Well, hell, maybe Google is serious about all this open stuff, after all. As part of the massive Google sites makeover now underway -- of which the + social service and gmail clutter cleanup are part -- there is a new utility for sucking all your precious data out of the search and information giant's services. Hey, it's your data. Shouldn't you be able to take it anywhere?

The Data Liberation Front video above introduces this new thing -- Google Takeout. It's more than a utility. Google Takeout is a movement. I mean that. This whole data portability thing clearly stems from Google's so-called "Open Principles". There is a Data Liberation Front website, blog and Twitter feed.

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On July 6, Facebook is hosting an event where it will unveil an unnamed new product, which TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington says will be an in-browser video chat client from Skype.

Though we haven't yet received an acknowledgement of this report today from Facebook or Skype, Arrington's proclamation is entirely plausible.

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Los Angeles Times reporters Jessica Guynn and Dawn Chmielewski claim that Google "is in preliminary talks to buy online video pioneer Hulu, people familiar with the situation said". Microsoft and Yahoo also are suitors. Last week, Hulu went on the selling block, setting off a tizzy of speculation about whom -- and rumors, just like this one.

Generally, when negotiations are serious, they never leak out, and "preliminary" means just that. Companies have preliminary talks every day about partnerships and acquisitions that go nowhere. Talk is cheap. Buying a company isn't, which is one of many reasons why leaks about talks generally mean nothing more or that one side or the other seeks leverage. The leak about Google could be purposely done to get a more serious suitor to ante up more cash.

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A lot of the easy money in Internet attacks is gone. Now you have to do some homework and pick your targets more carefully to get a rewarding rate of return on your crimes.

A report from Cisco says that the nature of attacks on the Internet is changing. Dumb, old-fashioned mass-spammed attacks, and spam itself, are losing their financial motivation and decreasing in frequency.

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Zynga, the Maryland-based social gaming company responsible for such popular time-wasters as FarmVille, CityVille, and Mafia Wars, filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange commission on Friday that values the company at one billion dollars.

In the company's S-1 filing with the SEC today, it neatly lined up all the important statistics that led to the billion dollar valuation: 232 million monthly active users, 60 million daily active users engaging in 2 billion minutes of play per day. When tallied, that amounts to 3805 years worth of gameplay every single day.

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But can IE9 and Windows 7 help defy gravity?

First of the month means fresh browser usage data from NetApplications. Despite all the hoopla about IE9, Internet Explorer's share, as measured in usage, declined (again) in June -- to 53.68 percent from 54.27 percent in May and 55.11 percent in April. Internet Explorer 9 launched in March.

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Wristwatch blog ablogtoread.com caught the exclusive debut of Tag Heuer's Link Smartphone, another device in the very small "Luxury Android" category that carries an almost $7,000 pricetag.

Tag Heuer is a division of the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy luxury goods conglomerate, and this is only its second luxury mobile phone.

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Bankrupt Canadian telecommunications company Nortel Networks Corp. has been slowly selling off its assets since 2009, and this year it put its most valuable intellectual property up for auction: essential patents for approximately 6,000 telecommunications and Internet technologies, including fundamental patents included in the LTE wireless standard.

In 2009, Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazardis called these patents a "national treasure that Canada must not lose."

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One of the biggest problems with instant messaging is that not everyone uses the same network. Typically you'll have friends who swear by Windows Live on the one hand, while others refuse to budge from Yahoo Messenger on the other. Throw in the growing popularity of alternative mediums like Facebook and Twitter, and keeping track of your online buddies' movements can be tricky.

Instantbird 1.0 aims to bring together many of these disparate networks and services under one roof, and while not as polished as more established multi-network clients like Trillian and Pidgin, its close links to Mozilla makes us confident the program will evolve into a powerful alternative to these programs in time.

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The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 3.4.1, a landmark update for its open-source, multi-platform office application. With its release, LibreOffice 3.4.1 is now the recommended build for all users except large enterprises, thanks to the bug fixes and improved stability that provide the focus of the release.

LibreOffice is an off-shoot of the OpenOffice project, development of which has stalled since many developers switched across to LibreOffice when it was launched in September, 2010.

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My whole Google experience is changing around me. Today I started using Google+, which brings a fresh -- and I'd say quite attractive -- look to the default search page. It's as functional as pleasing. Looks like the makeover just starts there. Google is freshening up other services, too, including Gmail. For the first time ever, I want to use this service in a browser.

"We're embarking on a series of interface updates to help strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as beautiful as it is powerful", Jason Cornwell, Google user experience designer, writes in a blog posted late this evening Eastern Time. Changes will occur gradually over a few months.

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Except for perhaps a complete collapse of its share value or meteor striking its headquarters, Research in Motion couldn't have had a more troubling day. An anonymous executive released a scathing letter, while the Waterloo, Ontario-based company made concessions to stave off an investor revolt.

NEI Investments had planned to make a proposal during RIM's annual General Meeting for shareholders that would have separated the company's leadership, if adopted. Right now, RIM has co-CEOs, who have come under fire as the BlackBerry platform burns beneath them. From NEI's perspective perhaps, two heads aren't better than one. Shareholders could have separated the roles of CEO and chairman and set up an independent chair. Today, RIM agreed to establish an independent committee for realigning top leadership, and NEI withdrew its proposal planned for the July 12 meeting.

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The free cloud applications, particularly Google spreadsheets, are gaining popularity as a phishing platform. I knew the Google Docs spreadsheet was good for something.

One of the main jobs of a phishing site in selling itself is to come from a trustworthy domain, and that's why Google Apps is so popular. Nobody is going to block *.google.com or even spreadsheets.google.com. So not only will some people be more inclined to believe that a phishing page is genuine, but it's less likely to be blocked by reputation systems. You even get to use HTTPS on your attack page, courtesy of Google.

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Up until now, those fighting against botnets have had some measurable success in taking them down. However, the newest botnet on the block may be a hard nut to crack, and at least one security firm is calling it nearly indestructible.

Kaspersky Labs says the TDL botnet contains about 4.5 million computers, and uses a variety of measures to avoid detection by antivirus programs. Furthermore, communications between an infected PC and the host are encrypted, making it harder to decode what the botnet may be doing, and it disables other malware.

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Today, Twitter revealed the 200 millon figure via its official blog. It's an amazing feat, up from 2 million in January 2009 and 65 million a year ago. But what if more people tweeted?

I've had my Twitter account since sometime in mid 2006. Most techies I know tweet. But we're a minority, at least in the United States. According to Pew Internet, fifty-nine percent of US Internet users, or 47 percent of all adults, have used a social networking service, like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Among that number only 13 percent use Twitter compared to 92 percent for Facebook.

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