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.
October 26 will be the date Windows 8 will be available preloaded on new PCs and also to those purchasing it through one of the upgrade programs Microsoft has announced recently. Microsoft officials shared the exact date on July 18 with the thousands of Microsoft salespeople attending the Microsoft Global Exchange Conference in Atlanta, according to a July 18 post on the Windows team blog.
In a largely expected move, Google has announced that today it will discontinue the old version of Google Analytics, which it has continued to support for much of the past year after introducing a new version. Google released a new version of the Web visitor statistic service last September that focused on real-time results but kept a link to the old version at the bottom of the page. That link will be retired today, Google announced.
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.
Microsoft's Office 2013 reaches its public Consumer Preview milestone yesterday, available for end users to test on Windows 7 and Windows 8 PCs. Microsoft is calling its Office 2013 suite, codenamed Office 15, a "modern" version of the software that is used on a billion PCs worldwide. Cloud-connected and designed to work well on Windows 8 tablets, Office 2013 signals a shift to document collaboration and anywhere any device access. Notably, Microsoft is introducing an on-demand subscription version of Office 2013 that can be streamed from any Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC, with the ability to sync settings and documents.
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.
Microsoft has launched Bing Fund, an angel fund with an incubator program that will make Microsoft resources available to startups and potentially provide it with acquisition targets in the future, Microsoft said. Bing Fund is an angel fund for startups "building online or mobile experiences." Eligible startups must be mature enough to have a business plan and a working prototype of their product, according to Microsoft. They must also have momentum.
Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 is a color grading software program that used to cost upwards of $20,000 when it was sold as a professional stand-alone package from Iridas. But following that company purchase by Adobe, SpeedGrade is now included with the CS6 Production Premium, Master Collection, and Creative Cloud bundles, or sold separately for $999. Using what Adobe calls the Lumetri Deep Color Engine, SpeedGrade allows you to perform professional color grading on your video footage either in its raw format or as an edited composition derived from Premiere Pro CS6.