TechBlog

Google Official Blog: In May we announced that we had mistakenly collected unencrypted WiFi payload data (information sent over networks) using our Street View cars. We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we’re acutely aware that we failed badly here. So we’ve spent the past several months looking at how to strengthen our internal privacy and security practices, as well as talking to external regulators globally about possible improvements to our policies. Here’s a summary of the changes we’re now making. ...

218 million “class members” probably won’t settle for Farmville dollar A suit has been filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of a Minnesota woman charging game maker Zynga with leaking the personal information of 218 million Facebook members in violation of federal law. The suit seeks class action status. The action follows by three days an investigative story by The Wall Street Journal that found a large number of Facebook’s apps – including Zynga games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars – leaked the user IDs of Facebook players and their friends to outside companies. ...

Windows is an attractive platform for the malware writers, in part, because of the sheer number of users. As Microsoft creep towards making their offerings more secure, applications are increasingly becoming the focus for vulnerability exploitation. Like Windows, Adobe products are a default software choice for most users. The bad guys know this and realize that its profitable to scrutinize their applications for exploitable vulnerabilities and create malware to take advantage of the fact. ...

Clever: Inspector Richard Haycock told local newspapers that the possible use of the car lock jammers would help explain a recent spate of thefts from vehicles that have occurred without leaving any signs of forced entry. “We do get quite a lot of car crime in the borough where there’s no sign of a break-in and items have been taken from an owner’s car,” Inspector Haycock said. “It’s difficult to get in to a modern car without causing damage and we get a reasonable amount of people who do not report any. ...

In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, Greg Shultz shows you how to use some of the new features in Windows 7’s Event Viewer to investigate boot time and track down issues that can cause a slowdown in the boot process. This download is available as an entry in the TechRepublic Microsoft Windows Blog. Credit to ZDNet.

Mozilla Labs: The “Chromeless” project experiments with the idea of removing the current browser user interface and replacing it with a flexible platform which allows for the creation of new browser UI using standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Introduction Have you ever had an idea to improve the user interface of your browser? Have you ever actually gone and tried to make that idea a reality? If you have, you would have probably used technologies like XUL and XPCOM. Much of the user interface (browser chrome) of Firefox is implemented in XUL, which uses a lot of Web-based technologies such as the DOM and JavaScript. Firefox is put together in a way that seasoned developers are able implement features with amazing efficiency, but at the same time, the browser interface in XUL represents a barrier for potential contributors. What if the parts of the browser that are most interesting to contributors were implemented in standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript? What kinds of wild-eyed experimentation would we see if a new conception of browser UI could be prototyped in about the same time it takes to write a web page? ...

I was reading an article on PCWorld’s website about the upcoming Google Chrome OS: So far so good. Except that I inadvertently clicked on one of their sponsored links: which ironically states “Here is all about spyware removal and even more.” After a few redirects, my browser is hijacked by one of those FakeAV scanners: Here is the HTTP traffic capture screenshot and log: ...

Facebook continues its quest to revamp its popular Photos feature with the launch of the number one most requested feature of them all: drag-and-drop organizing. Demonstrated in the video above, drag-and-drop organizing is exactly as it sounds; users can now drag and drop albums and photos into any order they desire. Today’s launch follows last month’s upgrade of Facebook Photos, which brought high resolution photo uploads and an in-line photo viewer to the News Feed. ...

My favorite music player in old days ‘Winamp’ has now released its official app (currently in Beta) for Android devices. The app is available as a free download to everyone. Winamp media player is a nice app for Android. It offers a complete media management solution by seamlessly syncing with the Winamp desktop library. In addition to high quality playback and persistent player controls, Winamp for Android offers wireless desktop sync with your Winamp desktop application. ...

Google’s ultra high speed fiber network — which the company says can offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — is about to get its first trial outside of the Googleplex. The trial is fairly small and not too far from home; the company will be deploying its network at Stanford University to “a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus. “ Google also points out that this isn’t part of its call for small-to-mid-sized communities to submit proposals to get “Google Fiber” in their towns. That competition sparked an amusing social media battle earlier this year between dozens (if not hundreds) of towns ranging from Topeka, Kansas, to Huntsville, Alabama. Google says that they, “still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year.” ...