Google Toolbar 5

The newest version of Google's toolbar is out.

You can download it here.

PC Magazine has a review of it here.

Personally, I have never cared for the toolbars, they tend to clutter up my browser. As I use Firefox, they have a nice little bookmarks toolbar, that I have set to show text only. This gives me my most often used bookmarks, such as Google, Ask, Westlaw, Lexis, Weather and Yahoo right of the bat.

USAspending.gov

There's a new way to track spending by the Federal Government, mandated by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, 31 USC s6101.

www.USAspending.gov is a "relaunch of www.FederalSpending.gov, that provides citizens with easy access to government contract, grant and other award data."

Online searching and privacy

Search engines will keep a record of what searches a user requests. Search engine companies will say that this helps them refine their search methods. And while that is true, many people are uncomfortable with leaving a trail of their searches. Ask.com now has a feature called AskEraser that deletes a user's search activities from the ask.com servers.

AskErase is available in the upper right hand corner of the Ask.com homepage.


Update: D'oh, made the ask.com a hyperlink. Who knew you could do such things on the intertubes.