The latest preview build of Internet Explorer 9 is now available for download. The third Platform Preview of IE9, which was unveiled at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday, offers some more flavors from the HTML5 platter, including support for the <AUDIO>, <VIDEO> and <CANVAS> tags. The preview build is designed to flaunt IE9's ability to tap into the underlying hardware, something that can provide a major performance boost to in-browser apps and HTML5 video.

Being a developer preview, it is aimed at web developers and designers and not suited for ordinary use. It only supports Windows 7 or Windows Vista SP2, with special updates required on both the operating systems to facilitate its installation.

“The Internet Explorer Platform Preview allows developers to test the new Internet Explorer 9 web development and design capabilities including our new JavaScript engine – codename Chakra – as well as our support for standards like HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1 and DOM,” Microsoft's James Pratt wrote on the Exploring IE blog. You can better sample these new features on IETestDrive.com, which houses a wide variety of demos.

Back in March, the internet's favorite repository of anonymous leaks, Wikileaks, published a classified Army document that labeled the site a security threat. According to the U.S. military, the man responsible for passing along classified information to Wikileaks, which included the above mentioned document and a  helicopter video kept classified for its ignominiously incriminating nature, is now in its custody in Kuwait. He is yet to be indicted as the military is still investigating the matter.

Specialist Bradley Manning, a 22-year old resident of Potomac, Maryland , was arrested two weeks ago from Forward Operating Base Hammer, about 40 miles east of Baghdad. According to a Wired report, he had his cover blown by an erstwhile computer hacker named Adrian Lamo. Apparently, Manning blithely identified himself as the source of some key leaks on Wikileaks during their online conversations.

The braggart took credit for four leaks, which included a video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter attacking a group of innocent Iraqi civilians after mistaking a cameraman's camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The helicopter attack, which included two Reuters employees among those killed, occurred in 2007.

Manning's task was rendered easier by inadequate security measures. “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga,’ erase the music then write a compressed split file,” Manning told Lamo. “Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis … a perfect storm.”