JetLib News

Hugh Pickens writes “The NY Times reports that Consumer Watchdog is running a 540-square-foot video billboard advertisement in Times Square, New York that shows Google CEO Eric Schmidt as an ingratiating ice cream truck driver who knows everything about everyone and happily offers free ice cream in exchange for full body scans. The group says its goal is to push Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track Me list, similar to the Do Not Call list developed to prevent telemarketers from aggressively calling consumers. ‘Do you want Google or any other online company looking over your shoulder and tracking your every move online just so it can increase its profits?’ writes the group’s president, Jamie Curtis, at the group’s web site. ‘Consumers have a right to privacy. They should control how their information is gathered and what it is used for.’ The FTC’s consumer affairs group had no comment on whether the agency is considering creating a Do Not Track Me list.”

Source: Anti-Google Video Runs In Times Square

Trailrunner7 writes “Google has released a new version of its Chrome browser and has included more than a dozen security fixes in the update. The new version, 6.0.472.53, was released two years to the day after the company pushed out the first version of Chrome. Google Chrome 6 includes patches for 14 total security vulnerabilities, including six high-priority flaws, and the company paid out a total of $4,337 in bug bounties to researchers who reported the vulnerabilities. A number of the flaws that didn’t qualify for bug bounties were discovered by members of Google’s internal security team.” (Read on for more, below.)

cgriffin21 writes “Samsung is making no bones about it: Google Android is its future. And with the revealing of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the company is showing that it’s all in when it comes to Android. At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Samsung finally pulled the curtain of the long rumored and teased Galaxy Tab, the electronics maker’s touch-screen tablet and answer to the Apple iPad.”

Source: Samsung Shows Off Galaxy Tab, Android Allegiance

crabel writes “A couple of weeks ago India went after RIM and its mail service; it has extended its hunger for data now to all telecommunications. All telecom companies have to give them access to all voice over IP services that go in/out or happen within the country. Heck, they are even going after VPNs used by corporate employees working remotely.”

Source: India Now Wants Access To Google and Skype

jj110888 writes “CyanogenMod has just been updated to version 6.0, bringing Android Open Source Project 2.2 (Froyo) to several devices. This fork includes enchantments to many of the built-in apps, Ad-hoc network connectivity, OpenVPN support, Bluetooth HID, Incognito browsing, extensive control over audio and UI elements, and more found in the extensive CHANGELOG. The CyanogenMod team uses an instance of Google’s gerrit tool for code review and patch submission, helping make this former backport of Android 1.6 to T-Mobile’s G1 into thriving development for the G1/MyTouch/MyTouch 1.2, Droid, Nexus One, HTC Aria, HTC Desire, HTC Evo 4G (minus 4G and HDMI output), Droid Incredible, and MyTouch Slide. HTC Hero (including Droid Eris) are coming soon for 6.0, with Samsung Galaxy S devices expected to be supported in 6.1.”

Source: Android Fork Brings Froyo To 12 Smartphones

snydeq writes “InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman reports on the future of mobile security — one that will see a significant rise in exploits as valuable information increasingly migrates to mobile devices. To date, sandboxing and code-signing have helped make mobile OSes relatively secure, when compared with their desktop brethren. But as devices store more valuable information than email, they will become more enticing to hackers currently breaking into Windows PCs. And the biggest bulls-eye appears to be on Android, in large part because its architecture is most like that of the desktop PC but also because there are so many variants in use — too many for Google or the carriers to patch securely. And as the PDF-jailbreak vulnerability showed, sandboxing has its limits when it comes to securing the browser — the most likely point of entry for exploits not due to the rise of extensions, helper objects, and plug-ins on the mobile Web.”

Source: Your Smartphone Is Safer Than Your PC — For Now

jason-za writes with this quote from a Google announcement:
“People tell us all that time that they’re getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean — here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day — mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta) — an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail.”

Source: GMail Introduces Priority Inbox

webmink writes “The MPEG LA seem unwilling to explain why they have extended their ‘free’ H.264 streaming video policy now. This article unpacks the history of MPEG LA and then suggests the obvious — it’s all because of WebM — and the worrying — maybe it’s preparing the ground for opening a third front in the patent war against Google.”

Source: ‘Free’ H.264 a Precursor To WebM Patent War?

recoiledsnake writes “The author of iPhone prototyping tool Briefs has decided to open source it after the App store submission has been in limbo for over three months. The app had got into trouble for what Apple believes is being able to run interpreted code, though the author denies it, saying all the compiling happens on the Mac. While Rob stays civil, his co-worker blasts Apple for not even rejecting the app. Three months is nothing compared to Google Voice for the iPhone though, which is still being studied further by Apple after more than a year.”

Source: iPhone App In App Store Limbo Open Sourced

An anonymous reader writes “Google is already experimenting with GPU acceleration in its latest Chrome developer builds. Chrome 7 can separate different layers of a webpage into CPU and GPU processes and combine those layers using the GPU as long as the browser is now launched with certain switches. Chromium 7 has also a new Labs feature that reveals that Google is thinking about moving tabs from the top of the browser top the left side. It seems that Chrome will be catching up with Firefox 4 and IE9 in terms of hardware acceleration soon.”

Source: Google Confirms Chrome GPU Acceleration