Microsoft Debuts Data Visualization Tool

Microsoft has released a controller for its Silverlight multimedia software that can present dynamic visual summaries of large data sets in Web browsers.

Developed by the company's Live Labs research group, PivotViewer can visualize large collections of data in such a way to make them easier to order and analyze.

The software can offer a high-level summarization of the data and allow viewers to swoop down to inspect individual data elements in finer detail. The data visualization can also be easily reorganized depending on conditions set by the user, hence the word "pivot" in the name.

"It's more about using the content as the [user interface] rather than using controls or menus," said PivotViewer engineer Brett Brewer in a video posted by Microsoft.

Microsoft debuted the technology at its Professional Developers Conference last November and demonstrated it during the TechEd conference earlier this month, during the keynote of Bob Muglia, who is president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business.

The demos usually show PivotViewer operating in a browser, with the left-hand side of the screen devoted to a set of check boxes that can be used to filter the data set, and the rest of the page devoted to organizing small icons, each of which represents a particular piece of data.

The data visualization technology could be used for business intelligence, Web site navigation, and as a conduit for content management companies to easily present their libraries to users, Microsoft asserts.

The technology has at least one early adopter. The U.K. wedding planning site Hitched uses PivotViewer as part of its wedding venues visual search.

PivotViewer includes application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow designers to customize the control of the viewer. Data collections must be described in XML and include icons for each element, according to the software's technical documentation. The data then can be placed on a Web server, where it can be accessed by any browser running Silverlight and the viewer.

Joab Jackson covers enterpise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com
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By PcWorld 

With Fix Now Out, Microsoft Sees Jump in XP Attacks

Microsoft urged Windows users to update their software Tuesday, saying it's now seen more than 25,000 attacks leveraging one of the critical bugs fixed in July's monthly security patches.

Microsoft researchers tracked a "fairly large," spike in Web based attacks that exploit the problem over the past weekend, the company said in a blog postingTuesday. "As of midnight on July 12 (GMT), over 25,000 distinct computers in over 100 countries/regions have reported this attack attempt at least one time."

On the busiest single day, Microsoft researchers tracked more than 2,500 attacks, a small number considering Windows' massive user-base. Still, Microsoft and security experts are worried about this flaw because it's been publicly known for more than a month, and has shown up in real-world attacks.

Users in Russia are now the most-targeted, Microsoft said. They have accounted for 2 percent of all attacks, which translates to about 10 times the total number of attacks per computer as the worldwide average. Portugal is the number-two most-targeted region.

Successful attacks secretly install malicious software on the victim's machine, often a program called Obitel. Once Obitel is on a PC, it enables other malware to be loaded, such as malware that can log keystrokes, send spam, or perform other nefarious task.

Two weeks ago, the total number of attacks logged by Microsoft was 10,000.

Security experts say the flaw is being exploited in drive-by Web attacks that are triggered by malicious code placed on hacked or malicious Web sites, although it could also be triggered in other applications -- e-mail readers, for example -- that can interact with Web pages.

To protect themselves from these attacks, Windows users need to install the MS10-042 update, released Tuesday. It fixes a bug in the Windows Help and Support Center, which ships with Windows XP. Although this flaw also affects Windows Server 2003, Microsoft has only seen Windows XP attacks used by criminals.

More-recent versions of Windows such as Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7 are not affected.

Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com

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By PcWorld 

Firefox Home App: A Good Idea that Could be Better

Firefox's Home App for iPhone has opened my eyes to a world where desktop and mobile web browsing become one, but we're not quite there yet.

Artwork: Chip TaylorThe neat thing about Firefox Home is that it syncs browser tabs, not just bookmarks, from a PC to an iPhone. Mozilla released the iPhone app on Friday. To use it, you'll also have to install the Firefox Sync add-on to your PC and create an account, and you have to make sure to click "Sync Now" under Firefox's tools tab before you hit the road.

Being able to pick up on the iPhone where I left off on the PC is one of those ideas that suddenly seems long overdue. I'm the kind of Internet user who amasses a semi-organized maze of windows and tabs as my browsing session goes on, and Firefox Home displays links in a simple list.

If you prefer a different browser, another app called Xmarks also syncs from PC to iPhone, and it works in Firefox, Chrome, and IE. It costs $1, and more elegantly groups your open tabs by window.

But neither Firefox Home nor Xmarks take the full step of being a web browser, or integrating with an existing one. When you open a link in either app, you go to a built-in Webkit browser for that app, and from there you're basically stuck. Sure, you can open any link in Safari, but it's not the same as taking all your open tabs on a PC and opening a fully-tabbed browsing session on the phone.

For Mozilla, the solution might be to actually release Firefox -- or Fennec, as it's known in mobile form -- for the iPhone, with the ability to sync directly to the browser. There's an alpha version of Fennec kicking around on Android, but no word on iPhone, or whether Apple would even allow it.

Both Xmarks and Firefox Home could really use a bookmarklet -- a small application stored as a bookmark -- to let mobile users tap their open tabs from any browser. The app would be so much better if I could send my entire browsing session to mobile Safari, or better yet, the tabbed glory of Atomic Web. I'm not the first person to suggest this; there's a growing thread of people asking for the feature on GetSatisfaction.com, an Xmarks rep responded by saying maybe they'll add a bookmarlet feature soon.

For now, browser tab sync is a good idea that falls short of greatness, but with two players in the iPhone app store, I only see improvement ahead.

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By PcWorld 

Mozilla Shows Next-Gen 'Tab Candy' Firefox Interface

Future versions of Firefox are set to adopt a new tab design that will transform the browser's interface, a senior Mozilla developer has announced.

Called "Tab Candy," the new idea is to place tabs inside the browser window, grouping them according to particular associations. The effect is rather like viewing thumbnails, which allows users to keep track of much larger thematic groups using a convenient visual cue.

Artwork: Chip TaylorThe best way to understand the concept is to view it. Mozilla design guru Aza Raskin (as it happens the son of the late Apple design guru, Jef Raskin) has released a video that steps through the new interface.

Other advantages are subtle but interesting, such as being able to load large numbers of tabs at the top of a browser window simply by clicking on that Candy thumbnail.

In the current Firefox browser -- or any browser for that matter -- the user would need to open these from bookmarks, one by one. It's like having a map of what is important, which makes losing track of important sites harder.

"Often, it's easier to open a new tab than to try to find the open tab you already have. Worse, how many of us keep tabs open as reminders of something we want to do or read later? We're all suffering from infoguilt," comments Raskin by way of explaining the need for a new form of visual cue.

"One more thing. Tab Candy is made entirely with HTML, Javascript, and CSS. There is no native codejust the open Web," adds Raskin.

Raskin's team has made available an Alpha download of Tab Candy for anyone who is willing to accept the limitations of running such early software. Be warned, however -- at this stage the release is aimed at developers. Timescales for incorporation of Tab Candy are still vague.
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By PcWorld

Does Firefox Have Cooties?

Lately, it seems, there's been a small movement amongst key projects in the open source community to move away from stalwart open source browser Firefox to up-and-coming newbie browser Chromium.
Earlier this month, news came out that in Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 Chromium would be the default browser (though Firefox will still be the default for the other *buntu 10.10 flavors). No official reason was given since several people found this news in some of the 10.10 blueprints.
Speed seems to be the reason why Flock CEO Shawn Hardin blogged yesterday that the new Flock 3 browser would be "the first major browser other than Google Chrome to be built on the Chromium platform." Previous editions of Flock were based on--you guessed it--Firefox.
What's the deal? Is Firefox just not good enough any more? Not hardly. Firefox is still hanging around 31 percent of market share (from Wikimedia), compared to Chrome's almost seven percent.
Likely the reason is that Flock (like Ubuntu) is looking for a platform that's already set to roll on mobile platforms.
Mozilla has been working on a mobile edition of Firefox for some time now, a development I look forward to seeing. But Chromium (and its commercial progeny Google Chrome) already has a solid mobile offering that delivers some real speed. That, coupled with the fact that Chromium has an expanding extensions gallery, makes for an attractive browser.
I know there's some people who have been upset that Firefox has grown into just as much of a behemoth browser it was supposed to replacing with Internet Explorer. And I have noted slower performance times as the new versions roll out, too. But Firefox still has great add-ons, it's more secure, and generally can get to any page I need. Chromium, and Chrome, were much faster the last time I checked, but still a little frayed around the edges.
Clearly, Firefox does not have cooties. This is just a by-product of having a diverse product ecosystem. Projects get to pick and choose the tools they need and not get stuck with just one tool from one company. Instead of showing a weakness in one product, these events really highlight the strengths of all of the products.
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Reload Accidentally Closed Tabs in Safari 5

Today's hint is dead-simple, but I can't find it documented anywhere--and judging from the response when I mentioned it on Twitter, it's something many Safari users are happy to hear about.
Since version 3.0, Safari has provided, in its History menu, Reopen Last Close Window and Reopen All Windows From Last Session commands. These features let you easily reopen the last Safari window you closed, and reopen all windows that were open the last time you quit Safari, respectively. Each command also restores any tabs that were open within those windows.
But what about the single tab you just accidentally closed? The one you opened four hours--or even four days--ago, so it's not easy to find in your history? Inexplicably, Safari has been missing the obvious counterpart those commands: a way to reopen the last-closed tab. I can't count the number of times I've seen requests for this capability.
It turns out that Safari 5 finally provides just such a feature--but it doesn't appear to be documented, not even in Apple's detailed list of new features and improvements. Thankfully, it's simple--even obvious--to use: If you accidentally close a tab you didn't mean to close, just press Command+Z, the Mac's standard keyboard shortcut for Undo. The "lost" tab is immediately restored. (You can also use the Undo command in Safari's Edit menu, which changes to Undo Closed Tab.)
My favorite part of this new feature--besides the fact that it exists, of course--is that it keeps track of the last tab you've closed in each window. So pressing Command+Z in Window A will restore a different tab than pressing the shortcut in Window B.
(Hat tip to Twitter user @drawar for pointing out this new feature.)

Adobe Officially Releases Flash Player 10.1

Adobe's Flash Player may be getting little love from Steve Jobs and the iPhone, but the company is still perfectly happy to serve up a new update for Mac users.
On Thursday, Adobe announced the public arrival of Flash Player 10.1, now out of beta and ready to be downloaded onto the Mac of your choice. This most recent update officially patches the "critical vulnerability" found in earlier versions of the player that could cause system crashes and remote entry by attackers.
This new version, however, does not contain the much-anticipated ability to use hardware to decode H.264 video feeds. For that, Mac users will still need to turn to the upcoming "Gala" update, which is still only available as a preview release.
Flash Player 10.1 is a 7.44MB download available from Adobe's Website for Macs running OS 10.4 or later.
Updated at 3:00PT with clarification of the missing hardware acceleration feature.

JavaScript Library Lets IPad Read Flash Advertisements

A mobile advertising company has written a JavaScript library that makes Flash advertisements viewable on devices such as the iPad, working around Apple's opposition to Adobe Systems' multimedia platform.
The library, called Smokescreen, renders Flash advertisements into JavaScript and HTML5 within the browser if a device can't read Flash. Smokescreen, which was primarily developed by Chris Smoak of RevShockAds, means that companies that create Flash advertisements don't have to build a different version of an ad in order to reach millions of iPhone and iPad users.
"Many people still want to use their existing Adobe tools for developing ads, and retooling to support a single platform seems silly," according to Smokescreen's blog.
Smokescreen does need up-to-date browsers, and the demo advertisements works on Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5, Safari 4 and the mobile version of Safari. It won't run yet on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 although it "looks promising," according to developers. There are "known, fixable" issues with Opera 10.5.
Smokescreen's code will soon be released under an open-source license. Its developers have posted a preview along with demos. Low-cost support and service options will eventually be made available, according to Smokescreen's blog.
Developers appear to be excited by Smokescreen. "Chris Smoak's Smokescreen, 'a Flash player written in JavaScript,' is an incredible piece of work," wrote Simon Willison, co-creator of Django, a framework for building Web applications in the Python language, on his blog.
However, Willison wrote that "my one concern is performance - the library is 175 KB and over 8,000 lines of JavaScript which might cause problems on low-powered mobile devices."
Smokescreen's JavaScript library must be downloaded and executed on a Web browser. Since mobile devices have much less processing power than desktop computers, the time it takes to render the advertisement may vary by device. The developers warn that Smokescreen is not as fast as a Flash plugin, but that performance could be improved.
A test of Smokescreen's demos on an iPhone showed that the more complex the animation, the slower the advertisement rendered. On a desktop computer, the performance was faster.
"Since Smokescreen is written in JavaScript, it is slower than the Flash plugin and is limited in speed by the performance of the browser," according to Smokescreen's blog. "Until we pull more tricks out of our sleeves to boost the speed, realize that some demos will not run at acceptable speeds on iPad/iPhone/iPod devices and are categorized appropriately."
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by pcworld

Apple Launches HTML5 Showcase Page

Apple has launched a new section of its Website dedicated to showcasing the capabilities of the next generation of Web standards that fall under the HTML5 umbrella.
The HTML5 Showcase includes seven different demos, each aimed at illustrating a specific capability of modern Web browsers, including video and audio playback, typography, image manipulation, "VR" panoramas, and 360º-view presentations.
The new content is squarely, if not openly, aimed at silencing critics of Apple's decision to exclude Flash support from its mobile devices. In addition to a link to CEO Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash" open letter, the text that accompanies the Showcase states that "[s]tandards aren't add-ons to the web. They are the web."
The demos only work on the most recent versions of Safari that can be found on Mac, iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. Users of other browsers--including those based on WebKit, the same underlying HTML rendering engine used by Apple's browsers--are directed to download Apple's browser.
The Website acknowledges this fact, stating that "soon other modern browsers will take advantage of these same web standards." That's to be expected of Apple, which has a history of dropping legacy technologies in favor of driving adoption of upcoming ones. Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously quoted Wayne Gretzky's line "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been" on the occasion of the launch of the original iPhone; earlier this week at the D8 conference, he said "Flash looks like it had its day but it's waning, and HTML5 looks like it's coming up."
Still, the fact remains that, while HTML5 may be the future of the Web, it is at present an incomplete standard that is unlikely to become "officially sanctioned" until as late as 2022, although many browsers will support it in a meaningful way much earlier than that, and Apple's insistence on supporting it exclusively may well accelerate the pace with which other browsers adopt it. Consistency across browsers does not afflict Flash-based Websites as much, for the obvious reason that Adobe controls its development and evolution exclusively--which, however, is also the nature of the main criticisms levied against its closed and proprietary nature.
In addition, there are still many open questions about some of the technologies that will make up the standard: for example, the Mozilla Foundation, which maintains the Firefox Web browser, has so far refused to support the H.264/MPEG-4 video format because of its proprietary nature and the licensing issues that surround it. Should this decision become final, supporting HTML5 would mean effectively having to serve video in multiple, incompatible formats.
Nonetheless, Apple's new HTML5 Showcase illustrates that the company is betting big on the capabilities of its flagship Web browser. Judging from the demos, the future of HTML5 applications looks bright indeed.

First Look: Safari 5's Extensions

Safari 5 delivers many new features to Apple's Web browser, but few are more prominent than the arrival of an extensions system. With an extension system in place, developers are in position to augment the functionality provided by the browser itself.
While the framework itself is primary of interest to developers, the extensions that have already started to surface will let users add to Safari all sorts of capabilities that had previously been the domain of hacks and workarounds.
Even though extensions have barely been available for a day, several developers have jumped into the fray and either demoed or published some initial add-ons. For example, yesterday at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Mac developer Panic showed Coda Notes, an extension that can be used to add annotations to a Website.
Although Panic has, so far, elected not to publish its extension, claiming that it's still too rough around the edges, others have been more adventurous. An enterprising user has even started a Website that collects and links to extensions as they become available--at the time of this writing, the ten or so downloads available covered functionality from making it easier to watch YouTube videos in fullscreen mode to managing tasks and projects.
Extensions vs. plug-ins
Safari has supported plug-ins for years, but the skill level required to create them was not trivial, since they required knowledge of a lower-level programming language like C, C++ or Objective-C. In addition, Apple never created an easy and secure method for managing or installing plug-ins, which further limited their appeal to regular users.
Extensions, on the other hand, are built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript--the standard languages of the Web. This places them firmly within reach of a large base of developers that are used to developing Websites, thus opening the customization of Safari up to a potentially huge audience. Developers, however, will still need to familiarize themselves with the custom JavaScript API that Apple has designed to allow extensions to communicate with the browser.
In addition, Apple has simplified the process of using extensions in two ways. First, once an extension has been downloaded, all it takes to install it is a simple double-click. The days of magical incantations, setup wizards, or copying files to obscure locations are simply over.
Second, Safari will refuse to install any extension that has not been signed with a digital certificate issued by Apple. Thus, in order to distribute extensions that others can use, developers must register for the Apple Developer Connection program and obtain a certificate that, at least in theory, could be withdrawn by the company in the event that a developer did not comply with any of Apple's terms and conditions.
The terms for creating extensions aren't as restrictive as the terms that iPhone developers must agree to in order to sell their apps through the App Store; they mainly include a number of requirements designed to make extensions safe, such as avoiding malware, unauthorized data collection, and so on.
New in Safari, but old-school in Firefox
Of course, extensions are not a new concept--Firefox has supported them for years and now sports a rich ecosystem of add-ons that's arguably one of that program biggest advantages. What's more, the Mozilla foundation, which develops Firefox, has integrated the process of installing extensions directly into the browser, so that users are provided a central location where they can discover extensions and from which they can be downloaded and installed seamlessly.
Apple appears to be prepping a similar system, which it terms the Safari Extensions Gallery. While the full details aren't yet known, the company says that users will be able to submit their extensions to the gallery, which will open later this summer.
Despite its first-mover advantage, Firefox suffers from some significant limitations that Safari has already overcome right off the gate. For example, the user interface of Firefox's extensions must be built using a language called XUL, which, although open-source, is certainly not as widely known as HTML. In addition, the process of developing extensions remains somewhat manual, whereas Safari 5 comes with a built-in package called Extension Builder that provides a visual, step-by-step process for packaging all the necessary files into a distributable extension package for users.
Finally, Safari developers can digitally sign their extension through an easy-to-use process that also happens to be completely free. Firefox extensions can also be signed, but developers need to follow a manual process and must purchase a code-signing digital certificate, which can cost several hundred dollars per year, from a third party. As a result, the vast majority of Firefox extensions are unsigned, while every single Safari extension will be signed. And, while a digital signature doesn't necessarily mean better performance or security, it does give users a measure of safety in knowing that Apple at least has the option of pulling an extension that is unsafe or malicious.
It's still too early to say whether extensions will catch on and become an important part of the Safari ecosystem. Their introduction, however, kicks Safari's capabilities up a serious notch and represents a direct move against Firefox, although the latter has a considerable lead and a well-established reputation as an extensible browser that are going to be difficult to overcome.

Google Voice Now Open to Everyone in the US

Google's telephony management application Google Voice is now open to all U.S. residents, as the company on Tuesday removed the requirement for prospective users to receive an invitation in order to sign up for the service.
Already, there are 1 million people with Google Voice accounts. Service features include a single phone number that, when called, rings a person's multiple lines, such as their home, office and cellular phone. Google Voice also offers voicemail message transcription, free calls to the U.S. and Canada, low international calling rates, conference call capability and a central, Web-based voicemail inbox. A subset of Google Voice features can also be used by people who don't want to get the single Google "phone number for life," but rather use one of their existing lines.
(See Related: Hands On With Google Voice--This Is Really Cool)
"We're proud of the progress we've made with Google Voice over the last few years, and we're still just scratching the surface of what's possible when you combine your regular phone service with the latest web technology," wrote Google Voice Product Managers Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet in an official blog post.
Google acquired the core Google Voice technology in mid-2007 when it bought a company called GrandCentral. At the time, Google closed new sign-ups for the GrandCentral service. It re-released the service by invitation only in March of last year with its new Google Voice name and a new set of features.
Last year, the telephony service was at the center of a nasty dispute when Apple rejected Google's Voice application for the iPhone, saying that it duplicated native iPhone capabilities.
Google cried foul, characterizing the decision as unfair, but months later found a way around Apple's block by releasing a version of the Voice application for mobile browsers.
Google and Apple are former corporate "best friends forever" now turned rivals, as they compete in more and more markets, such as mobile platforms (Google's Android vs. iPhone), online advertising services (Apple's iAd vs. Google's AdWords), Web browsers (Apple's Safari vs. Google Chrome) and PC operating systems (Mac OS vs. Google Chrome OS).
Google Voice also drew unwanted attention last year when transcripts of some of its users' voicemail messages showed up in search results. Google soon modified the application so that users can continue to share these transcripts on public Web pages, while keeping them out of the reach of search engine crawlers.

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by pcworld

Atomic Has Better Browser for Apple iPad, iPhone

The Atomic Web Browser for the iPad and iPhone adds a few features that makes Web surfing much better. It's a little buggy, but worth the $0.99 price for the premium version.
The best new feature of Atomic: Tabs. Atomic displays all your open Web pages as tabs at the top of the screen, and you navigate between open pages by tapping the tabs, just like you do on a desktop Web browser.
By tapping and holding on a link, you get a choice of opening the link in a foreground or background tab.

The premium version, priced at $0.99, supports unlimited tabs, constrained only by the device memory; the free version only lets you open a limited number of tabs.
You can tell Atomic to lie to Web servers. Don't worry, it's only a little white lie; Atomic identifies itself as another browser when visiting Web sites. This is useful for sidestepping mobile versions of sites that come up by default when you visit some pages, like the Twitter home page, on the iPad. Switch the settings on Atomic from the default Mobile Safari to Firefox and you'll never see that pesky mobile-optimized page again. This feature only works in the premium version, it's not supported in the free version.
Atomic lets you switch to a full-screen views of Web pages, hiding the buttons, title bar, address bar and other tools. That's especially popular on the iPhone, with its smaller screen.
Atomic lets you find specific text in a Web page, or view the source code of a Web page, two features missing from the default Mobile Safari.
Atomic has built-in integration with Facebook and Twitter to post links to those social sites.
You can increase and decrease the font size of pages you visit, and remember those settings when you return to those pages. And Atomic has a private mode, which allows you to surf to secret Web sites without leaving a trail in your browser history. (If you're just looking for private browsing without the other features of Atomic, the free Privately browser does the job.)
Atomic has some problems. It occasionally locked up for me. I'm still figuring out whether that's a problem with Atomic, or if it's just a temporary issue with my iPad. Some reviewers on the App Store reported similar lockup problems, others said it's very stable or that previous versions had lockup problems that have since been solved.
But despite the shortcomings, Atomic is a great browser, worth the $0.99 price tag for the premium version.
An minor upgrade is awaiting approval in the App Store, with small improvements. After that, the developer is working on Version 3.0, with a user interface makeover.
Mitch Wagner is a freelance technology journalist and social media marketing consultant. Follow him on Twitter: @MitchWagner.

5 Reasons Why Google Chrome Will Crush IE In Browser War

Google's Chrome browser is shining brightly, and it's not hard to see why. First, the stats: According to the latest NetApplications figures, Chrome now has 6.7 percent of the browser market--a stunning rise from zero prior to 2009. Competing browsers are either treading water or, as in the case of Microsoft Internet Explorer, in precipitous freefall.
So what explains Chrome's sudden burst of popularity? Here are five reasons:
It's very fast: Google's browser is a speed demon. PC World's performance tests have shown that Chrome has the fastest page-loading times versus leading competitors Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera Software's Opera. Anecdotally, I've noticed that the speedy Chrome runs circles around slow, lumbering IE. Sometimes, however, Chrome's need for speed is annoying. The browser times out too quickly and fails to load web pages because, well, it's too impatient. Hopefully Google will let users adjust this setting in the future.
It's very simple: Like many Google apps and services, Chrome emphasizes ease of use. Compared with IE, there are fewer menus, options, and features to configure. Usually that's a good thing, but not always. Sometimes I find myself reverting to IE for, say, the print preview feature. Could you add that, Google?
Better security: IE's security mishaps are well chronicled. To be fair, Microsoft has worked diligently to make its browser more secure, but nagging problems persist. By comparison, Chrome is a paradise of protection due in part to two factors: architecture and obscurity. Chrome's use of "sandboxing," isolating Internet commands from the operating system and other apps and data, makes it harder for hackers to load malware onto PCs. At Vancouver's Pwn2Own contest in March, security experts were able to hack the other leading browsers, but not Chrome. In fact, they didn't even try to hack Chrome, the New York Times reports. It's important to note, however, that Chrome's low market share also contributes to its relative safety. If you're a malware creator, why direct your efforts toward Chrome when IE represents such a big, fat target?
Runs well on older hardware: There's still a very large installed base of Windows XP machines out there, particularly in the enterprise market. Chrome's speediness is ideal for older hardware with slower components.
Chrome's ad campaign: Google may have inexplicably under-marketed its tepidly received Nexus One smartphone, but it hasn't made the same mistake with the Chrome browser. A TV ad campaign helped introduce Chrome to the masses, most of whom don't give much thought to their choice of browser.
Microsoft, of course, will continue to improve Internet Explorer, as will the developers of competing browsers. But Google Chrome's early success shows that simplicity sells.
Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.

Mozilla Plans November Release for Firefox 4 Free

Mozilla plans to ship a beta of Firefox 4 next month, and a final by the end of November, a company executive said yesterday.
In a 50-minute presentation, Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, spelled out not only the timeline for the next major upgrade, but also outlined the new features, changes and technology enhancements the company hopes to pack into the browser.
Beltzner also confirmed that Mozilla has dropped the idea of doing an interim edition, Firefox 3.7, which at one point last year it had slated for a mid-2010 release. Instead, the next version of Firefox 3.6 will include the primary feature once scheduled for Firefox 3.7, technology that splits some plug-in processes from the core browser.
That technology and associated project, dubbed "Lorentz," prevents crashes by Adobe's Flash, Apple's QuickTime or Microsoft's Silverlight plug-ins from bringing down the browser. The so-called "out of process plug-ins," or OOPP as Mozilla calls the feature, will officially debut when Firefox 3.6.4 launches Thursday.
Most of Beltzner's presentation, which was Webcast live Monday afternoon and is also available in a recorded version (HTML5 video-enabled browser, such as Firefox 3.6, required), was dedicated to defining the goals Mozilla has for Firefox 4, down to the individual features that may or may not make it into the final.
Performance is one of the key areas Firefox 4 will address, said Beltzner. "Performance is a huge, huge, huge thing for us," he said. "We created the performance story, and we've got to keep at it."
Beltzner emphasized that Mozilla will both boost the raw speed of Firefox -- it has been working on ways to push its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine -- and in users' perception of speed.
The latter will be tackled by slimming down Firefox's user interface, something Mozilla has been working on since last year. "The simpler an interface looks, the faster it will seem," said Beltzner. "The less the user has to take in with their eye, the quicker they can process it and the quicker the entire application will seem. So we're actually looking at making our interface faster just by changing the way it looks."
Mozilla's timeline shows plans to issue a Firefox 4 beta in June and make a final version by November. (Photo courtesy of Mozilla Corp.)The new interface for Firefox 4 will remind many of Google's Chrome, with tabs above the toolbar and address bar, fewer buttons -- including an all-in-one Home button that also serves as a single-menu App button -- and fewer dialog box interruptions. Mozilla is also aiming to eventually emulate Chrome by applying updates silently in the background.

Speed improvements could be crucial to Firefox's future. Although the browser was once one of the fastest when measured by the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark scores, more recently it has lagged behind rivals such as Chrome, Apple's Safari and Opera Software's Opera. In Computerworld's latest tests, Firefox beat only one browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), in JavaScript rendering speeds.
Beltzner also described a slew of other goals for Firefox 4, ranging from native 64-bit versions for Windows and Mac OS X to hardware acceleration using Windows' Direct2D API, as well as support for multitouch and a new parser to interpret HMTL5 code.
If it follows through on its Direct2D hardware acceleration plans, Mozilla will join Microsoft, which has pinned high hopes on the technology for its upcoming IE9, in tapping the power of a Windows PC's graphics processor, or GPU. Direct2D is available, however, only in Windows Vista and Windows 7; Windows XP users will not be able to take advantage of the feature.
Mozilla is also planning to integrate a single sign-on feature with Firefox 4 to make it easier for users to log in to Web sites, and hopes to add a permissions manager to let users control passwords, cookies and geolocation settings on specific sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Gmail.
The push to Firefox 4 is an "aggressive schedule, to be sure," Beltzner admitted.
But the browser has a head start of sorts, since Mozilla has been issuing alpha-quality builds of the upgrade since February. The fourth "Developer Preview" was released April 12, but yesterday Beltzner said a fifth and final alpha would likely show up this month.
Starting in late June, Mozilla will begin issuing public betas of Firefox 4 every two to three weeks, said Beltzner, who noted that the same stepped-up pace last year for Firefox 3.6 was invaluable.
Several times during the presentation and later in a blog entry, Beltzner cautioned that the Firefox 4 schedule could mutate at any time. "Understand that these plans are fluid and are likely to change," he wrote on his blog. "As with past releases, we use dates to set targets for milestones ... [and] judge each milestone release against our basic criteria of quality, performance, and usability, and we only ship when it's ready."
Historically, Mozilla has had a difficult time keeping to its initial development schedules. Firefox 3.6, for example, which launched last January, was released about two months later than first planned.
Beltzner hinted that the same could happen with Firefox 4. If it looks like the upgrade won't make it out the door by the end of November, Mozilla will skip a December release and push the browser into early 2011.
"[December] is a bad time to release a product," Beltzner said.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.
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Firefox Aims to Make IE, Safari Browsing More Secure

Mozilla has expanded a service that checks if a browser's plugins are current to now scan Internet Explorer, Safari Opera and Chrome in addition to its own Firefox.
Plugins are small bits of code that enable other applications to run within a Web browser, such as Adobe's Flash multimedia program. But outdated plugins are a danger for Internet users, as they can contain software vulnerabilities that can be used to gain remote control over someone's PC.
The problem has been recognized for some time, and some vendors have incorporated automated software update alerts to let users know when either they need to download a new plugin.
But others have no such mechanism. Each Web browser requires its own plugin, and if a user doesn't know a new version is available, they're unlikely to update it, which puts them at risk. Mozilla said studies have shown that up to 80 percent of users have an outdated plugin.
The latest version of Mozilla's Firefox browser, version 3.6, automatically checks for outdated plugins, but other browsers do not. For other browsers, Mozilla has built a Web service that will scan to see if several types of plugins are current.
"We believe that plugin safety is an issue for the Web as a whole, so while our initial efforts focused on building a page that would work for Firefox users, the team has since expanded plugin check coverage to work with Safari 4, Chrome 4 and Opera 10.5," wrote Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox development.
"We have added support for Internet Explorer 7 and 8 for the most popular plugins as well, but since IE requires specific code to be written for each plugin, it will take us a little longer to get to full coverage," he wrote.
Mozilla launched the plugin project for its own Firefox browser last fall, focusing on Adobe's applications. After installing security updates, Firefox versions 3.5.3 and Firefox 3.0.14 would display a warning if the company's Flash player was out of date.
For Firefox, the new page will check for plugins such as Apple's QuickTime and Microsoft's Silverlight multimedia players, Adobe's Acrobat reader and Flash plugins plus others. For IE8, the page scans for Silverlight, Windows Media Player, Flash and QuickTime so far.
Mozilla is also appealing to software vendors to contribute to a plugin directory that will track when new versions are available.
"If you're a plugin vendor, we need your help," Nightingale wrote. "The directory is currently in alpha stages, and we need vendors to let us know as new versions come out and old versions become dangerous."

By PcWorld

Mozilla CEO Lilly to Step Down

Mozilla CEO John Lilly will leave the nonprofit company as soon as it can find a replacement, ending his more than two years at the helm of the maker of Firefox.
Lilly will become a venture partner at Greylock Partners but will remain on Mozilla's board of directors, he wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
After helping to start several tech companies, Lilly joined Mozilla in 2005 and stepped up from chief operating officer to CEO in January 2008, taking over from Mitchell Baker, who became chairman.
Mozilla's Firefox browser is the most popular alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with a market share estimated at 25 percent or more.
Soon after taking over Mozilla, Lilly made headlines by slamming Apple for distributing Safari as a download with Apple Software Update. In that utility, which is used to distribute security updates for iTunes and the Quicktime video software, Safari is checked by default as a choice for downloading. Lilly said that made it too easy for users to install software they didn't ask for and may not have wanted. "This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices," Lilly said. He feared it would erode consumers' trust of security updates.
In 2009, Lilly also criticized Microsoft's plan for a "ballot screen" from which users would choose a Web browser.
In his Tuesday blog post, Lilly said his work with Mozilla began as a volunteer effort and became a full-time job, and that he wanted to return to his first love, working with startups. But he expressed pride in Mozilla's work.
"400 million users are directly touched every day by the work we've done so far, and many, many more are using better browsers because of our work," he wrote in a letter to Mozilla employees.

By PcWorld

28 Time-Saving Tricks for Google, Facebook, and More

Think you know all of the tricks at your favorite Internet sites? Think again.

Even if you're on Google, Facebook, and YouTube every day, you might not be tapping those sites' full potential. Read on to speed up your Internet abilities, unlock new features, and find a new favorite tip or two.

Google Gimmicks

Search within a site: Narrow down your search results to a single site. Type (search query) site:(domain); an example would be entering: video card tips site:pcworld.com to find pages only at that location. You can even limit results to within sections of a site, as in this example: twitter site:pcworld.com/businesscenter.

Search for file types: Maybe you want to track down a certain document that's a PDF. Enter your usual search string plus filetype:pdfps), Office docs (doc, ppt, xls), Rich Text (rtf), Plain Text (txt), and more. You can find a list of searchable file types here. to find only those pages. This method also works with PostScript (

Exclude results: Include a minus sign to exclude certain results. Suppose you want to find news about Apple unrelated to the iPad. Type Apple -iPad. You can also combine the previous tips, such as Apple -iPad -site:apple.com and Apple -iPad -PDF.

Get local details: Forget manual time conversion; just enter time [city] (as in Time Tokyo) to get the current local time. Or try weather [city] for a forecast. For more local details, try [city] map, movies [city or ZIP code], and [restaurant name or cuisine] [city or ZIP code]. This works for a few other regular search strings, like Weather [city], stock quotes, and more--check out Google's full list.

Make conversions: Swap units of measure, such as measurements of volume or distance; this works for converting different currencies, too. Try [number and unit] in [new unit] such as 7 inches in cm or 30 Euros in USD.

Bing Bonanza

Find links to files: Find pages that host or lead to certain file types, such as music. Enter [search term] contains:[file type] such as Wilco contains:MP3 to find MP3s from the band Wilco. Try this kind of search with many other file types, such as WMA, PDF, AAC, DOC, and nearly anything else.

Remove the background image: Bing sure is cute, but its big photos can be distracting. Visit http://www.bing.com/?rb=0 for a plain, gray version of the site.

Save searches as RSS feeds: If you want to stay on top of hits to a search query, turn it into an RSS feed. After loading your results, append &format=rss to the end of the new URL, and view it in your favorite RSS reader.

Theo pcworld.com

Opera Mini Downloaded More Than a Million Times in First Day

It's been three days since Apple approved Opera Mini for the App Store, so you may be wondering how the little browser that could has fared. In a nut: incredibly well.

In a press release, Opera boasts that its mobilized, proxy-dependent browser was downloaded more than a million times in its first day of availability. In fact, it became the number one free download across all 22 international App Stores.

This is an impressive feat, especially considering the security and scaling problems presented by Opera's "all your browsing are belong to our proxy servers" approach. Every Website that users browse and enter passwords into first goes through Opera servers that compress, decrypt, and re-encrypt, all in an effort to save on bandwidth, transfer times, and data plan bills.

Setting aside concerns about giving away one's sensitive passwords and other identity information to a third party, Opera Mini's initial blow-out success may be evidence that users were actually looking for an alternative to Safari--or, perhaps, were at least curious about what it offered.

Theo macworld.com

Microsoft to Fix Error in Polish Browser Ballot Screen

Microsoft will fix an error on the Polish-language browser ballot screen that inadvertently always lists Internet Explorer first, a company official said Tuesday.

Microsoft introduced the browser ballot screen in order to settle an antitrust case brought against it by the European Commission. Regulators determined the company's bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows OS was unfair to competitors.

The browser ballot screen has been displayed on computers within the European Union that have Internet Explorer installed by default. The screen allows users to change to one of 11 other browsers, such as Google's Chrome, Firefox, Opera and others. New Windows PCs also have a browser ballot screen.

After further complaints, Microsoft agreed to randomize the order in which those browsers are displayed.

But there's a glitch in its Polish language page, wrote Rob Weir, an ODF (Open Document Format) architect with IBM, who wrote on his personal blog that he was tipped off to a problem.

"The order is unchanging, with Internet Explorer always first, followed always by Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari, in that order," Weir wrote. "There is no shuffling going on at all."

Weir wrote that the problem is a "JavaScript error involving a failure to properly escape embedded quotations in one of the browser descriptions. Because of the error, the script aborts and the randomization routine is never called."

Microsoft acknowledged the error.

"We were already aware of the issue, which applies only to the Polish language version of the browser choice screen, and we have the fix scheduled for next week," according to an e-mail statement attributed to Jesse Verstraete, senior E.U. communications manager.

Microsoft had problems last month randomizing the choices and ended up changing the algorithm behind it. Weir had noticed that the randomization code appeared to favor Chrome, with Internet Explorer frequently ending up in the fifth spot.

Theo pcworld.com

Google Attempts to Lure Mac Users to Chrome

I’m not sure if this is new, or it’s just the first time I’ve noticed it: When I go to the Google home page on my MacBook Pro in Safari, I’m getting a little ad for Google’s own Chrome browser:

I started to wonder if it was a skirmish in the Google-Apple wars, but probably not: I’m getting the same ad in Firefox. (Not in Opera, though–I guess there aren’t enough users to make trying to lure them to Chrome worth the effort.)

Over in Windows, Google has used its front page to tempt IE users to switch in the past. (I’m not getting Chrome ads in other Windows browsers at the moment, though.) There’s only been an official shipping version of Chrome for the Mac since December–and maybe Google decided to wait a bit before it encouraged defections from other browsers. The polite upper-right-hand-corner message may be a relatively soft sell, but Google can put that soft sell in front of a lot of people if it so chooses.

Google’s promise that Chrome is “a faster way to browse the Web” may confuse some Macheads, since Apple is still touting Safari as the world’s fastest Web browser. But Apple’s benchmarks are from last August, and the Mac version compares Safari only to what’s now an out-of-date version of Firefox; Chrome isn’t even in the picture. Tom’s Hardware’s recent browser speed tests have Chrome eking out an overall edge on Opera and Safari, so Google does have bragging rights; Tom’s tests, however, were done under Windows.

If Google is saying that Chrome for OS X was faster than Safari and Firefox in some formal test, it doesn’t seem to be disclosing the details–the section on speed at the Chrome download site is devoted to a fanciful Rube Goldbergesque video:

I’ll be interested to see how well Chrome does among Mac users. It may be a tougher sell given that there doesn’t seem to be rampant disgruntlement with Safari, the Mac’s default browser. Among Technologizer visitors, for what it’s worth, about 11 percent of Mac users visit via Chrome–versus about 18 percent of Windows users who run Google’s browser.

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Theo pcworld.com