Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

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]

Electronics product maker Sharp is thinking of the kids with their latest PMP, and adds a little educational functionality to the thing aside from its regular multimedia features. The name of their new product is the RD-CX310, and it’s a little PMP that other than playing your music and converted videos, tells you the meaning of words via a built in dictionary. But mind you, it doesn’t only have a single dictionary, but a total of 82 dictionaries with English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Korean. Twenty unspecified audio books are also included in the package, supposedly from the world’s best novelists. And let’s not forget it has the capabilities of any other portable media player, and these include a 4.3-inch color screen, a 30GB internal HDD, built-in FM tuner, video recorder and support for a multitude of file types: WMV9, MPEG-4 DivX, Mp3 and WMA to be exact. Sadly, this seems to be only available to all the cool kids in Korea for now. Oh well, we can dream, can’t we?

Via [Akihabara News]

The iRiver D5 electronic dictionary has gone a lighter shade, now available in white, it sports a similar look to the MacBook.

The white version retains the same specs and will still be available in either a 2GB or 4GB model with some minor multimedia functions. The D5 can play MPEG-4 video and MP3 audio and has a 480 x 272 display with an FM radio and voice recorder.

Similar to the black D5 this white model will remain available only in Korea.

Via [AkihabaraNews]

Google: verb.
Definition: to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine.
Example: She googled her high school boyfriends.
Usage: Googling, noun.

The term Google has become synonymous with ‘searching’ the internet for various things. So much so that Google is afraid it is losing its brand. To add to Google’s fears, Merriam Websters Collegiate Dictionary plans to add the popular word to its 11th edition. It will join the other popular brands such as; Coke, Xerox, and Kleenex as the most used words in the world. Is this the end of the Google power brand? I don’t really think so because with its usage increasing and its increase in products they need not worry. Until the word changes its meaning completely Google will be safe. The positive side to all of this is that Merriam Webster continues to prove how the influence of technology on the people of this world is so strong that it creates a demand for new words.

Read [AMCP]