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Microsoft has voluntarily leaked more details about its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) web browser via a Russian Internet portal. The company revealed several new features related to the browser's overall look, which is heavily inspired by a ... rival. To date, Microsoft has yet to reveal a user interface for Internet Explorer 9, even though several developer previews of the browser have emerged since the spring. This means the Russian leak gives us our first glimpse of IE9's navigational model. IE9 Navigation Similar to Google Chrome First impressions suggest Microsoft's next browser -- ... (view more)

Internet classified ads site Craigslist is facing double trouble over claims that it aids illegal prostitution. The company has come under fire from former trafficking victims just days after losing a bid to be declared exempt from prosecution over ... the issue. The site has been under attack by state attorney generals for two years, most arguing for tighter restrictions over its explicit advertising. Though most advertisements for such services use coded phrases, officials believe the site violates bans on ads that directly solicit customers for this purpose. Craigslist management voluntarily ... (view more)

Microsoft has decided to remove its "Bing cashback" feature after a lack of interest among retailers. The scheme allowed users to search for products and then get a rebate for buying from a selected seller. The scheme originally launched as part of ... Microsoft's Live search engine, before being rebranded when Live merged with MSN to produce the new Bing site. The launch of Bing arguably made the cashback tool more useful for both Microsoft and customers, as Bing is based around providing results in a variety of categories depending on the subject of a search. For example, people ... (view more)

A new site aims to demonstrate Facebook's lax security and privacy by exposing some of the more embarrassing messages which users have posted. However, Facebook users appear to have undermined the site by posting intentionally bogus messages. The ... new site is known as Openbook and is intended to highlight changes made last month which made the search facility on Facebook much more public, even to non-users. It's even possible for status updates and other user info to appear on public search engines. This was particularly problematic as there have been several changes to Facebook's privacy ... (view more)

Facebook users are generally trusting when it comes to their privacy, but some issues push them right over the edge. Take a recent glitch that allowed outsiders to view private user information, including friend names and the content of their chat ... conversations. The glitch emerged late last week, and has once again brought scrutiny and anger down upon the heads of Facebook brass. Users of the social networking site discovered that they were able to find out more about their friends than had been the case in the past, and some could even uncover chat conversations between other people. (Source ... (view more)

Google has upped the ante in its dispute against China by uncensoring its previously censored search results. Officially, Google has not breached Chinese rules which insist on search results being filtered to remove content officials class as ... objectionable; this includes political information and viewpoints the government wants to suppress. Instead, Google has set its Chinese home page (google.cn) to route directly to Google's search tool via the Hong Kong version of the site (google.com.hk). It looks inevitable that China will simply block access to that site altogether. The government has ... (view more)

Google has been considering pulling out of China for a few months now, saying it is no longer prepared to meet official demands to filter results its in line with Chinese government rules. The dispute heated up around the time Google was the victim ... of a substantial hacking attack , and while no link to the Chinese government has been proven, it's believed in some circles that the attack was an attempt to access the Gmail accounts of political opponents of the ruling Communist party. Officials Forewarn of Google Closure Chinese officials are now said to have contacted several major websites ... (view more)

Facebook has overtaken Google as the most visited website among United States users. It's the first time Google has lost the top spot since September 2007. The revelation comes from Hitwise, a web analysis firm that gathers data directly from ... Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in order to help advertisers get a better idea of how to reach particular markets. Because the data comes from ISPs, it's considered more accurate than some methods which only gather data from individual sites or users. According to the firm, last week Facebook accounted for 7.07% of all US website visits, compared with ... (view more)

At one time, MySpace was the dominant social networking site on the web, a pioneering force that allowed users to create and regularly customize their own web pages. With the advent of Facebook and micro-blogging site Twitter, however, MySpace's ... popularity continues to dwindle, and now CEO Owen Van Natta's recent decision to leave has left many wondering what lies ahead for the troubled firm. According to a report from MySpace parent company News Corp., Van Natta has announced that he will be resigning his seat as CEO of the social networking site after just ten months in the position. For ... (view more)

The CEO of Facebook has sparked a new debate by claiming the site's users no longer see privacy as a priority. Mark Zuckerberg says recent changes that make more user data public by default represent the site reflecting a "social norm." Speaking at ... an awards ceremony in San Francisco organized by the TechCrunch blog, Zuckerberg said, "In the last five or six years, blogging has taken off in a huge way. People have really gotten comfortable sharing more information and different kinds but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that's evolved over time ... (view more)