Just days after a former employee blasted Mozilla for its frequent updates, the company on Tuesday shipped Firefox 14, patching 18 vulnerabilities and adding automatic encryption of searches passed to Google's search engine. The upgrade also lets users set an option that loads plug-ins - such as Adobe's Flash Player or Oracle's Java - only after approval, an additional security measure that may prevent stop some attacks.
Google has taken a new step to significantly expand what Web apps can do - and thus also lend new muscle to its Chrome browser, Chrome OS browser-based operating system, and Chrome Web Store for finding and buying Web apps. This week, Google released a new developer version of Chrome 22 that by default enables a technology called Chrome packaged apps.
Skype users are taking to its support forums to warn that some instant messages from one contact are being sent to an unintended recipient on that user's contact list. It appears the bug may have stemmed from a Skype upgrade last month, according to the support thread. "SunnyLady78" kicked off the thread by noting how "surprised" and "shocked" she was to find that messages sent to one person ended up being read by another one of her contacts.
New software from Web security specialists Blue Coat Systems allows companies to restrict what employees can do on their cellphones while logged into the corporate Wi-Fi. The software, which works with Blue Coat's ProxySG Web filtering equipment, seeks to fill a gap that exists between company-issued PCs, which are often subject to security and access restrictions, and employee-owned cellphones, on which employees are often free to do what they want.
The Internet partnership of Microsoft and NBC is officially over. NBC News announced last evening that it had acquired full control of MSNBC.com from the software giant and was rebranding the site as NBCNews.com. NBC will continue to provide news content to MSN.com, a Microsoft news portal, which will reciprocate by sending traffic back to the network, NBC said. For the short term, MSNBC.com will mirror the home page of NBCNews.com and eventually become the address of MSNBC TV.
OS X Leopard users are about to have yet another reason to spring for an upgrade — especially if they're hooked on Google's Chrome browser. The Chrome team wrote on Monday that Chrome will soon drop support for OS X 10.5 and that future versions will only be available for Snow Leopard (10.6) or higher on the Mac. The version of Chrome that will do this will be Chrome 22, which has just been seeded into the dev channel for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome Frame users.
HP announced a raft of new Ivy Bridge desktops back in April, but it had a few more all-in-ones up its sleeve. Today the company is unveiling a mix of business- and consumer-targeted machines: the Compaq Elite 8300, Compaq Pro 6300, Envy 23 and Pavilion 23. You can choose different processors from Intel or AMD, storage and graphics. The price starts at $650 and goes up to $929.
Opera users who are administrating a blog on Blogger, Google’s free blog hosting service, receive warning notifications as of lately that the browser is no longer supported by the service. Google notes that “parts of Blogger will not work” and that users may experience problems on the site because of the browser that they are using. A test in Firefox and Internet Explorer reveal no such notification on the site or the admin dashboard.
Financial services giant MasterCard and mobile carrier Deutsche Telekom announced yesterday that they would partner to accelerate adoption of mobile payments, which allow consumers to use their mobile phones to pay for goods and services. MasterCard sees business opportunity in Deutsche Telekom's 93 million mobile customers in Europe. The companies plan to begin in Poland and Germany, Deutsche Telekom's home country.
Google took the wraps off of Chrome for the iPhone and iPad, complete with the omnibar that allows for instant searches, pre-fetching pages, and swipe gestures to manage and close tabs, all on your iPhone or iPad. Hot on the heels of Chrome for Android coming out of beta, Chrome for the iPhone and iPad both sync bookmarks, history, open tabs, and even saved passwords for web pages with other instances of Chrome, including desktop and Android devices. Chrome for iOS also supports incognito mode for private browsing.