Search & Subscribe To Blogs Via Ask’s/Bloglines New Search Tool

Ask.com, the company that owns Bloglines, has just released a new tool: a search engine for blogs & feeds. This isn’t just any blog search site, though, it definately has some nice features. Using the "binoculars", the little icon of which resides underneath each result, you can roll your mouse over the icon and preview the site without having to leave the page. (Like Google Reader’s Google homepage module). Also underneath each result is a "subscribe" box — with one click, you can subscribe to feeds using your preferred reader…conveniently, mine is Bloglines. Another button, "post to", lets you post the search result to digg, del.icio.us, Newsvine, or Bloglines. Would I be wrong to declare this the "best blog search engine ever" just yet?

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According to this news article, the largest BitTorrent site, ThePirateBay.org was raided and shutdown by Swedish authorities last week. Servers from their data center were removed and 3 employees were taken into custody. Like TorrentSpy, ThePirateBay doesn’t host any copyrighted content themselves, they just point to it. I went and checked out the site this morning, expecting to find it down, but it was up and running. Brokep, one of the people behind ThePirateBay, had claimed that the site would be back up within a couple of days after the raid, saying that there is no legal basis for the raid, and that he is certain that the case will not go to trial. I guess he was right. In fact, I’ll bet TPB staff were totally prepared for a raid, probably had lawyers on standby and and backup datacenter in a secret location!

Online at ThePirateBay.org, the search functionality was not working as of this morning, so you would have to browse to find torrents. I downloaded a torrent file because the link was still there and I was curious; however, I didn’t actually open the torrent file to see if it was working and the tracker was up…because that would be wrong. Also, I noticed every torrent file was listed as "uploaded 0 minutes ago." It’s not that I recommend stealing, but until every TV show and movie and song is available online via legal means, it’s good to have alternatives. Just thought you should know.

Disney has signed a non-exclusive deal with CinemaNow, an online movie download and rental service. Beginnng June 6th, new Disney titles will be available for $20 and older ones will be $10. CinemaNow movies can be transferred to no more than 3 devices but they cannot be burned to DVD. I wonder if this means the vault has opened?