Bing Is Now Your Default Search Engine On IE6, Whether You Like It Or Not

For years, Microsoft has tried to shrug off its reputation as a monopolistic tyrant. Today comes news that seems to undermine those efforts pretty badly.

The Next Web reports that users of Internet Explorer 6 are being forced to use Bing as their default search engine — even if they’ve manually switched their preference to another search provider, like Google. Attempts to switch the browser to something other than Bing result in an error message.

Now, let’s set aside the fact that IE6 is a scourge on the web that opens users up to a wide array of critical security issues and forces developers to implement ugly hacks because the browser doesn’t support many web standards. The fact of the matter is that a sizable number of users are still using IE6 (over 5% of TechCrunch readers still use it, and the global marketshare is closer to 20%). We’re talking millions of users who are potentially affected by this issue.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Google Launches A Location-Based Android App

Google has just launched a new Android app that lists the places around

Places Directory is a straight-forward app created by some Googlers as their 20% time project. When you launch it, it looks up your location and gives you a directory of the types of establishments around. If I click on “Bars” for example, I’ll then get a list of the bars around me complete with a thumbnail image, the location’s distance from me and a star rating. Clicking on any of the listings will take you to a page with an overview of the place, including its address and phone number. You can also read reviews of the place by Google local users and see more pictures of the place.

While there are no shortage of apps on the iPhone that do basically the same task, there are less available on Android. And while some of the apps that do exist focus mostly on restaurants, Places Directly can also find things like ATMs or museums. And even the best apps out there that do these place listing suffer from a lack of information in smaller towns. That won’t be an issue in NYC, but could be in my hometown of Pepper Pike, Ohio. But Places Directory has Google’s huge database of information at its disposal, which means that even in remote towns, you’ll likely have some information about local places.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/02/google-launches-a-location-based-android-app-to-save-tourists/

Google upgrades custom search box on Blogger

Google’s blog publishing platform, Blogger, is bringing its Custom Search Box gadget out of its beta version, also known as Blogger in Draft. The search gadget a blog’s readers search posts, web pages linked from the blog, other blogs on the blog roll, as well as pages on the shared links list.

Google initially launched the gadget on its Blogger in Draft platform, which offers users a version of Blogger where Google tests out features and new interfaces. Google says it has upgraded the search gadget to provide simpler defaults as well as the ability for the box to integrate with the aesthetics and color of your blog. The Search Box gadget uses AJAX Search APIs to power the feature and also automatically updates the custom linked search engine when you update your blog, blog lists, or link lists.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Search Smackdown: Bing Vs. Google

That was fast. Irish programmer and SEO specialist Paul Savage has made this very basic web service, which lists all results for search queries on Google and Bing side by side so you can compare which one produces the best results for the keywords you enter on one single page. We've played around with it a bit and found that the tool proves that the user experience for both search engines really is very different:

- searching for 'Google'

Google will show news results about themselves first, and a link to their homepage later, which makes sense since people are probably already on there. The rest of the results consists of Google products and local versions of the search service. Noteworthy difference is the presence of a button that lets you drop down a widget displaying information about Google's stock without the need to leave the page.

Bing, on the other hand, provides a list of possible extended search queries on the left sidebar, and a list of useful direct links to Google services below the first result. It also lists 'similar' searches on the right sidebar (not visible in this screenshot) with alternative services - Bing being the first one they recommend. It also displays a box that you can use to jump to Google search, and it keeps track of your search history right on the page, unless you turn that feature off.

- searching for 'Linux'

Using Google, you get much better results for this query, period. Google lists at least five very relevant links (Kernel.org, Debian.org, RedHat.com, LinuxJournal.com and LI.org) that you will not find in the first 15 search results on Bing. No nifty sidebars, nor any amount of spot-on similar results will help Microsoft here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/02/AR2009060200550.html

Google's Android seen gaining support

HELSINKI (Reuters) -

Google's Android operating system is gaining support in the mobile industry, with 8 million Android phones to be sold in 2009, up 10-fold from a year ago, research firm Strategy Analytics said on Monday.

With the overall handset market shrinking as economies slow globally, the mobile industry is focusing investment on more advanced smartphones and their software.

Google's Android was introduced in the United States in the second half of 2008, and now all top cell phone vendors except Nokia have said they would use Android. "Android is now in a good position to become a top-tier player in smartphones over the next two to three years," said Neil Mawston, a director at Strategy Analytics.

Mawston said handset vendors and operators like T-Mobile and Vodafone are attracted to Android's relatively low-cost licensing model, its semi-open-source structure and Google's support for services.

Despite the 10-fold growth forecast for 2009, with 8 million phones sold Android would lag far behind market leader Symbian, andResearch in Motion, Microsoft, or Apple.

On average, the smartphone market is expected to grow 10-20 percent this year from 152 million phones sold last year.

Roughly half of these used Symbian operating system, while RIM sold 23.5 million, Microsoft 20 million and Apple 13.7 million phones, Strategy Analytics said.

Nokia bought out other shareholders of Symbian last year and gave all its software to an independent foundation, which now develops it on an open-source basis.

Nokia uses only Symbian software in its smartphones, while Symbian is also the key platform for Sony Ericsson, which has said it will also use Windows and Android as complementary offerings.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090511/tc_nm/us_mobiles_google

Google wave is a killer application watch out

A new service which–well, it’s one of the most ambitious services that Google or anyone else has cooked up? How ambitious? Project leader Lars Rasmussen says that it began with the question “What might e-mail look like if it were invented today?” ... It:

Is a service that looks like a rich piece of client software;

Behaves like sophisticated threaded e-mail;

Acts like IM when multiple collaborators are online at once.

Is one of the most real-time collaborative tools I’ve ever seen.

Has revision marking and versioning for workgroup editing.

Has instant photo sharing.

Allows its functionality to be embedded into blogs and social networks;

Can serve as a container for OpenSocial applications;

Has what Google says is a revolutionary spell checker;

Comes in mobile flavors for Android and iPhone;

Is an open-source project that lets developers write both Wave extensions ... and their own servers.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/google_wave_who_what_where_why_when