Google+ for Android now lets people reshare posts.

One of the first things I looked for in the Android app for using Google+ was an option to reshare posts with others. Today, Google delivered it.

And I'm not alone. Resharing was the top-requested feature for using Google's social network on mobile devices.

"The Google+ Android app update includes our No. 1 most requested mobile feature, resharing posts," said mobile product mamager Ben Eidelson in a YouTube video. The feature is in Google+ for Android 1.0.6.

To use it, users tap on a post, then tap on the three dots in the upper right signifying actions they can take with it. The "share" option lets people share the post publicly or just to circles.

The feature stands to significantly improve the activity on mobile devices, where it's often handy to forward an e-mail or retweet a tweet--activities that are a lot easier than creating an original post from scratch.

The feature won't be limited to the Android app, of course.

"Don't worry, iOS and Web app folks, reshare is coming soon for you too!" added Punit Soni, the lead product manager for Google+ games and mobile, in a Google+ post.

The new version also lets people create new circles, Google said ... [Read more]

Revenue derived from partnerships with operators has become Opera's biggest source of money.

Arguably, Opera Software has tougher competition now than at any point since the scrappy Norwegian company released its first browser in 1995.

Microsoft is aggressively developing Internet Explorer again. Firefox and Safari are widely used, and Chrome is ascendant. iOS and Android smartphones come with their own mobile browsers.

Despite that, Opera yesterday reported financial results with a healthy dose of good news. The recipe of Lars Boilesen, who took over as chief executive in early 2010, seems to be working.

Revenue for the second quarter of 2011 increased 29 percent from $31 million a year ago to $40 million. Profit rose even more, 47 percent, from $3.6 million to $5.3 million. Both those quarterly figures are records for the company.

The company makes money through a variety of means--search advertising revenue on its desktop browser, or licensing revenue as its browser is embedded in Internet-capable devices or its browsing services are used by mobile operators. Operator deals were the biggest source of funds, rising 41 percent to $14 million.

Opera CEO Lars Boilesen

[Read more]

(Credit: Feedly)

If you use Google Reader for Android (download), chances are you're not too excited about the service's interface, especially when it's miniaturized on a mobile touch screen. If that's the case, we'd like to direct your attention to Feedly for Android (download). Essentially, Feedly wraps your Google Reader feeds in a neat, feature-rich, simple-to-use package. It syncs with your Reader account seamlessly, is much easier on the eyes than the bare-bones Google Reader app, and plays nicely with a whole lot more third-party services.

When you first launch the Feedly app, it opens up directly to featured content. That's because it comes preloaded with RSS feeds from many of the Web's most popular sites. These preloaded "Essentials" cover a number of verticals such as technology, design, and business. So, without even syncing with your Google Reader account, you can already enjoy RSS feeds through Feedly. Also, the app has built-in "Save for later" and History functions, and it supports services like Twitter, Bitly, Instapaper, and Read It Later.

Overall, we love Feedly's clean and simple design. It makes for a much more enjoyable reading experience than Google Reader. If you log serious hours catching up on RSS feeds, we highly suggest thi... [Read more]

Who wouldn't want to blog for a living? Low pay, even lower esteem among your publishing peers, and the scorn of anonymous readers who aren't shy about telling you and the rest of the world what an idiot you are.

Yes, blogging is a career of the future, right up there with correctional officer and bankruptcy attorney.

Cynical? Moi? Actually, I've been blogging now for almost four years and I love it. Maybe somebody not named Arianna Huffington or Perez Hilton is making beaucoup dolares from a blog, but I haven't met that person. Still, money isn't everything... is it?

The fact is, blogs allow most everyone to express themselves to the masses, or whichever segment of the masses they're able to reach via search engines. There's an immediacy to blogs that no other publishing medium can match. And while most posts originate on a PC, there's no reason bloggers should feel bound to their computers.

To put mobile blogging to the test, I tried out the WordPress app for the iPhone and iPad, and Blogger's SMS and e-mail posting features. (The WordPress app is also available for Android devices and other mobile phones and tablets.) There used to be a free "Lite" version of the $2.99 BlogPress app for posting to Blogger, but that version appears to be no more.

Blogger's SMS-post feature requires that you first create a new blog and then merge the new blog with an existing one. I never got the SMS component to work reliably, but e-mailing ... [Read more]

The latest version of popular anti-spyware and antivirus program Ad-Aware comes with bold performance claims. Released today exclusively with CNET Download.com, Lavasoft Ad-Aware 9.5 Free Internet Security and Ad-Aware 9.5 Pro Internet Security says that both programs have seen heavy construction under the hood and ought to be four to eight times faster than they were in the last release, version 9.0.5.

Ad-Aware 9.5 hasn't changed its interface, but there have been under-the-hood changes to how it performs.

In addition, the suites now come with a faster installation process, bolstered by a dramatically smaller download that shrunk from 130 MB to 12 MB. This "stub" installer then grabs only about 80 MB of data online to complete the program, which is still significantly smaller.

While using the program, I noticed that Ad-Aware felt smoother when transitioning between screens, supporting that some parts of the program are faster. However, the program's "quick" scan, called the Smart Scan, which checks only mission-critical areas of your computer for infection, was actually slower on a real-world, daily-use computer than it was when tested in version 9.... [Read more]

The Firefox rapid-release program has caused some corporate indigestion, but Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker believes it's worth it.

She acknowledged that companies can have problems with the approach, in which new browser versions arrive every six weeks, but those problems are secondary compared to the alternative of holding up new features for a year, Baker said in a blog post today:

A browser is the delivery vehicle for the Internet. And the Internet moves very, very quickly. Philosophically, I do not believe a product that moves at the speed of traditional desktop software can be effective at enabling an Internet where things happen in real time. If we want the browser to be the interface for the Internet, we need to make it more like the Internet. That means delivering capabilities when they are ready. That means a rapid release process. If we don't do something like this the browser becomes a limiting factor in what the Internet can do.

She pointed to two areas where the rapid-release process causes problems: add-ons that need to maintain compatibility, and businesses that sometimes don't have time to test new software and update their own applications for the new browser.

"We need to be creative and try to find practical ways of alleviating these... [Read more]

While Firefox might be your chosen browser for its speed, useful add-ons, and open-source culture, it's also packed with many useful built-in features.

We dug through Firefox's endless list of features to find you the best, little-known secrets you can start using right now.

1. Customize search with Smart Keywords A little-known Firefox feature lets you run searches within any given Web site from the browser's address bar. For example, to search for "TouchPad" within Amazon.com, all you'd have to do is type "amazon touchpad" in the Firefox bar.

To create a smart keyword, head to a Web site and locate the search field. Then, right-click the search field and select "Add Keyword for this search...". Create the bookmark, store it in a folder, and your smart keyword is now enabled. Try it with reference sites like Wikipedia and IMDB for quick access to answers.

2. Open multiple Web sites at launch Who says you can have only one home page? You can set Firefox to open all your favorite Web sites at launch. For example, I'd like CNET, Facebook, and Twitter to launch every time I open my browser.

In Firefox, go to Options > General. In the home page field, enter URLs separated by pipes. For example "http://www.cnet.com | http://www.facebook.com | http://...." and so on. Then, hit "OK" and relaunch your browser to see the magic happen.

... [Read more]

(Credit: File Conversion)

Whether you're in the market for a simple conversion utility, or you happen to be a full-fledged media junkie, Media Converter for Android should have you covered. It's easy to use, performs well, and converts pictures, videos, music, and other files into just about any compatible format.

One of the things that makes Media Converter work well is that it actually offloads its duties to a remote server rather than performing them on your device. This means a much more lightweight app and increased support for file formats. On the downside, this also means that you must have a data connection for the app to work. While we don't think this should be a deal-breaker, it is worth noting. Otherwise, we were were perfectly happy with Media Converter's performance. It let us easily convert pictures to PNGs, documents to PDFs, even videos to MP3s. And after converting, we were able to send files via e-mail, or Twitter, and even upload directly to Dropbox.

So, if you're interested in turning your Android device into a Swiss Army Knife of file conversion, we highly suggest giving Media Converter a try. At only $2.99 in the Android Market, we think it's a steal.

Android's unbranded browser is coming back into the WebKit fold.

The software--called simply "Browser" on Android phones and tablets--is based on the open-source browser engine called WebKit. It's long been disassociated from it, though, and now Google is trying to reunite the projects in a move that could portend the arrival of a branded Chrome on Android.

"We're looking forward to a much better collaboration with the WebKit community," Google's Andrei Popescu said yesterday in a mailing list message flagged by new Chrome developer Peter Beverloo and spotted by TechCrunch.

Convergence between the Android browser and Chrome seems inevitable. Tablets bring a more PC-like experience to browsing, and Google is of course keen on tablets with the arrival of version 3 of Android, aka Honeycomb. Google TV, also based on Android, has a browser that sports the Chrome brand. But what's been keeping them apart?

At the Google I/O show in May, Chrome Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai said it's because, although the browsers share some common code, the Android browser is "not based on Chromium," the open-source version of Chrome. The implic... [Read more]

Sony's NEX-C3 is among the cameras supported by Lightroom 3.5, now a release candidate.

By now it's a familiar pattern: Camera makers release new models that can shoot photos in the high-quality but labor-intensive raw image format, and Adobe Systems periodically catches up with a release to support those proprietary formats.

So it's no surprise to owners of Olympus' E-P3, E-PL3, Panasonic's G3 and GF3, and Sony's Alpha NEX-C3 and SLT-A35 that the release candidate for Lightroom 3.5 adds support for their cameras. The closely related Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in 6.5 release candidate, also issued, follows suit; usually it's a few weeks before the test versions are replaced by final versions.

But the vastly larger number of existing Lightroom customers who have older cameras should pay attention to this release, too, because it attempts to fix a lot of bugs. Tom Hogarty, Lightroom's product manager, details them on his blog about Lightroom 3.5 and Camera Raw 6.5 today, but here are some that I found notable:

• Using the arrow keys to modify image adjustment settings lacked responsiveness

• Lightroom 3.2 introduced preview cache inefficiencies.

• Develop load time performance was inconsistent.

... [Read more]

With Print to PDF, you can turn e-mails, Web pages, and other documents into PDFs for viewing and sharing.

Here's the problem with AirPrint: not nearly enough printers support it. Plus, there's that whole consumables thing. Aren't we supposed to be living in a paperless society?

Print to PDF for iOS solves both problems, allowing you to "print" e-mails, Web pages, and documents as PDFs right on your iDevice. It's a clever app, one that works much like PrimoPDF and other utilities for Windows.

In other words, it intercepts just about anything that uses the iOS print command and generates a PDF instead of a piece of paper.

All you do is run Print to PDF, then switch to any other app that supports printing. Tap the Print command, choose Print to PDF as your printer (a one-time task), and then tap Print again. The process may take a few seconds, depending on the length of the item. When it's done, you'll have the option of instantly switching to the app to view your new PDF.

Print to PDF cleverly organizes output into saved e-mails, saved Web pages, and "other" prints (i.e. stuff that comes from other... [Read more]

To congratulate Mozilla on shipping Firefox 6, Microsoft sent a mere cupcake rather than a full cake, a little ribbing over the fact that new versions of Firefox arrive more frequently but with a smaller set of new features.

Matching Firefox's new rapid-release development cycle, Microsoft's Internet Explorer team has downsized the traditional congratulatory cake it sends to its browser rival.

The new cake arrived last week to Mozilla upon shipment of Firefox 6. Jonathan Nightingale, director of Firefox engineering for Mozilla, posted a photo of the cake on Flickr.

Under the rapid-release program, new versions of the browser ship every six weeks, which means the change in features from the earlier version is correspondingly smaller. No doubt Microsoft--which is still using the big-change, infrequent-update approach with IE--was poking fun at the new release philosophy when it sent the diminutive cake.

The first IE cake I noticed was for shipping Firefox 3 in 2008, but there have been others since then. Each bears the same message: "Congratulations on shipping. Love, the IE Team."

In looking back over the history, t... [Read more]

If you have an HDHomeRun Prime tuner for your PC, the eponymous app lets you watch (and record!) live TV on your iPad.

The HDHomeRun Prime is a new CableCARD TV tuner that plugs into your home network router. The HDHomeRun app piggybacks on that, letting you watch, pause, replay, and even record live TV right on your iPad. It's pricey, limited, and a little buggy, but it works.

Just to clarify, the app requires an HDHomeRun Prime, which sells for $249.99. I'm in the process of reviewing it, and so far it's fabulous. The app costs $17.99, which definitely seems steep, but for the moment there's nothing else quite like it.

After running the initial setup of the HDHomeRun Prime on my PC, I installed the app on my first-gen iPad. It immediately detected the tuners, and in seconds I was watching live TV. And I found I could continue watching it even while another live show was playing on my PC. (The Prime provides three tuners, so I still had one to spare.)

The app offers basic DVR functions: pause, 8-second rewind, and 30-second skip. You can record whatever you're currently watching, but yo... [Read more]

Apple has brought support for Japan's earthquake notification service to iOS 5 beta, 9to5Mac is reporting.

According to the blog, Japanese iOS users will be able to turn the notification system on from their mobile devices. If an earthquake hits, users will be alerted with a notification giving them information on the earthquake.

Japan launched its notification system in 2007. When tremors or earthquakes are measured, the service sends notifications out through an online system. As more information is gathered, including the earthquake's epicenter, that data is also pushed out.

The notification system is a key part of Japan's emergency response service, since the country is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes. In March, Japan fell victim to a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the damage from which was made significantly worse by tsunamis that it unleashed.

Related stories: • Japan reels from earthquake, nuclear crisis (roundup) • Major quakes hit Japan; tsunami warning for U.S. • Online resources for Japan quake info

Immediately follow... [Read more]

Trend Micro overhauled its security suites last year to great success. The company changed everything about the programs, from introducing a cloud-based detection engine on up through an interface with fast transitions and even the name, rebranding the suites as Trend Micro Titanium. Available exclusively today from CNET Download.com, this year's Titanium Maximum Security 2012 (download), Titanium Internet Security 2012 (download), and Titanium AntiVirus Plus 2012 (download) offer far fewer and far less dramatic changes, but they do include some improvements that ought to keep the suite competitive.

Trend Micro Titanium Max Security strengthens the cloud

In addition to last year's Smart Protection Network, which forms the heart of the Trend Micro's cloud-based detection by creating a real-time, always-updated database of user security encounters, two new engines have joined the fold. One is designed to detect and remove the "fake antivirus" malware, also known as ransomware, that plagues many. The other stops botnets that might've infected your computer.

Value-added enhancements cover both the useful, like bundling ... [Read more]

Apple has released an update to iTunes that addresses a number of bugs that have cropped up in the program since the original 10.4 release. The latest 10.4 release brought Lion-specific enhancements to the program, including full-screen capability, but early adopters of the latest version ran into a few problems with playback and the management of items in their media libraries. The iTunes 10.4.1 update released today addresses some of these issues.

According to the iTunes 10.4.1 download page, the latest version fixes the following problems:

1. Fixes a problem where the media keys on some third-party keyboards work inconsistently with iTunes.
2. Addresses issues with adding artwork to songs and videos.
3. Resolves an issue that may cause iTunes to become unresponsive when purchasing an HD movie.
4. Fixes a problem where iTunes may take longer than expected to open after waking your Mac from sleep.
5. Addresses issues with VoiceOver support.

The update should be available through Software Update as a ~12MB download, but can also be downloaded through the iTunes 10.4.1 update page (around 77MB in size). The update should not require a restart after installing.

As always, be sure to fully back up you... [Read more]

Confirming months of rumors, an app store, much like Apple's App Store for OS X, has officially been listed among the features Microsoft is working to include in Windows 8. The revelation came last week from Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky in a Building Windows 8 blog titled, "Introducing the team." Among a list of teams associated with building the forthcoming operating system was, you guessed it, "App Store." Read up on all the details here.

In other news, Mozilla pushed Firefox 6 out the door last week, updating the vast majority of its users to the browser's latest stable build. The new version is competitively fast, sports a new minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features such as support for Mozilla's new Add-on SDK and GPU hardware acceleration. If you haven't updated already, you can check out our review and download the new build here.

(Credit: CNET)

The tower defense genre started out with Desktop Tower Defense, a Flash game you could play in your Web browser, but once the iTunes App Store opened, developers quickly realized this type of game was a perfect fit for iOS devices. Soon, tower defense games that are now iOS classics emerged, including GeoDefense, Fieldrunners, and the hugely popular Plants vs. Zombies. The touch-screen interface made iOS devices a natural platform for tower defense gaming, allowing you to place units easily with only a few taps of your finger, and the result was the perfect time-waster requiring both quick thinking and a solid strategy.

Those early games are still fun even now, but the modern entries in the Tower Defense genre add even more to the action with 3D graphics, new types of gameplay, and new ways to take advantage of today's more powerful iOS devices. Whether you're a serious tower defense aficionado or new to the genre, you'll like the direction developers have taken with the tower defense games that are now available.

This week's collection of iOS apps are all tower defense games. The first is the... [Read more]

Mozilla upgraded its developer's edition of Firefox today to version 8, including changing how forced third-party add-ons are handled and debuting a series of under-the-hood tweaks that continue a renewed assault on performance gains made in Firefox 7 Beta. Firefox 8 Aurora can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it marks the first release of Aurora for Android.

Firefox's new add-on confirmation window, debuting in Aurora 8.

Two add-on changes were revealed last week that represent, for the first time in possibly years, that Mozilla has forced changes on how third-party programs and Firefox interact. Basically, Mozilla is disabling the ability of a third-party program, like security suites, to forcibly install add-ons without user permission. The change comes in two parts: one automatically disables t... [Read more]

Judging from the headlines appearing this week on tech Web sites, you'd guess anyone using a browser other than Internet Explorer was a fool.

After all, IE version 9 scored a whopping 99.2 percent in NSS Labs' worldwide test (PDF) of the ability of top browsers to detect socially engineered malware. IE 8 wasn't far behind at 96 percent--the difference attributed by NSS Labs to the Application Reputation component added to IE 9's SmartScreen technology.

By comparison, the four other browsers tested were veritable social-malware sieves: Google Chrome 12 had a 13.2-percent detection rate, Firefox 4 and Safari 5 detected 7.6 percent, and Opera 6.1 percent. The report's chart illustrating the test results is even more striking.

NSS Labs' socially engineered malware-detection test results show IE 8 and 9 to be the runaway winners.

Such dramatic results should be easy to corroborate, but a search for similar results from other sources came up empty. Every other browser comparison I could find rated Firefox, Chrome, and (usually) Opera above IE in terms of security. In fact, SecurityFocus lists ... [Read more]