by Claudine Zap While the price of ignorance is high, the cost of collegeâ?"not to mention graduate educationâ?"has become astronomical. A government initiative aims to change all that. It's a simple concept called Income-Based Repayment , which reduces student loans so they aren't more than 15% of income. (Some people making very little income won't owe a cent.) After 25 years of repayment, debt is wiped out . If you're a teacher or work at a nonprofit,

There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. Weve been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space. Today were unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.

Google's Gmail team has altered its labels feature in a major way, moving them to the left of your inbox, and adding drag and drop and other navigation capabilities. These changes are rolling out today. Gmail labels essentially do what folders do, but let users add more than one to a conversation. Once you create a label, you can view all the messages with that label by searching, or by clicking the label name along the left side of any Gmail page.

by Mike Krumboltz Golden Globe-winning actor Harve Presnell has passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 75. As Entertainment Weekly points out, Mr. Presnell may have been best known for his role in "Fargo." He played William H. Macy's tough-talking father-in-law, who loved watching hockey and undermining his son-in-law, though not necessarily in that order.

Microsoft is investing big ad dollars in big splashy display ads for Bing. In case you didn't notice, Microsoft is the latest advertiser to use a pushdown ad - a new unit introduced by the Online Publishers Association. The Bing ad appeared on wsj.com today and nytimes.com yesterday and June 8. A similar ad also ran on Msnbc, according to a Microsoft spokesman. What's more, Microsoft is using creative from the campaign in other placements - including including interstitials,

Programmers continue to leverage Google's Friend Connect social application in new ways. Now, Web sites that use Friend Connect can better communicate with their visitors with ClackPoint, a new gadget from startup Vipadia Limited. The ClackPoint gadget enables Web site owners to offer text chat, conference calling and document sharing through a gadget for Friend Connect. With the gadget,

by Mike Krumboltz One-time insurance giant AIG has announced a 1-for-20 " reverse stock split ." Folks have raced to the Search box to figure out what exactly that means . Short answer: If you had 100 shares valued at $1.00 each, you now have 5 shares valued at $20.00 each. Yay? For more on the move and why companies do it, check out this article from Investopedia .

Get out your cameras, it's time for a couple of search-related contests. If you enjoy the large images Bing features everday on its homepage, now you have the chance to see one of your images featured on the brand spankin' new decision engine. Bing is holding a photo contest where the winner's image will be featured on Bing.com for a 24 hour period. Photos are submitted via Facebook. You have until July 16 to submit your photos. The winner will be determined by public voting,

We continue to hear that one the favorite features of Bing is the rich and interactive daily image that appears on the Bing homepage. In fact, one of the questions we get asked the most is whether people can submit their own pictures. And now we can say yes! We've launched our first ever photo submission contest on Facebook . The theme is summer travel, and the winner will have his or her photo displayed on the Bing homepage on Monday, August 3 rd .

by Mike Krumboltz Hell hath no fury like a geek scorned. The Sci-Fi Channel 's decision to change its name to " Syfy " has outraged some of the channel's longtime devotees. Still, the station plans to go ahead with the switch on July 7 . Will this rebranding appeal to a broader audience? Or will the "shrewd move" go down as the TV equivalent of " New Coke "? Sound off and leave a comment below.