Well, this is interesting. On Wednesday, Mozilla gave us a heads-up that it was releasing an iPhone app that would "let Firefox users open their favorite Web sites on their iPhones." We assumed this mystery app would be similar to the Opera Mini browser, which dives through a loophole in Apple's notoriously restrictive non-compete clause that keeps developers from supplanting the Safari browser.

Instead of going the proxy browser route, as Opera Mini does, Mozilla's forthcoming app, Firefox Home for iPhone, is based on Mozilla's sync technology. Firefox Sync--previously Weave Sync--lets Web surfers carry over their history, bookmarks, and open tabs across computers and smartphones. The addition of the self-dubbed "Awesome" URL bar in Firefox Home should fast-track the search for sites by remembering your previous and automatically saved searches, even those typed into, say, your desktop browser.

Firefox Home for iPhone presents an intriguing twist on the problem of Apple's SDK. Rather than trying to create an exact replica of the Firefox browser on the iPhone, Mozilla is offering a window to your open Firefox tabs, and an encrypted one at that. A Mozilla spokesperson confirmed that Firefox Home is not a proxy browser. Rather, the app will launch pages in either a Web viewer or Safari.

While Mozilla hasn't yet submitted Firefox Home for iPhone to the App Store, the app's hypothetical acceptance will likely mark the second successful placement in the store of a third-party browser solution that isn't based on Apple's Webkit browser platform.

A day after Opera Mini emerged for iPhone this past April, browser maker Skyfire also announced its intention to follow suit, this time with the promise of streaming Flash video through its proxy servers, but so far we've only seen Skyfire's video-streaming browser operational on Android, and it is Webkit-based at that. There's nothing wrong with that, though the Webkit ties could potentially grease the app's wheels when and if Skyfire submits its browser solution.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Once again, Facebook has changed its privacy settings. Like the last time this happened, today's improvements are still a mixed bag, but a better one: they are generally easier to use but not as simple as they could be. There are a couple of curve balls thrown in, too.

Accessing your privacy settings hasn't changed. Go to the Account tab on the upper right of your Facebook page and scroll down to Privacy Settings. You'll be able to tell if the new settings layout has been pushed out to you, because instead of being greeted by text links to the various options, you'll see the new chart. It's easy to read, but don't let that deceive you--not all settings get equal weight.

Your new settings are automatically based on your previous ones. If you did any tweaking in the old system, they'll be imported as Custom settings on the left nav and under Other on the chart. Also on the left are several preset options: Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, and Recommended. It's no accident that the Recommended settings are in fact the second-most permissive ones on the list. Despite making the settings easier to manage, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg's strained tones as he unveiled the new paradigm indicate as much as anything else that Facebook wants you to share your data beyond your immediate friends network.

The chart itself is a static image, changeable only by hitting one of the presets or the small "Customize" text link below the chart. The Customize page looks like the text-heavy list of drop-downs from the older settings, but it does unify all those previously disparate settings in one place. Some things are new here, such as Edit Album Privacy and toggling wall postings. "Everyone" means that all Facebook users can see your info, whereas "Friends Only" is the most restrictive--except, of course, that this being Facebook, it's not. Choose Customize and you can further restrict your privacy settings, to either specific friends or just yourself. Still, most major privacy tweaks are now on this one page.

Above the chart there's a small text link under Basic Directory Information. This allows you to toggle the privacy settings for profile data, including how much of your profile shows up in Facebook-based searches, and your availability to strangers sending friend requests, messages, and viewing your friends list. It also includes ancillary profile data such as your current city and hometown, work and education, interests, and other pages.

It's more than a little irritating that Facebook still refuses to put everything in one place, because so many of the site's features cross-populate through your friends and search engines into the public realm. Facebook could have just made sliders to control everything, but instead you are forced to use drop-down options and a customization pop-up to gain access to all levels of privacy.

Another example of that is how the new settings allow you to block apps. From the main privacy page with the chart, click on the text link below the Applications and Websites link on the bottom left. At the top are icons of the apps you've approved and, through the small text links just below the icons, you can selectively remove or block all apps.

Facebook offers its standard four options of customization for the "Game and Application Activity" section just below the app icons, but don't let that lull you into a false sense of security. The "Info accessible through your friends" is ridiculous. It refers to your information that your friends' apps can access through their profiles. Basically, it's a backdoor for apps that you have no control over getting at your data. It's hard to stress how important it is to mark all these off. If you don't, the only other way to prevent your friends' apps from getting access to you is to not share any information with your friends, which defeats the primary purpose of Facebook.

Next on the list are Instant Personalization and public searches. Instant Personalization is a new feature that lets Facebook's partner sites get at your data that you've allowed "Everyone" to see. Thankfully, this is set by default to off--for now.

Public and Facebook searches used to be available on the same page. The public search option now lives on the Apps page, and Facebook searches have been moved to the basic directory page mentioned earlier. Again, having everything streamlined instead of trying to manipulate what people are aware of would probably have saved Facebook users some confusion. Wasn't that the whole point of this redesign?

Even with its flaws, the new privacy settings take a step in the right direction, organizing the settings under a more comprehensible scheme. There are serious problems, though, such as the information that is accessible through your friends by default, and which you must disable if you want to prevent your friends' app vendors from getting access to you. Unless you don't care about how much of your information gets around, don't use any of the preconfigured settings besides Friends Only. Caution is still a must for all Facebook users.

Originally posted at News - Security

As more games are released for Apple's tablet device, some of the old stand-up classics are making the jump to the touch screen. The iPad version of Pac-Man is almost identical to the original in every way, with the same ghost paths, same fruit bonuses, and same intermission movies. But can Pac-Man still be anywhere near as popular as it once was, with today's smooth graphics and multilevel arcade game offerings?

Before you head to the App Store and spend your hard-earned money, there are a couple things you should know about the iPad version of Pac-Man. Though there are a few annoyances, you may be surprised at how fun an old arcade classic can be on today's devices. Read our review of Pac-Man for iPad.

It took a year, but the long-awaited stable version of Chrome for Mac and Linux is here. Google has upgraded the stable branch of the browser to version 5, which includes several HTML5-based features and broad support for syncing, and which also maintains the blazing page-render speeds that the browser is known for. Take a tour in this First Look video, and download Chrome 5 stable for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Parallels, known for using virtualization to solve consumer problems, thought it had a surefire new use for its technology.

Why not use the same approach it used to put Windows on a Mac to help ease the move from XP to Windows 7. The solution was elegant, helping users both make the move and even run older programs that weren't compatible with the new version of Windows. At first, the signs from Microsoft were encouraging; the company even invited Parallells to a Windows 7 momentum event in Paris to publicly talk about the program, Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7.

There was only one problem: the way the product works runs afoul of Microsoft's license rules, at least for most users. That's because the $50 software puts the user's old Windows XP system into a virtual machine, running alongside Windows 7, a concurrent use not allowed under most Windows licenses.

CNET raised the issue with both Microsoft and Parallels after learning about the product last month. Parallels said it is up to users to make sure they are in compliance with Redmond's terms. Microsoft, meanwhile, said it was talking with Parallels, but declined to publicly call out the company. Until now.

"Microsoft does not endorse moving the user's desktop from a physically loaded OS into a VM as a consumer solution, because the vast majority (more than 90 percent) of consumers do not license Windows under a license that would allow them to transfer Windows into a virtual machine, move Windows to a different machine, or run a secondary virtual machine that is not running XP Mode on the same machine," Microsoft's general manager, Gavriella Schuster, said in a statement to CNET. "Without these license rights, most consumers will not be properly licensing Windows when using the virtualization features of Parallels' product."

Schuster pointed out that enterprise customers with a Software Assurance contract covering Windows could properly use the software. Users who buy a full retail boxed copy of Windows (or possibly of both Windows XP and Windows 7), as opposed to the an upgrade version might also be properly licensed for the Parallels software.

For its part, Parallels continues to say it is up to users to make sure they are properly licensing Windows in conjunction with the upgrade tool.

"We require customers to verify they have the proper license," a Parallels representative said on Tuesday.

Microsoft suggested it is looking for a little more than that.

"Microsoft is working with Parallels to ensure that the Windows licensing requirements are made clear to customers in their product," Schuster said.

Despite the legal issues, Parallels' upgrade tool would appear to address an important need.

Although Windows 7 has proven popular, upgrading can be a hassle, requiring users to back up their data and programs, reinstall software, and then figure out what to do with programs that aren't compatible with the newer Windows.

A Parallels representative said on Tuesday that the product remains available for sale.

"It's out there," the representative said. "We're very excited about the product."

Originally posted at Beyond Binary

For those who virtualize Windows and other operating systems on OS X, VMware has updated its Fusion VM solution to version 3.1. This update is advertised as being 35 percent faster than version 3.0, and offers up to 5x faster 3D performance for games and features such as Windows 7's Aero environment.

In the last bout of VM updates, Parallels took the lead with Parallels Desktop 5, showing marked speed advantages to other VM software packages including Fusion and VirtualBox. It seems VMWare has taken the initiative to close the performance gap and vastly improve the capabilities of Fusion. Only time and user report feedback will tell exactly how well the two packages match up, but so far the update does seem to be notably faster when running on my 17-inch MacBook Pro (2.66GHz, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.6.3), with far less lag when moving windows and doing things like drag-selecting groups of icons (a simple task that in the previous version caused slowdowns for me when 3D support was enabled for the VM).

I personally like Fusion's VM management interface better than that for Parallels Desktop; however, I have been using Parallels recently because of the performance difference. The performance improvements I see so far are promising, but I will be trying out Fusion 3.1 more thoroughly in the following days and hope it offers decent competition to Parallels Desktop.

Version 3.1 is a free upgrade for all Fusion 3.0 users (though it is a $39.99 upgrade for people upgrading from earlier versions of Fusion, and $79.99 for a full retail license), and in addition to faster graphics offers a more seamless experience between your Mac and the Windows VM. In all, the key improvements are:

• Faster graphics with OpenGL 2.1 support
• Unity optimizations with Expose
• More convenient USB device management between OS X and the VM
• Up to eight CPU support with up to 2TB hard disks
• Faster disk performance for virtualized Boot Camp installations
• Enhanced PC migration
• More guest OS support for SUSE and Ubuntu Linux
• Implementation of VMWare's vSphere VM pooling technology

One thing to note is the update is optimized for the latest version of OS X, so though it will run on an OS X 10.5.8 and 10.6.x installation, you will need OS X 10.6.3 for the best graphics performance.

The update was just released this evening, and should be available through Fusion's autoupdate, though can also be downloaded from VMware's Fusion download center. So far no major problems with the update have surfaced; however, do take the precaution to back up your VMs before upgrading, since some people who use VMs may not have them backed up regularly with Time Machine because of their size. The update will also install new versions of the VMware tools, so be prepared for the driver installation in your guest operating systems after upgrading the program in OS X.

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Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

Originally posted at MacFixIt

Did you hear? Having the Internet on your TV is a big thing again.

Google is just now getting into the game, but companies like Hillcrest Labs and its Kylo browser have been around for years. On Wednesday Hillcrest is putting out an update to its TV-friendly browser, which brings a handful of new goodies like user agent spoofing and integration with Windows Media Center.

Between the two major features, the user agent string tweaker is infinitely more geeky, but can go a long ways towards making some sites simpler to navigate from your couch. In short, it lets you set which sites you want to use a certain user agent for (like the Wii, iPad, or iPhone), so that each time you visit them the browser will trick it into thinking you're accessing the site from one of those devices. This is particularly useful if you're privy to one of YouTube's many custom variants, like for the Wii or PlayStation 3.

As for the Windows Media Center plug-in, it simply adds a launcher for Kylo within WMC that lets you launch it from within the app, then come back to Media Center when done. This may seem like a small tweak, but it makes it markedly simpler to jump back and forth between watching live TV (if you have a TV tuner) or recorded/stored content, and doing some casual browsing.

Other additions include a way to pick what the default page zoom is when opening any Web page, a toggle to have Kylo's UI hide itself after loading a page, and support for printing Web pages to a networked printer.

Hillcrest Labs is definitely in a unique position until the release of Google TV later this year. While the company makes its Kylo browser for Web browsing on computers hooked up to TV sets, it also makes a pointing peripheral called The Loop, and licenses its Freespace pointing technology to third-parties. Google, on the other hand, plans to bring its software outside of computers and into TV sets and set top boxes. The two companies are unlikely to co-exist on the browser front, however Hillcrest could do well licensing its pointer tech to remote makers.

Originally posted at Web Crawler