Google has already made a few concessions to please European antitrust regulators worried about fair placements in web search results. However, Microsoft doesn’t feel those sacrifices are good enough — and it claims to have scientific proof that more changes are necessary. One of the company’s astroturfing outfits, Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, has commissioned an eye-tracking study which suggests that Google’s lower-profile sponsored links and map results still draw too much visual attention. “Organic” search results and alternative services get just a fraction of the eyeballs, the Initiative argues. While the data may be of some use to officials, we’d advise taking it with a giant grain of salt — company-backed studies are rarely objective sources of information. Filed under: Internet , Microsoft , Google Comments Via: GigaOM Source: ICOMP
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Microsoft uses eye tracking to argue that Google distorts search results
A real sign language interpreter translates the gestures of the fake sign language interpreter from Nelson Mandela’s memorial. [ Jimmy Kimmel Live ] 
Scientists at the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Dresden, Germany, have created “the first sperm-based biobots” —a cybernetic microorganism made of metal and a bull’s sperm cell that can be remote controlled and used to impregnate an egg or deliver a drug to a target anywhere inside your body. Read more… 
Kembrew writes, “I saw your post in Boing Boing today about Pee-Wee, and coincidentally, I just published a piece on Pee-wee’s Christmas Special . I think it’s the first time Paul Reubens has been interviewed about the upcoming remastered Pee-wee’s Playhouse DVDs that will come out next year.” I previously invoked the term “eye-popping” to describe Pee-wee’s Playhouse, but starting next year, viewers will run the risk of having their eyeballs permanently dislodged from their sockets. “The Christmas Special is going to come out, along with the entire Playhouse series, on Blu-ray,” Reubens tells me. “It’s being remastered now.” “The show was never seen on film,” he says. “The show was shot on film and transferred to tape and edited on tape, and all the effects were done on tape. Then the entire show was put on another tape to broadcast, so there are three or four generations of quality that are lost on every episode. So we went back to the original film elements, and the company I’m working with has recreated every edit in every single show, and recreated all the effects from all the original elements—which we were lucky to have kept.” “It looks unbelievable. It’s so extreme, people are going to freak out when they see it,” Reubens adds. “The detail and clarity and color is amazing.” This means that Gary Panter’s set design, the stop motion animation and other details will come alive in psychedelic high definition. It’s the kids show equivalent of being upgraded from cough syrup to mescaline. Pee-wee’s (remastered) Christmas Adventure: An interview with Paul Reubens [Kembrew McLeod/Little Village] 
An anonymous reader writes “Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 26 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include Click-to-Play turned on by default for all Java plugins, more seamless updates on Windows, and a new Home design for Android. Firefox 26 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. Release notes are here: desktop and mobile.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
