TechBlog

Google Scribe may not seem very useful, but it’s one of the features that could significantly improve virtual keyboards from mobile phones. Instead of showing suggestions from a dictionary, Google Scribe can provide contextually-relevant suggestions. Scrybe is a free Android keyboard that uses Google Scribe to generate suggestions. It’s not developed by Google and it uses an unofficial Google Scribe API, but it’s an interesting application. Scrybe needs to fix many issues to become really useful. If you delete some letters from word, Scrybe is not able to detect that you’re not writing a new word. Another problem is that you can’t type very fast because Scrybe tries to fetch the suggestions. ...

Avira started shipping the Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Avira AntiVir 10 yesterday! This Service Pack fixes plenty of minor bugs we found in version 10 and thus makes AntiVir 10 more stable. Also, the developers added some optimizations to improve the speed a little. After installing SP1, all currently known issues should be gone. Since yesterday at 11:30 O’clock a product update is available for AntiVir Personal Free, Premium and Premium Security Suite in English and German over the automatic update. ...

Let’s take a look in the Email I got from Google right now: Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we’ve reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com), a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year. Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case. ...

Browser Total Market Share Microsoft Internet Explorer 59.26% Firefox 22.82% Chrome 8.47% Safari 5.33% Opera 2.28% Opera Mini 0.95% Netscape 0.63% Konqueror 0.06% Flock 0.05% ACCESS NetFront 0.05% Playstation 0.03% Mozilla 0.03% Obigo 0.01% Danger Web Browser 0.00% Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer 0.00% Blazer 0.00% WebTV 0.00% BlackBerry 0.00% ANT Galio 0.00% Lotus Notes 0.00% iCab 0.00% MaxThon 0.00%

Nokia C7 firmware is updated to 012.003 V1.06. The firmware is available for 059D9B9 : T-Mobile NL NL v1 Silver white 059D188 : 3 UK GB White\Silver v1 059D7V3 : Country Variant Sweden SE 059D9M6 : Country Variant Sweden SE Frosty Metal_COLOR 059F2S7 : Country Variant Finland FI MAHOGANY_BROWN_V1_COLOR 059F2S5 : Country Variant Finland FI CHARCOAL_BLACK_V1_COLOR 059F320 : Country Variant Bulgaria BG FROSTY METAL V1 059F3R5 : Country Variant Bulgaria BG CHARCOAL BLACK V1_COLOR 059F3Q4 : 3 DK DK Frosty Metal_COLOR 059F191 : 3 DK DK Charcoal Black ...

At the latest PDC conference, only a very few mentions of Silverlight were observed. It seems that Microsoft is betting on HTML5 as the future for cross platform development. They even claim that Silverlight is now a Windows Phone development toolkit (read this article from ZDNet). So it is really safe to continue your developments on this platform ? The interest of Microsoft to buying Adobe is now more clear, as I think Adobe will be best positioned for generating HTML5 interfaces, mixing Flex and Dreamweaver experiences.

Avira TechBlog: Adobe warns of a new vulnerability in Flash Player and in Reader. The problem is within authplay.dll and the corresponding .lib in the Unix versions. It allows attackers to inject malicious code like Trojans with specially prepared documents or Flash objects. The company works on a patch which it plans to release on the 9th of November. Until then, deleting the authplay library helps to prevent a successful attack. Flash or Reader will crash then when a file requests the services from authplay, but this is clearly better than having an infected system.

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered hiring Apple CEO Steve Jobs as the company’s first CEO, according to a new documentary. After interviewing a dozen unsuitable candidates during Google’s early years, Page and Brin went to meet Jobs, a personal “hero” of theirs. The pair then asked investor John Doerr, “Why can’t he be our CEO?” The anecdote comes from an episode on Page and Brin from the Bloomberg documentary series “Bloomberg Game Changers.” Earlier this month, the Bloomberg series, which looks at “today’s most influential leaders,” aired an episode on Jobs. ...

Adobe have published details of a critical vulnerability the following applications. Adobe Flash Player 10.1.85.3 and earlier versions Adobe Reader 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions Adobe Acrobat 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions The vulnerability could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against Reader and Acrobat 9.x. Adobe is not currently aware of attacks targeting Flash Player. ...

Gmail has just added a new “Labs” feature that should save you some time if you’re the type of person that tends to plow through your e-mail inbox in bunches. As the name implies, the new “Auto-advance” option (that can be enabled under “Settings” > “Labs”) lets you automatically move to the previous or next conversation after archiving, deleting or muting an individual e-mail message. While that might sound like expected behavior, up until today, Gmail simply took you back to your inbox after taking any of those actions, meaning you essentially needed to scroll back down to wherever you were in your attempt at e-mail triage. ...