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by Teresa Martin

When I was eight, I wanted a pony. So I did what any hopeful child would do: I started eating mountains of Charleston Chew bars.

You see, Charleston Chew had a clever promotion. If you ate something like five zillion candy bars you could collect enough wrappers to win a pony. And since my mean old parents just stared at me when I asked them for a pony, I was sure Charleston Chews were the answer to a young girl's dream.

And then there was my friend Bazooka Joe. You know, the bubble gum. Inch-sized pink rectangular block, with a pre-made dent so you could break it in half and share it with your friend ... but most importantly, it was packaged with a mini-comic and the promise that if you collected two zillion wrappers you could win valuable prizes.

Some things never change.

This week Microsoft announced that it has released a version of its Live Search that can be integrated into Firefox, which is one of my browsers of choice. I almost fear doing this since I've already caught that wrapper collection habit again, this time over at Microsoft Live Search Club (http://club.live.com/) where you can play word games and collect points to win valuable prizes. For, like 250,000 points I can get a KitchenAid Mixer!

The collection of games are online updated versions of parlor games. Flexicon - solve the punny word hint using the clues for up and down words. Chicktionary - make words from a scrabble of letters while the little animated chickens flick their wings (Spelling Bee and Word Slugger and are same game with different skins) Seekado - find the hidden words! All games are "powered" by Microsoft Live Search.

Give me a word game and I'm happy for an hour. Give me a word game in which I can collect points to win valuable prizes at some distant future time, and I'm addicted for endless hours.

It is a promotional tool that always works. Before this addiction, I had never really spent much time with Microsoft's entry into search. Google mostly, sometimes Yahoo or even GoodSearch if I was feeling warm and fuzzy .... But then one midnight hour when sleep was not my friend, I googled "scrabble online" and ended up at Live Search Club. And pretty quickly got to combine word games, fabulous prizes, and search results ... which sounds a little odd but it turns out to be pretty cool to make up the word "lari" out of desperation to fill that last four-letter slot only to learn that not only is lari actually a real word, but it also means a Georgian unit of currency, a search result that pops up in Live Search which is running at the bottom of the screen.

And so I've started to use the service from time to time. And discovered that I'm actually kinda' liking it. While Google feels like a powerful and effective database query - a phenomenally useful tool that remains my mainstay of search - Live Search is sort of more like flipping the page of an encyclopedia. There are subtle differences in design that create a very different user feeling, and the search results are different, although equally relevant. I sometimes feel like I now have two different lenses into the vast land of cyber data.

Microsoft is often bashed about. Sometimes, it deserves it. But often it doesn't. I've never bought the evil empire thing. Way back when, Excel was the upstart and was one of the reasons I started using a Mac - it was a great alternative to 1-2-3.

Microsoft's Teletubbies bought me a few precious hours of sleep by entertaining my never-sleep human baby. (Yes, in the late 1990s Microsoft was in the interactive toy business and our yellow Laa-laa came from Fry's Electronics in Palo Alto. What happened to Laa-laa you ask? Sadly, she was lost when water flooded some packed boxes during a move.)

From the dawn of the GUI, I have misplaced mice right and left and consequently have had the unique opportunity to try lots of different mice. Love the Microsoft wireless mice! Trust me, they are consistently good and ergonomically on target. Just bought one in pink for the lovely Miss Allegra's Mac.

Live Search feels good to me. And so I've just added it to my Mozilla search bar. I don't think that Microsoft and the Mac are incompatible. I don't think that Microsoft and Open Source have to be mutually exclusive. And I don't think that search belongs only to the Google lens. I do think that it is important to try things from different sources and draw on the tools that work for you - and to know that it is OK to mix and match.

So thanks to the oldest of parlor games: making words from letters, and from the long-time promotion: collecting something for valuable if never-achievable prizes, I've landed on another addition to finding stuff in vast online world.

And with enough sleepless nights, I might even end up with that cool KitchenAid mixer or blender ... which, by the way, takes up a lot less room than a pony and is a lot better for bathing suit season than 5 zillion Charleston Chews.