profile.

Read more about Yandex's social networking search engine on the company blog (in Russian).

About Yandex

Yandex (Nasdaq:YNDX - News) is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the country's most popular search engine and most visited website. Yandex also operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Yandex's mission is to answer any question internet users may have.

The Yandex Company logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=10933

The rest is here:
Yandex Unveils Social Networking Search

COMMENTARY / Ali speaks loudly without saying a word

Muhammad Ali appears onstage at the Las Vegas gala with wife Lonnie and Sean "Diddy" Combs.

LAS VEGAS -- They gathered in the bowels of the arena where most of the great fights of the past two decades have taken place, old men now all sharing one shining moment from years gone by. They had come to honor The Greatest, though whether Muhammad Ali remembered who they were or knew what it was all about was a matter of speculation that on this night would go unanswered.

Some, like Chuck Wepner, couldn't stop talking about the night they won their personal lottery - a spot across the ring from Ali. Nothing new there, because the Bayonne Bleeder has been talking about it to anyone who will listen almost every day since then.

Others, like Leon Spinks, weren't able to talk much at all.

"Leon Spinks is here, and he needs help," Wepner said. "There are a lot of fighters who need help."

This was a night supposed to bring that help, both to fighters such as Spinks and those fighting today. Millions would be raised in Ali's name for the Cleveland Clinic's new Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in downtown Las Vegas, where researchers are busy trying to unlock the puzzles of damage to the human brain.

A seat for dinner and the show at the MGM Grand hotel started at $1,500. UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta spent $1.1 million in an auction for the gloves Ali used against Floyd Patterson in 1965 in the first heavyweight-title fight in a city that would become synonymous with boxing. President Obama wished Ali well in a video greeting, and Stevie Wonder was among those on hand to sing birthday wishes to the former heavyweight champion, who turned 70 last month.

At the center of it all was an elderly man, mute and his face seemingly frozen as he sat at a table with his wife, Lonnie, and several other family members. Whether boxing caused Ali's Parkinson's is the subject of debate, but it was clear on this night that the disease he has fought for three decades has taken a terrible toll on him.

He was once a magnificent man with a sculptured body and a mouth that wouldn't stay shut. He's still magnificent in the way that his very presence envelops and engulfs an arena as it did Saturday night, hushing high rollers and the elite of this gambling town in a way no other man could - and all without saying a word.

They used to trot out Joe Louis like this in his final years, too, a heavyweight great and an American hero reduced to drooling in his wheelchair at ringside. With Ali, though, it seems different in a way if only because you get the feeling that the man who was the ultimate people person still enjoys being around people.

Doctors say not many people survive 30 years of Parkinson's, a debilitating brain disease for which there is no cure. That Ali has lasted this long is, perhaps, a tribute to the great athleticism that served him so well in the ring. Still, the death of his trainer, Angelo Dundee, a few weeks ago and Joe Frazier a few months before that is a reminder that even The Greatest has a limited time on Earth.

This article appeared on page B - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

See original here:
COMMENTARY / Ali speaks loudly without saying a word

White teacher sues to use n-word in class

CHICAGO - A 48-year-old Chicago public school teacher used the "n-word" as part of a lesson on the perils and pitfalls of racism, and it landed him a five-day suspension from his job. Now the teacher is fighting back, filing a federal lawsuit against the district and claiming that his civil rights have been violated.

Lincoln Brown, a 21-year veteran teacher and native of Chicago's Hyde Park, used the word in his sixth grade classroom at Murray Language Academy on Oct. 4, 2011 after discovering a note that a female student was passing, which had the slur written on it citing some rap lyrics. Brown, who is white, used the note as an opportunity to teach a lesson about racism in the context of Huckleberry Finn.

theGrio: Why the n-word should stay in 'Huck Finn'

In almost impeccable timing, as soon as Brown said the "n-word," the school's principal, George Mason, walked into the room, and the trouble started.

"This cannot be apart of who I am," Brown said during a press conference with his attorney. "My character has been assassinated."

Mason gave a different account of the incident and charged Brown with "using verbally abusive language to or in front of students" and "cruel, immoral, negligent or criminal conduct or communication to a student, that causes psychological or physical harm" which is in violation of the Chicago Public Schools policy. Mason disputed the context in which Brown used the n-word.

"We've talked about racial stereotyping and how words really shape people's ideas of who you are," Brown said. "I cannot tell you how much it hurts me to say that word."

theGrio slideshow: The top 10 n-word controversies of the decade

Following a disciplinary hearing, Brown was suspended for five days without pay. CPS denied Brown's appeal of the suspension on grounds that he "engaged in inappropriate discussions with sixth-grade students during instructional time."

See more here:
White teacher sues to use n-word in class

Technology Weekly x001 – Video

18-02-2012 21:00 Technology Weekly Show Notes x001 Air Date 2/19/2012 *News* Is BitCoin Dead? With TradeHill.com now defunct and some governments around the world trying to shut it down, Things are not looking good for the digital currency. There is at least some good news; BitCoin has finally stabilized and is becoming more popular which in turn will make it more stable. This is happening even with the loss of the second largest exchange closing down. There have been a few changes to the BTC system recently that should slow or stop people trying to game the system. All in all things are starting to look brighter for BTC. Adobe Releases Flash Updates. This update affects most of the devices and operating systems that support flash. This update fixed 7 security holes including a zero-day XSS flaw. The zero-day flaw was CVE-2012-0767 and was a cross-site scripting hole that could allow an attacker to take actions on behalf of the user on any webmail or website if the user visits a malicious site. The browser that was most affected was Internet Explorer, what a shock. To read the original article, click the link below. Original Document http://www.eweek.com *Main Block* Copyright Battle Continues For most people copyright is an unknown subject matter. In the US the battle between the rights of the people and the large corporations has raged on for a very long time. With each engagement the people lose a little more of our rights and freedoms. In the newest attacks the movie and music industry are ...

Go here to read the rest:
Technology Weekly x001 - Video

Bogart Robinson – Money To Burn [Electric Blue] – Video

19-02-2012 11:10 Bogart's "Money To Burn" the new single from the new album "Listen" coming soon! © 2011 Halo Digital Records

Link:
Bogart Robinson - Money To Burn [Electric Blue] - Video