Queries like “time in china” and “what time is it in uk” now return OneBox results with a clock icon and the appropriate place and time zone.  Pick something slightly vague, like “time in austin,” and you may get more than one result (Austin, Texas and Austin, Colorado are not in the same zone).

It’s also possible that Google will get it wrong – a search for “time lexington” yields results for cities in Massachusetts and Illinois, but not Kentucky, where the WebProNews offices are located.

Oh, well.  Now you more easily make sense of those Japanese news stories that appear to have been written one day into the future.  Or you can schedule international phone calls without spending five minutes squinting at maps.  “It seems time difference calculations can not be triggered though,” notes Google Blogoscoped’s Philipp Lenssen.  “Entering time difference germany china and similar will not show any onebox, even though it might be helpful.”

Again, Google’s clock feature isn’t going to change the world, but it’s a nice little add-on.

Orrick, in case you couldn’t guess, is the powerful law firm; indeed, its homepage describes it as a global entity, and an “About Us” section states, “Today, we have approximately 980 lawyers in 18 offices worldwide . . .”

Legal OnRamp, then, is the social network, and the site, which is currently in an invitation-only mode, doesn’t have a lot to say about itself.  So we’re off to alarm:clock, which summarizes, “Legal OnRamp provides content, connectivity and execution services to help in-house lawyers to get free legal counsel from outside firms.  The hope for the advise givers is that inside counsel would appreciate their help and hire them.”

As for the specific features that Legal OnRamp might offer, a:c continues, “Its chief feature is an ask the expert section that is wiki based.  Borrowing from LinkedIn’s networking function, bio pages include a ‘connection list’ of lawyers’ colleagues within and outside their firm.”

Yes, well, it all sounds perfectly lovely, doesn’t it?  Yet there’s no word on how much money Orrick may have given Legal OnRamp, and it remains unknown when the network will reach its next stage of development.  These lawyers are, as you might expect, good at keeping secrets.

Wis.dm just received $5 million in a round of funding that was “led” by North Bridge, you see, and that phrasing allows for a wide range of possibilities.  Wis.dm’s site is much more straightforward, though – there are endless lists of questions that can be answered with either a “yes” or a “no.”  People wishing to leave behind any additional information can make a comment.

Although I’m sure you’ve got the concept, here’s a sample question: “Can you list every book you’ve ever read?”  96 percent of the current 276 respondents answered “no,” leaving four percent to say “yes.”

For various reasons, that four percent worries me.  Knowing about the 96 percent doesn’t benefit me, and on the whole, I’m left feeling that I lost thirty seconds of my life.  I’m also inclined to agree with an alarm:clock article that states, “[W]e find most of the questions to be random and/or dull.”

Ah, well.  Judging by the look of a “people count” graph on Frostfirebuzz.com, Wis.dm is nonetheless becoming rather popular, and a fresh $5 million isn’t likely to hurt that status.

As a sort of user-generated news site, Associated Content’s description of itself as “The People’s Media Company” seems reasonable.  alarm:clock even reports, “Associated Content provides cash bonuses to its best contributors,” which sounds quite nice.  Yet despite these cheery aspects, the company is a bit controversial.

Not too long ago, people started asking questions about its intent – was Associated Content out to game Google?  No solid conclusions were ever reached, but the story was covered everywhere from WebProNews to USA Today.

In any case, it seems that Canaan Partners doesn’t have a problem with the way Associated Content is run; that firm led the funding round.  “We are very enthusiastic about the large market opportunity, the business momentum, and the great team they have assembled,” stated Warren Lee of Canaan Partners.  “We are excited about helping the Associated Content team continue to refine its offerings and extend its reach.”

And as alarm:clock pointed out, this may start a trend that would be beneficial to an entire business model – earlier this week, NowPublic, a “participatory news network,” also received funding.

Credit goes to alarm:clock for this discovery.  “We do not know yet how much Internet Brands paid, however, the sites appear to be run by smaller companies,” the a:c article states.  It then lists a handful of properties that have been sold: Corvetteforum, LS1Tech, PerformanceTrucks.net, ModMotorTech, Ford-trucks, Audiworld.com, Mustangforum.com, and ModernHemi.com.

Before today, I’d never visited any of those forums, but I’d heard of several – they are big, big players in the online auto field.  “Corvette Forum claims over 110K registered members, FordTrucks claims 400K registered users and 1M+ uniques per month,” alarm:clock notes.  A sampling of Corvette Forum activity: an acquisition-related post that was made at 9 AM today has already gotten 123 replies and over 2,000 views.

So when a:c writes, “The owner of one of the sites . . . argues that while discussion forums may seem like old tech he firmly believes that they are the most powerful of social networking sites,” I’m somewhat inclined to agree with that owner; I know I’d give up on MySpace long before turning my back on MatrixOwners.

A corporate perspective on all this is missing – Internet Brands has yet to issue an official press release on the matter – but you can get a sense of it by looking at letters from Troy Roberts and Jason Teller (big names on the Corvette and Audi sites, respectively).  The letters are nearly identical, and they both state that there are no planned changes other than a move to faster servers.

If Internet Brands can sustain this hands-off approach, then this is a very positive development for all its new car forums.  The “leading operator of media and e-commerce sites” won’t exactly suffer, either – these acquisitions should bring a lot of traffic its way.

Google May Employ Simply Hired

According to a report from alarm:clock, at least one knowledgeable onlooker thinks that a deal will take place.  “Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdry says that Google is stepping up its efforts to buy VC-backed SimplyHired,” the site reported.

Those “efforts” (if authentic) will almost surely succeed – between Google’s cachet and its cash, few companies can say “no” to the search engine giant.  But alarm:clock went on to point out another reason why this could be a match made in Heaven: “[Simply Hired’s] angels are GOOG angels.”

Furthermore, Simply Hired is, like Google, “based in Mountain View,” and also “targets the long tail and landed a MySpace deal.”

Still, there are those who think that an acquisition is doubtful.  On the VC Ratings blog, Joshua Jaffe writes, “I don’t buy this one.  Google has acquired a lot of companies in the past six years and a grand total of two were focused on search.  This is something Google does best and doesn’t need to go outside the Googleplex for in all but the most bleeding edge of cases.”

As for the argument that Google lacks a job search engine . . . well, that issue’s apparently not  on the “bleeding edge.”  And Jaffe points out that Google’s “64% search engine market share affords it the opportunity to put anything it wants in front of lots of users.”

All in all, this leaves us with just one more will they/won’t they situation; refer to Microsoft and Yahoo, Google and Dow Jones, or MySpace and Photobucket for other recent examples.  Still, it’s always fairly exciting to see the Google checkbook crack open.

It’s great to see more media coverage of ad exchanges, and since launching ours almost two years ago at Right Media we’ve often felt alone beating the drum of the ad exchange. One quote I particularly loved in the NYT article was:

DoubleClick, based in New York, views the exchange as the centerpiece of a growth plan and may derive the majority of revenue from the new service within five years, said David Rosenblatt, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview yesterday.

Good to see that others think exchanges have a bright future!

Other coverage:

• Techmeme
• Screenwerk
• Centernetworks
• ZDNet Digital Markets
• PaidContent
• Alarm:Clock
• Clickety Clack

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It’s called the MeP-h1 and is the first configurable microprocessor to achieve a 1GHz clock speed. The MeP-h1 gives designers the flexibility to customize processors at the design stage, including the ability to change processor configurations and add custom instructions. According to a press release,

The performance of the new core was boosted by increasing the number of instruction execution pipeline stages to nine, from five in Toshiba’s previous processor core. The new core is also optimized for design of high-performance customized processors by integration of a reorder buffer circuit that manages and shortens waiting cycles for user extension instructions.

The present implementation of the core was manufactured with 65nanometer (nm) process technology, and that too contributed to achieving the 1GHz clock speed. The new configurable processor core is designed with register transfer level description (RTL) and can be manufactured with other process technology, including 90nm technology.

The main features of MeP include:

- High-speed media processing (image and audio)

- Customizable configuration, including embedded-memory capacity

- Extensibility of hardware allowing easy addition of functions

Toshiba discussed the processor and its technology at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University earlier this week.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

The antitrust ruling last year against Microsoft, which has paid a $655 million USD fine, called for the Redmond-based software and game console maker to perform a couple of actions.

One would be to open up its Windows operating system source code to third-party developers; another called for the company to make a version of the operating system available without bundling in the Windows Media Player.

Microsoft has fought these requirements and has tried to negotiate a more favorable settlement. Opening its source code outside of stringent licensing and non-disclosure terms would hamper the company’s ability to compete.

Last night, the company again submitted a proposal for compliance ahead of the midnight deadline. “We can confirm that the proposals did go into the commission last night prior to the deadline and we await the commission’s response,” a Microsoft spokesman said.

The EU Commission now has to consider Microsoft’s response. That will take several weeks; any delay works in Microsoft’s favor. The company had taken the EU to court, requesting a delay to these remedies until 2006, but was turned down by the court.

Third-party software makers want access to the source code that runs Windows servers so they can build interoperable products. Those products would be able to provide file and print services that work well with Windows machines.

The decision regarding the Windows Media Player has been a touchy one with regulators. They seem to feel Microsoft will provide a version of Windows without the Media Player that will be technically inferior to the standard OS. Customers who would want full functionality could be compelled to download the Media Player.

That would circumvent the EU competition requirement, which seems aimed at allowing users to download players from RealNetworks or other companies. The EU appears to be contending that Windows Media Player breaks other players on a Windows machine.

And Microsoft has been unhappy with EU proposals for what it would be allowed to charge for the unbundled operating system, and for third-party access to its source code.

Once the EU finishes considering Microsoft’s proposal, they could either accept its terms or reject them. On rejection, the Commission would bring a new action against Microsoft, give the company two weeks to respond, and then potentially begin imposing a fine of as much as $5 million USD per day.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.