Google+ arrives, takes aim at Facebook

According to Vic Gundotra, a senior vice-president at Google, the company's latest social networking service called Google+ Project consists of Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Mobile.

"Online sharing needs a serious re-think, so it's time we got started," he wrote on the official Google blog while announcing the limited availability of the service. 

In the lengthy post, Gundotra implies that sharing, or in other words, social networking as we know it on the Facebook is "awkward" or "even broken" because it doesn't give due regard to privacy as well as doesn't allow users to have complete control over their social circle. 

According to Google, Circle will allow users to create different groups of friends or relatives. This will make sure that the information you share with one set of group doesn't reaches the other group. Sparks will allow users to access the content in which they are interested from across the web through Google while Hangout will allow them to video or text chat with anyone willing to do so. 

Google's +Mobile will be offered through, initially only Android, smartphones so that users can share pictures taken with their phone within their Circle or post messages to their friends. 

To those who are interested in trying out Google+, Gundotra said, "We're beginning in field trial, so you may find some rough edges... and the project is by invitation only." 

The popularity and growth of Facebook, which has over 600 million users, have alarmed Google. While the company still leads in overall search market on the web, Facebook this year has become biggest player in display advertising. According to eMarketer, a research firm, Facebook has over 17% share in display advertising on the web. In comparison Google has a 12.3% market share.

ASUS Launches The ROG Matrix GTX 580 Graphics Cards

Continuing the success of its popular ROG Matrix Series graphics cards, ASUS has launched the ROG Matrix GTX 580 Series. Based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU, the ROG Matrix GTX 580 Series combines a dual-fan DirectCU II thermal design and 19-phase Super Alloy Power components with instant hardware overclocking tools; TweakIt, ProbeIt and an innovative Safe Mode button. Together, with the new GPU Tweak software overclocking utility, both gamers and overclockers can now gain a performance advantage.

Redesigned From the Ground Up for Incredible Performance

The ROG Matrix GTX 580 series is clocked at 816MHz and features a massive 1.5Gb of 4.8GHz GDDR5 memory. It comes preloaded with a variety of hardware-based tools, including TweakIt and ProbeIt for instant overclocking adjustment and measurement, plus a Safe Mode button for the instant restoration of stable settings at any time.

The ROG Matrix GTX 580 Series has been created to deliver the ultimate in overclocking performance with its ground-up PCB redesign and exclusive 19-phase Super Alloy Power technology. This guarantees much greater overclocking headroom, with a 15 percent performance boost, 2.5 times longer lifespan and 35 degrees cooler operation than the reference card design.

Direct Cooling in Style

Also helping cool the Matrix GTX 580 series is an exclusive DirectCU II thermal design that puts copper heat pipes in direct contact with the GPU to effectively dissipate heat. Twin sound-dampened fans also pull 600 percent more air across the card’s heatsinks than the reference design, achieving 20 percent cooler operating temperatures. The Matrix LED load indicator provides an at-a-glance, color changing display of the card’s overall load in real-time, too.

New Malware Targets 64-Bit Windows

Rootkit writers have started exploiting a loophole that lets them write malware able to bypass the PatchGuard driver signing protection built into 64-bit versions of Windows, Kaspersky Lab has reported.

A product of the BlackHole Exploit Kit, a hugely successful kit for building malware to hit specific software vulnerabilities, the first element of the attack on a system is straightforward enough, using a downloader to hit the system through two common Java and Adobe Reader software flaws.

On 64-bit Windows systems open to these exploits, this calls a 64-bit rootkit, Rootkit.Win64.Necurs.a., which executes the 'bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON command, normally a programming command for trying out drivers during development.

The loophole abused by the malware writers is that this stops Windows' Patchguard from objecting to the unsigned and insecure nature of the driver (in this case a rootkit driver) being loaded.

The power of the technique is double-edged, however. Once loaded, the rootkit is able to block the correct loading of antivirus software that might detect and remove it, but this is also a giveaway. Security programs that do not wo"rk correctly could be taken to infer the presence of something unusual.

Windows PatchGuard, formally known as Kernel Patch Protection (KPP), is a design feature of 64-bit versions of Windows, including XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server, designed to stop malware undermining the operating system at the highest level of privilege.

Hotmail and Yahoo users also victims of targeted attacks

Web mail users at Yahoo and Hotmail have been hit with the same kind of targeted attacks that were disclosed earlier this week by Google, according to security software vendor Trend Micro.

Trend Micro described two similar attacks against Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail in a blog post, published Thursday. "It's an ongoing issue for more than just Gmail," said Nart Villeneuve, a senior threat researcher with Trend Micro. Villeneuve believes that Facebook accounts have also been used to spread similar attacks.

Google made headlines Wednesday after revealing that several hundred Gmail users -- including government officials, activists and journalists -- had been the victims of targeted spearphishing attacks.

Google mentioned phishing on Wednesday, but the criminals have been using other attacks too. In March, Google said that hackers were taking advantage of a flaw in Microsoft's Windows software to launch politically motivated hacks against activists.

Corporate networks have been under attack for years, but hackers now see personal Web mail accounts as a way to get information that can help them sneak into computers that would otherwise be locked down. "People always think of these attacks as isolated cases, but they're more like a series of successful and failed attacks over a longer period of time," Villeneuve said. "It's not a one-off attack."

Asus shows Android-based phone/tablet combo and seven-inch 3D device

                     At this week's Computex conference in Taipei, Asus unveiled an Android-based hybrid tablet/smartphone device called the Padfone, embedding a removable smartphone in a 10.1-inch tablet. The company also announced a more conventional seven-inch tablet called the Eee Pad Memo 3D, with Android 3.x, a stylus, and glasses-free 3D video playback.

              The Padfone, which Asus Chairman Jonney Shih termed a "convergent device" in his Computex presentation (see video farther below), combines a 4.3-inch Android smartphone and a 10.1-inch tablet computer into a single symbiotic gadget. The two device are said to share data and 3G Internet access. Final screen sizes may change when they product ships later this year, however.

The smartphone docks inside the tablet to give users an expanded view, says Asus. With the phone docked, it can recharge from the tablet's larger battery. In return, the tablet can make use of the smartphone's 3G connection, says the company. The dual interfaces for both the tablet and phone are said to ensure the layout is automatically adjusted for all activities such as video-conferencing, web browsing, and emailing. 

Padfone with smartphone detached

The concept appears to be very similar to Motorola Mobility's Atrix 4G, which can plug into an optional Laptop Dock to bring the Android smartphone experience to a larger screen. In this case, however, the dock is a touchscreen tablet rather than a netbook.

Asus also introduced a fourth tablet to go alongside the now-shipping Android 3.0 Eee Pad Transformer convertible tablet, as well as its similar, but slide-out style Eee Pad Sliderconvertible and Windows-based Eee Slate. The seven-inch Eee Pad Memo 3D appears to be a revised version of the Eee Pad Memo that was announced with minimal detail at January's CES show.

Asus Eee Pad Memo 3D

Unlike most seven-inch tablets, the Eee Pad Memo 3D will offer an Android 3.x operating system, says Asus. The tablet will also ship with a multitouch screen, but will also offer a stylus, for "note taking in portrait orientation," according to the company. This is similar to the seven-inch, Honeycomb-basedHTC Flyer.

In addition, the device offers a glasses-free 3D display mode that is automatically launched when one flips the tablet into horizontal landscape mode, says the company. No more details appeared to be available. 

Google releases video chat source code

Google has released the source code for a technology that it hopes developers will use to embed real-time video and voice chat functionality in their Web applications.

Google acquired the technology, called WebRTC (Web Real Time Communication), when it purchased VoIP (Voice over IP) software developer Global IP Solutions in 2010, for approximately $68.2 million. The company said it would open source the technology early last month.

WebRTC is a set of voice and video signal processing technologies, which can be accessed by developers through HTML tags and JavaScript APIs (application programming interfaces).

Today, Internet audio and video chat services from companies such as Skype are chiefly proprietary, accessible through plug-ins and client downloads. Last month, Microsoft agreed to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion.

Google wants third-party developers to use the voice and video engines to create chat applications that can be run directly from within a browser. Global IP Solutions has built WebRTC-based mobile clients for Android, Windows Mobile and the iPhone. Ericsson Labs built a videoconference prototype with the technology as well.

Google is working with other browser developers, such as Mozilla and Opera, in hopes they will support the technology in their browsers. The company is also participating in W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) projects for creating real-time communication Web standards. WebRTC is based on the W3C's Web Applications 1.0 API.

Google to dump support for Microsoft's IE7

Google will drop support for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 browsers for its online apps, including Gmail and Docs.

"Beginning August 1, we'll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis," said Venkat Panchapakesan, who heads Google's enterprise engineering team, in acompany blog Wednesday. "Each time a new version is released, we'll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version."

By that scheme, Google will stop supporting IE7, Firefox 3.5, Apple's Safari 3 and its own Chrome 9, all which have released two newer versions.

IE7, for example, has been superseded by IE8 and IE9; the same goes for Firefox 3.5, which has been replaced by Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4.

After Aug. 1, users running those browsers may have trouble with some features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites. At some point, those apps may stop working entirely.

"For Web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers," said Panchapakesan. "Older browsers just don't have the chops to provide you with the same high-quality experience."