Wozniak joins search startup advisory board

March 29, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

NEW YORK — Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — currently strutting his stuff as a competitor on the ABC show “Dancing With the Stars” — is joining the advisory board of search startup DeepDyve.

DeepDyve Chief Executive William Park said he got to know Wozniak through mutual acquaintances and wanted him on the board because of the personal computing pioneer’s passion for the convergence of technology and education.

Park said he also was drawn to Wozniak’s efforts to make technology more powerful and yet easier to use.

Park said the advisory board, which meets twice a year, is intended to help shape the company’s strategy and the direction of its products.

Google draws upon rival ideas with search changes

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. prides itself on setting trends, but it appears to be copying some of its smaller rivals with the latest refinements to the way it displays Internet search results.

After months of testing, Google tweaked its technology to occasionally display longer descriptions of Web sites in response to search requests consisting of several words. The expanded snippets will contain three or four lines from Web sites instead of the usual one or two lines.

The switch is designed to give Google’s audience a better sense of what information a Web site has even before users click on the link. It’s something lesser-known search engines already have been trying to do, either by posting longer descriptions or providing capsule snapshots of the Web pages that show up in their results.

In another minor change, Google said it has improved its formula for posting suggestions pointing to other topics that might be tied to a search request.

Associated Press