A graphic from 'Privacy on the Go' illustrates recommendations for building privacy into mobile apps.

California's Office of the Attorney General has issued long-promised guidelines on mobile privacy today. The "Privacy on the Go (PDF)" report address the varied interests in smartphone and mobile app development, including app developers, carriers, ad networks, and operating system makers.

"We are now offering this set of privacy practice recommendations to assist app developers, and others, in considering privacy early in the development process," wrote Attorney General Kamala Harris in an introduction to the guidelines.

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Google released the stable version of Chrome 24 today, adding support for IndexedDB for apps that work better offline, mathematics formulas formatted with MathML, and faster JavaScript.

The new version also comes with a range of security fixes, including two $1,000 bounties and one $4,000 bounty paid to people who found high-severity vulnerabilities. Because Chrome automatically downloads updates by default in part to patch holes as fast as possible, people just need to restart the browser to update it.

IndexedDB, under development for years, is geared to store data for use even if a Web site or Web app is working with no network connection. It's used for offline Gmail and Google Docs, for example.

Math markup language makes it easier for the browser to display formulas like the quadratic equation -- not something everyone needs, but as with accents and currency symbols, something very useful to a particular subset.

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The installer for TechSmith's SnagIt screencapture program is powered by OpenCandy.

LAS VEGAS--If you want to make money off of apps, you must develop for mobile, right? Wrong, says SweetLabs' Chester Ng, who points to his company's success with its OpenCandy project to help developers earn a living.

The problem is both cultural as well as logistical, Ng said in an interview outside the Las Vegas Convention Center. Desktop software, especially on Windows, has a long history of being developed as freeware. But pitching a secondary software purchase to the user during the installation process had been poisoned, he said.

"The problem is that developers don't like the Ask toolbar monetization," Ng explained.

To that end, his company SweetLabs developed OpenCandy to create a better offer experience for both the user and the developer, he said. "We're not showing the same offer over and over. If you're downloading a PDF tool, [the user] might see an offer for a productivity app."

The past year has been a good one for the 5-year-old startup based out of San Diego. OpenCandy has hit more than 1 billion installs of Windows freeware, and month-over-month volume increased by 63 percent in 2012. Payment rates to app developers jumped 70 percent in the same period.

... [Read more]