By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
September 1, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Google on Monday said that a recent report claiming it failed to patch a third of the serious bugs in its software had the facts wrong.

IBM’s X-Force security company, which released the report last week, acknowledged the error and issued a revised chart that shows Google patched all the vulnerabilities rated “critical” or “high” in its online services.

“We questioned a number of surprising findings concerning Google’s vulnerability rate and response record, and after discussions with IBM, we discovered a number of errors that had important implications for the report’s conclusions,” said Adam Mein, a security program manager at Google, in an entry on a company blog .

Last week, X-Force’s report claimed that 9% of all Google bugs disclosed in the first half of 2010 were unpatched, and 33% of the vulnerabilities ranked as critical or high had not been fixed.

According to IBM’s revised tabulations, Google patched every vulnerability revealed in the first six months of this year.

“After we released our trend report … we received feedback from two software vendors regarding the severity and remedy information for some of the vulnerabilities behind this chart,” said Tom Cross, a researcher with X-Force, in a mea culpa blog posted on Saturday. “As a consequence of this feedback, we have manually reassessed the CVSS scoring, remedy information, and vendor information for every vulnerability that impacted the percentages that appear in this chart.”

Cross’ blog post included a revamped table that showed the new numbers.

Although Cross did not name the other vendor that complained about the patching results, Sun Microsystem’s numbers also changed dramatically. Where the original table had Sun letting 24% of all first-half 2010 bugs and 9% of the most serious flaws go unfixed, the recalculated figures were 8% and 0%, respectively. The changes dropped Sun from the vendor with the largest percentage of unpatched vulnerabilities to the one in fifth place.

In April, Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun for $7.4 billion ; X-Force listed the two companies’ vulnerabilities separately.

Other vendors’ unpatched percentages also decreased after X-Force re-examined its data, including Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s, as did the catch-all category of Linux.

What caught Google’s eye, said Mein, was X-Force’s assertion that one-in-three critical bugs had not been patched.

“We learned after investigating that the 33% figure referred to a single unpatched vulnerability out of a total of three — and importantly, the one item that was considered unpatched was only mistakenly considered a security vulnerability due to a terminology mix-up,” Mein said.

Mein pointed to a 2009 blog post by Jonathan Ness, a member of Microsoft’s security team, as proof of what he called mistaken identity. Ness’ blog discussed the difference between “stack overflows” and “stack buffer overflows,” and said the former were not security vulnerabilities because they could not be used on their own to insert attack code onto a PC.

It’s not unusual for software vendors to dispute the findings of independent security researchers. Mozilla, for instance, has repeatedly disagreed with reports that claim Firefox has more bugs than rival browsers, calling some of those reports “misleading” because Mozilla’s open-source approach requires that all vulnerabilities be disclosed while Apple and Microsoft can fix flaws without revealing that they were ever there.

At times, developers also quarrel with researchers over the severity of a bug, or even whether a flaw should be labeled a vulnerability. More than two years ago, Microsoft first claimed that a Windows bug was a “design flaw,” then weeks later changed its mind and called it a security problem.

X-Force has also had problems with its vulnerability counts and calculations. In the report it issued last week, the company admitted that the methodology it used to compile the 2009 edition was flawed and said it had corrected the problem to make the results more accurate in the mid-2010 report.

Cross said that X-Force would release a revised report this week.

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
August 27, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - With Microsoft and Yahoo officially teaming up in the search market this week, it’s time to wait and see if this move could eat into Google ’s hearty lead over its top opponents.

Microsoft and Yahoo announced Tuesday that Bing is totally fueling Yahoo search results in the U.S. and Canada. The search integration comes more than a year after both companies announced that they were joining forces to better take on Google, the goliath of the search industry.

It will be a while before there are any numbers to show how the pair is fairing against Google , said Hadley Reynolds, an analyst at market research firm IDC. However he said the launch was a positive start.

“It’s important for Microsoft and Yahoo that the shift from Yahoo search to Bing for organic results took place smoothly this week — apparently without any technical breakdowns,” Reynolds said. “These transitions are dicey in any software environment, and the fact that Yahoo and Bing pulled off the project successfully should build confidence among search marketers and advertisers.”

With the 10-year deal, Yahoo gave up its own longstanding search technology in lieu of using Microsoft’s fairly new Bing search engine to power all searches on the various Yahoo sites.

Both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission approved the search agreement earlier this year.

This week’s announcement marks a first step in putting the agreement into action. Satya Nadella, a senior vice president at Microsoft, noted in a blog post that at this point, Bing is only powering results in English in the U.S. and Canada. The setup is expected to expand into other languages and regions in coming months.

Yahoo users should expect to see few, if any, differences in their searches. What could change is the level of competition that Google faces.

“With Yahoo’s moving their volume of search users to Bing, it makes it a much more level playing field for Bing vs. Google ,” said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. “While the combined Microsoft and Yahoo search traffic is still significantly lower than what Google drives, it’s much larger than the two had on their own. This gives Bing better numbers to show advertisers and a chance to cut into Google’s lead.”

Neither Bing nor Yahoo separately has had any luck cutting into Google’s lead in the search market. Google captured 65.8% of the search market in July, according to market research company ComScore. Yahoo had 17.1% and Bing had 11%, ComScore reported.

The plan, then was for Bing and Yahoo to hitch their teams together and to make a reinforced assault on Google’s gates.

“This probably saved Yahoo, who, without the removal of the cost related to search and the influx of Microsoft revenue, would likely be gone by now,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group. “For Microsoft, it puts them in the search game but by creating a stronger competitor…. The onslaught against Google began when Microsoft basically wrote a blank check to Yahoo to fund the battle. But this [week's integration] will represent the biggest win Microsoft ever got in one move.”

Olds said Google should look over its shoulder and pick up the pace on search innovation if it wants to maintain its expansive lead.

“Now that Microsoft and Yahoo’s teaming up on search has become a reality, it’s definitely something that Google will take notice of and react to,” he added. “Both Microsoft and Yahoo have moved from also-ran status to a credible threat in terms of their traffic and technology.”

Olds also noted that Microsoft has deep pockets and probably can afford to invest in the search competition for years.

“For Google, search is the cash cow that supports everything else they do,” Olds noted. “Microsoft’s situation and perspective is different. They have their existing software franchises to generate money. This will put more pressure on Google’s profitability over time.”

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By Preston Gralla
Computerworld (US)
August 24, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - By some very important measures, Microsoft’s best days are behind it. Once the dominant technology company in the world, it has fallen behind — even far behind — in the market’s biggest growth areas: the Internet and mobile devices. True, it remains dominant on the desktop and in office suites, but that’s not where the growth is these days.

When it comes to the Internet, it trails far behind Google. And when it comes to mobile devices, it has fallen far behind both Apple with the iPhone and iPod, and Google with Android-based phones.

In fact, a milestone was passed back in May, when Apple overtook Microsoft in total valuation. Soon, it is expected to pass Microsoft in revenue as well.

SHOULD MICROSOFT SIMPLY GIVE UP, AND ACCEPT THAT ITS GLORY DAYS ARE OVER?

Certainly not. The technology market changes quickly, and companies can leapfrog competitors, even seemingly entrenched ones, with the right mix of strategy and products. Here is my modest proposal for two steps Microsoft can take to try and regain its technology dominance.

Step #1: Tear down the walls

Microsoft has become large and unwieldy, bedeviled by red tape, bureaucracy and political infighting. In my last column, I showed how infighting and bureaucracy at Microsoft led to the Kin mobile phone disaster, while Google, using technology from the same engineer who had developed the guts of the Kin, rushed ahead and succeeded with Android.

That’s far from the only instance of these kinds of problems. The Web-based version of Microsoft Office, for example, was not able to make use of the superb Windows Live Sync technology at its launch, even though it would have given the product a feature that Google couldn’t match. Why wasn’t Windows Live Sync included? The development cycles of Office and Windows Live Sync didn’t match. Microsoft could easily have incorporated the then-existing version of Windows Live Sync into Office. Instead, it has to wait until the development cycle of Windows Live Sync proceeds.

Microsoft should turn its engineers, designers and product managers loose, and make them entrepreneurial. If they need to step on the toes of other Microsoft products and technologies, or even filch them for their own use, so be it. That’s the only way Microsoft will be able to develop technologies its competitors can’t match. The company has some of the best engineers in the world. Microsoft should use them to their fullest capabilities.

Step #2: Kill the Windows brand

Microsoft’s vast wealth and success is built on top of Windows. But Windows is also holding the company back when it comes to the future, both in the eyes of consumers, and in the company’s own product development. Microsoft should continue to develop Window as an operating system, and should still call it Windows. But it shouldn’t force its other important products to carry the Windows name or even necessarily use Windows technologies.

The Windows Live brand is a perfect example. It’s not at all clear what the “Windows Live” brand is supposed to mean. It’s an unrelated set of Web services and downloadable software, most of which have nothing to do with Windows. What does Windows Live Hotmail, for example, have to do with Windows? Not a thing, given that you can use it with other operating systems, such as Mac OS X. Giving it the Windows name only confuses consumers.

The same holds true for the Windows Phone. In the past, forcing its mobile operating system to be Windows-like has hurt Microsoft; it’s one of the reasons the iPhone and Android both leapfrogged Microsoft in smartphones.

Microsoft should reconsider forcing almost everything it does to use the Windows brand and fit into the Windows ecosystem. Dropping that framework would give it a fresh chance with consumers, and allow its designers and developers to take a fresh look at the products they create.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
August 20, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Google began previewing on Wednesday a spruced-up API to access Google Analytics configuration data.

Google Analytics gives users insights into Web site traffic and marketing effectiveness. Described as a significant new piece of the Google Analytics developer platform, the Google Analytics Management API offers read-only access to Google Analytics configuration data and consists of five new Google Data Feeds that map directly into the Google Analytics data model, said Jeetendra M. Soneja, of the Google Analytics API team, in a blog post on Wednesday. Read-only access is offered to account, profile, Web property and goal data as well as to advanced segments.

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While the previous API returned all configuration data at once, which could be inefficient, the separate feeds enable developers to request only needed data, said Soneja.

“Many developers have asked for a faster, more powerful way to access Google Analytics account configuration data through the Data Export API. We’ve listened and today we’re releasing a preview of the new Google Analytics Management API,” Soneja said.

“The API will change, grow, and get better over time. We recommend developers who aren’t committed to making updates to their applications only experiment with the new API and continue to use the Account Feed as their primary source for configuration data. We will strive to give you at least one month advanced notice of changes to this API,” Soneja said.

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By Fred O’Connor
IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)
August 17, 2010

BOSTON - The reign of Hewlett-Packard’s former CEO Mark Hurd was bookended by scandal — only where the first one, in which the HP board was caught spying on journalists and others, allowed Hurd to consolidate power and nab the chairman’s job, the second has sent him packing. Meanwhile, Oracle has sued Google, claiming that the Android mobile OS infringes on patents it acquired from Sun Microsystems.

1. Actress in HP scandal sorry Hurd lost his job: The actress who brought sexual harassment charges against former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd said she was surprised that the allegations cost him his job. Jodie Fisher, an actress and reality television contestant, released a statement on Sunday in which she came out as the person who brought the claims against Hurd. Fisher worked for HP as a contractor and attended executive summits and major client meetings. Late last Friday HP announced that Hurd had resigned from the company, saying that he did not violate HP’s sexual harassment policy but did violate its standards of business conduct. Hurd filed inaccurate expense reports to conceal his personal, nonsexual relationship with Fisher and paid her for work she did not perform, according to statements from HP.

2. Google, Verizon make net neutrality proposal: Last week’s rumors of network neutrality talks between Google and Verizon turned out to be true. But contrary to media reports, neither company wants to create a business arrangement. Instead, Google and Verizon on Monday released a proposal that would allow the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to enforce some network neutrality rules. The proposal would bar ISPs (Internet service providers) from blocking or slowing Internet traffic and allow the FCC to fine offenders up to US$2 million. Network neutrality fans knocked the proposal, saying the measure does nothing to keep the Web open and is ineffective since it does not cover wireless broadband.

3. Oracle sues Google over Java use in Android: Google’s Android mobile-phone OS infringes on Oracle’s Java software patents, according to a lawsuit that Oracle filed against the search company. Oracle’s lawsuit claims that Google knowingly infringed its Java technology, which Oracle acquired when it bought Sun. An analyst said that Google developed Android without using Sun technology and that the success of Android phones served as a catalyst for the lawsuit.

4. Microsoft’s 30-day forecast: Stormy exploits expected: IT administrators may want to rethink summer holiday plans after Microsoft issued its monthly security update on Tuesday. Of the 32 flaws that Microsoft rated on how likely they are to be exploited, 18 of them were labeled as very likely to be exploited. Popular Microsoft products like Office 2007, Internet Explorer, Silverlight and Windows all received patches.

5. Skype files IPO registration with SEC: Internet telephony company Skype looks to raise $100 million through an initial public offering, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, formerly part of online retailer eBay after an acquisition, will use the funds for “general business purposes” and to grow its user base.

6. New Android malware texts premium-rate numbers: Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered the first malware program that targets the Android mobile OS. The application presents itself as a media player but sends text messages to the number of the hacker who created the software. However, Android phone owners outside of Russia don’t need to fret over their phones’ security just yet. The application isn’t available in the Android Market, and so far the program has only appeared on phones sold in Russia and on mobile networks in that country.

7. Dell’s Streak tablet to go on sale Aug. 12: Dell’s Streak, a device that the company describes as a tablet PC but has smartphone features, will be available to U.S. consumers on Friday. The device is already available in the U.K. Dell says the device’s 5-inch screen will offer better multimedia experiences than smartphones with smaller screens.

8. Twitter launches the Tweet Button: Twitter launched the Tweet Button, which aims to ease the process of posting Web links to the social media site. By installing the button on their sites, Web publishers will allow users to share URLs without leaving the page or switching browser tabs. Clicking the Tweet Button launches a pop-up window that allows users to access their Twitter accounts, presents a shortened URL and permits people to post the information to their accounts.

9. AT&T, Verizon cashing in outside of phones: Data services are contributing more to the bottom line of U.S. mobile carriers thanks to the rash of e-readers, tablet PCs and other consumer electronics devices on the market. In the second quarter U.S. mobile penetration exceeded 100 percent, according to an industry consultant. The increase of iPads, Kindles and other non-phone devices connecting to data networks helped U.S. mobile operators earn 31 percent of their second-quarter revenue from mobile data services.

10. Oracle provides Sparc road map, but questions remain: Oracle this week also discussed plans for another piece of technology it acquired from Sun. Oracle described the five-year plan for updating the processors in its Sparc-based server line. Oracle offered details on the servers to counter customer concerns that it was abandoning their development. Oracle also has plans for Sun’s Solaris OS and will ship Solaris 11, the software’s next major update, in 2011. However, questions remain over the fate of both lines of Sparc processors since only plans for the overall chip family were discussed.

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
August 17, 2010

TAIPEI - A new startup funded by major chip makers and investment firms is taking aim at electricity bills, the biggest cost in data centers.

Smooth-Stone, which on Monday announced it secured US$48 million in new funding, plans to use mobile phone microprocessors inside the high-powered computer servers used in data centers to lower their electric bills. The chips will be an alternative to server chips such as those based on x86 technology from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

The headlines Smooth-Stone has already garnered, Start-up Aims to Slay Chip Goliath, and, An atom bomb aimed at Intel, suggest the technology will be available soon and effortlessly.

But the reality is it might take a while. The company faces stiff competition and several daunting technological challenges in its quest to build good server chips using mobile phone processing cores.

There are already companies developing such chips, including Marvell Technology and a company Google recently acquired, Agnilux, which could have products out soon. And there’s the issue of taking on Intel, a company with a history of crushing rivals.

The excitement around Smooth-Stone appears to be coming from the fact that the company has won funding from a group of investors that includes chip makers Arm Holdings, Texas Instruments, and the major investor in GlobalFoundries, ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Company).

“This kind of investment, the amount, and the strength of this syndicate is a strong endorsement for the innovation we are bringing to market,” said Smooth-Stone CEO Barry Evans, in a statement. Evans used to work for Marvell as vice president and general manager of its cellular and handheld group, which Marvell acquired from Intel a few years earlier.

“The capital will be applied directly to the final development and market delivery of high performance, low-power chips that will change the server market and the makeup of data centers,” the statement says.

The problem Smooth-Stone is trying to solve is serious, especially in the new world of cloud computing, which is requiring more data centers. The powerful processors inside data center servers require a lot of electricity to run and give off a lot of heat. That heat leads to even more power use in data centers via the air conditioners and other cooling methods used to keep them from overheating and shutting down.

The most popular processors used inside mobile phones, and the ones Smooth-Stone and others are aiming to use in servers, come from Arm, a company with a keen focus on low-energy processors for devices that need batteries.

But Arm’s focus on mobile phones also means there are limitations the chips will have to overcome, mainly in software and calculating speeds.

The software issue is the more serious of the two because many programs for servers are written to run on x86-based processors and would have to be rewritten for Arm’s RISC-based (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) chips. It’s not a major challenge, but it would add cost and time to the effort.

Arm cores are also still made for 32-bit computing only, not 64-bit computing, a direction the IT industry is moving more speedily toward.

Arm is working to improve chip performance due to the industry move to put its cores in servers, said Mike Inglis, general manager of Arm’s processing division, during an interview in June.

But he also said the use of Arm processing cores in server-based chips is a concept being tested and could take a few years to play out. “I think the press has gotten too excited with the server discussion with Arm,” he said.

Still, Marvell plans to launch its first server chips with Arm cores later this year, a company representative said. And it has put multiple Arm processing cores inside its server chips to better compete against those made by Intel, a strategy other companies could use.

Marvell will put out a quad-core chip based on Arm’s Cortex-A9 processors to compete with Intel on speed.

“The server market, which is currently dominated by x86 processors, continues to be plagued by concerns of growing power consumption. Marvell, by exploiting ARM’s low-power technology, hopes to make inroads into the server territory with its new offering that promises a fivefold reduction in power consumption and an on-par performance compared with an x86 processor,” wrote Gartner analyst Ganesh Ramamoorthy, in a report.

Smooth-Stone and other companies looking to enter the fray could adopt a similar approach with multiple Arm cores.

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By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld (US)
August 13, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - The Open Compliance Program announced by the Linux Foundation on Tuesday is a response to the surging growth in the use of open source technologies within enterprises, and by makers of consumer electronic and mobile devices, analysts say.

Much of the program appears to be directed at addressing what many analysts said is a continuing confusion among makers of embedded devices about open source licensing requirements. But enterprises can benefit from the program as well, they added.

The Linux Foundation, a non-profit group that is focused on fostering Linux growth, announced a set of open source tools, training materials and a self-assessment checklist , designed to help companies comply with open source license requirements.

The program is supported by several large vendors, including Google , Novell, IBM , HP and Intel . Also supporting the effort are organizations such as the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), which provides free legal representation for developers of open source software, and gpl-violations.org which is focused on raising awareness of open source license violations.

The impetus for the initiative comes from the skyrocketing use of Linux as an embedded operating system in mobile, consumer electronic and numerous other products, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the foundation.

The goal is to help companies fulfill their license obligations in as straightforward and low-cost a manner as possible, Zemlin said in a conversation with Computerworld today.

“Market adoption of open source software has reached a scale that is unprecedented,” Zemlin said. Companies ranging from embedded systems manufactures, to those with large super-computer clusters are all using open source software these days because of the cost and technology benefits, Zemlin said.

Many though appear not to understand or be fully-informed about their obligations to share their source code with the broad community as they are required to, he said.

“The Linux kernel alone has a $10 billion value, and that value comes from the fact that people are sharing it,” he said. The compliance program will ensure that all of the technical and cost benefits that companies are deriving from open source software “is matched by their ability to comply with the legal requirements of open source licenses,” Zemlin said.

Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and a law professor at Columbia Law School said the new effort is being driven largely by what’s happening in the embedded world.

Most of the violations that the SFLC has observed and pursued have occurred among manufactures of embedded devices, Moglen said. In most cases, the violations stemmed from a lack of experience in open source use. Enterprise use of open source software for the most part appears to be more mature and in line with open source license practices, he said.

What the Linux Foundation is doing is “to provide operations advice that should make it easier for device manufactures and distributors to comply with Free and Open Source Software license at minimum cost,” Moglen said.

But enterprises that are using open source technologies will also benefit from the Linux Foundation’s newly released tools for identifying and reporting source code components, and for ensuring that the code is safe and ready for public consumption.

“Companies wanting to use or contribute to the open source world are complex mixes of developers, business management, and operational management such as the internal legal team,” said Stephen Walli, technical director of CodePlex Foundation, a non-profit that facilitates exchange of code among software companies and open source communities.

The Open Compliance Program will increase corporate contribution and participation in the open source world, and alleviate some of the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that surrounds open source licensing, he said.

“I think the Open Compliance Program is an important next step in the industry as more and more companies use and contribute to the open source software ecosystem,” Walli said.

“There’s a growing maturity and understanding in the software industry around intellectual property practices over the past two decades, but that understanding isn’t uniformly present across all participants,” he said. “The OCP fills that gap providing tools and education for all to use.”

The Open Compliance Program comes at a time when there are indications that adoption of open source software may have reached a turning point. A survey by Accenture of 300 IT managers in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland showed 69% expected investments in open source tools to increase this year, while about 40% said they planned on migrating mission-critical software to open source in a year.

More than 75% of the survey respondents cited quality as a primary driver of open source adoption.

The Linux Foundation’s move highlights problems being raised by the continued broadening of Linux and open source use, said Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group.

While it has extended to new markets and devices, open source software and its licensing model … are still very new to many organizations and verticals, so this type of compliance and facilitation,” is needed for continued growth, Lyman said.

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
August 12, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - It looks like Google may be looking for a new online fight.

While the search giant has been engaged in a drawn-out and heated battle with Microsoft , it seems to be prepping for war on yet another front: by taking on social networking behemoth Facebook .

“I think it’s obvious that Google wants to become the primary — if not only — stop on the Internet,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “Which means they need to not only dominate search, but also to become the biggest player in social networking.”

The Internet has been abuzz with speculation that Google is getting ready to take another plunge into the burgeoning social networking world - this time with an online games focus. Much of the talk is based on the fact that Google recently shelled out $182 million to purchase Slide , which has developed applications for social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace.

And there’s online chatter that Google has secretly bought Jambool, a company that created a virtual currency payment product called Social Gold. Google did not reply to requests for confirmation.

However, Google’s silence hasn’t stopped industry watchers from piecing together bits of information.

“Google has said little, but their acquisitions and the rumors certainly seem to add up to the conclusion that Google is planning something big in the social networking space,” said Augie Ray, an analyst with Forrester Research. “Thus far, Google has made acquisitions and launched social applications that were largely unconnected from each other and from the core Google consumer experience. With their next and much-anticipated launch, my expectation is that we’ll see a cohesive offering that moves social into the center of the Google experience.”

The moves feed into speculation that erupted late in June when word started to circulate that Google was working to develop a social networking site executives hoped would be a Facebook-killer . Google has never confirmed the development of the site, rumored to be dubbed Google Me.

However, Ray said it would be natural for Google to work its way into social networking, and to use the popularity of online games to help it do so. Google’s decision to kill its failed Google Wave social networking and collaboration service, means the company has figured out that it needs to go after the booming social networking audience with a really big piece of bait.

And gaming could be that bait, especially for users who have their networks of family and friends already solidified on sites like Facebook.

“It is smart for Google and others to offer gaming elements as part of social strategy for a couple of reasons: First, some people — particularly younger people — enjoy social games, so these games are part of the entire picture for a social network,” say Ray, pointing to Forrester research showing one in seven adults online play social games.

“Secondly, social games offer revenue opportunities, including the sale of virtual goods, margins made on social currency purchases and in-game advertising,” he said.

But Ray doubts that Google will base an entire social network on gaming. Instead, games would likely be just part of the overall package.

Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, said Google’s less than stellar track record so far on social networking leaves him with serious misgivings about another splashy, and most likely expensive, offering.

“Google’s failure rate with these new attempts is rather impressive — and their inability to pull much revenue or profit from even the successful ones [makes that even] more so,” he added. “Given their track record, the odds are not in favor of this working out particularly well.”

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By Roger A. Grimes
InfoWorld (US)
August 6, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - If malware were biological, the world would be in the grip of the worst pandemic in history. In 2009, more than 25 million different unique malware programs were identified, more than all the malware programs ever created in all previous years (see the annual report from Panda Labs). That’s a pretty incredible statistic. Malicious programs now outnumber legitimate ones by many orders of magnitude.

The world’s largest cloud computing user? Not Microsoft, not Google, not Amazon.com. The ringleaders of the Conficker botnet, with more than 4.6 million infected computers under their control, win by a mile. Some antimalware vendors report that 48 percent of the computers they scan are infected (see page 10 of the APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report) with some sort of malware. Trojan horse programs make up 66 percent of all threats (see page 4 of the annual report from Panda Labs).

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No one need wonder what malware is trying to do: It’s trying to steal money, whether it’s through data theft, bank transfers, stolen passwords, or swiped identities. Each day, tens of millions of dollars are stolen from innocent Internet victims. And yet many computer defenders can’t tell you what the biggest threat is to their environment. If you don’t know the biggest threats, how can you defend against them properly?

Today’s malware differs dramatically from the threats we faced just 10 years ago, when most malicious programs were written by young men looking to earn cyber bragging rights. Most malware made the user aware of its existence through a displayed message, music (as in the Yankee Doodle Dandy virus family), or some other sort of harmless mischief. Those were the days.

Thoroughly modern malware
Today’s malware is written by professional criminals. In most cases, users are unwittingly tricked into executing a malicious program in the form of a Trojan horse. Users think they are installing needed software, often “recommended” by a site they trust. In fact those sites are recommending nothing of the kind. Malware producers routinely break into legitimate websites using found vulnerabilities and modify existing Web pages to include malicious JavaScript redirects. Or the malicious code is hidden inside a banner ad on a website, supplied by legitimate ad services.

Either way, when the user surfs to the legitimate website, the malicious JavaScript is loaded, and it either prompts the user to install a program or redirects the unknowing user to another website where they are told to install a program.

Trojans lead the pack
Trojans typically camouflage themselves as downloadable antivirus scanners, “needed” patches, malformed PDF files, or add-on video codecs required to display an exciting video. Most of the fake programs have the clean look and feel of a real app. Even career antimalware defenders find it hard to tell the difference between what is real and what is fake.

Fake programs are even more successful at duping victims when they appear to come from popular, well-known websites that a user has trusted and visited, without incident, for years. Or they launch from one of the popular social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, which are all the rage among the least savvy computer users. Some malware programs scan the user’s computer for vulnerable software that lacks security patches, but typically, users cause infections themselves by installing apps they should not.

This is not to rule out the obvious impact of spam, phishing, adware, or other attack methods. It’s just that computer worms, viruses, and the other methods for exploiting computers, added up all together, don’t equal the threat of the socially engineered Trojan — even though some multivector worm programs, like Conficker, have victim figures that number in the millions.

In a common scenario, the first malicious program installed is called a downloader. A downloader’s goal is to be installed on the victim’s PC and then to “phone home” to the “mothership” Web server for more instructions. The downloader often has instructions to contact a dynamic DNS server to get the mothership Web server’s current location. The dynamic DNS server is just another Trojan-infected computer installed on an innocent user’s desktop. The DNS address record received by the downloader has an address that is good for only a short time — sometimes as little as 3 minutes. These “fast flux” techniques complicate efforts to investigate or eradicate malware. The downloader will eventually be redirected to another server (which is, of course, just another compromised host) and download a new program or receive instructions. This sequence of finding and downloading new programs and instructions can go on for dozens of cycles.

Eventually, the final program and instructions will be installed on the victim’s computer, with a handful of command-and-control servers under the direction of the botnet owners. Botnets can be used by the owners themselves to steal money, to conduct distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, or to break into other computers. Often the botnet owner will rent the botnet to other criminals who then use them to do their bidding. A good example of a common bot and botnet is Mariposa. At one point, it controlled more than 13 million PCs in 190-plus countries. The masterminds of Mariposa were not ultraskilled malware writing geniuses — they were three guys who bought a botnet “kit” on the Internet for $300.

DIY kits: Tools of the trade
Do-it-yourself malware kits have been around for two decades, but now they are soup-to-nuts efficient. The typical kit can spit out (currently) undetectable malware to do the customized bidding of its owner. Using these kits is as easy as clicking a few check boxes. The resulting malware will break into websites to start infecting innocent visitors, generate enticing spam and phishing e-mails, and do everything it takes to create the botnet — including bots, dynamic DNS servers, roving mothership Web servers, and the command-and control servers.

Many of the kits are directed toward bypassing particular types of authentication and focus on particular financial institutions. The better bot kits include a sophisticated administrative back end so that the hackers can read statistics on total infections, OS versions exploited, and tricks used. For another $30, the kit creators will include 24/7 tech support.

These kits aren’t hidden. With just a little bit of searching, you can find them on the open market, often marked as “experimental” or “test-only” products. And there are plenty of “service providers” willing to help malware hackers turn their ill-gotten gains into hard cash.

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By Michael Alan Hamlin
August 2, 2010

Internet use is increasingly a lifestyle fixture throughout the Philippines according to the latest Internet usage survey conducted annually by Yahoo! and AC Nielsen. Three other findings are especially noteworthy: 1) Search, entertainment, and social networking are becoming tightly engrained in the lifestyles of Internet users; 2) While the digital divide is a concern, users across the age demographic rely on the Internet, but for different reasons: and, 3) Mobile access is going mainstream, likely due in part to low rates of home access.

Conducted in February, the survey had 1,500 respondents aged 10 and above in all regions of the Philippines. Overall, it found that 30 percent of Filipinos— more than 28 million individuals—use the Internet regularly. That’s close to the entire population of Malaysia, about five times the population of Singapore, and roughly four times the population of Hong Kong. Although the Philippines’ per capital gross domestic product is dwarfed by each of these nations, that hasn’t stopped Filipinos from going digital in significant numbers.

While Metro Manila has the highest percentage of Internet users at 40% of the population or about six million users— about equal to the population of Singapore—other urban areas showed increased Internet uage. For example, 37% of individuals living in Tuguegarao in Luzon regularly access the Internet, as does 33% of the population in the Visayas university town of Dumaguete and 29% of sprawling Davao in Mindanao.

As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “Dr Google” is users’ principal resource online, although Yahoo! and AC Nielsen didn’t exactly put it that way. Any way it’s described, search is big, with 76% of respondents indicating they use the Internet to find information online, up from 58% in last year’s survey. Internet portals (73%), instant messaging (68%), chat rooms (67%), and e-Mail (65%) are mainstream activities. Social networking wasn’t measured last year, but this year 53% of respondents said they use the Internet to visit these services.

When it comes to search, students aged 15-19 have the highest incidence of use at 84%. However, other demographic groups also rely heavily on Internet search: 76% of 10-14 year olds, 75% of 20-29 year olds, and 77% of 30-39 year olds. In fact, 58% of 40-50+ year olds participating in the study also use the Internet regularly for search. Somewhat more men, 78%, than women (73%) search online.

While 44% of these users are searching for information and documents, most are entertaining themselves, especially younger users. Overall, 62% look for images and 52% for videos, hopefully respecting intellectual property rights in the process. Another 31% are on the look for music and audio clips. Interestingly, relatively few users searched for blogs (13%), jobs (11%), and news (11%) online.

Respondents (69%) overwhelmingly rely on Internet cafés for Internet access. Slightly more respondents than last year, however, access the Internet from home, 31% compared to 27%. Access from school decreased from 7% to 4% and at work from 7% to 5%. That may be in part because mobile access is increasing, from virtually nothing last year to 5%. That shift is prevalent among young adults who can afford smart phones and high access charges. Eight percent of 20-29 year olds and 9% of 30-39 respondents regular access the Internet via mobile devices.

Social networks are prospering, with 53% of respondents visiting social networks regularly, and 30% user generated content sites—such as video sites—regularly. Among social networks, Facebook has grown rapidly in the past year. Only 4% of respondents said they used Facebook in last year’s survey, compared to 83% this year. Friendster remains a popular social network with 84% of respondents visiting regularly, but that is down from 92%. Six percent of respondents use the micro-blogging service Twitter regularly.

These popular online networks are primarily useful say respondents for staying in touch (66%), but they also seem to be taking over other mainstream activities, such as e-Mail (64%) and chat (63%) which can be performed within these networks. About the same number use social networks to pass time (63%), but interestingly, 59% use them for personal brand visibility, or to learn more about the personal brands of their network.

The results suggest that the new government can level the online playing field by providing wider and less expensive access to the Internet. Only 20% of D and E users have access, compared to 93% of ABC and 61% of C2. That may mean reviving the idea of a government- subsidized nationwide Internet backbone. The private sector will fight that move, but the reality is that despite large numbers of Internet users in the Philippines, the country will only be a digital nation when access becomes more universal.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
July 30, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Google is offering a mechanism for previewing Web fonts featured in the Google Font Directory.

Accessible at Google’s website, the Google font previewer enables testing of fonts so developers can decide which font best meets requirements.

[ Also this week, Google introduced a version of its cloud applications geared for government usage. See InfoWorld's report. ]

“Now, whenever you visit the font family page of any of the fonts, you will see a link saying ‘Preview this font’ that will load your font selection into the font previewer,” said Marc Tobias Kunisch, of the Google Font API team, in a blog post on Wednesday.

Google Font Directory provides Web fonts for inclusion in Web pages via Google Font API. The directory, API and previewer are all listed as being in a beta stage of development, according to Google Web pages.

With the previewer, developers can edit text, change its size and line height, and add decorations and spacing. The previewer generates corresponding code to use a font on a Web site. Developers need only copy and paste the stylesheet link and the CSS onto Web pages, Tobias said.

“We think the previewer is a great way to try out Web fonts and showcase what can be done with them,” he said.

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By Darren Pauli
Computerworld Australia
July 29, 2010

SYDNEY - The Australian Tax Office is turning to iPhones, iPads and Androids to help teach disinterested school kids about tax and superannuation.

The office will use the chic phones as part of its education plans after its voluntary program based on paper hand-outs failed to interest teachers and students. Almost every school in the country signed-on, but only about a third used the paper hand-outs at best in a limited capacity.

A contract was issued last month to build an application that would teach tax obligations and superannuation using games, quizzes and tests over Windows, Macintosh, and Apple, Windows and Google smart-phones.

The application will attempt to get kids excited about the other certainty in life while the ATO pushes to have its program formally integrated with the national syllabus from 2013.

It will teach school kids about Tax File Numbers, superannuation, and the need for, and difference between personal and business taxes. The application will need to entertain teachers as well as children through a series of activities, multiplayer-online games and challenges.

Parents and teachers will be able to track student progress online, and generate reports and topical teaching materials.

The application will go live in time for the start of school next year.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
July 29, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Google on Monday patched five vulnerabilities in Chrome by issuing a new “stable” build of the browser.

The update to Chrome 5.0.375.125 fixed three flaws rated “high,” Google’s second-most-serious threat rating, as well as one pegged “medium” and another labeled as “low in Google’s four-step scoring system. Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia judged the cumulative update as “highly critical” using its own ranking.

As per Google’s usual practice, technical details of the vulnerabilities were hidden from public view to prevent attackers from leveraging the information before most users have upgraded.

According to a blog post by Jason Kersey of the Chrome team, Google also added what he called “workarounds” to Chrome for a pair of critical vulnerabilities not in the browser’s code, but in external components or software.

Kersey did not provide any additional information on the workarounds other than to point a finger at the Windows kernel and “glibc,” or the GNU C Library, a collection of C programming language files and routines that’s a critical component of most Linux operating system kernels.

Details of the discussions among Chrome developers who worked on the Windows kernel and glibc workarounds were also unavailable to the public, making it unclear if Kersey’s reference to a critical vulnerability in the Windows kernel was to a previously-patched bug — Microsoft has fixed three kernel flaws so far this year, most recently in June — or to a vulnerability that hasn’t yet been made public.

Microsoft was not available for comment late Tuesday.

Several researches credited with reporting the flaws were awarded bonuses as part of Google’s bug bounty program. Four bugs garnered four different researchers $500 each — Google’s standard payment for Chrome bugs — but Marc Schoenefeld was handed $1,337 for helping Google craft the Windows kernel workaround, while Simon Berry-Byrne was paid the same amount for his assistance with the glibc workaround.

Schoenefeld is a security researcher for Red Hat, while Berry-Byrne, who also is known as “SBerry,” has found and reported numerous vulnerabilities in browsers, including both Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox.

The payments of $1.337 to Schoenefeld and Berry-Byrne are likely the last for that amount: Last week Google hiked its top bounty to $3,133 .

This was the second security update this month for the production version, or the most polished edition, of Chrome for Windows, Mac and Linux. Google typically patches its browser every two to four weeks.

Chrome is the world’s third-most-popular browser, accounting for approximately 7.2% of the browsers in use, according to the most recent numbers from Web measurement company Net Applications.

Google Chrome can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux at the company’s Web site. Users running the stable build will receive the update automatically in the background.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
July 28, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Honing in on the lucrative government market for business applications, Google introduced on Monday Google Apps for Government, featuring its suite of cloud-based business applications equipped with extra security precautions.

The suite, with such applications as Gmail email and Google Calendar, offers U.S. government FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) moderate-level certification. Also, government user data is to be maintained on servers segregated from Google’s commercial customers. Google officials emphasized that government agencies are acutely concerned with security and that Google Apps is the first cloud platform certified for use by the federal government.

[ See InfoWorld's report on the recently opened Google Apps Marketplace for third-party applications to supplement Google's online applications. ]

Google is positioning the suite as a solution for all branches of government, emphasizing cost savings that could be enjoyed by governments now beset by budget shortfalls.

“As we know, the financial pressures on government are enormous, and this is a material cost savings,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt, during a rollout event at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

“The government has an enormous opportunity to leverage the Web as a platform,” said Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise. Governments at all levels are spending billions on IT; cloud computing offers an opportunity to change these dynamics in the next decade, he said.

Available now, Google Apps for Government costs $50 per user per year, the same price as Google Apps Premier Edition. In addition to Gmail and Google Calendar, Google Apps for Government also features Google applications like Docs, Sites, Video, Groups, and Postini.

Gmail and Calendar data currently is physically segregated from non-government user data and maintained within the United States. Google plans to segregate the other applications in the suite as well, with that work now in progress.

Google’s suite for government will compete with the Microsoft Office suite of applications, Girouard acknowledged. “It’s a pleasant side effect,” he said.

Cloud computing offers the ability to deliver innovation to government workers at an accelerated rate, said Matt Glotzbach, director of management for Google Enterprise. The company already has been offering its applications to government agencies, Google officials said.

“Google isn’t a stranger to government,” Glotzbach said. The company has more than 100 federal agencies using its applications as well as other governmental agencies at different levels.

Google officials downplayed a recent flare-up pertaining to implementation of its applications by the city of Los Angeles. The company expects the Los Angeles implementation will prove to be a great success for the city and Google, said Girouard.

“We’re working very closely with them,” said Girouard. He emphasized that Los Angeles, as the second-largest city in the country, represents a major undertaking for Google right out of the gate.

At Berkeley Labs, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy,  the labs have migrated more than 4,000 users to Gmail and expect to see $1.5 million to $2 million in savings over five years, Google officials said.

Schmidt said there is an opportunity to use Google’s Chrome OS in government.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
July 23, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Google and IBM came out on top as the leading cloud computing vendors in a survey of developers revealed this week by Evans Data.

The biannual Evans Cloud Development Survey 2010, which polled more than 400 software developers, found that more than 40 percent cited Google as the public cloud leader. Nearly 30 percent identified IBM as the top private cloud provider.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Canonical and IBM aligned for cloud deployments this week. | Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in the InfoWorld editors' 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report.  | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]

Google is perceived as leader for setup, infrastructure, and application management in public clouds while IBM is viewed as leading in these attributes in private clouds.

 ”Most developers expect to be in a hybrid situation going forward with respect to application deployment in the cloud,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data, in a statement released by the company. “And these two vendors are perceived of as best filling the two main requirements for either public or private clouds, i.e., security and reliability. With no other vendors even close in perceived leadership, it’s likely that we’ll see IBM and Google dominating the cloudscape for the foreseeable future.”

Developers, Evans said, want to move applications between public and private clouds.

Public clouds are generally considered to be third-party data centers available for Internet-based application deployment, from companies such as Amazon. Private clouds are usually thought of as internal networks of systems that utilize cloud-based application deployment techniques.

In other findings in the survey included the following:

o More than 80 percent of respondents feel it is important for cloud providers to offer 100 percent backward compatibility as a cloud infrastructure matures.
o Sixty percent were concerned with government geographical restrictions with cloud deployments.
o Better data encryption is the most sought-after security improvement for public clouds.

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By John P. Mello Jr.
PC World (US)
July 20, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Google takes a step today toward locking horns with Facebook over creating a smarter Web. The Sultan of Search announced it has acquired Metaweb, a fledgling outfit that’s been working on packaging information on the Internet so it can be searched and connected in more meaningful ways than nests of links.

“Over time we’ve improved search by deepening our understanding of queries and web pages,” Jack Menzel writes today in The Official Google Blog.

He went on to say, “The web isn’t merely words — it’s information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities can help us deliver relevant information more quickly.”

“Today,” he adds, “we’ve acquired Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. Working together we want to improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone.”

Noble sentiments, indeed. But what exactly is Menzel getting at? He’s talking about being able to conduct searches that are closer to a scalpel than a jackhammer. he explains it this way:

“Type [barack obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world. But what about [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000] or [actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar]? These are hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers.”

Google, though, isn’t the only one looking for those answers. Facebook is looking for them, too. In the spring, its announced its Open Graph initiative. Open Graph is also trying to tie together the far corners of the Web into packages that can be more meaningful to its users. “Yelp is mapping out the part of the graph that relates to small businesses,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told an audience at the company’s F8 developer’s conference in April. “Pandora is mapping out the part of the graph that relates to music. If we can take these separate maps of the graph and pull them all together, then we can create a Web that’s smarter, more social, more personalized, and more semantically aware.”
In their quest for a more perfect Web, though, it appears the two giants could be heading for a collision course over metadata. The metadata for Facebook’s initiative could create a rival structure to what Metaweb has built, argues Kim-Mai Cutter at the Deals & More website
“And,” she adds, “because Facebook has the ‘like’ data recording the preferences of its 500 millions users, it would be in the best position to harness the metadata to create a compelling search product.”

Needless to say, the prospect of a compelling search product from anyone but Google isn’t going to make anyone at Google very happy.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
July 19, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft, which has witnessed competitors like Apple and Google grab the spotlight in the mobile phone space, acknowledged Thursday that it is willing to co-fund software development projects for its Windows Phone 7 platform.

This tactic, however, is not new to Microsoft, according to a statement from the company. But a company representative said Microsoft itself had not previously co-funded development projects in such a manner.

 [ InfoWorld's Paul Krill reported this week that developers' initial reaction to a Windows Phone 7 beta software development kit was tepid. ]

“Windows Phone 7 is a significantly more ambitious effort than anything we’ve attempted before; the target customer base is bigger, the developer community and opportunity is bigger, and our efforts to redesign the UI and developer platform have been significant,”  Microsoft said.

“This expanded scope offers a tremendous new developer opportunity that we are supporting with investments in traditional activity that predominantly benefit the majority of our extensive developer community: free professional tools, online as well as personal support, test devices, events and hands-on labs, training, marketing support, and in some more limited cases, co-funding strategic projects,”  the company said.

Microsoft said the scope of its opportunity is new but its developer evangelistic tactics are not.

“We have a long history of engaging with developers to offer support in the creation of compelling apps. The limited use of co-funding to help initiate strategic projects is not new to Microsoft; furthermore, developers tell us that we do not engage in any co-funding activity outside the scope of our competitors,” the company said.

A Microsoft representative brushed aside the notion that the company was undertaking such ambitious moves to bolster Windows Phone 7 because its profile is overshadowed by other companies in the mobile phone market.

“Microsoft is doing this because Windows Phone 7 represents a significantly more ambitious effort than anything they’ve attempted before,” the representative said.

Windows Phone 7 was announced in February. The first phones running the OS are due this coming holiday season. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android have built prominent profiles in the smartphone arena, with Microsoft taking a back seat.

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
July 16, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - After struggling for a few months, Microsoft ’s Bing search engine showed growth in the U.S. in June.

While still lagging far behind Google , Bing showed greater growth than its main search rival last month, according to a report from comScore, Inc., an Internet research company. Bing, which had its first anniversary in late May, saw its search share in the U.S. market increase from 12.1% in May to 12.7% in June.

Google lost a little ground last month with its search share dipping from 63.7% in May to 62.6% last month. Second-place Yahoo had slightly better news with its bite of the search market edging up from 18.3% to 18.9%.

According to comScore, Americans conducted 16.4 billion searches in June, up 3% from the previous month.

Bing may not have seen a huge increase in its share of the lucrative search market last month, but the uptick was good news for a service that has seen its share of ups and downs in the past several months.

Microsoft’s search engine, which was a total revamp of the company’s far-from-beloved Microsoft Live Search, had made strong gains in market share in the first months after its release last year, but by early 2010, it had lost some momentum and saw its numbers hold steady or slip.

Industry analysts have noted that users are simply accustomed to engaging Google’s highly popular search engine, and that they will need a strong reason to switch.

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
July 12, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Google’s Orkut social networking site has been beset with bugs lately, leading the company to apologize for spotty service.

Orkut is an online community intended to make participants’ social life more active and stimulating. The Orkut engineering team is working to address recent issues with the site, said Eduardo Thuler, Orkut product manager at Google, in a blog post on Friday. He cited issues related to the frequent updating of open source software as a factor.

“First, Orkut is based on open source software that is subject to frequent updates, which we then pull and merge into the Orkut code tree. A result is that this can sometimes makes bugs harder to discover and fix. We accidentally began overwriting user app preferences, which resulted in the activity updates not getting posted, but this has now been fixed,” Thuler said.

[ Als on InfoWorld: Orkut was hit by a worm in 2007. | Despite its size, Google has a fight on its hands in creating a Facebook killer ]

“The Orkut engineering team has been hard at work addressing some recent issues and we would like to provide a status update and apologize for the inconvenience our spotty service may have caused you,” he said.

Google also has had to deal with getting viewer and owner information via data pipelining, a process that broke. The company was working to fix this as of Friday, according to Thuler.

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
July 9, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Google executives may have to wait a while to find out whether Chinese officials will renew the company’s license to do business in the country.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is still reviewing China’s application to renew its content license and has not set a timetable for wrapping up the work, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal.

“As Google submitted the application in late June, it is impossible to finish the examination in such a short time,” Wang Lijian, a spokesman for the ministry, told the newspaper today.

In a statement, Google said today that “We’ve submitted our application, and we are waiting to hear from the Government.”

The search giant filed an application to renew its Internet Content Provider (ICP) license on June 30, the final day that it could be submitted. The license expires in 2012 but must be renewed every year. Google cannot do business in China without the license.

Industry observers have speculated that Google may run up against some roadblocks considering its recent battles with the Chinese government.

In January, for example, Google threatened to halt its operations in China after charging that an attack on its network from inside China aimed to expose the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. At the same time, Google said it was reconsidering its willingness to censor the search results of users in China as required by the government.

After several months of negotiations with Chinese officials, Google announced in March that it had stopped censoring search results in the country.

In a blog post at the time, David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and Google’s chief legal officer, said the company had stopped censoring Google Search, Google News and Google Images on the Chinese Google.cn site. Users in China were redirected to the Hong Kong-based Google.com.hk site, where they were given uncensored search results in simplified Chinese. Late last month, Google moved to assuage Chinese officials by halting the practice of automatically redirecting traffic to the Hong Kong-based site.

The company had been hoping for a more immediate decision about its license renewal.

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By Paul Venezia
PC World (US)
July 7, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - It’s not the first time that I’ve had this question on my mind, but reading Matt Prigge’s post last week — which echoed my own sentiments about cloud computing — led me to contemplate why we seem to consider Google’s cloud more trustworthy than others.

Nobody pushes cloud computing harder than Google: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Apps, Google this, Google that. It’s all based on a framework of remote resources and an amorphous blob of processing that’s been tuned to spit out whatever we happen to be looking for, accept whatever documents we create, and send email and IM messages. And unlike so many other cloud service providers, Google seems to be accepted in this role, while others inspire skepticism.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Read about Google's adventures in Wi-Fi snooping in France. | Check out Neil McAllister's comparison of Google Docs and Microsoft Office Web Apps. ]
Most people have heard Google’s corporate motto, “Do no evil,” which has been challenged again and again, from censorship in China right up to Google Street View cars detecting and cataloging nearby Wi-Fi networks. Google claims the latter was inadvertent, but the company is still in hot water for it.
Nonetheless, Google is going a step further. To feed Google Places, it’s placing cameras in certain public places and establishments, so you’ll be able to view the interior of a restaurant, say, before heading out for dinner. And this seems perfectly fine to most people. I wonder what the reaction would be if Microsoft or Oracle tried the same thing? Would it be all roses and sunshine, or would people look at some crusty, beady-eyed Oracle guy and send him packing?
Somehow, Google has convinced the world that the company isn’t, in fact, evil. That’s despite the fact that Google is the most powerful force on the Internet today — a position that companies with different corporate mentalities might wield like a truncheon.

But Google steps lightly and presumes nothing. The famously sparse home page remains free of ads and clutter — a design so beloved that when Google introduced a Microsoft Bing-like background image a few weeks ago, the Internet exploded with outrage, and the situation was quickly reversed. But screaming about background images is like yelling at a prison guard for the quality of the food: You’re still under lock and key, even if the consistency of the pudding improves.

Recently I’ve noted how much Facebook knows about you, but make no mistake, Google knows plenty, too. Based on IP information, they know your searches, naturally, but they also know everything you do with Google tools. Planning a trip? They know where you’re going and how you’re getting there if you use Google Maps and directions. Correlate that information with keywords in messages in your Gmail account and you can determine times, companions, specific destinations, the whole works. Use Google Maps on your smartphone and, technically, they could track your progress.
Given the paranoia about so many other intrusions such as government surveillance, snooping bosses, predators, whatever, it’s amazing what Google has gotten away with. We’ve taken the candy, and in return we’ve given up significant levels of privacy to some huge corporate entity that we inexplicably trust not to betray us.

Maybe we trust Google because it has been benevolent in the past — in not “monetizing” when it could have, in promoting open source here and there, and in providing whimsical perks to its employees. Sure, now and again we’ve sucked air and said, “Oops, that was kinda evil.” But strictly speaking, the company hasn’t screwed over enough people to dent its public image. The idea that Microsoft — or even Apple — could ever make that same claim is almost comical.

Google also has the benefit of being constantly available. Can you even recall the last time that Google Search was unavailable or down? Some apps have had snafus in the past — notably Gmail — but the Google main page has always been ready for service, fast as you please. And that impeccable reliability may have more to do with why folks trust Google with their details, documents, pictures, videos, and so on than anything else.

Me, I don’t trust the cloud. I don’t know that I ever will. Yet I have a Gmail account and I use Google Maps and a variety of other Google tools all the time. At this point in the evolution of the Internet, it’s impossible not to. Let’s just hope that those in control of our information can truly be trusted to do the right thing. Hope, in the end, is all we can do.

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By Nancy Weil
IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)
July 6, 2010

BOSTON - Google tops headlines with rumors about the company’s social-networking plans, more changes it made in China and an acquisition during what proved to be a slower-than-usual week for IT news as we ease into the summer here in Boston, where we’ve been treated to some gorgeous days of late. We’ve clustered Google’s news at the top for your reading pleasure and will end our list this week with some “how to” tips that may come in handy for the lazy days ahead (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), ending with some news from Australia where wintertime is buzzing, so to speak.

1. Web abuzz on talk of Google Facebook killer: Speaking of buzzing — the Internet was (and still is) full of chatter that Google is developing a social-networking service that will take on (and take out) Facebook. Given how much Google already knows about us, and its obvious path toward world Internet dominance, we can’t say this comes as a surprise.

2. In its battle with China, Google takes a step back: But it was a bit of a surprise to hear that Google had moved to placate Chinese officials a couple of days before the company’s license to operate there was up for renewal, announcing that it would no longer redirect search traffic from China to its Hong Kong search engine.

3. Google buys ITA for $700M to boost travel search: About that world dominance path …

4. Russian spy ring needed some serious IT help: Of course, there was a heavy IT angle to the news that a Russian spy ring was charged with snooping on the U.S.

5. Apple address iPhone 4 reception, promises software update: So much for the claims that users just don’t know how to hold their new iPhone 4s.

6. The ignominious fall of Dell: Recently unsealed court documents claim that Dell knowingly sold faulty computers, leading to a lot of wondering about both the company’s past and its future.

7. You are here: Scary new location privacy risks: We never have understood why it would seem to be a good idea to broadcast our location, even if we are where we’re supposed to be.

8. How to build a computer: Here’s a summertime (or wintertime below the Equator) project.

9. How to jailbreak your iPad (plus 8 things to do with it): Well, we know what we’ll be doing this holiday weekend.

10. Vuvuzela sales trump Aussie loss: We don’t need a location-based service to tell anyone where we are since it’s easy enough to find us these days by following the buzzing sound. (That said, we’ve come to a new appreciation for the mute button.)

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By Michael Kan
IDG News Service (Beijing Bureau)
July 06, 2010

BEIJING - After five days of waiting, Google is still in the dark about whether the company’s operating license in China will be renewed.

As of Monday morning, Beijing time, the search engine giant had yet to hear back from the Chinese government regarding the license, said Jessica Powell, a Google spokeswoman.

The license, which is issued by the Chinese authorities, is necessary for Google to continue operating its China-based Web site, Google.cn. But tensions between the company and Chinese officials have put the license’s renewal in doubt.

In March, Google decided to stop censoring the results to its Google.cn search engine by shutting the site down. All internet traffic from the site was then redirected to Google’s uncensored Hong Kong search engine. The move quickly angered Chinese officials, who demanded that the company comply with Chinese laws that require companies to censor search results.

Now, with Google’s operating license up for renewal the company has decided to take a step back from its previous actions in a bid to comply with government demands. Last week, Google.cn was restored as a “landing page,” where users are given a link to the company’s Hong Kong page rather than automatically redirected to it.

Since Google’s license went up for renewal last Wednesday, the company’s web search services have also been partially blocked in China. Google Suggest, a feature that provides probable search terms when user types their query, continues to be blocked, Powell said.

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By Juan Carlos Perez
IDG News Service (Miami Bureau)
July 6, 2010

MIAMI - Malicious hackers attacked Google’s YouTube on Sunday, exploiting a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on the ultra-popular video sharing site, hitting primarily sections where users post comments.

“Comments were temporarily hidden by default within an hour [of discovering the problem], and we released a complete fix for the issue in about two hours. We’re continuing to study the vulnerability to help prevent similar issues in the future,” a Google spokesman said via e-mail.

The attack potentially put at risk YouTube cookies of users who visited a compromised page, but it couldn’t be used to access their Google accounts, the spokesman said. As a precaution, YouTube users should log out of their account and log back in again.

The attackers apparently targeted singer Justin Bieber, incorporating code into YouTube pages devoted to him so that visitors saw tasteless messages pop up about the teen star, and were also redirected to external sites with adult content.

An industry source familiar with the situation said that while the attack itself didn’t involve malware infections, such a risk is inherent whenever users visit any Web page, such as the ones attackers redirected users to. It’s not clear if those landing pages contained malware, but most up-to-date anti-virus software is designed to protect against those threats, this person said.

YouTube is by far the most popular video uploading and sharing site. In May, U.S. residents watched 14.6 billion video clips at Google sites, mostly at YouTube. which is about 43 percent of all clips watched online that month, according to comScore.

On a day when the U.S. marks its independence with fireworks shows, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook lit up on Sunday morning with reports from thousands of individuals who noticed the YouTube hack.

A separate stream of postings on social media sites focuses on whether Apple’s iTunes App Store may have been compromised by a rogue developer and whether purchases may have been made without victims’ permission using their credit cards on file.

People posting about the Apple issue are suggesting that App Store customers check for any unusual activity on their accounts.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from IDG News Service.

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
July 2, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Just one day after Google made a major effort to work with the Chinese government , the search firm reported that its service is being partially blocked in China.

Google reported on its status update page for the company’s services in China that its online search service began being partially blocked today. Google search had been fully or mostly accessible until today.

Google did not immediately respond to requests for information.

The blockage comes just one day after Google tried to placate Chinese officials by saying it would no longer automatically redirect search traffic from China to its Hong Kong search engine . Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said in a blog post late on Monday that China had threatened not to renew its license to operate in China if the automatic redirect was not removed.

Google’s Internet Content Provider (ICP) license is up for renewal today.

“Looks like there’s just no making China happy,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “Yesterday, Google stopped re-routing domestic China searches through Hong Kong, which should make China happier. But no. They thank Google with an upraised middle finger of friendship and new blocks on Google’s searches.”

Google executives are hoping to hear today whether the Chinese government accepts its compromise move and will renew Google’s license to continue doing business in the country.

Without a license, Google would go dark in China.

In an interview on Tuesday, Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, said that while Google’s move amounts to caving in to Chinese officials, the company’s executives had few alternatives if they wanted to continue doing business in China.

“They really have no choice if they want to stay in that region,” Enderle said. “That was the problem of taking a position the company could not sustain. You don’t fight governments. Google had a choice: Capitulate or leave. They capitulated.”

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
July 1, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Google may not be throwing in the towel in its battle with the Chinese government, but it certainly took a step back this week.

Google announced late Monday that it will no longer automatically redirect search traffic from China to its Hong Kong search engine. The announcement came just two days before Google’s license to operate in China must be renewed.

The company hopes the move placates Chinese officials , who had threatened to revoke Google’s Internet Content Provider (ICP) license if the company did not stop redirecting search requests from Chinese users.

In a blog post last night, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said the company plans to complete the shift in direction over the next few days.

Instead of the automatic redirect, the Google.cn site now shows an image of the Google search bar above a link that says, “We’ve moved to Google.com.hk. Please visit our new Web site.” Clicking on the logo or text takes users to the Hong Kong Web site.

It should be clear on Wednesday whether the Chinese government accepts the compromise move and will renew Google’s license to continue doing business in the country.

Without a license, Google would go dark in China.

Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, said that while Google’s move amounts to caving in to Chinese officials, executives had few alternatives if they wanted the company to continue doing business in China.

“They really have no choice if they want to stay in that region,” Enderle said. “That was the problem of taking a position the company could not sustain. You don’t fight governments. Google had a choice, capitulate or leave. They capitulated.”

Google in January had threatened to halt its operations in China after contending that an attack on its network from inside China aimed to expose the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. At the same time, Google said it was reconsidering its willingness to censor the search results of users in China as required by the government.

After several months of negotiations with Chinese officials, Google announced in March that it had stopped censoring search results in the country. In a blog post at the time, Drummond said the company had stopped censoring Google Search, Google News and Google Images on the Chinese Google.cn site. Users in China were redirected to the Hong Kong-based Google.com.hk site, where they were given uncensored search results in simplified Chinese.

“It seems to me [that the compromise] is a smart business move,” said Augie Ray, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “Google certainly was not going to get the Chinese government to alter its long-held commitment to controlling content on the Internet. The best Google can hope for is to find an acceptable middle ground so that it can honor its own commitment to unfiltered search results while working within the rules set by the Chinese government.”

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, argued that this week’s moves don’t indicate that Google has shifted its stance on censorship of content.

“Censorship was Google’s line in the sand. It has not crossed it,” Gottheil said. “Google did what it said it was going to do. It stopped censoring. For Google, this is mainly a reminder of the stand they took earlier. Their reputation is a business asset. If China accepts their compromise, it helps them keep a larger part of the Chinese market than they would if [they were] completely shut down, but it’s not as good as their prior situation.”

Enderle, though, argued that the latest move makes Google look “immature and foolish” because it initially took a position it couldn’t sustain.

Ray contended that Google had no choice but to compromise if it wanted to remain in the enormous market.

“In the end, it is difficult to imagine that exiting or being forced to exit the Chinese market would be positive for Google,” he added. “And it seems the Chinese government would prefer to have Google operating within the country, since having the large and recognized Internet company depart would be potentially embarrassing. There is good reason for the two parties to continue to work toward a mutually agreeable resolution, but in the end it is the Chinese government that will decide what is agreeable and what is not.”

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
July 01, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Google will take a page from Mozilla’s playbook and block outdated plug-ins from launching, part of new efforts to keep Chrome users safer, the company said Monday.

In a post to the Chromium blog , a trio of Google security engineers announced that Chrome would refuse to run plug-ins if they were found to be out of date, and thus, potentially vulnerable to exploitation of known bugs.

Chromium is the name of the open-source development project that feeds into the Chrome browser.

Google did not spell out when the outdated plug-in blocking would be added to Chrome, saying only that it would take place “medium-term.” Nor did the Google engineers specify which plug-ins would be blocked. Chrome will assist users in updating old plug-ins, they said.

Chrome will also display a warning when a site calls on an infrequently-used plug-in, said Chris Evans, Julien Tinnes and Michal Zalewski of Google’s security team. “Some plug-ins are widely installed but typically not required for today’s Internet experience,” they said. “For most users, any attempt to instantiate such a plug-in is suspicious and Google Chrome will warn on this condition.”

Evans, Tinnes and Zalewski did not elaborate on how Chrome would define “infrequently-used.”

Google did not reply to requests for clarification and more information on the timeline of the impending changes to Chrome.

Chrome is following in the footsteps of Mozilla’s Firefox, which already has outdated plug-in blocking.

Mozilla added basic plug-in checking to Firefox 3.5 last September, but fleshed out the feature in Firefox 3.6, which debuted in January. The newest Firefox checks browser plug-ins, such as Adobe’s Flash Player or Apple ’s QuickTime, to make sure they’re up-to-date, then blocks vulnerable plug-ins from loading and shows users how to update the software.

Both Mozilla and Google have said their new features are a reaction to the rapidly-increasing number of attacks against vulnerable plug-ins, especially Adobe’s Flash Player and Reader.

According to some estimates, attacks against browser plug-ins, particularly Adobe’s popular Reader PDF viewer, are quickly climbing. In the first quarter of 2010, antivirus vendor McAfee said in April, PDF exploits accounted for 28% of all malware-bearing attack code .

In other security arenas, Chrome is already ahead of Firefox. Google’s browser, for instance, now automatically updates Adobe’s Flash Player behind the scenes. And two weeks ago, Google added an integrated PDF viewer to the “developer” build of Chrome for Windows and Mac.

Chrome accounted for 7% of all browsers used last month, according to the most recent data from Web metrics company Net Applications. Meanwhile, Firefox owned a 24% usage share in May.

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By Kenneth van Wyk
Computerworld (US)
June 28, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - ON JUNE 1, THE FINANCIAL TIMES REPORTED THAT GOOGLE PLANNED TO DROP WINDOWS AS ITS PRIMARY DESKTOP OPERATING SYSTEM AND SWITCH TO APPLE ‘S MAC OS X AND LINUX , BECAUSE THE LATTER TWO ARE MORE SECURE THAN WINDOWS. THAT’S A PRETTY BOLD LEAP BY ANY MEASURE. SHOULD YOUR ORGANIZATION FOLLOW SUIT? NOT SO FAST.

No doubt about it, switching desktop operating systems across an enterprise the size of Google is a massive undertaking. There’s just so much to take care of. It’s a move that’s far more complicated and disruptive than simply uninstalling one operating system and installing another. And the direct product costs are a mere drop in the bucket compared to the overall costs when you consider things like tech support, user training and so on.

I can only assume that Google was well aware of all this and made an informed business decision. If that is the case, should the rest of us consider it a warning sign that we should heed?

Let’s take a rational look at some of the factors involved here. And I’ll point out that I have absolutely no direct contact with Google on this, so I’m merely making some guesses from an outsider’s perspective.

For starters, Google seems to be reacting at least in part to the recently publicized attacks it experienced. From those reports, it appears that the attackers were able to exploit old browser configurations (Internet Explorer 6) at Google to gain their initial access to the company. Of course, it sure shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this column that running a vulnerable browser can lead to significant problems.

Aside from that, wouldn’t it be cheaper to simply upgrade these vulnerable browsers, or even switch to a different browser, than replace the entire operating system? It’s got to be cheaper to switch browsers than it is to replace desktop operating systems across an entire company.

Next, does anyone really believe that OS X or Linux are inherently more secure than Windows? Seriously? I believe I’m safer on OS X than I would be on Windows, but let’s not confuse secure with safe.

Consider doing something that is inherently risky — say, walking around with a wad of cash stuffed in your pocket that’s so large it’s obvious, and without anything to protect yourself. That’s just crazy, right?

Now, if you’re carrying that cash while walking down a quiet country lane, you’re far safer than if you were walking through crowded city streets in a foreign land where you glaringly stood out. Safer, but not more secure.

That’s the difference between secure and safe, but how does it apply to switching operating systems? You may feel that an operating system other than Windows is more secure because there have been fewer published successful attacks and malware for that other operating system. That could well be a legitimate concern. But I’d argue that neither Linux nor OS X is inherently any more secure than Windows. They tend to be safer because there are far fewer attacks and malware aimed at them, at least today.

So, what makes one operating system safer than another? Published 0days? Successful attacks? All of these things and much more factor into the equation, for sure, but it doesn’t end there. At some level, we’re kind of at the whim of the attackers. What operating systems are they attacking most today?

If we think of attacking systems as a business, then the folks writing the attacks face similar issues as the ones faced by any software developer. What platform do you write your code for? Market share, likelihood of success, cost to market and many other things are likely to factor into that decision. Well then, by all accounts, these things tend to be dynamic. Right now, they tend to favor Windows, but that may well not always be the case.

What is safe today may well not be the safest choice tomorrow. From where I sit, it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll start to see more malware and attacks aimed at Apple’s systems in the future, just because of their market success in the past couple of years. See where this is going?

My point is this: Today we have far more attack code that works on Windows systems than on OS X or Linux. That probably won’t always be the case, and underneath it all, there are security weaknesses in all three of these operating systems. So, switching operating systems across an entire enterprise and bearing the resulting expenses might not be adequately forward-looking to be a sound business decision.

A far more compelling business justification will be found by looking at the business applications you need. Which platform best supports your business processes? What applications are available for those business processes? How about usability? How about ease of integration with other business infrastructure? Those are the sorts of things that should factor most in the decision process.

While I have my own preferences for what desktop operating system I want to be using personally, that’s hardly a basis for a sound business decision for the entire enterprise.

So, if you’re looking at Google’s actions and trying to decide whether your enterprise should consider switching operating systems, security and safety should certainly be factors, but don’t fool yourself. Be sure to see the big picture before you make that hugely important leap.

With more than 20 years in the information security field, Kenneth van Wyk has worked at Carnegie Mellon University’s CERT/CC, the U.S. Deptartment of Defense, Para-Protect and others. He has published two books on information security and is working on a third. He is the president and principal consultant at KRvW Associates LLC in Alexandria, Va.

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
June 25, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Microsoft fired another salvo as its battle against Google for search turf heated up this week.

Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled new features aimed at making Bing more than just a search site. Bing was enhanced with an entertainment page that will let users watch TV shows, play games and listen to music — all without leaving the Web site.

“This has become a full-on war . I’m not too sure it can get any hotter,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group. “Microsoft is trying to make Bing ever more capable. The goal is to get you to live within their search engine and not go to any other sites, certainly not Google. The more you can do with Bing, the less likely you are to wander someplace else like Google. It’s textbook customer containment.”

Microsoft is looking to significantly beef up Bing’s handling of entertainment-related queries, an area that draws a lot of interest from users. The company also will be looking to increase its footprint with other “verticals,” such as health, travel and shopping.

Microsoft’s Bing could use a boost in its competition with long-dominant Google.

Despite Microsoft’s hefty investment of time, R&D and advertising dollars, Bing hasn’t made much of a dent in Google’s search market share in the year that Bing has been on the market. Google has been hanging tough, grabbing more than 71% of all U.S. searches in April. That was a 2% increase over its numbers in March, according to a report from Hitwise, an online traffic monitor.

Bing, which is in third place behind Microsoft and Yahoo , saw its own numbers slip 2% in April, reaching a 9.43% share for the month.

“This week’s move is a good one for Bing,” said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. “I think these new features are good choices for their initial rollout, particularly the video search. With a single search, users can see pages of thumbnail videos that relate to their search terms. Plus, they can see the videos play without leaving the Bing page, which helps users sift through the results and find exactly what they want.”

If Microsoft continues to innovate and execute well, it just might start chipping away at some of Google’s substantial market lead, Olds said.

The analysts were in agreement that Bing’s innovation will push Google to do the same. And that, they say, can only mean good things for users.

“Bing’s design choices have already had a big impact on Google,” said Hadley Reynolds, an analyst at market research firm IDC. “The most obvious is Google’s belated introduction of a left rail similar to Bing’s this past May, and their increasing integration of rich media and best bets into the interface. Now Bing is moving the goal post further with these June enhancements. I expect to see an ongoing series of changes to the core searcher experience from both Google and Microsoft continue through the next couple of years and spawn a counterpart competition in the mobile search experience.”

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By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
June 25, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - HTML5 rocks, Google declared this week. The company launched a developer resource site devoted to HTML5 technologies and is calling it HTML5rocks.com

The budding HTML5 specification features multimedia capabilities for the Web and it is being embraced by companies ranging from Google to Microsoft and Apple. HTML5 covers a broad spectrum, said Eric Bidelman of Google Chrome developer relations, in a blog entry.

[ Could HTML5 kill Flash and Silverlight? | Find out what to expect in HTML5. ]

“The term ‘HTML5′ covers so many different topics that developers have a hard time getting up to speed on all of them. Some APIs and features are part of accepted standards while some are still a work in progress,” Bidelman said.” Additionally, there are a number of great resources out there, but most are still very hard to find. As announced on the chromium.org blog, Google is releasing a new developer resource dedicated to all that is HTML5, HTML5Rocks.com.”

The site has been broken up into four main sections: Interactive Presentation, to demonstrate HTML5 features; HTML Playground, for trying out capabilities; Tutorials; and Resources.

HTML5 has been at the center of an ongoing feud between Apple and Adobe, with Apple saying the emergence of HTML5 means Adobe’s Flash plug-in technology is no longer necessary.

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