JitNik's Tech World

Benefits

Google’s Realtime Search offers you a convenient way to search through status updates, news articles and other links that are shared on the social web, mainly Twitter and Facebook.
Microsoft too has a similar search product called Bing Social and though both these tools are powered by the same data coming from Twitter and Facebook, I find Bing’s Social Search a slightly better product than Google’s Realtime Search.

Both Bing and Google display search results from Facebook and Twitter in a self-updating river of news format but with Bing Social, you have an option to filter out status updates by source.
That means you can limit your search results to either Twitter or Facebook, something that is currently not possible in Google’s Realtime search.

Microsoft recently launched online tools for Small and Medium Sized Businesses. The sales pitch - Online E-mail, Calendar, Collaboration, Productivity Software can Reduce IT-related Costs by Upto 10% to 50%. In a press release, Microsoft stated that all customers can log on to www.microsoft.com/india/onlineservices and experience the online service. The commercial launch is set to be on October 20009. Microsoft Online Services is a part of Microsoft software plus services strategy which provides flexibility and choice of accessing and using software on premise and on Internet as a service.

Mr. Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Microsoft Business Division said “Over 80 percent of the businesses in India are SMBs that are increasingly looking to use world class IT for better business productivity. With tools such as email and collaboration becoming increasingly a must-have in this segment, the pay-as-you-go affordability and freedom from IT administration, Microsoft Online Services offers the much needed respite from financial and logistical hurdles. We encourage businesses to make the best of the free trial opportunity we are launching – and experience the powerful impact of Microsoft Online Services.” The list of products is here.

Through this, Microsoft’s strategy is seen as embracing cloud and promoting its Azure platform. Microsoft seems to be going cloud in a big way, with it also launching Office Live (possible competition to Google Docs). However, Office Live, as commented in this article holds little promise for Medium and Large based customer services and contains several hidden costs.

Microsoft Corp in a quest to provide complete security to its OS users would soon be launching its own antivirus app Code named-‘Morro’. Microsoft also informed that the early version of the product is currently tested by its employees and would soon make a beta product available online before going for a launch at the end of 2009

Anti-virus app ‘Morro’ would provide full–time protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans .Although many are terming it as stripped down version of earlier shelved Live OneCare.



This news assumes significance as this antivirus would be completely free and would provide higher level of security due to close knit approach with Windows OS.Microsoft may be able to provide a great solution due to control over anonymous usage statistics of millions of PC’s.

This has sound alarms for commercial Anti-virus companies like Symantec,kaspersky and McAfee, earning majority of their revenues by protecting Windows PCs all these years. These companies also has significant presence in enterprise security market and attracts huge revenues from it.

Microsoft through this initiative is trying to ramp up confidence amongst its customers, at the same time opening up a new revenue stream in future.The move may be late timed but indeed serve great purpose for users craving about better anti-virus integration in windows OS.

1. Use the full version of Bing

If you are using Bing outside North America, chances are that you seeing a localized version of Bing that may be missing some features. For instance, the Indian version of Bing.com doesn’t have search history and the image on the Bing home page here is not interactive as in the US version.

To explore the full version of Bing, go to this page and set English - US as your default region. You can now enjoy all the Bing features from anywhere.

2. Track Companies from the IE Favorites Bar

If you search for a company stock (e.g. GOOG or MSFT), Bing will automatically create a web slice for that company which you may then add to IE 8 and track the performance directly from the favorites bar. You need Internet Explorer 8 to try this feature.




3. Watch Preview of Hulu Videos outside US

Hulu hosts some popular popular TV shows but the problem is that you can only watch these videos if your computer has US based IP address.

However, Bing lets you watch shot previews of Hulu video even outside US. Just search for any TV show episode on Bing Videos (see example) and hover the mouse over any of the video thumbnail to watch a short clip.

4. Save and Email search results

With Bing, you can save your search history on to a local folder inside Bing or to your Windows Skydrive account. Alternatively, you may send your search queries to a friend via email or publish them on your Facebook wall via Bing. You’ll need Silverlight to share queries in Bing.

5. RSS Feeds of Search Results

Unlike Google or Yahoo, Bing offers RSS feeds for their web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader. Your browser should be able to auto-detect the RSS feed of Bing pages or you can append &format=rss to any Bing search URL and convert it into a feed.

This RSS feature is not available for Image or Video search in Bing.

6. Find Pages That Link to MP3 Files or Documents

Bing (and Live Search) supports a unique "contains" search operator that lets you find web pages that contain links to particular file types.

For instance, a search like susan boyle contains:mp3 will show pages that are about the British singer and that also link to MP3 files. Replace mp3 with doc to search pages that contain links to Word Documents.

http://www.bing.com

Yet another Windows 7 build has leaked to the Web, turning recent appearances of pirated copies into a weekly event on file-sharing sites.

As many as 10 different copies of Windows 7 Build 7068 have been added to BitTorrent since last Friday, according to searches on popular tracking sites such as Mininova.org and Pirate Bay. Illegal copies of both 32- and 64-bit editions are available.

The appearance of Windows 7 Build 7068 follows the leak of Build 7057 by about a week; 7057, in turn, followed 7048 by about the same time span. The newest build is the fourth to hit BitTorrent since Microsoft stopped offering the public beta last month.

Traffic on this build has been especially brisk. As of midday today, Mininova reported that the various copies of Windows 7 Build 7068 have been downloaded a combined total of more than 65,000 times.

Although Build 7068 was compiled by Microsoft on March 21, there's no hint in the new version that it is a possible release candidate (RC), unlike earlier this month when some downloaders speculated that Build 7057 was the long-awaited RC.

Last week, in fact, Microsoft accidentally revealed details of Windows 7 RC, including a May 2009 delivery of a public download and a new expiration date, June 1, 2010, for the preview.

According to the My Digital Life site, Windows 7 Build 7068 expires on March 2, 2010, the same date as earlier builds, including 7057, displayed.

Windows 7 leaks have been a problem for Microsoft since previews were first handed out in October 2008 at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference. Since then, other versions have appeared on BitTorrent, including a pirated copy of what was later released as the beta.

Microsoft introduced its new version of Internet Explorer on Thursday, touting its new security features such as the SmartScreen phishing filter. However, the new features weren't enough to keep a the browser from being hacked at the CanSecWest conference.

Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) More about Microsoft unveiling of Internet 10th Annual Online Fraud Report. Online Payment Fraud Trends, Merchant Practices and Benchmarks. Get your copy today. Explorer 8 on Thursday was marred by news that the browser, touted to be its most secure ever, already has been hacked.

The launch has also kicked off a new round of browser wars, with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) More about Google unveiling a new beta of its Chrome browser, and Mozilla More about Mozilla Foundation releasing Fennec, the mobile version of its Firefox browser, in beta.

IE8 was cracked at the 10th annual CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada, Wednesday by a hacker who identified himself only as "Nils." To be fair, the first browser to go down at the hacking contest at CanSecWest was Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) More about Apple Safari.

"Microsoft is investigating reports of a possible vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "While we're not aware of any actual attacks using this possible vulnerability or of any customers affected, if the vulnerability is confirmed, we'll take action to help protect our customers."
Security and IE8

This is not the first time a security vulnerability has been discovered in IE8 --in February, Microsoft released a security bulletin for IE8.

Announcing IE8's release Thursday, Microsoft said it "offers leading-edge security features in direct response to people's increasing concerns about online safety," and quoted CEO Steve Ballmer as saying that IE8 "provides protection that no other browser can match."

Does that square with the facts? Probably, Jason Miller, security and data team manager at network security and patch management vendor Shavlik Technologies, told TechNewsWorld. "They have SmartScreen Filter, which they haven't had before, and there are reports that it's catching a lot of malware," he explained.

SmartScreen Filter is an extension of IE7's phishing filter. When a user visits a site that has been labeled harmful, IE8 will put up a warning and suggest the user not visit the site.

Still, all software has vulnerabilities and is prone to hacking, Miller said.
Browser Wars Reignite

IE8 has lots of nice new stuff. These include accelerators, a version of selection-based search that lets users invoke an online service from any other page using just the mouse. IE8 also has Web Slices, which are snippets of a page that a user subscribes to. The browser will automatically update the snippets, which users can view directly from the Favorites bar.

This could kick off a new round of browser wars, as other firms offering Web browsers have revved up their efforts recently.

Google has just unveiled a new beta of Google Chrome, which it claims in a blog is almost twice as fast as the original beta. It also has several new features, including form autofill, full page zoom and autoscroll, and lets the user drag tabs out to get a side-by-side view of Web pages.

Meanwhile, Mozilla rolled out the mobile version of its Firefox browser, called "Fennec." This has impressed reviewers at first sight because of the variety of features it offers.
More Trouble Coming?

The browser wars could lead to more security issues, Shavlik's Miller warns. "As you add new features, there will be new areas for vulnerabilities to exist," he said. "The more bloated these browsers get, the more areas there are to attack."

Miller predicts that hackers will unleash a torrent of attacks on IE8 over the next few weeks. "There's a lot of money in this for the hackers, and they'll want to find a way in."

The situation won't be helped by the fact that hackers are now targeting browsers more heavily. "Over the past couple of years, browsers have overtaken e-mail as the area where users spend the most time, and attackers are putting out traps on Web sites," Paul Judge, chief technology officer at Web security application vendor Purewire, told TechNewsWorld.

"There's no shortage of vulnerabilities out there," Judge added.