The objective of all search engine providers is epitomized by ideal search often portrayed in popular television and movie series “Star Trek”. When captain issues a request for all information on a Klingon spaceship, search engine intuitively understands that he wants military information. It does not provide information on how much spaceship costs in commercial market and where it can be obtained, nor scientific details that would interest an engineering student.

Search engines are similar to rating agencies like Moody and Standard & Poor’s (S&P). These engines rate web pages similar to way Moody would rate a company credit rating by giving it a rank. Google’s latest patent application are similar to methods used by stock charting (technical analysis) – using same ideas such as Rate-of-Change, Momentum and so forth. It is comparable to Moody apply a patent for some of methods use for ranking and henceforth, restraining S&P from employing similar algorithms.

The upcoming Sony Playstation 3 will have 1% processing power of a human brain. Given that most people uses 10% of their brainpower, it is years away, not decades, that machines will have equivalent brainpower.

The respective percentages of all searches done in February 2005 are 36% for Google, 31% for Yahoo, 16% for MSN and rest shared by smaller providers. As evident by these numbers, market share can fluctuate significantly over a few months.

Microsoft is numero uno when it comes to desktops and internet browsers although it is facing challenges from Mozilla (internet browsers). Sony (the leader in game consoles), Linux (desktop). Given its large base of customers, this dogged competitor is flexing its muscles against Yahoo and Google. It is foolhardy to write-off Microsoft, given its resilience, market-savvy, financial resources and history of handling challenges from upstarts. MSN spiders are faster in indexing web pages than its two main rivals.

Called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), it is a format designed for sharing web content such as news and features. An RSS service (also known as an RSS channel or feed) consists of a list of items, each of which contains a headline, description, and a link to a web page. RSS can also include links to multimedia files, such as MP3 “radio” programmes.

To use RSS, you need a special RSS news reader or “aggregator” that will allow you to collect and display RSS services. The news reader allows you to view services you want, all together in same place. By automatically retrieving updates it makes sure your content is always up to date.

For example, using Awasu newsreader program on your PC you could subscribe to feeds from Reuters, BBC, CNN, FT and many others. Then, instead of surfing from one site to another you just click on service within newsreader to get latest headlines. The sites can be scanned in seconds rather than having to be laboriously loaded individually, saving you having to surf around.

In an interview for BBC, James Crabtree of The Work Foundation, said that there's growing belief in technology community that e-mail is a system close to breakdown, thanks in part to spam, unread newsletters, and sheer weight of messages.

"At moment, not many people really know about using RSS. But if more people knew what it was, I think they would use it. It's just a really handy way of getting information you want without having to surf around for it," he said.

There are many different newsreaders available, many for free. Most are applications that you download and install. Others are web-based services that you can sign-up for and view using your browser.

Once installed, you have to find newsfeeds you are interested in. This can be tricky as there are literally thousands. One good source is http://w.moreover.com/categories/category_list_rss.html that has industry specific feeds available. Another is http://www.feed24.com/ that will let you search for all manner of information.