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Bing is drumming up some interest for its Snapshot feature by adding social media shortcuts into search results.

When you search for people in Bing it brings up their Wikipedia entry -- or, if they don't have an entry, their LinkedIn profile -- in a Snapshot box alongside its results. The box will also have shortcut buttons to the person's various social media accounts.

The Snapshot box is powered by Bing's Satori technology, which sounds similar to Google's Knowledge Graph.

In addition to professionals on LinkedIn and famous people, the Snapshot box will also pop up … Read more

Abalta's just-released WebLink system makes use of smartphones to power popular apps on a car's dashboard. Although no automotive partners have been announced, the technology could let drivers see and control apps for navigation, music, news, and social media through their cars' touch screens.

For the WebLink launch, Abalta Technologies included integration with Slacker Internet radio, WebNav navigation, Parkopedia parking information, and WCities event information apps.

Abalta says WebLink will work with any major smartphone operating system. The technology makes use of the HTML 5-compatible browsers of smartphone operating systems, showing the content and accepting touch-screen control input … Read more

LinkedIn's Web site went down at least three times this morning due to an unknown issue.

The company confirmed the problem in a Tweet today. The site was up and down all morning, and is currently down again.

LinkedIn earlier posted an image telling users that it was "taking a moment to clean things up." The site returned shortly after its first bout of downtime, but certain features such as the in-box were unavailable. A second error message an hour later noted that there was a "Gateway Timing Error."

A LinkedIn representative told CNET that … Read more

Get ready for some LinkedIn ads masquerading as slideshows. The company is pushing its SlideShare tool as an advertising medium within its network, LinkedIn announced today.

The network has signed on General Electric and marketing firm Constant Contact as the initial brands to try out this type of advertising.

These slideshow ads, called SlideShare Content Ads, will blend in on the LinkedIn pages, according to Meera Bhatia, head of Product Management for Marketing Solutions. The advertising will appear as a "sponsored presentation," and users can click through it within the advertisement or they can expand it into a … Read more

LinkedIn is getting ready to purchase news-reading app Pulse, AllThingsD reported today.

The app, which aggregates news and social media feeds, boasts more than 20 million users who are spread across more than 190 countries and read 10 million stories a day.

Unnamed sources told AllThingsD's Kara Swisher that the startup has had many suitors. Both Microsoft and Yahoo were talking to Pulse about an acquisition, and other companies including Facebook, Gannett and Amazon have been interested as well.

But the top contender is LinkedIn, and the two companies may announce the deal this week, according to the report. … Read more

Everyone knows how to read a newspaper or a book. They all have some variation of text, columns, pages and pictures. The basic design frameworks have been improved and fine-tuned for human consumption, but they remain little changed over the last several hundred years.

Now we hear about sweeping changes to the design of news feeds in social-networking services. Google just introduced bigger cover photos and some improved navigation to Google+. Twitter is always tweaking the presentation of its news feed, such as Twitter Cards that allow users to include rich media such as video and photos as part of … Read more

You've played that "no phones at dinner" game and lost. You can't bear ignoring your messages. Well, this bit of bling could be your new best friend.

LinkMe is a digital bracelet that displays the messages, Facebook updates, and tweets that you need most.

Billed as a world first on its Kickstarter page, LinkMe will "display the messages and alerts you choose, making your entire social life available to you with just a glance at your wrist." … Read more

LinkedIn is chewing over a product that would help facilitate private communication for enterprises and allow staffers to better benefit from their rolodex on the professional network.

The vast majority of sharing on LinkedIn happens in public, Chief Executive Jeff Weiner said Monday during an appearance at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference. So, to create value for enterprises, the one area where the healthy company is admittedly lacking, LinkedIn needs to think about creating private-sharing tools that work behind the firewall, he said.

LinkedIn is doing a lot more than thinking -- it's eating. Weiner used … Read more