The Mozilla Foundation has released an early beta of the upcoming version 4 of Firefox, its flagship cross-platform browser for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
The long-awaited release introduces a number of improvements and additions over previous versions of Firefox. Firefox 3 came out two years ago, while version 3.5 of the Web browser debuted in 2009.
Adobe has launched a final version of Flash 10.1 for Android, so iPhone users can now officially feel left out, though they’ll be in good company for a while yet.
Android users running version 2.2 will be able to download Flash 10.1 from the Android Marketplace, but everyone else will have to wait as Adobe is expecting partners to deliver versions for other smartphone platforms.
Read more at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/22/flash_mobile/
Google released its faster web indexing system, dubbed Caffeine, on June 8. It promises fresher results and more content.
Caffeine analyzes the Web in bits and pieces, processing hundreds of thousands of Web pages in parallel and updating regularly around the world so new pages, or new information on existing pages are added straightaway.
According to Google software engineer Carrie Grimes’ blog post:
Social network giant Facebook has plugged another security leak, this one involving the indexing by search engines of email addresses not listed on Facebook.
Thousands of email addresses submitted using Facebook’s “Find a friend” feature that were not tied to a Facebook account got indexed by Google. The big problem here is it allows spammers to easily scape the data for these email addresses.
Read the rest of this entry »
It was recently reported that Google was going to phase out internal use of Microsoft Windows due to security concerns. This change comes after the Chinese attacks on the company that exploited a flaw in Internet Explorer 6.
Now Google employees will be given the choice between using Mac OS X and Linux systems, and allowing Windows systems with special permission. This seems pretty extreme – for a response to a hack from an outdated browser.
The more likely story revolves around the tension between Google and Microsoft. Is this just another round of combat by two giants battling it out in the /browser war/OS sphere/productivity software suite in the cloud?
Email can be a very effective communication tool for many businesses when it is handled properly. The speed, ease and interactive nature of email coupled with clear messages can be an effective way to communicate with customers, vendors and employees.
Unfortunately, not all email senders communicate clearly and in a business manner. Consider the following two messages: Read the rest of this entry »
Google has announced the availability of the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The opt-out provides users with a choice of whether information about website visits is collected by Google Analytics by stopping data from being sent from your computer when you browse websites using the Google Analytics Javascript (ga.js) to track usage.
Read the rest of this entry »
Chrome 5 will be the first stable release for Mac OS X and Linux, an important step in attracting mainstream users. Even in beta, Chrome for Mac and Linux has already achieved significant success, and some sites record up to 40% of accesses with the Chrome browser. Now that you have a version for everyone it is reasonable to think that these shares will grow again.
Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter says no to 3rd party advertisements via the Twitter API on their service. Word from the Bird is that they want to maintain the user experience and cannot trust 3rd party advertisers to ensure this. Is it about user experience, or keeping control of the cash register?
Twitter recently launched their Promoted Tweets platform, which allows businesses to insert their ads into the Twitter stream. Right now the ads only appear in searches but will eventually move to other streams as well.
Twitter has updated their Terms of Service to explain the new rules but I think this line sums it up: …”In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale, we require you to compensate us…”
Read more about this story by Brennon Slattery at PC World Twitter Gets Serious About Getting Paid.
Google has rolled out the beta version of its SSL encrypted search on Friday, May 21st, with plans to eventually roll it out to all of its services.
Now you can use the more secure search option at “https://www.google.com”. The search terms and results will now be protected. This makes Google the first major search engine to offer this service. Other search companies, such as Yahoo! and Bing, do not provide this option yet.
The extra security is only provided between the user and Google – clicking on a search result leaves Google’s SSL protection.
Read more at CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/24/cnet.google.encrypted/
