Think real-time search matters more than life itself? Perhaps, but the whole concept is still foreign to most consumers -- 73% -- who had never heard of real-time search results before participating in a recent eye-tracking study conducted by online marketing firm OneUpWeb. What's more, only a quarter of the consumers cared for the real-time results, compared to 47% of the information foragers, while he majority of the participants surveyed said they were indifferent to the whole idea. The study involved 44 people divided into two groups: "consumers" and "information foragers." The difference between the groups involved …

Thanks to a little redesign, online video guide Clicker gets the royal treatment on The New York Time's Bits blog. "The company hopes to move closer to offering a next-generation programming guide that isn't a schedule and can change dynamically based on a number of different events, categories and playlists," writes Bits. The startup recently closed an $11 million series B round of funding, and is now touting some new features, including "Headliners" -- which highlights particular shows and breaking-news videos, and "Trending" -- which spots presently popular TV shows, movies and other video. According to Bits, …

Not to be outdone by Google's cloud-computing efforts, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer now says he's 'betting the company' on the technology. By Ballmer's estimates, about 70% of Microsoft employees presently work on cloud-related projects -- and that figure will grow to 90% within a year. "The cloud fuels Microsoft, and Microsoft fuels the crowd," Ballmer said during a presentation on Thursday according to The Telegraph. "We're all in." That last statement "may portend a change in mission for the software giant, which for years has talked about a future of software …

Mike Rich, SVP of AOL Entertainment, is out, according to TechCrunch. Rich spent nine years at the company. Since AOL CEO Tim Armstrong arrived last year -- and proceeded to bring in his own executive team - AOL's old guard has dwindled. Gone is Bill Wilson -- who spent nine years as president of AOL Media -- along with David Liu, Ted Cahall, and Grant Cerny, among others. In turn, former Google exec David Eun is now president of AOL Media and Studios. Under him, David Mason, the co-founder of recently acquired StudioNow has just been promoted to senior …

Google just introduced a new Stars feature, which lets users permanently position a link at the top of a search results page for a particular query. "It's a great idea," says Read Write Web. "No dumbing-down the internet for those lucky relative few of us who do know how to use it, just some additional options for those who are still beginning to learn." Starred results will appear above and separate from Google's algorithmic results, the search giant makes clear. Using the feature won't change the traditional 10 results that Google returns in reply to a search. …

Hoping to build confidence in the safety of cloud computing, Google will now offer enterprise customers something called "synchronous replication." Simply put, the free feature backs up data within Apps to multiple data centers so that, if a disruption were to occur, the amount of data lost (or the amount of time without access to the data) is minimized greatly. "Every action you take in Gmail is simultaneously replicated in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, we nearly instantly transfer your data over to the other one that's also been reflecting …

In perhaps the surest sign yet that mobile has arrived, related patent lawsuits are booming. With the exception of Microsoft, Palm and, so far, Google, "nearly every large mobile phone player ... has recently been involved in some sort of patent litigation regarding mobile technologies," writes The New York Times Bits blog. Illustrating the madness perfects, the blog maps out the suits -- only a fraction of which have so far been settled. More notable cases include Apple being sued by the Taiwanese company Elan Microelectronics over alleged infringement of touch-screen patents. "These suits, specifically around mobile, …

In a Front Page story in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes it pretty clear that he has no immediate plans to take the company public. "We're going to go public eventually, because that's the contract that we have with our investors and our employees," Zuckerberg tells the paper. "We are definitely in no rush." Even more than a piece of Facebook, however, investors want to know how much it would cost them, according to The Journal's Digits blog. Word on the Street is that the top social network will go public in 2011 with a …

Think your company was getting a handle on digital marketing, or at least the pace at which the market was evolving. Then consider this statement from Google Europe boss John Herlihy: "In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant." Google's VP of Global Ad Operations says that cloud-computing will soon guarantee that every mobile device will be capable of handling the most advanced applications, thus demoting desktops to doorstop status. Well, "If your data moves to the cloud, and most of your daily online activities are done on devices such as the Nexus …

With the help of John Battelle's premium ad network Federated Media, Toyota has launched a branded channel on TweetMeme. The effort is part of broad of effort by the Japanese automaker to repair its image in the wake of safety recalls and suffering sales. The channel, dubbed Toyota Conversations, features news stories, videos and other related information, along with tweets from Toyota's Twitter account and its own AdTweets. According to The Los Angeles Times' Technology blog, recent additions include "5 Reasons to Buy a Toyota" and "Toyota rolls out 0% financing incentive plan." Tweetmeme channels can be …