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Yahoo pushes news, again

Web giant reintroduces downloadable software to stream news and information to people's desktops.

Stefanie Olsen
Yahoo has reintroduced downloadable software to stream news and information to people's desktops. Called the Yahoo Ticker, the free application takes the features of My Yahoo--personalized stock quotes, weather data and syndicated feeds of news headlines--and transports them, in the form of a streaming ticker, to the desktop. In a move to compete with Google's search Deskbar, Yahoo also has added a Web search box to the software.

The concept, called "push" technology, was popularized during the dot-com heyday as a way to make over the computer as a personalized portal of news and information, rather than forcing people to surf the Web for the same. But the concept fell out the window with the dot-com crash. In recent years, as the tech economy has rebounded, companies including Sony Pictures Digital and Entertainment Tonight have promoted similar push applications.