Who would have thought.....

A slow day on Techmeme (in that so much of the news wasn't really new today - leading to a short discussion on Twitter about where the Zeitgeist had gone), so here are some snippets from it that were more interesting:

In Bronze position - the Pew Internet Centre with the news that we are taking news from conventional and online sources. Actually, to be fair they've come up with some convenient "tribes", so its great for that page on the Powerpoint when it finds finds four distinct segments in today's news audience:

- Net-Newsers (13%), relatively young, who only use the 'net for news
- Integrators, who comprise 23% of the public; older, who integrate the 'net and traditional sources
- Traditionalists - the oldest (median age: 52) and largest news segment (46% of the public);
- Disengaged (14%), less educated and affluent, who stand out for their low levels of interest in the news and news consumption.

Not hard to predict from standard demographics and adoption curves, though - which is in itself interesting, as it means the outcome of the game is in itself fairly predictable. Full PDF is over here

Secondly, in Silver - Microsoft is trying to compete with Google by differentiating its search:

Specifically, the company believes examining a full sequence of user queries can lead to more useful results. Today, the company only keeps track of the immediately prior search, but often users use search engines to explore subject areas broadly, said Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising platform group, at the Search Engine Strategies conference here

This story is actually part of a line that started running a few weeks ago (we covered it here) and using deeper context based search as a Google antidote is hardly news - but hopefully it shows real intent.

But lastly, and for Gold - from the Telegraph, comes the astounding news that we find attractive people of the opposite sex - er - more attractive!

"We found that shorter, slimmer females with long slender legs, a curvy figure and larger breasts are more attractive," said lead researcher Dr William Brown of Brunel University.

Conversely tall men with broad shoulders and relatively short legs in comparison to the length of their upper body are the most attractive to women, say the researchers.

Who would have thought......