Google has launched Dashboard, which enables users of its products - such as Gmail, YouTube and Blogger - to centrally manage privacy settings and monitor how much data is stored on Google's servers.
In this four minute interview, Alan Noble, engineering director at Google Australia, explains that Google Dashboard is designed to make it easy to visualise all the data in your various Google applications.
Mozilla plans to overhaul the look and feel of Firefox for Windows, a redesign that will resemble Google's Chrome in several key elements, according to screenshots and discussions on the open-source developer's Web site.
The visual refresh for Windows Vista and Windows 7 will likely take place in two stages. Part of the redesign will land in Firefox 3.7, a minor update now slated to ship in the first half of 2010, while the remaining pieces will wait for Firefox 4.0, a major revision tentatively set for release late next year.
Sun Microsystems and Research In Motion have issued critical bug fixes for security issues with their products.
The patches were issued separately on Tuesday, with Sun releasing version 6 Update 17 of its Java Runtime Environment and BlackBerry updating its BlackBerry Desktop Software, used to sync data between the BlackBerry and a PC.
Adobe Systems has issued an update for five vulnerabilities in its Shockwave Player, which is installed on some 450 million PCs.
It classified the update as "critical," its most severe rating. The vulnerabilities affect version 11.5.1.601 as well as earlier ones. The company recommends upgrading to version 11.5.1.602. Four of the problems could allow an attacker to execute malicious code on a computer, while the fifth one could lead to a denial-of-service condition, Adobe said in its advisory.
The blogosphere was all a-twitter yesterday when rumors surfaced that Skype, the popular internet telephony application, would be released as open source “in the nearest future“. It turns out that Skype’s plans are not so grandiose, and even if they were, questions about who owns the code would prevent it from happening.
In a clarification posted today on Skype’s Linux blog, developer Stanislav Karchebny (aka berkus) wrote:
Watching Michael Phelps set seven world records at the Olympics was exciting. But a tense computer science competition where a programmer feverishly codes and debugs a C++ or Pascal program before the clock runs out? Now that’s one to really wow the grandkids.
Henadzi Karatkevich has been taking part in computing tournaments for almost half of his life — which is to say, since he was 8. The 15-year-old mathlete from Gomel, Belarus, was encouraged to pursue the “sport” by his parents, both programmers. He graduated quickly from local coding contests to national ones.
Three new features are now available to Windows 7 users of the new beta release of Firefox. Firefox 3.6 beta 1 introduces enhanced previews for both the new Windows 7 taskbar and the tabs.
The taskbar previews for tabs brings Firefox into parity with Internet Explorer 8, allowing users to see and select their open tabs via Aero Peek. The obvious limitation with this feature is how it impacts the display when you've got a high number of tabs open. As you open more tabs, their preview panes will shrink.
Mozilla late on Friday released the first beta of Firefox 3.6, a minor upgrade slated to wrap up later this year.
Delayed by over two weeks as developers closed out last-minute bugs, including one that pushed the release back by several days last week, the Firefox 3.6 beta contains relatively few visible changes from June 2009's Firefox 3.5. Instead, most of the enhancements have been made to under-the-hood components, including the TraceMonkey JavaScript rendering engine.
Facebook gathered developers together to share changes and improvements it plans to roll out over the next two quarters. The event, dubbed Facebook Developer Garage Palo Alto - Roadmap Edition, was also streamed over the Web simultaneously via Ustream.
Facebook co-founder, CEO and president Mark Zuckerberg kicked things off by providing some background regarding where Facebook is now and the vision for the future. Zuckerberg began by saying "Facebook Platform is quickly becoming, along with Connect, is quickly becoming one of the most important parts of our strategy."
Google has officially released the software development kit (SDK) for its Android operating system.
Among the new features added are support for multiple email account synchronisation and full support for Microsoft Exchange, with is bad news for some developers. Other new features include new HTML 5 and Bluetooth 2.1 support, multi-touch control and support for zooming with digital cameras.
