Software-Programming

Google's Chromebook announcement couldn't have been more timely, for its irony. Yesterday, during Google I/O, the company gave Chrome OS its big official debut and set June 15 as launch date for the first Chromebooks -- from Acer and Samsung. Today, Microsoft antitrust oversight ends -- a decade after an appeals court upheld most of the claims against the company while throwing out a remedy threatening breakup into two entities. Chrome OS and Microsoft's U.S. antitrust problems are strangely linked, as the ghost of Netscape rises from the grave to haunt the company cofounded by Bill Gates.

Source code for the latest version of the ZeuS crimeware kit has been leaked on the internet, giving anyone who knows where to look free access to a potent set of malware-generation tools that normally sell for as much as $10,000.

The Australian Tax Office has put out a call for a software solution to reduce the number of employees that suffered from musculoskeletal disorders or repetitive strain injuries.

The tax office was seeking to reduce these injuries after being hit with higher workers' compensation insurance premiums. Comcare, the Australian Government's workers compensation agency, told the ATO that its 2009/10 premium of $26.1 million was to rise to $30.8 million this year.

The open source Metasploit vulnerability testing framework got a major overhaul this week with the release of Metasploit 3.7.

The Metasploit 3.7 release provides an enhanced session tracking backend that is intended to improve performance. Metasploit 3.7 also provides over 35 new exploit modules for security researchers to test, including new ones designed to test Apple's iOS mobile operating system security. The Apple iOS Backup File Extraction module however is not an attack vector for directly exploiting iOS. Rather it is what is known as a post-exploitation module.

The popular Ubuntu Linux, famous for its polished, easy-to-use desktop version, also has a specialized Ubuntu server edition. This is more than a re-packaged Ubuntu Desktop; it comes with a kernel tuned for server duties, a full complement of server software and no graphical interface. This is a serious, lean mean server operating system.

In a twist of irony, hackers have managed to restore the 'Install Other OS' feature to the PS3.

It's ironic because the whole reason Sony took out the feature was to prevent hackers from tampering with the PS3's security. That was about one year ago, and it caused quite an uproar, even among PS3 owners who never used the functionality.

FORMER SONY PLAYSTATION 3 HACKER George Hotz, who uses the nym Geohot, has agreed to an Ipad 2 jailbreak challenge, according to a fellow hacker.

Iphone hacker Joshua Hill said on his Twitter account that he has challenged Hotz to "dump the Ipad 2 BootROM" before he can. Hill said Hotz accepted the challenge, and that the famous PS3 hacker "didn't have an iPad yet but he's getting one soon".

Was it only a few weeks ago, that we were looking at the latest crop of Web browsers? Why, yes, yes it was, but now Google has released yet another newer, faster, better, and more feature-full version of its Chrome Web browser: Chrome 11.

Besides the usual improvements in security and speed, which I’ll get to in a moment, Chrome 11 comes with a new, interesting feature: voice-to-text, or more properly, voice-to-data. So, with a Web site set up to handle it, such as Google Translate, you can “talk” to the Web.

The recently released Firefox 4 is a big improvement over previous versions of the popular Web browser, but you can still teach it plenty of tricks.

We've rounded up ten great downloads to help you get more out of Firefox 4. Not all older add-ons work with Firefox 4, but every one in this roundup does. Whether you want to enhance search, better manage the information you find online, keep yourself safe, or perform other Web tasks, we have what you need. And all of these picks are free.

Big news is coming from BlackBerry this week, with new devices and services being announced from the smartphone manufacturer, but it’s also introducing a brand-spankin’ new OS: BlackBerry OS 7. We haven’t seen much of the new mobile operating system at this point, but we expect to catch plenty of it along with its new features some time this week.