The Conficker worm today has begun to phone home for instructions but has done little else. Conficker was programmed to today begin actively visiting 500 out of 50,000 randomly generated web addresses to receive new instructions on how to behave. Conficker has begun to do this, according to security company F-Secure, but so far no doomsday scenarios have emerged.

Among security experts, the consensus seems to be that very little will happen today. This may be in part because of the high amount of publicity Conficker has received, but then again April 1 is not the first time Conficker has been programmed to change the way it operates. Similar trigger dates have already passed with little change, including January 1, according to according to Phil Porras, a program director with SRI International. Security experts at Symantec, the maker of Norton Antivirus, also believe the threat is overblown and says Conficker today will "start taking more steps to protect itself" and "use a communications system that is more difficult for security researchers to interrupt."

Technology companies and experts across the globe have been working together to halt the spread of Conficker, disrupt its communications and uncover who created the worm. Microsoft has even issued a $250,000 bounty for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Conficker's authors. Despite the security sector's best efforts, very little is known about the origins of Conficker or its purpose. Nevertheless, some breakthroughs have been achieved. On March 30, Security experts with the Honeynet Project discovered a flaw in Conficker that makes it much easier to detect infection. IBM researcher Mark Yayson also believes he has discovered a way to "detect and interrupt the program's activities," according to The New York Times.

Since the Conficker worm was discovered in October 2008, the malware has only received programming updates from its author and worked to infect other computers. Conficker is believed to have infected 10 million computers worldwide mostly in Asia, Europe and South America. According to IBM, only 6 percent of North American computers have been infected.

While today may be a non-event, Conficker could be used to create harm in the future. Possiblities include a massive botnet, which would give Conficker's authors control over millions of computers worldwide. The botnet could then be used to attack corporate or government networks, commit identity theft, or deliver massive amounts of spam. Security experts warn that all Windows users must make sure their operating system and antivirus programs are up to date with the latest patches and virus protections. So far, Windows is the only operating system known to be vulnerable to Conficker.

source: PCWORLD

Whether OpenOffice 3.0 is right for you comes down to this decision: can you live without the latest features in Microsoft Office 2007?

OpenOffice.org is a powerful productivity suite - including tools for word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows and more - with one major additional feature: it's free. It works for Windows, Mac and Linux systems.


Most of the tools you need for productivity are included in OpenOffice.org 3.0, minus an email client. There's Writer, a powerful word processor; Calc for spreadsheets; Impress for slideshows; Draw for basic drawing and graphics; and Base to serve as - you guessed it - a database.

OpenOffice.org 3.0: major improvements

OpenOffice.org 3.0 OpenOffice 3 is a major upgrade over the previous version, with plenty of new features, native OS support, and all the tools most people would need to get their work done. You begin in a splash screen called the Start Center, with new icons for the different applications you can select (you can't start the individual apps from the Applications folder). You can share data between apps, and run more than one module at the same time.

OpenOffice 3.0 is fast. The Writer application zips along, formatting a 200-page novel at lightning speed - like we were using a basic txt editor.

Calc, the spreadsheet program, also runs fast. OpenOffice.org - which is a collaborative effort from developers who donate their time - does not post the minimum processing speed to run the apps, and says that only 256MB RAM is required. However, we'd recommend you have at least a gig of RAM.

There's another major change in the latest version of the software: OpenOffice.org 3.0 supports the OpenDocument 2.1 (ODF) standard, a popular format that's used around the world, especially by government agencies. Speaking of format support: Writer supports Microsoft Word files, so you can open them and then save them in Word format or as ODF.

However, if you want to save a document in Word format, you must continually choose "Save as" because the program does not natively support Word. In fact, the Save menu is dimmed when you open a Word file. This forces you to make a decision about whether you should start using ODF, a format that is still not supported by Microsoft Word.

OpenOffice.org 3.0: each program updated

So what has changed in each app? For starters, Writer now supports editing notes that run along the side of the screen - something like Word's comment bubbles. These can be formatted with a different color for each editor, which facilitates group editing of documents; but it's a far cry from the extensive comment bubbles, markup, and reviewing pane options in Word 2008, which allow you to track all changes, see the original document and various other views, and highlight changes.

Writer has a new zoom slider on the status bar and a way to view multiple pages on the screen at once. If you're a former Office user switching to OpenOffice.org 3.0, you may be annoyed to find that you can't hover your mouse over the status bar to see what the features will do - and there's no pop-up help system. However, there is extensive documentation and loyal users willing to provide forum support, however.

Calc now includes a Solver wizard that helps you optimise the calculations within cells on a spreadsheet. It works okay, but it's no deal-closer - no one buys a spreadsheet program for a calculation solver. OpenOffice.org 3.0 enhances the chart functionality in Calc, supporting regression equations and correlation coefficients. Most importantly, a pie chart we made in Calc - from a home budget spreadsheet, which includes 24 workbooks, thousands of calculations, and extensive data sets - rendered quickly.

We also like the new workbook-sharing feature: you can click an option to share your data, a co-worker can make changes, and then you can integrate those changes back into the original document. This feature, which is available in Excel, was sorely lacking in previous versions of OpenOffice. Calc also supports up to 1,024 columns in a spreadsheet as opposed to only 256 in the previous version.

Impress, the slideshow program, can now perform a few extra tricks. You can import a table from Calc and edit it directly - it's no longer just a static image. Our favourite addition, though, is multi-monitor support.

Draw has only a few enhancements, including a way to crop images by just grabbing handles and moving them.

Unfortunately, even with these new features, there's still a lot missing compared to Office 2007. Most critical: the latest Microsoft suite uses elements for documents, charts, tables, and other sections of your document that allow you to quickly format your pages. They are amazingly helpful - a bit like templates, but for individual sections of your document.

When using OpenOffice.org 3.0, we also really missed Microsoft Office's snazzy notebook view, noteflags, annotated audio clips you can export to an iPod, multi-page printing, enhanced auto correction features, and advanced document security. OpenOffice.org also doesn't provide any email or calendaring apps, which is not a major gripe - there are plenty of open source options available.

System requirements

Windows 2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher)/XP/Server 2003/Vista; 256MB RAM (512MB RAM recommended); 650 MB available disk space for a default install (including a JRE) via download, after installation and deletion of temporary installation files, OpenOffice.org will use approximately 440MB disk space; 1024x768 or higher resolution with at least 256 colours. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher; Intel Processor; 512 MB RAM; 400 MB available disk space; 1024 x 768 or higher resolution with 16.7 Million colours

Verdict

The decision here is not whether OpenOffice.org 3 is worth the download--the program is free - but whether you really need to buy Microsoft Office 2007. Ultimately, Office 2007 is the superior product. You'll get extensive call-in support, few crashes, and the latest and most advanced features. On the other hand, OpenOffice.org 3.0 is one of those 80-20 products. It will do what 80 percent of what most of people need it to do. It's speedy, feature-rich, and does what it says it will do very well. And if that's all you really need (and if you can live without the latest Office features), it's definitely worth the effort.

Here are our picks for no-cost ways to protect your PC, including Avast Home Edition, SpywareBlaster, and more.
Your PC is under attack on all fronts.

These eight free downloads and services will help you beat back the bad guys with antivirus and antispyware programs, personal firewalls, and even a program that can detect whether your Web site is under attack.

BEST BET Avast Home Edition: The big names in security software charge you big bucks for big suites full of big, bloated software. It scans your system for malware and kills what it finds, and gives you seven different types of "shields" to keep you safe from harm, such as one for protecting you from dangers that might be lurking on Web sites (such as drive-by downloads), one for guarding against peer-to-peer attacks, another that stops instant messaging threats, and so on. And it does all that, amazingly enough, without taking up much RAM or system resources.

a-Squared HiJackFree: Spyware is notorious for evading even the most rigorous cleaners, which is why you need more than one antispyware utility on your PC. HiJackFree is a great download to use in concert with your main antispyware program for extra protection. Rather than offering a live shield, it checks your system for spyware and then eradicates it. For the geeky, it offers a lot more as well, such as tools for viewing what programs are using your TCP ports, and for examining programs that run on startup.

Attack Trace: Worried that the bad guys are targeting your Web site? This free service checks to see if your site is under attack.

Comodo EasyVPN Home: This download allows you to create secure peer-to-peer networks over the Internet for sharing information, chatting, and so on. Everything is encrypted, so no one else will be able to snoop on what you're doing.

EULAlyzer: Hidden in some end-user license agreements (EULAs) are indicators that the software may be spyware, or that it might invade your privacy in other ways. This downloadable analyzer examines EULAs and warns you about dangers.

Online Armor Personal Firewall: This is the best personal firewall you've never heard of. It provides solid protection, but unobtrusively. Lots of firewalls bug you constantly when you first install them, asking about any program that wants to access the Internet. This software starts out by allowing known safe applications to access the Web and bothers you only about the programs it's unsure about. It also has a clever "Safer mode" that will allow certain apps to run with stripped-down privileges.

SpywareBlaster: With this downloadable antispyware utility, you can make sure you don't get infected in the first place rather than scanning for and killing spyware after it hits your machine. It works differently from most competitors by restricting the actions that potentially dangerous Web sites can perform when you visit them. It also protects against dangerous ActiveX controls, and keeps tracking cookies off your PC.

SuperAntiSpyware: Here's an excellent antispyware tool that does a thorough job of scanning your system for dangers, and then whacks any it finds. This download scans not just your files and memory, but also your Registry. It doesn't offer real-time protection, though.

source: www.pcworld.com

A 10-month cyberespionage investigation has found that 1295 computers in 103 countries and belonging to international institutions have been spied on, with some circumstantial evidence suggesting China may be to blame.

The 53-page report, released on Sunday, provides some of the most compelling evidence and detail of the efforts of politically-motivated hackers while raising questions about their ties with government-sanctioned cyberspying operations.

It describes a network which researchers have called GhostNet, which primarily uses a malicious software program called gh0st RAT (Remote Access Tool) to steal sensitive documents, control Web cams and completely control infected computers.


"GhostNet represents a network of compromised computers resident in high-value political, economic and media locations spread across numerous countries worldwide," said the report, written by analysts with the Information Warfare Monitor, a research project of the SecDev Group, a think tank, and the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto. "At the time of writing, these organizations are almost certainly oblivious to the compromised situation in which they find themselves."

The analysts did say, however, they have no confirmation if the information obtained has ended up being valuable to the hackers or whether it has been commercially sold or passed on as intelligence.
Spying Since 2004

The operation probably started around 2004, the time security researchers noticed that many of these institutions were being sent bogus e-mail messages with executable files attached to them, according to Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research at F-Secure. Hypponen, who has been tracking the attacks for years, says that GhostNet's tactics have evolved considerably from those early days. "For the past three-and-a-half years or so it's been fairly advanced and fairly technical."

"It's really good to see a spotlight on this while thing right now, because it's been going on for so long and nobody's been paying attention," he added.

Although evidence shows that servers in China were collecting some of the sensitive data, the analysts were cautious about linking the spying to the Chinese government. Rather, China has a fifth of the world's Internet users, which may include hackers that have goals aligning with official Chinese political positions.

"Attributing all Chinese malware to deliberate or targeted intelligence gathering operations by the Chinese state is wrong and misleading," the report said.

However, China has made a concerted effort since the 1990s to use cyberspace for military advantage "The Chinese focus on cyber capabilities as part of its strategy of national asymmetric warfare involves deliberately developing capabilities that circumvent U.S. superiority in command-and-control warfare," it said.
Tibet's Computers Breached

A second report, written by University of Cambridge researchers and published in conjunction with the University of Toronto paper, was less circumspect, saying that the attacks against the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (OHHDL) were launched by "agents of the Chinese government." The Cambridge team titled their report, "The Snooping Dragon."

The analysts' research started after they were granted access to computers belonging to Tibet's government in exile, Tibetan nongovernmental organizations and the private office of the Dalai Lama, which was concerned about the leak of confidential information, according to the report.

They found computers infected with malicious software that allowed remote hackers to steal information. The computers became infected after users opened malicious attachments or clicked on linked leading to harmful Web sites.

The Web sites or malicious attachments would then try to exploit software vulnerabilities in order to take control of the machine. In one example, a malicious e-mail was sent to a Tibet-affiliated organization with a return address of "campaign@freetibet.org" with an infected Microsoft Word attachment.

As the analysts probed the network, they found that the servers collecting the data were not secured. They gained access to control panels used to monitor the hacked computers on four servers.

Those control panels revealed lists of infected computers, which went far beyond the Tibet government and NGOs. Three of the four control servers were located in China, including Hainan, Guangdong and Sichuan. One was in the U.S., the report said. Five of the six command servers were in China, with the remaining one in Hong Kong.

The University of Toronto report classified close to 30 percent of the infected computers as being "high-value" targets. Those machines belong to the ministry of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Latvia and the Philippines. Also infected were computers belonging to the embassies of Cyprus, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malta, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.

International groups infected included the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) secretariat, SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) and the Asian Development Bank; some news organizations such as the U.K. affiliate of the Associated Press; and an unclassified NATO computer.
Spotlight on Security Needs

GhostNet's existence highlights a need for urgent attention to information security, the analysts wrote. "We can safely hypothesize that it [GhostNet] is neither the first nor the only one of its kind."

The Cambridge researchers predict that these highly targeted attacks bundled with sophisticated malware -- they call them "social malware" -- will become more prevalent in the future. "Social malware is unlikely to remain a tool of governments," they write. "What Chinese spooks did in 2008, Russian crooks will do in 2010."

While F-Secure has seen only a few thousand of these attacks so far, they are already a problem for corporate users in the defense sector, Hypponen said. "We're only seeing this right now on a minuscule scale," he said. "If you could take techniques like this and do it on a massive scale, of course that would change the game."

source: PCWORLD

Firefox 3.0 is the best web browser we've ever seen.

Of course, Firefox has been setting the standard for web browsers since it first appeared in 2004. At the time, Microsoft's Internet Explorer ruled the web, and it did a lousy job. But unless you were savvy enough to try alternatives such as Opera - or were still hoping that Netscape would get its act together - you were stuck with IE.

Firefox then was a breath of fresh air. It was everything that IE wasn't. It was secure and fast, and it supported extensions to transform the browser from a mere utility to the heart of the modern-day computing experience.

For a while, though, Firefox went into a decline. Mozilla kept adding features, but at the expense of memory, stability and performance. At the same time, Microsoft had finally been forced to improve Internet Explorer. Firefox was still better, but it was no longer that much better than IE 7.

With Firefox 3.0, however, Firefox is back on track.

Memory issues

One of the ways that Firefox 2.0 annoyed people was the way it handled memory. The longer their browsers were open, and the more pages were loaded, the more memory was used. The result for some users - especially those whose systems didn't have much memory to begin with - was that performance would drop to a crawl.

They also lost stability. With Firefox 2.x, we were averaging a complete Firefox failure - all browser windows either freezing or closing down - once every two days.

Firefox 2.x used different-sized chunks of memory. Then, as it constantly grabbed and released memory, its memory map began to look like a beaten-up jigsaw puzzle. Here a hole, there a troublesome spot where someone had torn off part of a piece to make it fit, and so on.

In addition, Firefox 2.0 kept full-size copies of images in memory. When you displayed a Jpeg or any of the other compressed picture formats, Firefox kept the full-size uncompressed images in memory even if you weren't currently looking at them. Since a single 100k image can eat up 1MB or more of memory, this old way of handling images can waste memory quickly.

Mozilla's engineers seem to have fixed that - or at least improved it - in Firefox 3.0. Now, if you're not looking at an image, it's been saved in memory in its original compressed format. They've also worked on the memory map issue.

Firefox 3.0 is now using expiration policies in its memory caches. The developers' thinking is that if you haven't retrieved a previously viewed page in half an hour or so, the savings in memory by dropping the page from your cache are more important than the small possibility your page will load faster if you retrieve the stale document.

The result is that, regardless of any other improvements, Firefox 3.0 is faster and more stable than its predecessor. We found that, on average, opening and closing tabs on Firefox 2.0.0.14 used up about 5 percent more RAM per browser tabbing session compared with Firefox 3.0. And in the weeks we've been running Firefox 3.0 on multiple systems on the same exact same PCs doing the same work as we were doing with Firefox 2.x, we haven't seen a single freeze-up.

Performance

Besides the memory improvements, we found Firefox 3.0 to be both faster and more stable than its predecessor for other reasons. Thanks to the vastly improved Gecko 1.9 web-rendering platform, Firefox makes complex pages - like PC Advisor's Games home page, with its text, graphics and video - pop, rather than be painted, on the screen.

To test that, we looked at a group of pages, first on Firefox 2.0.0.14 and then on Firefox 3.0. (In all cases, we cleared the cache first.) We saw a 20 percent to 35 percent reduction in the time from when a web page was summoned to when it completely appeared on the screen.

Next up, we tested Firefox 3.0 for its compliance with web standards such as CSS, JavaScript, SVG and XML with the web Standards Project's Acid3 test.

Here Firefox 3.0 scored 71, which isn't exactly a prize-winning rating; the latest version of Safari for the PC, Safari 3.1.1, scored 87. On the other hand, the other browsers we tried, such as IE 7 and IE 8 beta 1, turned in even worse results. Since Safari's security could well be described with the word awful, we'll stick with Firefox 3.0.

For practical purposes, the only web pages that are likely to give you trouble are the same ones that always have: web pages that were designed specifically with Internet Explorer and ActiveX in mind. But we wouldn't worry too much: in the months we've been using Firefox 3.0, first as a beta and then as a release candidate, Firefox had no trouble rendering any of the thousands of web pages we visited.

Features

Often, when it comes time to look at a product's new features, we end up writing what amounts to a laundry list of functions that no one is ever likely to use in the real world. That's not the case with Firefox 3.0.

For example, the protection mechanisms against malware and cross-site scripting actually work. Firefox 3.0 warns you before you enter sites that have been known to carry malware - you can continue, if you really want to, but at least you'll know you're heading into trouble.

Protection against cross-site scripts - web forgery - goes farther. Firefox 3.0 won't even show you content that seems to be coming from an illegitimate site or is trying to play break-in games with JavaScript. You can still force Firefox to show you the site's content - but on your own head be it.

Firefox 3.0 also gives you more information about the sites you visit than earlier versions did. The drop-down listing of possible addresses that appears when you start typing in an URL has been enhanced to be easier to read and show more information.

Clicking on the favicon - the tiny icon to the left of an URL address - will give you a window that, hopefully, will show such information as who owns the site, what cookies have been set and other elements that may have been delivered. Unfortunately, that feature isn't all that useful yet - few web sites bother with identity information - but it's got potential.

Another nice feature is that when (as is so often the case) you come across a website with an SSL security certificate that's not quite right, Firefox 3.0 displays enough information about the certificate so you can make an informed decision about whether you want to trust the site or not. It's still an error message, but at least now it's an easy-to-understand error message.

Firefox 3.0 now asks if you want to save your password only after you've successfully logged in to a website. For those of us who always type in passwords wrong the first time, this can be darn handy.

Bookmarking has also been improved. For example, the new Smart Bookmarks folder, which appears in your bookmarks toolbar, automatically picks up and lists your most-often visited pages. Firefox 3.0 also enables you to add keyword tags to your bookmarks and then sort your bookmarks by these tags.

On a purely aesthetic basis, Firefox 3.0 will now adjust its look to match that of your Mac OS X , Linux or Windows operating system. This worked perfectly on our test XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Linux systems running both KDE and GNOME. It sounds small, but we found the overall effect to be surprisingly easy on the eyes.

Care with extensions

If you can't live without a particular browser extension, you'll want to hesitate before immediately upgrading to Firefox 3.0. Firefox's new extension subsystem insists that any extension provide a secure website for updates; it also changed some of the APIs. Extensions that don't currently support these changes (as of this writing, this included Google Toolbar ) won't work with Firefox 3.0.

On the other hand, you may find that you don't need many extensions commonly used with Firefox 2.0. For example, with the new Firefox 3.0 you can increase text size, so you may no longer need extensions such as NoSquint.

Firefox also finally has an improved download manager, which supports interrupted download resumption, so you may not need a third-party download manager. In addition, Firefox 3.0 can now register web-based protocol handlers. This means that you can now open mailto and iCal links with your web application of choice without adding an extension.

In other words, if you don't absolutely need incompatible extensions, there's a lot to be said for upgrading to Firefox 3.0 today.

Firefox has also improved its help system. It now reaches out to the Firefox support website for help information. Everyone has the experience of searching for help, only to find that the on-PC help is hopelessly outdated. With Firefox 3.0, you can always get to the most current information.

System requirements

233MHz processor; Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista; 64MB RAM; 52MB hard drive space. FOR MAC: Mac with Intel x86, PowerPC G3, G4, G5 processor; Mac OS X 10.4 or later; 128MB RAM; 200MB hard drive space

Verdict

Nothing is perfect in this world. Still, when it comes to web browsers, Firefox 3.0 is as good as they come. Certainly, compared with the forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 and the security problem-prone Safari, Firefox 3.0 is the standout browser for 2008. Since Firefox first appeared on the scene in 2004, it has set the standard for web browsers. Not only did it break Microsoft's iron grasp on web browsing, its very existence forced Microsoft and the other browser companies to up their game. All of the web browsers are far better than they were before Firefox came along. Now Mozilla's open-source developers have set the bar even higher. Firefox 3.0 is the best of the breed.

Despite some beta issues, Google's streamlined and speedy Google Chrome web browser offers strong integrated search and an intriguing alternative to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Google takes aim squarely at Microsoft with the release of its new web browser, Google Chrome. And Microsoft should be very afraid: Chrome lives up to its hype by rethinking the web browser in clever and convenient ways that make using the web a more organic experience than you'd get with either Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8.0 or Mozilla's Firefox 3.0.

Initially available for download for Windows Vista and XP, Google plans to expand its Google Chrome offerings to the Mac and Linux platforms as well. The company doesn't offer any timeline for these versions, though.

Google Chrome automatically detects the web browser you're using and prompts you through the process of installation (right down to telling you how to access downloaded files within Firefox, for example). When you first run the application, Google Chrome imports your bookmarks, passwords, and settings from Firefox or Internet Explorer. It even can grab username and password data, and it automatically populates those fields for you when you use Chrome for the first time to visit a particular site.

After running through a quick import checklist, Google Chrome opens on your desktop - and right away you begin to experience the web in a new way. Chrome's layout is very simple: you'll see a row of tabs running along the top, a web address bar, and a bookmarks bar that runs beneath the address bar. A separate recent bookmarks box appears at the right of the screen, as does a history search field.

Like its Google stablemates, Google Chrome has a remarkably minimalist interface. There is no full-scale menu bar and no title bar - and few distractions. All controls are buried beneath two icons to the right of the Omnibar (as Google refers to its address bar): a page icon for managing tabs and using Google Gears to create application-like shortcuts from your desktop to a website; and a wrench for history, downloads, and other browser options.

Despite some beta issues, Google's streamlined and speedy Google Chrome web browser offers strong integrated search and an intriguing alternative to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

You can set your own Google Chrome home page, or you can use the 'most visited' sites page as your starting point. This page provides thumbnail images of your most frequently visited sites, shows recent bookmarks, and supplies a search field for searching your page history. You can change your default search engine, too: This option is located beneath the wrench icon, under Options .

Google Chrome's design bridges the gap between desktop and so-called "cloud computing". At the touch of a button, Google Chrome lets you make a desktop, Start menu, or QuickLaunch shortcut to any web page or web application, blurring the line between what's online and what's inside your PC.

For example, we created a desktop shortcut for Google Maps. When you create a shortcut for a web application, Google Chrome strips away all of the toolbars and tabs from the window, leaving you with something that feels much more like a desktop application than like a web application or page.

The lack of forward and back buttons means that if you browse between pages in a saved web application you may find yourself a little confused if you want to go back a page. Google Chrome does let you right-click to navigate backward, however.

This being Google, search is an integral part of Google Chrome; and Google has added some clever features to make searching easier. Chrome goes beyond its Microsoft and Mozilla competition by searching your browser history's page titles as well page content. The history results show the title of the page, as well as a thumbnail representation of the page (for some sites but not all; it was unclear why some sites were visually represented while others were not), but it doesn't show the actual web page address.

The lack of URL information can make it difficult to identify the specific web page you're going to, especially if the site's title bar description is not specific (because, say, different sections of the same site have identical title bar descriptors).

For example, earlier today we read an article on Macworld about an upcoming Apple launch event. To find the article in the browser history, we simply typed 'apple event' in the Omnibar. The resulting list showed every page we had visited that contained the phrase 'apple event'. Conveniently, the Google Chrome Omnibar lets you search not just your history, but Google and other sites as well.

The default Google Chrome search engine is Google, as you might expect. However, you can choose from a list of nine other search engines, or you can manually add your own search engine. Type 'google fish sticks' to search for fish sticks on Google. The same syntax works for Yahoo, Amazon, Live Search, and other sites that are already recognised by Google or that you add. This feature, though nifty and promising, proved inconsistent in the early going: it worked for us most of the time on a Windows Vista PC, but two colleagues who were testing Google Chrome on Windows XP machines had trouble getting the feature to work.

Google provides keywords to activate this Google Chrome search feature, but some of us had to edit the search engine keywords manually before the feature would function properly.

Despite some beta issues, Google's streamlined and speedy Google Chrome web browser offers strong integrated search and an intriguing alternative to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Google Chrome includes a number of features that appear in other browsers, such as a private browsing mode dubbed Incognito, tools for web developers to use in viewing and troubleshooting source code, and the ability to restore all tabs from a previous session.

Google Chrome also features tab isolation: if a web page causes a problem with Google Chrome and leads to a crash, the crash will affect only the tab displaying the page and not the whole program. Internet Explorer 8.0 will offer a similar feature, but Chrome takes the idea a step further by adding a task manager that gives the user an idea of how much memory and CPU use a page is eating up, and by allowing you to kill anything that is causing a problem. Unfortunately, you have to configure this tool manually.

In our early testing, we ran into some problems. Google Chrome can be a little unstable, which is not surprising considering that it is a beta. Also, we have found that Flash does not work with Chrome on our Vista-based test system, although colleagues running XP had no issues with Flash compatibility. They did, however, experience software crashes when searching in the history section.

And when Google Chrome crashes, it takes everything with it unless you manually configure the browser to act otherwise (the configuration options are buried under the wrench icon, in the Options/Basics menu). In contrast, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 automatically restore your previous session in the event of a crash.

The sites we visited that rely on JavaScript and Ajax seemed to work fine, but Microsoft's Silverlight wouldn't work with Chrome. Google's browser uses WebKit, the same engine that powers Apple's Safari web browser - and Silverlight only works with Safari for Mac.

System requirements

Windows XP/Vista; internet connection

Verdict

Google has produced an excellent browser that is friendly enough to handle average browsing activities without complicating the tasks, but at the same time it's powerful enough to meet the needs of more-advanced users. The search functionality of the Omnibar is one of many innovations that caught my attention. Google Chrome's launch makes one thing clear: the web browser is Google's operating system.

source:www.pcadvisor.co.uk

Apple is trumpeting its updated Apple Safari 4 web browser as exceptionally fast and innovative. It certainly looks good, but what does it actually offer? We gave it a quick spin to see what's under its hood.

"Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications," proclaims Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing.

Safari prompts you to install Bonjour for Windows and Safari Desktop shortcuts. Bonjour is the applet used to aggregate content from attached devices as well as your hard drive. It's not an essential part of the Safari experience.

Having specified whether these two extras should load along with Safari and accepted Apple's licence agreement, you get a rather odd Apple thankyou message that stalled the installation progress. What it actually means is we needed to quit the existing web browsing page so everything could be updated. It would have made sense to say so.

afari prompts you to install Bonjour for Windows and Safari Desktop shortcuts. Bonjour is the applet used to aggregate content from attached devices as well as your hard drive. It's not an essential part of the Safari experience.

Having specified whether these two extras should load along with Safari and accepted Apple's licence agreement, you get a rather odd Apple thankyou message that stalled the installation progress. What it actually means is we needed to quit the existing web browsing page so everything could be updated. It would have made sense to say so.

Once the installation has finished, and you've gone through the rigmarole of restarting your PC, you'll be able to start using the Safari 4 beta. Unless you've specified a home page, the main window will be black - something we can only hope Apple changes in the final release as it looks plain wrong.

To set your website as the home page, you need to click the Sprocket icon to the right of the Safari home page and click the Preferences option the drop-down list. You can then enter a new web address as your desired home page.

At first glance, Safari is a plain-seeming browser, but, as soon as you start typing in web addresses or entering a search term, things pick up. If you were already using Apple Safari as your web browser, the Top Sites tab should already be populated; if not, you might want to start by having a look at what Apple deems Popular.

The tab on the right of the links options immediately below the web-address bar in Safari 4 proffers a drop-down list of sites such as eBay, Amazon, Craigs List, Flickr and so forth. You can optionally view these as a succession of tabs that runs across the top of the browser window. If you find these less-than-inspiring, press the + button and, rather than being offered the option to add items that are Popular with you rather than Apple, you get a list of Top Sites.

Much like Google's Chrome browser, this list is displayed as a set of visual thumbnails of sites you frequently visit. The thumbnails are 'live', meaning that you can see what's currently on the main page, rather than being shown what was uppermost on your last visit. You can flick through these if you're using a touchscreen display or zip through them with a mouse. The experience is similar to the Cover Flow feature in iTunes or on the latest iPods and iPhone.

In any case, Safari remembers what you looked at, the pages you visited on each site and records useful keywords so you can easily call up previously-visited information.

pple is trumpeting its updated Apple Safari 4 web browser as exceptionally fast and innovative. It certainly looks good, but what does it actually offer? We gave it a quick spin to see what's under its hood.

Another useful addition is the RSS feed at the far end of the address bar. Where a site has an RSS (really simple syndication) feed so you can receive updates in your email inbox, clicking on the blue RSS icon gives you options for which feeds you get.

Similarly, the News button in the links bar lets you view updates from a range of publications and websites. As with the Popular list, a tabbed view is available, and it's also possible to customise your settings.

We like the fact that you can view the stories here by source, date or title and can specify whether Safari displays related stories on the topic or a simple list of articles from a range of sources. An 'article length' slider lets you adjust this to suit.

We've yet to find a way to activate and deactivate the sources on offer to make them more UK-specific, for example.

The Settings tab offers a comprehensive set of customisation options. You can also launch the Private Browsing feature and clear the History so that other people using the PC can't follow your web trail.

Preferences extend to how frequently the History cache should be cleared out, whether Safari should use a particular style sheet standard, the text encoding, Auto Fill for passwords and usernames at secure sites, and so on.

Cookie preferences, plug-ins, Java and JavaScript enabling and other Security settings can be specified, while the Bookmarks tab lets you choose how, whether and what are associated with the Bonjour service.

System requirements

Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista; 256MB RAM; 500MHz Intel Pentium processor. Any Mac running Security Update 2009-001 and Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 or Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11, Mac with an Intel processor or a Power PC G5, G4, or G3 processor and built-in FireWire; 256MB of RAM; Top Sites and Cover Flow on Mac OS X Tiger require a Quartz-Extreme compatible video card

Verdict

While it's too soon to say whether Safari will become our browser of choice, our first impressions of a highly user-definable experience and a neatly ordered information repository in which items are quietly logged and can be called up again whenever we need. We'll give you a fuller review in due course, once we've run some more formal tests to establish whether it live up to its claims of being speedier and more innovative than the rest of the browser bunch.


source: www.pcadvisor.co.uk