The paid upgrade versions of the popular malware remover Ad-Aware have offered antivirus support for more than a year, but now that feature, plus a long-awaited scheduler, have been added to the free version.

On Tuesday, Ad-Aware Free Internet Security 8.3 offered users of its free product those two new features in a minor update.

Although the update sounds small, the addition of a scheduler comes after years of the publisher LavaSoft restricting the feature to its paid upgrades as bait to get users to buy a license. Many software publishers have similar business models, though there is an ongoing debate among users as to what is acceptable to restrict and what cripples a program's core functionality. While the scheduler doesn't affect the program's ability to function, many users felt that by forcing them to rely on themselves to run scans, the company was, in effect, making their computers less secure.

The antivirus feature is new to Ad-Aware, having only been introduced in 2008. Originally, the program used Avira's virus detection engine, but since 2009, the detection engine has been provided by Sunbelt Software. These changes to the free version of Ad-Aware put it on more competitive footing with other well-known free security programs, such as AVG, Avast, and Avira.

It seems like just yesterday that RIM revealed its first beta version of an official Twitter client for BlackBerry, and then rounded out the features with a notable upgrade.

On Tuesday, the BlackBerry-maker announced its readiness to take the app from public beta to its first full release, which RIM will start rolling out to BlackBerry App World by region beginning Tuesday night and Wednesday.

Twitter for BlackBerry 1.0 will get one more feature--the ability to dive into anyone's profile from any screen. It will also launch with support for seven additional languages: Dutch, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (European), Russian, and Turkish.

Apart from that, the features appear to be identical to the most recent beta update, and include key capabilities such as editing retweets, shortening URLs, displaying photos, and automatically completing a username from your personal list of people you follow when you begin typing a few characters after an "@" sign. 

We'll stay on the lookout for the update and will have a hands-on review of the final app shortly.

Mozilla released the first beta for Firefox 4 on Tuesday, introducing a new interface design to a wider Windows audience, support for multiple technologies that aim to be essential to Web browsing in the future, and a plan for updates far more aggressive than those of the past.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, Firefox 4 beta 1 is Mozilla's first official peek into the future of the world's second most popular browser.

The interface changes in this first beta version are the most apparent, and they might take some users time to get used to, unless you've been playing around with the Firefox nightly builds. Tabs are now on top, by default, at least in the Windows version. In its changelog, Mozilla promises that tabs-on-top will come to the Linux and Mac versions of Firefox, when the default themes on those two operating systems receive updates. This can be toggled under the Customize option under the menu button, labeled "Firefox," in the upper-left corner of the interface.

The menu button is also new to Firefox, but not to browsing in general, as Mozilla follows the lead here of other browsers. Google Chrome has always had tabs on top, and Opera earlier this year compacted its menu bar behind a single drop-down menu in the upper-left corner. Bookmarks have also received the button treatment, though you can resurrect the bookmarks bar easily enough. In this beta version of Firefox, only Windows Vista and Windows 7 users will see it.

There are other tangible changes to the browser. You can now search for open tabs from the smart location bar, and the Stop and Reload interface buttons have been merged into one. The add-on interface has been overhauled, but don't get too used to it; Mozilla says it's a work in progress, so you can expect its look to continue to evolve. Mozilla hopes to have the new, lightweight JetPack network in place for when Firefox 4 is out of beta testing later this year.

The out-of-process plug-in protection that debuted for Windows and Linux users in Firefox 3.6.4, but has been restricted to the beta builds for Mac, comes fully activated for all three platforms in this beta. This keeps crashes in Adobe System's Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight, and Apple's QuickTime from pulling down the entire browser.

Firefox 4 beta also sees significant improvements to Firefox under the hood. There's a new HTML5 parser, and support for more HTML5 form controls than in previously released Firefox betas or the nightly builds. The HTML5 WebM video format for HD is natively supported, and APIs have been improved for Websockets, HTML History, and JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions. CSS transitions are partially supported too.

Some features in Firefox 4 but have been turned off by default, for now, including full WebGL support and an experimental Direct2D rendering back end for Windows. Mac users will see a core animation rendering model for plug-ins on their operating system, which means that plug-ins that support it should be able to draw faster and more efficiently.

In security, Firefox 4 so far introduces a minor but useful change. CSS ":visited" selectors now prevent Web sites from checking a user's browsing history. There are plans for an account manager and a content security policy to help detect and prevent attacks.

Mozilla said in its blog post announcing the new beta version on Tuesday that users can expect updates about every two weeks. There's also a prominent "feedback" button to the right of the location bar, which Mozilla has already begun using to get feedback about the browser. The full changelog for Firefox 4 beta 1 details even more changes made to the browser, and it hints at what's coming, as development of the browser proceeds.

Google has begun work on a new item on a long list of technologies designed to make applications running on the Web more competitive with those that run natively on a machine's operating system: an interface to know which way is up.

The orientation interface plumbing is being built into the WebKit browser project that underlies Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, according to a Google's Chrome issue tracker.

The technology would let the browser provide an application with hardware-supplied information about which way a computing device is being held, information that's particularly useful for mobile games that rely on that for a user interface. For example, tilting a device can turn it into a steering wheel or a tabletop on which a marble rolls.

Work to add orientation support to Firefox began in 2009, and Mozilla expects it to be built into Firefox 3.6

The moves reflect a major trend under way: browsers are becoming, in effect, operating systems. Many native interfaces are being reproduced in browsers, and there's broad work under way to improve browser processing and graphics abilities as well. One big difference, though: browser-based apps usually require a network connection.

Google is placing a major bet on this cloud-computing direction. Not only does it have a broad range of Web-based tools such as Google Apps, but it's also building its Chrome OS browser-based operating system whose applications run exclusively in the browser.

Browsers also are becoming more central to mobile phones and other devices such as Apple's iPad and a host of expected competing tablets.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Various blogs are reporting that it appears some iTunes customer accounts have been hacked and that funds from those accounts may have been used to purchase apps in the iTunes App Store.

Earlier Sunday, Engadget reported an inexplicable uptick in sales of book apps by a developer identified as Thuat Nguyen. According to the blog, at the time of writing its report, Nguyen apps accounted for 42 of the top 50 books by revenue in the Books section of the iTunes App Store. Engadget went on to mention "a number of people reporting up to hundreds of dollars being spent unwillingly from their [iTunes] account to these specific books."

Blog TNW Apple reported that the phenomenon appeared to extend beyond apps by one developer, and that it seemed to be international in scope. It also ran excerpts from several posts to the MacRumors: Forums Web site.

"Yesterday my credit union contacted me saying there was suspicious activity on my debit card." TNW Apple quoted one post as saying. "Sure enough over 10 transactions in the $40-$50 area all on iTunes equaling to $558."

A call made by CNET to Apple for comment was not returned by publication time.

Despite roaring sales for its new products, Apple has been getting a bit bruised lately. Among other things, the company's most-recent knock 'em dead gadget, the iPhone 4, has had reception problems; the company's response to the issue has been widely lampooned in the press; Apple faces a challenge from Google's Android operating system in the mobile arena; its policy regarding submissions to the iPhone App Store and its refusal to make the iPhone and iPad compatible with Adobe's widespread Flash software have been seen by some as a sign of control-freak tendencies; and the company's media policies have reportedly captured the notice of antitrust authorities.

Originally posted at News - Apple