Google has released an update for its Chrome browser, bringing security and 3D improvements.

As with previous updates to Chrome, the biggest boasts of version 12 relate to security. The Safe Browsing behind-the-scenes protection has been extended to warn users against downloading dangerous files, although right now this only applies to Windows .exe files. Mac and Linux users will have to wait a little longer, which might be galling for Mac users hit by the recent MacDefender drive-by download attack.

The new feature relies on a database of known malicious sites maintained by Google and updated by its search robots. This has been used since the first release of Chrome to warn users who visit malicious websites, and it also indentifies sites in Google search results. This is the first time it's been applied to file downloads.

Also new is the ability to delete Adobe Flash Locally Stored Objects (LSOs) within Google Chrome. Otherwise known as Flash cookies, these are files stored on the hard disk that websites use to store information about you, or data that you generate (for example, scores within Flash-based games).

Read the full article here from PCWorld.

To hear the experts tell it, cloud computing may be the most innovative technology development in decades—and the greatest thing since sliced bread—or should be dismissed as a marketing tool for existing know how that's as old as computers themselves and no more revolutionary than pre-packaged bagels.

"Cloud computing is fundamentally new," says Bryan Plug, CEO of Accept Corporation, a management software service company.

"It's an improved way of acquiring business services and is the proverbial 'better, faster, cheaper' way to run many business functions. It's not just a marketing tool," Plug adds.

"The concept of cloud computing is not new," counters Bill Abram, founder and president of Pragmatix, an IT services and technology consulting firm. "In fact, the term 'cloud' is used as a metaphor for the Internet. It's mainly a marketing term."

Read the full article here from CNBC

Once again signaling his close ties with Silicon Valley, President Barack Obama plans to draft Twitter CEO Dick Costolo to his National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

In a White House statement released Thursday evening, Obama named Costolo, along with Scott Charney, corporate VP of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group, McAfee President David G. DeWalt and three others, as potential appointees. The group oversees the availability and reliability of telecom services in the U.S.

Costolo became Twitter CEO last October after co-founder Evan Williams stepped down.

The move is Obama’s latest overture to Silicon Valley. In his January State of the Union address, the presidentname-checked Google and Facebook. The following month, Obama shared a dinner with Eric Schmidt, then-CEO of Google; Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others, at the home of Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr.

The original article appears here from Mashable.

The current structure of our public school system has lead us to a point where both students and teachers are under-performing, and technology will need to play a major role in reinvigorating our schools.

Joel Klein, former Chancellor of the New York City School System, in his recent Atlantic piece explored the crippling inefficiencies of the public school system and how student engagement, test scores and graduation rates suffer as a result. Gaming technology holds the potential to recaptivate students and help teachers who are stretched too thin ensure that each student is receiving personalized attention and absorbing the lessons at hand.

Others are also seeing the huge potential for the gamification of education. Last week, researchers atNew Media Consortium (NMC) in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), released “2011 Horizon Report K-12 Edition.” The report explores six technologies – including gaming — that are poised to have a massive impact on education in the near term, midterm and long term. Gaming is by no means a new concept—I grew up playing Math Blasters and Oregon Trail–but new technology enables game development that is well positioned to transform education in an extremely positive way.

Read more here from Edudemic 

The World Wide Web Consortium has reached an important point in the long journey to standardize HTML5, the next version of the Hypertext Markup Language used to describe Web pages.

HTML5 officially reached "last call" status this week, which means the W3C believes it's got a version of the specification mature enough for organizations to decide whether to express support. But changes still could come: "In practice, last call announcements generate comments that sometimes result in substantive changes to a document," the W3C said in announcing that HTML5 reached last call.

Hypertext Markup Language is a key plank of the World Wide Web technology created by Tim Berners-Lee, who remains involved as the W3C director. "We now invite new voices to let us know whether these specifications address a broad set of needs," he said in a statement.

But HTML5 also is a sore point for the group. HTML has steadily gained in importance as the Web grew far beyond its early roots. But the W3C largely abandoned HTML after releasing version 4.0.1 in 1999.

The W3C focused instead on an incompatible technology called XHML 2.0. That project didn't catch on among Web developers and browser makers, though; the latter formed their own group called the Web Hypertext Applications Technology Working Group (WHATWG) to advance HTML outside the W3C.

Read more from the full article here from CNet.com