Google is giving Google+ users two enhanced ways to find information disseminating across the social network, with real-time search and hashtags.

“Now when you search in Google+, you’ll see a message about new posts the instant they’re available,” Vic Gundotra, Google’s SVP of social, explained in a post on Google+ Wednesday. “If you click on this message, or select ‘Most recent,’ then relevant posts will start appearing in real-time.”

Also, should you opt to put a hashtag in any of your Google+ updates, that hashtag will automatically link to search results for the term.

The improvements will come as welcome additions for Google+ power users, journalists and media types interested in keeping up with breaking news on Google+. The search updates may do little to convince more casual social networkers to stick around on the social site or give it second chance.

They have some long-term significance, however. We expect this technology to become the foundation for a revamped real-time search experience on Google.com itself.

You may recall that Google Realtime Search went on hiatus in July — after Google failed to reach an agreement with Twitter for continued access to its firehose of data.

More About: Google, Google Realtime Search, Search

The latest big name interested in buying Yahoo may be Microsoft, according to a Reuters report from last night.

Sources tell Reuters that one camp in Microsoft is excited about the deal because it would give them a strong web portal and destroy AOL as a competitor. But another Microsoft group (lets call them the “realists”) say that the company shouldn’t be spending billions on a property without much growth potential.

No matter how much I think about it, I can’t imagine why Microsoft would spend billions (Yahoo has a market value of around $20 billion) on a sinking ship. Another report, from All Things Digital, says that the Reuters rumor is way off. ATD’s sources say that Microsoft has been clear it isn’t interested in buying Yahoo.

Microsoft already has a 10-year deal in place to have its Bing search engine power Yahoo’s search and to display Microsoft’s self-serve ads alongside Yahoo’s search. As part of the deal, Yahoo gets an 88 percent cut from advertising revenue — but that’s still a decent chunk of change for Microsoft, which also gets added exposure for Bing and its ads.

Microsoft famously tried, and failed, to buy Yahoo in 2008 for $44.6 billion. After that experience, I can’t imagine that Microsoft wants to go through yet another nightmare acquisition process.

Reuters notes that Microsoft may also seek out a partner for a potential Yahoo buy, but All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher squashes that idea too, saying that Microsoft has been telling Yahoo bidders it won’t be teaming up with them. Although Microsoft might consider a token investment, if it means completing the deal, Swisher says.

“Certainly, Microsoft has been and is willing to talk to anyone interested, said sources, given their Yahoo business relationship,” Swisher writes. “But this does not make it a bid of any shape or size. They are not even “considering” it, unless that means watching from a distance.”

Alibaba’s CEO recently expressed interest in buying Yahoo, but he quickly backed down when faced with the reality of a Chinese company buying a major US business, which involves deep regulatory investigations.

Filed under: deals, VentureBeat

Finding your way around a new airport—at least major ones in the US—just got a little easier with the help of Bing search. The new airport maps show you the location of terminals, ticket counters, restrooms, eateries, ATMs, and more.

To find a map of one of the 42 airports currently covered (Microsoft plans on covering more), just search for the airport name, code, or city on Bing and click on the map and then zoom all the way in. You can also enter in your flight number to get to a map link.

Google Maps covers airports, but doesn't yet show you a complete view of the inside like Bing does (comparing JFK on Google, I find there's only a Wendy's and a Our Lady of the Skies RC Chapel in Terminal 4 there).

To see the full list of the mapped airports covered now, you can check the Bing Maps Blog post below.

New Airport Maps for Bing | Bing Maps Blog via Tech Crunch

You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.

The weekend witnessed a spat between popular restaurant guides, Zomato and Burrp, with the former alleging that Burrp was copying listings data from its website including proprietary data points such as location co-ordinates. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, in his blog post, also included screen-shots of Burrp pages.

The evidence: pages from Burrp featured a custom phone number originally allocated by Zomato to facilitate table bookings, of which even the restaurant staff is not aware of.

The post also linked to the Linkedin profile of a Burrp employee who had added the listing, to show that it was not a user submitted listing. Zomato has also mentioned that Burrp’s listing included the same GPS coordinates for the restaurant, until the 5th decimal point, which a user is unlikely to submit along with the listing.

Zomato also adds that there have been similar instances in the past, and on informing Burrp, the response that they received was that these were user uploads.

Burrp’s side of the story

In a response to Zomato’s blog post, Burrp also posted one on its own blog, defending the accusation. It said that the request to add the business listing came via an email and that Burrp added details verbatim, in good faith. Further, it says that the phone number mentioned in the listing should have carried an extension number, without which it doesn’t connect to the business. So, if it was to copy the number, it did not make sense to leave the extension.

Burrp alleges that Zomato is the one which copied features from Burrp, is poaching Burrp employees from sales and content, and is putting fake reviews of  un-reviewed business and submitting them to Google. Burrp did not include any evidence in the post, to substantiate these counter-allegations.

Our Take

- For any local listings aggregator, listings are a vital asset which drive traffic to the website. These sites generate money form paid listings, which are in turn-dependent on traffic generated through search. So, even if it’s a question of a handful of listings, a local search business can not ignore it.

- User Generated content is a major liability for content players, and if it has a major role to play in the functioning of the business, it must be well moderated. There is no place for ‘good faith’ when you are susceptible to getting sued for copyright violation.

Nikhil adds: Under India’s new IT Rules, Burrp can be held liable for these listings for copyright violation, if it does not take them down on being notified by Zomato, or vice versa. If either of them refuses to comply with the request, the plaintiff can take the matter to court. Remember that previously, Cleartrip has also been accused of data theft.

- Zomato substantiated their accusations with proof, including screen-shots and links.  Burrp defended the accusations, but did not cite any proof. Why didn’t it include a screen shot of Zomato’s alleged fake reviews on Google?

- It seems like this was not just a one-off incident and Karthick Gopal earlier tweeted a picture (via Gautam John) of a restaurant menu with Zomato’s watermark being used on Burrp. Pluggd.in also published some listings from Burrp and Google, which featured the same Zomato phone number.

- On poaching employees, Deepinder Goyal replied to my tweet saying that Burrp has a high attrition rate and Zomato hired some of their best people. In any competitive industry, this is a normal practice, and in contrast with copyright violation, isn’t illegal. Note that there is no explicit allegation of database theft by Burrp. Readers should keep in mind that JustDial had sued Burrp’s sister company AskMe of database theft.
*Reach India’s Digital Industry Decision Makers: Advertise on MediaNama. Contact sales@medianama.com. For more info, click here.

"In your Web browser, create a new bookmark containing the following JavaScript code as the URL"

Rocketbox is a powerful, new way of searching your e-mail in Apple Mail.app. It's never been faster or easier to find what you need.

How to save money on flights within the U.S.

To create the bookmarklet (this is how you do it on Firefox—other browsers should be similar), just right-click your bookmarks toolbar, select New Bookmark, and paste the text below into the Location field:

javascript:var searchterms = escape(prompt('Enter Artist and Album'));var query = searchterms + ' site:mediafire.com';window.location='http://www.google.com/search?q=' + query;

YouTube goes Pandora and launches the Music Discovery Project

The most fascinating contrast is between "is it wrong to..." vs. "is it ethical to." One change in word generates very different suggestions.

Google clarified that it was the one who put an unintended forward slash in the URL of one such site, causing all sites to be flagged harmful.

Be the first to know who's twittering about you, your products, your company, or your website! TweetBeep.com gives you twitter alerts by email when a tweet matches your search!

Inhale the Web

Academic search engines may be more discriminating than their commercial counterparts, but they often lack user-friendliness

Search for photos on Flickr by tags

To find Free Wi-Fi near you enter your address

Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble—it searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.

Google has finally added the long-awaited search box to their popular web-based RSS reader, Google Reader. Now you can search across all of your subscribed feeds as a whole, or more granularly across tags or even individual subscriptions.

This is an aggregation of popular search queries gathered from various sources across the web. This list is updated once per day.

If you hate those web2.0-ish names and are looking for a domain name that isn't taken yet