One of the world's largest computing grids, capable of streaming the equivalent of three million DVDs a year, was officially launched on Friday.

It will allow 7,000 scientists in 33 countries to process the 15 petabytes of data that will be produced each year at the particle accelerator at the Cern laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.

Scientists who spent years building the grid and its dedicated 10Gbps connections to 11 key sites--the main universities and laboratories in the network--said high-bandwidth grid computing is transforming the way research is carried out.

Compared to the current market leaders, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., however, Ask's share of searches — 4.8 percent in August — is quite small.

And so, in a bid to get people to conduct searches through the site more often, Ask has been working on improving the speed and relevance of results since Safka's arrival in January. It is the latest in a long line of overhauls for the search engine once known as Ask Jeeves.

Ask sped up search result download times by 30 percent by doing several things, Safka said, including using an expedited delivery system from Akamai Technologies Inc. to show results for common Ask searches.

Ask also has increased the number of sites it indexes content from and the amount of material it gets from those sites, Safka said. And Ask has tweaked the algorithm it uses to rank search results.

Beyond these under-the-hood changes, Ask will divide pages into two panels instead of three and add features like "Ask Q&A," which aims to give users questions and answers related to their search terms.

However, Ask actually benefits from Google's prowess, since Google posts ads on Ask and other IAC sites. And with the overall online advertising market still young and continuing to grow, Diller said, Ask doesn't necessarily need double-digit market share in order to do well financially.

said by Koil :

1)how would you link up to other network devices, say in a house? There would still be a need for some wiring then I guess...maybe just fibre between all the bulbs to the main PC/Server I guess. (or a lot of mirrors along the hallway and up the stairs I guess would work too )

This could be done with an LED-based communications network that also provides light - all over existing power lines

said by Koil :

2)I am thinking that "too fast for the human eye to perceive" is going to still be noticeable. Kinda like DLP televisions that use the color wheel. If you move your head or eyes fast enough, you'll catch it...not a deal breaker, but something they'll prolly run into.

said by RadioDoc :

It's more fashion accessory than a phone. Most of the people I know who actually try to use it like a Blackberry hate it and have gone back to RIM. The rest? It's jewelry.