BlueStacks wasn't kidding when they said that they were hosting a Mac-Android wedding.

SAN FRANCISCO -- App player BlueStacks announced the "marriage" of Mac and Android under a wedding tent today, across the street from the Moscone West home of Google I/O.

You can download the BlueStacks alpha for Mac from CNET Download.com or BlueStacks.com.

BlueStacks brings Android apps to your Mac. Free but in rough alpha, for now.

The public alpha of BlueStacks for Mac brings BlueStacks' LayerCake technology to OS X and features several apps from BlueStacks partners such as HandyGames, CreativeMobile, and Pulse, in addition to the Android basics. BlueStacks will work on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and above.

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Wickr allows you to set the antiforensics mode to low or high and specify how soon you want messages you send to self-destruct.

Encryption hasn't made it to mainstream consumers because it isn't always easy to use and because the person at the other end needs to be using it too. A new free iOS app called Wickr solves at least the first of those issues.

Wickr, which is available on the iTunes store beginning today, offers military-grade encryption for protecting text, photo, audio, and video messages.

All messages you send disappear within six days, unless you want them to self-destruct earlier than that. You can also set individual messages to autodestruct within a set period of time after the recipient opens them.

Wickr co-founder Nico Sell advises a number of security companies and handles public relations for the Defcon hacker convention, so she has a good handle on the privacy risks that can come from storing data on unencrypted smartphones. Encryption protects data from prying eyes in the case of theft or loss, or if the device gets hit by data-stealing malware or other remote attacks.

"Reporters always asked me how they can securely and anonymously communicate with sources, and there hasn't been an easy ans... [Read more]

Chrome's Native Client powers new games (screenshots)

Google usually celebrates a new stable Chrome release with a blog post touting its new features. But with Chrome 20 today, all we got was a long list of high-paying security bug fixes. That can't be right.

Or at least that can't be all there is in Chrome 20.

If Google sticks to its approach from past years, today's I/O keynote will focus on mobile hardware and Android, while tomorrow will be about the Web and Chrome. But what's in Chrome 20?

Demonstrating the power of Native Client I expect a lot of talk about Native Client, which Google has been diligently debugging. Native Client (NaCl) is an open-source tech that allows C and C++ code to be securely run in the browser. Basically, it runs code in two protected sandboxes. This has the security benefit of cutting down on browser-based threats, but security is only part of the picture. Google wants NaCl to power Web apps to run as s... [Read more]