HitChrome

Small enough to fit in your pocket, the PlayStation Compact deftly balances portability and ergonomics in a gaming console/digital camera hybrid gadget. Utilizing the integrated Wi-Fi, users can link up for some multiplayer gaming action.

This will make the console a highly versatile device that packs in so many features. The PSC (Playstation Compact) implements the Digital Living Network that allows you to share photos, videos as well as real time screen wit a PSP.

Google has made some interesting changes to the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) which users are required to sign.

Chrome, which was launched for beta testing only in September this year, has already performed well in such a short period, and now Google is going all out to promote it even further, and increase their customer base.

Thus the latest changes to the EULA have been made keeping this target in mind. Some of the noteworthy changes are mentioned below.

Earlier, people who were not of a legal age to enter into an agreement with Google, were not allowed (legally) to use Chrome. Now, that restriction has been totally done away with.

Google had made it mandatory for users to provide personal identification and contact data, and also keep it up to date, while signing the EULA. That section is now no longer applicable.

Google had specifically banned the use of automated access to their browser. They have now decided to delete that clause, as long as the user does not indulge in any activity that could interrupt or disrupt the services. Read the rest of this entry »

Solar-Powered Bra: Charge Your Cellphone With Your Bra

The Handphone Read the rest of this entry »

Pandora began working on a Windows Mobile client more than two years ago client for their personalized music streaming service. Right as that project was entering alpha, they penned distribution deals with AT&T and Sprint, who both had one requirement: it needed to work on their standard, run-of-the-mill feature phones.

With their relatively small development team, Pandora shifted their efforts to the development of a J2ME application. Soon after that was ready, the iPhone SDK became available, which meant Windows Mobile development was pushed aside again.

At long last, the project has come to fruition. Pandora has now released a Windows Mobile client.

Anyone accustomed to the online Pandora experience should feel right at home here. Punch in an artist or song, and Pandora will start offering up songs it thinks you will love. Love it? Give it a thumbs up. Hate it? Thumbs down. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has a security problem today as reports surface of vulnerabilities.

The popular browser is still open to a threat it detailed in a blog six days ago, and the solution is yet to be released. Since the disclosure last week, the problem has spread across the globe, affecting at least 2 million computers.

Unlike other computer viruses, this one does not require users to click on fishy links or download mysterious software: it plagues computers that simply open an infected Web page.

Microsoft’s ubiquitous Internet browser is currently used by 69 percent of Web surfers, commanding a lion’s share of the browser market. Different versions of Internet Explorer are also affected, making users with older browsers installed on their computer vulnerable as well.

Security experts say malicious code can affect the system by hiding inside the data binding function of the browser and causing IE to close unexpectedly and reopen vulnerable to prying eyes.

So far most of the attacks have been geographically centered on China and have been used for the purposes of stealing computer game passwords. But with a flaw of this proportion, the possibilities of nefarious action could include the massive theft of personal information such as administrative computer passwords and financial data. Read the rest of this entry »

Google’s strategy to update its browser more frequently has helped the software to jump back over the 1% mark again. Chrome’s market share and the release of the final version of the browser helped the software to bounce back.

Chrome’s market share does not reflect the media attention the software usually receives and the browser needs still time to grow until it could be considered a “major” browser that can compete with the big boys. If we believe data published by Net Applications, there are seven times more Safari users than Chrome users, twenty times more Firefox users and about 70 times more IE users globally.

But it seems that Google has found an effective strategy to increase its market share – frequent updates. Google began pushing its updates more often in late October, not quite two months after the browser’s initial release and was able to slow the browser’s market share decline and grow its share again. According to Net Applications, Chrome hit a record 1.16% three days after its release on September 4 and hit its lowest share at 0.69% on October 15.

Curiously enough, this was about the same time when Microsoft was able to almost match Chrome’s market share with its IE8 beta 2 release, which is pictured in our chart as well.

Last week’s release of Chrome 1.0 pushed Chrome back above the 1.0% mark for the first time since September. Chrome saw a 1.05% share on Saturday and 1.09% on Sunday. However, it appears that Google has now created a solid user base from where it may be able to grow.

Google’s Chrome scored lowest in a test of password management security, but other browsers didn’t fair much better. The security expert found security flaws in the Firefox 2 password management two years ago. He tested Google Chrome during its beta period and Chapin’s company, Chapin Information Services (CIS) had reported three bugs in Chrome that were not fixed by release time. Chapin said that, along with seventeen other issues in Chrome’s password manager, they created “a toxic soup of potential vulnerabilities that can coalesce into broad insecurity”.

Safari 3.2 for Windows was also added to the CIS testing, and “essentially tied for the worst password manager” with Chrome. CIS’s tests are made up of 21 specific checks to ensure the browsers are not easily fooled into giving up the password information that they have remembered for the browser user.

Phishers could exploit these flaws to trick a browser into disclosing a username and password for a third parties site.

Interestingly, Google Chrome was the only major browser that passed one test; not filling in a form when auto-complete is set to off, but this only brought its score up to 2, the same score as Safari. No browser scores well on Chapin’s tests.

The “winner” was Opera 9.62, which only passed 7 of the 21 tests. CIS have a test suite which allows users to evaluate their own browser against the CIS tests.

The Official Google Blog stated that the full release comes after 14 product updates and that Chrome 1.0 is more stable and much faster than former one.

Video plug-ins optimization is one of the biggest improvements users wanted from Google Chrome. The browser had always had glitches in playing videos, even from Google’s subsidiary, YouTube. The official blog states that these bugs were fixed in the final release. Furthermore, the blog states that the “V8 JavaScript engine runs 1.4 times faster” on Chrome 1.0 compared to its first beta release.

PC Magazine reviewed the browser yesterday and reported a 24 percent increase in speed, Chrome being much snappier than Internet Explorer and comparable with Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 2. Yet, the reviewer reported that Google Chrome still uses the biggest amount of RAM, almost double than Firefox, when opening complex websites.

Google Chrome has been continuously updated since its initial release in September 2008. However, there are still issues that Chrome’s users have to cope with. Among the most important flaws of Google Chrome is the inability to access websites like Windows’ Hotmail because the browser is still not officially supported. Also, it is somehow surprising that even the company’s own Google Zeitgeist 2008 Website isn’t properly displayed in Google Chrome.

In the near future, it is expected that Google will release Linux and Mac version of Google Chrome, along with RSS support and an extensions platform.

Google has claimed that in the 100 days since it unveiled the beta version of its Google Chrome browser, it has attracted more than 10 million active users on all seven continents.

Since its release, Google has released 14 updates to the product, and as of today, the company is removing the ‘beta’ label from the browser.

“Google Chrome is a better browser today, thanks to the many users who sent their feedback, and the many more who enabled automatic crash reports, helping us rapidly diagnose and fix issues,” said Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management at Google.

Among the problems that had to be fixed during the beta period were video and audio glitches.

One of the early distinguishing factors about Google Chrome was the speed of the browser in terms of scripting, and Google says this has been boosted 1.4 times faster on the SunSpider benchmark and 1.5 times faster on the V8 benchmark. “And there’s more speed to come,” Pichai said.

Bookmark features were a top request from early adopters, and Google’s engineers have made it easier to switch between another browser and Chrome with bookmark import and export features. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently Google posted a handbook for Web developers that highlights the key security features and quirks of major Web browsers.

The Browser Security Handbook as it is dubbed, has three parts that tackle the security features in browsers and browser-specific issues that could lead to security weaknesses.

Michal Zalewski, a developer at Google, stated in the introduction to the handbook. “Insufficient understanding of these often poorly-documented characteristics is a major contributing factor to the prevalence of several classes of security vulnerabilities, although all browsers implement roughly the same set of baseline features, there is relatively little standardization — or conformance to standards — when it comes to many of the less apparent implementation details.”

The handbook covers features of Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Mozilla Firefox 2 and 3, Apple Safari, the Opera browser and Google’s Chrome and Android browsers. Read the rest of this entry »