There's no killer feature update to TrueCrypt 7 as there was in version 6. Still, the latest revision to the popular open-source and free encryption program for Windows, Mac, and Linux debuts some new features and security enhancements that make it worth the upgrade.

Users whose computers have certain Intel chips are expected to see faster performance because of support for AES encryption. TrueCrypt says that AES is between four and eight times faster than encryption powered solely by software. The company has provided a list of supported Intel chips. At the time of writing, it includes six i5 processors and two i7 processors for desktops and 12 processors for mobile devices. Users can also forcibly deactivate the feature by going to the Performance option under Settings.

Windows users will see multiple new features. Encrypted volumes can now be set to automatically mount on Windows whenever the host device is connected and the proper credentials have been provided. This makes connecting encrypted USB keys and external drives more convenient. Favoriting gets more convenient on Windows, too, as users can now favorite non-system volumes, and customize options for favorited volumes, including mounting at logon, affixing special labels, and changing the order in which volumes are displayed.

The latest TrueCrypt takes advantage of pressure directed from TrueCrypt towards Microsoft in the wake of version 6 that requested an API for hibernation files, which had not existed previously. TrueCrypt 7 can encrypt both hibernation and crash dump files. Although the feature is available to all supported versions of Windows, TrueCrypt notes that the feature is best suited to users of Windows Vista and later. Windows XP and Windows 2003 do not offer an API for encrypting hibernation files.

One feature has been removed from TrueCrypt 7. The program won't encrypt device-hosted volumes on floppy disks, although TrueCrypt will still allow users to create file-hosted volumes on floppy disks.

There's no doubt that none of these feature and improvements is as impressive as the ability to encrypt an entire operating system, which landed in TrueCrypt 6. Still, they mark the introduction of useful improvements to the program and upgrading is recommended.

Individuals aren't always right, and neither are companies, which is why we heartily appreciate when corporations gracefully address their errors--preferably while capitulating to user demands.

A minor update to Skype for iPhone (now version 2.0.1) reverses Skype's decision to charge for calls over 3G, Skype wrote in a Wednesday blog post.

Late last May, a major update to Skype 2.0 for iPhone finally introduced the oft-requested feature of placing Skype calls over 3G in addition to over Wi-Fi, a capability that Apple had unlocked months before.

Skype, however, presented the 3G calling feature as a double-edged sword, offering it as a free trial of what would by August 2010 become a paid subscription. Skype users railed against the proposed subscription model, and we can't blame them--we didn't like it either.

Skype's blogged announcement only vaguely referenced its earlier subscription blunder, saying that

"...better call quality and better availability (which is achieved with an app capable of multitasking and/or making calls over 3G) led to increased call frequency and longer calls."

The blog post also mentioned that due to some operators' move to tiered pricing models, "we no longer have plans to charge a supplement to make calls over 3G."

While Skype is vague about its reasons for pulling its premium 3G calling price plan, we suspect the present user backlash and fear of future outrage to be the cause. Since some carriers have been discussing capping their all-you-can-eat data plans and charging more for greater data usage, additional Skype costs on top of increased carrier bills could win Skype more enemies than friends.

In addition to keeping Skype free for 3G and Wi-Fi calling, the update also adds multitasking, another crowd-pleasing feature. 

Callers have groused about Skype's incapability to push through incoming calls if the Skype app is closed. Wednesday's update now pops up a notification when Skype buddies send you an IM or incoming call, even when you're using other apps.

The multitasking features, which require iOS 4, conversely let you use other apps while on a Skype call. You'll need an iPhone 4, an iPhone 3GS, or a third-generation iPod Touch (32GB and 64GB) to get the benefit of multitasking.

As another tweak, Skype for iPhone 4 has updated graphics that take advantage of the phone's Retina Display.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

One of the biggest problems in the evolving mobile applications market is context: how do you know what you want, and why?

Google's Tim Bray tackled those topics in a post to his personal blog Wednesday, unfortunately unable to solve the issues in under 1,000 words but making some good points in exploring them. Bray works for Google's Android development team but said in his post that the Android Market development is handled by a separate group.

In short, when it comes to both Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market, "just as with the Internet itself, Sturgeon's Law applies: almost everything is crap," Bray wrote. There is no real good way to search for the right applications because there is no cultural commitment to determining the value of an application, he wrote.

By contrast, take Amazon: there is a unbelievable amount of stuff on Amazon, from books and music to consumer goods. But we can keep things in context because we look to passionate communities devoted to judging the value of art and rely on our own experience with big brands. That simply doesn't exist in the mobile world, Bray wrote, although I might direct his attention to our own Download.com in the future.

But his basic point is valid, that as the mobile application continues to be the premier way in which we utilize our mobile devices, both consumers and application retailers need to figure out a better way to surface the best content and weed out the useless stuff. Even with Apple's insistence on reviewing every application submitted to the App Store, application discovery has been one of the biggest gripes among iPhone developers for years.

Good food for thought from Bray, and undoubtedly something both Google and Apple are working on. Google, after all, is a search company, and Apple bought mobile search company Siri in April. That expertise could and should be transferred to application discovery, not just Web search.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

Want the ability to print preview in Chrome? Me, too. But we'll have to wait, because it's one of the features that didn't make the Chrome 6 cut.

Typically in software development, there comes a point when programmers have to turn their attention from adding the fun new technology to making sure what's going to ship actually works. This point, called the code freeze, just happened for Chrome's sixth "milestone."

Google believes in continuously updating its browser, and given its steady encroachment on the turf of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox and its rapid ascension beyond Opera and Apple's Safari, it's hard to argue too hard with the approach. In June, Chrome climbed to 7.2 percent of worldwide browser usage from to 7.0 percent in May.

When trains leave the station frequently, you don't have to wait as long to catch one. But you still have to wait if you miss a train, and that's what's happened to some Chrome features.

Printing support has been one of Chrome's relatively weak points compared to other browsers that have been in the market for years longer, but Google's been working to catch up. Indeed, Chrome slipped a notch when an earlier change broke one feature, the ability to print only a selected portion of text.

For Chrome users on Windows, print selection is fixed in version 6. But for Mac and Linux users, print selection was bumped back to Chrome 7 because "printing is being reworked."

Print preview, a longstanding feature request, is getting closer. Although it was punted out of Chrome 6, work is under way... "UX [user experience] mocks for print preview have been created and approved internally. Implementation is in progress. Will not make M6 [Chrome milestone, or version, 6]...Targeting M7 now," according to the issue tracker.

Who caught the train?
Not everything missed the Chrome 6 train, of course. Some features set for delivery include:

• Extensions sync, so extensions on one machine are the same as on another used by the same person.

• A bug fix to speed up display of some Scalable Vector Graphics, an older graphics format seeing new life with efforts to improve Web standards.

• A consolidated menu button that merges Chrome's two earlier tool and page buttons into a single button.

• Synchronization of browsing history across multiple browsers so that, for example, Web pages visited once can be more easily revisited.

• Background image resampling to take better advantage of multicore processors and speed up page rendering when resizing images.

Who missed the train?
Also on many wish lists is the ability to put tabs along the side of the browser rather than across the top. This interface style devotes more vertical real estate to the job of showing a Web page while using the relatively abundant horizontal space of wide-screen displays.

But "side tabs" were pushed back to Chrome's 7. Again, though, the feature is under development. "You can try out side tabs on Windows by way of--enable-vertical-tabs [an extra command option that must be invoked when Chrome is launched], right-click on a tab and choose 'Use side tabs.' On Chrome OS go into the experimental menu," the issue tracker said.

Next on the list of bumped features slipping from version 6 to 7 is support for full-screen HTML5 video. The headline feature of the new version of Hypertext Markup Language is video that's built into Web pages themselves rather than relying on a plug-in such as Adobe Systems' Flash, and Google hopes to break the HTML5 video logjam with its WebM technology.

But Chrome can't yet play HTML5 video in a full-screen mode, a popular option for immersive entertainment. One complication with the user interface: avoiding something that could enable password-stealing interface. Here work has begun, but "there are many, many more patches" to be applied to Chrome before it's done, according to the tracker.

One of Google's most ambitious efforts to make the Web a more powerful foundation for applications is a project called Native Client that lets programs downloaded from the Web run securely and fast on a computer. Key to Native Client, or NaCl for short, is a process called sandboxing that restricts executing programs to a walled-off region of memory.

But Native Client apparently won't make Chrome 6 unless people specifically enable it with the present "--enable-nacl" launch option. One issue is making sure the sandbox works well not just on Mac OS X 10.6, but the older 10.5 as well.

"The new code allows for removal of the hole in the sandbox on Mac OS X 10.6. However, the hole is still required on 10.5. I am currently in the process of debugging everything on 10.5," according to an issue tracker post Tuesday. "I believe the decision was made to keep Native Client behind the --enable-nacl flag for M6. Since the M6 deadline was yesterday, I'm moving this issue out to M7."

Also punted yet again is a feature that enables a security feature that moves a process called "proxy auto configuration" to a separate computing process. Programmers initially wanted to build this into Chrome 3, but it wasn't put on the front burner. Evidently that's caused a bit of frustration, since one Chrome leader, Darin Fisher, tagged the work "StopPunting" in October 2009.

But of course, with Chrome, a new milestone arrives about once a quarter. Maybe next time.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Greensboro, N.C., artist David Lanham broke his foot and had some free time to spare. If that was me, I would eat chips and play video games all day. Not Lanham. He had a video chat (using FaceTime on the Apple iPhone 4) with a friend and painted the friend's portrait. This led him to offer his services to those who want a similar portrait done, for a fee of $50.

From what we can see on Lanham's Flickr page, the quality of the drawings is excellent. It's no surprise as the man works at Icon Factory, a design firm that specializes in making icons for software, user interfaces, and more.

Check out more portraits by Lanham in the gallery to the right and on Flickr. If you're keen on getting one done, send him an e-mail--you can find the address on his Web site. Lanham says he can do portraits over iChat or Skype, too, though he does mention on his Twitter page that's he's now booked through the end of the year.

(Source: Crave Asia via Wired)

Originally posted at Crave

iPad app Flipboard calls itself a "social magazine," a way to browse Facebook and Twitter content with the same breezy effortlessness you'd browse the pages of a favorite periodical.

I call it cool.

Flipboard reminds me of Blogshelf, the awesome iPad app that gives blogs and RSS feeds an iBooks-style makeover.

Here, however, the app pulls from your Facebook and Twitter accounts, turning friends' updates into nicely formatted, perusal-friendly pages. (Shades of Sobees, which works a similar kind of magic--though only for Facebook.)

Flipboard also delivers your choice of a couple dozen aggregated content sections (news, finance, music, tech, etc.) selected by Flipboard's creators. It's perhaps the best way I've found to read The Onion on my iPad.

You can tap any section to see headlines, story blurbs, and photos mashed up in an attractive, magazine-style format. Swipe to flip to the next page, or tap a story to read it--an abbreviated version of it, anyway. As with Blogshelf, you often have to "tap through" to the original Web page to access the full content.

I can live with that, but Flipboard needs to fix a few other areas. For starters, you're currently limited to just nine sections. Choosing a new one means deleting something else--and the Facebook and Twitter sections can't be removed, even if you're not a social-media maven.

There's no offline option, either, so if you're not currently connected via Wi-Fi or 3G, no soup for you.

The biggest wrinkle? Flipboard has quickly turned into a victim of its own success. For the past several hours I've been unable to link my Facebook and Twitter accounts; the app is suffering from "capacity overload."

That's a temporary glitch, no doubt, and even without that stuff, Flipboard is worth a look. For me it's already joined the likes of Blogshelf, Early Edition, and PressReader as one of my favorite ways to consume content on my iPad.

Want to know more? Check out this morning's post on the Digital Media blog: Meet Flipboard: Mike McCue's stealth "social magazine." You can also watch the company's promo video below--though see if you don't agree that the pitchman comes across as overly smug. Yeah, it's a cool app--we get it!

Originally posted at iPad Atlas

Microsoft released a beta of the new version of its Security Essentials antimalware software on Tuesday, sporting a few changes and enhancements.

Following version 1.0 of the free Security Essentials released in September, the folks in Redmond outfitted the 2.0 beta with an updated antimalware engine. The new engine is smarter at detecting and removing security threats and offers a better performance, according to a Microsoft blog. The software also now integrates directly with Windows Firewall and gives users the option to turn the firewall on or off.

By integrating with Internet Explorer, the Security Essentials beta provides greater protection against Web-based threats, Microsoft said. It can also watch for attacks that come via a network, though this option is only available in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Users of Windows XP can't take advantage of this particular feature because XP lacks the necessary Windows Filtering Platform.

You can find and download the new beta at Microsoft's Connect page where you'll need to log in with a Windows Live account. You'll then be directed to the download page where you choose whether to grab the 32-bit or 64-bit version.

Microsoft has promised to keep the beta current with the latest virus and spyware definitions and also provide ongoing updates to the software itself. To receive the software updates, you'll need to subscribe to Microsoft Update and set your preferences to automatically download and install new updates, according to the company.

The beta is only for people in the U.S., Israel (English only), China (Simplified Chinese only) and Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese only). And it's available on a first-come, first-served basis, apparently just until a certain quota has been reached.

The initial release of Security Essentials garnered mostly positive feedback, faring well in a challenge by testing firm AV-Test and bringing home positive reviews from CNET and other tech sources.

Originally posted at News - Microsoft

Editors' note: Each day for 10 business days, CNET personalities you know and love will publish slideshows of their 10 personal favorite iPhone apps. With each post, you get a chance to vote for your own favorite app. At the end of July, we'll collect the full list of 100 apps and announce the 10 that you, our readers, love the most.

Editor-at-Large Rafe Needleman's collection of his favorite 10 iPhone apps should serve as a template for any professional journalist. Note taker? Check. Travel apps? Check. Twitter app? Yep!

Of course, even Rafe is human. When he's not traveling for work, spreading his opinion, or hosting Buzz Out Loud, he has to eat, and he's picked an app for that, too. (Bonus: only this slideshow reveals how many Facebook messages a busy journalist receives.) See Rafe's slideshow for the 10 apps that keep Rafe on track:

Once you've seen all of Rafe's picks, return to this poll to let us know which app is your favorite, then check back each day on iPhone Atlas to see app choices from the rest of the CNET crew.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas