Latest Technology News

Remember Google Chrome? The new browser that was one of Betanews' Top 20 Stories of 2008, and certainly across the Internet as a whole? Well, after the initial hype that Chrome (and its subsequent first vulnerabilities) caused, the browser quietly broke the 1 percent mark of browser share this month. Google this week released updates addressing one moderate, and one severe security threat, and provides fixes for Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail.

The Moderate security update addresses a cross-site scripting vulnerability linked to the Adobe Reader plugin, and the severe update is for a bug in the V8 JavaScript engine that could allow malicious users to "clickjack" sensitive information by bypassing same-origin checks.

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comScore data released this week showed online casual gaming has reached 86 million users in 2008, an increase of 27% year over year. Additionally, the time individual users spend on gaming sites increased 42%.

Casual gaming is the category where Yahoo is definitely king, with 19.5 million unique visits in December, a 20% increase over 2007 and 4 million visits more than second place EA Online, and 6 million more than Disney Games, which holds third place.

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President Obama's TIGR (Technology, Innovation and Government Reform) team has already extolled the merits of mashups, and now we're seeing the beginnings of mashup language RDFa take root on WhiteHouse.gov.

Viewing the site's copyright policy source reveals the use of RDFa tags such as xmlns,and property. These provide a set of XHTML attributes (metadata) to augment the visual data with information meant for other machines to read, recognize and catalog.

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ABI research released the results of a survey today called "U.S. Consumer Interest in Netbooks," which found that of more than 1000 netbook users, only 11% used theirs as their primary household computer.

Sales of netbooks in 2008 were in excess of 11 million, and analysts began to track the effect it was having on notebook and desktop sales. In November, marketing executives from Acer and Asus estimated between 8-20% of netbook buyers were lost notebook sales.

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T-Mobile's Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations Neville Ray was quoted yesterday in an interview as saying: "We will be launching more G series phones and other products. You will see us launch a data card product. This will be happening in the coming weeks and months."

Ray discussed T-Mobile's expanded 3G coverage in the U.S., and elaborated a bit on the company's plans for its AWS spectrum, saying, "We did purchase a large volume of spectrum and doubled our spectrum assets in the U.S. with the 1700 MHz spectrum and 2100 MHz spectrum. We effectively doubled our assets. So the network we are launching uses 10 MHz of spectrum and we have 30 MHz so we have headroom to grow. There also are spectrum efficiencies with HSPA and HSPA+.

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In a sweeping proposal yesterday, the UK's communications and technology minister, Lord Carter, has proposed a system whereby all citizens are guaranteed broadband Internet service with as much as 2 Mbps bandwidth, by 2012.

The interim report entitled "Digital Britain," published officially by the country's Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform (PDF available here), outlines a possibility for ministers in Parliament and the Prime Minister to consider. Just as the government mandated mail service to all citizens in 1840, and basic online data service to all citizens in 1984 under what the UK calls a universal service obligation, the report -- written with the blessing of Lord Carter -- suggests a similar USO be applied for broadband service.

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While it's unofficial, the long rumored but still unannounced Sidekick LX 2009 could well include 3G support, GPS with turn-by-turn instructions, and more, according to a detailed spec sheet that appeared online.

The spec sheet -- spotted and captured by a blog reader when she took a survey on QuizPoints -- also shows that T-Mobile's LX 2009 will come with Microsoft Live Local Search and Maps. An accompanying photo reveals a device with a thin design and a large QWERTY keyboard.

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Though the fellows sounding the warning today are the best in the business, it didn't take a lot of know-how to develop a proof-of-concept that the new User Access Control panel can be disabled by VBScript.

Windows 7 is still in the public beta process, and will be for some months to come. The purpose of true beta testing is to isolate and identify serious problems (we should know). So it's to any researcher's credit that a potentially threatening problem be brought into the open prior to Microsoft finalizing the code for everyday use.

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Google's GDrive -- a rumored forthcoming service for storing personal software files on cloud-based Google servers -- looks likely to launch soon, if a reference in a file used by GooglePack is a good indication.

GDrive's "localized product category" is "online file backup and storage," according to the newly discovered description in the file. It also offers a two-line "localized short description" for the long anticipated GGDrive service, which is seen by some as ultimately eliminating the need for storing personal data on PC hard drives.

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Networking and Telecommunications researchers The Dell'Oro Group published a report yesterday forecasting the next five years for DWDM in long haul fiber optic networks that expects the market for 40 Gbps wavelengths to grow by 50% every year. Short for Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, DWDM is an optical technology used to fit more traffic (thus making it "dense" with signals) on existing fiber optic backbones.

This week, General Cable Corp and Fujitsu won their bid for a 1,000 mile long haul submarine fiber optic cable project connecting the Indonesian islands of Kalimantan and Sulawesi. That project is scheduled for completion in mid-2010.

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This Morning, Japanese electronics company NEC posted its third quarter earnings, showing a ¥124.8 billion drop year-over-year. Part of the cost-cutting measures the company announced today included workforce reductions to its chip, component, and LCD divisions, which will total 20,000 employees. 60% of these layoffs will take place outside of Japan, and the majority of those cut will be full-time employees. All cuts are expected to be completed before March 2010.

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Like Acer, number two computer company Dell is expected to unveil its long-rumored smartphone products at GSMA in Barcelona on February 16. According to Wall Street Journal reports, Dell has been working for over a year on Android and Windows Mobile devices and will have prototypes to show off at the convention, one of which is a touchphone, the other a slider of some sort. Details remain scant, but when Dell enters the smartphone business it will mean all of the US top five computer manufacturers will be represented in the mobile handset sector.

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Microsoft reps call it an illustration of the company's efforts for increasing platform interoperability, but you could also say it's another sign that the company's entirely serious about making headway in the search wars: Ladies and gentlemen, a Live Search browser add-in... for Firefox.

As per the image shamelessly hijacked above from the Port 25 blog, it's pretty simple stuff, enabling query suggestions in a small search box at the upper right of the browser window. It's more eyecatching behind the scenes, where (as lead program manager Alessandro Catorcini points out) the 2.0 version of the Live Search API supports multiple protocols (JSON, XML, SOAP), as opposed to Google's AJAX-only search API. Developers will recognize the project as being in the wheelhouse of Project Silk Road.

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A study just out from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that whatever your grumpy grandparent or eye-rolling teen claims, the Internet is for everybody, young and old.

In fact, some functions -- and not just the ones you'd expect -- aren't remotely the province of only the Young And Free-Time Blessed. The survey found that Generation Y (born 1977-1990) and teens are the biggest users of blogging, social networking, and instant messaging. And older users seek information and use email more frequently. But Gen Y and the GI Generation (born before 1937) seek out health information at almost exactly the same rate online -- 68% versus 67%. 31% of both the 12-17 crowd and Gen X (born 1965-1976) download videos. And there's barely five percentage points of difference between the crowd least likely to make travel reservations online (the GI Generation and Gen Y, tied at 65%) and the generation most likely (Gen X, 70%).

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On NASA's annual Day of Remembrance for the astronauts (and cosmonauts) who died in the effort to conquer space, the space agency put forth a call to action that might interest even earthbound geeks. They're looking for tech projects in need of testing in near-weightless conditions.

The FAST (Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training) program is seeking tech projects to take up in high-flying parabolic aircraft. It's a public-private collaboration -- the planes are owned and flown by outfits such as the Zero Gravity Corporation, and managed by the Johnson Space Center's Reduced Gravity Office. (We now pause while you enjoy the mental image the name engenders.)

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