A rumor peddled by Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider in a article sent to press Friday morning, concerning IAC’s alleged consideration of the replacement of Ask’s search engine technology, Teoma, with the vastly more popular system employed by Google, has effectively been debunked. Reuters has now reported that source “familiar with the matter” has declared any such purported murmurs as “incorrect.” Ask is in a rather odd situation at the moment.

The 2008 U.S. Presidential election is in full swing now. Of course, it arguably has been geared up to a full-on race for the Democratic and Republican party nominations, yet only recently have we been given the privilege of hindsight into the contentious (not to mention hugely convoluted) primary process, which is still very much underway.

Amazon MP3 has been around for several months now. And it’s doing pretty good. Decent amount of press coverage when it hit the stage. Decent song selection, all with decent sound quality. And just about everything is decent with the all-DRM-free program Bezos & Co are touting out in the cloud. And now the company’s gone and done another decent thing with is music download service: it has opened its doors to Linux users.

In a piece published Friday in Forbes, Sramana Mitra documented the numerical reasons why India’s outsourcing industry - commanded by corporations like Infosys and Wipro - is bound to decline. And maybe even die, if the current hiring binge, the steady increase in industry wages, and the demand for any and all services supplied by the workforce on the subcontinent from around the world decreases as a result of increasing costs and nominally increasing productivity.

Are you an Mac fanatic? If so, how do you prefer reading the Mashable feed? Via a third-party Web-based service? Or through a more local piece of software? For those of you who can’t quite get yourselves to adopt a strictly Web-based lifestyle when it comes to consuming the daily dish, and like to work with pretty confabulations that look thematically in tune with the desktop environment of Mac OS X 10.4+, you can get yourself an install of Newsfire - free of cost [WebWorkerDaily].

As if Twitter users haven't had enough headaches as of late with downtime, SXSW is looming, and everyone thinks that is going to strain the system even further. This seems the perfect time for a competitor to make a move, and according to Mike Gunderloy of Web Worker Daily, Pownce has made some improvements to its API which may be the first sign they are ready to step up (again). Part of Twitter's appeal has been the numerous third-part applications you can use to interact with it.

A Zogby Interactive-We Media poll taken online recently tells us that some 67% of Americans consider “traditional journalism” out of touch, and nearly half of respondents are said to be “turning to the Internet to get their news,” Reuters has reported. The second point I take without question. The first is utter nonsense. The migration to the Web shouldn’t elicit surprise in anyone capable of perceiving the growth of and focus upon the Internet.

Earlier today we reported on Pownce improving its API, and how this combined with suspected stress on Twitter from SXSW might be the chance for the upstart microblogging platform to move up in the rankings. Well, Allen Stern of Center Networks brings to our attention that today's planned outage (6PM - 8:30 PM PST, March 1st), is actually intended to address this very scenario.

IAC, the parent company of Ask.com, is looking to get into online gaming in a big way. According to Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org, IAC's is looking to spend $50-100 million to build their new gaming portal, InstantAction into something that carries titles with "deeper" interactivity than the casual fare typically found online.

The vast majority of people don't really need heavyweight image editing applications like Photoshop or Aperture. Luckily, you can find a lot of great, online applications that'll do just fine for some simple everyday photo editing tasks. Interestingly enough, although there's a lot of competition in this space, we constantly see new apps sprouting everywhere. Therefore, we bring you seven apps you may have missed.

There’s a little rumor spreading slowly around the tech blogosphere. It was delivered first by Nicholas Carr of Rough Type earlier today, and anticipates the arrival of word from Microsoft as to its Web-app strategy. Yes, so says Carr’s headline on the matter.

Facebook has grown to very notable international proportions (numerically speaking) over the last couple of years, but it’s been slow to expand its lingual repertoire. Only recently has the site been amended to allow users whose primary language is Spanish a way to interact with friends, family, and associates more easily.

There are a number of things Wikipedia discourages its users from doing when editing or adding to the site. Actions that incur a good bit of wrist-slapping include, for example, the construction or amendment of autobiographies. The reason of course for this is that subjectivity (as opposed to objectivity) can be tricky thing, and for that it is a soft line that users are told not to cross.

You’ve probably heard a lot of talk about the "Great Firewall" erected by the Chinese government to keep a tight leash on Internet users based on the mainland. It’s all the rage these days, especially with the arrival of the 2008 Olympic Summer Games. But perhaps you don’t know very much about the makeup of the “GFW.” Sure, you know its there. That’s obvious enough. Yet you still might be curious to learn of its real strengths and weaknesses.

It appears that RealNetworks may be looking to purchase Scrabulous, the much-loved Scrabble clone that was the favorite app amongst Facebook employess mere months ago. According to a comment made by Om Malik of GigaOM (in response to a New York Times story published today), RealNetworks seems to be offering the impression that it wants to take a stab at bringing some form of Scrabble - an officially-sanction version, of course - online.

The South by Southwest Interactive conference, or SXSW for short, is a big deal. A really big deal. The number of musical acts scheduled to be in attendance at the Austin-based festival will top 1500 this year, and given that the various events comprising the annual jamboree are to be squeezed into just 96 hours (4 days), one could very well argue that the ensuing March madness (not to be confused with the other March Madness) will be just short of impossible to manage.

No, not a movie about onions, people. Though that would be frickin' trippy, wouldn't it? We're guessing. Moving on.... The Onion is compendium of comedy that is equal parts incisive, deadpan, and intelligently stupid. And for that we can say naught but good things about the company and the material it puts out on a daily and weekly basis, whether in word or video form. Most of it, anyway. Some of what they’ve got fails.

Call it "Break-Up 2.0." It seems using the Web as a bullhorn for romantic break-ups is all the rage with the kids these days. As we reported earlier today, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, said on his profile on the site that he was not romantically involved with Rachel Marsden. This supposed relationship has been the source of much gossip for the past several days on sites such as Valleywag, and he felt it was time to address the matter head on.

It's leap year, and it's a weekend. I say that's cause for celebration ... with a Mashable Conversations Week in Review! Who's with me? Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here. Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating). Add directly to your Zune here. This week was particularly good, with a great set of conversations that just seemed to naturally roll out of production and into your earholes with little effort at all.

YouTube is reporting on the company blog that the site's YouChoose '08 page is getting some changes as the candidate field continues to narrow. As the national focus begins to shift from the primaries and caucuses to the conventions and eventual national election, the hub page for the election is expanding to add more content from news organizations, bloggers, and average users.

You can learn to do just about anything on the web, and guitar playing is no different. Yeah, I know you've mastered the toughest songs on Guitar Hero III, but can you actually play a guitar? We've got 11 tools to help you start living out your dreams of being a rock legend... you know, when you're not coding a new Twitter application. Lessons & Tools All-Guitar-Chords.com - Quickly look up chords and scales, see them laid out on a virtual fret board, and see progressions of a scale in tab.

There is noticeably heightened interest being expressed in online gaming - particularly casual online gaming. Call it a World of Warcraft syndrome of some sort. Or call it the Wii Games-effect, if you like. What’s for certain, is that social gaming - and more and more often with Internet-based components - has been reborn, and is now bigger than ever.

Recognize the name Akimbo? It’s a title taken by a company based in San Mateo, California, whose video distribution system is its main attraction. The system provides content owners and publishers a multi-faceted framework through which to distribute media via a number of methods and business models: Ad-supported, transactional/pay-per-view, subscription, download-to-own, and others.

This guest post was contributed by well-known web skeptic Drama 2.0. Data portability is a hot topic in the Web 2.0 community. I’ve previously weighed in with my opinion: data portability is not a universal right and the value a company may receive from offering it varies from company to company. Some companies have a valid business rationale for offering it while others don’t.

Predictify is a community-based prediction site where users can earn money based on th accuracy of their responses for participating in the site's questions and events. First reviewed here, Predictify officially launched to the public a few months ago. Now, Predictify is taking the next step in its web development and offering a platform for others to create a co-branded Predictify community.

Turn Inc., the ad network founded by Jim Barnett, the former CEO of Altavista, came on the scene with $8 million in a round of funding last year, and is now furthering its automated ad placement process with the launching of the Turn Smart Market.

Mzinga, a provider of online community solutions, has acquired Prospero Technologies, which specializes in the same SaaS approach for enterprise and consumer use. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Given the vast history behind these merging companies, it's been interesting to see how Mzinga came to be, and how it had to respond to a changing market in regards to its community offerings as an enterprise solution, for about a decade now.

It's not like we doubted him, but Trent Reznor really meant it when he said that he hates the way the music industry operates and that he encourages sharing of his music on the internet. Nine Inch Nails have put up the first volume of their album 'Ghosts' on torrent sites, under a creative commons license. If you want the whole package of the multi volume album (36 tracks!), though, you can go over to NiN's official site and download it for 5 bucks.

The recently redesigned Fastcompany has launched its video counterpart, Fastcompany.TV. First two shows are Scobleizer, which needs no introduction, and Fastcompany Live, which features live shows filmed with a Nokia N95 and streamed via qik.com's service. Below you can see Robert Scoble basking in the sunlight and welcoming everyone to the new site. viewNode("4b7771ec503d4", {"width": "450", "height": "267"});.

Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS), has just announced it acquired web analytics company Compete, Inc. for $75 million in cash plus deferred cash payments in 2008-2010 of up to another $75 million.