Technology in your hands.

Microsoft has unveiled a new web search engine, Bing, designed to intuitively understand what people are seeking on the internet and challenge online king Google.

The US software colossus described Bing as a “Decision Engine” and said it will be deployed worldwide at Bing.com.au by Wednesday.

Bing’s launch comes in the wake of Google and Yahoo! announcing refinements to their search services and the launch of a Wolfram Alpha query engine that delivers answers instead of lists of websites.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the web.”…

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Google co-founder Sergey Brin has put his reputation behind a project launched today by a team from Google Australia which seeks to overthrow email as the dominant mode of internet communication and replace it with a new hybrid.

“What we are seeing with Wave really rethinks how communication works,” Brin said today. “I think you will see a form of interaction that you would not have previously imagined.”

Christened Wave, the new system is a combination of email and instant messaging and document-, maps- image- and video-sharing all housed in one spot…

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HE HAS been called a “born creative thinker” and “a man of extraordinarily high principle”. Others consider his inventions frivolous and derivative. Not that Frederick Bailier Richardson III – aka Ric Richardson – particularly cares.

As of last week, the 47-year-old inventor, surfer and one-time dirt-biker stands to reap the lion’s share of a $US388 million ($537 million) damages award from Microsoft, after a US jury found the software giant had stolen his technology.

Mr Richardson, who grew up in Lane Cove and never studied beyond year 12 at Hunters Hills High, is the founder of Uniloc, which sued Microsoft in 2003 for violating its patent relating to anti-piracy technology. “I would love to tell you how much money I’ll get,” he told the Herald, “but frankly I don’t know. I don’t get into the operational side of the business. To me, the money is important only in so far as it allows me to further my ideas.”

Despite his low profile, Mr Richardson, who divides his time between Sydney and Huntington Beach, California, is the inventor of dozens of patents. Recent projects include adapting the carbon scrubbing technology found in submarines to car exhaust pipes and collaborating with friend and Nobel nominee Peter Rentzepis, from the University of California, on the use of lasers to achieve atomic level computing.

“Ric is scarily intelligent, and he works crazy hours,” Brad Davis, chief executive of Uniloc USA, said. “He’s the kind of guy who can become an expert on something in about eight seconds.”…

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Is it time to put Conficker in the history books? Is Conficker really a dud? The truth is, nobody knows. Conficker gained so much attention in part because of the sheer number of computers it was able to infect. But nobody knows for sure what Conficker can accomplish. However, at the time of this writing no Conficker-related catastrophes have surfaced and some think the threat never will. So as attention shifts away from Conficker, it’s important to know where we stand against the world’s most famous piece of malware…

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Microsoft has released a new version of Internet Explorer, adding features meant to speed up common web surfing tasks and bringing the browser’s security measures in line with those of major competitors.

The number of browsers has grown to a dizzying array, from Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, the two most popular, to Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, the Norwegian entrant Opera and others. Each is using speed, security enhancements and new features to fight for a share of web surfers’ growing time online. Microsoft remains the dominant player, but Firefox’s influence is growing…

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Futuremark’s aim with this benchmark is to put an end to the so-called “browser wars” by removing subjective opinions or analysis of performance with too much room for variability such as loading times.

ZoomTypically, a newly released browser will be subdued to the well known Acid3 web standards test but there are few universally used benchmarks which measure the performance of common web page functions. Peacekeeper is a purely JavaScript-driven benchmark and therefore only tests JavaScript functions. It does not test actual web page loading times and is therefore not affected by connection speeds and the variation that can occur there, nor does it test things like Flash.

In order to have more basis on real world performance, each of the tests are weighted differently depending on how heavily they are used on commonly accessed websites such as YouTube and Facebook. A few tests, such as those using arrays, are not based on these website profiles…

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Sunbelt Software has released a free command-line version of its popular VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware utility.

This scanner, intended for use on systems where malware interferes with GUI-based security products, runs in a Windows 2000/XP/Vista command prompt or in Safe Mode with Command Prompt. It uses the same scanning engine and malware definitions as the full VIPRE product. To ensure up-to-date definitions users should download the product anew before each use…

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The service, a relaunch of GrandCentral, which Google bought in 2007, allows you to choose a local number, which will simultaneously ring up to six phones such as your cell phone, home phone, office phone, and the phone at that vacation home that most of us can only dream about.

In addition to forwarding your calls, it also takes voice messages that you can listen to on the Web, from a phone, or read, thanks to a new feature that transcribes voice messages and sends them as e-mail and text messages.

If you have multiple phones, having a single number to reach them all can make you and your callers’ lives a bit easier, and it can save space on your business card by not having to list separate numbers. The concept is simple: people are trying to reach you–not one of your phones–and Google Voice lets you decide how to route the calls…

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A service launched this week unblocks Caller ID information that the caller thinks is blocked, causing concern among those who help abused women.

TrapCall.com lets people rig some AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA phones so that if a call comes in with blocked Caller ID and is rejected, it rings again, this time displaying the number of the caller.

The basic service if free. The Web site charges for plans with more advanced services, like call recording and Caller ID with name.

The Web site said the service can be useful for people who get harassing phone calls…

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