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The first search engine to ever challenge Google has finally arrived and it's from Microsoft. Once you quit laughing, you should really give it a try. Microsoft's Bing has a lot of potential and several features that are actually better than Google (here and there).

If you want to just compare the two side by side, try http://www.bingandgoogle.com/. Enter a search term and the site will submit it to both search engines for you and show you the first page of results side by side. Happy hunting!!

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Washington state (and Microsoft) are suing companies that use those fake security alerts to trick people into downloading and using their products. You know the ones. They usually say something like "Warning! Your computer is infected with viruses and you must download a quick security update to stop it".

Your first warning should be when they ask for your credit card number, but I don't hold that mistake against anyone. The real problem is the scumbag companies who utilize this kind of manipulation. It makes you wonder how they've gotten away with it for so long in the first place.

Making money by preventing everyone else from buying a domain

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So I know that to buy a website that either the name of a famous person or business in the hopes of making them pay you bunches of money when they get smart enough to want that site is Cybersquatting and is illegal. Simple enough. I also know that buying a domain that similar to a major site in the hopes of getting traffic from people who make spelling mistakes is also illegal. For example, if I were to register Hotmial and I got lots of traffic from people who meant to go to Hotmail. Clearly bad.

But here's the important question: what about ad squatters? Ad squatters are those people who buy up every possible domain that consists of words or letter combinations that people would likely buy, park annoying ads on them and leave them there for all time. For you to actually get that site, you would have to pay a lot more money than if the site weren't registered assuming the ad squatter decides to sell at all.

I say ad squatting should also be illegal because if someone like me wants to register a domain name for a new business or website, I'm screwed because every possible good name has been taken. If some real company or individual somewhere legitimately used the site for their own blog or store, I wouldn't mind, but these jerks only have worthless ads and no content and do nothing to add to the Internet as a whole. In fact they make it worse because search engines often list them as relevant due to the domain name alone when in fact they have nothing useful on their pages at all.

I've read the stories about how these people make millions a year on these annoying ad pages. I don't begrudge someone from coming up with a brilliant idea and making a lot of money, but when you're choking the opportunities of everyone else to do it at the same time, that's not ok.

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Here's an article listing (and rating) the various ways to watch download/watch TV legally.

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This isn't going to be an exhaustive write-up about Paypal and the various trouble you can get into with it. Instead, I'm going to talk about one very important part of the system that most people should know how to deal with.

Specifically, the direct bank access.

When you sign up for Paypal, they ask for your bank account information so they can make some test deposits. Once you see the deposits, you return to the system to tell them how much was sent to verify your account.

Here's the problem: if you do it, Paypal will then have full access to your bank account to pull funds if you were to say, go negative on your Paypal account or some Paypal employee decides they need a little of what you have or a hacker breaks through their world class security.

Instead, don't ever confirm the deposits. What this does is allow Paypal to continue making deposits (for when you get cash in Paypal), but they can't debit your account (so there!). Granted, doing this will limit the amount of money you can filter through paypal (like $500 a month or so), but so what? Most people never do transactions that large and worst-case, if you manage to get a single transaction over $500, just withdraw it over the course of a few months.

If that's not realistic for you, confirm the numbers, just make sure the account you're using is disposable.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

So now if you get into a disagreement that you can't find your way out of, you and your significant other can go to Sidetaker.com and post your respective sides on the issue. Users of the site can browse through the arguments, vote, and comment on who's side they're taking and why.

Honestly, I think this sounds like a pretty neat idea. Of course, I would get more use out of the site if they'd let us post work-related disagreements instead.

Read the terms, don't like what you see.

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As I suspected, a product from a company like Google shouldn't be trusted without scrutiny. They've developed a new open-source Internet browser to compete with Firefox and Internet Explorer, but if you read carefully, you might notice this:

You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

So anything you submit through the Google browser can be stored and used for either promotion purposes or for selling to 3rd parties. In other words, Google browser is nothing more than the most sophisticated data-brokering device yet created (or spyware in other words).

Google may have the best search engine around, but their privacy policies are and have always been complete crap.

2008 Sept, 04 Update

Well that was fast. Google has updated it's EULA to remove any reference to them holding rights to what you own. It looks like they just cut-and-pasted their EULA from Google docs (which still has that problem). Now it reads like this:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.

Surprisingly forward thinking.

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Did you know that you could get DSL service WITHOUT having to have a phone land line with the same company? Probably not since the phone company won't tell you. Check out this article for tips on how to teach the "Customer Service Reps" what and how to do it.

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If you've been caught by surprise doing web searches with your kids and found something you really didn't want to explain, maybe Ask.com's new kid-safe search is worth checking out.

They dropped their "don't be evil" motto for a reason

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Google has been inappropriately storing your search records for a long time now, but it looks like they're far from being the only one.