Google Sets Its Sights on Web App Domination

In a presentation of its attempts to bridge over the chasm between Web-based applications and client, or native, applications, (Nasdaq: GOOG) announced alterations to its Google World 3-D mapping software system system as well as Google Gearing Wednesday at its yearly I/O software developer's conference in San Francisco.

For webmasters, Google launched its new Google World Browser Plug-In, which can be embedded within a Web site. The Internet hunt supplier also unveiled a name change, among other things -- from "Google Gears" to simply "Gears" -- for its set of offline software system development tools.

The new denomination is intended to underline the company's belief that Gearing is community-driven project, according to Vic Gundotra, frailty president of engineering, mobile and developer divisions at Google.

During his keynote address, Gundotra reportedly told the audience that the company desires to speed up the capableness of the browser.

Mapping the Browser

With the Google World API (application scheduling interface) browser plug-in, Google have taken an app that once required a download to a user's personal computer and made it available through a Web browser. The API enables Web developers to embed the 3-D mapping application into their Web pages in the same manner that they have got been able to utilize the Google Maps API.

More than 150,000 land sites have got developed applications using the Google Maps API, while the Google World client have logged more than than 400 million downloads. Releasing the Google World API, according to Google, is a presentation of its belief in the "value of being open." The hope is that developers will utilize the API to "build the adjacent great geo-based 3-D application."

Developers can embed Google World inside any Web page using a few lines of code, and an extended JavaScript API lets developers to command the photographic camera and make lines, markers and polygons. It also enables webmasters to import 3-D exemplaries from the Web and sheathing them anywhere on the planet, Alice Paul Rademacher, technical Pb of the Google World Browser Plug-in, wrote in a LatLong Blog post.

"In fact, you can even sheathing your content over different planets, stars and galaxies by toggling Sky mode, letting you construct 3-D Google Sky mashups. You can also enable 3-D augmentings with a single line of JavaScript, attach JavaScript callbacks to mouse events, bring KML (keyhole markup language) information from the Web and more," he continued.

There's a batch of chance on the manner for geo-based advertisement , according to Karsten Weide, an analyst.

"Google World is an amazing application that is well-positioned to do money out of geo ads. However, the fact that Google World was client-based greatly down audience range and traffic, both of which are jobs for advertisement sales," he told TechNewsWorld.

Integrating Google World into Web browsers rectifies that job but makes not vouch successful advertisement sales, Weide pointed out.

"That still doesn't intend that Google will be better able to sell advertisements on Google World than it currently is. So gross sales necessitate to be fixed, too," he added. Gearing Up

On the one-year anniversary of Google Gearing (now just "Gears), the hunt company gave a peep at its programs for the unfastened beginning undertaking in the approaching year.

The first twelvemonth concentrated on offline-enabled applications. However, in its pursuit to convey Web apps to the bow and "close the spread between Web apps and native apps" the company said it would pass its 2nd twelvemonth trying to work out some of the issues surrounding Web applications.

To do Gearing available to everyone, Google said that it is adding support for Firefox 3 and Campaign to its support for Internet Explorer and earlier versions of Firefox. Opera is also working to back up Gearing on the desktop and mobile devices.

Speaking of Gearing applications, announced the launch of improved functionality for its e-mail application, using the original Gearing Database API with Full Text Search. MySpace states its new mail app do searching and sorting faster and easier. Gonna Be a Rumble

With the Google World API and Gears' expanded mission, the phase is put for a conflict over Web 2.0 applications between (Nasdaq: MSFT) , Google and any other participants that come up along.

"It's as clear as twenty-four hours what's going on here. Microsoft is coming from their pilothouse and moving upstream. Google's approaching from their pilothouse and moving downstream. There's going to be an inevitable clang in the middle. There's board for both; it is not a zero-sum game," said Jonathan Edwards, a analyst.

"The writing's on the wall that at some point when Web applications go as rich as client applications that users don't desire to maintain flipping back and forth. We see this approaching down the route and these are just stairway along the way," he told TechNewsWorld.

Sociable Networking Toolbox:

Microsoft releases Silverlight 2 beta

Moving forward with next-generation software in two critical realms, Microsoft released Wednesday initial populace beta versions
of its Silverlight 2 multimedia system presentation engineering and the Internet Explorer 8 browser.

The company announced the releases at its Mix08 conference in Las Vegas.

Implemented as a plug-in, Silverlight is Microsoft's Equus caballus in the industry's race to supply the most eye-catching visual
effects; it vies with Adobe's Flash Player and related to technologies. Silverlight is cross-browser, cross-platform, and
cross-device, Microsoft said.

Version 2 characteristics support for managed codification and developing with multiple languages, including IronRuby, IronPython, JavaScript,
and .Net. The beta is .

Internet Explorer 8, meanwhile, offers capablenesses such as as improved interoperability and full conformity with the Cascading
Style Sheets 2.1 specification. That beta is available .

With Silverlight 2, Microsoft brought out a host of early adopters, including NBC Sports, which is using Silverlight for upcoming
Olympic Games coverage; Hard Rock International, of Hard Rock Cafe fame; and Cirque du Soleil. Display capablenesses both for the
Web and mobile devices were highlighted.

NBC Sports bes after to utilize Silverlight to Webcast 2,200 hours of coverage. "You're going to be able to travel online and you're going
to be able to devour picture how you desire it, when you desire it," said Perkins Miller, senior frailty president of NBC Sports and
Olympics.

Hard Rock showed a Silverlight application enabling users to zoom along in onto images of stone memorabilia, while Cirque du Soleil
showed a performer-casting intranet application featuring video. In the mobile space, Weatherbug demonstrated a weather condition information
application running on a Nokia phone.

Microsoft's Silverlight impressed Mix08 attendant Chris Pels, president of iDevTech, a consulting house focused on Microsoft
technologies. "I believe it really takes the user experience to a different degree and especially through the browser," Pels
said.

"I was very interested in the mobile device facet of it, too," he said. Microsoft Silverlight still must turn out itself in
the marketplace, Pels said.

Among the Silverlight inventions touted by Microsoft is "adaptive streaming," which estimates bandwidth capablenesses on the
client.

"Basically, it can automatically pick the appropriate spot charge per unit and encoding to use," said George C. Scott Guthrie, general director in
the Microsoft Developer Division. He had recently .
Alice Paul Krill is editor at big at InfoWorld. Continued1 | | »

Opera Upgrades Mobile Web Browser - InformationWeek

Opera Software on Tuesday unveiled the up-to-the-minute version of its mobile Web browser for commercial use; the browser includes sweetenings like zooming, panning, and Flash support.

Opera Mobile River 9.5 usages Opera's zoom along engineering to enlarge content on a Web page, and pages can be saved for offline browsing when there isn't an Internet connexion available. The new version also utilizes Opera's Presto rendition engine to rush up the burden of pages. Opera said it tweaked the engine to better public presentation by accelerating the handling of Web pages, even those coded using JavaScript and Ajax.

Additionally, version 9.5 supports appliances and Flash for accessing popular societal networks, such as as Facebook and MySpace. Equipment shapers and radio bearers have got the option to include Flash Lite 3 with Opera Mobile, giving their clients the ability to watch YouTube videos, for example, according to Opera.

Widgets are mini applications that sit down on a mobile device's place silver screen and can be accessed with a few clicks. Opera offers the capableness to add appliances in the new version. The company's end is to supply users with a desktop-like experience on little mobile device screens.

Opera Mobile River have been included in more than than 100 million telephones manufactured by HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and others, the company said. Software platform shaper UIQ also collaborated with telephone shapers to present Opera Mobile River 9.5 on future mobile phones.

The up-to-the-minute version is compatible with mobile telephones running the Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux platforms. It will be available as a standalone browser and as a software system development kit.

Opera didn't supply pricing, but as a comparing point, it bear downs $24 for earlier versions of the browser.

For those who don't desire to blast out money, Opera offers a free full-featured mobile browser called the Opera Mini. In November, the company of the Opera Mini, which can be viewed in desktop mode, meaning Web pages are displayed exactly as they look on a personal computer or laptop. Users also can access the content they desire by using the zoom along characteristic or choice Small Screen Rendition to avoid horizontal scrolling on a page.

Malware Bumps Google Ads From Web Pages

Thursday, December 20, 2007 6:05 americium PST

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A security company have identified a Dardan Equus caballus programme that replaces textual matter advertisements on Web pages with ads from another source, depriving Google of gross and potentially causing jobs for end users.

Google may be weak to halt the fast one since it affects the alteration of an internal personal computer file, called the hosts file, that is used to fit sphere name calling of Web land sites with information science (Internet protocol) addresses, said Rumanian security company .

When a individual visits a Web site, the browser bank checks the hosts data register to see if it have an information science computer address for a peculiar sphere name. If the hosts register is corrupted or hijacked, the browser can be directed to bring a different Web page than the 1 the user intended to.

Modifying the hosts register can be done for legitimate reasons. For example, personal computer users can change the hosts to barricade streamer advertisements served from known advertisement networks. When a Web page seeks to reach an advertisement server, the petition is diverted by the hosts register and no advertisement appears.

BitDefender said this peculiar malware directs a browser to download ads from a different waiter than Google's advertisement server.

BitDefender named the malware Trojan.Qhost.WU and said it is not spreading fast and presents a "medium" hazard of damage. It did not state how the Dardan is being circulated, and company representatives did not go back a phone call for comment.

Besides costing Google advertisement revenue, there is a danger that those substitution ads could incorporate golf course to land sites with malicious software, BitDefender said. Web land site proprietors who purchase advertisements through Google, as well as Google itself, can lose out on both Web traffic and gross if people are diverted from its ads.

There is not much that Google can make for those who download the malware. However, security merchandises such as as BitDefender's tin observe and take it.

Without commenting on the Dardan specifically, Google said it takes Web land sites from its hunt index that incorporate malware.

"We have got canceled client business relationships that show advertisements re-directing users to malicious land sites or that publicize a merchandise violating our software system principles," the company said in a statement.

Why Firefox is Better than Internet Explorer

Even though Firefox is newer than Internet Explorer, it is considered by many, to be superior in security and reliability. While Internet Explorer may tout its new characteristics in recent upgrades, there are plenty of bugs that people are encountering and for the most part, the bulk of the 'newer features' IE boasts about, were already available in Firefox for a while.

One of the most recent embroideries to Internet Explorer is the check browsing. This is a very utile feature; however Firefox have had it for over a twelvemonth now. Regardless if there are or aren't any bugs in this peculiar IE feature, given their path record, I give Firefox a pollexes up on this 1 because it's old school for them at this point.

Additionally Microsoft Internet Explorer offers protection against phishing cozenages with its anti-phishing scanner. Due to the rise of phishing threats, it is a well received and necessary feature. However, Firefox offers this same safety characteristic with its Google Toolbar extension.

And while Firefox might not be absolutely one hundred percentage secure, the bugs are realized and repaired much faster owed its Open Beginning software. While some feel this presents unneeded security risk, by making the beginning codification readily available to the public, it have more than support and parts from assorted software system developers. In contrast, with Internet Explorer, Microsoft is solely responsible for fixing security issues, which sometimes intends delayed response.

Then come ups the Internet Explorer Web Developer Toolbar extension feature. This imaginative characteristic offerings welcomed tools to web developers by manner of troubleshooting web pages. But, you guessed it, still yet another pre-existing and perhaps superior characteristic available with Firefox tools.

To summarize it up, even with Microsoft Internet Explorer running play alongside Firefox, the fact still stays that Firefox have had few jobs from the beginning. With both beingness cervix to cervix in available characteristics the competition is stiff. But if you're cook to set some of the new characteristics to work for you in web browsing, why not check up on out the dependable 1 that been doing right all along. You can download now, Firefox for FREE, plus larn some particular tips that volition let you to do the most out of Firefox tools.