Google

In what is likely to be a windfall for Xiaomi, Google executive Hugo Barra is joining the firm and taking on the role of Global Vice President to help the Chinese smartphone creator grow internationally.

Hugo Barra has confirmed a move to Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer that has gone from strength to strength in recent years. While well-known in China, the brand is not often recognizable outside of Asia -- which is what Barra will attempt to tackle in his new role.

An error by the US Department of Justice's document-redaction staff has inadvertently let slip a secret that the DoJ has spent months battling in the courts to protect – albeit one that will come as a surprise to no one.

The DoJ has long maintained that the practice of using National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain information from tech companies about their customers must be absolutely hush-hush. The letters are so secretive, in fact, that companies that receive them aren't allowed to discuss them or even admit that they exist.

Google said Thursday it will by default encrypt data warehoused in its Cloud Storage service.

The server-side encryption is now active for all new data written to Cloud Storage, and older data will be encrypted in the coming months, wrote Dave Barth, a Google product manager, in a blog post.

You can now use your Google account credentials with Mozilla Persona to log in to Web sites, but have no fear: Mozilla assures its users that Google can't track which sites you use with its service.

"Persona remains committed to privacy: Gmail users can sign into sites with Persona, but Google can't track which sites they sign into," wrote the company on its Identity at Mozilla blog, which tracks Persona development.

Google Chrome passwords are stored in cleartext, a function that Google dismisses as a flaw.

Software developer Elliott Kember discovered that all saved passwords can be displayed in plain text in the Chrome settings panel.

IDC released its smartphone shipment numbers for the second quarter of 2013, and other than the usual stuff (Android at 80%, iOS down to 13.3% due to lack of a new model), the Windows Phone figures are interesting.

THE GOOGLE CODE developer website is being used by hackers to spread malware, security firm Z-Scaler has warned.

According to Z-Scaler security researcher Chris Mannon who reported uncovering the ploy, cyber crooks are using the Google Code website as a fresh twist on their usual attack strategies.

On Wednesday, July 24th Google launched the Chromecast. As soon as the source code hit we began our audit. Within a short period of time we had multiple items to look at for when our devices arrived. Then we received our Chromecasts the following day and were able to confirm that one of the bugs existed in the build Chromecast shipped with. From that point on we began building what you are now seeing as our public release package.

You're not the only one who missed out on dropping $1,500 for Google Glass Explorer Edition. An Australian geek, who goes by the "Evil Dead" name Ash_Williams on Australian PC hardware community forum Overclockers, doesn't have one either. So he made his own.

The hacker's version is called Flass, a combination of "fake" and "glass." It's powered by a Nokia N9 phone. The TV-out feature of the phone feeds the eye display, which is mounted on a set of real glasses using cable ties. Ash_Williams has gone through four different versions of Flass so far.

More than any other big technology company, Google is building for the future, undertaking blue-sky projects like wearable computers and self-driving cars that don’t have an obvious place in today’s world because it believes they’ll be ubiquitous in tomorrow’s.

Chromecast, the new $35 widget that lets you stream web video from your computer or mobile device to your television, isn’t that kind of product. It’s more of a bridge technology, a stopgap measure — a bit of a kludge, really. It’s certainly not the watch-anything-on-any-screen solution we keep hoping will arrive.