suggestions

Facebook's events feature gets suggestive

Facebook has a new feature that aims to help out with your social life when away from its confines.

A new feature, called suggested events, began rolling out to users this afternoon. It provides users with a list of events they may want to attend, even if they were not explicitly invited.

According to TechCrunch, which picked up on the feature, the events that show up in the new menu are pulled from past history, including check-ins, as well as pages that have been liked. Events that Facebook friends are planning to attend are also thrown into the mix. All … Read more

Best tech gifts under $100

Budget tech is one of our favorite categories here at CNET, so that's why we're running not one, but two budget tech gift roundups this year.

My compadre John Falcone put together a list of the 10 best el-cheapo tech products out there with his Best tech gifts under $50 feature.

I get a little more wiggle room with a $99.99 budget, which is why this list should really be called "Best tech gifts between $50 and $100." But more people are looking on Google for "best tech gifts under $100," so we'… Read more

Portable audio holiday gift picks

You almost can't go wrong giving the gift of music, so take a look at our top audio picks in this year's Holiday Gift Guide.

My opinion is that one can never have too many headphones since each model offers a different sound profile, but check out these alternatives for the audiophile on your gift list.

A good place to start is obviously a portable music player like the versatile Apple iPod Touch, but I also love the Logitech Wireless Boombox for iPad.

It lets you stream music from any device with a Bluetooth connection (most current smartphones, … Read more

Google claims Bing copies its search results

After noticing curious search results at Bing, then running a sting operation to investigate further, Google has concluded that Microsoft is copying Google search results into its own search engine.

That's the report from Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan today, who talked to both companies about it and presented Google's evidence. According to the report, a mechanism could be the Suggested Sites feature of Internet Explorer and the Bing Toolbar for browsers, both of which can gather data about what links people click when running searches.

The story began with Google's team for correcting typographical errors … Read more

Mozilla develops social skills with F1

As Flock and RockMelt duked it out for social-networking addicts' attention, browser kingpin Mozilla quietly introduced last week a new add-on for Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail users. Called F1 (download) and created by Mozilla Messaging, the division of Mozilla that manages the e-mail client Thunderbird, the secure and unobtrusive add-on provides fast sharing of URLs via a dedicated navigation bar button. It mimics one of the best features found in social-networking browsers without having to deal with hassle of switching browsers, although the add-on is definitely still a bit rough.

Once installed, F1 will create a button on the right … Read more

Google Suggest searches blocked in China

Google users inside of China are unable to use Google's search suggestions feature, as Google awaits word on its ultimate fate in China.

Ever since Google announced it would offer Chinese language search out of Hong Kong rather than mainland China, it has maintained a "Mainland China service availability" page to track which Google services can be accessed from inside The Great Firewall and which have been blocked. At some point on Wednesday China began blocking searches done through Google Suggest, according to the company, which prompted Google to update that page with a little yellow wrench … Read more

Google Suggest gets even more local

Believe it or not, people in New York are looking for different things on Google than people in Topeka.

With that in mind, Google has tweaked its Google Suggest search feature to provide localized suggestions for queries in a given metropolitan area. It already suggested different queries based on countries, assuming that Germans were looking for different queries than Italians.

Now searchers in different parts of the same country will get different suggestions for search queries. A quick experiment Friday with colleagues in New York and Boston produced different results for a query containing the letters "pat."

In … Read more

Google's speed freaks tweak suggestions, Chrome

Google introduced two search features Friday that focus on delivering search results without having to visit the search results page.

Universal search features such as weather, time, and flight-tracking information can now be found in the Google Suggest drop-down list of possible results for relevant queries, such as "weather San Francisco." In addition, Google has released an extension for its Chrome browser called Quick Scroll that is essentially Google's take on the Control-F (or Command-F for you other folks) basic search function.

Google has offered image-based answers to simple questions such as "What time is it … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1100: The Internet is a human right...in Europe

The European Commission has decided that every citizen has a right to the Internet, but still made it fairly easy for the media industry to cut the Internet off. We also see that Intel is in hot water again. And we ask that perennial question, "Why can't I own a Canadian?" And Google answers.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1100

Intel in threats and bribery suit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8343179.stm

Google Dashboard lifts curtain on stored privacy data http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10390941-265.html … Read more