Microsoft have switched on the long promised HTML5 version of their Bing search engine. Bing began by making search more visual with a daily image, but now through the power of HTML5 video, that image comes to life as a video. Unfortunately this is another entrant to the US-only release list, but there is a relatively easy way for those outside the US to use it.

In the top right of Bing there is a Country selector, click this, then choose United States from the list. Of course this then means you will get US-oriented results. If you can’t be bothered with that, then check out the video below of Bing’s HMT5 video homepage.

Sure this does absolutely nothing to the quality of search results, but is an interesting showcase of the possibilities of HTML5 and makes for a unique search experience, Google, your plain white page is growing old.

More @ Bing

Use Private Browsing Mode

All the popular (updated) web browsers all now support a private browsing mode. In Firefox, you can access it by pressing Control+Shift+P, Chrome Control+Shift+N, and the dreaded Internet Explored Control+Shift+P. If you are planning on doing some searches you don’t really want traced, it is highly recommend that you use these modes.

Manually Clear Your Browser History

If you don’t have the latest browser that has a Private Browsing Mode, please upgrade. Otherwise remember to clear all your history manually once you are done. Depending on your browser, you will most likely find it under the tools section. If you downloaded, or saved any files onto your hard drive, make sure you delete them too as it won’t be deleted through this step.

Check What’s Running

It’s also a good idea to check what’s running on your computer, you never know, someone may have installed a keylogger or another program on your computer that records what you do. I recommended downloading and running HiJackThis which performs a scan and outputs a text file. Upload it to http://www.hijackthis.de to see if it reveals any nasties.

Check MSCONFIG

Another check you can do is MSCONFIG. This basically shows you a list of programs and services that load when your computer boots. Disable anything you don’t practically need or anything that looks a little suss. Not only it stops programs running during startup, it makes your computer boot a lot quicker.

To access MSCONFIG, simply type it in on the run command on start menu search box.

Check Your Router Or Network

Some routers also record the history and URL of sites on your network visit. So if your router has logging capabilities, ensure that it is switched off. Also, programs such as Wireshark can be used to see what’s inside packets being sent along your network (in case you want to sniff what’s in your packets – you can even find out passwords!).

Check The Actual Website

If you are using Google to search for something, make sure that you (or someone else) are not logged in. Because if there account has Google Web History turned on, anything that you search, click, and visit will be recorded – so just a word of warning.

Use A Virtual Box

If you really want to hide what you do on the computer, install a Virtual Machine. For example, download Virtual Box, install Ubuntu on it, and you have your own private PC.
Make sure you also password protect the user account.

In the end….

If you don’t want people to find what you have been search for, the majority of the time, you probably shouldn’t be searching for it in the first place.

I hope that you have found some of these tips useful in protecting what you do online. If you want some further reading, I have written a few posts on my own personal blog about how you can protect your personal identify online and how you can protect yourself while using Facebook, Gmail, and other websites that you may want to check out, which I strongly suggest that you do.

Do you have other tips you would like to share? We at techAU would like to know.

If your after a new car, your first step is almost certainly jumping online to see what’s available. Where do your start ? The problem for car buyers is that there’s simply too many car sales websites available. Where competition and choice usually benefits consumers, in use cases like this, it just ads to the confusion for an average user.

CarGrabber is to cars, what WebJet is to fights, simplifying the process of shopping online for a used car.

The web start-up is the brainchild of Australian entrepreneurs Chris Noone and Claude Morello. The idea was born of their frustration at the time and effort needed to search multiple used car websites to find relevant used cars.

Aggregating results from sites like Drive, Countrycars and Trading Post, CarGrabber currently has nearly 120,000 used cars to search through. Naturally with that many vehicles to look through, its important you can filter the list to limit results to find just what your after. Filtering is a real strength of CarGrabber, providing an abundant categories to refine your search. What I would suggest is that this needs to be updated to take advantage of the AJAXY goodness we’re now accustom to on the web. Having the full page refresh each time a selection is made seems very dated. Fix this, and the user experience becomes so much slicker.

If your going to make a short list of vehicles to you will need an account on CarGrabber. Fortunately, these guys have done account creation spot on. With an understanding that users already have plenty of online accounts to maintain and remember passwords for, CarGrabber allows you to sign in with Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, OpenID or AOL. That’s pretty much the big ones covered off. During testing account verification with other services are suffering some errors, hopefully these are remedied shortly.

Results are displayed with thumbnails and basic information, sorted from lowest to highest price by default. Naturally you can resort the results or further refine search results to get to a manageable list. Adding items to your shortlist allows you to return to them quickly after logging back in to CarGrabber.

Each entry also contains a link ‘View on Service’ which links to the relevant site the listed vehicle comes from. To make the purchase or get further information and screen shots, you’ll need to click through the link. It would be a nice improvement if the thumbnails also linked to the same location.

Overall CarGrabber is a great service that should be your starting place when searching for used cars in Australia. The site continues to add new vehicles with another 1,000+ added during the writing of this feature.

More @ CarGrabber.com.au

Microsoft’s Bing division has announced today that they are integrating elements of Facebook into their search results. These come in too varieties. The first is searching for a contact’s name, this brings up their Facebook Profile (if it’s public) and provides easy links to add them as a friend or send them a message right from the results page.

The second part of today’s announcement is the use of Facebook Likes to influence search results. So wether your searching a particular business, band, product or service the search results will include a section called ‘Liked by your Facebook Friends’. This is actually a really valuable use of your social graph, helping to assist in when result suits you best. These more personalised search results will require you to be logged into Facebook on that machine.

More info @ Bing Community

Update
Angus Kidman over at Life Hacker has worked out that by using www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy that you can try out Google Instant now.

Check out today’s image on Bing. It’s very timely to match in with today’s big race – The Melbourne Cup. Rolling over the image you’ll see a number of square that link off to associated racing stories, one noteworthy item is the Birdseye view of the Flemington racecourse.

Just made official, the deal that’s been years in the making has finally been made. In the deal Yahoo’s search will now be done by Microsoft, using the same technology in Bing. This effectively means Microsoft have bought they’re way to 2nd position in the search engine (read: advertising) space online.

Both companies are referring to the deal as a Partnership / Agreement, which they say will have benefits to both businesses. While Microsoft is handling all the search technology, Yahoo’s side of the deal is the handling of all advertising sales, which of course both companies will take a cut. What percentage each gets is not disclosed.

There is one caveat to all this. “The transaction will be subject to regulatory review”. Assuming that does happen, it’s expected the deal will be finalized early 2010.

The terms of the deal stipulate this is a 10 year arrangement.

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) talks about the search deal.

Carol Bartz (Yahoo! CEO) talks about the search deal

You can read all the detail over @ http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/pressroom/Default.aspx