Twitter has just announced some photo news, as rumors circulating over the Memorial Day holiday weekend hinted it would. The big reveal isn’t exactly a new photo-sharing or photo-storage service – Twitter will not be hosting the photos you Tweet now. But that doesn’t mean that today’s announcement is irrelevant or unimportant.

Today’s announcement actually has two part: one dealing with search and one dealing with photos. It also involves two new partners for the company: Firefox and Photobucket.

Twitter says that it’s rolling out an updated version of its search today, one that will not just give you “more relevant tweets” and that will show related photos and videos on the results page so you needn’t leave the site to view them.

Twitter is partnering with Firefox in these improved search efforts – at least as part of today’s announcement. With a new version of the browser, users will be able to type a hashtage or a @username into the Awesome Bar and go directly to the search results page. There’s also an add-on that will give this same functionality. This makes Twitter search function much like any other address-bar-based search engine. (Well, except that it bypasses both Google and Chrome, of course.)

Twitter also announced that it has partnered with the photo-sharing and storage company Photobucket, which will be responsible for hosting these tweeted photos. In coming weeks, Twitter says, users will be able to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet directly from the Twitter.com website. This will also be available via Twitter’s mobile apps, and the company is exploring ways to Tweet photos via SMS.

Just as the new photo-sharing service will be unveiled over the coming weeks to users, it appears as though developers will also have to wait for more information about the new “‘Tweet-with-photo’ API.” But as there are a number of companies who’ve staked their claim on providing just this sort of service – namely Twitpic and YFrog – the future of Twitter photo-sharing still appears cloudy.

Ever since it became stable enough to use on a day-to-day basis on a Mac last year, Google Chrome has been my browser of choice. Other browsers have been adding some nice features — but Chrome keeps adding them faster. And today on its second birthday, that rate of change isn’t slowing down.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 6 as the latest stable version of the browser today. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone using the dev or beta builds of the browser, but it’s nonetheless an important mark as it means it’s stable enough for mass consumption.

Remember that it was just two years ago when Google surprised the world by announcing a new browser (a little early) via a comic. The next day, we got the first shots of what the browser would look like — and it was released as a beta for Windows users. It actually looks pretty much the same today, but it’s now much, much faster (and when it launched it was already faster than most browsers out there).

Google says that Chrome today is a full three times faster when it comes to JavaScript performance versus Chrome circa 2008. The rapid speed increases have also undoubtedly pushed rival browsers to become faster, so we’ve all benefited.

Arguably more important to me is that despite adding all the new features – and extensions — Chrome still seems lightweight today. I fondly remember the good old days of 2004 when I first started using Firefox as my main browser and thinking how fresh and lightweight it felt compared to the atrocity that was IE. Firefox, sadly, got bloated over the years. So far, Chrome hasn’t put on the same weight. Here’s hoping it never does.

As I said, Chrome is also showing no signs of slowing down from a development standpoint. The browser is already in the process of morphing into version 7 as well. Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on, has been hit version 7 a couple weeks ago — and the dev build of Chrome just went 7 as well. Google has said they hope to iterate every six weeks going forward.

These next few months are going to be arguably the most interesting times for the browser yet. The Chrome Web Store will soon open, bringing tightly integrated web-based apps into the browser. And then, of course, Chrome OS is due before the end of the year.

Happy birthday Chrome.

Example of private browsing in Firefox.

Features in the four major browsers designed to cloak users’ browser history often don’t work as billed, according to a research paper that warns that users may get a false sense of security when using the built-in privacy settings.

The private-browsing modes are supposed to allow users to visit a website without leaving any trace on their computers, and yet Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari frequently leave tracks, according to the research, which is scheduled to be presented at next week’s Usenix Security Symposium in Washington DC. The makers of those browsers — Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, and Apple respectively — often hail the offerings as a way to enhance privacy when using shared computers.

One failure that affects IE, Firefox, and Safari happens when users save SSL, or secure sockets layer, client certificates while browsing in private mode. The browsers store a record of those actions in a file that allows anyone who has physical access to know exactly what site the user was visiting at the time. Similarly, when IE and Safari encounter a self-signed certificate, it is stored in a certificate vault that is preserved even after the private session ends.

Similarly, Firefox users who make security certificate settings while in private mode will have a partial copy of their browsing history stored in a file called cert8.db, the researchers said.

“We discovered that all these browsers retain the generated key pair even after private browsing ends,” the researchers wrote. “Again, if the user visits a site that generates an SSL client key pair, the resulting keys will leak the site’s identity to the local attacker.”

The study (PDF here) showed each browser failing in specific settings.

The privacy mode in Firefox, for instance, is undermined when a user sets site-specific preferences or uses a variety of Mozilla-sanctioned plug-ins. The open-source browser also stores websites visited that dole out custom protocol handlers based on the HTML5 standard.

For its part, IE’s InPrivate mode can be undermined when websites make SMB queries, since the Microsoft browser shares large chunks of code with Windows Explorer.

The researchers also devised a way for webmasters to detect when someone visiting their sites is using the privacy mode. It involves placing an iframe with a unique web address and then “using JavaScript to check whether a link to that URL was displayed as purple (visited) or blue (unvisited).”

The researchers said that to the best of their knowledge they are the first to demonstrate a way to detect private browsing mode — but that may not really matter for much longer. The technique appears to use the decade-old browser history attack, which was recently fixed in Safari and will soon be fixed in Firefox. It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft and Google follow suit.

Using the technique, they confirmed what we all suspected: the feature is mainly used when surfing to porn sites. Gift and news sites, not so much.

TrendLabs recently received a new FAKEAV sample, which they now detect as TROJ_FAKEAV.BLW. Like previous variants, it poses as a legitimate antivirus application that displays false detections, disables firewall and security center functions, and produces pop-up warnings to force affected users to purchase rogue antivirus software.

Unlike its predecessors, however, this sample uses the file name AV.exe. If users are not into computers, they may think this is a valid antivirus application. It uses registry shell spawning as autostart technique, which means the malware is executed every time a user runs files that have the .EXE file name extension. It also uses any of the following application names:

• %1 Antispyware 2010
• Antivirus %1 2010
• %1 Guardian 2010
• %1 Guardian
• %1 Defender 2010
• %1 Antivirus
• %1 Antivirus 2010
• %1 Antivirus Pro
• %1 Antivirus Pro 2010
• %1 Internet Security
• %1 Internet Security 2010

Note that %1 refers to the OS installed on the affected machine. This makes the malware flexible in that it is able to take advantage of the features of an infected user’s OS.

Whenever an infected user attempts to access the Internet via Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox, this malware displays warning messages saying these browsers are malicious. (Internet Explorer on the left and Firefox on the right)

This may cause the user to panic since these are two of the most commonly used browsers. Users who are tricked into purchasing the bogus product are redirected to multiple rogue antivirus domains.

This list ensures that the malware can access other domains even if some have already been taken down. Lastly, this malware does not allow users to execute files from security companies, which prevents the affected user from scanning the affected computer.

When faced with these kinds of false alarms, I would urge users to calm down and avoid purchasing rogue antivirus products. This does not help solve the problem. Instead, it makes things even worse, as this is just a waste of hard-earned money.

This is only the latest tactic seen from the perpetrators of rogue antivirus malware. Recently, advanced threats researchers spotted another FAKEAV run using Sandra Bullock’s recent marital difficulties to spread malware. If you have any questions about this type of malware, please feel free to contact me and I will be glad to answer any of your questions.

Just about everyone these days knows that the internet can be a pretty dangerous place to browse if you are not careful. With all the trojans, viruses, infected websites, scams, it seems that it is near impossible to keep yourself completely safe unless you just keep your computer unplugged from the internet. With all these threats to worry about, this doesn’t even include all the bad things that can come through email or instant messaging programs!

What makes it worse is that the people who out there making all the bad and dangerous stuff on the internet do it for a couple different reasons. A few of them being to steal your personal information (such as bank information, credit card numbers or usernames and passwords), try and scam you with bogus software, or just mess up your computer for the fun of it because they can. I like to call these people “the bad guys”.

While there are a ton of people out there making these bad programs and websites, there are also a big number of people who are on the other side writing software and various tools to help protect your computers as well as clean them if they have gotten infected.

Most users don’t realize that just having an antivirus program is not usually enough to keep you safe from all the bad things that our out there trying to get into your system. I found an great article that talks about 10 pretty simple ways to increase your online security so you don’t have to worry when browsing the web or checking your email. So lets get on to the list!

1. Augment your anti-virus tool
2. Switch to plain text mail
3. Don’t click mail links
4. Vet your email
5. Switch web browser
6. Check web sites before you visit
7. Manage your passwords
8. Screen all downloads
9. P2P basics
10. Create a virtual sandbox

These 10 things are a great start to help keep your PC safe from a majority of the threats that are out there lurking in the shadows of the internet. While these aren’t fool proof, they can help the average user stay away and avoid all together most stuff that can harm their computers.

For a description of each of these 10 ways to further protect yourself, head over to this article on techradar.com to read up on each of these steps.

Everyone now days is trying to make sure they stay safe while browsing the web for various reasons. The problem that is ever growing is that of  the constant growth of malware infected websites that try to infect your computer when you simply visit those websites. They do everything from trying to steal your personal information, trick you to visiting another website, and even just simply infecting your computer with a host of different types of malware.

Many people think that as long as they have their antivirus software updated and running while they surf is enough to keep them safe. While this was true a couple years ago, much of the malware causing problems today has found ways to trick the user into getting around their antivirus software and infecting the system. Once it gets into the system, 9 times out of 10 it is usually too late for your antivirus software to help you.

Even though the good guys are constantly changing their strategies to try and stop the malware from effecting their users, the most common case is that the bad guys are constantly changing their ways as well to get around the good guys. Internet Explorer is usually the most targeted browser of choice simply because since it comes with Windows by default, by exploiting that, you have the greatest chance to actually succeed by infected users. This has resulted in a higher demand for alternate and more safe browsers to take its place.

Today, Mozilla’s Firefox is the most popular browser that users pick to replace Internet Explorer. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that you can add “extensions” to the browser to help keep unwanted websites from messing with your computer. Below is a quick list of 10 very helpful extensions you can add on to Firefox to help making your web browsing more safe.

1. BetterPrivacy
2. BlockSite
3. Dr. Web Anti-virus
4. FormFox
5. Ghostery
6. Locationbar
7. NoScript
8. Password Hasher
9. QuickJava
10. Web of Trust

After looking over this list, I have to agree that these extensions do indeed help a great deal in keeping you better protected while browsing the internet. Even though it can’t keep you completely safe from everything, they do a fantastic job in keeping you safe from a good percent of the dangerous and just plain annoying things out on the internet. If you would like to read up more on these extensions, you can click HERE to read up on them and help you decide which ones you would like to use.

Many of us have been saying it for a long time: location based services are the future. But up until now they’ve been a distant, hazy future, because they’ve been so difficult to use. That’s going to change soon, and it looks like Google is going to be leading the way. Google has just announced that it has become the default location provider service in Firefox, which means beginning in the latest Firefox Beta (available here) users will be able to update their location from their web browser without having to install an extra plugins or programs through Google. This is big.

Location based services take a lot of flack for their privacy issues, but so far the biggest obstacle in their acceptance has been that they’re a huge pain to use, typically requiring extra browser plugins and annoying sign-up processes. The new version of Firefox is probably going to change that, at least for desktop browsers, because it will have location detection baked in. Up until now it seemed like Mozilla was going to be using Geode, a plugin it first annouced back in October, as its default location provider.

The switch to Google is obviously a big win for Google Latitude, and it will also likely give Google access to volumes of local data that will allow it to offer hyper-targeted advertising to businesses (or maybe not, at least for now – see below). As with Google’s search deal with Mozilla, which was recently extended through 2011, I suspect Google is paying a pretty penny for the right to be the browser’s default provider. In 2006, that search deal alone reportedly accounted for $57 million, or around 85% of Mozilla’s total revenue.

Mozilla says that there is no money changing hands in this case, and that it is totally unrelated to the search deal. Mozilla wanted to break the ‘chicken and the egg’ problem of location, and decided to go with Google because they saw eye-to-eye on privacy issues. Also Google says that the data isn’t currently being used for advertising purposes (at least for now), and that this is really about getting location-based functionality deployed to the web. But even without the advertising dollars, there is one very major upside: Google is going to be able to perfect its location database, with millions of users tapping into it on a daily basis. And that database is going to be extremely valuable going forward.

Google’s plans extend well beyond the Firefox browser, too. Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser on the web, and Google recently released an update to its Toolbar which includes the same location detection service as Firefox will. Of course, users will still have to download the plugin, which makes the barrier to entry significantly higher than it will be on Firefox.

Microsoft made its Internet Explorer 8 browser available yesterday, along with a company-commissioned report claiming IE8 is more secure against malware than rival browsers from Mozilla and Google. Users were able to download IE8 in 25 languages at 12:00 noon Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday from Microsoft’s IE Web site and its online download center.

Microsoft has been preparing users for IE8 for a good year now, stressing performance improvements, better support for Internet technology standards, the addition of new features to help people keep track of most visited sites and favorite sources of information, and of course, security, as highlights of the new browser. According to the report Microsoft released Thursday, based on research conducted by NSS Labs, IE8′s Release Candidate 1 was 69 percent effective at catching malware before it did damage to a user’s system. Mozilla Firefox 3.07 came in second with a 30 percent effectiveness rate, with Apple Safari’s 3 in third place with a 24-percent rate and Google’s Chrome 1.0.154 in fourth place with 16 percent effectiveness rate

NSS Labs said in the report that the data was collected from tests conducted in just over 12 days from Feb. 26 through March 10 in its labs in Austin, Texas. During the course of the test, the company said it monitored connectivity to ensure the browsers could access the live malware sites being tested, and performed 141 discrete tests. The margin of error of the tests was 3.76 percent, according to NSS Labs. Amy Barzdukas, a senior director at Microsoft, acknowledged that it might be a conflict of interest for Microsoft to sponsor a report in which IE8 came out on top in terms of security. However, she encouraged people to “look closely at the results” before making a judgment call on the validity of the report.

IE8 will be included as part of the Windows 7 OS. However, for the first time since adding browser technology to its operating system, Microsoft will give users the ability to turn off IE8 as a feature in the system. This decision was outlined in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Microsoft is under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union to give users more browser choice in Windows.