Do@ brings a rare innovation to search in its free app for iPhone. Instead of lifeless, text-based search links, you see thumbnails to live Web pages that you can interact with right away. It's a germane solution to search that we hope catches on, and one we hope spurs on Google to step up its game.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Some of the most popular applications available for the iPhone and Android handsets suffer from serious security issues, a recent study from security firm ViaForensics has found.

According to the security firm's appWatchdog study, a slew of companies, including Foursquare, LinkedIn, Netflix, and Wordpress earned a "fail" rating on storing sensitive data securely. Netflix's Android application, for example, failed to "securely store passwords," ViaForensics said. Surprisingly, the iPhone version of the Netflix app earned the highest "pass" rating for securely storing passwords.

Netflix is taking the findings seriously. In a statement to CNET, a company spokesman said that "Netflix members' privacy and personal-information security are a top priority for Netflix." The spokesman said that the streaming company will be "making a change on the app" to improve its security.

In a blog post discussing the results, the security firm said: "It is ViaForensics' goal that this resource help inform consumers about potential data security risks posed by mobile apps by arming them with objective information and that app developers will be motivated to work hard to take all appropriate measures to secure their apps."

For its part, Foursquare has already taken action to safeguard user data.

"If a user's Android device is stolen and the device is not password-protected, then a hacker with malicious intentions may be able to access that user's data," a Foursquare spokesperson told CNET in an e-mailed statement. "However, we haven't been notified of any such instances by our user base. Nevertheless, we pushed an update to all Android users on Tuesday, June 7, that will make even this type of access unavailable to hackers. We value the security of our users' personal information and are continually making enhancements to clear potential attack vectors that we become aware of."

Even so, ViaForensics' findings are certainly discouraging. The security firm found that LinkedIn failed to securely store application data on both iPhone and Android devices. The Wordpress iPhone application failed in that evaluation, as well. Even Google's Android Gmail application was cited as not storing application data securely. However, the iPhone's Google Gmail App scored at the top on securely storing passwords, usernames, and application data.

Not surprisingly, considering the personal nature of the information they store, banking applications scored highly in ViaForensics' testing. Bank of America, Citibank, Fidelity Investments, and Wells Fargo all earned top marks in the study. Most other top apps, however, suffered from at least one security issue.

ViaForensics' study is all the more concerning when one considers that mobile applications are becoming far more popular. Earlier this week, In-Stat reported that users will download 48 billion mobile applications to their smartphones in 2015. On Monday, Apple revealed that 14 billion apps had been downloaded from its App Store since 2008. Over 4.5 billion applications have been downloaded from the Android Market.

Update at 9:03 a.m. PT to include Netflix statement.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

If you like living your digital life in the browser, then the Chrome OS (review) could be a clanging clarion siren that's hard to resist. It's fast, geared for an Internet tether yet able function on its own, and it's a bold step into the future of how operating systems work. The Chrome OS will be available to the public on June 15, and Google and Samsung gave CNET an early look at the coming Samsung Chromebook.

While only CNET's New York office received a review model early, the operating system constantly updates and so the San Francisco-based team was able to examine the latest version of Chrome OS on the original Chrome OS laptop, the Cr-48.

Basically, Chrome OS is a low-to-mid powered operating system that has the potential for mass appeal, much more so than what we saw back in December 2010 when the Cr-48 launched. Google has made some nifty improvements, all available on the Cr-48 because they're all enhancements to the operating system. There's a decent local file browser, for one thing, and the latest version of Chrome performs much better on the anemic Cr-48 hardware than the original version of Chrome OS did.

It's no mean feat that a company can improve performance simply by improving the software, and yet that appears to be what Google has accomplished. That means that older Chromebooks will still get better over time, despite their age. We also noticed that boot times improved, and of course browser speeds. When the Chrome OS launched, Chrome the browser was on version 8. It's now on version 12.

Yet the Chrome OS's strength in cloud-based flexibility is also its great weakness. If you don't have an Internet connection, you're in trouble. The promised offline support for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs hasn't materialized at the time of writing, a mere week before the public launch of the Chromebooks. Wi-Fi and 3G connections are simply not prevalent enough at the moment to support constant connections from a smartphone, let alone a low-powered laptop. Without that tether to the Internet, and without offline support, the Chromebook is essentially a less-media friendly, less-touch friendly version of a tablet.

It's entirely possible this will change in the next week if Google pushes out updates to offline support. For now, though, the Chrome OS is an interesting concept idea that is at best before its time.