Author: Pallab De

Since last week, rumors that Google has made up its mind to quit China have been getting stronger and stronger. Now a Chinese newspaper is reporting that Google may cease operations in China as early as April 10. Reportedly, Google will announce the departure date on Monday – the day after the Google employees will receive their annual year-end bonus.

The row started when Google publicly announced that they had been victim of sophisticated hacking attempts originating from China. In an aggressive move, Google promised to serve uncensored search results in China and even threatened to pull out. The ensuing controversy worsened diplomatic relationship between China and USA and succeeded in bolstering Google’s “Do No Evil” image.

Google may not be the largest search engine in China, but it does command a significant market share. Google has officially declined to comment on the speculations. However, if it indeed decides to quit China completely, there would be widespread ramifications due to the sheer number of various Google products and their respective users.

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As expected, the browser choice screen (also known as the browser ballot) is having a significant positive impact on alternate browsers. Norwegian browser maker Opera Software has revealed that they are experiencing a 130% increase in browser download rates as a result of the choice screen. In fact, the choice screen now accounts for as much as 53% of the total downloads from Europe.

The effect is most pronounced in Poland where the browser choice screen has led to a three-fold increase in the download rates and now accounts for 77% of all downloads. Downloads from Spain, Italy and Denmark have also increased significantly. Surprisingly enough, Norway is one of the countries least affected by the browser screen. Perhaps, this is because awareness about the homegrown browser is already high in Norway.

Although, Apple and Google have declined to share any statistic, both Opera and Firefox have confirmed that they are experiencing significantly increased download rates. In the coming months, it will be interesting to see if the browser choice screen manages to have a significant effect on browser market.

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Earlier this week, several media outlets reported that Google might have already decided to cease operations in China. While Google hasn’t officially reacted to the speculation, MSNBC is reporting that Google has begun serving uncensored search results in China.

Google had promised uncensored search results in their original missive. However, at least til earlier this week, search results were censored as usual in China. However, now it appears that at least some users in China are getting uncensored results for search queries related to the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre and Xinjiang independence.

Google officially denies making any changes. “We have not changed our operations in China,” said Google spokesman Scott Rubin. In fact, it is quite possible that this is simply a case of the filters malfunctioning. However, if the results have indeed been uncensored, then two things are certain. Firstly, the Chinese government will not be pleased with this development and secondly they will not hide their displeasure.

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Before I begin, allow me to get one thing out of the way; I absolutely hate the “This Program Might Not Have Installed Correctly” dialogue box. They are not only annoying but also misleading. Whatever little purpose they serve is negated by the fact that these prompts tend to be woefully inaccurate.

These warning prompts are triggered by the Program Compatibility Assistant (PCA) Service, which monitors all application installations and tries to detect known compatibility problems. The trouble is that most portable applications seem to trigger PCA alerts. Thankfully, disabling the PCA service is straightforward.

• Type services.msc in the Start Menu (or in the Run dialogue box).
• Locate the entry for Program Compatibility Assistant Service.



• Right Click on it and select Properties from the context menu.
• Set Startup Type to Disabled and close the Services applet.
• If you ever feel the need to undo the changes, simply change the Startup Type back to Manual.

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Nexus One hasn’t exactly set the mobile market on fire since its launch. In spite of tremendous pre-launch hype and fairly positive reviews, the sales figures for the Google phone have been abysmal. Now, Flurry has released a new set of data which really drives home how appalling Nexus One’s sales figures are.

The original iPhone took 74 days to sell one million units. In the same period, Google has managed to sell only 0.135 million handsets. Somewhat surprisingly, Motorola managed to sell the most units within 74 days of its launch. However, to be fair, Motorola had several advantages including increased receptivity to smart phone, a larger subscriber base and holiday season launch.

On the other hand, Google’s sales figures have undoubtedly taken a beaten due to the unconventional distribution model. The poor sales figures illustrates that most users are not used to purchasing mobile phones online. Although, Google is officially claiming to be “pleased” with the sales figures, it will be interesting to see if they manage to make the online distribution model viable.

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Microsoft has released a couple of workarounds for the extremely critical Internet Explorer vulnerability we had discussed earlier. The workarounds are available as Fix It solutions, which can be applied directly from the browser.

The vulnerability in question is caused by an error in the Peer Factory class (iepeers.dll) and affects Internet Explorer 6 and 7. The impact of the vulnerability has been magnified by the public availability of the exploit code as well as presence of in-the-wild malwares exploiting this vulnerability.

The first workaround simply disable Peer Factory in the concerned systems while the second one enables DEP (Data Execution Prevention) protection for older versions of Internet Explorer.

The Fix-It solutions make it aptly clear that Microsoft is taking this issue extremely seriously. An update is currently being tested internally and would be pushed out to all affected users as soon as possible. However, in the meantime users stuck with older versions of Internet Explorer should immediately apply the workarounds.

[ Download and Apply Fix-It Solutions ]

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I don’t know what the developers at Opera Software have for breakfast, but it is certainly good stuff. Over the past few weeks, they have been churning out new releases at a frantic pace. Closely following the release of Opera 10.50 for Windows and Opera Mini 5 Beta for Android and Windows Mobile, Opera Software has just released the final builds of Opera Mini 5 (for Java and Blackberry handsets) and Opera Mobile 10 (for Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile).

Opera Mini 5 designed to work on pretty much any phone that supports J2ME applications. Native versions are available for some platforms (such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android handsets), however the feature set for all editions is similar.

Opera Mini 5 is a huge improvement over Opera Mini 4 and bears little resemblance to its predecessor. The interface has been completely revamped and is both stylish and intuitive. New features include tabbed browsing, visual speed dial, adaptive zoom, touch-screen support, password manager, privacy manager, download manager, inline editing, find-in-page and copy-paste support. Existing features such as Opera Links (synchronization), RSS feed reader, address auto-completion and landscape mode have been retained.

Opera Mini is currently the most popular mobile browser in the world with more than fifty million users. Its biggest advantage is speed. In order to overcome the limitations imposed by the weak hardware of basic phones, all webpages are routed through Opera’s servers, where they are rendered and compressed. Opera claims that it can reduce size of pages by up to 90%, thus providing a dramatic speed boost while reducing bandwidth costs.

Opera Mobile 10 is the more feature-packed brethren of Opera Mini and currently supports Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile. It features the same rendering engine (Presto) utilized by Opera for desktop and is better suited to render dynamic content.

Other features include tabbed browsing, password manager, privacy manager, kinetic scrolling, auto-rotation, adaptive zoom, touch-screen support, find-in-page and speed dial. Opera Mobile 10 also retains Opera Turbo, which once again relies on server-side compression to reduce bandwidth usage and increase surfing speed on slow connections.

Opera was one of the first companies to envision a united open web. This has allowed them a head start over competitors. However, they aren’t resting on their laurels. “Keeping in mind the needs and wants of our 50+ million users, we have emphasized speed, desktop-like functionality and data savings in our mobile browsers. Today, we have made it even easier for everyone to surf, search and socialize on the Web,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. Opera Software’s latest mobile offerings retain their tradition of innovation and are indeed a force to be reckoned with.

[ Download Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10 for your handset ]

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Welcome to another edition of Browser Saturday – the weekly roundup of all major browser related news. Without further ado let us get started.

Internet Explorer

This was a particularly rough week for Internet Explorer users. Early in the week, Microsoft released a security advisory warning users about a critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, which could result in the execution of malicious code. Soon, multiple security product vendors confirmed that the vulnerability was indeed being exploited by hackers to attack unsuspecting users. To make matters worse Israeli researcher Moshe Ben Abu published the exploit code. Check out our original article to learn more about this issue.

Microsoft also tweaked the browser ballot screen – which has already given a boost to alternate browsers, to remove any inherent bias.

Firefox

Mozilla publically launched RockYourFirefox – a central repository for users looking to enhance their browsing experience. RockYourFirefox would regularly feature some of the best Firefox extensions along with reviews, feedback and insights from Firefox users around the web.

However, the most exciting development of the week was the announcement of Mozilla Account Manager. It is a new Mozilla Labs project, which aims to make managing accounts on different websites simpler by allowing users to sign-in/sign-out from the toolbar itself. Check out our in-depth coverage to get an idea about this possibly revolutionary product.

Mozilla also started pushing Firefox 3.6 more proactively to users, while continuing impressive work on the latest development builds.

Chrome

This was a comparatively quiet week for Google Chrome. The most significant development was Google deciding to do away with the unique client ID present in all installations of the browser. In the future, Chrome will be getting rid of the unique identifier after the first automatic update check.

Although there weren’t a lot of new stuff from Google, there were plenty of new extensions. If you are a cricket fan, go ahead and install the IPL on YouTube extension for Chrome to get lives scores, commentary and match reminders.

Opera

Opera Software had a fairly dramatic week thanks to all the hoopla about the malformed Content-Length header security issue. The initial proof of concept code turned out to be non-exploitable. However, a modified scenario presented by Secunia was (at least theoretically) revealed to be a security risk.

However, things were not all gloomy for Opera. Carakan JavaScript engine continued its impressive showing – it proved itself to be not only the fastest but also the best behaved.

Meanwhile, Opera Software kept churning out releases for various platforms. UNIX and MAC users received new 10.50 snapshots while Windows users got a chance to try out a 10.51 build. Opera Mini 5 beta for Android was also released this week.

Safari

Apple pushed through as many as 16 security updates for Safari, ahead of the Pwn2Own hacking contest.

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• Opera Comes Clean On the Malformed Content-Length Header Security Issue
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Back in January, we reported that Apple iPhone OS 4.0 might introduce a host of improvements including support for full-fledged multitasking. Now, Apple Insider has uncovered further evidence, which corroborates our original story.

Ever since the introduction of 3rd part apps, multitasking has been one of the most requested (rather demanded) features. The iPhone OS has traditionally prevented third party apps from running in the background. However, this has always been an artificial restriction, rather than a technical limitation. In fact, Jailbroken iPhone’s have had multitasking capability for quite some time.

At the moment, very little is known about the upcoming firmware update. However, sources with a proven track record have confirmed to Apple Insider that, “The Cupertino-based company has developed a “full-on solution” to multitasking on the iPhone OS”. The source also teased that iPhone OS 4.0 will feature a “multi-tasking manager that leverages interface technology already bundled with its Mac OS X operating system”. Gizmodo believes that the interface technology in question is Expose. What do you think? Are you excited at the prospect of seeing multitasking in iPhone? Don’t forget to let us know.

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Earlier this week, Microsoft had issued a security advisory warning users of Internet Explorer 6 and 7 about the presence of an unpatched vulnerability. Since, then the situation has rapidly deteriorated for Microsoft. Multiple security product vendors including Symantec and McAfee have already confirmed that the vulnerability is being exploited by hackers to attack unsuspecting users. Now, PCWorld is reporting that the exploit code has been published on the web.

The vulnerability, which has been rated by Secunia as “Extremely critical”, permits the execution of arbitrary code that can result in a compromised system. The exploit code was published by Israeli researcher Moshe Ben Abu, who used a clue present in a blog post by McAfee to obtain an in-the-wild exploit.

The critical nature of the vulnerability combined with the publication of exploit code makes the situation precarious for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 users. Most experts believe that Microsoft will try to patch the vulnerability as soon as possible. However, until a patch is released, users are advised to use an alternate browser or apply the workarounds suggested by Microsoft.

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You are probably familiar with the Acid3 test, which checks how well certain selected aspects of web standards (especially those related to the Document Object Model and JavaScript) are implemented by a browser. Now, the Chromium development team has released a similar benchmarking utility which can check how well a browser’s JavaScript engine behaves. The test runner is based on the Sputnik JavaScript conformance test suite which was launched last year.

Sputnik comprises of more than 5000 tests and touches all aspects of the JavaScript language defined in the third edition of the ECMA-262 specification. The results of the test are quite interesting. As expected, none of the browsers managed a perfect score. Opera 10.50 was the best performer with 78 failures, while Internet Explorer 8 was the worst performer with 463 failures. Safari 4, Chrome 4 and Firefox 3.6 recorded 159, 218 and 259 failures respectively.

Sputnik test itself is still in its infancy and will undoubtedly continue to evolve and mature with time. However, a standard test suite like this will definitely help browser manufacturers discover bugs and inconsistencies. Let us hope that browser manufacturers like Microsoft and Mozilla will take this test seriously and help in the evolution of a truly Open Web.

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Chatroulette’s popularity has skyrocketed over the past few weeks thanks to the widespread media coverage. At the moment, you can love it, hate it, but just can’t ignore it. The basic premise of Chatroulette is simple – it connects random strangers for a two-way webcam chat. Although the officially stated purpose of the site is to simply meet and befriend random people from different corners of the world, like most things on the internet, it is used by many for cheap titillation.

Chatroulette Map is an interesting mashup of Chatroulette and Google Maps. Chatroulette utilizes a P2P (peer-to-peer) connection between to users for communication. Hence, determining the IP address of the user on the other end is not too hard. Chatroulette Map grabs the IP address and screenshot of random users and uses Geo IP database to obtain the approximate location of the user.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Chatroulette Map does not serve any real purpose, but neither does Chatroulette. It is an interesting mashup, but the morality of taking screenshots of unsuspecting users and using them publically is dubious. In fact, one of the biggest attractions of Chatroulette is anonymity. However, if services like Chatroulette Map take off then unwary users may be in for trouble. Don’t forget to let us know what you think about Chatroulette and Chatroulette Map.

Techie Buzz Rating: 1.5/5 (Average)

[ Visit Chatroulette Map ]

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Close on the heels of the launch of Opera Mini for Windows Mobile, Opera Software has released Opera Mini 5 beta for Android handsets.

The new beta for Android contains all the features we have come to love in Opera Mini. It attempts to provide a desktop like browsing experience through features such as tabbed browsing, visual speed dial, bookmarks and password manager. “Android users should not have to compromise when it comes to surfing the Web on their phones. Opera Mini will give Android users a fast and cost-efficient access to their favorite Web sites and services,” said Dag Olav Norem, Vice President of Products, Opera Software.

Opera Mini lacks multi-touch and flash support, but tries to make up for the missing features through sheer speed. All webpages are compressed (by up to 90%) before being sent to your device. This dramatically increases browsing speed while reducing your bandwidth bills.

Android users can download Opera Mini from the Android marketplace or by visiting m.opera.com/next with their Android browser.

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Last week we reported that a highly critical security vulnerability had been uncovered in Opera for Windows. Since then, there have been several conflicting statements from Opera and Secunia regarding the seriousness of the vulnerability.

On one hand, Secunia claimed that the vulnerability is serious enough to permit the execution of arbitrary code and can even be used to gain control of the user’s system. On the other hand, several Opera employees indicated that the vulnerability is non-exploitable.

A short while ago, both Opera Software and Secunia officially issued clarifications regarding this issue. It appears that the confusion arose because the initial proof of concept code shared with Opera was in fact non-exploitable and achieved little more than crashing Opera. Accordingly, Opera Software had issued public statements based on their initial investigations.

On the next day, Secunia contacted Opera and presented a slightly modified scenario. On 64-bit systems, the modified code would still trigger a crash. However, on 32 bit systems it could cause memory corruption and (at least in theory) be exploited to execute arbitrary code. In other words, the original test case was not a security issue but the modified scenario presented by Secunia was.

Opera Software has already prepared a patch and is testing the updated build internally. The patched build should be publically released soon.

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Sony Ericsson has yet to launch its line of Android phones, but expectations are already sky high. Xperia X10 is slated to come out soon, while Xperia X10 Mini and Xperia X10 Mini Pro should hit the market by the end of this year.

Sony Ericsson has been working on its dazzling user interface, dubbed UX (Rachael), for more than a couple of years. As a result of the long developement cycle, Xperia X10 would initially ship with Android 1.6 – which is fairly outdated. Thankfully, Sony Ericsson is not planning on leaving buyers of their brand new smart phones stranded with an outdated operating system. Speaking to CNet Asia, a Sony Ericsson spokesperson confirmed that SE will be upgrading all of its Android devices to the newer version. He teased that the upgrade "will be an Eclair variant, so it could be 2.1 or even 2.2″.

This news should be music to the ears of Sony Ericsson fans and anyone looking to buy an Xperia X10 device. At the moment, very little is known about Android 2.2. In fact, SE is possibly the first device manufacturer to even confirm its existence. The update timeframe is also ambiguous, and Sony Ericsson may take four to eight months to deliver the update. However, one thing is sure – exciting times lie ahead for Sony Ericsson and Android fans.

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Welcome to another edition of Friday Fun. Working on large software development projects can be quite demanding, especially if you have a deadline to meet. During this demanding period, it is a common practice among developers to unleash their creativity (and also let off steam) through code comments.

Users at PreCentral.net have managed to locate quite a few snarky and amusing comments present in Palm’s webOS code. While they aren’t as insane as the ones spotted by Codeulate (warning: NFSW), they are amusing and interesting in their own geeky way. While one developer labeled users as “slimy ******* users”, another revealed the time constraints he was working under. Here are some of my favorites:

• //<-- gaze into the javascript abyss
• // This should not happen
• // Every time you call this, somewhere a kitten dies
• // this is weird
• // Welcome to the house of javascript hacks. Please enjoy your stay!
• // Finally remove any remaining scripts to avoid any evilness they may bring
• // TODO: Peter will fix this
• // On the offchance that the user hits the ‘minimize’
  // before we finished capture … slimy ******* users.
• var depressed = false; // spot the pun!
• // hide all buttons and plead for patience.
• //TODO: this is not a great user experience, but will get the job done given the time constraints.
  // A preferable solution would be to add a spinner while the account is being deleted or send the
  // user to the accountpreferences assistant and invoke the Remove Account button.

(via fearphage)

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Today Opera Software hosted its fourth Capital Markets Day in Oslo, Norway. You can download the excerpts of the event from here. Although, the document doesn’t provide any detailed information about their future plans, there are quite a few interesting revelations:

• Opera Mini Widgets: Opera has been tirelessly promoting widgets, which are essentially tiny applications developed utilizing web standards. Widgets are currently available only in Opera Mobile and Opera for desktop. However, Opera will soon be introducing widgets to Opera Mini. This is a significant announcement, as this would allow even basic phones to run web-applications (widgets) such as eBook reader and Twitter Client.
• Opera “Bream” UI: At the moment, little is known about Bream, but Haavard K. Moen teased that it “covers the entire mobile value chain”.



• Revolutionizing the TV: Opera is already focusing on emerging segments such as Television sets. Opera estimates the number of connected TVs to grow from 14.7 million in 2009 to 87.6 million in 2013. It intends on building a HTML5 based open applications platform for TVs. The development platform and developer tools are expected to be launched later this year.
• Continued Collaboration with Global Operators: Currently Opera has agreements with 11 out of top 30 mobile operators globally. It plans on increasing both short-term and long-term revenues by teaming-up with even more extensively with device manufacturers and mobile operators. Opera will be powering Vodafone’s Android app store client.
• Opera Turbo to Go Mobile: Opera will be introducing Turbo devices (possibly in collaboration with Vodafone). Opera Turbo is a technology, which was introduced in Opera 10 for desktop. In Turbo mode, all webpages are routed through Opera’s servers, where they are compressed to dramatically reduce page load times on slower connections. Exactly what Opera means by Turbo enabled devices remains to be seen, but it could possibly be devices equipped with Opera Mobile featuring Turbo.
• More Than 100 Million Users: Opera currently has 48 million desktop users and more than 50 million mobile users. The total desktop market share is estimated to be 1.73 billion users. This means that Opera’s desktop market share is approximately 2.7 %. Opera estimates its mobile market share to be around 26%.



• Impact of Ballot Screen: After the soft launch (website launch) of the ballot screen, Opera’s daily download rate tripled in several European countries. The impact of the actual launch (on March 1) should obviously be much larger.

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