There's a reason I commute in tennis shoes--the days I literally make a mad dash for the soon-to-be departing train or bus.

Sure, there are localized apps for getting schedules, but it's also convenient that public transportation scheduling is one of a handful of enhanced features in Google Maps for Android version 4.3, new on Tuesday.

Schedules toe their way into the public transit page that's invoked by tapping the icon of a station that's plotted on a map--as long as those details are available to Google, that is.

On the social front, Latitude, Google's social beacon for locating friends nearby, now suggests friends you could add to your network.

Open the Latitude module from the menu and you could see a list of names appear at the bottom of your list of Latitude friends list, followed by "+" or "x" icons. Tap to add or dismiss the request.

The most practical new feature adds snippets of a review for locations you search out on the map. After searching for a nearby restaurant, for instance, tap on the map pop-up and you'll see the first two lines of a review at the top of the results.

Get the Google Maps for Android 4.3 update from the Android Market for all countries and languages where Maps is currently available. Note that the update is not compatible on Android smartphones running an operating system earlier than 1.6.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Perhaps the best-known alternative media player for Windows and Mac, VLC's popularity has been driven by its open-source and cross-platform nature. The latest update, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, goes to great lengths to keep the player current.

VLC 1.1 adds in hardware acceleration on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Linux computers; supports encoding and decoding the HTML5 video and audio codec WebM; better MKV HD support and 40 percent faster HD decoding; introduces lua-based extensions; and has overall better performance because of the removal of "tens of thousands of lines" of code.

There's also a significant subtraction from the media player, if you're a fan of Internet radio. VLC 1.1 removes support for SHOUTcast Radio because, according to a press release, "VLC developers have received several injunctions by e-mail from employees at AOL, asking us to either comply to a license not compatible with free software or remove the SHOUTcast capability in VLC," over the past year. As a response, VLC stopped supporting SHOUTcast, although the top of the press release now indicates that the situation is more fluid than it appeared at first.

The full list of changes to VLC Media Player 1.1 are available at their site.

It's true: BlackBerry App World 2.0 is rapidly on its way. We got the low-down in a special press event late last week about how some of the new services will work and when you can expect to get it. We also got a chance to try out BlackBerry's new app catalog on a Bold 9700. Make sure you check out our image gallery to see screenshots of what's to come.

New features and services

BlackBerry ID
BlackBerry ID is an account-based service that can help manage your device content and later help you transfer it to a new phone if you switch devices, much like scooping the flesh of a melon into a new rind. If you delete an app, you'll be able to redownload it at any time, but only for one app at a time.

Having to redownload every app onto a new phone will add unnecessary tedium back into the device-switching process, though RIM's product manager for App World, Alex Kinsella, told CNET he's already asked the developers to fold in "Update All" functionality. Thank goodness. We're not sure whether that will come out with version 2.0 or in a later update.

The previous version, App World 1.0, had some similar features. It could reinstall paid downloads through PayPals' payment service in the My World section, but PayPal owned the download data, not RIM, and it only applied to paid apps, not to free downloads. My World downloads certainly didn't apply to phone data outside of the app catalog the way that BlackBerry ID might.

While RIM didn't pour on the details, we do know that you'll sign up for BlackBerry ID the first time you start up App World 2.0. It will give you the option to associate previous PayPal purchases to the ID. We also know that the ID will be integrated into future BlackBerry services, not just the app store. We're hoping that will include changes to the online catalog along the lines of what Google has planned for pushing downloads from its the Web store to the phone.

Carrier and credit card billing
We've been eagerly awaiting this announcement ever since App World first launched in April, 2009, with its single PayPal payment plan for paid apps. We've known for a while that version 2.0 will let you associate a credit card number with your app purchases, pay for them with your monthly service bill, or continue using PayPal, but now we've got proof (see photo, right).

In addition, RIM will be offering premium apps to 60 more countries--including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, India, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

As of now, both RIM and its application developers have been profiting off paid apps in only 13 countries. RIM cited currency issues as the main blockade keeping the company from opening up the market prior to this launch. That's a flimsy-sounding argument to our ears, though the quantity and quality of BlackBerry catalog apps is sure to improve as a result of RIM's App World expansion into a higher number of paid apps worldwide.

QR codes
Google has differentiated its Android operating system in part by its support for scanning QR codes, the 2-dimensional squares that contain digitally coded information like URLs and contact details. BlackBerry already had QR-scanning capability in its BlackBerry Messenger app. With the advent of App World 2.0 comes QR scanning for apps as well as for IM and other new contacts.

Interface updates
We detail the most notable changes to the next generation of Blackberry App World in our slideshow, including new screens for top free and paid applications and for top themes, as well as a peek at collapsible subcategories that show you the status of your apps at a glance.

Availability
App World 2.0 beta should be ready for BlackBerry users to download later this month, says RIM's Kinsella, with the general release slated for the latter part of the next three months.

Firefox 3.6.4 might not sound like a major update, but the latest version debuts an important new feature for Mozilla's browser. Code-named "Lorentz" and available for Windows and Linux, the update includes the highly-anticipated Out-of-Process Plug-in (OOPP) "sandboxing" feature that prevents specific plug-ins that crash from taking down the entire browser. In this initial implementation, OOPP will prevent Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft Silverlight crashes from causing browser-wide instability.

While Mac users do get the security fixes made in their version of Firefox 3.6.4, they won't get OOPP support. In an FAQ, Mozilla said that getting OOPP to work on the Mac version of Firefox "requires major changes" to the browser, and that users should expect it in the major Firefox 4 update due late this year.

OOPP has been part of Google Chrome for some time but in a slightly different form. Mozilla's version, which the publisher touts as allowing users to experience "uninterrupted browsing," is slightly different in that it relates only to specific plug-ins. Plug-ins are not the same as extensions and add-ons, although some people colloquially use the terms interchangeably. A plug-in is a special kind of add-on that helps the browser perform specific functions such as media playback or viewing images that would otherwise be unviewable.

So in Firefox 3.6.4, when a plug-in crashes, only the plug-in component of the page becomes unusable. This is the same as Chrome, but Chrome differs in that its tabs are "sandboxed" so that if the renderer crashes one Web site, the rest of the browser will not crash. Non-OOPP crashes in Firefox will still take down the whole browser, but Mozilla expects people to see a dramatic reduction in the incidence of browser crashes because of the OOPP innovation.

OOPP also will automatically let Firefox 3.6.4 users know when plug-ins need to be updated. If you're not sure of a plug-in's status, Mozilla has created a Web site that will automatically scan your plug-ins, let you know which ones need to be updated, and provide download links for them.

For a while, it seemed like Firefox 3.6.4 might launch without the OOPP feature. A potential security risk kept the browser from hitting its original street date of early June. Other repairs made in this version include four critical security bug fixes and several minor ones, related to buffer overflow, integer overflow, reused free objects in plug-ins, and memory corruption.

Correction: Erroneous information about how Chrome manages plug-ins has been removed from the original version of this story.