Webware

It's been a few days since Opera unwrapped its latest beta browser for mobile phones, and we've had some more time to get acquainted. Opera Mobile 10 beta (download), which runs on certain Symbian Series 60 smartphones, adds some improvements to its password manager and has made a few tweaks under the hood. However, its most significant alterations are in its visual design. Bottom line: We like it, and we like how similar it is to Opera Mini 5 beta, a recent overhaul of the free Opera browser for Java phones.

There are some downsides with the version 10 beta browser that have cropped up--these go beyond the known issues and bugs. Opera's smartphone browser continues to struggle with accurately rendering complex pages. When zooming in on CNET Download.com on the Nokia N97, we saw text and graphics overlap. While Web sites often redirect to a URL optimized for mobile phones, we'd still like to see graphically rich pages rendered more faithfully in Opera Mobile on those that don't have specialized versions.

Its responsiveness was also an issue on the Nokia N97 test phone, but we suspect this has more to do with the device than with Opera. CNET reviewers dinged the Nokia N97 for its choice of an inconsistently responsive resistive touch screen instead of the capacitive touch screen that's found on the iPhone.

Even if you don't have a compatible Nokia, Samsung, or Sony Ericsson phone to test Opera Mobile 10 beta with yourself, you can watch our First Look video to see the new browser beta's features--its new tabs interface shines.

Real-time satellite imagery of lunch at the Googleplex would be "creepy," according to CEO Eric Schmidt.

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google is trying not to be creepy.

That's according to CEO Eric Schmidt, who told Fox Business Thursday that "we're trying not to cross what we call the creepy line" when it comes to the data it gathers. As an example, Schmidt said Google only publishes satellite data that is a month old, indicating that Google would consider it creepy to publish real-time satellite data.

Google is quite used to facing charges that it has become a little too Big Brotherish in its conquest of the Internet search market. In response, it emphasizes that Google users have control over the data the company collects on them, most recently introducing Google Dashboard as a way of letting users see all the personal data the company has assembled in a single Web page.

That will likely never be enough to satisfy the hardcore privacy advocates of the world, but the general public--and the government--are also starting to get a little uneasy about Google's unparalleled reach across the Internet.

In the interview, Schmidt also said that Google had to avoid the "mistakes" made by Microsoft that led to its prosecution by the U.S. government. But Google also has to be wary about how aggressively it courts favor with the Obama administration, he said: Schmidt is a technology adviser to the administration.

"You don't want to be too close to any particular administration, and they don't want to be too close particularly to you," Schmidt said. That drew a dry retort from Fox Business' Neil Cavuto, who said, "Well, take it from us here at Fox, that's not a worry."

Don't forget, CNET is scheduled to interview Schmidt next week, and if you have questions for the CEO, leave them in the comments below or on this page.

Retweeting has become such an important part of Twitter use that the social network announced on its blog late Thursday that its rollout of integrated retweeting has finally begun.

"We've just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote on the blog. "Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know."

Right now, Twitter users are forced to manually retweet items they care about by inputting "RT" at the beginning of a message. Some sites use Tweetmeme's Retweet Button to make it a little easier for users to retweet stories they like. Earlier this year, Twitter shared the mechanics behind the new feature with third-party Twitter developers to see how they could integrate it in their own apps. It's about time that it's coming to Twitter.

In essence, the new retweet button will work much in the same way the "reply" option works on the site already. Users will need only to click the retweet button and their status-update box will be populated with the desired tweet. Those who have access to the feature are saying that a new icon is displayed before the message, rather than the typical RT, but since I don't have access to it yet, I can't confirm its existence.

Twitter plans to test the retweet option on a small number of accounts at first. If all goes well, it will "proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100 percent."

If you have access to the new feature, let us know what you think in the comments below.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--For almost all of its existence, Mozilla Messaging has been known for Thunderbird--e-mail software with the traditional view that a person's PC is the center of their computing existence.

Now, though, the Mozilla Foundation subsidiary's scope is expanding beyond the confines of the computer under your desk or on your lap. In the near term, the new Thunderbird 3 is becoming more integrated with the Web. And in the longer term, the Raindrop project has the potential to lift your inbox all the way to the cloud.

"For us it's really important to have Thunderbird. It's also important to not stay in the blinders of that scenario," Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher said in an interview at the company's headquarters here. With Raindrop, "We're focusing on best experience for messaging in a Web application."

Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The change reflects the changing nature of computing. Where Thunderbird's chief competition once was now software such as Microsoft's Outlook, it's now also got to reckon with Google's Web-based Gmail service and its ilk, Ascher said.

Thunderbird is still a priority. Thunderbird 3 is set to arrive next week in near-final form--though nearly a year later than had been planned--but Mozilla Messaging has high hopes the new version will be faster, easier to use, and more versatile through the addition of third-party extensions.

Universal inbox
Raindrop is something of an ultimate inbox in the company's vision, a Web application that draws not just from e-mail but from other communication conduits such as Twitter, Facebook mail, and instant messaging. Its goal isn't just to consolidate today's overabundance of communications channels, it's to help prioritize what's important and put off what's optional until a more convenient time.

"We're breaking the notion of one list coming in, in chronological order," he said. What just arrived isn't necessarily the most important thing to do, though human minds are prone to thinking it is.

Some aspects of Raindrop's future are more certain than others. It's way to early to say when the company might release its first version of the actual software, but one thing that's settled is that Raindrop won't be a service Mozilla offers. Instead, the software will run on others' servers--at Internet service providers, for example.

"Hosting a messaging system for the world is not something we can afford right now," Ascher said. Still, it's revealing that the company chose to create Raindrop as a server-based technology accessible through a Web browser rather than as PC-based software.

Will Raindrop rule the roost?
In the longer term--say 2015--might Raindrop replace Thunderbird as people's messaging interface of choice? Perhaps.

"I suspect some people will and some people won't," he said. "I think desktop software still has a bunch of user benefits that will last for quite awhile."

Persuading everybody to freely cooperate with Raindrop could be tough. Sites like Facebook like their central positions in people's electronic lives and like to serve ads next to their content. In time, though, Ascher believes they'll come aboard.

"I think in the long term, openness wins," he said.

Even without Raindrop, Thunderbird 3 will integrate with the Web. It's got Firefox's engine built in for displaying Web pages, a fact that means the software can display Web content.

That ability means Thunderbird can, for example, show Yahoo and Google calendars in separate tabs. There's little in the way of integration with those services today, but it can be added, Ascher said. He expects plenty more add-ons will bring it closer to the cloud, too. He didn't mention it, but even Raindrop could be added in its own compartment.

Mozilla Messaging smells money
Mozilla Messaging is part of a peculiar organizational structure. In the beginning the non-profit Mozilla Foundation oversaw the open-source software that was the core of Netscape Communicator. Eventually, that software split into two main components: the Firefox browser and the Thunderbird e-mail software.

The foundation set up two subsidiaries to oversee the two projects, first Mozilla Corp. for Firefox in 2005 and second Mozilla Messaging for Thunderbird in 2007. Ascher has since 2007 led the latter, which employs six engineers and nine others.

It also draws on the expertise of many volunteers in the open-source world who translate the software, write add-ons, and help debug it. Because of this help, Mozilla Messaging gets by with only one quality assurance employee and one marketing employee, and Thunderbird 3 will arrive in more than 40 languages.

The subsidiary today gets its funding from its nonprofit Mozilla Foundation parent, which in turn receives the lion's share of revenue from search advertising revenue that results from searches Firefox sends Google's way. Ultimately, Ascher wants Mozilla Messaging to be financially self-sustaining. But how?

"I'm not sure yet. I think what we're looking for are rev models like Firefox--revenue models where the user benefits and doesn't have to pay anything, and somehow enough money flows into Mozilla Messaging to fund development long-term," Ascher said.

That may sound like a lot of hand-waving, but Ascher points out he has no investors looking for a big and quick return on the money they invested, so Mozilla Messaging is a relatively cheap operation to run.

Ads? No thanks
One route the company won't take is advertising, the approach that's vital to Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail, as well as to Firefox.

"I don't think people benefit from advertising in mail," he said. "One reason it works for search engines is people often are searching to buy. They're happy to see ads. It helps them. I don't think that works in e-mail."

Today, there are probably somewhere between 10 million and 20 million Thunderbird users, said Rafael Ebron, Mozilla Messaging's director of marketing. That's a far cry from Firefox, whose users total more than 300 million, Mozilla says.

But both projects can punch above their weight. Just being a freely available alternative--whether with Thunderbird or with Raindrop--can steer other products and services, Ascher believes.

"Firefox had an influence over people greater than its market share," Ascher said. "I don't think we'd need to manage everybody's e-mail servers for us to have an influence over the e-mail landscape and make sure everybody has a better experience."

The industry P.R. frenzy over scams in ads and offers on social networks goes on: Facebook announced on Thursday evening in a post on its developer blog that since it updated its developer platform terms of service this summer, it has disabled two ad networks that it says were running deceptive advertisements.

This comes in the wake of allegations that some companies that power offer- and survey-related moneymaking operations for social-gaming applications on platforms like Facebook's have effectively been scamming users into paying for services without disclosing those costs. One of them, Offerpal Media, has been particularly visible in the crosshairs.

"This battle is not new and it's far from over," the post by Facebook's Nick Giano wrote. "We faced stimulus scam ads on our own system earlier this year and pushed them off the site with rigorous enforcement. We did the same months later when deceptive ads from third-party ad networks appeared in applications. We're doing that again now as we see them appear in the form of offers."

Additionally, Facebook--which has said for quite some time that many of the activities highlighted in the "app scam" controversy are already banned by its terms of service--included in the post that more than 100 developer applications have been either "suspended or brought into compliance" over advertising issues, and that more than half of them were used by at least 1 million Facebook members per month. It's not clear whether these were all related to scams, or to other advertising-related infringements like the Burger King marketing campaign that encouraged users to "unfriend" their contacts in exchange for a free cheeseburger.

Facebook representatives declined to name which ad networks or applications it has banned. But the company did ban two companies in June, Social Hour and Social Reach, citing ad network policy violations. It's possible that the two ad networks mentioned in Facebook's blog post were banned months ago, given the "since July" language.

Earlier this week, MySpace--another big destination for social-network apps--announced that it had updated its terms of service to ban app scams. Prior to that, several prominent application manufacturers announced that they had banned potentially deceptive offers, despite the fact that they are responsible for a big chunk of virtual-goods revenues.

An update was made to this post at 7:51 a.m. PT on November 6 to note that Facebook banned two ad networks in June.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5.5 is out, just eight days after the browser updated to version 3.5.4. For Windows, Mac, and Linux, the new version of the browser fixes three bugs: one critical bug across all platforms, and then one lower priority one for Windows and one lower priority one for Mac.

The critical bug addresses crashes in the GIF decoder that was not present in version 3.5.3, while the Windows bug fixes a security runtime issue and the Mac bug fixes an HTML parser error. Mozilla Evangelist Christopher Blizzard tweeted that although the critical bug wasn't security related, it was annoying to many users. The full changelog can be read here.

The stable build of Google Chrome has been updated from version 3.0.195.27 to version 3.0.195.32. This update introduces five stability improvements, including problems with how the browser managed content from Adobe Acrobat Reader, returning to Google Maps data via the Back button, and three others.

One of the security fixes addressed not warning users of some file types that could run JavaScript, such as SVG, XML, and MHT. The other one plugged a hole that could allow for memory corruption and subsequent malicious code execution through Google Gears. The full changelog can be read here.

The developer's build of Google Chrome for Mac was also updated earlier Thursday, introducing several user interface improvements. The Copy Image feature is now fixed, auto-updates are more transparent, and multiple keyboard problems have been fixed. The full changelog for this update is available here.

It looks like the brouhaha surrounding social-app moneymaker Offerpal Media is bigger than founder Anu Shukla's "sh*t, double sh*t, and bullsh*t" response to the accusation that its business is built on scamming consumers. It's got upcoming developments in two lawsuits, one in which it's the plaintiff and one in which Shukla is a defendant.

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi reported Thursday that a lawsuit was filed in an Alameda County, Calif., superior court against Shukla and co-founder Michael Liu on behalf of Kevin Halpern, who alleges that he helped found the company and was then shut out. In a court complaint, Halpert says that in exchange for offering his social-networking expertise to what would become Offerpal, Shukla promised him a 15 to 20 percent stake in the company that never came to fruition.

The defendant's motion to dismiss the breach-of-contract suit is scheduled for November 24, according to public court documents. On Wednesday, Offerpal had announced that Shukla would be leaving her post as CEO and would be replaced by digital-ad veteran George Garrick.

But that's not the only legal dispute that Offerpal is in. There's a judicial settlement conference scheduled for Friday in the trademark infringement lawsuit that Offerpal filed against Kickflip, a former customer that went on to create a competing business, called Gambit, according to a person familiar with the court details. The suit was originally filed in April, and the status of a potential settlement is currently unclear because most of the events thus far, as well as Friday's scheduled meeting, have been behind closed doors.

But the reason why Offerpal has been in the news so much as of late has been because of Shukla's public altercation with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington at last month's Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco. In response to Arrington's allegations that Offerpal's profitable business, used by many social-gaming companies as a way for users to earn virtual goods in-game, actually misleads players into signing up for paid offers and subscriptions.

Following the Arrington-Shukla spat, a number of high-profile names in the gaming and social-networking world came out against developer-app scams and misleading ads. Offerpal maintains that it runs a legitimate business. But it's clear that this company's issues run quite a bit deeper than a single PR fiasco.

Securely see stored passwords on your iPhone.

(Credit: Siber Systems)

We have long regarded the RoboForm browser toolbar for Windows as an uberconvenient freemium tool for storing and securing scores of passwords. In contrast, the new iPhone app, RoboForm for iPhone, is decidedly less acommodating.

The problem isn't so much that you have to have a free online account to use RoboForm for iPhone, or even that to have the online account you must first fill up the desktop version--either the free or premium software--with credentials. Part of the trouble is more that restrictions in Apple's SDK inhibit RoboForm's usefulness. Other flaws stem from the application itself.

It's helpful to understand how RoboForm works on your PC. RoboForm installs as a system tray icon and as a browser toolbar. It works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. When you enter your log-in credentials, RoboForm offers to save them, storing a file protected by 256 AES encryption on your computer. Selecting that credential later on from RoboForm's list fills in the log-in. In addition, you can keep credit card information and other sensitive data secured away in RoboForm, filling in online forms with a click when you go to buy an item online, for example. RoboForm secures passwords, includes a password generator, and uses one master password to manage the rest of your passwords.

The iPhone version of RoboForm is a cross between a data store and a unidirectional syncing app. It can give you access to the passwords you store via RoboForm for the desktop, which makes the iPhone version inconvenient for new users. First-timers would have to first set up an account, install RoboForm, input their passwords, automatically install the company's GoodSync syncing plug-in, and sync the secret data to an online account for which they would also have to register. In contrast, existing users only have to sign up for an online account, if they don't have one already, and sync data.

Once on RoboForm for iPhone, you sync to the online RoboForm account to transfer over your passwords and other credentials. Sounds reasonable so far, but here's the catch. Since Apple doesn't allow multiple third-party applications to run simultaneously, you can only fill in passwords from within RoboForm for iPhone--by clicking the Login button--and only then once you've entered your master password.

RoboForm on the desktop automatically installs a syncing plug-in.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

A rival app, 1Password for iPhone, encountered similar hurdles when it debuted in July 2008 (review). Both 1Password and RoboForm for iPhone solve the tangle to some extent by including an in-app browser. The key to successfully using either app is to retrain yourself to open the password app to browse, instead of the Safari browser.

Assuming you believe that the benefits of RoboForm for iPhone outweigh the drawbacks of surfing the Web through a password app, there are two other solutions that might make RoboForm on iPhone less handy in some users' eyes. The iPhone's Safari browser features autofill in the iPhone 3.0 operating system update. If you opt out of that, you can take advantage of certain Web sites, like Google's Web apps, that offer to remember log-in credentials for you. RoboForm VP of Marketing, Bill Carey, counters that the software, in production for a decade, is more accurate in determining when to fill in credentials, and in some cases is more secure than browsers' password managers.

In addition to the awkward workaround for using RoboForm's smarts are other downsides. First, there are the known limitations. You cannot currently update or edit log-in information from within RoboForm on iPhone, making data currently one-directional--it flows into the iPhone, not out of it. RoboForm for iPhone won't work if your master password is four characters long. Your free account at RoboForm.com can't contain special characters, like the + or - symbol. RoboForm's publisher says that the company is working on fixes.

RoboForm downloads passwords to the iPhone from your online account.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

We also encountered weak spots in testing RoboForm for iPhone. RoboForm for iPhone's practice of placing the Login button on the same screen as the exposed password pricks our nerves. Sure, you've already logged in with a Master password at this point, so theft is not an issue, but potentially flashing that information in public is. In addition, we received a "page invalid" error message when attempting to log in to Gmail. The same action worked flawlessly on RoboForm for Windows.

RoboForm's Carey informed us this is a known issue in which long URLs like Gmail and Wachovia Bank break on mobile phone browsers. The fix is fast, but since you can't edit on the iPhone yet, you'll need to be in front of a computer. In RoboForm on the PC, click Tools, then Edit Passcards. Change Gmail's log-in URL to http://www.gmail.com, then sync online and sync the iPhone app.

Kludgey workarounds like this make the app workable while development continues, but the weak spots are many, and the alternative options to using RoboForm on the iPhone are at this stage more robust. Existing users will get the most from RoboForm for iPhone. New users may want to weigh other options for the time being.

Yahoo's Flickr site has deepened its relationship with photo-licensing power Getty Images so photographers can nominate their own photos for inclusion in Getty's Flickr Collection.

Previously, Getty decided which images it believed were commercially viable, and since the program launched in July 2008, it has put together a collection of more than 60,000 commercial images. Now photographers, instead of just being able to indicate that they're willing to be contacted by Getty, can actively submit a portfolio of images.

"A submission should include exactly 10 images that represent what you consider to be the best of your work. The Getty Images creative team will evaluate submissions based on style, subject matter, and technical skill," Andy Saunders, Getty's vice president of creative imagery, said in a statement. "If some or all of the photos--or other images from your photostream--are selected for the Flickr Collection on Getty Images, you will receive an invitation via FlickrMail. This invitation will clearly show Getty Images' initial selection of images and introduce the enrollment process."

The partnership is an interesting confluence between the old-school world of stock photography and the nouveau era of digital photography and the Internet. With digital SLRs and the Internet, high-quality photos are easier to come by, leading to the arrival of several "microstock" companies that sell photos on a royalty-free and relatively inexpensive basis. It's hurt professional stock photographers, but it's provided extra income to any number of enthusiasts and amateurs.

Flickr never launched its own microstock site, despite an abundance of enthusiasts contributing photos, but the Getty partnership does mix a commercial ingredient into the Yahoo photo-sharing site's operations.

The easy availability of photos at Flickr and other sites can lead to copyright infringement troubles. On Tuesday, Toyota USA apologized for using Flickr photos without permission:

Toyota apologizes for pulling images from Flickr without photographer permission. Images from a handful of photographers appeared on a Toyota site for five days. We're working quickly to reach out to the individual photographers involved. Until then, the images have been removed, and corrections have been made to the process of pulling images from Flickr.

So it's clear that some Flickr photos have business value, whether for their professional quality or their everyman snapshot flavor.

Getty and Flickr won't disclose any details about their business relationship, but here's what Flickr has to say about how the finances work for photographers:

Flickr has a business relationship with Getty Images, though we've never publicly discussed the specifics of the deal. Regarding the photographers, Getty Images will be the exclusive distributor of select Flickr members' content, and in turn, Getty Images will facilitate the license of such photography and will pay the royalties directly to the members. This will be a direct relationship between Getty Images and each Flickr contributor.

Flickr photographers will be asked to sign a Getty Images contributor contract, if they agree to have their images licensed for commercial use, that will specify rates for rights-managed and royalty-free royalties, as applicable. Rates for royalty-free imagery are 20 percent; rates for rights-managed (images) are 30 percent. These are directly in line with royalty rates that (Getty's) existing contributors receive.