Firefox 22 blocks third-party cookies by default.

(Credit: Mozilla)

Up until now, only Apple's Safari browser had blocked third-party cookies by default. Last week's release of Firefox 22 to its developer's channel also came with the feature, indicating that the option will soon make it to all Firefox users.

Firefox 22 Aurora (download for Windows, for Mac, and for Linux) blocks third-party cookies by default, putting the ad industry on notice that browsers are about to start looking askance at them. While Safari has had the feature for a long time, no other major browser has supported it until now.

Mozilla first announced that they were changing their third-party tracking cookie policy in February.

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(Credit: Ad Hoc Labs)

After enjoying much success on iOS, Burner, the app that provides "disposable" phone numbers, has finally made its way to Android.

Have you ever wished you could have a temporary phone number for things like Craigslist purchases, job searches, or other short-term projects? Well, Burner provides just that. Think of it as an app that can disguise your phone. It gives you a temporary phone number from which you can place calls and send messages or receive calls and messages. Its phone numbers work exactly like the one provided by your carrier, but they stop working after an specific amount of time.

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The Burner app is free to download and comes with one free Burner number in an area code of your choice. To give you an idea of how it works, the free sample lasts for one day, 5 minutes of voice c... [Read more]

SimCity

(Credit: Electronic Arts)

Today game developer Electronic Arts has announced that the much-anticipated SimCity for Mac will be available for purchase on June 11.

The latest version, which is stripped of any version number and is being simply called SimCity, was announced on March 5 for both OS X and Windows, and was initially released for Windows early last month, but in an EA blog post today Lucy Bradshaw, senior vice president and general manager of EA's Maxis label, is quoted as saying the Mac version of the software will be out in two months' time:

SimCity is coming to Mac on June 11 and one purchase will give you both the Mac and PC versions. You only need to buy SimCity once to play together across the same servers, regardless of which version you're playing.

In addition, Bradshaw reportedly said that the delayed launch of the Mac versions is because the game's rendering engine has been built from the ground up with Mac-native code to ensure that Mac users will get the best performance possible out of the title, and is still undergoing testing and development: "We didn't want to make any compromises when it came to the Mac so we created a native version that is optimized for the hardware and OSX."

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Chrome for iOS now lets you print Web pages via AirPrint or Google Cloud Print. The latter also supports print-to-PDF via Google Drive.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET)

It seems like just last week that Google was rolling out updates for its Chrome browser for iOS.

In fact, it was: Last week, Google added sharing and history features to Chrome for iOS.

Yesterday, Google brought a few more worthwhile features to its mobile browser: support for AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and full-screen browsing. Version 26.0.1410.50 also lets you save any Web page as a PDF to your Google Drive account.

Full-screen browsing works just like in Safari: When you scroll up, the Omnibox (i.e., address bar) disappears to give you a bit more viewing area. When you scroll back down (or tap the top of the screen), it reappears. Simple, but effective. The feature is good for video and Web-based games, where you don't want distracting user-interface "chrome" getting in the way of what you're seeing.

As ... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET)

It looks like AppGratis might not be the last app-discovery application to be removed from Apple's App Store.

Apple is planning to remove several app-discovery programs currently available in its App Store on the same grounds that it removed AppGratis, All Things Digital is reporting, citing people who claim to have knowledge of Apple's plans. The site's sources say that Apple is worried that app-discovery applications that help promote programs from other developers threaten the App Store's rankings.

AppGratis was removed from the App Store last week in a move that shocked Simon Dalwat, chief executive at AppGratis. In a blog post yesterday, he acknowledged that Apple's move was "a hard hit," but added that his company's "mission is far from finished."

According to AppGratis, its app was removed for violating two provisions in Apple's App Store guidelines that forbid apps to display apps from other developers, as well as programs that push notifications for marketing reasons.

Apple has been at the center of a slew of app-removal battles with developers, and in some cases, has reversed its course to satisfy critics. So far, the company ... [Read more]

In the OS X Security system preferences you can set the system to require a password when the system wakes from sleep or after the screensaver has been active for a period of time. However, you may run into a few cases in which entering your account password then does not work.

One cause can be if you have recently changed the name of your user account. For authentication, OS X will use either the short or long username, along with any aliases that you have associated with your account. However, if you have changed the long username for your account and have not yet restarted or completely logged out and back in, then the system may still have your old account name loaded for quicker authentication. In this situation, if you are prompted to authenticate then the old, now incorrect, username will be presented at the password prompt.

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This is usually not an issue since the username in authentication prompts is generally editable. ... [Read more]