Hasta La Gadget!

By Arianne Cohen

You could blame weeds, trees and grasses if you start itching, sneezing, coughing and wheezing this fall. But the usual suspects aren’t the only triggers. A host of household items — candles, chemicals, stuffed animals and spices — may be the real culprits. “Many homes are filled with irritants, and if there’s a high enough count of an irritant, you’ll react,” says Christopher Randolph, MD, an allergy expert at Yale University. Here, a rundown of 11 sneaky suspects — and how to stop them from bothering you.

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We had a bit of a laugh with Google’s Kevin Bacon calculator. Not everyone needs to tie their searches to the star of Footloose, though, which is partly why Google is pushing out an update to its Knowledge Graph that explains how searches turn up related items. The effort is starting with actors, celebrities and their links to any movies and TV shows they’ve starred in. Looking for Orson Welles and mousing over Rita Hayworth’s portrait reminds us that the two luminaries were married for years, for example. We won’t know when the more intelligent searches will expand, but at least we won’t be quite so confused if the animated Transformers movie appears next to Citizen Kane.

Filed under: Internet

Google Knowledge Graph explains related content, finds the six degrees with less Bacon originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 01:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Permission to daydream, granted.

A new study in the journal Psychological Science shows that allowing your mind to wander might actually be good for your creative prowess.

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, found an association between daydreaming and creative problem-solving. Their study involved having participants first conduct an “unusual use task” — where they had to try to come up with as many weird ways to use an object as they could.

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The Washa|part is a small wall-mounted washing machine that is perfect for use in small apartments. The washing machine uses steam to release particles from clothing. It is also sprays detergent onto items in the form of a fine mist to better suit the steam operation. It is a cool concept that will hopefully hit the light of production in the near future.

[Yanko]

We reported last Friday about a potential antitrust lawsuit that the FTC was looking at slapping Google with over patent violations. The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating potential antitrust claims regarding Google for over a year. Recently, it started poking around the way Google handled the patents it received when it bought Motorola, and now it seems Google is considering a settlement.

The potential issue comes from the Motorola patents, and how Google handled them after buying Motorola in May. With the company came a roster full of lawsuits that Motorola had filed against various competitors, claiming that they violated its patents. Also in the baggage for Google was a variety of lawsuits filed against Motorola over its refusal to license certain patents.

As a result, the FTC has threatened a case against Google via Section 5 of the FTC Act, something that concerns deceptive and/or unfair business practices. The case would be brought with the claim that Motorola’s wireless-technology patents were being used “as a weapon” against its competitors, a source told the WSJ. According to this source, the Federal Trade Commission feels that it has evidence of Google workers telling colleagues that the way it was handling the patents is wrong.

Google declined comment on the matter, except to say that it would cooperate. The FTC declined comment altogether. The potential terms for a settlement are unknown. Google has also been the subject of probing by antitrust authorities in Europe, in this case over how it displays it search results.

[via WSJ]

Google contemplates patent antitrust settlement is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
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