Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft's search engine Bing, has stated that traditional search engines have failed to address to the ever changing needs of Internet users.  Bing’s main competitor, Google, is on the receiving end of this criticism. According to Weitz, Google’s search algorithm which measures the strength of back links is not effective to delivery relevant results to users’ search queries.

Weitz has stated in an interview that Google launched with the intention of organizing the world’s information. He praises Google’s algorithm as a brilliant model but considers it to be ineffective for today.

However, Bing also offers a similar set of search features. Bing’s features include images and maps, ability to calculate sums, news, weather and the ability to define words. Google’s dominant position on the search engine market, of which it claims 65 percent, has attracted scrutiny from all sorts of parties including government regulators. Bing’s claim adds up to the long list of anti-trust claims and anti-competitive speculations Google has received. Weitz further stated that the reason for the government to investigate Google’s activities due to Google’s incredible power over the market.

Amid allegations and accusations, Google continues to dominate the search and mobile operating systems market. Recently, the giant has purchased £3 million worth of patents from anIsraeli company, Modu. Google has not yet announced its plans with the acquired intellectual property. It is expected that Modu’s ideas will be used to create innovative smart phones in the future. Experts believe that the move is yet another step towards smart phone supremacy.

As for Weitz, he is convinced that Google’s massive impact on the search engine market has to be observed for foul play. He added that Bing’s social results are a much better way to obtain relevant information on a search. Bing, which currently claims 14 percent of the search engine market still has a long way to go to catch up with Google.

Since December last year, Facebook users have had access to Facebook’s facial recognition technology. The latest information released from Facebook has made it public that the facility has now been made available to users from all over the world.

The feature has been added to Facebook’s long list of default features. Whenever a new photo is uploaded, Facebook’s facial recognition technology kicks in to identify whether the people in the pictures are present in the uploader’s friend list. Then it will proceed to tag the images accordingly unless the user decides to opt out of the feature.

As Facebook users continue to add pictures on to the social media site, it will automatically scan them to determine if a particular user’s facial features match in different photos. Once a match has been located, it will request for the user’s permission to automatically tag all those photos.

The feature was welcomed by many users who found tagging images to be a chore. However, it was not met entirely with positive responses. For instance, some users complained about the fact that the service was integrated in to the default settings. Since the feature has to be ‘opted out’ of rather than ‘opted in’, most users were displeased with the inconvenience.

Since Facebook failed to officially make an announcement regarding the update as it was made, Facebook conspiracy theorists had plenty of things to say about the matter. The news that Facebook has made the feature available for users all across the world was unveiled by Sophos, a web security firm. Facebook has stated that the innovative feature will make sharing special moments over the social network without having to turn it in to a chore.

Although some users are genuinely pleased about the feature, others are convinced that there just might be something lurking beneath the surface.

A few days ago I downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird and I saw that OMG, I was wasting my time with Outlook Express, I t is one of the best email applications and very easy to use, so I decided to export all my emails and contacts from Outlook Express to Thunderbird.

It seemed there was a problem because Thunderbird could not recognize the file format of Outlook Express. It was very frustrating, because Outlook uses a file format called .pst, it is file format and folder used my Microsoft Outlook to store mails, messages, contacts, and calendar in Outlook.

Then I tried to search God Father Google to find a solution for .pst format, I really do not know what was my search keyword that I saw a site called PSTpanic. It is an online competition where you can submit your picture and other users can vote on.

In fact PSTpanic is a web 2.0 site in a very specific niche for computer enthusiasts and provides game for network admins. You must show your panic and frustration to win the prizes, which are Amazon gift vouchers. The photo that gets the highest vote and rate wins $250 Amazon gift voucher. I think it is fun to participate.

Update: I noticed that this site (PSTpanic.com) is not functional anymore.

If you are familiar with Homer’s Odyssey, you know what it means by Trojan Horse. Yes, at least the concept. If you don’t know what’s there in Odyssey, let’s me explain you what happed there at Troy.

In Homer’s Odyssey, there exists a city called Troy, which has a wall that cannot be broken by the enemies. Therefore, Troy has been regarded as one of best cities in terms of security. Due to the same reason, no other kingdom would take the chance of fighting with Troy. But one king is going to Troy with thousands of ships for fighting with Troy but looses in the initial rounds of the war. Finally the attacking army pretends that they left the war and keeps a large wooden horse on the shore where Troy king takes it to the Troy city as a monument of the war. But apparently, there had been well trained soldiers hiding inside the wooden horse where they came out of the house and open the gates of Troy for the rest of the army to come in. Eventually Troy was burnt to ashes and it was a victory achieved by the Trojan horse.

Now you can relate the above epic to your computer by assuming Troy as your computer and Trojan Horse as a kind of virus. Troy’s wall is somewhat similar to your security system (anti-virus software or firewall) and Trojan Horse can surpass your security system by misleading it.

Let’s talk about what is exactly done by the modern Trojan horses to our computer systems. Let’s take Melissa, most popular Trojan Horse of all time as an example. First you may get an email with an attachment and the email is written in such a way that you would open the attachment. If the attachment is opened by the user, it would run a hidden macro without the user’s knowledge. If Microsoft Outlook is present in the user’s PC, Melissa will take first 50 contacts and mail itself to those 50 contacts. This way, Melissa could multiply rapidly within a very short period of time and soon the internet was full of Melissa emails. Since the demand was so high for email servers, most of them crashed causing more business damages. Eventually the anti-virus programs were updated to find and kill, Melissa.

I assume that, by now you understand the similarities between the epic and the modern Trojan Horse. It is very important to keep your virus scanner up-to-date for catching Viruses before they make any damage to you.