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Posts tagged Google

Firefox beta available

May21
2011 5 Comments Written by hotrao

Nick Peers at Beta news (full article here), reports that “[...]  Mozilla has released the first publicly available beta of Firefox 5, which acts as a halfway house between the final stable, final release of Firefox and the developmental version, Firefox Aurora. The beta version offers a more stable environment than Aurora in which to road-test developmental features before they’re implemented into the next final release.

On the surface there’s little to differentiate Firefox 5 from Firefox 4 in this beta release, which installs over the top of any existing stable release, but it does feature the new Firefox Channel Switcher that allows users to move between developmental and stable versions of Firefox from a convenient dialog box. [...]“.

Though I’m not a big fan of Firefox (I was but changed my mind in favor of Chrome), I’m really curious to try it.

This post as a comment also here

Posted in Tech - Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Facebook tried to smear Google

May13
2011 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Again a problem with Facebook that reminds me more a high school joke than a 50 billion company behaviour.

Many sources, among them Ed Oswald at beta news (full article here) and Sharon Gaudin at Computerworld (full article here), report that “[...] Facebook found itself doing damage control Thursday after it was revealed the company had attempted to create negative press for Google. Two employees of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller had endeavored to pitch stories over the search giant’s privacy issues.

News of the botched effort was broken by The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons on Wednesday night. Without specifying how, Lyons said evidence pointed to the social networking site as being the mysterious client of Burson-Marsteller’s, and the company admitted to doing so.

A spokesperson for Facebook said the company hired the firm in order to fight back against Google’s planned Social Circle, which uses some of Facebook’s data. In addition, it believes that the Mountain View, Calif. company’s efforts in social networking raise some privacy concerns. [...]“.

In love and business everything is admitted, but I think that especially if You have the kind of relevance Facebook has, a limit exists and cannot be exceeded.

Is the same old story told in security issues: a company should behave in a wise manner, either for ethics, either for investors.

And back talking others is for teens, not for IPOs.

This post as a comment here and here

Posted in communication, Economy, Other, Tech - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Beware of Dropbox public folders

Apr27
2011 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Martin Brinkmann at ghacks has discovered that if You don’t put too much attention on where you put your photos on Dropbox, You risk that they become visible to everybody.

To discover some public galleries,  just try these steps:

  • Go to Google, Bing or your preferred search engine, and enter the following search term into the search box at the top: site:http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/
  • Search for site:http://www.dropbox.com/s/ or site:http://dl.dropbox.com/

To avoid these simply don’t put your pictures in dropbox photos folder. (full article here)

I think that not all people are so skilled in using applications and at same time dropbox assumes by default that people read service levels and disclaimers (is not so assured in most cases….)

This post as a comment also here

Posted in Other, Tech - Tagged , , , , ,

Google has relased a new stable version of Chrome

Apr15
2011 3 Comments Written by hotrao

Google has just released a new stable version of Chrome, upgrading to version 10.0.658.205.

According to Martin Brinkmann at ghacks.net (full article here), “[...]

The release is a security update that fixes vulnerabilities in all versions of the web browser. Most notably, it includes an early fix for the Adobe Flash vulnerability that has been confirmed by Adobe earlier this week.

Three additional security vulnerabilities are fixed in the latest Google Chrome Stable version. One of the fixed issues is only affecting Chrome on Windows, while the remaining are affected all versions of the Chrome browser.

  • [Windows only] [70070] Critical CVE-2011-1300: Off-by-three in GPU process.
  • [75629] Critical CVE-2011-1301: Use-after-free in the GPU process.
  • [78524] Critical CVE-2011-1302: Heap overflow in the GPU process.

All three vulnerabilities have received a critical rating, the highest possible rating. The Adobe Flash vulnerability was rated critical by Adobe, which means four critical vulnerabilities have been fixed in total in the latest version of Google Chrome.

Google Chrome users can download the latest version of the web browser from the officialGoogle Chrome download page, or with an in-browser update.[...]“.

Also Google sometime is loosing some bugs in their releases… :-)

This post as a comment also here

Posted in Other, Tech - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Google results

Apr14
2011 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

The guys at geeks are sexy posted a very interesting and humorous interpretation of Google results representation, which I post below (full article here, original post via ilovecharts.com).

Really nice…and representative of how much information is accumulating on the net.

 

This post as a comment also here and here

Posted in communication, Other, Tech - Tagged , ,

Geocoding an address in Google Maps

Apr08
2011 1 Comment Written by hotrao

Wikihow publishes here a step by step tutorial for geocoding an address in Google Maps.

Though is something that not too much people could find useful, demonstrate how wide is the spectrum of things that can be done in Google products.

Posted in Other, Tech - Tagged ,

Chrome is developing in guarding You against malicious downloads

Apr06
2011 2 Comments Written by hotrao

Peter Bright at Ars Technica informs that “[...] Google has just announced that it’s going to take this protection even further in its Chrome browser and apply it to executable downloads. Click a link that downloads a program Google’s Safe Browsing API regards as hostile and you’ll see a warning, along with an option to cancel the download.

Initially, malicious Windows programs will be the target. Such programs are unfortunately commonplace and generally depend on social engineering tricks—rather than outright security flaws—to lure users into installing them, with fake video codecs and bogus anti-virus software both being popular approaches.

A similar security system, designed for a similar purpose, was included in Internet Explorer 9. [...]” (full article here). Same topic is covered by Ed Oswald at betanews (full article here)

I’m sure that this is another required step into the endless war between thieves and guards, but I also think that will bring more complexity instead than simplifying life to end users, because when a security message appears 9/10 of times is not comprehensible to an average user.

This post as a comment also here and here

Posted in Tech - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A guide to Facebook privacy settings

Apr03
2011 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Ghacks has published here a small but useful guide to basi security settings in Facebook.

Suggestions include the fact that “[...] , this menu is entirely customizable. If you do not want anyone who is not on your friends list to access any of your information then you can do this from here. If you don’t mind if friends of friends also have access to your profile then this is an option too. For example, if I wanted everyone to be able to see when my birthday is then I would first click on the ‘Customize Settings’ tab. From here, I would enable everyone to see my birthday. It is as simple as that. Let’s take a closer look at each of the different settings that you can edit when it comes to Facebook privacy. [...]

First of all is the ‘Posts by me’ section. This will include any status updates that you write, any wall posts that you make, or any photos that you upload. Obviously, the most sensible thing to do here is to set this to ‘Friends only’. This is because you do not want people that you do not know getting access to things that you have said, or your personal information or images.
The ‘Bio and Favourite Quotations’ section is up to you whether or not you would like to make this section private. However, it is important to remember that you may be putting private information about yourself in the Bio section which others will be able to see if you do allow this section to be public rather than private. The ‘Family and Relationships’ section is another one that is best kept private. The reason for this is because if you allow this information to be public then everyone can see members of your family which not everyone would be comfortable with. Of course, it is up to you, but it is best to be on the safe side. The rest of the information in this section of the privacy settings would usually be better if it were set to ‘Friends Only’, because it is all personal information. [...]”

I think the guide is useful despite the fact that this brain confusing level of security that is implemented by Facebook for me is still unreliable and difficult to understand by average user.

This post as a comment also here.

Posted in communication, Other, Tech - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Getting access to Google Body

Mar25
2011 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Google body is to anatomy what Google earth is to geography.

To get access you need to go to browser site (here).

You will need to have a WebGl enabled browser.

This is the kind of applications that should be written: fast, detailed, open and educationals.

 

Posted in Other, Tech - Tagged , , , , ,

Google working to shrink Chrome a little bit

Mar22
2011 Leave a Comment Written by hotrao

Stephen Shankland at Cnet reports that “[...] When Chrome got its start, the browser was svelte and fast-loading if limited. Now, it’s got plenty of features, but two years later, it’s nearly three times bigger. And Google, deciding that’s not a good thing, has set up a task force to curtail Chrome bloat.

The task force is “aggressively looking at options to bring down the size of Chrome distribution binaries,” said Anthony Laforge, Chrome technical program manager, in a mailing list message this month. Binary files are the ones computers understand; they’re created from human-comprehensible source code. [...]” (full article here)

I personally hope that this optimization will give us a still performing, secure and no compromises browser  like the one we are used to.

I think is an effort worth a try, especially if you think at the times (not so far) when a program was measured in kbytes ;-)  and worked fine despite using tons of space (HD or RAM).

This post as a comment also here

Posted in Tech - Tagged , , , , , ,
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