Microsoft has collaborated with the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre to launch a child-friendly version of Internet Explorer 8.

The IE8 Click Clever, Click Safe browser offers a number of features aimed at keeping children safe on the internet, as well as advice on what to do about viruses, hacking and problems with mobile browsers.

The re-jigged browser also offers a number of reporting tools that can flag up inappropriate material, for example, or report incidents of online bullying.

Microsoft said that a 'web slice' feature can be added as a bookmark feature to the service, which also will notify the user of any updates to their favourite pages.

"Internet safety advice needs to be at your fingertips and not hidden away. Parents and children should not have to go searching through numerous web pages to find the help they need," said Jim Gamble, chief executive of CEOP.

"The new browser will embed advice, help and report services directly into the toolbar to provide a constant, reassuring presence for families who will be one click away from the support they need.

Microsoft has backed up the release with the news that 64 per cent of under 18s had been contacted online by someone that they did not know, and that over a third had responded. The firm argued that this makes the use of such security and filtering tools much more important.

The launch of the new version of the browser coincides with Safer Internet Day, an EU initiative designed to promote safer and more responsible use of the internet among the young. Some commentators have wisely pointed out, however, that the time and resources spent on such an exercise would be better directed at their elders.

In an unprecedented move Google final succumbed to advertising on television, a medium it has pointedly ignored for years, to promote its search engine.

It did it in style though, choosing the third quarter ad break during the Superbowl to run its 'Parisian Love' ad, costing the company a cool $5 million (£3.2m) in the process.

The advert showed off a raft of Google's search functions including maps, flight tracking, spelling correction, dictionary definitions, and its newest development, translation, as part of a search-enabled love story, all wrapped up in 53 seconds.

The move suggests Google may be feeling the heat from Mircosoft's Bing search engine. The rival search site has had no such qualms about advertising on TV, after it ran a large campaign last year to promote the launch of the search site. At the time Eric Schmidt criticised the move, telling Fox News: "You don't earn market position with ads, you earn it search for search, answer by answer."

Schmidt was less critical of his own company's decision to screen an ad though, writing on his Twitter page: "Can't wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said 'Hell has indeed frozen over')."

However, to be fair to Schmidt he did explain on a blog posting that the ad was never actually intended for the TV or the Super Bowl but was part of a series of videos designed to show how people used Google. They said that they liked the Parisian Love video so much they decided to share it with a wider audience.

Whether or not Google is under threat from Bing, or indeed any other search engine, is open for debate however. Figures on Statcounter.com suggest not, as they give Google a whopping 90.5 per cent share of the search market, while a combined Bing and Yahoo still only reaches 7.8 per cent.

The war of words between Apple and Adobe heated up late this week, with the latter's chief technology officer forced to defend his firm's popular Flash technology from Steve Jobs' earlier jibes.

According to reports circulating at the beginning of the week, Jobs used the occasion of a big Apple meeting to have a rant at Google and Adobe, saying his firm does not support Flash "because it is so buggy".

"Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash," he's reported by Wired as saying.

In a later blog posting, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch sought to play up the near-ubiquity of Flash on the web, its long history and support for all but one (guess which) of the top smartphone manufacturers' devices. He went on to explain why Apple, and therefore the new iPad, does not support Flash.

"We have shown that Flash technology is starting to work on these devices today by enabling standalone applications for the iPhone to be built on Flash," he wrote.

"In fact, some of these apps are already available in the Apple App Store such as FickleBlox and Chroma Circuit. This same solution will work on the iPad as well. We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen."

He went on to defend the technology's security and reliability credentials.

"Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today," he said.

"We work directly with the major browser teams - including Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft IE, and Google Chrome - and review any emerging issues so we can resolve them together."

Lynch does however admit in his blog that Flash Player on Windows has historically always been faster than the Mac, and adds that Chrome browser users are currently suffering Flash errors.

He goes on to recognise that "there may either be an upswing in incidents or there is a general piling on happening".

Whether Jobs will now come back to hurl more insults at the Flash-maker (or anyone else for that matter) remains to be seen. We kind of hope he does though - at least it makes tech a bit exciting.

A video posted online purports to show a Google tablet running the Chrome web browser and operating system.

The video, which also appears on the blog of Glenn Murphy, User Interface lead at Google for Chrome and ChromeOS, shows a concept tablet device running the operating system. Although only a video creation, the tablet is running a number of applications, appears to have a snap feature similar to Windows 7 that lets you control how and where applications appear on the screen, and offers a virtual keyboard.

To scale, there is a computer generated hand controlling the touch movements, the screen looks huge. This may just be a scaling issue however, and Murphy has already released a psd file of other versions for developers looking to create their own mock ups. Although this has not appeared on an official Google blog, Murphy's role at the firm may suggest that a final version may not be too far behind, nor too different from these concepts.

There are a number of other concept images, all of which make the Google tablet look like a worthy contender for the iPad, particularly its ability to run multiple apps. Plus, with apps on the iPad rumoured to cost more than they do on the iPhone, tablet users may find the Google option easier to swallow.

Possibly smarting from the less than gushing reception that his iPad received last week, Apple supremo Steve Jobs has come out swinging against a couple of firms that have ticked him off recently. Surprisingly, they aren't publishing houses.

According to a write up on Wired, Jobs suggested that Google may need to change its mantra from 'don't be evil' to something far less flattering, during a rant about the iPhone. Wired got the skinny from someone attending a big Apple meeting, reporting that Steve said: "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them. This don't be evil mantra: It's bullshit."

Wow, someone sounds a bit paranoid. Although another Apple'er has popped into the comments to inform us that Jobs actually said that the mantra was 'crap', we think that's just nit picking. The message is the same, whatever the choice of words. 'How dare someone else try and sell a phone'.

Jobs is of course reacting to the release of Google's Nexus One, which has apparently angered him by being fairly cool, and by actually having a decent reception - unlike a cetain iPad.

On the subject of the iPad, one of the criticisms thrown at the device was the fact that it doesn't support Flash, here Jobs once again threw out his toys, along with a couple of insults.

"They (Adobe) have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy," he is reported as saying. "Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash".

We can be sure that no one will be using it on the iPad, or the iPhone, but it is pretty popular elsewhere Steve. Although this is pretty unpleasant stuff, we thank the Apple workers for passing it on.

The debate surrounding body scanning technology in airports that started the moment a terrorist tried to blow himself up on a Detroit-bound flight, shows no signs of reaching a satisfactory conclusion.

Many concerns still exist over the technology and just yesterday we reported that MEPs raised issues about the health and privacy implications.

There are three types of body scanning technology currently available: backscatter x-ray, active microwave, and passive millimeter wave.

However, while the first two varieties use either X-rays or microwaves to irradiate the subject and use backscatter or reflected signals to provide an image for an operator, one firm has claimed its technology does not cause any health concerns.

MMIC Solutions told Frontline that its Passive Millimetre wave technology (pictured above) works by reading the naturally occurring waves emitted by the human body, rather than irradiating the subject. This provides an image in which any objects such as a handgun are visible to an operator.

The company also claims that, contrary to reports that traditional body scanners would not have detected the bomb worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, its technology would have worked.

Regardless of the above though such technological differences will not allay the fears of many who argue that body scanners have the potential to violate the privacy rights of passengers.

Furthermore, many MEPs commented yesterday that scanners should not remove the pressing need for agencies and governments to share information behind the scenes to counter terrorism at the back end as well as on the frontline.

Reports in The Times have suggested that Orange is the first UK operator to begin talks with Apple about hosting the newly-unveiled iPad on its network.

However, it is likely that other operators including O2 and Vodafone will be talking to Cupertino at some stage, given that all three networks now offer the iPhone in the UK.

All three operators, and potentially other providers such as 3, will no doubt be keen to win the PR war and be the first to announce the device on their networks, given the undoubted frenzy there will be for the device when it becomes available.

While AT&T has been confirmed in the US as the first network operator to carry the device, news on the UK carrier for the device remains speculative at best and an Apple spokeswoman was unable to offer any comment on network negotiations.

T-Mobile and Vodafone declined to provide any comment on the matter as well while we were still waiting to hear back from Orange at time of writing. The UK's current market leader O2 said, "The iPad is an exciting device but we have nothing to announce at this time."

However, Apple's spokeswoman confirmed that the device would be available worldwide from March after Apple yesterday said that the Wi-Fi enabled version of the iPad would be available in 60 days and the 3G version in ninety days.

Based on some calendar calculations this would place the launch date of the Wi-Fi iPad around 30 March and the 3G version around 30 April.

Apple refused to release info on pre-order dates or UK pricing for the iPad, but if they match the US prices confirmed yesterday we could see the device retail between £307 and £510.

Today is National Australia Day, a yearly event that sees pubs fill up with Australians standing at empty bars and wondering why there is no one there to serve them.

Coinciding with this year's event is the plan to switch off the internet as a protest against government plans to, er, switch off the internet. On their web page, confusingly set up to spread the word, the organisers of Internet Blackout Day, write, "The Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers to censor the internet for all Australians. This plan will waste millions of dollars and won't make anyone safer."

"We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to 'Refused Classification' content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?"

Anyone interested in joining the protests is asked to blackout their photo on social networking and other sites, while organisations and other groups have been urged to black out their web sites.

But, rather than totally switch off sites webmasters are asked to add a piece of code to the page that will significantly darken it. It will also add a banner for the blackout week, in order to further spread the campaign.

With increasing state enforced censorship of the web and resulting protests happening across the globe, 2010 has the potential to become a watershed year for the internet. The fallout from the hacking of Google and other firms' systems by Chinese ne'erdowells is set to roll on for months and was recently escalated by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks.

Back home, meanwhile, the controversial Clause 17 of the Digitial Economy bill has already drawn fierce criticism from all quarters, not least the ISPs who have branded it unworkable and the privacy protestors who see deep packet inspection as an affront to their civil liberties.

The desperate actions of governments to limit internet freedom of choice are unlikely to last forever, but the battles being fought over the coming year could prove to mark a decisive moment in the evolution of the web.

The Aussie campaign starts today and lasts for a week.

Next Monday sees the Office of Fair Trading launch its annual Scamnesty campaign designed to raise awareness of online and offline fraud among consumers and businesses throughout the month of February.

According to the OFT, nearly half of the UK adult population has been targeted by a scam, and more than three million adults - one in 15 people - fall victim to scams, losing a total of £3.5 billion every year. Now not all of this is online-based, but you can bet that a fairly large percentage of it is.

Global IT consultancy Unisys has also taken the opportunity to get involved. It got busy pulling out some of the key findings of its latest biannual Unisys Security Index to compile a top five scams to avoid list.

According to the Index, over 80 per cent of people in the UK are nervous about the misuse of their bank card details and 83 per cent worry about unauthorised access to their personal information - worrying stats for those e-retailers keen to maximise sales and banks looking to cut costs by encouraging use of online banking.

Thus, there are well-versed warnings about using ATM Skimmers and insecure e-commerce sites, placing too much personal information on social networking sites and using unsecured WiFi routers.

All very straightforward advice which if everyone took on board the internet would be a safer place and there would probably be no need for awareness raising campaigns with terrible names like Scamnesty. But then again, that's not very likely, is it?

Yet more evidence has emerged to prove that the recession may have actually had a positive effect on firms - forcing them to integrate and improve management performance processes and recognise the benefits of Business Intelligence (BI) tools.

The second annual Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Index used interviews with 800 business decision makers in Europe and North America to assess the quality of their processes and the accuracy of their information.

By some wizardry, the bods at Oracle then formulated each organisation's index rating, and found that as a whole, they have gotten a 38 per cent higher score.

Now what this actually means, says Oracle, is that over the past year these firms have noted improvements in their strategic planning and reporting processes, focused more on customer loyalty to drive growth, and acknowledged the importance of BI as a key reporting tool.

According to Oracle vice president, Frank Buytendijk, the findings show that businesses are now a lot more confident that they can handle "the new reality of today's economy".

"The improved Index doesn't as much signal any material advances, but this rediscovered confidence creates the preconditions for real improvement to take place," he added.

"Comparing it to a rise in consumer confidence preceding a spending increase, this increase in performance confidence will precede new projects and improved ways of working."

So you see, recessions aren't all that bad after all.