Enthusiasts of deep dialing, or calling, to a specific part of a large phone tree are likely to enjoy Fonolo's new iPhone application.

The app, offers free of charge, includes most of the features found on Fonolo's Web site. The main attraction, of course, is being able to dig through a company's entire phone structure and get connected without having to waste phone minutes (and precious moments of your life) listening to automated prompts.

Using the app requires having a Fonolo account. While a pain, this serves two purposes. One is to sync your dialing history between your mobile-phone and Web use of Fonolo. The other is to keep track of your favorites--the specific parts of a company's phone tree that you've bookmarked for later use. Additionally, you can listen to phone calls you may have recorded using Fonolo's call record feature, which worked well in my testing.

As far as usability goes, Fonolo is on the slow side, if you're on older iPhone hardware. It takes a few seconds to jump between screens, which can be a pain when navigating a directory several menus deep. Again, this beats actually calling a company to go through the motions, but it's much slower than using Fonolo.com from a regular computer or an iPhone 3GS.

Regardless of the hardware differences, I found its directory of companies difficult to navigate, as each alphabetically ordered page loads only 10 companies at a time. It's much faster to just use the app's search tool, which, while better than browsing, did a poor job at offering suggestions when I had slight misspellings.

Is Fonolo worth hanging on to as an iPhone app? If you regularly find yourself calling customer service lines and wanting to jump directly to a certain menu, then yes. If you're fine with just calling the company and wading through menus, don't bother.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

The stable version of Google Chrome for Windows has been updated with three critical security fixes and an announcement that the first payouts to crowd-sourced security researchers have been delivered.

Chrome 4.0.249.89 repairs serious problems found in processing the < ruby > tag, and two integer overflows that affected the JavaScript engine and deserialized the sandbox message. Google has a policy of not revealing more information about security fixes until a majority of users have updated their browser.

Other security fixes issued in this release include several medium and low level risks, encompassing proxy behavior, redirection target link leaks, and domain confusion populating the HTTP authentication dialog. This last one was discovered by Timothy D. Morgan, a researcher from VSR and one of the first recipients of the crowd-sourced researcher payments. Google stated that Morgan donated his $500 reward to Haitian relief efforts, and so the company raised it to $1,337.

Google watchers will note that for the first time, the Chrome stable version number is ahead of the Chrome beta for Windows, which is currently at v4.0.248.70. It wouldn't be surprising to see the beta version updated soon. The full changelog for Google Chrome 4.0.249.89 can be read here.

Last week, Firefox users were warned by Mozilla of two add-ons that had been discovered to contain malware and removed from their add-on Web site. Mozilla backtracked on one those add-ons last night, saying that the company had worked with McAfee and determined that the Sothink Web Video Downloader is malware-free.

The initial estimate of 6,000 affected downloads has also been revised downward, to 700 downloads. Mac and Linux Firefox users were not affected by the malware discovery.

Mozilla stated that during the re-testing process that cleared the Sothink add-on, the other add-on thought to be infected, Master Filer, was confirmed again as containing a Trojan. The Sothink add-on has been re-added to AMO as well as CNET Download.com.

In an interview via e-mail last week, Nick Nguyen, Mozilla's Add-ons Director, said that the incident that uncovered Master Filer began when a user running an antivirus program from Eset threw up a warning. "All add-ons uploaded to AMO are reviewed for malware with automated tools," he said. "ClamAV failed to detect the Trojan in Master Filer which caused us to re-evaluate our toolset. After upgrading our process, we rescanned the remaining 58,000 files on AMO and detected one additional instance of malware," which was the Sothink add-on.

Nguyen noted that both Master Filer and Sothink Web Video Downloader were add-ons labeled as "experimental," which means that users had to have an account at AMO to download them and that they could only be downloaded directly from the Mozilla site, but he also said last week that only one version, v4.0, of the Sothink downloader was found to be infected.

Security breaches in Firefox add-ons are rare, but they have occurred before. In 2008, there was a compromised file in the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2.

Mozilla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Each week brings a slew of new iPhone games to our doorstep (digitally speaking), but time doesn't permit us to write individual posts about each one. Therefore, here's a roundup of some new and interesting titles you might want to check out:

• Daisy Mae's Alien Buffet Unapologetically sexist and gloriously campy, Daisy Mae (top) has the look of a '50s drive-in movie and a plot to match: the gun-toting titular heroine must blast wave after wave of aliens that have invaded her trailer park. Boy, howdy!
• Giana Sisters If you like Mario-style platform games, you're sure to like this adaptation of the popular Nintendo DS title, which itself originated on the Commodore 64! In addition to 32 original levels, Giana Sisters for iPhone (bottom) features 80 new levels, overhauled graphics, and OpenFeint support.

GT Racing: Motor Academy lets you race more than 100 licensed cars.
(Credit: Gameloft)
• Graves Robber Anyone who knows me knows I'm a sucker for zombie games. DigiArty's Graves Robber looks and plays like a zombie-themed Diablo, mixing fiery third-person battles with RPG elements like hit points, experience, and weapon/equipment upgrades.
• GT Racing: Motor Academy Gameloft's latest entry into the crowded arcade-racing category raises the stakes with more than licensed hot rods and six-player online competition. Other than that, it's not terribly different from the company's own Asphalt 5 (which is $2 cheaper).
• Pocket Chef Though not the first cooking game in the App Store (that honor goes to Cooking Mama), Pocket Chef is the first 3D cooking game. Crack eggs, flip steaks, chop veggies--it's all part of 19 cooking-themed mini games. Bonus: Pocket Chef includes actual recipes.

Have you discovered any interesting new games this week? If so, shout 'em out in the comments!

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

For several months, the Vista PC in my home office refused to upgrade Firefox. The first few times this happened, I uninstalled the old version of Firefox and reinstalled the new version. (Instructions for installing Firefox are provided on the Firefox support site.)

Though this allowed me to upgrade the browser, the uninstall/reinstall process took far too long. The Firefox error message instructed me to "make sure there are no other copies of Firefox running on your computer, and then restart Firefox to try again." I closed Firefox, opened the Windows Task Manager Processes list (press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, choose Start Task Manager, and click the Processes tab).

Sure enough, there was an entry for "firefox.exe *32," even though there were no Firefox windows open on the system. I selected the rogue entry and chose End Process to close it. With the phantom process gone, Firefox updated without a hitch.

Here are solutions to four other common Firefox glitches.

Conflicts with security software, outdated add-ons cause slow starts/no starts
Firefox was starting so slowly on my test PC that I began to wonder whether I actually clicked the fox icon in my Quick Launch toolbar. I soon realized I neglected to uninstall about a half-dozen Firefox add-ons I had tested several months ago and no longer used.

Once I uninstalled them in Firefox's add-ons dialog (click Tools > Add-ons > Extensions to see the list), the browser opened in a jiffy once again. Unfortunately, some slow Firefox starts aren't so easy to troubleshoot. In some instances, Firefox opens but won't load any Web pages. The Firefox Support site provides several possible causes and cures.

Likewise, if Firefox crashes when you attempt to start the program, the support site recommends that you upgrade to the latest version, try opening the browser via the Safe Mode option in the Mozilla Firefox folder on Windows' Start menu, look for conflicts with plug-ins or other software, or scan the system for malware.

Three other pages on the Firefox Support site describe fixes for crashes loading only specific pages, crashes that occur when attempting to download a file, and crashes when exiting the program.

Delete add-ons that won't go quietly
Sometimes, the option to uninstall a Firefox add-on is grayed out, even when the program isn't compatible with the latest version of the browser. That's the case for Google Gears on my test machine.

To remove such "uninstallable" extensions, open Firefox in Safe Mode, reopen the Extensions list in the browser's add-ons dialog, and see if the uninstall option is now clickable. If the Uninstall button is still grayed out, the solution entails opening your Firefox profile folder (instructions for doing so), and following the steps presented in that article for your version of the browser.

Prevent update notices when you already have the latest Firefox version
Few things about PCs are more frustrating than being told repeatedly that you successfully installed an update that's been on your system for weeks. The two reasons for this described on the Firefox support site are that you inadvertently saved the "new update was installed" tab, or Firefox is unable to save your settings file.

In the first instance, the cure involves opening the Options dialog (in Firefox 3.6, click Tools > Options > General) and making sure the Mozilla.com What's New page isn't listed as your Home Page. Possible causes for Firefox being unable to save your settings file are presented in the Firefox Support article "Preferences are not saved."

Similarly, Firefox may continue to prompt you about an available update that you've already installed. Two potential solutions are to reinstall Firefox and to open your Firefox user folder and delete two files: active-update.xml and updates.xml.

Prevent your autocomplete data from going AWOL
Firefox's autocomplete feature is a great time-saver when entering data in Web forms. (A similar feature is available for the browser's Location bar.)

Unfortunately, Firefox sometimes forgets your autocomplete entries. First, make sure the browser is set to remember the data: in Firefox 3.6, click Tools > Options > Privacy and make sure "Remember search and form history" is checked.

If you've checked "Clear history when Firefox closes" in the same window, click the Settings button to the right and make sure Form & Search History is unchecked.

Originally posted at Workers' Edge

Watch out Safari. There's a new browser looking for a spot on the iPhone.

Norway-based Opera announced Wednesday that it will unveil its new Opera Mini 5 browser for the iPhone at next week's 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The developer of the desktop Opera Web browser is touting Opera Mini as faster than Apple's Safari, thanks to its use of compression. Opera said it compresses pages by up to 90 percent before they're sent to the mobile device.

Opera Mini 5 will also offer such features as tabbed browsing, a password manager, and Speed Dial, a splash page that displays thumbnail images linked to your favorite sites. An Opera link feature will let you synchronize your Speed Dial page and bookmarks between the mini and desktop browsers. Opera has already found a home and some success on Java-based cell phones such as the BlackBerry and on Android smartphones.

The Opera Mini for iPhone demo at the Mobile World Congress will only be open to partners and journalists with press passes. But the company said it will also show all visitors the latest beta releases of Opera Mini and Opera Mobile for other portable devices.

But this all could be a moot point. An Opera spokesperson told me that the company has yet to make any submissions to the Apple App store. When asked if getting approval from Apple might be a problem, the spokesperson said the company hopes Apple "will not deny their users a choice in Web browser experience."

Yet given the approval process at the App store and Apple's reluctance to okay apps that duplicate an existing function, will Opera Mini face an uphill battle for the iPhone market?

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas