If PayPal has its way, you'll be using its service to pay for all kinds of apps and software updates with your credit card.

Last week, the electronic payments company announced a new service for developers that will let software-writers accept credit card payments using PayPal without requiring buyers to have a PayPal account.

The program, called Guest Payments, will let software developers offer credit card payments for an app in addition to PayPal's electronic transferring of funds between a buyer and seller. Publishers will be able to add PayPal's credit card payment options to any app--desktop, mobile phone, and Web.

One reason PayPal's electronic payments service has historically been so appealing is the anonymity it affords the customers and the convenience it lends the merchants. Customers--like you and me--can let PayPal handle secure money transfers without handing over credit card or bank account details to every small-time publisher. 

For their part, merchants can get the buyer's name and payment without having to set up shop to handle security standards or deal with fraud--in exchange for a transaction fee.

It will be interesting to see how this new PayPal service pans out on the mobile phone front in particular. Many smartphone platforms already offer their own application stores, and methods for application-buyers to pay through some combination of credit card or carrier billing.

BlackBerry-maker RIM has notably relied solely on PayPal to sell apps, requiring users to register for a PayPal account if they wanted to buy any software. A forthcoming update to BlackBerry App World will add a new credit card payment option and carrier billing, both which will exist outside of PayPal.

While PayPal's new payment option will crop up in app payments, we're not expecting to see it take over those mobile storefronts that have payment systems already in place.

Long recognized as the fastest torrent client for Windows, the Mac version of uTorrent finally discarded its beta status today. After nearly three years of development, two of them in the public eye, the stable version of uTorrent for Mac contains the same protocol enhancements that make the Windows version so flexible.

Built natively in Cocoa, these include the new uTransport protocol, protocol encryption, distributed hash table, and peer exchange support. uTP is a relatively new protocol that slows down all connection traffic when a congestion has been detected until the problem has been cleared. It basically prevents one person's connection from crowding out others, and this is the first time it's been available to Mac users.

In the blog post announcing the new Mac version, the vice president of product management for uTorrent's parent company BitTorrent, Simon Morris, noted, "Feature parity is the goal for all of our consumer clients." Though there still are some minor features not in the Mac version, such as autoshutdown after completion, what's missing doesn't seem to affect the program's overall behavior.

Android users who have been waiting a long time to see an app for Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader can stop waiting, and start downloading.

While a little plain and slim on features, the free Kindle app for Android--available starting Monday--does its job as an e-book reader. Once you fire it up, it lets you shop for new books or download books you already bought.

Since Kindle is about book sales, the app lets you buy e-books through Amazon's online Kindle Store, where works typically sell for about $10 a piece. You can also send yourself the first chapter for free until you decide if you want to go ahead and own the rest of the book. The Kindle app conveniently syncs up your selection wirelessly.

We'd prefer to search for or browse books directly from the the Kindle app, a feature that, according to Amazon's news release,  is coming in future versions, along with full text search.

Amazon's Kindle app for Android is similar to Kindle on other mobile operating systems, like the iPhone and BlackBerry, including support for both portrait and landscape orientations.

Unlike other e-readers, the Kindle reading pane is plain white by default, though the settings let you adjust brightness and font size, and choose a smooth sepia or black background if you're not a fan of the white. (We'd personally love to add other textures, like the crumpled paper or linen looks.)

The app's straightforward navigation have you tapping in the margins or swiping the sides to advance through the pages. Press the center of the page to remind yourself of the book's title or check out what percentage of the selection you've read. As with Kindle on other platforms, this app will remember where you put your bookmarks, though it would be nice if we could rename the bookmark, rather than try to remember the assigned location.

The Kindle app is available free from the Android Market. You can view a list of country support here (scroll down.)

Update, 3:30 p.m. PDT: We provided more details about the app's availability by country.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Mozilla pushed out a minor update to Firefox on Saturday, slightly adjusting the new plug-in crash protection feature that was introduced last week. Firefox 3.6.6 for Windows and Linux delays the amount of time that the plug-in protection module will wait before terminating an unresponsive plug-in.

Mozilla evangelist Mike Beltzner said in a blog post on Saturday that although Firefox 3.6.4 was beta-tested with nearly 1 million users, after its release the company began hearing complaints from some users, especially those playing games on older computers. The crash protection feature would only wait 10 seconds before aborting a plug-in; that's now been extended to 45 seconds.

Firefox for Mac has also been updated to version 3.6.6, but it's not clear why. The out-of-process plug-in crash protection feature has not yet been implemented in the Mac builds of Firefox. Also, some users have reported crashes related to Norton and Skype, and some users who had been using the Firefox 3.6.4 beta builds have reported having to manually install the update the 3.6.6.

A request for comment from Mozilla was not immediately returned.

The Firefox 3.6.6 release notes are available at the Mozilla Web site.

Good news, Apple browser fans: Safari for Windows and Mac now comes with extensions. The bad news? They're not yet enabled by default, and there's no official add-on gallery from Apple.

The better news? There is a workaround, and it's easy. In this How To video, we'll show you not only how to enable Safari's extensions, but how to install them and where to get them, too.

Streaming music from the cloud to your computer or mobile device is nothing new, but doing so with your own library is something that's on the brink of becoming an everyday occurrence with upcoming efforts by Google, HP, and possibly even Apple.

Enter MSpot, the latest service to promise free and unlimited streaming from the cloud to your computer or Android device. The company on Monday is finally opening up this service to everyone following a month-long private beta.

To get it to work, users need to install a small piece of software on their Windows or Mac computer. This lets you pick which folders or specific albums you want to be synced to your MSpot storage. It can also be tied into the libraries of existing local jukebox software like Windows Media Player and iTunes. Every time you make a change in one of these places, like adding or removing files, and rating your music, those actions are synced back to your online collection.

On the client side of things, you end up getting a very simple jukebox interface which promises to work with IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Android users running 2.1 or higher can also download an application that can set aside local phone storage and both stream and download songs to whatever amount of space you allow it to take up on your SD card or built-in storage.

We tried it out in Chrome and on Android and had great results. The songs began playing instantly, and the player interface was simple and intuitive. Best of all, we were able to access that same library from multiple devices at the same time.

The mobile application can stream your music over EDGE and 3G. We tried it on 3G and got music to start streaming in, in about seven seconds. It then played through without any breaks or buffering; on Wi-Fi you get instantaneous results.

MSpot lets you stream as much and as often as you want, however you only get 2GB of storage for free. More can be had in chunks of 10, 20, 50 and 100 gigabytes which ranges from $2.99 to $13.99 a month depending on what plan you get. That said, you might be able to get away with just using the free service; even if your music library is far bigger, as MSpot compresses tracks.

While an audiophile might cringe, I found the quality to be quite listenable on tracks that had started out at 320kbps, and been shrunk down to the company's standard 48kbps AAC+ format. Would the original sound better? Sure, but with MSpot you can access these songs when you're not in reach of that file.

There are certainly a few other things missing from the Web and Android experience, but I expect them to be added in the future. You cannot, for instance, upload directly to your MSpot library from either of these places, nor can you add or change ratings. But even without these things, MSpot's core service is compelling enough to warrant a spot on your computer or Android phone.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

We love our Macs for their ease of use and Apple's attention to detail and style. But, as we've found many times at Download.com, a third-party developer sometimes designs a way of doing things that trumps what you find in OS X. Default Folder X adds a fairly simple tool bar to open and save dialog boxes that adds fast access to often-used folders, and other nifty tricks like zoomable previews in your open dialog boxes. If you want more control over your open and save dialog boxes, Default Folder X is an excellent choice.

Also this week, we have the latest update to TypeStyler, an easy-to-use, pro-level tool that lets you create great-looking stylized text for everything from flyers and signs to newsletters. Our game this week is Tennis Elbow 2011, a beautiful-looking and challenging tennis game that lets you play on several court surfaces and tour the globe.

Don't forget to check out our iPhone apps of the week!

A few reports are surfacing that claim the current reception problem with the iPhone 4 could be an issue with the phone's OS software instead of the phone's construction.

Similar to the recent videos showing the grip on the iPhone 4 resulting in signal loss, others have released videos showing the same things happening on older models after having upgraded to iOS 4. This indicates the problem is in the operating system instead of the phone's hardware, which is promising for people who have been impacted by the reception issue.

In looking at what is happening, the root of this problem is in the hardware. When you physically bridge two parts of the phone with your hand the signal drops, and then reappears when you change your grip. This happens because of interference in the RF signal, where the user's hand will either shield, ground, or introduce noise in the signal. This will happen to some degree on every electronic device that uses RF signals (bluetooth mice, wifi routers, and other phones), but may happen more prevalently on the iPhone 4 because of its exposed antennas.

Check out CNET's demonstration of this problem on the new iPhone!

While the root of the problem is in hardware, there is a second component, which is how the software handles fluctuations in signal quality. This noise introduction alters the signal's characteristics in such a way that the phone can no longer identify it. Since this happens on both newer and older iPhone models that are running iOS 4, it indicates the current OS version is not handling signal fluctuations very well.

Therefore, fixes coming in the form of an OS or firmware update will not necessarily eliminate the situation for the iPhone 4, but may help it by increasing the device's tolerance of noise in the RF signal. Even with a software fix the iPhone 4 may still be susceptible to greater signal fluctuations, but we can hopefully look forward to an update making this problem less noticeable. Meanwhile, the only fixes are to change your hand grip (or using no grip with headphones or a bluetooth earpiece), or using a protective case.

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Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or email us!
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

Originally posted at MacFixIt

Google has remotely removed two free apps from several hundred Android phones because the apps misrepresented their purpose and thus violated Android developer policies, according to a company spokesman.

This marks the first time Google has used the Remote Application Removal Feature that allows the company to delete apps for security reasons that have been installed through Android Market.

The apps were proof-of-concept programs designed to test the feasibility of distributing a program that could later be used to take control of the device in an attack, according to Jon Oberheide, the developer who wrote and distributed them.

The one app--called RootStrap--executed code that merely printed a message on the phone that says "Hello World," while the second app did the exact same thing but was disguised as a preview of the "Twilight Saga: Eclipse" movie, he said in an interview with CNET on Friday. There were about 50 downloads of the RootStrap app and 250 to 350 of the Twilight app, though some people later uninstalled them, he said.

Oberheide has developed a program that could be used to bootstrap a rootkit, effectively allowing someone to remotely take control of a phone by having an app already installed on it phone home to fetch code that could exploit a vulnerability on the device, he said.

"An attacker who develops legitimate-looking apps and distributes them on the Android Market could gather a large install base and if there was a vulnerability within the Android operating system or Linux (upon which Android is based) the attacker can phone home to see if there is an exploit to download and push it out to all the phones he controls and take complete control of the phone via the kernel," said Oberheide, who works at a security start up called Scio Security.

Oberheide removed the apps voluntarily from the Android Market after being asked to by Google, he said.

The apps "were not designed to be used maliciously, and did not have permission to access private data--or system resources" beyond accessing the Internet, Rich Cannings, Android Security Lead, wrote in a blog post.

Under the Android Market Content Policy for Developers, "developers should not upload or otherwise make available applications...(that offer) misleading information about an application's purpose."

Updated 4:41 p.m. PDT with comment from researcher who developed the apps.

Correction 3:30 p.m. PDT: This story initially misstated who wrote the Android Developers blog post. It was Rich Cannings.

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex