Archive for October, 2009

Happy Halloween.

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Gmail account security tips

As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we recently posted about how to pick a smart password. Having a strong password goes a long way in helping to protect your data, but there are a number of additional steps you can take to help you keep your Gmail account secure:

1. Remember to sign out. Especially when using a public computer, be careful to sign out of your Google account when you’re finished. Just click the “Sign out” link at the top right corner of your inbox. If you’re using a public or shared computer and want to be extra thorough, you can also clear the browser’s cache, cookies and history. Then, completely close the browser. On your personal computer, you can also lock your computer with a password-protected screensaver if you need to step away momentarily. Learn the best ways to lock your screen in Windows or in Mac OS X. Forgot to sign out? Open up a new Gmail session on another computer and use Gmail’s remote sign out feature to close any sessions that might still be open elsewhere.

2. Be careful about sending certain sensitive information via email. Once you send an email, you’re no longer in control of the information it contains. The recipients, if they so choose, could forward the email or post its contents in a public place. Even if you know and trust the people you’re emailing, that information may become exposed if their accounts become compromised or they get a virus on their machines. As a rule of thumb, should you need to provide a credit card number or financial account number to respond to a message, provide it over the phone or in person — not over email. And never share your password with anyone. Google does not email you to ask you for your password, your social security number, or other personal information — so don’t send it!

3. Enable “Always use HTTPS.” Any time you visit a webpage, your computer needs to send and receive information across the Internet. HTTPS is used to encrypt data as it is transmitted between computers on the Internet, so look for the “https” in the URL bar of your browser to indicate that the connection between your computer and Gmail’s servers is encrypted. We use HTTPS on the Gmail login page, and you can choose to protect your entire Gmail session with HTTPS as well. HTTPS can make your mail slower, so we let you make the choice for yourself. Open Settings and choose “Always use HTTPS” on the General tab if you want to turn it on.

4. Be wary of unexpected attachments.To help protect you from viruses and malware, Gmail automatically scans every attachment when it’s delivered to you, and again each time you open a message. Attachments you send are also scanned. That said, no system is foolproof, so if you happen to get an email from a friend with an attachment you didn’t expect, don’t be afraid to ask the sender what it is before you decide whether to open it.

5. Make sure your account recovery information is up-to-date. Your account recovery information helps you regain access to your account if you ever forget your password, or if someone gains access to your account without your permission. We currently offer several paths to account recovery. Every Gmail user must select a security question and answer — be sure to choose a combination that is easy for you to remember, but hard for others to guess or come across by investigating. Don’t choose a question like “What is my favorite color?” as others may easily guess the answer. We also encourage you to provide a secondary email address and/or a mobile phone number, so we can send you a link to reset your password if you lose access to your account. You can find additional security tips for Gmail in our Help Center. Learn more about protecting your computer, website, and personal information by checking out our security series on the Google blog or visiting http://www.staysafeonline.org.

Source :
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/gmail-account-security-tips.html

Google makes Similar Images part of image search

Google on Tuesday announced that its similar-images feature is now a standard part of the company’s image search technology.

The feature was originally launched in late April, alongside the visual-news timeline, as a way for users to find images that share certain visual similarities with those in Google Images search results. This means that you could do a search for “ice cube” and very quickly fork out Google’s results between images of the frozen chunks of water and the popular West Coast rapper, all without having to change your original search term.

Which ‘ice cube’ did you mean? Google’s image search can now offer suggestions for images that may be similar.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Google continues to host a dedicated Similar Images search page that provides identical results to what’s now found in the standard version of Google Images search. This is likely to remain, as has been the case for sites of other Google Labs graduates, such as Google Transit (now a part of Maps) and Google Suggest.

Google has also created a standalone Google Product Ideas page to grab user feedback for other features or changes to the image search service. This operates the same way as other product idea pages by letting users suggest new ideas to Google’s engineers, as well as giving others the chance to vote ideas up or down.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-10384618-248.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Firefox gains 30 million users in eight weeks

Mozilla’s open-source Firefox browser has gained 30 million users over the past eight weeks, as it continues to gain on Internet Explorer.

Chief Executive John Lilly revealed the increase in user adoption in a Twitter post on Monday, and Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, confirmed it to ZDNet UK on Tuesday.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of users for Firefox,” Nitot said. “Firefox checks for new versions every 24 hours, when it’s running, and when it checks, it pings the Mozilla server. We count the number of pings.”

Read more of “Firefox gains 30m users in eight weeks” at ZDNet UK.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10384402-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Bring multimedia content to your Twitter profile

Ffwd Video-sharing site Ffwd allows people to share their favorite videos with Twitter followers.

When you get to Ffwd, you can view a host of videos on several topics. When you find something you like, Ffwd provides a “Share to Twitter” option. When you click that, your update box will be populated with a standard tweet and a link to the video. You can change it before you send it out. It’s a nice service, but given the fact that there are many more videos on YouTube (which also lets you share content on Twitter), it might not be your first option.

Ffwd

Ffwd populates your update box with a link and message.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Flickr If you’re a Flickr user, the Yahoo-owned site allows you to show off your images on Twitter with the help of a unique Flickr URL.

Full story :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10383463-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

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