Question: What well-known internet search engine continues to lag industry leaders no matter how smart it becomes? Answer: Ask Jeeves.
The search engine is launching its latest effort to win more fans. The hook: a new feature designed to provide more immediate answers to inquiries.
With the change, Ask Jeeves will display a "Web Answer" to many of the requests its search engine processes. For instance, if someone enters "world's largest lake" into Ask.com's search box, the top result will include a snippet listing the Caspian Sea.
Ask Jeeves' market share has climbed from 1.8 percent a year ago, but most of those gains were achieved through a $395 million acquisition of a family of websites that included MyWay.com and Excite.com. The company is hoping for another boost later this summer after it's sold for $1.9 billion to InterActiveCorp.
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Doublechip: Intel unveiled its first mainstream home PC microprocessor with two computing engines on a single chip and vowed to sell millions of them by the end of the year.
The Pentium D processor and supporting chips will target home computer users who run more than one program at once or have software that is designed to take advantage of the extra computing horsepower of the chips' dual cores.
It's part of Intel's recent strategy to supply more than just microprocessors to computer makers. The move started in 2003, when Intel launched its Centrino technology that includes a processor, chipset and wireless radio tuned to work together in notebook computers.
When purchased in volume, Pentium D prices range from $241 to $530 with speeds from 2.8 GHz to 3.2 GHz.
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Fighting back: A website critical of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's views on gays contains constitutionally protected, noncommercial speech and should be allowed to keep its name -- a common misspelling for the conservative evangelist, a lawyer for the site owner argued.
Christopher Lamparello, who operates fallwell.com, took his case to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to reverse a federal judge's ruling that he violated federal trademark law.
A federal judge ruled the domain name was nearly identical to Falwell's website falwell.com and could confuse web surfers -- despite a disclaimer noting it is not affiliated with Falwell. He also ruled the site had a commercial element because it included a link to a book on Amazon.com.
In 2003, Gary Cohn of Highland Park, Illinois, surrendered the domain names jerryfalwell.com and jerryfallwell.com after Falwell threatened to sue him for trademark infringement.
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Stolen identity: A woman sued Yahoo for $3 million, alleging the internet site failed to fulfill a promise to remove nude pictures of her from the web.
Cecilia Barnes, 48, in a lawsuit in Multnomah County, Oregon, claims an ex-boyfriend began posting unauthorized personal profiles of her containing the photos in December. The profiles included her e-mail address and work phone number.
The former boyfriend also engaged in online discussions in Yahoo chat rooms while posing as Barnes and directing men to the profiles, the lawsuit claims.
Barnes sent Yahoo a letter in January saying she did not create the profiles and wanted them removed. Additional attempts to get Yahoo to remove them in February and March did not get a response, the lawsuit claims.
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Compiled by David Cohn. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
