TechBlog

cross-posted on the Official Google Blog Just three weeks ago, we kicked off the Year of the Rabbit with a speedy Chrome beta. Today, we’re excited to bring these speed improvements and more to everyone using Chrome. With today’s stable release, even your most complex web apps will run more quickly and responsively in the browser. (For the curious, this boost corresponds to a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark suite.) We realize that speed isn’t just about pure brawn in the browser—it’s also about saving time with simple interfaces. Chrome’s new settings interface will help you get to the right settings quickly so you don’t have to dig endlessly to find a way to import your bookmarks or change your browser’s homepage. We’ve added a search box that shows you the settings you’re looking for, as you type. On top of that, you can also copy and paste a direct link into Chrome’s address bar to jump to a specific settings page. (No more long, frustrating phone conversations with your dad on where to find that specific setting in the browser!) Here’s the new settings interface in action: ...

Google is always looking for new ways to make it easier for developers to get started with our APIs. When you come across a new Google API, you often want to try it out without investing too much time. With that in mind, we are happy to announce the Google APIs Explorer, an interactive tool that lets you easily try out Google APIs right from your browser. Today, the Explorer supports over a half dozen APIs – and we expect that number to grow rapidly over the coming weeks and months. ...

Mashable: Monday night, Adobe released a new, experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool codenamed Wallaby. Wallaby is an AIR app that lets devs and designers quickly and simply convert Flash Professional files to HTML5— and when we say “simply and easily,” we mean it’s a matter of dragging and dropping. The company is specifically hoping this tool will make it easier for designers and developers to get their content onto iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. ...

CNET wrote: The popular blogging-site hoster WordPress was hit with another distributed denial-of-service attack this morning, the second in two days. “Unfortunately, the DDoS attack from yesterday returned in a different form this morning and affected sitewide performance,” the company said in a notice on its Automattic site, which serves as a dashboard for the service. “The good news is that we were able to mitigate it quickly and performance returned to normal around 11:15 UTC. We are continuing to monitor the situation closely.” ...

labnol.org wrote: If you are a fan of Firefox, you may want to get this one. The first RC (Release Candidate) of Firefox web browser is now available for download at ftp.mozilla.org. If you have trouble accessing the above link, use this direct link to download the Firefox 4 RC1 installer for Windows. The Mac version of Firefox 4 RC1 is here while the Linux version is here. This Mozilla page has a list of all news features that are part of Firefox 4 beta, including the compact start button, and am not sure if much has changed in the latest RC. ...

Mashable wrote: Google has broken new ground in the personal finance realm with the purchase of UK price comparison website BeatThatQuote for $61.5 million ($37.7 million GBP). BeatThatQuote, launched in 2005, provides price comparisons for UK loans, insurance, legal services, utilities and other financial products. It was named one of the UK’s fastest-growing websites by Nielsen in 2007. “Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google,” BeatThatQuote Managing Director John Paleomylites said in a statement on the company’s website. “We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.” ...

BetaNews.com: Android handsets infected with malware are getting a cleaning job from Google. On March 2nd, Google removed 21 apps from the Android Marketplace that contained malicious code (the number of infected apps is now 58). Now Google is “remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices” and “pushing an Android Market security update to all affected devices that undoes the exploits to prevent the attacker(s) from accessing any more information from affected devices,” according to a blog post by Rich Cannings, Android security lead. ...

TechSpot Wrote: A few new Windows 8 user interface screenshots have leaked. Windows 8 build 7910 is part of the Milestone 2 branch, so we’re not seeing the latest, but it is rather interesting that it took just eight minutes to install, approximately 2.5 times faster than Windows 7. You have to thank the Chinese website Win7China for offering a glimpse into the future even though the leaks did include several wallpapers with a “ssh…let’s not leak our hard work” message. ...

The Chrome OS Beta channel has been updated to R10 release 0.10.156.46 including the new Chrome 10 Beta, new trackpad and several stability and functional improvements over the previous release. This release contains the following security fixes: Scratchpad application security vulnerability fix In addition to all Chrome 10 new features (see Chrome 10 blogpost), there are several Chrome OS great improvements including: 3G modem activation fixes 3G connection to the carrier fixes Wi-Fi connectivity/Out of the Box fixes New trackpad and sensitivity setting adjusted Auto update engine and debugging improvements Power optimizations GTalk video/chat optimizations Audio CPU utilization improvements Improved on screen indicators: brightness, network status, update icon There is one known issue: ...

Internet giant buys into security. Internet giant Google has acquired software analytics firm Zynamics, it was announced yesterday. The German company, which was founded in 2004 by CEO Thomas Dullien (aka Halvar Flake) to research the automation of reverse engineering and code analysis, now produces four reverse-engineering tools:BinDiff, VxClass, BinNavi and BinCrowd, which are widely used by researchers in the security community. Google has not provided any clues as to how it plans to make use of the Zynamics technology, other than to bolster the protection offered to Google users. Details of the acquisition were not revealed. ...