Ed Bott and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols debate whether Microsoft’s next operating system is headed in the right direction.
September 19, 2011
by sjvn01
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September 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google Needs to Clean Up its Android Market’s Malware Mess
“Google! Stop playing with that copy of Angry Birds and go up to your Android Market room and clean it up right now!” Alas, Google is as likely to pay attention to my command as my once four-year old daughter was.
Listen, I like a lot of what Google does. For example, I think Chrome 14 is the best Web browser around, but have you seen the mess of malware in the Android Market? It’s shameful!
The security software company McAfee recently stated that the amount of malware targeting Androids phones jumped 76% in the last quarter (PDF), making it the most heavily attacked of all mobile operating systems. “Overall attacks are becoming more stealth and more sophisticated, suggesting that we could see attacks that remain unnoticed for longer periods of time,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee, in a statement.
Of course, they don’t need to be stealthy. Most people download their malware right off the Android Market.
September 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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Chrome 14: The best Web browser keeps getting better
It’s odd. When Firefox moved into its accelerated development path, Firefox really didn’t get much better. In fact, it’s been getting less stable. Google’s Chrome Web browser though just keeps getting better with every new release. Chrome 14, in my opinion, is now clearly the best Web browser for any operating system available today.
Why? Well, look at all the raw numbers. To see how Chrome 14 ranked, I put it up against the latest releases of Firefox and IE 9 on a Windows 7 box.
When it comes to Web standards compatibility, Chrome 14 is a winner. On the Acid 3 compatibility test, which checks out how well a browser complies with Web standards such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, and Extensible Markup Language (XML), Chrome had a perfect score. Firefox 6 had a score of 97 and IE had a 95.
On the recently, August 23rd, updated HTML5 Test, which checks to see how compliant the Web browser is with the HTML5 Web page standard, Chrome is king of the mountain again with a score of Firefox showed a significant improvement. This time, it came in with 341 points out of a possible 450. Firefox 6.02 came in second with 313 and. IE 9.0.8 came in a distant last with 141. Anyone who tells you that IE is HTML5 compliant is trying to sell you Windows. It’s not. It’s not even close.
September 15, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google opens Google+ up for developers
Questions about Google’s new social network real name policies aside, I quite like Google+. One of the things I like about it, in stark contrast to Facebook, is that Google+ lets you access and back-up your personal data. Now Google has taken it one step further: The company has opened up some of Google+’s Application Programming Interfaces.
On Google+, appropriately enough, Chris Chabot, a Google developer advocate, announced “I’m super excited about how the Google+ project brings the richness and nuance of real life sharing to software, and today we’re announcing our first step towards bringing this to your apps as well by launching the Google+ public data APIs.”
Chabot continued, “These APIs allow you to retrieve the public profile information and public posts of the Google+ users, and they lay the foundation for us to build on together – Nothing great is ever built in a vacuum so I’m excited to start the conversation about what the Google+ platform should look like.”
So excitement aside, what’s the story with these APIs? A quick look at the Google+ Developers site reveals that we’re still in the early stages here. The sites states that “This initial set [of APIs] is focused on providing read access to public data. We’ll be adding more APIs over time to build on this foundation and help you create more types of integrations”
September 15, 2011
by sjvn01
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You’ll soon able to opt-out of Google Wi-Fi snooping
You did know those cars and trikes Google uses to take photos for Google Street View were also collecting your Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) information and location too right? Well, they have been since 2009, and now, thanks to complaints from privacy advocates in Europe, you’ll be able to opt out of this “service.”
In a Google blog site, Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel, wrote, “Even though the wireless access point signals we use in our location services don’t identify people, we think we can go further in protecting people’s privacy. At the request of several European data protection authorities, we are building an opt-out service that will allow an access point owner to opt out from Google’s location services. Once opted out, our services will not use that access point to determine users’ locations.”
Of course, as Paul Ducklin, the Head of Technology, Asia Pacific, for a Sophos, a security firm, notes, “This is a Catch-22. Google pretty much has to keep you on file, simply in order to know that you didn’t want to be on file in the first place. Otherwise they’d just add you back in next time the Street View Wi-Fi scanner came round – and then you’d have to opt out again. Sadly, you can’t opt out of the Street View collection process proactively.”
September 14, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google and Intel Android pairing spells trouble for Microsoft
While all the attention was on Windows 8’s preview this week I wonder whether the real end-user operating news wasn’t happening elsewhere. To be exact, I think Google and Intel’s announcement that Android was coming to the Intel chip family will end up being the bigger news.
My fellow ZDNet writer James Kendrick touches on this when he says that, besides Intel and Google themselves, the winners of this deal include “OEMs already fluently speaking Intel yet not already on the Android team.” You know, those companies like Dell that have been speaking fluent Windows for the last couple of decades.
I’m not suggesting that Android will challenge Windows on the desktop. No, I think Google’s Chrome OS can spell trouble for desktop Windows, but not Android. Not yet anyway.