As you have probably heard by now, the EFF has convinced the U.S. copyright office to grant exemptions to the DMCA, which mean that users of phones like the iPhone can jailbreak them. While it may be legal to do so, Apple still doesn't want you to.

Leander Kahney at Cult of Mac received this statement from Apple on the matter:

"Apple's goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

Kahney also speculates that now that jailbreaking is officially legal, we may see a "cottage industry" of unofficial app stores pop up. That could be interesting, particularly since Apple is notorious for being very strict with the apps it allows in the App Store.

ComputerWorld asks if it is now legal to start a business around jailbreaking phones. Mitch Wagner writes, "Would it now be legal to start a business jailbreaking iPhones for other people? Could you legally buy iPhones from Apple, jailbreak them, and then sell them? weaKnees does just that kind of business for DVRs, it sells TiVos hacked to include larger hard drives than the manufacturer standard. We've had one of their hacked TiVos for three years, it works great. If weaKnees decided to branch out to selling jailbroken iPhones, would that be legal?"

Keep in mind that part of Apple's statement about violating you warranty.

As you have probably heard by now, the EFF has convinced the U.S. copyright office to grant exemptions to the DMCA, which mean that users of phones like the iPhone can jailbreak them. While it may be legal to do so, Apple still doesn't want you to.

Leander Kahney at Cult of Mac received this statement from Apple on the matter:

"Apple's goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

Kahney also speculates that now that jailbreaking is officially legal, we may see a "cottage industry" of unofficial app stores pop up. That could be interesting, particularly since Apple is notorious for being very strict with the apps it allows in the App Store.

ComputerWorld asks if it is now legal to start a business around jailbreaking phones. Mitch Wagner writes, "Would it now be legal to start a business jailbreaking iPhones for other people? Could you legally buy iPhones from Apple, jailbreak them, and then sell them? weaKnees does just that kind of business for DVRs, it sells TiVos hacked to include larger hard drives than the manufacturer standard. We've had one of their hacked TiVos for three years, it works great. If weaKnees decided to branch out to selling jailbroken iPhones, would that be legal?"

Keep in mind that part of Apple's statement about violating you warranty.

Wolfram Alpha told WebProNews today it has released beta versions of Wolfram Alpha Widgets and Widget Builder to allow users to create and share widgets on their blog or website.

"Widgets are the next step in our goal of making Wolfram Alpha ubiquitous--available to everyone, everywhere," said Barak Berkowitz, Managing Director, Wolfram Alpha.

 

 

"With widgets you get a brand new way to experience the power of Wolfram Alpha and share it with your readers and friends. By putting the massive data repository and computational capability of Wolfram Alpha in everyone's hands, we fully expect to be surprised and impressed by the innovative ways people put this power to use in their areas of interest and expertise."

Wolfram Alpha widget can be built in a few steps using the drag-and-drop Widget Builder.  Widgets can also be personalized, allowing users to customize the look and feel of the widget as well as the display of the results. Widgets can be created from any Wolfram Alpha query.
 

 

Wolfram Alpha told WebProNews today it has released beta versions of Wolfram Alpha Widgets and Widget Builder to allow users to create and share widgets on their blog or website.

"Widgets are the next step in our goal of making Wolfram Alpha ubiquitous--available to everyone, everywhere," said Barak Berkowitz, Managing Director, Wolfram Alpha.

 

 

"With widgets you get a brand new way to experience the power of Wolfram Alpha and share it with your readers and friends. By putting the massive data repository and computational capability of Wolfram Alpha in everyone's hands, we fully expect to be surprised and impressed by the innovative ways people put this power to use in their areas of interest and expertise."

Wolfram Alpha widget can be built in a few steps using the drag-and-drop Widget Builder.  Widgets can also be personalized, allowing users to customize the look and feel of the widget as well as the display of the results. Widgets can be created from any Wolfram Alpha query.
 

 

Despite the Chinese government's decision to renew Google's Internet Content Provider license, the company is continuing to run into trouble in that country.  The latest problem is that two of Google's authorized advertising agents have ended their relationships with the corporation.

That's in no way a good sign for Google.  Wang Xing reported that Universal Internet Media and the Xi'an Weihua Network were two out of only 25 authorized advertising agents, and they were also "the major advertising agents for Google in East and Northwest China."

The organizations must have represented a pretty significant percentage of Google's revenue stream, then, and Google was already doing a poor job of attracting advertisers compared to Baidu.

Plus, it's necessary to consider whether the exits of Universal Internet Media and the Xi-an Weihua Network will be part of a trend.  If they're successful enough partnering with another company, additional advertisers might follow their lead, either to avoid negative connotations or just pursue bigger audiences.

But Google's not completely out of allies.  Wang Xing wrote, "Cheng Yu, general manager of Zoom Interactive, a Google authorized advertising agent in Beijing, said on Monday his company will continue its partnership with Google."

So Google fans can hope that this is just an isolated incident.

Despite the Chinese government's decision to renew Google's Internet Content Provider license, the company is continuing to run into trouble in that country.  The latest problem is that two of Google's authorized advertising agents have ended their relationships with the corporation.

That's in no way a good sign for Google.  Wang Xing reported that Universal Internet Media and the Xi'an Weihua Network were two out of only 25 authorized advertising agents, and they were also "the major advertising agents for Google in East and Northwest China."

The organizations must have represented a pretty significant percentage of Google's revenue stream, then, and Google was already doing a poor job of attracting advertisers compared to Baidu.

Plus, it's necessary to consider whether the exits of Universal Internet Media and the Xi-an Weihua Network will be part of a trend.  If they're successful enough partnering with another company, additional advertisers might follow their lead, either to avoid negative connotations or just pursue bigger audiences.

But Google's not completely out of allies.  Wang Xing wrote, "Cheng Yu, general manager of Zoom Interactive, a Google authorized advertising agent in Beijing, said on Monday his company will continue its partnership with Google."

So Google fans can hope that this is just an isolated incident.

Mayo Clinic said today it is launching a Center for Social Media to create broader and deeper engagement by hospitals, doctors and patients.

"Mayo Clinic believes individuals have the right and responsibility to advocate for their own health, and that it is our responsibility to help them use social media tools to get the best information, connect with providers and with each other, and inspire healthy choices," said Mayo Clinic president and CEO John Noseworthy, M.D.

"Through this center we intend to lead the health care community in applying these revolutionary tools to spread knowledge and encourage collaboration among providers, improving health care quality everywhere."

Features of the Center for Social Media include:

*Training for health care employees via webinars, in-person and on-site workshops and boot camps, and online curriculum.

*Consulting and coaching to help organizations align social media strategies with business goals.

*Conferences and other events to bring people together to learn from each other and share their experiences.

*Resources including toolkits, manuals, books, white papers, policies and guidelines.

"Health care has lagged behind other industries in applying social media tools," says Lee Aase, one of the leaders of the new center.

"Social media interest and activity among hospitals and health care professionals has grown remarkably, though, with the number of hospital Twitter accounts, for example, doubling in the last year."

In addition to reaching out, the center staff will work with Mayo Clinic colleagues to find new ways to apply social media tools throughout the Mayo system.

"We see immense opportunities to use internal social networking tools for collaboration among our employees to improve patient care, education, research and administration," said Aase.

"As we find new applications, we plan to conduct research into their effects so we can measure any cost savings, efficiency gains and improved effectiveness. And when we do, we'll be sharing those findings externally to help the whole health system improve."
 

 

Mayo Clinic said today it is launching a Center for Social Media to create broader and deeper engagement by hospitals, doctors and patients.

"Mayo Clinic believes individuals have the right and responsibility to advocate for their own health, and that it is our responsibility to help them use social media tools to get the best information, connect with providers and with each other, and inspire healthy choices," said Mayo Clinic president and CEO John Noseworthy, M.D.

"Through this center we intend to lead the health care community in applying these revolutionary tools to spread knowledge and encourage collaboration among providers, improving health care quality everywhere."

Features of the Center for Social Media include:

*Training for health care employees via webinars, in-person and on-site workshops and boot camps, and online curriculum.

*Consulting and coaching to help organizations align social media strategies with business goals.

*Conferences and other events to bring people together to learn from each other and share their experiences.

*Resources including toolkits, manuals, books, white papers, policies and guidelines.

"Health care has lagged behind other industries in applying social media tools," says Lee Aase, one of the leaders of the new center.

"Social media interest and activity among hospitals and health care professionals has grown remarkably, though, with the number of hospital Twitter accounts, for example, doubling in the last year."

In addition to reaching out, the center staff will work with Mayo Clinic colleagues to find new ways to apply social media tools throughout the Mayo system.

"We see immense opportunities to use internal social networking tools for collaboration among our employees to improve patient care, education, research and administration," said Aase.

"As we find new applications, we plan to conduct research into their effects so we can measure any cost savings, efficiency gains and improved effectiveness. And when we do, we'll be sharing those findings externally to help the whole health system improve."
 

 

It's a rare person who would suggest that any online traffic report is completely accurate; most folks know stats from Hitwise, Nielsen, and the like are closer to educated guesses.  But it turns out that last month, comScore got Yahoo's June stats wrong by a significant margin, leading Yahoo to announce the problem in a press release today.

It's hard to characterize Yahoo's response as an overreaction; by its own admission, comScore really was way off the mark.  Yahoo explained that the organization "underreported Yahoo!'s U.S. page views by more than one billion and its duration metrics by more than 850 million minutes."

So now, "Based on the corrected numbers, on a month-over-month basis, Yahoo!'s U.S. page views were down 4.7 percent versus the reported 7.4 percent, and U.S. duration was down 4.3 percent versus the reported 6.4 percent."

And you can see an even more detailed breakdown below.

comScore, meanwhile, has promised that it's identified and corrected the problem behind these inaccuracies.  Yahoo has gone on the record saying that it still has confidence in comScore's figures, too.

Hopefully everything will be back to normal by the time comScore's stats for July roll in, then.

It's a rare person who would suggest that any online traffic report is completely accurate; most folks know stats from Hitwise, Nielsen, and the like are closer to educated guesses.  But it turns out that last month, comScore got Yahoo's June stats wrong by a significant margin, leading Yahoo to announce the problem in a press release today.

It's hard to characterize Yahoo's response as an overreaction; by its own admission, comScore really was way off the mark.  Yahoo explained that the organization "underreported Yahoo!'s U.S. page views by more than one billion and its duration metrics by more than 850 million minutes."

So now, "Based on the corrected numbers, on a month-over-month basis, Yahoo!'s U.S. page views were down 4.7 percent versus the reported 7.4 percent, and U.S. duration was down 4.3 percent versus the reported 6.4 percent."

And you can see an even more detailed breakdown below.

comScore, meanwhile, has promised that it's identified and corrected the problem behind these inaccuracies.  Yahoo has gone on the record saying that it still has confidence in comScore's figures, too.

Hopefully everything will be back to normal by the time comScore's stats for July roll in, then.

PowerReviews, a provider of customer reviews for retailers and brands, has partnered with Google to share "premium user generated" product review content from client sites.

Ratings and reviews will be displayed in Google search results, Google Product Search, and Google advertising programs.

"Clearly, many consumers depend on search for shopping -- from conducting initial research to making the final purchase. Providing high quality product review content within Google gives our clients opportunities to enhance search listings, increase brand awareness and drive sales through every stage of the shopping process," said Pehr Luedtke, CEO of PowerReviews.

"With this new offering, we continue to help retailers and brands leverage their product reviews by increasing traffic and exposure from Google."

PowerReviews is giving retailers the ability to automatically feed full-text product reviews to Google, with the aim of increasing brand exposure for the retailer and offering users access to opinions from other shoppers as they do research and make purchases.

PowerReviews operates Buzzillions. Com, and works with over 1,000 retailers and brands on over 3,500 websites.
 

PowerReviews, a provider of customer reviews for retailers and brands, has partnered with Google to share "premium user generated" product review content from client sites.

Ratings and reviews will be displayed in Google search results, Google Product Search, and Google advertising programs.

"Clearly, many consumers depend on search for shopping -- from conducting initial research to making the final purchase. Providing high quality product review content within Google gives our clients opportunities to enhance search listings, increase brand awareness and drive sales through every stage of the shopping process," said Pehr Luedtke, CEO of PowerReviews.

"With this new offering, we continue to help retailers and brands leverage their product reviews by increasing traffic and exposure from Google."

PowerReviews is giving retailers the ability to automatically feed full-text product reviews to Google, with the aim of increasing brand exposure for the retailer and offering users access to opinions from other shoppers as they do research and make purchases.

PowerReviews operates Buzzillions. Com, and works with over 1,000 retailers and brands on over 3,500 websites.
 

There's a bit of good news for Google this morning in relation to the Street View data collection clash.  The UK's Information Commissioner's Office announced that it's had a look at some of the data, and the organization is inclined to believe that no harm will come of Google's mistake.

It's important to note that the ICO, which is an independent authority, didn't analyze every scrap of information, so this doesn't count as conclusive proof that only random 1s and 0s were collected.  Also, the ICO didn't in any way argue that it was okay for Google to record the data.

Still, the ICO told Dan Worth, "On the basis of the samples we saw we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data. . . .  There is also no evidence as yet that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment."

The ICO then stated, "We will be alerting Privacy International and others who have complained to us of our position."

That counts as a significant win for Google.  Things hadn't been going too well beforehand, with more and more officials clamoring to investigate the company's practices and possibly impose penalties.  Now it's effectively been let off the hook by one inquiry.

It should be interesting to see if any other groups are willing to accept the ICO's word on this matter.

There's a bit of good news for Google this morning in relation to the Street View data collection clash.  The UK's Information Commissioner's Office announced that it's had a look at some of the data, and the organization is inclined to believe that no harm will come of Google's mistake.

It's important to note that the ICO, which is an independent authority, didn't analyze every scrap of information, so this doesn't count as conclusive proof that only random 1s and 0s were collected.  Also, the ICO didn't in any way argue that it was okay for Google to record the data.

Still, the ICO told Dan Worth, "On the basis of the samples we saw we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data. . . .  There is also no evidence as yet that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment."

The ICO then stated, "We will be alerting Privacy International and others who have complained to us of our position."

That counts as a significant win for Google.  Things hadn't been going too well beforehand, with more and more officials clamoring to investigate the company's practices and possibly impose penalties.  Now it's effectively been let off the hook by one inquiry.

It should be interesting to see if any other groups are willing to accept the ICO's word on this matter.

Yahoo Japan is turning to Google to power its paid and organic search engine listings. This comes as something of a surprise as Yahoo has a huge deal in place with Bing that is just getting started, but Yahoo doesn't actually own the majority of Yahoo Japan, so that version of Yahoo gets to do its own thing.

According to Kara Swisher at Boomtown who broke the news, Yahoo only holds a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan, while SoftBankCorp, a Japanese ISP and cell phone provider controls 40%. Yahoo has made the following statement on the matter:

Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

Get this video! Get this video! Get this video!

Last week, Yahoo announced that it has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft, with up to 25% of its U.S. search traffic seeing Bing and adCenter results.

Yahoo will be integrating Microsoft's mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. The company anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September.

Yahoo Japan is turning to Google to power its paid and organic search engine listings. This comes as something of a surprise as Yahoo has a huge deal in place with Bing that is just getting started, but Yahoo doesn't actually own the majority of Yahoo Japan, so that version of Yahoo gets to do its own thing.

According to Kara Swisher at Boomtown who broke the news, Yahoo only holds a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan, while SoftBankCorp, a Japanese ISP and cell phone provider controls 40%. Yahoo has made the following statement on the matter:

Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

Get this video! Get this video! Get this video!

Last week, Yahoo announced that it has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft, with up to 25% of its U.S. search traffic seeing Bing and adCenter results.

Yahoo will be integrating Microsoft's mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. The company anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September.

You may soon be able to post more than just 140 characters on Twitter. Twitter is testing a new feature that allows users to post videos and photos in their Twitter streams.

Some have spotted the feature, while most probably never had it. Twitter gave Mashable the following statement:

"We’re constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android (Android) apps."

The description that accompanied the "Tweet Media" setting on those accounts that had access to it said, "By default, you’ll only see images and videos shared by people you’re following, and reveal those by people you’re not. Check this box to see media from everyone on Twitter."

It's unclear whether or not Twitter will go forward with making this a feature, but it would not be surprising. It may mean bad news for other third-party apps that let users post photos and video, but it wouldn't be the first time Twitter released its own functionalities that compete with its own ecosystem.
 

You may soon be able to post more than just 140 characters on Twitter. Twitter is testing a new feature that allows users to post videos and photos in their Twitter streams.

Some have spotted the feature, while most probably never had it. Twitter gave Mashable the following statement:

"We’re constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android (Android) apps."

The description that accompanied the "Tweet Media" setting on those accounts that had access to it said, "By default, you’ll only see images and videos shared by people you’re following, and reveal those by people you’re not. Check this box to see media from everyone on Twitter."

It's unclear whether or not Twitter will go forward with making this a feature, but it would not be surprising. It may mean bad news for other third-party apps that let users post photos and video, but it wouldn't be the first time Twitter released its own functionalities that compete with its own ecosystem.
 

We've known that Ask has been working on a new version of Ask.com for months, but now it's here. Ask is placing new emphasis on the Q&A side of search, and is injecting the Q&A experience directly into the main search experience, which is what SVP of Product Management Tony Gentile tells WebProNews, sets the new Ask apart from other Q&A sites.

He says they've taken a hybrid approach, utilizing existing partnerships and new technology that's been refined over the last six to nine months, to build a new social Q&A experience that's built directly into Ask's search capabilities. When Ask doesn't immediately give you an answer (or the right answer), you can simply ask "the community."

We asked Gentile to tell us a little about who this community is. Initially, he says, they are using their existing employee base across IAC companies in a private beta. These employees are encouraged to invite their own families and friends to participate. Some journalists have been invited as well. Eventually this will expand. He says they will also implement technologies like Facebook Connect, Twitter, LinkedIn, OAuth, etc. to get users to bring in people from their own networks.

Also as a result of the social media aspect, he says profiles can lend credibility to answers. For example, if you answer a question and your LinkedIn profile is attached to it, that can show your experience in a field related to a question you have answered.

This is where the new Ask.com comes in as a potentially useful tool for businesses. Businesses may want to answer questions about products, and even create relationships with potential customers. An interesting nugget Gentile shared is that in analyzing the questions Ask receives, the majority of them are either related to "how do I spend my time?" or "how do I spend my money?"

Ask has the ability to work at the local level, as well. Gentile says they have the ability to analyze questions of both an implicit and an explicit local nature. For example, if someone asks, "what's the best burrito shop in San Francisco?", that's clearly a local question, and they can route it accordingly to people in and who have visited San Francisco.

Another type of local question, however, is something like "who's a babysitter I can trust?" That's also a local question, but it doesn't name a specific city. Ask says it has the ability to figure it out, and again, route accordingly. It calls upon signals in the user profiles. If a user gives permission, they will use location.

Here are the main features of the new Ask.com (as described by the company):

- Proprietary semantic search technologies: Finds the most relevant, quality answers across the Web, and displays them at the top of the page. No click-throughs required.

- The largest Q&A database on the Web: More than 500 million questions and answers indexed, and the ability to quickly extract Q&A pairs from hundreds of thousands of sources.

- Ask.com community: Leverages proprietary search categorization to route questions and solicit high-quality answers from community members based on their interests and areas of knowledge.

- New user interface: Improved UI makes it easy to ask and answer questions, highlights advancing and trending questions from the Ask community throughout the site.

"Ask's heritage has always been about answering questions – in fact, more people associate Ask with answering questions than any other brand in the world," says Ask.com U.S. President Doug Leeds. "As users continue to embrace the social Web, now is the perfect time to extend Ask’s technology beyond finding pages that have answers to finding people who do as well.  With 87 million monthly users and more than a decade of Q&A experience, Ask.com is uniquely positioned to answer the long tail of questions that are impossible for search engines alone to address."

It's worth noting that Google purchased Aardvark not too long ago, which also calls upon a community to answer questions, but the company's plans for the service are still somewhat unclear. It remains to be seen if that will become fully integrated with the search engine.

"As the Web becomes more conversational in nature, consumer expectations and the Web’s ability to meet those expectations are changing rapidly.  It has become natural for people to ask questions and receive answers online, and algorithmic search alone can only take that proposition so far,” says Allen Weiner, Research VP, Media Industry, Gartner Research.  "There is a huge market opportunity for companies who can get this right."

While they don't have any specific announcements yet, Ask has a roadmap for new directions in which they plan to take the new Ask.com, in terms of social and mobile. These could be key elements in just how successful this relaunch is.

We've known that Ask has been working on a new version of Ask.com for months, but now it's here. Ask is placing new emphasis on the Q&A side of search, and is injecting the Q&A experience directly into the main search experience, which is what SVP of Product Management Tony Gentile tells WebProNews, sets the new Ask apart from other Q&A sites.

He says they've taken a hybrid approach, utilizing existing partnerships and new technology that's been refined over the last six to nine months, to build a new social Q&A experience that's built directly into Ask's search capabilities. When Ask doesn't immediately give you an answer (or the right answer), you can simply ask "the community."

We asked Gentile to tell us a little about who this community is. Initially, he says, they are using their existing employee base across IAC companies in a private beta. These employees are encouraged to invite their own families and friends to participate. Some journalists have been invited as well. Eventually this will expand. He says they will also implement technologies like Facebook Connect, Twitter, LinkedIn, OAuth, etc. to get users to bring in people from their own networks.

Also as a result of the social media aspect, he says profiles can lend credibility to answers. For example, if you answer a question and your LinkedIn profile is attached to it, that can show your experience in a field related to a question you have answered.

This is where the new Ask.com comes in as a potentially useful tool for businesses. Businesses may want to answer questions about products, and even create relationships with potential customers. An interesting nugget Gentile shared is that in analyzing the questions Ask receives, the majority of them are either related to "how do I spend my time?" or "how do I spend my money?"

Ask has the ability to work at the local level, as well. Gentile says they have the ability to analyze questions of both an implicit and an explicit local nature. For example, if someone asks, "what's the best burrito shop in San Francisco?", that's clearly a local question, and they can route it accordingly to people in and who have visited San Francisco.

Another type of local question, however, is something like "who's a babysitter I can trust?" That's also a local question, but it doesn't name a specific city. Ask says it has the ability to figure it out, and again, route accordingly. It calls upon signals in the user profiles. If a user gives permission, they will use location.

Here are the main features of the new Ask.com (as described by the company):

- Proprietary semantic search technologies: Finds the most relevant, quality answers across the Web, and displays them at the top of the page. No click-throughs required.

- The largest Q&A database on the Web: More than 500 million questions and answers indexed, and the ability to quickly extract Q&A pairs from hundreds of thousands of sources.

- Ask.com community: Leverages proprietary search categorization to route questions and solicit high-quality answers from community members based on their interests and areas of knowledge.

- New user interface: Improved UI makes it easy to ask and answer questions, highlights advancing and trending questions from the Ask community throughout the site.

"Ask's heritage has always been about answering questions – in fact, more people associate Ask with answering questions than any other brand in the world," says Ask.com U.S. President Doug Leeds. "As users continue to embrace the social Web, now is the perfect time to extend Ask’s technology beyond finding pages that have answers to finding people who do as well.  With 87 million monthly users and more than a decade of Q&A experience, Ask.com is uniquely positioned to answer the long tail of questions that are impossible for search engines alone to address."

It's worth noting that Google purchased Aardvark not too long ago, which also calls upon a community to answer questions, but the company's plans for the service are still somewhat unclear. It remains to be seen if that will become fully integrated with the search engine.

"As the Web becomes more conversational in nature, consumer expectations and the Web’s ability to meet those expectations are changing rapidly.  It has become natural for people to ask questions and receive answers online, and algorithmic search alone can only take that proposition so far,” says Allen Weiner, Research VP, Media Industry, Gartner Research.  "There is a huge market opportunity for companies who can get this right."

While they don't have any specific announcements yet, Ask has a roadmap for new directions in which they plan to take the new Ask.com, in terms of social and mobile. These could be key elements in just how successful this relaunch is.