Stop Censorship: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation

Protect the Internet Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation Mozilla: On November 16th, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system. This bill can pass. If it does, the Internet and free speech will never be the same. Join us to stop this bill. Why? A few infringing links are enough to justify censoring an entire site, blocking good content along with the bad. ...

November 17, 2011 · 1 min · 144 words · Omid Farhang

Google Releases Official Google+ Notification Extension For Chrome

gHacks.net: If you are a heavy user of Google’s Google+ social networking product you are probably keeping the site running in a tab all the time to never miss new messages. But even if you do, you need to switch back to the tab regularly to see if there are any new notifications on Google+. Notifier extensions make sure that users stay informed even if they close the Google+ browser window. Up until now Chrome users could make use of third party notifiers which, will working perfectly, were not official which may have kept some users from installing and using those extensions. ...

November 3, 2011 · 2 min · 304 words · Omid Farhang

Happy third birthday, Chrome!

Google Chrome Blog: It’s that time of the year again for the Chrome team, when we pause on our anniversary to reflect on the amazing life and times of the web. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three years since we launched our open source web browser, Chrome. In that time, the web community has continued to inspire us, bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security. To pay homage to the goodness of the web, we’ve put together an interactive infographic, built in HTML5, which details the evolution of major web technologies and browsers: ...

September 1, 2011 · 5 min · 854 words · Omid Farhang

An update on attempted man-in-the-middle attacks

Google: Today we received reports of attempted SSL man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks against Google users, whereby someone tried to get between them and encrypted Google services. The people affected were primarily located in Iran. The attacker used a fraudulent SSL certificate issued by DigiNotar, a root certificate authority that should not issue certificates for Google (and has since revoked it). Google Chrome users were protected from this attack because Chrome was able to detect the fraudulent certificate. ...

August 31, 2011 · 1 min · 164 words · Omid Farhang

Blogger’s fresh new look

Blogger Buzz: As you may have heard, things are starting to look a little different across many Google products—and today, Blogger is the next product to get a makeover. It’s been a few years since we made major updates to Blogger’s look and feel, and there’s a lot more to these changes than just shiny new graphics. We’ve rewritten the entire editing and management experience from scratch so it’s faster and more efficient for you—and easier for us to update and improve over time. ...

August 31, 2011 · 2 min · 376 words · Omid Farhang

Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an Internet connection

Gmail Blog: The great thing about web apps is that you can access all of your information on the go, and we’ve introduced ways to use Google Apps on a variety of devices like mobile phones and tablets. But it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally find yourself in situations when you don’t have an Internet connection, like planes, trains and carpools. When we announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011, we talked about bringing offline access to our web apps, and now we’re taking our first steps in that direction. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today. ...

August 31, 2011 · 2 min · 407 words · Omid Farhang

Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMoney blacklist bad DigiNotar SSL certificates

Mozilla Security Blog: Mozilla just released an update to Firefox for Desktop, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey. Updates are now available for: Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux (final release) Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux (3.6.21 final release) Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac and Linux Firefox Nightly for Windows, Mac and Linux SeaMonkey (2.3.2) Thunderbird (6.0.1) We strongly recommend that all users upgrade to these releases. ...

August 31, 2011 · 2 min · 320 words · Omid Farhang

Update: Google Buys Motorola

Google Operating System Blog: Google found a way to solve the problem of Android patents and it’s only three times more expensive than acquiring the Nortel patents: buying Motorola for $12.5 billion. “Motorola has a history of over 80 years of innovation in communications technology and products, and in the development of intellectual property, which have helped drive the remarkable revolution in mobile computing we are all enjoying today. (…) In 2008, Motorola bet big on Android as the sole operating system across all of its smartphone devices. It was a smart bet and we’re thrilled at the success they’ve achieved so far,” says Google’s CEO, Larry Page. ...

August 15, 2011 · 3 min · 505 words · Omid Farhang

Google buys Motorola Mobility, Android's top supporter

BetaNews: Google thoroughly rocked the smartphone world on Monday morning by announcing it will be acquiring Android phone maker Motorola Mobility for approximately $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility has existed as a standalone entity for just 8 months, and has produced some of the most successful Android smartphones such as the first Droidwith Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, though, Motorola Mobility holds one of the most valuable wireless patent portfolios in the business, and this acquisition serves as a follow up to the Nortel Patent auction where Google placed bids, but lost out to a consortium of bidders that included Apple, EMC, Microsoft, Ericsson, Research in Motion, and Sony. ...

August 15, 2011 · 2 min · 266 words · Omid Farhang

Google Apps highlights – 8/12/2011

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that Google post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights” and subscribe to the series. This week we have news from the Gmail and Google Docs teams, which both made interface changes to streamline how you use those applications. We also introduced some new keyboard shortcuts and made improvements to spreadsheet charts and functions. ...

August 13, 2011 · 3 min · 607 words · Omid Farhang