Microsoft has announced the public beta release of Windows Search 4.0 for both Windows Vista and XP. If you have been using Vista or had in the past you may know that the application search in your start menu is powered by Windows Search. There are a number of improvements in this version over is predecessors which include

• Support for the Encrypting File System (EFS)
• Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost)
• Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
• Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations
• Improved indexing performance
• Faster previewer updates for Windows XP
• Per-user Group Policy settings
• Windows software updates for Watson errors

There are also few changes to support group policy objects. Overall the search from the start menu has seen some improvements.

Download Windows Search 4.0

Via [LiveSide]

Quite sometime back we had spoken about how to add your favorite folder to your file open / save dialogs and also followed it up with a trick on how to access multiple favorite folders with a simple click in the file / open save dialogs.

Those tricks are still very much useful but if you intend to save yourself some time and efforts there is a very cool software utility that will allow you to open your favorite folders if you are using file open / save dialogs, browse dialogs or just using Windows explorer to browse folders.

Google AdSense as always keeps on adding new policies to their already heavy user policies. This time around there are some interesting changes to their policies with regards to ad placements.

The first interesting change is no ad units under section headings that imply ads are not ads. According to the policy such formats may mislead a user that the ads are part of the post. This change affects the hugely popular format used by most blogs wherein the ads are directly placed beneath the title before the content starts. Check out the screenshot below to look at the format of the ads.

A startling revelation by CNET has found out a clause in Google’s TOS which debars users who are under 18 years of age (which is the legal age to form a binding contract in United States) cannot make use of any Google Services like Gmail, YouTube and more.

The clause in itself does not state the age but the confusion is created over what a legal age for a person should be.

You may not use … Google’s products, software, services and web sites … and may not accept the Terms if … you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google.

The reporter then goes on to point out similar TOS in Facebook and MySpace where the age is clearly mentioned. Check out the CNET article Google: No kids allowed

After a long time I have some relief that my Internet service provider Comcast and finally relented and patched up with BitTorrent. This takes of a headache where Comcast was throttling bandwidth for connections made through the torrent clients which made it quite difficult to see torrents.

On the other hand there is always a fear of getting caught while downloading movies and music using BitTorrents and you may also face class action suits against you. If you are really concerned about who is watching your downloads then you should definitely make it a point to read this superb article written by Adam Pash of Lifehacker.

When you download a file using BitTorrent, you’re connecting to several peers who are distributing chunks of the file you’re downloading. In order to send data back and forth, you and your peers exchange IP addresses. (IP addresses are like mailing addresses for sending data over the vastness of the internet). When you’re downloading copyrighted material, sometimes disingenuous organizations will join in the download and log your information, like your home IP address. Once they have your address, they can find out who your ISP is and contact them to complain about copyright-infringing activity.

If that sends some signals down your brain you should definitely safeguard your privacy while downloading content from BitTorrrent networks.

Here comes the next batch of Web2.0 releases that add value towards your computing and mobile experiences.

Movino

Movino is a service that allows you to broadcast live videos directly from your cellphone using 3G or Wifi. You can also use Movino to use your phone as a bluetooth webcam on Mac OS X.

Movino - Broadcast live videos from your cellphone

Lookybook

If you have a kid and want them to look at picture books without any fear of them spoiling it looky book is a new service which provides users with picture books just like they would do it normally but with a twist, the books can be viewed on the computer itself cover to cover just like the original book is.

Nice site to bookmark for your kids.

Lookybook - Picture books you can discover, share and talk about

Many a times you may see a application using high amounts of memory or hogging most of the processing power of your CPU. At such times other applications may work extremely slow or completely stop working.

This is a extremely problematic situation since you are tied down till the application releases the memory or CPU usage for other tasks to perform. The best solution has always been hitting Ctrl + Alt + Del and killing the memory hogging application.

I was a follower of the Ctrl + Alt + Del method for quite long until I started using Process Explorer a great tool for knowing what’s going on your system and a must have task manager replacement. With process explorer you get to know in depth knowledge about each and every process.