Microsoft eyes NZ sites and it could get ugly

Microsoft is looking for New Zealand's ugliest website and is calling on the local online community to help.
In a clever bit of reverse psychology, the software giant is asking for personal computer users to "nominate the website that make your eyes sore" in order to demonstrate how beautiful the internet can be when viewed through its new high-speed web browser Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).
"Don't surf past like you never even saw them," Microsoft says at www.thewuglies.co.nz, where you can enter the competition and download IE9. "We're after NZ sites only and will be judging just the homepage."
The person who finds New Zealand's ugliest website will win an HP Notebook computer, while the owner of the website will be offered a much-needed design makeover by Microsoft. Wuggly nominations close on October 22.
Internet Explorer 8, which came bundled with Windows 7, offered increased protection against internet nasties such as malware and phishing but, like its competitors, used less than 10 per cent of a personal computer's processing power.
Internet Explorer 9, now in beta or prototype form, is the first browser to use hardware acceleration which makes it up to 11 times faster than its predecessors and competition.
It performs well on personal computers running Microsoft's Windows 7 or Windows Vista operating systems; it won't work on Windows XP, but is designed to take advantage of higher-specification machines. If your computer, whether desktop or laptop, is fitted with a graphics card in its PCI or PCI-E slot IE9 will use the card, designed for graphic design and gaming, to display websites faster and clearer than you are used to.
IE9 has been designed to seamlessly integrate with Windows and run websites as if they were programs installed on your machine, rather than data on some distant computer server on the other side of the world which takes awhile to load.
To the everyday user, IE9 looks cleaner and less cluttered than its predecessors and competition.
IE9 does away with separate address bars and search-engine boxes to create what Microsoft calls One Box. Typing in the One Box presents a drop-down menu with two lists - the first offers suggested website addresses and the second search-engine results. The default setting is Microsoft's Bing search engine, although it can be changed to any search engine.
Download IE9 Beta at www.beautyoftheweb.com
Bill Brown is Nerd Guru of Need A Nerd, which provides onsite computer and technology support to businesses and homes. Call 0800 63 33 26.