The OS Quest » » Likes & Gripes

Microsoft Live Search Not So Good When Looking for Microsoft Content

ray — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:29:28 +0000

All the talk may be that Microsoft needs to buy Yahoo in order to bulk up enough compete with Google. Let’s hope they also work on basic search. When I updated my Windows Home Server I wanted to find the bulletin so I’d know what it did. I had the bulletin number from the log so I fired up IE and typed the number in the top right search box. I got four results, none a Microsoft site.

The first two results must have referenced the bulletin in the past. The pages contained multiple articles, but not about the update. The last two results were a little better. They linked to old blog pages but those pages still contained a "recent links" type link in the sidebar that brought me to a post about the patch. The site was in German, which I don’t read, but it wasn’t a Microsoft branded site. I later even tried telling Live to search just Microsoft.com and it told me no results were found.

A screenshot of the Microsoft Live Search results are below.

So I switched to Google and repeated the same search. The fifth result is the Microsoft support page. There is one thing that’s a mixed commentary on Google - my post about the update, made 15 minutes ago is now the second result. Google is certainly quick when processing blog updates, but it didn’t weigh the Microsoft Knowledge Base article about the update very high and my new post tops it. Eight results were returned. Not all are in the screenshot below, the Microsoft support article is the last item in the screenshot.

Maybe I should add Yahoo to that convenient search box. Yahoo tops both Google and Live by returning the MSKB articles at the top of the results.

OK, this hardly makes a conclusive case to damn MS Live Search, but if they buy Yahoo I hope they keep the Yahoo search algorithm.

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OS X Intelligent File Saves

ray — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:38:17 +0000

It’s a small thing, but something I really appreciate. When saving or renaming a file in OS X just the name portion, not the extension, is selected. To change the name all I have to do is start typing.

The file save dialog:

When renaming a file:

Windows Vista selects everything, including the extension, Although the extension is automatically added back when the file is saved, it’s not quit as intuitive and it is less efficient if all I want to to is append a version number to the file.

Why I really like the OS X intelligence - hitting the right arrow with the file name highlighted allows me to easily append a version number to the file name.

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Windows Vista Warning

ray — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:05:01 +0000

I’ve been spending more time using Vista and Internet Explorer. I’m still using default settings, at least the security related ones. While browsing to Arstechnica.com the screen went gray and the following popup appeared:

Now I think UAC is a good thing so I don’t want to just slam it. I’m guessing this was generated because there was a flash-based ad on the site. The ad didn’t display and using Firefox I saw it was a flash ad.

My problem here is the message is useless. I didn’t start the action, all I did was browse to the website. The message is pretty meaningless - IE wants to install an add-on. So, since I trust Ars Technica do I install it? Could their site have been hacked? Could they be serving an ad with a trojan? Is this a drive-by install? (I clicked cancel)

The results was that after browsing the site awhile I received the message again but I also received the yellow bar that told me the Flash plug-in was needed. I installed the plug-in (by clicking the yellow bar) and the ad displayed and I haven’t received the UAC prompt again.

Yes, I could turn UAC off but that lowers security and eliminating the message isn’t a solution. I think it’s a good thing to let me know whenever something wants to install. But the message needs to be more descriptive. The yellow bar add-in warning tells me it’s Flash from Adobe, why can’t this?

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