Google has unveiled a new Universal Search feature that integrates results from news stories, books, video, local search and images.

The feature will expose users to new information without requiring them to visit specialised search engines within the Google site. Users will be able to watch videos from Google and YouTube through a player embedded on the search result page, for instance. The site will link to videos on other websites, but will not play them on an embedded player.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin touted the Universal Search launch as the first big pay-off from last year's YouTube acquisition. The expansion transforms online video from an entertainment product to a research tool, Brin argued at a company event at Google's corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California.

People learning to ski, he suggested, do not currently visit video sites. Universal Search will expose them to such content. "Now the incredible value from a research point of view ... will become apparent and really useful to users," said Brin. The service will also offer information from Google's book search, local search, news stories and image search services. A search for local restaurants, for instance, will offer a list of user reviews, address information and a map. Searches for movies will link to the Internet Movie DataBase and display the entire movie when available.

"Hundreds" of engineers have been working on the project for two years, the company said. Because Google has added five additional sources to its search queries, it had to design algorithms that would not increase the load on the servers by 500 per cent. Google ended up designing a new search infrastructure and new ranking algorithms to determine the order in which results are ranked.

The company claimed that this allowed it to essentially eliminate the workload associated with introducing additional content. Google also unveiled a new contextual search feature that lets users narrow down their query to a specific category based on the query itself.

A query for 'downtown Los Angeles', for instance, offers a deep dive into images, news and maps as well as plain web results. A search for the 'Python scripting language' offers blog items, book links, discussion groups, and code snippets.

"We ultimately see a real advance in the information being presented to the user," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

Lastly, Google launched a new Google Experimental page where users can sign up for services and products that are in an early test phase.

The search firm currently offers the services to random users that allows the site user to receive upcoming services.

The new services are currently being rolled out throughout Google's data centres and should be available to all users by 17 May.

Courtesy: Itweek.co.uk

Microsoft will be releasing more information to users ahead of upcoming security updates.

The software vendor will provide severity ratings, and warn of the impact of the vulnerability and the affected software for each bulletin. The current system informs users only of the number bulletins affecting a particular application and provides a severity rating for the most severe vulnerability.

Microsoft cited customer feedback as the driver behind the changes. The company has been under pressure to increase the information that it publishes through its Advance Notification Service. The advance warnings are sent out each Thursday before the actual patch release on the second Tuesday of the month. The notification system is designed to allow IT administrators to prepare for upcoming patches by telling them which applications need to be updated.

Microsoft limits the amount of data that it discloses, however, to prevent malware writers from using the information to exploit vulnerabilities. Microsoft will also change the form of its security bulletins, allowing users to more easily gauge the severity of vulnerability and applicability to their environment.

Courtesy: Itweek.co.uk