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With the deal closed on the Dictionary.com purchase, Ask.com has now become, at least according to comScore, the ninth-largest web property. The all-cash deal originally began back in mid-May and had Ask.com purchasing Lexico Publishing Group LLC. The web properties that were included were Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.

Ask.com is reporting that this will give them an increase of around 15 million additional users on a month basis, which would put them up to a monthly audience of around 145 million. Terms of the acquisition, such as how much was paid were not disclosed.

Read [Reuters]

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Sections: Web, Websites

Ask has launched a news page, being called “Big News” they will aggregate and display top news stories from around the web. The stories will be pulled from a variety of sites both big and small, ranging everywhere from the small blog up to The New York Times. They even have some integration with Digg.com, on the bottom of the page you are shown the “Top 5 Diggs in the News” and also five stories that have yet to be Dugg, offering you the option to “Be The First.“

According to Ask the listed news stories will be “dynamically generated” and are based on a variety of factors to include freshness, source authority, social media references, article content, and multimedia availability. The sections and categories will also be able to be tracked and followed via RSS with lots of details shown during mouse overs while on the Big News page. While the social news section has many other competitors, Ask has a nice offering with what appears to be both a clean and easy-to-use interface.

Read [Ask “Big News”] Via [CNET]

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Sections: Web, Websites

Ask has just added the ability to skin the search page with personally uploaded images. Skins were first introduced last year as part of the Ask3D package, however users were able to skin the search page only with a standard set of images. According to Ask “millions-of-people” have been “skinning to their hearts’ content” and have been requesting the ability to upload their own images. Ask has listened and its now here, beginning today users can now take advantage of the new upload feature on skins. The upload process is fairly easy, however a nice set of directions are over on the Ask.com Blog.

Read [The Ask.com Blog]

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Sections: Web, Websites

Ask has released a mobile directions service called Click To Speak. This will allow users to enter an address using your voice instead of typing it out. Simply speak the city and state, then the street address for both your destination and also your starting point.

To use the new Click To Speak just visit http://m.ask.com from your mobile browser, click the Directions link, then click on the speak the address option. Once there you will just hit “Continue” and you will then begin the voice prompts, after you finish you will receive a text message with the details of your directions. The directions are available in either a list view or turn-by-turn view and can even be switched back and forth between driving and walking routes.

With just a quick test myself it seems pretty good, check out the video below for a quick walk through.

Ask Mobile with Dial Directions from xbrendanx on Vimeo.

Read [Ask.com Blog]

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Sections: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Mobile, Web, Websites