The iPad won't be available until Saturday, April 3, but you can check out the apps starting now.

The iTunes App Store now has quite a long list of iPad-ready apps, with prices that are higher than iPhone apps, as expected. At the moment, the only people able to test the new iPad apps are reviewers who've gotten ahold of loaner iPads in advance of the launch. The iPad apps we're now spotting look like the leaked apps seen last week.

Apps that Apple demonstrated at the launch event for the tablet device are all there: the iWorks apps (Numbers, Pages, Keynote), along with third-party apps like Brushes and MLB At Bat 2010. There are also tons of recognizable names: NPR, eBay, Twitteriffic, AIM, and Reuters have created apps that will be available for people to download right when the iPad goes on sale.

Originally posted at Circuit Breaker

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft has a new plan to make more money from Office: give it away.

With Office 2010, one of the biggest changes is how many ways there are to get Microsoft's most profitable software program for free.

In addition to the free, browser-based Office Web Apps, Microsoft is also offering PC makers the ability to install a basic version of Office on new computers. The new program, Office Starter, includes a stripped-down version of Word and Excel. PC makers, retailers and Microsoft can all make money if the PC buyer later upgrades to a paid version of Office.

"People will be exposed to the Office 2010 experience from the minute they turn on that PC," Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop said Wednesday in an interview here. Microsoft is estimating that 80 percent of new PCs sold at retail after the launch of Office 2010 will have the starter edition of Office pre-installed, he said.

It's obviously a huge gamble for Microsoft, which still makes the bulk of its profits from Windows and Office. That said, most of the Office money comes from businesses and, on the consumer side, Microsoft is also trying to contend with free rivals like Google Apps.

Plus, while Starter is new, Microsoft has always had a lower-end productivity suite. Office Starter replaces Microsoft Works, a product that was both sold at retail and heavily pre-installed on new PCs. While Office Starter only shows the user the slimmed-down versions of Word and Excel, PC makers are actually loading the full version of Office, ready to be unlocked as soon as the buyer pays for an upgrade.

To make buying that full copy of Office easier, Microsoft plans to flood stores with options to buy the product. In addition to the traditional boxed copies of the suite, Microsoft is also planning to sell "product key cards" that can be used to upgrade a single copy of Office (boxed copies can be used for two or three computers, depending on the edition).

The product key cards have a number of other subtle differences as compared with traditional boxed products. One is that the cards, like gift cards at a supermarket, are just pieces of plastic or cardboard until they are activated. That means stores don't have to pay for lots of copies of the software upfront.

"We're migrating to an inventory-less model," Elop said.

But saving retailers the cost of stocking inventory is just one aspect.

The move to product cards also allows Office to be carried in more places within the store.

"If it is an inventory product, if it is a real boxed product with real value, there are always concerns about the security of that product," he said.

By contrast, the product key cards can be placed at all the positions where someone might think of buying Office (or be convinced by a salesperson)--in the software section, near the PCs, and, most importantly, right by the cash register.

Microsoft also plans to use the Web apps as a way to sell the full Office. Elop said there will be a prominent button within the browser-based programs to open a document in the desktop versions of Office. Those that have the latest Office will see the document immediately, while Microsoft will have an opportunity to sell those with an older version or no version of Office on the benefits of buying Office 2010.

The challenge, Elop said, is making sure that Microsoft doesn't mess up the user experience in its efforts to sell users on paid products.

"You have to balance the absolute importance of the quality of the user experience against the desire to also have an upsell opportunity," Elop said. "We will bias toward making sure the user experience really hangs together...We've seen situations in other companies, on other days where people have become too aggressive on that."

For more from my chat with Elop about Office 2010, check out the video interview above.

Originally posted at Beyond Binary

Google's Chrome edged up to about a quarter Firefox's share of global Web browser usage in March, a gain that outpaced its major rivals.

Chrome increased from 5.6 percent to 6.1 percent share of the browser usage from February to March, according to preliminary Net Applications statistics released Thursday. The company monitors and analyzes browser usage on a large network of Web sites.

Firefox also rose from 24.2 percent to 24.5 percent, and Safari also gained from 4.5 percent to 4.7 percent.

Opera was flat at 2.4 percent. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, though still the top browser by far in terms of usage, continued its steady decline with a drop from 61.6 percent to 60.7 percent.

The browser market is getting fiercely competitive. Safari and Chrome are joined at the hip by virtue of their common usage of the open-source WebKit foundation, but Chrome developers are pushing ahead as fast as possible.

Mozilla's Firefox had been the primary alternative browser of choice for those who wanted to move beyond Internet Explorer. Its share gains have leveled out with the arrival of Chrome, though, which has appealed to the same techno-savvy audience. Firefox is responding with new features and a new focus on performance, but the most interesting new dynamic in the browser wars is the awakening of Microsoft's slumbering IE giant.

On Wednesday, Mozilla offered an alternative quantitative view in its first Mozilla Metrics Report.

Mixing in statistics from four organizations--StatCounter, Quantcast, Gemius, and Net Applications--Mozilla concluded it's faring better than the Net Applications figures alone. "Firefox's worldwide market share [is] hovering near 30 percent," the organization said.

One other interesting statistic from a Mozilla usage study: "We found that the typical user has between two and three tabs open at any one time," though in the weeklong test one user had more than 600 tabs open.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

One of the App Store's most notoriously expensive apps just got a price cut. Wolfram Alpha, which debuted last October for the fairly jaw-dropping price of $49.99, now sells for just $1.99 [iTunes link].

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, Wolfram Alpha made headlines last year as a supposed Google killer, a search engine that could perform "computational knowledge" tricks far beyond any other service.

In other words, as CNET's Rafe Needleman put it, "Google finds links. Wolfram Alpha finds answers." My own take: It's a search engine for math geeks.

In any case, there was widespread glee when Wolfram Alpha got the app treatment--followed by considerable head-scratching and some outright rage over its price. The $50 sticker seemed particularly insulting considering that you could enjoy much of the same functionality in your iPhone's Safari browser--for free.

According to a Wolfram Alpha blog post, the price cut is part of a "new focus on ubiquity" for the tool. And in an extremely wise marketing move, anyone who purchased the Wolfram Alpha app for $49.99 (or its one-time sale price of $19.99) can request a refund.

What do you think? Is the app suddenly looking a lot more attractive at $1.99? OK, that's a given, but now that it's reasonably priced, think you'll buy it? Hit the comments and share your thoughts.

Bonus deal: Speaking of price cuts, The Simpsons Arcade is on sale for 99 cents, down from $4.99. Woo-hoo!

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

After a year and a half, Chrome has come a long way toward matching the features of better-established browsers. Now, with version 5 coming together, a lot of Google's work focuses on advancing the state of the browser art.

The new Chrome 5 is available in beta now for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, not that most Chrome users will ever have to know the version number if Google has anything to do with it. Chrome versions are called "milestones"--fleeting waypoints along an unfinished journey to a better browser. But what exactly will moving into the rear-view mirror once Chrome 5 is finished?

In short, a lot. Chrome fans may be dissatisfied with the speed with which their favorite features are arriving--print preview, for example, still seems distant, and Mac OS X and Linux users still have only a beta version of the browser to work with--but Google's pace of Chrome development is fast. Here are some highlights of what's coming in Chrome 5.

Geolocation
First up, Chrome will get geolocation, one of the better-settled elements of HTML5, the revised Hypertext Markup Language standard for Web page still under development. Geolocation lets the browser, if given the user's permission, inform a Web site of the user's location. That feature is handy for placing people on a map, finding nearby services or contacts, adjusting features on a Web site that may vary geographically, and simply telling a global Web site what the best server is for the user.

Actually obtaining the location is tricky. There are broad clues based on a user's Internet Protocol (IP) address, but Google (along with rival Skyhook) supplements this data with signals from radio signals from wireless networks and mobile phone networks. And, of course, some devices, mostly mobile phones, have GPS support.

Windows 7 features
Next on the list is support for a Windows 7 feature called Aero Peek, which pops up thumbnail images of open browser tabs when the user hovers the mouse pointer over the Chrome icon in the task bar. Internet Explorer supports this technology, unsurprisingly.

However, as Aero Peek support arrived in Chrome developer preview editions, the tenor of comments on the issue tracker has changed from "Hurry up! Other browsers have this!" to "Make the pain stop! Give us an off switch!" That's because many people have dozens of tabs open at once, at which point the feature can be messy and unhelpful. Chrome Aero Peek adjustments are under way.

Another Windows 7 feature, Jump Lists that provide a menu of actions people can take when clicking on the Chrome menu item, also comes with Chrome 5.

Extensions
It took Google longer than expected to build the major feature of Chrome 4, the ability to accommodate extensions that let others customize the browser's features. The integration was tough enough that a Mac version of the technology never made it out in a 4.x beta version. With Chrome 5, all three operating systems Google supports get extensions.

And extensions will change in Chrome 5. With some new browser interfaces, programmers will be able to expand what extensions can do. For example, history API will grant an extension access to a user's browsing history record; several others are possibilities but not slated for Chrome 5.

One feature Windows users got with a Chrome 4.1 version that never arrived for Mac and Linux users is an auto-translate pop-up that appears when Google detects a page written in a different language. Chrome 5 brings that to Mac and Linux.

Syncing
These days, people often use browsers from more than one computer and on mobile phones. To help smooth the experience, Chrome 5 is getting wider synchronization abilities beyond the bookmark sync that arrived in Chrome 4.

Coming in Chrome 5 should be sync for themes, autofill entries, and passwords. However, apparently pushed back to Milestone 6 is even more sync: extensions, open tabs, and Web addresses that have been typed into the browser.

For those who hate filling out forms, Chrome 5 gets an autofill feature that can remember names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal details that often must be typed over and over again. That could placate people who like the feature in Google Toolbar, which doesn't work in Chrome.

Built-in Flash
Google also is working on a feature no other browser maker has added, a built-in version of Adobe Systems' Flash Player. Google is among the most aggressive advocates of programming technologies including HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that ease Web page formatting, and JavaScript that runs Web-based programs, and those technologies collectively are a competitive threat to Flash. However, Flash is widespread on the Web today, and Google has taken a pragmatic stance toward including Flash.

Specifically, Chrome includes the next beta version of Flash Player, 10.1, which is due to be completed this quarter. And as with Chrome overall, Google will by default automatically update it without the user taking any action. That could be helpful given recent severe vulnerabilities in Flash, though some object to the idea of invisible updates. Google sees Chrome like Web sites, though: something that's constantly changed; people don't get a choice when they upgrade to the latest Google search algorithm.

And apparently, it's not just Flash. PDF support also is arriving as an internal plug-in that ships with the browser, the unofficial Google Operating System blog discovered.

WebGL
Google is working on other programming foundations, too. It's a supporter of the draft WebGL standard started by Mozilla and the Khronos Group, the latter the standards group that oversees the OpenGL graphics interface on which WebGL is based. WebGL permits sophisticated, low-level, hardware-acclerated 3D graphics from a Web application, a feature some hope will lead to elaborate interfaces and better online gaming.

Chrome 4 had a version of WebGL built in, but to use it, people had to disable a security feature called the sandbox that confines computing processes to keep them from running amok. Chrome 5, though, will likely get WebGL support within the sandbox, making it practical for people to try.

Don't expect whirling cubes and first-person shooters in a couple months, though. Even though OpenGL is familiar to many programmers, it's an unknown quantity to many Web programmers.

Another programming change is support for Native Client, Google technology to boost browser-based applications with security-scrubbed software modules that can run at the speed enjoyed by native software on a computer's ordinary operating system. Native Client support is a priority for Chrome 5 and works for 32-bit software running on Mac, Linux, and Windows computers. However, some 64-bit support is tripped up by an issue for 64-bit Windows that didn't get done in time for Chrome's milestone 5.

Users will get some new controls in Chrome as well. Conveniently for Flash haters irked that Flash will be built in, Chrome will have an ability to suppress its use, for example through use of a "chrome://plugins" address.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Microsoft issued an emergency security update on Tuesday to plug 10 holes in Internet Explorer, including a critical vulnerability that has been exploited in attacks in the wild.

The cumulative update, which Microsoft announced on Monday, resolves nine privately reported flaws and one that was publicly disclosed. The most severe vulnerabilities could lead to remote code execution and a complete takeover of the computer if a user were to view a malicious Web site using IE, Microsoft said in the bulletin summary.

Users of IE8 and Windows 7 are not vulnerable to the flaw being used in specific attacks, according to Microsoft. However, software affected by the cumulative update addressing all the IE vulnerabilities includes Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008, Vista, and Windows 7.

The security bulletin also includes two other bulletins rated "important" that patch a vulnerability in Windows Movie Maker and Microsoft Producer 2003, and seven vulnerabilities in Office Excel.

Security experts were pleased that Microsoft chose to issue an emergency out-of-band patch for the critical IE hole being attacked rather than wait two more weeks for the next Patch Tuesday release.

"We expect to see these kinds of vulnerabilities now," said HD Moore, chief security officer at Rapid7 and chief architect of the Metasploit exploit database. "We're seeing at least one of these IE vulnerabilities exploited in the wild every few months and no patch available at least for three weeks...But they realized this is a bigger issue."

Users of newer versions of Microsoft software shouldn't be complacent when vulnerabilities and exploits come out that initially affect older versions of software, like IE6, because chances are that exploits exist that affect the latest versions and haven't been discovered yet or that attackers are working on them, according to Moore.

For example, initially exploit code for the main critical IE hole affected only IE6, but then a researcher last week showed that exploit code works on Windows Vista and IE7. And now Microsoft has acknowledged that IE8 could be affected, it would be just harder to exploit it, he said.

"Exploiting on Windows 7, 64-bit Windows and IE8, the techniques have become easier," Moore said. Microsoft users should "expect (exploits eventually) to apply to every version of that product."

Symantec has seen a recent spike in attempted infections through the IE security hole that has been targeted in attacks, said Joshua Talbot, security intelligence manager at Symantec Security Response.

"The typical attempted infection process seems to involve compromising a legitimate Web site then inserting an iFrame which redirects users to a malicious site," he said. Although IE8 and Windows 7 users are not affected, "hackers behind the zero-day (IE) attack will start to reverse engineer the update from Microsoft and develop an IE8 attack methodology," said Mickey Boodaei, chief executive of Trusteer, a browser security vendor.

More than 50 percent of Windows users use IE8, while 25 percent of Windows users are still using Internet Explorer 6 or 7, Trusteer said based on its customer base of 5 million users.

Microsoft initially warned that attackers were exploiting the critical IE hole three weeks ago, releasing Security Advisory 981374 during its most recent Patch Tuesday.

The vulnerabilities addressed in Windows Movie Maker, Microsoft Producer 2003, and Office Excel are less serious than the IE issues, though they work similarly by requiring an attacker to entice a victim to take action. They could allow attackers to take control of a machine remotely through a malicious file in Movie Maker, Producer, or Excel opened by a recipient.

Software affected by those bulletins includes Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Office XP, Office 2003, 2007 Microsoft Office System, Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac, Office Excel Viewer, Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 file formats, Office Sharepoint Server 2007, and Producer 2003.

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex