Google launches Google+: Facebook killer

According to Google blog post today Google launched a new social networking site which will rival Facebook. This social networking site was known as Google+ project. It looks identical to Facebook and it works in the same way as that of Facebook.
This new social networking site of Google is now available to a small group of invitees and will allow people to post status updates, share links and upload photos.
But according to Google what will set apart Google+ from Facebook is that users will be able to make separate “circles” or groups of online friends and will be able to communicate within these groups or circles such as users can have various circles of college friends, work colleagues and family members.
A user can communicate separately with each circle or group.
According to an analyst of Technology Business Research “Ezra Gottheil”, the circles idea makes a lot of sense. It’s smart, and while you can do something similar to Facebook, it is not exactly Facebook.   
It will take some time before we will know whether these feature will be able to convince Facebook users or to use a second social network and leave the popular Facebook for a brand new service.
Bloggers have long talked about whether Google will be able to come out with a Facebook killer.
The one certainty is that Google is facing an uphill battle in taking on Facebook. While the social network has officially said that it has more than 500 million users, other sources recently have reported that the number now is more than 750 million.
With Google+, the company is giving users a way to get a rolling scroll of content from across the Internet on any topic of they're interested in. Really into fashion, gardening or restoring old cars? Google+ will stream a feed of content into your page so you can stay up to date on your favorite topics.
And with a feature called "Hangouts," Google+ enables users to meet up with their friends online, using multiperson video.

Mozilla releases Firefox 5

Today Mozilla released the final version of Firefox 5, in its new faster release regime under which it will release new Firefox  version in six weeks. Mozilla also patched 10 bugs in Firefox 5  out of which seven were rated critical, two moderate and one as low threat.
The 10 bugs which were patched also include one in browser’s handling of the Web GL 3-D which was called unsafe by rival Microsoft.
By releasing Firefox 5 today, they have met the self imposed deadline of June 21, notable because company has slipped deadline of browser upgrades on time.
Firefox 5 looks identical to Firefox 4 but according to company it has added more than 1000 improvements. Among the most significant changes are enhanced support for HTML 5 and support for CSS (cascading style sheet) animations.
Firefox 5 can be downloaded from here:


Desktop version for windows

Mobile version

Your Firefox 5 for other operating system can be downloaded from here:


Firefox 5 download (13 mb)

Google’s new features harming Bing

This week Google has released new image and voice features, this was done so as to stop its market share from declining. Earlier it was said that Bing’s search result were far more accurate than Google and Google was slowly losing share market to Bing and Yahoo.
With these new features Google has tried not only to stop its search market share from declining but to increase search market share. According to analysts now Microsoft will need to up Bing’s game or risk falling behind.
Google laid these new search features at Inside Search event which was held on Tuesday, unveiling voice, image search and Instant pages which will load the top search result on user’s computer.
 According to an analyst with IDC Hadley Reynolds, speed and imagery is addictive to users and that’s was Google has offered its users. He further added that Bing should be working furiously to make new features because Google has just changed the game  
According to industry analysts Google’s announcements has given the dominant search engine several features that Bing doesn’t have. And that is not going to help Bing to decrease the distant ground between it and Google.
While Bing and Yahoo are focused on ‘decision engine’ capabilities of search and delivering more meat and fewer links.
However some analysts like Rob Enderle and Dan olds of Enderle Group and The Gabriel Consulting Group said that the Google will have to make sure that these features work well or users will get annoyed and will leave Google for Bing or Yahoo.

Facebook on a downturn in U.S

According to a study by Inside Facebook, the overall Facebook users are increasing but the new number of users are slowly declining. According to Inside Facebook, Facebook lost 6 million users in May.

Overall although Facebook gained 11.8 million more users in May but it is less then previous months 13.9 million gain or 20 million gain during some months in the past year.

Facebook may continue to gain users, but the world's biggest social network isn't gaining them as quickly as it has been and is actually losing users in the U.S.

According to Inside Facebook, Facebook was having 155.2 million users at the beginning of May but dropped to 149.4 million at the end of May. Other countries have also showed losses like Canada’s Facebook users loss was 1.52 million and that of U.K was more than 100,000 but the U.S showed the biggest loss.

A Facebook spokesperson, in an e-mailed statement, said Facebook is pleased with its growth. "From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook on any given day."

Google and Apple gains at Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s behest

Despite launch of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) and Firefox 4 in March, Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s browser share continue to decline according to a Web usage data published on Sunday in California based Net Applications..
According to Net Applications IE lost eight-tenths of a percentage point of share in April to 55.1%, a new low for Microsoft. In same time frame Firefox dropped to two-tenths of a percentage point to 21.6%, a share equivalent to its December 2008 standing.
Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome benefited from Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s decline.
 Safari share increased to five-tenth of a point for this month at 7.2% a record for a browser that is integrated with Mac OS X and iOS, mobile operating system for iPhone and iPad whereas Chrome’s share grew by four-tenth of a point.

Mozilla patches Firefox 4

Closes eight holes in new browser, including ASLR oversight

Mozilla on Thursday patched Firefox 4 for the first time, fixing eight flaws, including a major programming oversight that left the browser as vulnerable to attack on Windows 7 as on the 10-year-old Windows XP.
The company also plugged 15 holes in the still-supported Firefox 3.6, and issued its last security update for Firefox 3, which debuted in mid-2008.
Mozilla patched a total of 20 bugs in all versions of Firefox, 17 of them rated "critical," the company's top-most threat warning in its four-step scoring system.
Firefox 4.0.1, the first update to that browser since its March 22 launch, fixed seven critical flaws and one rated "low."
The most important of the bugs was a programming lapse that left Firefox 4 open to less-sophisticated attacks.
"The WebGLES libraries in the Windows version of Firefox were compiled without ASLR protection," stated the advisory labeled MSFA 2011-17. "An attacker who found an exploitable memory corruption flaw could then use these libraries to bypass ASLR on Windows Vista and Windows 7, making the flaw as exploitable on those platforms as it would be on Windows XP or other platforms."
The WebGLES graphics libraries support WebGL, an open-source extension to JavaScript that lets developers render interactive 3-D graphics content.
WebGL is supported in shipping versions of Firefox and Google's Chrome, in a preview build of Opera Software's Opera, and will be backed by Safari in its next upgrade.
The Khronos Group, an industry consortium whose members include Mozilla, Google, Opera and Apple, released the final specification of WebGL 1.0 just last month.
ASLR, or address space layout randomization, is one of the security underpinnings of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It's designed to make it more difficult for attackers to locate addressable memory space that can be used to execute exploits.
"The WebGLES libraries could potentially be used to bypass a security feature of recent Windows versions," Mozilla acknowledged. "WebGL was introduced in Firefox 4; older versions are not affected by these issues."
Mozilla credited a researcher who goes only by his first name, "Nils," for reporting the ASLR oversight. Nils may be best known for his work at the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest, where in 2009 he exploited Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari in short order to win $15,000 in cash awards.
At 2010's Pwn2Own, Nils won $10,000 by sidestepping ASLR and DEP (data execution prevention), another anti-exploit technology found in Windows, to hack Firefox 3.6.
Mozilla also upgraded older editions of Firefox to 3.6.17 and 3.5.19, noting that the latter was the last security update for the aged browser.
"This is the last planned security and stability release for Firefox 3.5," said Christian Legnitto, who overseas Firefox releases. "All users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 4."
The support expiration for Firefox 3.5 will affect a minority of Mozilla's users: As of the end of March, just 1.7% of all users worldwide were running the browser, according to statistics from Web metrics company Net Application.
Users can update to Firefox 4.0.1 by downloading the new edition -- which runs on Windows, Mac and Linux -- or by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu in the browser. Firefox 3.6 and 3.5 users can obtain their newest versions with the update tool.