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Google Fit update brings Android users real-time exercise tracking

In a statement on the official Google Chrome Blog, the browser’s developers have announced the availability of a new version in the stable channel. It brings some performance improvements and a handful of new features.

Google’s development efforts on Chrome have been moving forward at an impressive pace. The company is iterating very quickly on new features and stabilizing them as they trickle down through the various release channels. The most noteworthy new features introduced in the stable release of Chrome 9 are support for WebGL and Chrome Instant.

WebGL is a relatively new standard that emerged in 2009 with the support of the Khronos group. It provides a set of JavaScript APIs that wrap the functionality of OpenGL ES, allowing developers to render 3D graphics in the Canvas element. Mozilla and Apple have also adopted the standard and have their own increasingly mature implementations. Google officially supports WebGL with hardware-accelerated rendering in Chrome 9. To take the feature for a spin, you can try out some of the WebGL demos at the Chrome Experiments website.

Another major feature in Chrome 9 is support for Chrome Instant, the browser equivalent of Google’s instant search innovation. As the user types a URL, the autocompletion mechanism will automatically load pages. This feature is integrated into the browser, but is not enabled by default. Users who want automatic loading will have to opt-in by toggling a preference in Chrome’s settings panel.

Users can download the latest version of Chrome from Google’s website. For more details about some of the bug fixes, you can refer to the release notes.

YouTube Kids, the family-friendly video app, is now available outside the US

Mozilla has rolled out an eleventh beta release of Firefox 4, the next major version of the browser. In addition to the usual assortment of bugfixes and performance improvements, the new beta also adds support for a “Do Not Track” setting.

The implications of behavioral advertising are a growing source of concern among privacy advocates. In an effort to appease regulators, the most prominent Internet advertising companies voluntarily offer a cookie-based opt-out service that allows users to indicate to advertisers that they don’t want to be tracked. It’s a good start, but Mozilla sees a lot of room for improvement.

The browser vendor recently proposed a simpler and more seamless solution which involves adding an optional header to HTTP requests. The header can be used to transparently inform advertisers that the user doesn’t want to be tracked. It’s a better long-term approach than the cookie-based solution because it’s easier to manage and integrate into existing software.

Mozilla has implemented the feature in Firefox 4 beta 11. The browser’s preferences dialog has a new checkbox that the user can toggle to control whether the opt-out header is transmitted to servers. The setting is disabled by default, but is relatively easy for users to find and enable.

As we explained when we compared the tracking opt-out philosophies of Google and Mozilla last month, the downside of introducing a new Do Not Track mechanism is that won’t actually work until it gets buy-in from the major advertising companies. As far as we know, the new header isn’t actually recognized by major advertisers yet.

Due to the lack of industry support, toggling the new setting will have no real effect for users at this time. It seems premature to be exposing the feature through the Firefox user interface, but doing so could potentially help to encourage broader adoption by advertisers and other browser vendors. It’s worth noting that the advertising industry has been relatively supportive of opt-out technologies in the past, so there is hope that Mozilla’s solution will gain some traction.

How to Back Up and Restore WhatsApp Chats with Google Drive

Microsoft today announced that it had wrapped up work on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and would start delivering the major upgrade on Feb. 22 through Windows Update.

The company said it had reached the “release to manufacturing,” or RTM milestone for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, and was shipping the code to PC and server makers today.

Customers who subscribe to either TechNet or the Microsoft Software Developer Network (MSDN) can download Windows 7 SP1 starting Wednesday, Feb. 16, the same day companies with volume license agreements can grab the upgrade.

The general public must wait until Tuesday, Feb. 22, when SP1 hits the Windows Update service. Microsoft typically reserves the last Tuesday of each month for shipping non-security updates.

Google+ is now faster for the few who use it

It has been almost a year since Intel and Nokia began converging their respective mobile Linux platforms to create the MeeGo project. The effort has attracted interest among hardware vendors, but hasn’t quite reached the stage where it is ready for mainstream consumer devices. A growing body of evidence suggests that the wait might soon be over.

Nokia had hoped to deliver its first MeeGo-based product in the fourth quarter of 2010, but pushed back the launch into 2011. Nokia’s MeeGo debut device was originally expected to be the rumored N9 handset, but the subsequent flow of conflicting rumors and leaks has left little in the way of clarity, leaving broad speculation in their wake.

The latest round of rumors suggests that Nokia is still aiming to bring the N9 to market, but that it will be powered by an Intel Atom processor. This seemingly dubious suggestion got a boost last week when Intel showed off a smartphone with the company’s Medfield SoC.

We are also starting to see some signs that Nokia is polishing up MeeGo for a product launch. In a brief and informal note posted on the Qt Labs blog earlier this week, Nokia’s Henrik Hartz acknowledged that Nokia has temporarily closed the MeeGo-themed branch of its Qt Quick components project. The contents of that branch will allow third-party Qt applications to conform with the MeeGo look and feel. Nokia says that this code is being finalized and that the developers are “unable to make certain pieces of the final user experience public” during the last stages of development.

Nexus 6P vs iPhone 6s Plus – Speed Test and Benchmarks

With the Gingerbread barely cooled on the Android 2.3 SDK, Google has now pushed another iteration to developers. In Android 2.3.3, it’s all about expanding support for near-field communications — that non-Packers NFC business we’ve been hearing so much about.

In Android 2.3.3, Google has added a full-featured NFC read and write API, which will work with “almost any standard NFC tag in use today.” They’re also providing developers with better control over how their apps react when an NFC tag comes into range.

Last but not least, similar to the Touchstone transfer wizardry shown off by HP on its new line of webOS hardware today, Android 2.3.3 has initial support for peer-to-peer connections with “other NFC devices.”

Google obviously wants to get some momentum behind Android’s NFC support, not least because the company is likely working on an NFC-driven payment system.

Let the proximity application awesomeness begin!

Google can remotely bypass the passcode of at least 74% of Android devices if ordered

According to a document prepared by the New York District Attorney’s Office, older versions of Android can easily be remotely reset by Google if compelled by a court order, allowing investigators to easily view the contents of a device.

The document, which looks at the impact of full disk encryption on access for law enforcement, says that devices running Android 5.0 (and newer) are unable to be remotely reset as they use full disk encryption – it’s not switched on by default for many devices, however. Anything using an older version is vulnerable to remote reset.

“Forensic examiners are able to bypass passcodes on some of those devices using a variety of forensic techniques.

For some other types of Android devices, Google can reset the passcodes when served with a search warrant and an order instructing them to assist law enforcement to extract data from the device. This process can be done by Google remotely and allows forensic examiners to view the contents of a device.”

According to the Android Developer Dashboard, that means that 74.1 percent of devices are still using a version of Android that can be remotely reset at any time.

Apple and Google settle Motorola patent disagreement and agree to cooperate on patent reform

(Reuters) – Apple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola Mobility unit have agreed to settle all patent litigation between them over smartphone technology, ending one of the highest profile lawsuits in technology.

In a joint statement on Friday, the companies said the settlement does not include a cross license to their respective patents.

“Apple and Google have also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform,” the statement said.

Apple and companies that make phones using Google’s Android software have filed dozens of such lawsuits against each other around the world to protect their technology. Apple argued that Android phones that use Google software copy its iPhones.

The two companies informed a federal appeals court in Washington that the cases should be dismissed, according to filings on Friday. However, the deal does not appear to apply to Apple’s litigation against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, as no dismissal notices were filed in those cases.

The most high-profile case between Apple and Motorola began in 2010. Motorola accused Apple of infringing several patents, including one essential to how cell phones operate on a 3G network, while Apple said Motorola violated its patents to certain smartphone features.

Bing caught copying search results from Google

In a case of Internet espionage that makes the antics of double agent Cold War operatives seem like frivolous child play, Bing has been caught stealing search results from Google with its Bing toolbar and IE8’s Suggested Sites feature.

Google first suspected foul play in May 2010. By October 2010, with Bing results beginning to look uncannily like Google’s, it knew something had to be done about it — and so, in true, nerdtastic style, Google set up a sting to prove that Microsoft was actually behind the wholesale mimicry of Google’s search results.

Google injected “synthetic” results into its search engine — fake queries and results that no real user or engine would ever generate. Then, on D-Day, December 17, about 20 Google engineers were asked to run the test queries with Internet Explorer 8, Bing Bar and Suggested Sites. By December 31, some of these fake results began appearing on Bing. See the examples after the break — it’s damning.

For a full discussion of Bing’s antics, and what repercussions Microsoft might have to face, read the original Search Engine Land post.