SEARCH NEWS AND OTHER WEB TOOLS... SPURL.NET, ZNIFF.COM, PICSEARCH

Microsoft recently signed a deal with Swedish company, Picsearch, to provide technology for MSN Search's image search services.

Also the same company that launched Spurl.net (competitor to del.icio.us, Furl, and others) has started a beta for a "human search engine," Zniff.com. It's based on the data collected from Spurl.net:

By humans, for humans
What you see is the very first version of a new breed of search engines. A search engine that uses human information from normal internet users to find and rank web pages. The results you see here are from a collection of roughly 1.5 million bookmarks gathered by the users of the Spurl.net bookmarking service.

The concept is similar to a Korean search engine that is kicking Google's butt in Korea, Naver.com. They have a service within their normal search where people can add information to about a local area, so the search results become more detailed and fresh.