Internet

Some people are disappointed that Google's Chrome plans don't include a head-to-head fight for the desktop with Windows. They shouldn't be. Google has a far more interesting way to battle Microsoft in mind.

Facebook and Zynga are facing a class-action lawsuit over their 'scam' advertising strategy. It's alleged that they 'cheat' users of games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers re-arrange the furniture to watch the show.

No doubt they're breathing a big sigh of relief at Microsoft right now, after the world has had a first look at the Google Chrome operating system. Chrome represents absolutely no threat to Windows for the foreseeable future, just at a time when Microsoft is vulnerable.

I've just put the beta of Microsoft Office 2010 through its paces for a Computerworld review, and while there's plenty to like, there's plenty that should be made better as well. Here are five ways it can be improved.

No more rumors. This time, it's real. Chrome, Google's Linux-based desktop operating system is on its way.

In a previous Security Levity post, I was asked a question that often comes up. A commenter wondered how is it that spammers can send spam from "my" email address? And is that something we should be worried about?

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Microsoft has good reason to be pleased with recent figures that show Bing has a nearly 10% share of the search market, nearly 31% higher than a year previous. But it still lags far behind Google, which has 65.4% of the market. If the goal is to catch Google, it will never happen.

The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced its Word Of The Year for 2009: unfriend. (Well, at least they didn't choose teabagger.) But in IT Blogwatch, bloggers wonder if that's the best the wordmeisters could do.

A Google executive has admitted what most already people know: Google Docs simply isn't yet good enough for prime time. "We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet," Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division recently admitted. He said, though, that he expects that to change in the next year.

Google's latest toy for us to play with is a new Web protocol. Designed to make browsing faster and more efficient, SPDY sets out to solve many of the limitations of good ol' HTTP. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers dig into the detail, shouting "¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!" Not to mention Tweetlanta...
(GOOG)

Local TV news has long lived by the maxim, "If it bleeds, it leads." It appears that Microsoft has decided that when it comes to local news on Bing, that's also the path to success, at least when it comes to Massachusetts. Check out Bing's local Massachusetts news, and you'll find plenty of tabloid news -- at least I did when I tried it out.

This week on Security Levity... spam laws around the world. Many of us know about the U.S. federal law regulating spam, known as the CAN-SPAM Act, or at least we think we do. But what about the laws internationally? Here are a few notable international spam laws...

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The Mozilla foundation is celebrating five years of Firefox this week. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers break out the cake and light the candles. Not to mention Sesame Street sci-fi...

Windows 7 gets the headlines, Snow Leopard gets the praise, but the Linux desktop actually seems to be, ever so slightly, growing.

comScore reports that when it comes to time people spend online, Microsoft leads Google by a wide margin -- more than 3.9 billion hours spent online for Microsoft versus more than 2.5 billion hours spent online for Google. But those numbers may be very misleading, and Google may in fact be crushing Microsoft.