As Search Engine Land reports, the information appears in a boxed-out area to the right of typical search results. This so-called "Sources" section provides details on movies, books, music and famous people. Links in this section lead the user to fresh Google searches. If users are following a person or brand on Google+, that entity's latest updates will appear within the Sources box.

In one example, a search for "U2" lists the band's members, place of origin, discography, record labels, awards and related searches. A biographical snippet includes a link to the band's Wikipedia entry.

Google confirmed its experiment to Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, saying that the company is "always experimenting with ways to improve search, but we have nothing to announce at this time." Sullivan expects that the Sources section will likely roll out to all users in the future. He believes these changes are what the Wall Street Journal hinted at in March, in a report that said Google wants to provide more facts and direct answers in its search results....

Its vision for a set of tightly woven services and desktop applications that Microsoft outlined when it unveiled Windows Live in 2005 hasn't been fully realized, the company said on Wednesday.

If you're looking for a new service to sync and store files across multiple devices and the cloud, you should give SkyDrive a serious look. Not only do you get more free storage, but you'll also have an easier time managing online documents and you get free remote access to your home PC while you're on the go. Google Drive may be the current media darling, but for people just looking to get some work done here's why you should give SkyDrive a try....

Of course, prognosticators have predicted much the same thing numerous times in the past, predictions that turned out to be wrong.

"Frankly, Google has been out to lunch on this," said Frank Gillett, an analyst with Forrester Research. "The real question is: What took you guys so long? And have to got anything original or is this a 'me too' play."

Regardless of whether Google Drive does indeed launch soon, would-be users need to ask themselves a number of questions about their needs before choosing a cloud storage service.

Google Drive will likely have many of the same features of other cloud storage and file synchronization services, such as data encryption and the ability to edit a file on one device and have those changes automatically appear on every other device you own....

Lenovo gained from strong growth in Asia and market expansion across the Americas and Europe, IDC said. Lenovo's PC shipments grew by a whopping 43.7 percent compared with the first quarter of last year, while Dell's shipments fell by 2.1 percent year over year after shipment declines in key markets.

Lenovo's shipments were 11.7 million units, giving it a 13.4 percent market share in the first quarter this year. The company is fast approaching Hewlett-Packard, whose shipments totaled 15.7 million units, growing by 3.2 percent year over year. HP had 18 percent of the market during the quarter. Dell was in third place with 10.1 million units shipped and an 11.6 percent market share....

But are a pair of Google augmented reality glasses practical? Some argue "yes" and others "no". Think texting and driving don't mix now, how about drivers sporting Google glasses video chatting with a friend? Then again, a pair of Google glasses could make you the "smartest" guy in the room - as long as there is a Web connection.

Here are two opposing viewpoints on Google's Project Glass eyewear. PCWorld contributor Howard Baldwin argues the pro side of the argument while PCWorld contributor Ed Oswald represents the naysayers....

While these are only claims from anonymous sources at this point, the idea that console makers are looking to destroy or at least restrict the second-hand gaming and rental market is not surprising. The move could push more users toward using Sony's PSN Store to download game titles. And game makers would also welcome the lockdown, as Kotaku points out, since it would remove the need to create so-called online passes to bilk more money out of second-hand gamers. Online passes typically offer pre-owned game users access to online features or new content downloads for a fee....

Today, AMD took the wraps off the Opteron 3200 series, a line of "Bulldozer" based processors comprised of the quad-core 3250 and 3260, and the 8-core 3280. The new processors are aimed at Web hosts, cloud providers and server dense deployments -- the same customers SeaMicro sought.

Opteron 3200 processors are clocked at 2.7 GHz or up to 3.7 GHz using the company's Turbo CORE alternative to overclocking. Depending on the model, they support memory speeds of 1333 MHz, 1600 MHz and 1866 MHz, handle up to two DIMMs per memory channel and address up to a total of 32GB of RAM. Cache sizes range from 8 MB for quad-core 3200s and 16 MB for the 8-core variant. Power consumption is rated between 45W and 65W.

AMD is hoping to appeal to budget-conscious Web hosts and cloud services providers with energy-saving features and compressed ROI windows. According to the company, the 3200s use up to 19 percent less power on a per-core basis than the competition, namely Intel's Xeon E3-1220L....

The new iPad looks almost identical to the iPad 2, Jason Snell notes in his Macworld review. He says the extra thickness on the new model is almost imperceptible, but the additional 50 grams it gained were noticeable. "Once you get a load of that Retina display, it's hard to go back to anything else," Snell writes, but "users of the iPad 2 shouldn't fret: their iPad investment is certainly good for another year." ...

Some of the top PC players are already struggling.

Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest PC maker, saw its profits plunge in its first fiscal 2012 quarter as consumers, and even enterprises, were already looking more closely at replacing or augmenting PCs with cool tablets.

Now Apple has upped the ante with a new iteration of the world's most popular tablet.

"The iPad is cutting into PC sales and PC companies really won't have a strong response until Windows 8 ships later in the year. So they have every reason to be concerned," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Enderle Group.

"[Tablets are] clearly having a sharp impact on [PC] growth. While they don't truly replace a PC, folks who buy an iPad typically hold off on buying a new PC. And more frightening, is that when they do buy, they appear to be trending towards Apple products," Enderle added....

A customer described the problem to The Register as an "admin nightmare" and said they couldn't understand how such an important system could go down.

"This should never happen," said our source. "The system should be redundant and outages should be confined to some data centres only."

Azure customers can at least take some comfort from how informative Microsoft has been, keeping them updated via the platform's online service page at least every hour.*

The service management system first began to have problems at 1.45am GMT (5.45pm PST), according to the page.

"We are experiencing an issue with Windows Azure service management. Customers will not be able to carry out service management operations," Microsoft said, adding that it was investigating the problem....

The new OS will support Hyper-V and SQL Server running over the Samba file sharing protocol Server Message Block (SMB) v2.2 , including remote direct memory access (RDMA) over Ethernet and InfiniBand.

The new file-sharing capability allows a virtualized server infrastructure to utilize shared JBOD storage through the use of RDMA-enabled network interface cards (RNICs). To date, Microsoft has qualified one 10GbE NIC from Intel and a 10GbE and InfiniBand NIC from Mellanox Technologies.

RDMA allows servers, through special NICs, to access the memory of other servers without the use of the operating system, offering very high throughput, low latency networking for server clusters....

The Smart Socket technology in HP's new Gen8 servers revolves around the integration of a clamp on the motherboard to mechanically upgrade processors. Instead of manually placing a processor inside a socket, a clamp with the processor can be pushed down on the improvised socket for a safer chip upgrade.

"You never drop the processor down, we mechanically control the whole thing," said Mark Potter, senior vice president and general manager for HP's Industry Standard Servers at the HP Global Partner conference being held in Las Vegas.

The motherboard has a clamp on it that has a processor framed inside, and is aligned with the socket so it can be slotted correctly. The clamp goes down sideways to insert the processor into a socket, after which it can be locked up tight....

"HTML5 is a compelling technology for developing apps, and is quickly improving. Combined with the freedom to build what you want and distribute it directly to users on your own terms, it has great potential. But just as there are gaps to be filled from a technology point of view, there are gaps to be filled from an ecosystem point of view. The Web lacks standard, consistent ways to find, rate, review, purchase and prove ownership of apps. Mozilla's goal is to foster an ecosystem that combines the best elements of the Web with the best elements of the app model" Mozilla Foundation...