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Security threat discovered in Google's Android software

Researchers have found some holes in Google's Android SDK that could make the software vulnerable to hack attacks. But because commercial Android devices are still months away from hitting store shelves, there's no need to panic.

Core Security published an alert on its Web site on Tuesday stating that it had found eight vulnerabilities related to some open-source image processing libraries in Google's Android SDK, which the group claims are outdated. Attackers exploiting these vulnerabilities could take complete control of Android handsets, the alert said.

It's hardly surprising that some kind of vulnerability would be discovered. … Read more

Google's photo and bookmarking missteps

For all the company's overall success, some of its individual entrants sometimes seem not just lagging and wanting, but sometimes just plain... off.

I'm not so much talking here about sites like Orkut and Google Video that were more-or-less representative of and competitive with social media and video sharing sites (respectively) at the time they came on the scene. They simply didn't rise to the top of the pile for complicated and somewhat elusive reasons that would make for another long discussion.

However, other examples from Google just seem oddly out of tune.

Take Google Browser Sync … Read more

Google offers search within search

Imagine searching inside Wikipedia or Amazon.com, but on the Google search site. Google's got a test going of a way to search inside different sites from within a Google Web search results page. If you type in "amazon," "wikipedia" or "new york times" on Google, it brings up the relevant result at the top and immediately underneath is a second search box. If you type a keyword in that secondary search box it will return results from within that site.

(Via Search Engine Land)

The Google-ization of Facebook

Is Facebook the next Google? Maybe and maybe not, but either way there's a lot that Facebook can learn from Google and from the Googlers it's hiring.

The latest person to move offices from Mountain View, Calif., to Facebook, seven miles away in Palo Alto is Sheryl Sandberg. The Google vice president of global sales and operations will become chief operating officer at the social network company later this month.

Facebook previously hired Benjamin Ling, who was in charge of Google Checkout; Justin Rosenstein, a developer on GDrive and product manager for Google Page Creator; and Gideon Yu, … Read more

Zuckerberg: New Facebook COO will be organization czar

q&a On Tuesday, Facebook announced that it had hired six-year Google veteran Sheryl Sandberg as its chief operating officer, a big move as the hot social network attempts to convince the Valley that it's here to stay and slated to keep growing fast.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had a few minutes to chat on the phone about Sandberg's new role at the company.

The 23-year-old CEO insisted that Sandberg isn't a pure replacement for outgoing executive Owen Van Natta. From what it sounds like, her role will be significantly more extensive. Not surprisingly, she's … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 673: Offline is the new online

EPISODE 673

Sanity prevails: IE8 will default to standard-compliant mode http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080303-sanity-prevails-ie8-will-default-to-standard-compliant-mode.html http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9884688-56.html

Survey: Warnings from ISPs could slash file-swapping by 70 percent http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080303-survey-warnings-from-isps-could-slash-file-swapping-by-70.html

Nokia to bring Microsoft Silverlight-powered experiences to millions of mobile users http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1197788

Official Google Mobile Blog: Shifting Google Gears to mobile http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/03/shifting-google-gears-to-mobile.html

What price, Scrabulous? Mergers, acquisitions, venture capital, hedge funds http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/ scrabulous-founders-look-to-score-big-report-says/?hp

Microsoft offers $100K to … Read more

Zoho makes commuters happy with offline mobile office docs

As an extension of this morning's news about Google Gears making its way to mobile devices, online office suite Zoho is taking advantage of the new technology to give people a way to view Zoho Writer documents on their Windows mobile phones while away from a data connection. It's the type of situation that occurs frequently for commuters, and something that has historically given native software applications the leg up on their Web counterparts.

Users can view up to 20 of their latest Zoho Writer documents while connected, and view up to the last last five when in the Gears-enabled offline mode. According to CEO Raju Vegesna, an option to change how many documents you can load into the Gears cache is in the works. Also on tap is an offline editing mode to let you make changes or tweaks to your docs, although according to Vegesna more than 90 percent of users simply view documents on their mobile devices.

Zoho was one of the first adopters of Google's Gears technology, adding it to its Writer word processing service back in late November--something Google has still not done with its own Documents and Spreadsheets service, despite hints it was the next service to get the Gears treatment back in January.

Vegesna walks us through the process of installing Gears and accessing the mobile version of Zoho Writer in the video embedded after the break.

One of Zuckerberg's smartest moves, so far

The crew at Facebook has done well to amass a huge war chest (Microsoft's $240 million investment), 66 million members, 200,000 developers, 16,000 applications, 500 employees and somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in revenue for last year.

With the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg as COO, the odds just increased for Facebook to survive its adolescence (more on Techmeme).

Sandberg is 15 years senior to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. She has been through the gauntlet, working in the Clinton administration and then at Google for six years, starting when the company had less than … Read more

Facebook plucks new COO from Google's sales ranks

Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has hired a new chief operating officer to replace the outgoing Owen Van Natta. Starting on March 24, veteran Google employee Sheryl Sandberg will take on the executive role at the social network.

For six years, Sandberg was vice president of global sales and operations at Google, where she helped to grow the company's AdWords and AdSense products, as well as its Google.org nonprofit division.

As part of her new job, according to a statement from the social-networking company, she will "be responsible for helping Facebook scale its operations and expand … Read more

Google Gears heads for Windows Mobile phones

Google is bringing Google Gears to mobile phones so that people on the go can access Web-based applications even when they're not connected to the mobile Net.

Smartphones and 3G data services are changing the way some people work, allowing them to access documents and applications from anywhere. But when their wireless connection is interrupted or not available at all, they're cut off.

Google Gears for mobile helps solve this problem so mobile workaholics can even get stuff done on airplanes or when they're supposed to be on vacation in some far-off destination with no wireless access. (… Read more