TechBlog

Mashable: Facebook is known for its hackathons — all-night coding sessions designed to help create new products or improve others. Now the company has announced its first Hacker Cup. Facebook says it’s “bring[ing] engineers from around the world together to compete in a multi-round programming competition.” The Hacker Cup is very similar to Google’s popular Google Code Jam. Contestants will be challenged with solving algorithmic-based problem statements. Those who successfully solve the problems in the allotted period of time will advance to the next round. ...

Firefox Firefox 3.6.13 and Firefox 3.5.16 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.13. Firefox 3.6.13: http://firefox.com Firefox 3.5.16: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to these latest releases. If you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This updates can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu. ...

The latest release of Google Chrome includes the Chrome PDF Viewer which won’t properly display some PDF files like Dynamic Forms and PDF Portfolios. While Google Chrome is not a supported browser, the Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape 10.0.0 does actually work with Chrome on Windows. If you want to display your PDF files in Chrome using the Adobe Reader, you can easily disable the native viewer. Just type “about:plugins” in address bar and then disable the Chrome PDF Viewer. You don’t even need to restart.

Adobe: The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update (Mac|Win) speeds up painting performance and fixes a number of problems discovered after Photoshop CS5 was released. The most significant fixes in the update include the following: A number of potential security vulnerabilities have been addressed Crashing bugs related to typography & fonts have been addressed Performance of various features has been improved Crashes related to opening 3D layers, sharpening, color management, and scanning via TWAIN devices have been fixed Problems with brush cursors, the histogram progress bar, the display of selection boundaries (“marching ants”), scrolling while using the shift key, and the use of action droplets have been addressed Intermittent file format problems have been addressed Metadata-related bugs related to focus distance and Orphea Studio JPEGs have been fixed In addition you can download a TWAIN plug-in update that includes fixes for multiple document scanning, and a that fixes a crash that could occur when attempting a second scan.

Google officially unveiled the long-anticipated Chrome Web Store at its big Chrome event today. Think of the Web Store as the App Store, but for the Chrome browser. The apps work both in the Chrome web browser and in Google’s upcoming Chrome OS. Google showcased some of the apps that will be available in the Web Store from companies like NPR, The New York Times, EA and Amazon.com. Google will be rolling out the Chrome Web Store to Chrome users later today and it will be accessible via https://chrome.google.com/webstore.

Google revealed during its Chrome press conference today that its web browser now has 120 million users. That’s 50 million more users than it had less than seven months ago. Chrome is Google’s webkit-based web browser. Launched in September 2008, the browser has gone from zero market share to nearly 10% market share. It’s known for its lightweight design and fast JavaScript rendering. How fast is Google’s web browser growing, though? At its developer conference in May, Google announced that Chrome had 70 million users. That means the browser has increased its user base by around 40% in six and a half months. That’s some serious growth. ...

Mashable: Windows Phone 7 has been on the market for a little more than a month, but the company still isn’t disclosing how many devices featuring its revamped mobile OS have been sold. Pressed on the issue by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference on Tuesday, Microsoft Corporate VP for Windows Phone Joe Belfiore would say only that “It’s just too soon to talk about numbers,” though he admitted it will likely take years before Microsoft is near the top of the mobile market share discussion. ...

Mashable: Facebook and the Twitterverse have been a little quieter for the past several days, as some of the networks’ most famous users — including Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Alicia Keys — signed off in the name of charity beginning on Worlds AIDS Day, December 1. The group of celebrities had asked fans to donate to Keys’s Keep a Child Alive organization to revive their Internet presences. But by Monday — six days later — they were only halfway to $1 million and itching to get back on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, Usher, “revived” his Twitter presence before the campaign had technically ended. Apparently, the celebrities were more than a little let down by their followers. ...

BetaNews: One year ago, Google gave the world its first look at Chrome OS, a project taking a new approach to thin clients and terminal computing. The long and the short of Chrome OS is: if the browser is the most-used application on a PC, why would you load it down with anything else? Chrome OS focuses on computers that are permanently connected, where all apps, data, and user identities and desktops are stored in the cloud. The computers running the OS are designed to be as unencumbered by software as possible, so they can run quickly and reliably. Businesses can run them in secure private clouds just as well as consumers can run them on the public Web. ...

BetaNews: In light of the recent rash of “history sniffing” bugs and the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed “do not track” list, Microsoft today announced that release candidate of Internet Explorer 9 will feature a new tracking protection setting that will keep a user’s browsing habits private from sites looking to harvest browser histories. The new feature of IE9 will let users opt out of sharing their browser information with sites they may not know or necessarily trust. It includes a Tracking Protection List of Web addresses that the browser will call only if the user specifically types the URL into the browser bar. That means any content from a URL that the user has blocked will also not show up in the browser. ...