Meh...

A crosspost of  a (very) quick review I made of Bing today, that I posted over on Channel9 - http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/471309-Yet-Another-Bing-Thread-YABT-a-review/

I got my hands on a Bing preview code yesterday and I must say, I'm impressed. It provides better results than the current live search (an example of this (from Liveside) is that a search for Liveside on Live search takes you to a page on their site other than their homepage, while a search on Bing yields their homepage). Also awesome are the mouseover popups - done in such a way as to not be obtrusive or annoying while yielding useful information (I must admit I was queasy when I first found out about these, but now I've been able to try them I'm not).

Another feature that I love is that it seems to know what you're searching for (when you search for something on Google, Live Search, Yahoo! etc. it just searches for a series of words, Bing is different). An example of this is a search for "The Italian Job" - as well as just trawling the web for the phrase "The Italian Job" a series of film related options appears to the left of the search results. And, what's more, the search results are sorted into criteria such as "Quotes" "Reviews" and "Posters":

The video search results screen is also greatly improved - contrast:

All in all, great work Microsoft! Just one major issue: localisation: if I have my country set to UK instead of Bing shopping I get ciao!, I don't get the reliable medical information, I get multimap instead of Bing maps (I know at least maps is consistent with current Live Search), heck it even doesn't organise my "Italian Job" results in a nice, movie related way, like the US version does. I'm wandering if this is something to do with the fact that the UK localisation names itself "Bing Beta" while the US localisation names itself "Bing Preview" - but please Microsoft, don't deny your international customers all the coolness of Bing, please bring the international locations up to feature parity by launch. Thank you.

I'll now leave you with a few other screenshots

You may have heard of Microsoft Vine – a new service from Microsoft. When it was announced there was a lot of confusion about what it actually did (and I guess having a service that actually does something (and you knowing what that something is) is quite important if you wish to use it). It seemed to be a cross between Facebook and Twitter, all managed from a desktop application (many asked why they needed  a desktop application to do what they already do). Oh, and it promised to save the world.

Well Microsoft have began sending invites out, so I was able to download Vine and see what exactly it does, and if it does it well. First impressions – weird setup process: download an exe that just opens my web browser and points me to an MSI which I manually have to download and run. After that the install process when smoothly, more or less as you’d expect an install to run.

Firing up the app… first thought is: I’m sure Microsoft have said they want to try and reduce the number of tray notifications users get… then they add one to Vine telling me… that it’s Vine (and this wasn’t some first run thing either… happens every times):

So, once the app’s open what does it look like? Very glassy… I like! :D

Time to start poking about. The map is virtual earth with some kind of localised news feed added – you can also have areal photography instead of the map:

(only appears when you mouse over the upper left of the map)

Note the dropdown for easy selection of places (I’ve also turned on satellite imagery for this one):

News feeds seem to only be for the US at the moment…. and the news is hardly monumental (the worst dissaster at the moment is that AT&T are “mulling cheaper plans for the iPhone” in Birmingham Alabama. Better hurry up with “Pink” Microsoft!

(also, note the balloons are a little off… first bug I’ve found so far… :D :p)

When you add places you can set Vine to alert you to all news items in a certain radius (although we don’t have news in the UK yet):

The star is me :) and the big blob is the stuff close enough that I care (customisable)

Next up we have the “Vitals” screen – Where you can add various personal bits of info, link to your social networking sites etc. Seems phone integration doesn’t work outside the US yet either, because my perfectly valid UK mobile number keeps being rejected as an “invalid phone number” with and without country code (anyone know what the international dial code for the US is… I could add that on the front and try again):

The pin is basically a way of stopping someone sending fake emails – even if they fake your email address (easy enough) they have to know your pin to be able to send an alert to Vine.

We have the places screen that allows you to see all the places you care about (see if AT&T are going to lower iPhone prices near your home too :p), and manage them. No, I don’t live in Redmond, so please don’t go there to stalk me:

Finally we have the people screen (this is supposed to be the really important one right…?). I tried to add a contact but when I got the invitation email it only brought me to the beta invite request page so I won’t be able to test the rest of the feature properly just yet:

So now the touted features… alerts and reports. Having no contacts I was unable to send either of these – but you can see what I could have done (I had to smile at the “In an emergency dial 911” – reminded me of the IT Crowd):

An “Alert” I think this is supposed to be a call for help;

A “Report” I think this is supposed to be a kind of general “Yoohoo, I’m still here” message.

The types of report you can send:

I’m still not convinced how much this is better than just phoning your parents/spouse/pet monster/whatever and asking for help… but it uses teh internetz… so it must be better!

Other stuff? erm… that search box you can see at the bottom of the window just loads Live Search in a browser… that could probably be lost from the application without much hurt…

Oh and check in my report above… unfortunately the Wizard of Oz remains unable to use Vine as “Somewhere over the rainbow” is not considered a valid address :(

Also you can print out a card to stick in your wallet to remind you that rather than emailing your parents you can get Microsoft to do it for you!

http://www.vine.net/static/pdf/emergency_card.pdf

That’s all folks… so long!

With companies such as GMail now taking action to try and block phishing messages:

Phishers are having to try harder to get their messages through the protection systems about, and I've seen a message trying this in a way I've not seen before:

Now it's entirely possible that lots of people will read that and think it makes sense and open the attachment. But wait a second, isn't this a bit suspicous? An unsolicited email, claiming to be from my bank, that doesn't address me by name asking me to log in using a link they've provided. And asking me to open an attachment. And wait a second, on this page (http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/security/phishin...g_3nP:12ntf16af) HSBC themselves tell me not to open unsolicited attachements. Very phisy.

Being quite concerned, and not wanting anything nasty on my computer, I fired up Google Docs to take a look at it, while reducing the risk of it harming my computer. Here's what I saw:

A fairly official looking document that had managed to pass GMail's phishing filter and presented me with an official looking URL. But wait a second, where does that link lead?

Oh dear... not the HSBC website.

So, how to protect yourself? Always beware emails claiming to be from your bank, it they're real they'll adress you by name (or postcode or some other information the phishers shouldn't know), they'll never ask you for (or to verify) any security details and NEVER click on the links in the emails - type your banks website in the adress bar yourself.
If you recieve an email you suspect to be phishing there's a few things you can do:
Report it to the email provider (e.g. for GMail, Hotmail:)

Report it to the bank (they should have an report phishing email address, found on their website e.g phishing[at]hsbc[dot]com)
report it in your web browser (e.g. for FF and IE:)

And if you entered any personal information contact your bank by telephone or branch IMMEDIATLY.
For more information please visit: http://www.getsafeonline.org/ and http://banksafeonline.org.uk/

In an attempt to further eradicate the liberties and rights the home office has taken it upon itself to allow the police to hack into your computer without a warrant. Of course this is ok because it is only permitted if someone, somewhere, believes you to be a serious criminal. What if they make a mistake you ask? That doesn’t matter it’s not like they have to tell anyone. And even if you did find out they don’t have to prove that they had real evidence to believe you were a threat – just the fact that they said the evidence existed. And all the abuse prevention is backed up by the strict and beefy “Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act” – the self same act that allows a council use CCTV to see if you really live where you say you do (for the vital purpose of ensuring that you are not swindling the school admissions system you understand - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7341179.stm); check up on where your dog poos (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7369543.stm) or ensure that fishermen are not (shock! horror!) fishing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7398820.stm). As such regulation by this act fills me with total confidence that the system will not be abused. I fully believe that regulation by this act can hold Big Brother at bay indefinitely.

But I here you say, this involve hacking and that is illegal. Even the state is not above the law. Right you are! However they’ve already thought of that one too – in 1990. They may not be above the law, but they can change the law so that they are above the proletariat. Which they did. So indiscriminate hacking by the state has been legal for 19 years now. Bet you didn’t know that. So what’s changed new? It will become common practice in the UK police force, EU police force will be able to do it to UK citizens with no repercussions, before they could be held liable snooping your private life without a warrant (illegal - even if not under the PC Misuse Act) whereas now information so gather could probably be used in a “fair trial” in a court of law.

Oh, and it all relies on the fact that terrorists, pedophiles etc. will just leave the relevant files easy to find on their computer and not apply any kind of encryption or protection to them whatsoever. Heck, they may as well plan their bombings via MSN.

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439604.ece)

I for one do not welcome our new Orwellian overlords.

We've all heard of "The Great Firewall of China", and similar in other countries, and most of us in the western world take it for granted that this kind of thing doesn't affect us. However this appears to be changing. For several years now I've known about a system called "Cleanfeed", designed to satisfy those Daily Mail readers that have bought into the pedophile hysteria, that blocks illegal content (specifically child pornography). Now while, in principal, I child pornography is the single type of illegal content I don't have a problem with being blocked, I do have a practicle problem with it - any system designed to block it could easily be extended to other things (easier to get a child porn filter through parliament than an anti extremist one, in turn easier than an anti David Cameron one). Another specific problem I have with Cleanfeed is that ISPs are not generally open and honest about it - many choose to use a 404 error pages instead of an honest block - how do you know what's being blocked and what's genuinely down (if you're not a geek).

A more eloquent explanation of several of my problems is provided by Wikipedia (emphasis added by self):

The new Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker has set a deadline of the end of 2007 for all ISPs to implement a “cleanfeed”-style network level content blocking platform.^[3][4] Currently, the only websites ISPs are expected to block access to are sites the Internet Watch Foundation has identified as containing images of child pornography.^[2] However such a platform is capable of blocking access to any website added to the list (at least, to the extent that the implementation is effective), making it a simple matter to change this policy in future. The Home Office has previously indicated that it has considered requiring ISPs to block access to articles on the web deemed to be “glorifying terrorism”, within the meaning of the new Terrorism Act 2006, saying "However, our legislation as drafted provides the flexibility to accommodate a change in Government policy should the need ever arise."^[3] The measures have been criticised for being inadequate as they only block accidental viewing and does not prevent content delivered through encrypted systems, file sharing, email and other systems.^[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom

Any way, what brings me to post about this now is this: I have come I across the first example I have seen of this filter being overzealous – the blocking of a Wikipedia article - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_ISPs_restrict_access_to_Wikipedia_amid_child_pornography_allegations (note that by visiting that news link you are, potentially, opening yourself up to child porn allegations).

So it looks as if we, in the UK, will soon be behind “Hadrian’s Firewall”. Goodbye now, I must go and watch for black helicopters while drinking my “Victory Gin”.