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(CNET) — Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple’s iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS. On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google’s Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a Chrome OS-based tablet that went live two days before the iPad launch. Apparently nobody noticed initially, because only now did Murphy tweet, “Apparently our tablet mocks have been unearthed.” The site also shows the array of devices Google envisions for Chrome OS. “While its primary focus is Netbooks, Chrome OS could eventually scale to a wide variety of devices. Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power,” according to the Chromium form factors site. Chromium is the name of the open-source developer project that underlies the branded Chrome product. It’s possible that Chrome OS could be an easier sell on tablets than on Netbooks, the class of device on which Google said it plans to launch Chrome OS. Netbooks often are used as general-purpose PCs, so the browser-based philosophy of Chrome OS is a more jarring transition. Today’s tablets, in contrast, tend to focus more on a collection of specialized uses such as reading books, surfing the Net, and chores that only require light typing. With that approach, Chrome OS’ break from the PC world could be less jarring. The tablet market isn’t as big as the Netbook market, though. The ideas are only mock-ups, but Google has established itself as a real if not dominant force in the computing industry. Its Android mobile-phone operating system is increasingly influential, and its Chrome browser continues to steadily grow in usage. The tablet mock-ups show a variety of Chrome OS tablet ideas, including a virtual keyboard taking up the bottom half of the screen or detached and floating as a separate window. Also included are a slideshow mode, an application launcher, sidebar-mounted browser tabs, and a pop-up contextual menu. The video mock-up shows a much larger tablet, with hands resizing and moving windows through the multitouch interface, scrolling through text, and typing a search query. It’s all very rough at this stage, but none of it is too remote from a multitouch-enabled version of the Chrome OS. Google plans to debut Chrome OS in Netbooks later this year, and development of the open-source operating system is well under way. In a statement, Google didn’t share any specifics about its plans: “Google Chrome OS is still in development, and we are constantly experimenting with various user interfaces to determine what designs would produce the best user experience. As we’ve said all along, the UI is still under development and will continue to evolve as we determine which designs work best for our users.” Computing companies have been trying to make tablets for years, with little success. Apple hopes its design will change that with its iPad selling from $499 to $829. It’s more of an iPhone with a large screen than a MacBook with no keyboard. Google is taking a different approach with Chrome OS. Instead of programs running straight on the computer’s hardware and its underlying Linux operating system, Chrome OS applications run directly in the browser. What’s similar to the iPad, though, is that both have somewhat of an applications head start compared with a computing platform that’s starting from scratch: the iPad can run existing iPhone apps, and Chrome OS can run existing Web applications such as Google Docs. One thing that’s changed since early tablet years is the arrival of e-book readers as a real phenomenon. Amazon’s Kindle is the most notable example, but there are others, and Apple touted book reading with the iPad. Google, it should be noted, has a conduit to millions of books via its Google Books service. Given that Apple chose to use a variation of its iPhone OS for the iPad, it’s interesting but not terribly surprising that Google chose to use Chrome OS rather than its phone operating system, Android. In the big picture, Google clearly hopes the browser will be the foundation for applications, letting them run more easily on a multitude of devices. Android uses a variation of Oracle’s Java technology as a program foundation. Perhaps ironically, Java was launched with the motto for programmers of “write once, run anywhere,” and it is that vision Google is trying to realize with Web applications.

After lots of Beta and RC releases, uTorrent, the most popular and lightweight BitTorrent client has now been updated to ver. 2.0 which is the final stable release. The user interface has also improved with a set of new icons. Release Notes: Added UDP tracker support! uTP has been improved significantly 1.8.5, with many bugs fixed and performance improvements. It can be found in the preferences as “Enable bandwidth management” (but don’t worry, you can still control caps!). The setup dialog has been overhauled to make it much easier to use and with a built-in speed test. More presets were added and it automatically scales settings for high-upload connections. A new transfer cap feature has been added to track bandwidth usage, along with graphs to show your usage. Note – The program asks you to install Ask Toolbar which you can ignore during installation. ...

Since yesterday, our lab has detected a flood of email messages that seem to contain a Microsoft Update, but it’s actually malware. We’ve seen around 3,000 in a few hours. The message is like the following: This email, which seems to have been sent by the Microsoft Support team, informs you that a new security update for Outlook/Outlook Express has been released. It’s a critical update, so it’s better to install it as soon as possible. ...

In recent weeks, various cybercrime attacks have disrupted the computer systems that allow nations to manage their national greenhouse-gas emissions quotas and their possession of carbon assets according to international agreements (the Kyoto Protocol and the European system). One quota is the right to emit the equivalent of one ton of carbon dioxide during a specified period. The initial attack targeted the Danish CO₂ quota register that was shut down on January 12. The Danish authorities took this decision after registry users received a fake email purporting to originate from the Danish Energy Agency and redirecting the recipients to a mirror site to steal their credentials. ...

Last week I revealed troubling transmissions by the Google Toolbar: Even when a user specifically “disable[s]” the Google Toolbar, and even when the Toolbar disappears from view, the Toolbar continues tracking users online behavior—including specific web pages visited and specific searches run on other search engines. To Google’s credit, after I posted my article Google promptly fixed these nonconsensual transmissions—but big questions remain. How did this bug slip through Google’s internal testing? What happens to the data Google collected without user consent? And why was Google collecting this data in the first place? ...

We were made aware that phishing for Skype credentials is currently taking place. The link the phishing mails direct to are dangerous – they aren’t detected by any phishing filter of the popular browsers yet. One thing caught my attention. Modern browsers should support domain highlighting so that the real domain is visible when someone surfs the Internet. Like Internet Explorer 8 properly does: There you can clearly see that you are not on the Skype website, but on another domain. ...

MyPcSecure is the latest rogue anti-spyware application and a clone from the WiniGuard family.

LiveEnterpriseSuite is a clone of InternetAntivirusPRO. Actually, the only thing that the authors of this rogue have changed is the name in the GUI. LiveEnterpriseSuite will detect false infections and require a license to remove them. If your computer is infected with this malware, you should remove it soon, Click Here to learn how to remove such malwares.

Google has confirmed that it’s future operating system Chrome OS will have an integrated media player that will offer basic codec support , so that users can directly play audio or video files from Gmail or from USB drives or other media devices. In an interview with Ars Technica, Matthew Papakipos, the lead engineering director for the Chrome OS project, shared that Chrome OS will have a complete media player that approximates the functionality of Windows Media Player. ...

With the latest release of their browser, v.4.0, Google has published a long expected feature: Browser Extensions. Now Chrome features what other browsers like Firefox, IE, Opera and so on offer for a long time already. But, being able to compete with the others better doesn’t mean that they have solved all problems. Actually, their problems just start to appear – because adding extensions in the browser is just the same as opening Pandora’s box. ...