I recently did something I haven't done at all in 2012: browsed Google Chrome's selection of extensions to make my internet experience more enjoyable (as if it could get any better). Of the 20 or more extensions that I tried out, here are the ones that stood out to me:

1. Do Not Track Plus There's been a slight uproar recently with reports published that told of sites like Google and Facebook selling your data to third-party companies. DNTP takes care of your concerns, blocking internet tracking software and cookies.
2. WOT: WOT (short for "Web of Trust") allows internet users to rate websites, which can be used to warn other users when an internet site should be avoided. I have it set to only tell me about the bad eggs, which works for me because I can ignore its existence 99% of the time I spend on the internet.
3. Melanto Calculator: This takes your computer calculator and one-ups it. It has almost every function that a TI-84 contains, except the graphing capabilities. It doesn't even need the internet to run!
4. Graph.tk: While only a student may find this useful, it's still great. It's technically not an extension for chrome, this merely links to the site. This is what it appears to be: a very versatile graph that is simple to use and easily mastered. Awesome for quickly graphing pretty much every function when you are calculator-less. I love using this alongside the Melanto Calculator.
5. Facebook Photo Zoom: Who here hates the fact that you can't see a big picture without clicking on the icon? This takes all that clicking away (a relief for my finger). Simply hover over the photo, and a large version will appear. Takes some time to get used to but this is my favorite extension so far (besides Adblock).

PHILADELPHIA (CN) - A wave of class actions against Google claims the search giant's new privacy policy, which aggregates information the company collects about users across various Google platforms, violates computer fraud and abuse and wiretap laws.

If you are like me, then you probably have several e-mail addresses.  Problem for me though, is determining which one to use for various groups of people or situations.  Which address to give out for my family?  How about friends?  How about acquaintances?  How about those websites that require you to register with an e-mail address just to view their content or post messages?  What about for online shopping?

Determining which address to use has been somewhat of a headache for me, and the people I keep in touch with most often.  My first true e-mail address was my school account when I started college back in 1995.  My username was not anything creative or cool, just my last name followed by my first initial and then middle initial.  That was the address I used all through school.  But as the internet began to expand, different service providers offered different benefits, and thus I had to register with one of their domains such as Yahoo!, Netscape, and Microsoft.  I recall most people back then used America Online (AOL), as they used that as their service to connect to the internet via dial-up.  Soon enough, cable providers such as Comcast and Verizon came on the scene to offer broadband connections.  Thus, the internet-hungry crowd jumped on that bandwagon to get their content faster than before.

Upon graduation from college, I got a job, got my own place, and thus signed up for my cable company's broadband connection (Comcast).  They allowed me to use up to seven e-mail addresses.  Fortunately, I did not need all of them, just one.  So at this point, I had seven active e-mail addresses: my work, my school, Comcast, Yahoo!, Netscape, MSN, and Xoommail.  My school account automatically closed six months after graduation, and Netscape/Xoommail were gobbled up by other providers.  I switched from Comast to Verizon a few years later as Verizon services were cheaper (saved me ~$40/month).  I still have my Yahoo! and MSN accounts, but both attract a lot of SPAM - sure, most of them go directly to their SPAM filters, but I still do not like having to clean out that box of 50+ e-mails daily.

I initially signed up for Yahoo! and MSN as they offered a great source for uploading photos and other files.  However, they soon shut off that service.    Furthermore, my Yahoo! account has been breached a few times by those programs that send out SPAM to other people.  Thus, I am trying to close out that account - or just keep it for registering for internet content that I do not want to get annoyed with on a daily basis.  I had to create a G-Mail account when I got my Android smartphone several months ago, and I am using that account quite often now.

A part of me wishes that each person should be assigned one e-mail address and one phone number at birth, and that is the one that must stick with them for the rest of their lives.  Of course, this will never fly in a non-communist society.  But just imagine how more simplistic life would be if we only had one method of being contacted?

So to date, I have had 12 different e-mail addresses:

- School (actually had 2 at school, but really only used one of them)
- Netscape
- Xoommail
- Yahoo!
- MSN
- Comcast
- Verizon
- Work (3 different companies)
- G-Mail

Never had a Compuserve or AOL e-mail address (although did have an AIM account).

Same holds true for phone numbers, as I have had 12 different phone numbers over the same time span - but the same cell phone number over the past 10 years (thank goodness for porting).  However, the difference between the two is that e-mail addresses can follow you no matter where you move to around the world - land line phone numbers do not.  But this list will continue to grow as well with the emergence of Google Voice and as folks are ditching their landlines for cellular ones.

Just curious to see if anyone out there has had more accounts?

The NY Times blog, Bits, spoke with Google employees who asked not to be named. “These people said they are expected ‘to cost around the price of current smartphones,’ or $250 to $600. The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS.”

“The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby, according to the Google employees. The glasses are not designed to be worn constantly — although Google expects some of the nerdiest users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed,” writes the NY Times.

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How will we reinvent news for Google’s new augmented-reality eyeglasses?

For the news industry, this eventually will become yet another device like smartphones or tablets that demands we rethink news products, delivery methods and business models based on its unique capabilities and uses. It’s never too early to start thinking.

Following a Wall Street Journal report last week which revealed that search giant Google had developed a way to bypass privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser, the head honchos at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) division started wondering if their competitor was doing the same to them.

As it would turn out, they absolutely are, according to a lengthy explanation published Monday by IE corporate vice president Dean Hachamovitch.

“We’ve found that Google bypasses the P3P Privacy Protection feature in IE,” he wrote. “The result is similar to the recent reports of Google’s circumvention of privacy protections in Apple’s Safari Web browser, even though the actual bypass mechanism Google uses is different.”

Yesterday afternoon Google announced it was making sweeping changes to its privacy policy beginning March 1. Users can't opt out, so Google is beginning to send notice to its users via email and even on its homepage.

The big change is that Google will now track you across its services. In other words, Google will now, for example, be able to pair information it collects on its email service with information it collects on its search service to really target its advertising. In a blog post explaining the changes, Google says it will make the experience across its suite of products "more intuitive."

But here's how Danny Sullivan, a search expert, explains it for Marketing Land:

Google is sifting through the photos and commentary on its blossoming social network so its Internet search results can include more personal information.

The additional personal touches that began to roll out Tuesday mark another step toward one of Google's most ambitious goals. The Internet search leader eventually hopes to know enough about each of its users so it can tailor its results to fit the unique interests of each person looking for something.

Different people should start seeing different search results more frequently now that Google Inc. is importing content from its 6-month-old Plus service, a product that the company introduced in an attempt to counter the popularity of Facebook's online hangout and Twitter's short-messaging hub. Google's main search results page also will start highlighting more content from an older online photo service called Picasa.

Other features will recommend additional people and companies to follow on Plus, based on their search requests. Those suggestions will exclude publicly accessible information about accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

The preferential treatment for Plus might amplify concerns about the objectivity of Google's search results _a focal point of broad regulatory investigations in the U.S. and Europe.

The Federal Trade Commission, attorneys general in six states, and the European Commission are looking into complaints alleging Google has been unfairly exploiting its dominance in Internet search to promote its other services while ignoring or downplaying pertinent information about its rivals.

The exclusive Plus recommendations in Google's search results are "exactly the kind of thing that the antitrust people are screaming about," said Danny Sullivan, an industry expert who has been following Google since the 1990s and is now editor of SearchEngineLand.com. "This is very un-Google like. It's unfair to other services and it's unfair to people."

Sullivan's criticism is especially striking because he has generally defended other search features that highlight Google's own services.

Twitter said it's worried the added emphasis on Plus in Google's search results will make it more difficult to find breaking news and other compelling information shared within the 250 million messages, or tweets, posted on its service each day.

"We think that's bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users," Twitter said in a statement.

Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google says its efforts to reel in more information from other sharing services are frequently thwarted by the providers. For instance, Twitter puts explicit instructions in its computer computing telling Google not to index the material, according to Google.

"Ushering in the new era of social and private data search will take close cooperation, and we hope other sites participate so we can provide the best possible experience for our users," Google said in a statement issued after it was asked about its added emphasis on Plus in its search results.

Facebook and Twitter pose a threat to Google because they don't allow Google's search engine to log most of the photos, links and observations cascading through those services. That's troublesome to Google because its search engine could become less useful if its system can't analyze what people are signaling is important to them so those preferences can be factored into the results.

Twitter once gave Google better access to the tweets flowing through its service as part of a 2009 licensing agreement, but that deal expired last summer. Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine is still paying to mine into Twitter's service.

Facebook has long cooperated with Bing, partly because Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in the company in 2007. At the same time, Facebook has steadfastly resisted Google's attempts to peer deeper into its social network.

That's one of the reasons Google started Plus, which is now hatching "Search, plus Your World."

The feature will be automatically turned on for all English-language searches made by users logged into Google. Turning off the personal results permanently will require changing a setting in Google's personal preferences. The personal results can also be excluded on a search-by-search basis by clicking on an icon of the globe on the results page (the personal results will be denoted by a button featuring a human's silhouette).

If the new formula works as Google expects, the search results will include pertinent information culled from the requestor's Plus account. For instance, a query about the San Francisco 49ers might include links and comments made about the football team by other people in one of the social circles on the user's Plus account. A search request that includes the name of a dog owned by the user or a friend might turn up photos of the pet that have been posted on Plus and Picasa.

"This is going to open up a whole new avenue in search," said Ben Gomes, a Google fellow.

Google isn't the first to do this. Bing has been mining some of the preferences and other information shared on Facebook since May. But Google's emphasis on more personal results figures to attract more attention because its search engine is so dominant. It handles about two-thirds of the Internet search requests made in the U.S. while Bing processes less than one-third, including the activity that it comes through a partnership with Yahoo Inc.

Facebook, though, has greater insights into personal tastes. That's because its nearly 8-year-old social network boasts more than 800 million users who share more than 1.5 billion photos alone each week. In October, Google said Plus had more than 40 million users. Google hasn't updated the information since then, although some external studies have estimated Plus began the new year with 60 million to 70 million users.

The search changes Some of Google's changes may help prod more people into joining Plus.

As part of Tuesday's expansion, the profile pictures of Plus accountholders will appear in the drop-down suggestions on Google's search box. So when typing in "Mary," you may see those named Mary in your circle along with those Google believes you'd find interesting.

Searches on general topics such as "music" and "sports," will generate suggestions on people and companies that have Plus accounts. Sullivan considers this be unfair because some people might not have Plus accounts, or share more interesting information on their Twitter page.

While Google is hoping the addition of more personal results will make its search engine even more useful, the changes also could spook some people as they realize how much information is being compiled about them. Google tried to minimize privacy concerns by recently switching to technology that encrypts all its search results to protect the information from slipping out.

Previous privacy missteps by both Google and Facebook resulted in both companies entering into settlements with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The FTC agreements require Google and Facebook to submit to external audits of their privacy practices every other year.

Do we really need another programming language?  As powerful and versatile as the current crop of languages may be, no single syntax is ideally suited for every purpose. What's more, programming itself is constantly evolving. The rise of multicore CPUs, cloud computing, mobility, and distributed architectures have created new challenges for developers. Adding support for the latest features, paradigms, and patterns to existing languages -- especially popular ones -- can be prohibitively difficult. Sometimes the best answer is to start from scratch.

This article provides a look at 10 cutting-edge programming languages, each of which approaches the art of software development from a fresh perspective, tackling a specific problem or a unique shortcoming of today's more popular languages. Some are mature projects, while others are in the early stages of development. Some are likely to remain obscure, but any one of them could become the breakthrough tool that changes programming for years to come -- at least, until the next batch of new languages arrives.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, once the undisputed kind and the holder of world’s most-used browser is no longer on the top of the ranking which it had enjoyed for so many years but like every rise has a downfall, the same is the case with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 who faces a tough rival in form of Google Chrome.

Easter eggs of Google has became a bit more famous these days after the release of some easter eggs like tilt, do a barrel roll etc.. than it was before.

Here is a small list of Easter eggs of google given below and with time passing the list would be updated with the help of both ourselves and our readers suggestions.

Google has added one more thing to the list of things it can do over the Web: tell a car where to drive.

The Internet giant earlier this week was granted a patent for a method of controlling an autonomous vehicle. Specifically, it details how a vehicle can transition from being human-driven to autonomous mode.

by Martin LaMonica

(Photo: Credit: Wayne Cunningham/CNET)

Type "let it snow" into Google search-- and see what happens!

Google this week debuted a new homepage search trick that allows users to make the homepage snow and then frost over. 

You heard it here first! :-)

I’ve been a truly Android fan boy for 2 years and a Apple hater for 5 years, but this year I did the impossible: Bought an iPad, a Macbook Pro and an iPhone. This acquisitions really changed the way that I saw Android and all the other platforms that I loved. On this article I’ll be talking a bit about the most used argument by Android users to say that their platform is better: Choice. They say that you there are a variety of devices on the market that runs their OS so you can choose the one you like most, also that you can customize Android, flash new ROMs and tweak everything you want of it. While Apple… Yeah, you know how closed they are.

Last week I had to re-download my browser and install all of my extensions again. After downloading all of the ones I previously listed, I started hunting for a few new ones. Here's what I managed to come up with, all are linked in their names:

1. Turn off the Lights: This is a handy little thing that resides in your URL bar. When you watch a video, you can press its little lightbulb icon and your browser will go dark. It's exactly like hulu.com's feature, except now on whatever web page you are looking at.

2. Sand v2: This is by far the best and biggest waste of time I've ever seen. It's a "game" where you can choose and interact with a bunch of different elements to create whatever you desire. You can grow a plant, make a bomb, create a little world, whatever you desire.

3. IE Tab: Everyone knows (or should know) that Internet Explorer is the slowest and worst performing of the 4 major browsers (by far). In case you didn't know, when tested against one another, Google Chrome is the fastest of the browsers, followed by Firefox, Safari, and IE, in order. I highly encourage all of the IE users to switch, especially because it does not mean giving up IE forever. If you like the features if IE but want a faster browser, or you are a chrome fan who can't find a way to set a desktop background, this is for you. This extension will open an IE tab inside your Chrome browser.

That's all for now, to view the five that I recommended in #1, click here.

Call it "Occupy Facebook." Or, perhaps, "UnOccupy Facebook."

Hoping to capitalize on frustrations with the social networking giant, not to mention some of the anti-corporate sentiment bubbling up on Wall Street and beyond, entrepreneurs have launched an upstart site called Unthink.

The Tampa, Florida-based startup wants to be everything that Facebook and rival Google+ are not -- and it has the manifesto and sassy YouTube video to prove it.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A federal judge denied Oracle's motion to add additional patent infringement theories to its ongoing litigation against Google and the internet search giant's Android operating system, and also declined reconsider a ruling tossing out earlier contentions.

Through an analysis, Bloomberg found that the companies have hired more than 160 lobbyists for the task that could cost the U.S. government $78.7 billion over ten years. Bloomberg has also put together this handy graphic that shows all of the Capitol Hill connections. (Again, it's a pretty comprehensive piece that's worth a click over for.)

Be careful what you Google, especially if it's for pictures of Heidi Klum. The German celebrity tops the list of internet searches that can lead to malicious software, according to a leading computer security firm.

I've already posted a few times about how I am a huge google Chrome fan. It's fast, sleek, and simple. I switched two years ago from IE and let me tell you IE fans, it's like riding a sloth and then a cheetah. No comparison.

The cool thing about google chrome (and I think Firefox boasts something like this as well) is their "extensions" feature, which lets you customize your browser a bit further than picking out a theme. It adds some flavor to your experience and makes it really "yours". Most extensions are totally free and download in about 10 seconds. You can find the official library here.

So today I, as a chrome user, am here to offer you some extensions that I enjoy, to all you future users (because the switch will happen soon, right?). Note: I am not affiliated with Google in any way except appearing on the search list when you type "Leafydebater".

1. Adblock. This does what the name suggests it does: blocks ads. It blocks all ads on most internet pages and you can set it to not block ads in certain places (like Newsvine). I also blocks those annoying youtube ads embedded in the video, a nice little bonus.
2. Panicbutton. This nifty little thing I discovered a few days ago and I'm thrilled. Living in a dorm, I get people sneaking up on me all the time and I don't believe anyone knows about me on Newsvine, and I plan to have it stay that way. If I'm doing something that is meant for only my eyes, I simply hit a pre-set key on my keyboard and Panicbutton will hide all my tabs while showing something that no one will be interested in (I have it set to MSN.com). When they're gone, I hit the key again, type in a little password (which is also a great idea) and boom! I'm back to whatever I was doing before.
3. JoinTabs. This is another creatively named extension, but it's also quite useful. Often I find myself with seven different tabs in three separate windows and it gets rather annoying to flick back and forth. If I hit the extension button, it brings all of my tabs into a single window.
4. Google Calendar. I've tried a bunch of technology-based calendars and none of them have lasted long. I'm not a calendar guy. I decided to try one more, called Google Calendar, and it's the best. What's so great about it is its ease-of-use. I can quickly type into a box (that stares you right in the face) "Dinner with mom 7pm tomorrow", or "Brunch 11am October 3rd" and it will set the event. I can also set an event right on the calendar. The bonus for me is that its icon is very, very visible when you first enter google chrome or open a new tab.
5. Angry Birds. I was never a fan of the game (I don't own an iPod) until I found it as an extension. It's a great time killer and travel buddy (IT WORKS OFFLINE TOO!!!) so it comes in handy. A bonus? It's a good game.

For sure Google is making a great future for mobile devices with Android and I think that the next version, Ice-cream Sandwich or 4.0, will be even better, killing the tablet/phone system and UI style fragmentation. But even if it gets released there will be a major problem that Google ain't corrected and I think it's a bit late, but not too late that it shouldn't get solved. That's the Android system updating.

Today the responsible for delivering the updates to the customers are the carriers, at least here in Brazil it's like this, but the biggest problem that I see is that carriers don't care about updating the OS for their customers, which is expanding the fragmentation even more.

Apple got this right, centering the updates in iTunes, where the user gets notified every time there is a new update, showing the benefits of updating the device and making the user get interest in updating the device. This helps the user, which get a better experience wi his device, and also helps the developer, which knows that the most of the devices that will be running his application will be at the latest version of the OS, reducing the fragmentation problems, which is a major flaw in Android.

As far as I can see in my Android Market Publishing Center the people that downloaded my app are usually running 2.2 and 1.6, just a very tiny part is running 2.3. This make clear how Google is failing to deliver the updates, but they are failing because of the carriers that don't give a @!$%# to their customers.

As a power user I never relied on my carrier to deliver the updates to me, I just browse XDA-Developers for a great custom ROM to flash. At the time my Motorola Milestone and my Galaxy Tab are running CyanogenMod 7 and my Galaxy S is rocking MIUI. At the Apple side, my iPad and my IPod Touch are using iOS 5 (latest developer beta). I develop for both platforms using Phonegap, and I can clearly tell that iOS is a lot better to develop for comparing to Android, which have a lot of incompatibilities and I've described in my previous article.Android don't have something like iTunes to alert the users when a new update is available, but I have a proposal for Google.

Solution:
Develop a system that can make OTA updates and alert the user every time he turns the phone on, something like "A new update for your system is available. Do you want to update now?", this for the next version of the OS, but for everyone that is running older versions should get warning about a new update in another way. The actual way to do OTA updates is too difficult for normal users to know that it exists, you need to check for a update manually using the option in the Preferences of your device.

If Android wants to be the next platform of the future, helping users and developers to have a great experience they need to implement this VERY FAST, each second without this on all the phones is slowing the progress of the OS, since there is no need of great improvements and great new stuff if the only users that will enjoy it are people that bought a new phone that already came with this new version of the OS and power users that have access to XDA-Developers.

Google, please do something about this fast.

Wrote this article using my iPad while traveling

Social networking giant Facebook has released a plugin that allows a users of the social networking site to like, share or recommend any page from anywhere in Google’s Chrome browser.

The plugin, once installed, appears as a thumbs-up icon in the top right corner of the Chrome browser.

This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all.

"90 percent of the US Internet population does not know that. This is on a sample size of thousands," Russell said. "I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for. At the end I'll say to them, 'Let me show one little trick here,' and very often people will say, 'I can't believe I've been wasting my life!'"

According to new statistics, three quarters of its users are men.

Two tracking websites say males account for at least 74 per cent of Google+ account holders.

Say goodbye to the Picasa and Blogger names: Google intends to retire several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products, Mashable has learned.

The move is part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+, the search giant’s social initiative.

A reader of this blog spotted some interface elements which show that Google+ will be available in Google Apps.

"It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi," the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.

"Either they were supremely confident or they were bored."

It was not clear what strategy Google was employing, whether it wanted to confuse rival bidders, intimidate them, or simply express the irreverence that is part and parcel of its corporate persona. Whatever its reasons, Google's shenanigans did not work.

Google Faces Up to Facebook with 'Plus' Social Sharing Site

Google just threw down the digital gauntlet, right in front of Facebook's feet, with the announcement of a new social sharing site called Google+.

The site is invite-only at the moment (cue hundreds of "Can anyone spare me a Plus invite?" requests on Twitter), so for those who can't get inside, the basic premise is this: Plus lets you create groups of people called "Circles", and you can share stuff among those groups in a more focused way than you might using Facebook.

So while you might share the news that you've got engaged with everyone in all your Circles, the other news - about how your engagement party ended up with three hospitalized casualties, your car painted bright pink, and your purchase of 20 square miles of prime Los Angeles real estate for just $20 and a can of Coke - might just be shared with your BFFs. Or maybe the subset of your BFFs who were invited to the party.

Meanwhile: Myspace to Be Sold to Specific Media for $35 Million

The price is well below the $100 million that News Corp. had been hoping for and a chasm away from Myspace’s one-time billion valuation.

The deal includes a halfing of Myspace’s staff of 400, as well as other cost cuts. It’s likely Myspace CEO Mike Jones and other top staff will remain only for an interim period.

News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 million in 2005, and made that back via a lucrative advertising deal with Google when the social networking site was flying high.

But that was another time–the media giant has been trying to sell the site before the end of its fiscal year, which falls on Thursday, in order to get it off the books.

Google officially disclosed Friday that it’s under investigation by the FTC for possible anti-competitive business practices.

“On June 23, 2011, Google Inc. received a subpoena and a notice of civil investigative demand from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission relating to a review by the FTC of Google’s business practices, including search and advertising,” the company stated in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission made public on Friday.

“Google is cooperating with the FTC on this investigation.”

The filing makes official a probe that’s been brewing for months and brings the U.S. government in line with antitrust regulators in Europe and Texas, who for months have been scrutinizing Google’s competitive conduct.

Google is introducing more technological tricks to simplify Internet searching and give people another reason to surf the Web on its Chrome browser.

The features unveiled Tuesday include an option that will allow people to speak their search requests in English while sitting in front of their office and home computers. It's something they can already do on smartphones running on Google Inc.'s Android software.

The new features serve as another reminder that search remains Google's backbone even as the company branches into mobile devices, browsers, computer software, music and even television.

By continually coming up with new ways to simplify search requests, Google hopes to extend its dominance in what so far has been Internet's most lucrative market: steering people to the information they want as quickly as possible. Spurring more search requests provides Google with more opportunities to shows the ads that generate most of its revenue.

For now, the spoken-request option for desktop computers will be offered only on Google's Chrome browser. It will be activated by clicking on a microphone icon inside Google's search box. Chrome's users will get the new feature within the next few days.

Google hopes to eventually make all the features available through Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox browsers, both which have wider audiences than Chrome. Eventually, people will be able to speak requests in other languages, too.

The speech-recognition technology draws upon a database of more than 230 billion words that Google has built while processing spoken requests on phones for the past two and a half years.

Another innovation is designed to load Web pages more quickly after users click on the top search result. The "Instant Pages" option, which also requires Chrome, builds upon a 9-month old feature in which search results automatically appear after typing in a few characters into a search box. The results change as more letters are typed in to complete the search query.

Google is hoping its browser gets another boost Wednesday. That's when a new line of laptop computers running on an operating system based on Chrome will go on sale. The Chrome laptops from Acer Inc. and Samsung Electronics will cost $349 to $499 and require Internet connections to run most programs because they will have limited storage capacity, not hard drives.

Not all of Google's latest search options will require Chrome. Among them is a new tool that allows users to drag images into Google's search results to get a list of results about what's in the photograph. For instance, a photo from a family vacation years ago could be dragged into the search box to get information about the location.

This image-recognition technology can identify people, but Google so far has decided not to use it for that purpose. Google executives also said the photos entered into the search box won't be made available to the general public.

Google, which is based in Mountain View, currently processes nearly two out of every three Internet search requests in the U.S. — an advantage that has held firm for several years.

Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. have invested billions of dollars in search during the past eight years with little to show for it. After deciding it would be better off funneling money into other projects, Yahoo began to rely on Microsoft for most of its search results last year. Microsoft's Bing search engine has been getting more usage during the past two years, but it hasn't been able to reverse the huge losses in Microsoft's online division.

Although Google appears well entrenched as the Internet search leader, it has struggled to counter the threat posed by the success of Facebook. Its popularity poses a problem for Google because most of its content can't be indexed by Google's search engine. None of the features introduced Tuesday addressed the Facebook challenge.

I've made it very clear in the past that China is my least favorite country in the world. I believe that this exemplifies that feeling.

A few days ago, China made public the fact that they have a division in their military based solely on the internet. The division specializes in cyberattacks, such as information overloads and viruses, and hacks. They say that this unit's goal was only to increase the security of their internet and to prevent attacks on them.

I believe, along with many other people, including technology experts in our own military, that this claim is bull@!$%#. The fact that this unit is a defense only unit, that the goal of this unit is to secure China, is trash and an incredibly bad lie. We have seen attacks on companies and the United States through the internet that have all pointed back to China. We have known about this unit, or rather we've had a suspicion for a couple of years now. The fact that it exists does not surprise me. But when China is using a military unit to hack companies such as Google, my ranting begins.

China is known for their cracking down on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and all other sorts of things that we as Americans consider to be rights. I don't care when it is limited to China and Chinese companies. That's an internal issue that we shouldn't be meddling in. But utilizing a military unit that could be capable of doing a lot of damage to try to crack down on America and American companies is a huge overstep. The damage isn't limited to freedom of speech, either. A training "mission" for this unit was supposedly hurling information and viruses as a fake target in an attempt to shut the target down. That training could be used against companies like Facebook, Google, and governments like the US itself, assuming that it was good enough to do so. 

This is all part of the reason behind my fear of China becoming a superpower. That they might use and abuse that status to try to impose their limiting of freedoms on other countries or attempting to gain information from or shut companies down completely. For example, say China used this military unit to hack into Boeing and steal the blueprint for the next generation of attack helicopters. This example scares me because it could be very likely of happening. I repeat this fact again: China has already hacked google, though for what I am unsure. They have the capability and the resources, and if they ever got into a disagreement with Boeing, which they already have, and/or wanted to expand their military, they would be able to just waltz in and build that helicopter in China.

To be fair, I'm sure that many others say the same about America, but I believe that China is a little different. Chinese ambitions, to me, seem very unpredictable, and it seems that China has this thirst for more power in the world, enough so that they are ignoring the needs of their own people to get it. They also tend to try to display more power than they actually have. China to me is a threat to world stability and sanity. If England or France suddenly rose up in power and challenged the United States, I'm sure I would have reservations as a citizen, but I don't think I would be as concerned as I am with China.  

I'll be honest: I think China is a narcissistic, power hungry nation headed by an insane government. The creation of a military unit and their utilization of it so far just furthers my point.

Recent legal developments regarding privacy and data security have added new requirements, and the failure to comply could result in substantial liability.

You didn't pay your bill. We need our computer back. And here's a picture of you typing away on it, the computer rental company told a client as it tried to repossess the machine.

Those allegations appear in a federal lawsuit alleging that the firm, Atlanta-based Aaron's Inc., loaded computers with spyware to track renters' keystrokes, make screenshots and even take webcam images of them using the devices at home. The suit filed by a Wyoming couple Tuesday raises anew questions of how invasive custodians of technology should be in protecting their equipment.

Three hours after I gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social Security number to me. "We had it a couple of hours ago," he said. "I was just too busy to call."

In the past few months, I have been told many more-interesting facts about myself than my Social Security number. I've gathered a bit of the vast amount of data that's being collected both online and off by companies in stealth — taken from the websites I look at, the stuff I buy, my Facebook photos, my warranty cards, my customer-reward cards, the songs I listen to online, surveys I was guilted into filling out and magazines I subscribe to.

The Android gains matter because technology platform markets tend to standardize around a single dominant platform (see Windows in PCs, Facebook in social, Google in search).

No they @!$%#ing don't. PC's were an anomaly. I don't see every TV being made by Sony, or every handheld console being made by Nintendo, or every TV games console being made by Microsoft.

There's also a big difference between standardisation and dominance. Facebook is certainly not the 'standard' of social networking—it's just the current one everyone's in love with. But we've been there before and web users are fickle. Maybe Facebook will be our overlords in a decade, but it's just as likely to be Friends Reunited 2 and we'll all be using WeldedToYourBrain.com, or something. Ditto search and Google.

Imagine the cops rifling through your mail, your calendar, your receipts. All your private information, available for them to look through. To do this offline, they'd have to get a warrant from a judge and break into your house. But every day the cops -- and anyone else with a good lawyer -- get access to your online email and calendar just by asking.

Major online service providers like Gmail and Facebook just hand over your personal data to the police when they get a legal request -- usually without even telling you they've done so! And since you never know about the request, you never get a day in court to challenge it. Your privacy is gone before you even know it.

Users of Google's Chrome browser can install an extension that lets them choose to block certain sites. Google will study which sites people block to figure out which ones bother users, Matt Cutts, head of Google's spam-fighting team, wrote in a company blog post.

After a month of using Google's Chrome OS and CR48 notebook, I'm convinced Microsoft cannot ignore the threat of Google's Internet OS. So they should respond with 'Internet Explorer OS' to counter Google's move on their turf.

Chrome OS with the CR48 is what I consider a 'netbook experience'. I'm sure Redmond is busy building Internet Explorer OS. If not, they could have another 'iPad problem' on their hands. The 'browser-as-an-OS' strategy is a smart one and consumers will flock to it. Again, Microsoft can't ignore this. They could use their own browser-based OS to up sell consumers to a Windows 7 Upgrade & application bundle. It could work.

In closing, I love the Chrome OS experience. It's a joy to use each day, even with the occasional hiccups experienced using the development branch and prototype hardware (CR48). Everyday computing tasks are simple & to the point. Computers should be our friends -- not our enemies.

Google is making incredible progress on an incredible computing platform.

A fast-moving Twitter worm is in circulation, using Google's goo.gl redirection service to push unsuspecting users to a notorious scareware (fake anti-virus) malware campaign.