Comment 4 inShare154 Yandex, Google’s Russian Rival, Is Twitter’s New Real-Time Search Partner
A significant step for Twitter in its international growth: Yandex, Russia’s search giant, today announced that it will carry Twitter data in all of its search results.
The news also underscores one possible route to revenue generation for Twitter: Yandex describes this as a licensing deal. The terms of it were not disclosed but Microsoft reportedly paid Twitter $30 million for a similar search agreement.
The agreement with Yandex will see Twitter’s data firehose appear both in Yandex’s blog search, as well as through a dedicated URL, twitter.yandex.ru. Read more...
Kinect-like device makes everything a touchscreen
What would it look if you didn't have to carry around a phone, tablet or other touchscreen gadget to tend to your email and other on-the-go computing needs?
A team at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University have an idea. The researchers have unveiled a project in the works that uses a Kinect-like camera to transform any surface into a touchscreen.
And I do mean any surface — a piece of paper, a wall, a table, your hand, your arm ...
The proof-of-concept prototype — called OmniTouch — is a wearable camera/projection system that "allows the wearer to use their hands, arms and legs as graphical, interactive surfaces," according to a write up at the Microsoft Research website. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBCUniversal.)
The OmniTouch prototype my be rather large and bulky - not to mention downright goofy looking - at this stage, but researchers say that miniturizing it would not be difficult.
"Today’s mobile computers provide omnipresent access to information ... It is undeniable that they have forever changed the way we work, play and interact," the team writes in the OmniTouch research paper here. "However, mobile interaction is far from solved. Diminutive screens and buttons mar the user experience, and otherwise prevent us from realizing their full potential." Read more...