Google has today started rolling out their new encrypted search feature to some chrome users, enabling them to have end-to-end encrypted searches between their computer and Google search.

The encrypted search service has been available for some time in beta by visiting a specific URL but its the first time Google has started redirecting users directly to the new secure search page. Using the new SSL search helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third parties.

Google explains:

Google has updated its Google+ app for iOS devices which include the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, and the latest version comes with a range of bug fixes as well as some minor new features.

Google+ will now lets you re-share other users content with your friends on Google+, and Google has also added a number of performance enhancements to the latest version of Google+

 

You can find out more information about the latest version of Google+ for the iPhone, iPad and ipod Touch over at iTunes.

Google has today announced via its “Data Liberation Front” team thats its now provided Google Voice users the ability to export Google Voice data from its service, using the Google Takeout service. Watch the brief presentation video announcing the new data export feature for Google Voice after the break.

 

Google Takeout has been created by Google to enable users to extract and backup data from its applications and was created by a team of Google engineers named the Data Liberation Front, who have been tasked with the mission to help create ways that users can export data from Google services.

You can find out more information regarding Google’s Data Liberation Front over on their website.

The world is already abuzz about Google+, even though it’s not accessible to most. Still, many doubt that anyone, even the mighty one from Mountain View, can catch up to Facebook’s half a billion (at least) active users. Unless, maybe there was a simple way to import your Facebook friends to your Google+ Circles.

Inevitably, there is now an app for that. Actually, it’s a Chrome extension.

Facebook Friend Exporter is the work of developer Mohamed Mansour, a software engineer who works at Blackberry maker Research in Motion, according to his online resume (and his Google+ page), and develops open source tools in his spare time.

The extension wasn’t designed with Google+ in mind. In fact version 1 was released last November, but it has exploded in the past week as the limited number of Google+ beta users have gone searching for ways to port over their entire Facebook world to Google.

Launching years after Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to look at Google as simply playing catch up in the social networking game with the release of its Google+ “field test.” But look back in time and it’s clear that Google has been playing in the social world for years, but never quite put all the pieces together in one place.

Here’s a chronological look at the long path Google has taken to form what could be the next big social network, if the company can pull off the mega-coup of convincing most of the half a billion Facebook users it has a better service.

2004 - Orkut: Google had a social network in place long before your Mom joined Facebook. Orkut was quietly launched more than 7 years ago to compete with Friendster, and it’s stayed quiet in the United States and most of the world, but has become the dominant social network in a few countries, most notably Brazil. Hilariously, it’s still in beta.

I use Google Chrome as my main browser on a day to day basis and have a multitude of Chrome extensions installed to help with productivity and tasks.

If you use the Chrome browser a new Chrome extension has launched this week called Mega Button which might interest you which adds shortcuts to settings right on your toolbar and has been created by Haroldinho. Check out the brief video to see the new extension in action after the jump.

The Mega Button extension provides quick access to Bookmarks, History, Plugins, Extensions, Downloads, DNS, Memory and Cache directly in the toolbar and is free to download from the Google Chrome Extension library.

Fans of Linux, Microsoft and Macs used to be able to search for information about those topics on Google using specialized search tools that narrowed the results to a focused set of highly relevant Web sites.

Earlier this week, however, it was discovered that Google has pulled the plug on many such specialized search portals—including Google.com/linux, Google.com/microsoft, Google.com/mac and Google.com/bsd—redirecting users to Google.com/webhp instead.

 

Also eliminated by Google were Google.com/unclesam and USGov.Google.com for government-specific information searches.

‘Better Off Using the Search Box’

“We are no longer offering specialized search services at google.com/linux, google.com/microsoft, google.com/bsd, google.com/mac, google.com/about and google.com/unclesam,” Google confirmed in a statement provided to Search Engine Roundtable on Monday.

“These services were established many years ago to offer search across a limited index of the Web, which in the past was a better way to find this information. For example, google.com/linux was designed to help people find information from message boards and blogs about the Linux operating system,” Google explained.

“Today, search quality has advanced tremendously, and based on our analysis we’ve found that in most cases you’re better off looking for this kind of specialized information using the regular Google search box, for example by typing [linux fedora upgrade],” the company said.

‘A Serious Mistake’

The news came as a great surprise to many Google search users, however, as could be seen over the past few days on a Google Web Search forum.

“Google Uncle Sam is a critical search feature,” wrote one participant, for example.

“I consider the decision to remove Uncle Sam search a serious mistake and very bad public relations,” wrote another.

‘I Personally Apologise’

Combined with the lack of advance notice, in fact, users’ dismay even prompted an apology from Google.

“I personally apologize for our poor communication regarding the termination of Uncle Sam search,” wrote Google Search Product Manager Rishi K. on the search forum. “We should have done a better job communicating this in advance, and I apologize for that. In the future, I’ll make sure we find a way to do better.”

Google also directed disgruntled users to its Help Center for more ways to restrict searches in topic- and site-specific ways.

Loss of an Advantage

In addition to dealing a blow to users accustomed to relying on these topic-specific search portals, Google’s move could also shift an advantage to services like Bing-based search.usa.gov, as one forum commenter pointed out.

Search Engine Land has also noted that vertical search tools may be even more useful and important today than ever before.

I’m especially sorry to see the end of the Linux search tool. Have you used any of the ones that have been eliminated? Will this change affect the way you search? Please sound off in the comments.

Could Spring overtake Enterprise Java Beans? VMware and Google think so, but Red Hat remains doubtful.

Oracle may own the Java trademark, but VMware is touting its own Spring framework as the best programming model for enterprise Java developers.

“In the innovation of the Java programming model, I think Spring really plays a leading role there,” said Rod Johnson, who is senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s SpringSource product division, as well as the creator of the first version of Spring.

At least one other company seems to share VMware’s enthusiasm, Google has chosen Spring as the preferred programming model for Google App Engine. And at the SpringOne G2X developer conference in Chicago this week, the two companies announced that they have completed a number of integrations between Spring and the Google App Engine and the Google Web Toolkit. Johnson noted that while Google pulled out of the Oracle-controlled JavaOne, it was a major sponsor for the SpringOne conference.

“We talked to our customers, we wanted to learn where the new growth is, where a lot of the new apps are being written, because that is probably where the growth will be for App Engine. And we felt like Spring is a really good platform for those applications,” said Brad Abrams, product manager for Google’s developer tools division.

Not everyone is so certain that Spring is the future of enterprise Java development. Red Hat, for instance, has questioned the need for the Spring framework at all.

“The latest iteration of Java can offer a simple, standard architecture that can cut development time while offering an open and standard platform making the need for frameworks like Spring unnecessary,” wrote Red Hat Senior Director of JBoss Enterprise Middleware Ashesh Badani, in a blog posting last week.

An open-source project, the Spring framework was designed to help developers quickly structure Java programs, especially Web applications, in an architecturally coherent manner. Since its introduction in 2002, it quickly grew to be one of the most widely used Java frameworks. VMware purchased Johnson’s company, SpringSource, in 2009.

At the conference this week, VMware and Google, who started working together earlier this year, displayed the first fruits of their partnership.

Within the next two weeks, a plug-in for the SpringSource Tool Suite will be available that will allow developers to deploy their applications to the Google App Engine. The App Engine only uses a subset of the full range of Java APIs (application programming interfaces), and so Google worked to ensure that all those APIs used by Spring are available in the Google App Engine, Abrams said.

Also, the Google Web Toolkit has been integrated with Spring Roo, a tool that generates Spring code that conforms to preset requirements in performance security or other aspects. “Now Roo can generate a rich Internet client application using the Google Web Toolkit,” Abrams said. Lastly the, Google Speed Tracer, a performance analyzer found in the Chrome browser, has been bundled into Spring Insight, which is SpringSource Tool Suite’s own performance analyzer.

While VMware touts Spring chiefly as a development component for cloud-based applications, Johnson noted that it has achieved popularity as an alternative to Java Enterprise Edition’s EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) for enterprise application development. The company claims that 2.5 million developers use the Spring framework.

“The open-source community in general has taken the baton from the Oracle technologists. Spring overtook EJB several years ago and continues to pull ahead,” Johnson said.

Red Hat engineers, however, have argued that the latest version of Java Enterprise Edition, JEE 6, eliminates the need for frameworks such as Spring. In particular, it features the inclusion of JSR (Java Specification Requests) 299, a specification that covers how to handle dependency injection, a set of much-needed procedures that allow software components to interact. One of Spring’s chief features is that it handles context and dependency injection.

To boost his argument in his blog post, Badani pointed to a write-up from fellow Red Hat employee, and JBoss core developer, Lincoln Baxter, which discussed the process of migrating an application from Spring to Java EE 6.

“It’s no secret that the Spring Framework cropped up as a lightweight alternative and abstraction to programming for Java EE because the perception was that Java EE had become cumbersome and overly complex,” Baxter wrote. “When it comes right down to it, using Java EE can be even simpler than using Spring, and take much less time. You just have to find the right guides and the right documentation.”

Johnson admitted that Java EE 6 has borrowed some ideas from Spring, and, in general, is easier to use than the previous versions, whose complexities may have driven developers to Spring. But Java EE 6 still doesn’t have the full range of features that Spring does, such as a full-fledged Web framework and productivity boosters like Roo.

Nor is it widely implemented across application servers, Johnson argued. While the next version of the Red Hat JBoss application server will support Java EE 6, IBM’s Websphere does not support it, and the open-source Tomcat server only supports a subset of Java EE 6 functionality.

“I don’t think comparing Java EE and the Spring programming models is an apples-to-apples comparison, and, secondly, Java EE as an alternative to Spring is just not viable in the vast majority of production deployments today,” Johnson said.

 via: techworld

Paul Otellini expressed his confidence in the upcoming Google TV that hits stores this month. In a fresh interview with The Wall Street Journal the CEO talked about the virtues of the Google TV over the Apple TV, the mammoth $7.68 billion purchase of McAfee and the future of the PC market.

Mr. Otellini is optimistic about the performance of Google TV with its 50% Intel software. Calling it “a very powerful model”, Otellini noted that the younger set might be keener on it than the older demographic who’ll likely embrace the competition.

He even went as far as using his son as an example: “My son is probably going to buy a Google TV, simply because it’s cool. He wants to be able to do his Facebook chat and talk with his friends saying, ‘Hey, are you watching the game?’ in real-time. You cannot do that on Apple TV.”

Furthermore, Mr. Otellini still believes in the PC market, mentioning that it enjoys strong global sales despite the deluge of tablets and smartphones.

By Gregg Keizer

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.