Forget “Jeeves”, it is time to ask the hottest search engine ever, Ms Dewey what you’re looking for.

She may be nothing more than a skin of flash videos streaming one after another on top of a Live.com search engine, but it is a “little” interactive. If you just leave the site running and not search for anything, Ms Dewey will get sad, frustrated, or start playing with her day planner. It is a cute idea, and if they can get a few more quick down-blouse shots, this could very well be the engine to topple Google.

Microsoft has set up a Click 4 The Cause, a search engine based on their live.com site. Microsoft will donate a portion of the proceeds it generates from the search engine to NineMillion.org, a non-profit group that aids refugee children around with world.

Microsoft will donate a minimum of $100,000 to the organization, and hope to bring further awareness to the charity, while at the same time promoting their own search engine in hopes of getting out of Google’s shadow. The specially made search engine will be active until March 31st.

Are you a young child and need to make sure Santa is making his way to your house?

Maybe you’re a physicist trying to do some analysis on how Santa gets around the world in just one night while dragging every imaginable gift along with him (without losing any of that weight)?

Either way, once again, you can track Santa’s journey from the comfort of your own home.

Google allows you to track him and his sleigh through Google Earth Santa Tracker.

Norad is also doing their traditional tracking, but this year they seem to have teamed up with Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

Hope Santa brings everyone what they want. And Merry Christmas to all of you readers.

Now that Windows Vista is nearing it’s public release date, software makers will be rushing to make sure all their products fit into the new visual style of the operating system.

Since Vista has its own built-in sidebar, Google has updated their own Google Desktop sidebar to fit in better with that visual style. Parts of Google’s sidebar are now transparent, making things such as the gadgets fit into the desktop in a much nicer way. Also, if you find yourself with two sidebars in Vista, you might want to switch one off.

Along with the Vista upgrades, this version includes full integration with Office 2007 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and a couple of other things.

In an attempt to one-up their competitor’s Google Earth, Microsoft has added 3D functionality to their Local Live Search. Unlike Google Earth, which is a separate application, Microsoft’s 3D Virtual Earth 3D uses an in-browser ActiveX control. The buildings in Virtual Earth 3D look a bit nicer, being textured and all, but it’s measurably slower than Google Earth. The interface is also not as nice as Google’s, but I guess it’s still a work in progress.

I’ve tested out a few areas, but had pretty lame results. Here is a comparison of my town, Tampa, FL:

Downtown Tampa, FL in Local Live 3D

Downtown Tampa, FL in Google Earth

If you visit the cities listed on the sidebar at Virtual Earth 3D, though, you get much better results. Those include:

• Atlanta
• Baltimore
• Boston
• Dallas
• Denver
• Detroit
• Fort Worth
• Houston
• Las Vegas
• Los Angeles
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• San Francisco
• San Jose
• Seattle

Normally when it comes to search interfaces I opt for the “simpler the better” approach, but Live.com’s Image Search with all it’s flashy Ajaxy goodness makes me happy. Maybe it’s the fact that you still see the image results on the left side, next to the framed source page, after having clicked on an image.

Let’s do a comparison:

A search for hedgehog on Google Image Search.

The same search on Live.com Image Search.

What can I say, I like hedgehogs.

Those of you who have been beta testing Windows Vista have probably already seen it, since it’s the default homepage for IE7, but Microsoft’s Live.com has come out of beta.

As you can see, Microsoft has learned a bit and no longer has a default homepage so filled with junk that you can’t figure out what you want. It’s quite sparse, don’t you think? Even Google has more stuff than that on their front page these days.