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Learn all the Facebook Chat Symbols

microsoft-bing-logo

So we have all heard of this new entry into the search engine market called “Bing” or more like Microsoft second crack at gaining more search engine dominance against Google and Yahoo. Microsoft over the last month has been hyping this new search engine as the next revolution in search as its search engine market share has been slipping in the last couple of years and marketing (pay-per-click) struggles to make a profit. At first glance the front page search looks very simple and has an almost google feel to it, doing a search in Bing does reveal the same results or very similar results as it did with the MSN search engine and I can see Bing weighs the domain name quite heavy for search result. The one neet feature I can say was quite helpful was the left hand sidebar with my search history (although if you where searching for something sketchy and forgot to clear the history that might be embarrassing).

Overall I think Microsoft did a decent job making the look and feel of the search engine “Google’ish” but will it gain more market share or increase what Microsoft has now?

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Microsoft Bing search engine review

We all know the controversy surrounding facebook and its terms and conditions. There was huge uproar about deleted/disabled accounts from users remaining on the facebook servers forever making it possible for users to login and re-activate their accounts even a year after they disabled it with all information still in tact. Now facebook has enabled a way for users to permanently disable and delete your facebook account.

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Why Facebook wont kill my login

The ZDNet Test is based on industry standards for javascript. It was performed using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1, Opera 10.00 Alpha,
Firefox 3.1b1, Chrome 2.0.158.0, and the WebKit r40220 developer
project included in Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

Microsoft IE 8 RC1 and Safari were left far behind in th tests, with Google and Firefox running neck and neck. The implication are obvious: Proprietary browser manufacturers ned to get on the ball, stop trying to driv ethe market, and give people what they want in a browser. Hope for MS IE8 had been high, but it’s performance is fr from the spped promised at its beta release. We can only hope that the final releae will show some improvement.

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Google Chrome and Firefox Speeds Blow Past IE and Opera!

For our experience, the clickjack episode almost always begin with a Google search, and when a link on the results page is clicked on, something different happens. Instead of loading the domain name we click, a completely different web page pops up, usually a directory page using the same set of keywords as a search term.

What happens is relatively simple, and at the same time very difficult to prevent. A would-be hijacker monitors traffic to a partcular IP address (Google), and traces a connection back to the sending party (the user) by following the return packet (search results). Now, when that person clicks a link on the search results page, the malicious party kidnaps the request, and returns a completely different url/IP address to the browser, which was expecting a response, and thinks that everything is going as planned.

What is important to note is that our experience has been rather benign, but the possibility of clickjacking for mischief is very large. Your browser can be tricked into sending cookies, or making other responses to  website, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You could unwittingly be giving up personal information by doing something as simple and trusted as performing  web-based search
 
The good news is that this flaw seems to be prevalent in the Open Source browsers, but does not seem to have much affect on proprietary browsers, such as IE7 or Safari. Google and Mozilla both have already announced that the problem is under consideration, and will be eliminated in future releases. Google 2 is expected to be released into public beta sometime in the next few months, and Firefox has a new version due in a similar timeframe.

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Clickjacking Chrome and Firefox

Microsoft has released the latest update for IE 8, the latest version of Microsoft’s well known web browser. This version is Internet Explorer 8 RC or Release Candidate 1, and is reputedly getting close to a final release for the new browser.

Rumors have it that this version was delayed to provide more security, but our examination seems to point to Google Chrome as being a possible for the delay, as IE8 has incorporated many of the most popular Chrome features.

According to Microsoft, one of the primary delays has been greater scrutiny, especially in the UK, for compliance with antitrust regulations. We probably all remember the Netscape vs Microsoft debacle, and a similar battle is beginning to gain steam in Europe.

IE8 is intended to be a primary competitor for Mozilla Firefox, which has steadily gained marketshare in the past few years, and is today used by almost as many people as use the Internet Explorer Browser. But there is other competition in the field as well, with Google’s Chrome, Apple Safari, and even other Mozilla offerings, including SeaMonkey.

According to initial reviews, IE8 is more compliant with HTML 4.01, CSS 2.1, and other web standards. In itself this is a major improvement for Microsoft, which has long striven to influence the direction of development by promoting similar but different variations of web standards. Perhaps the fact is starting to sink that Microsoft doesn’t rule the software industry alone anymore, and that’s something that will be good for the industry as a whole.

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Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 RC

Among the unfixed bugs are ones related to Firefox 3.1’s new privacy mode, dubbed “Private Browsing,” a feature that debuted in Beta 2 last December, and several connected with the new ability to drag tabs from the browsing window.

In related news, Mozilla also announced a subtle but significant change to the way tabs work in Firefox, tweaking them so that when a new tab is opened from a link it will appear immediately to the right of the one you are working on. Referring to the change, Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla, says that this feature is one of the little things that don’t get a lot of attention when people talk about Google Chrome.

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Mozilla Delays Firefox Beta 3.1

Originally, when you right-clicked, and selected “open in new tab,” that new tab window would appear at the very end f your list of tabs. Logically, this creates a chronological order for your tabs, but doesn’t reveal any sort of organization.

The new tab method, introduced in Google Chrome, and copied first my Microsoft, and now by Firefox, groups tabs of similar type together. If you right click in a tab, and open a link in a new tab, that tab will appear immediately adjacent to the tab window you are currently working in. For research, this allows you to open groups of related documents, and keep each part of the research isolated.

Admittedly, the new way that tabs works will take a little getting used to. Another feature that will definitely come in handy during the learning process is the “undo close tab” feature, which can re-open tabs from the session history.

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Mozilla FireFox Adopts Chrome Tabs

Google, while it is considered to be the leading internet search engine, uses far more than search queries to draw people to use their services. Google, perhaps more so than any other provider of its type, has endeavored to make Google the one-stop home page of its members. Google Reader, the Google answer to MyYahoo, is one of many generalized and customizable services available from most search engines. But nobody else has Google Docs, which provided a cloud version of popular office productivity software, such as spreadsheet and document creation.

And even the people who design the next generation of websites make extensive use of Google’s unique monitoring services, such as Google Trends and Google Analytics, which help them position themselves for tomorrow’s business, and push their customers into the 21st century version of the outdoor shopping mall.

Very few competitors, even Microsoft, are able to mimic the depth of services provided by Google, which allows more than just searches in its query bar. Complex mathematical formula, if typed in properly, can be solved, as well as immediate access to a plethora of library functions, such as dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia services.

Google’s appeal comes from it providing a single location with all of the tools needed for both business and relaxation online, including message forums, chat systems, and VOIP telephone services. Google’s approach, which seemed rather benign a few years ago, can now be clearly identified as the online version of walmart, providing just the services that keep people coming back, and making them easy enough for even a totally new user to figure out.

As cloud computing, or computers that use the internet for operating programs, making them less expensive machines, grows through web 2.0 applications, only Google is poised for the masses right from the start, and that is a strategic edge that puts them into competition with software giants, such as Microsoft.

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What sets Google Apart

Lycos, which is still a major search engine and internet directory, is feeling the crunch of tough economic times, and cutting corners by cutting back on free services, it seems. To many, this is almost like the end of an era, as we watch the commercial push to populate webspace give way to the larger and more commercialized world of web 2.0. Just as Netscape gave way to fresher Mozilla packages, so do the old school websites and email providers fall to wayside as it becomes easier for such services to be provided on an as-needed basis by site who capitalize on the earnings potential of keyword oriented click-thru campaigns, and on-page advertising.

Remember, if you have any old data at these Lycos services, you only have a few weeks to remove it, or you’ll risk losing it forever.

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Lycos to Drop Lycos Mail, Tripod