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Google Sets Sights on Skype: Bakes Video Chat Into Chrome

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Watch you back Skype/Microsoft, Google is gunning for you. Alongside their social initiatives, Google is now implementing its open-source audio and video chat software into the Chrome browser, enabling users to chat in real-time without having to load up a secondary client like Skype.

Google has started to build its open-source WebRTC software into Chrome. WebRTC was introduced in May as a new open tech that allows developers to create quick HTML and Javascript APIs for building voice and video chat applications on the web. With WebRTC built into Chrome, users will be able to start video chats over Google Talk without the need for installing Google’s plug-in first. Oh and they’ve introduced this as royalty-free and are promising to work with other browsers developers(probably Mozilla and Opera initially, but then IE and Safari at some point too) to flesh out the project. This means that anyone building a site can make use of the new tech, and in theory, construct their own personal Skype battering ram. I bet someone is at MS is questioning if they should have spent that massive amount of money for Skype (then again, maybe they knew this was coming and they HAD to in order to compete?!).

The WebRTC (a la Google Talk via the browser) will certainly help the ChromeOS initiative, it’s one more piece of the “web as the OS” strategy coming into place. I also have to imagine that this will play VERY well in with Google’s new social initiative: Google+.

Microsoft finally patches 17-year-old bug

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A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update.

The February update for Windows will close the loophole that involves the venerable DOS operating system.

First appearing in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared since.

The monthly security update will also tackle a further 25 holes in Windows, five of which are rated as “critical”.

Home hijack

The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run programs that date from the DOS era.

Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it.

As well as fixing holes in many versions of Windows, the update also tackles bugs in Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2004 for Apple Macintosh machines.

The bumper update is not the largest that Microsoft has ever released. The security update for October 2009 tackled a total of 34 vulnerabilities. Eight of those updates were rated as critical – the highest level.

In January 2010, Microsoft released an “out of band” patch for a serious vulnerability in Internet Explorer that was being exploited online. The vulnerability was also thought to be the one used to attack Google in China.

Following the attack on Google, many other cyber criminals started seeking ways to exploit the loophole.

Also this week, a security researcher has reported the discovery of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that allows attackers to view the files held on a victim’s machine.

Microsoft has issued a security bulletin about the problem and aims to tackle it at a future date. At the moment there is no evidence that this latest find is being actively exploited online.

Google Turns IE into Chrome

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People hate IE6; they’ve made that abundantly clear on the web. Unfortunately, plenty of people are still stuck using it for reasons such as their work not letting them upgrade. So Google is doing something about it.

Chrome Frame is a new browser plug-in developed by Google to give you a Chrome browsing experience inside of Internet Explorer. LOL… seriously: Chrome Frame turns IE into Chrome.

It’s freakin hilarious that Google seems to hates IE so much that it has spent its own time “improving it”. You could also read that as “spent it’s own time to destroy it”.  Product Manager Mike Smith and Software Engineer Alex Russell, say that they simply want to make a more seamless web experience for both web users and developers. RIGHT… whatever… if it helps kill IE6 off the web I’m all for it.

So what is this thing? It’s just a plug-in that creates a new frame inside of IE that IS the Chrome browser. The plug-in itself is only about 500K, but then it must download around 10 MB of Chrome-related data to work correctly on a machine (I assume a one time download). The look will be so seamless that a user shouldn’t realize they’re not simply browsing with their regular old version of IE… except that it’ll be hell-a-faster and standards compliant.

To target the Chrome plug-in for IE, developers simply have to insert a meta tag in their HTML code. If Chrome Frame isn’t found, the page will render just as it normally would in IE.

Chrome Frame will work with IE6, IE7, and IE8 on any Windows-based machine.

So this is obviously wicked cool, and Microsoft’s response should be just as cool as well!!!!

You can find Google Chrome Frame here. And learn more in the video below.

IE6 Must Die

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Mashable does a great writeup on why IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On. The serious downsides to IE6 are:

– CSS v2 (Cascading Style Sheets): This is the code that enables almost all design on the web. In other words, designers have to hack up websites just to make them load in IE6.

– PNG Transparency: A great deal of .png images don’t display correctly in IE6. It basically kills using them in design work.

– General Security: Just like not updating your virus software can get you riddled with spyware, not updating your browser can be a gateway to attacks. There are even code snippets that will shut down IE6. I won’t tell you what they are, but you can find them on Wikipedia. It’s unstable.

– Digg , Facebook , and YouTube (soon): Both Digg and YouTube have announced that they’re cutting back on IE6 support. Facebook already gives you suggestions for better browsers if you try to log in with IE6. You won’t be able to Digg articles or browse YouTube via IE6 in the near future.

You should read through the entire article though if this is something that is of interest to you because they go into HTML5 as well as how IE6 is hurting web development progression in general. As a “web guy” I can’t wait for IE6 to die. When a client says they want to target IE6 (I usually say “current release + one version back” but sometimes they object) I utterly cringe because I know what a PITA it will be.

Catch the full article on Mashable.

FireFox gains two out three users Microsoft that loses

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Long ago the king of the browsers was Netscape. Microsoft turned their massive shift very quickly once they realized exactly how important the browser would be to the future of computing and brought Internet Explorer in line with Netscape… and then the browser wars began. As a web developer I can tell you those years SUUUCKED. Each company would include “features” that only worked with their browser, build web apps when the web was young was difficult (I realize this still exists, but nothing like it did back in the day).

Last month, Microsoft’s market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. Initial data sets provided by Net Applications suggest that the Internet Explorer will drop once again significantly in December to below 69% and Mozilla will climb above 21%.

This doesn’t mean IE is out… 69% is still the lions share but it shows that other browsers are making in-roads to Microsoft’s stranglehold on browser marketshare.  The contenders are FireFox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. FireFox is clearly in the lead as the primary competitor to IE. I personally use FireFox as my daily browser; when the next release comes out and their uber JavaScript engine is in place I can’t see myself going back to IE for anything unless it requires it. Chrome has the mighty Google backing it… it seems Google can do very little wrong lately and Chrome fits nicely into their long term strategy. However, Chrome is still immature in comparison to FireFox at this point.

For crazy detailed stats on each browser gain, decline, etc check out How serious is the market share loss of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer? at TGDaily.com.

I agree with the summary of the authors of the article… I’m stunned at how Microsoft is just letting this happen. Web apps may not be able to counter desktop apps yet (ok GMail is CLOSE… if they’d just get the contacts to sync correctly!); let’s face it… Photoshop via the web ain’t happening anytime soon. However, more and more applications are moving to the cloud. Google understands this and is pushing it agressively, MICROSOFT knows this and is building out cloud architecture… so I’m completely baffled as to why they would allow this to happen. IE8 beta’s appear to be a dude… slow, proprietary, and still not comforming to standards. Whereas the new-comers are quick, have excellent plugin architectures, the new rendering engines used in Chrome and the next release of FireFox make “web 2.0” site rawk. I guess the best we can hope for at this point is that Microsoft has a card up it’s sleeve for when Windows 7 comes out.