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Google product announcements are prompting questions about its ability to gather more potentially sensitive personal information from users.In a mid-October letter to Google directors, Consumer Watchdog said it had "serious privacy concerns" about the browser and the transfer of users' data through Google's services without giving people what it sees as "appropriate transparency and control."

"Google Suggest" sends Google searches as you type, in hopes of anticipating your desires. So if you're keying in "Electoral College 2008 election," Google will offer multiple search queries along the way. First you'd be given results related to the term "electoral," then ones on the Electoral College in general, and finally you'd get links pertaining to Tuesday's presidential vote.

This is what worries Consumer Watchdog: Say you key in something that could be embarrassing or deeply personal, but reconsider before you press "Enter." The autosuggest feature still sends this phrase to Google's servers, tied to your computer's numeric Internet Protocol (IP) address.

Brian Rakowski, the product manager for Chrome, said Consumer Watchdog's fears stemmed from confusion about the role a Google Web browser plays.

"There was some concern that, given a very naive way of how browsers work, you may think, `Now I'm using a Google browser -- Google must know everything on their servers about me,"' he said.

Rakowski said queries sent to Google through the autosuggest feature do include data like a user's IP address and the time at which the queries were made. But Google logs just 2 percent of the information brought in through "Google Suggest," in order to improve the feature, Rakowski said, and anonymizes this data within 24 hours. The anonymization is accomplished by stripping off the last four digits of the IP address associated with the query.

"You're flying blind without that information, so we have to collect a little bit," he said. "But we're really (collecting) the bare minimum we can to provide that service."

The autosuggest function can be shut off in the browser or when using Google's search engine through its home page, but it is not immediately evident how to do so.

One way is through Chrome's "incognito" tab, which turns off the autosuggest feature and lets users surf the Web without revealing their activities to people who have access to the same computer. However, Consumer Watchdog objects to the design of "incognito." The group claims the feature makes users feel that their Web surfing is totally private, while in fact Google is still sending some information back and forth between users' PCs and the company's servers.

Google takes issue with that complaint, too. The "incognito" function lets users surf without leaving a trail of pages visited or "cookie" data-tracking files behind but can't entirely cloak someone's Internet activity from the outside world.

"We try to be very up-front with users when they enter this mode about what it provides and what it doesn't provide," Rakowski said.

Although Chrome is new, Consumer Watchdog is not waiting to see whether it gets too little use to worry about. In October, Court's group wrote U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to caution him about Google's plans to sell ads for Yahoo, saying that its fears about Google's market power have been exacerbated by Chrome's release.

"It's about having a monopoly over our personal information, which, if it falls into the wrong hands, could be used in a very dangerous way against us," Court said.

Google's senior product counsel, Michael Yang, said the company is not using any data from Chrome to make improvements to its ad services.

But that doesn't mollify privacy critics, who fear Google might start doing that someday to best capitalize on its vast audience. Some 650 million people use Google's search engine and panoply of Web services.

"The way Google has fashioned Chrome, it's a digital Trojan horse to collect even more masses of consumer data for Google's digital advertising business," said Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer rights organization.

For now, at least, Google is planning to adopt just one change suggested by Consumer Watchdog. When users spell a Web site's address incorrectly, Chrome sends a request to Google to help determine the actual site the user is trying to visit. This happens even when users are surfing "incognito," and Rakowski said it was an oversight.

"It's something we're prioritizing now that we want to fix," he said.

1. Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.
2. Google’s Home Page Has 63 Validation Errors.

3. The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day.

4. The infamous “I’m feeling lucky” button is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

5. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

6. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’.

7. Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

8. Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.

9. Google consists of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world.

10. Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.

11. Googol is a mathematical term 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasne.

12. Number of languages in which you can have the Google home page set up, including Urdu, Latin and Klingon: 88

13. Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices.

source:jaystech.com

Microsoft Relevant Products/Services showed off new Windows 7 innovations at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week. The focus was how the upcoming version of Microsoft's flagship product will make it easier for hardware partners to create new experiences for Windows PC customers.

Windows senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan rallied hardware partners, encouraging them to begin testing their current products and building new products on the application programming interface (API).

"We've done a great deal of work in Windows 7 to enable new scenarios with our hardware partners, and we are excited by the partner innovation we have shown today," said DeVaan, who heads Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division. "Windows 7 presents tremendous opportunities for hardware developers. This innovation will enable our hardware partners to provide customers with even greater choice in rich computing experiences."

Hardware-Friendly Features

Among the new Windows 7 features Microsoft demonstrated are technologies that aim to optimize how customers interact with Windows PCs, manage devices, access broadband, and use wireless Relevant Products/Services.

For example, in efforts to make it easier for customers to interact with all their devices on a Windows PC, Microsoft has created a new feature dubbed Devices and Printers. It offers a single place for customers to interact with devices, browse files, or manage settings. Devices can be connected to the PC using USB, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, with setup wizards.

Device Stage is another new feature, designed to help Windows 7 customers take advantage of advanced device features. For example, Device Stage provides information on the status of mobile Relevant Products/Services phones, portable media players, cameras and printers connected to a Windows 7 PC and runs common tasks in a single window customized by the device manufacturer.

Windows 7 also promises to deliver a simpler and more reliable way to connect to the Internet using wireless modems. The process is similar to connecting to any other wireless network, and is done using the View Available Networks feature.

And, of course, there's the much-touted Windows Touch functionality that lets users control the computer by touching the screen and receiving visual feedback for tap and double-tap gestures. The Start menu, Windows Taskbar and Windows Explorer are touch-ready. Windows 7 also introduces support Relevant Products/Services for multi-touch technology that lets users zoom in, zoom out, and rotate images with fingers.

We're helping protect partner investments in Windows Vista as we build Windows 7," DeVaan said. "Our goal is to maintain very high compatibility with products designed for Windows Vista."

Microsoft's Challenges

Microsoft is making some progress with Windows 7, but the company is still in the shadows of Vista mistakes, and those perceptions, along with market realities, breed challenges for Redmond with the latest version of its operating system. One of the key challenges is giving users and businesses a reason to upgrade to Windows 7, according to Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia.

"There are very few products I can think of; In fact, this is the only product I can think of that not only has to appeal to the CIOs of Fortune 500 companies but also to my mom as well," Gartenberg said. "Microsoft needs a marketing message that's going to work for both of those audiences. That's something Microsoft has been unable to do."

Making matters worse for Microsoft, Windows 7 is coming at a time when Apple is firing on all cylinders and its commercials are mercilessly poking fun at Microsoft and Vista, even to the point of mocking the Windows ad campaign itself, Gartenberg said. Then there's the timing issue of getting the product to market.

"Historically, Microsoft has had a hard time shipping an operating system in less than a year when they released it in beta. Well, the product isn't even in beta yet. If they do release it in that short a time span, then is this really just an updated version of Windows Vista with a different name and a different marketing message?" Gartenberg asked. "And maybe that's exactly what Microsoft needs because Vista wasn't so bad to begin with."

We know there are plenty of "secure" flash drives out there, but face it: if someone is really determined to get at your data, they'll probably figure out a way. That's where Kingston's Data Traveler Elite Privacy Edition comes in. The 4GB flash drive encrypts all data with 128-bit AES, and then adds an extra layer of security: a self destruct feature. If anyone tries to use a brute-force attack to guess your password, the drive will automatically erase itself after 25 wrong guesses. Of course, if you have a really easy password, and a data thief can figure it out in under 25 guesses, you're out of luck. For the rest of us, this could be a good solution for keeping on-the-go info out of the wrong hands.

source:engadget.com

The Reactor PC will sure listed in the hardcore gamers list. Its first-of-its-kind submersion technology, Total Liquid Submersion, allows most reliable, most efficient overclocking around, with entire computer submerged in coolant. The PC is powered by Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors running at up to 3.2 GHz and comes with up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 3 SATA connectors, an Nvidia 790I Ultra SLI chipset, and up to three video cards, 7.1 digital surround sound and blue-lit translucent case. The Reactor PC comes with a starting price of $4550.

It was claimed as the world’s smallest PC measuring at 4.3 x 3.9 x 1.2 inches(110 x 100 x 30mm) and weighs 13 ounces. This handheld-size pc is running on Windows XP or Linux and powered by a 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800 processor. It comes with a 40GB hard disk, network and USB interfaces, 256 MB of DDR RAM and up to 512 MB of NAND flash. There’s two versions available, one with 256MB configuration (sans WiFi, hard drive) for $220 and the other one with 512MB WiFi version (with no hard drive) for $245.

reference:tech fresh