Google on Tuesday released Chrome version 27 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version features a big boost to page loads (now 5 percent faster on average) as well as significant updates for developers. You can update to the latest release now using the browser’s built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome.

The speed improvement is thanks to the introduction of “smarter behind-the-scenes resource scheduling,” according to Google. At first, Web content appearing on the screen 5 percent faster on average may not seem like a huge difference, but when you realize how quickly a pages load on Chrome already, it’s a big jump. Starting with this release, the scheduler more aggressively uses an idle connection and demotes the priority of preloaded resources so that they don’t interfere with critical assets.

The Sync FileSystem API is a new offline storage application programming interface for Chrome packaged apps which automatically synchronizes stored data across clients via Google Drive. The files are stored in private sandboxes and can be manipulated with the HTML5 File API and FileSystem API (sample app).

Google also notes a few other enhancements in this release: improved ranking of predictions, improved spell correction, and numerous fundamental improvements for Omnibox predictions. If you’re worried about the company tracking your information, you’ll want to read Logging policies for Chrome Instant.

As in previous releases, Google also included the usual bug fixes, a new version of V8, and so on in Chrome version 27.0.1453.93. For more details, you can check out the full SVN revision log.

Last but certainly not least, Chrome 27 also addresses 14 security holes (11 rated High, two marked Medium, and one considered Low):

• [$1000] [235638] High CVE-2013-2837: Use-after-free in SVG. Credit to Sławomir Błażek.
• [$500] [235311] Medium CVE-2013-2838: Out-of-bounds read in v8. Credit to Christian Holler.
• [$1500] [230176] High CVE-2013-2839: Bad cast in clipboard handling. Credit to Jon of MWR InfoSecurity.
• [$1000] [230117] High CVE-2013-2840: Use-after-free in media loader. Credit to Nils of MWR InfoSecurity.
• [$1000] [227350] High CVE-2013-2841: Use-after-free in Pepper resource handling. Credit to Chamal de Silva.
• [$2000] [226696] High CVE-2013-2842: Use-after-free in widget handling. Credit to Cyril Cattiaux.
• [$1000] [222000] High CVE-2013-2843: Use-after-free in speech handling. Credit to Khalil Zhani.
• [$1000] [196393] High CVE-2013-2844: Use-after-free in style resolution. Credit to Sachin Shinde (@cons0ul).
• [$3133.7] [188092] [179522] [222136] [188092] High CVE-2013-2845: Memory safety issues in Web Audio. Credit to Atte Kettunen of OUSPG.
• [$1000] [177620] High CVE-2013-2846: Use-after-free in media loader. Credit to Chamal de Silva.
• [$1000] [176692] High CVE-2013-2847: Use-after-free race condition with workers. Credit to Collin Payne.
• [$500] [176137] Medium CVE-2013-2848: Possible data extraction with XSS Auditor. Credit to Egor Homakov.
• [171392] Low CVE-2013-2849: Possible XSS with drag+drop or copy+paste. Credit to Mario Heiderich.
• [241595] High CVE-2013-2836: Various fixes from internal audits, fuzzing and other initiatives.

Google thus spent a whopping $14,633.70 in bug bounties this release and fixed three more security bugs compared to the previous Chrome release. These fixes alone should push Chrome users to upgrade as soon as possible.

Top Image credit: casasroger/Flickr

Google on Monday announced it is killing Google Checkout, its online payment processing service, on November 20, 2013. The company is offering merchants a six-month warning to figure out where to go next.

Google officially replaced Checkout with Wallet back in September 2011. The company has been building out the successor recently, and now claims the new platform “enables merchants to meet the demands of a multi-screen world where consumers shop in-stores, at their desks and on their mobile devices.”

Google is giving its users the following information to before the aforementioned kill date, depending on which camp they fall into:

• Merchants without their own payment processing will need to transition to a third-party alternative solution within six months.
• US merchants with payment processing can apply for Google Wallet Instant Buy.
• Merchants selling through Google-hosted marketplaces (such as Google Play, Chrome Web Store, and Offers Marketplace) will be unaffected.

For those in the first group, Google is not offering a replacement processing solution for physical goods and services. The company has, however, partnered with Braintree, Shopify, and Freshbooks; neither of these are ideal as they all still require a transition, but at least Google has negotiated discounted migration options for its Checkout users.

“We recognize this transition may be difficult; it impacts you and your business,” Google says. “We’re committed to helping you with a smooth transition. While we are unable to offer a direct replacement for Google Checkout, we are continuing to invest in a variety of exciting new payments products to meet real world needs for both buyers and sellers.”

Those who find themselves in the second group should know about both the Google Wallet API and the Instant Buy Android API. While the former has been around for a while and works for mobile sites, the latter was just launched last week at Google I/O 2013 and lets developers integrate payment features into Android apps.

Those in the last group will continue to be supported. Google plans to automatically transition them to the Google Wallet Merchant Center in the next few weeks.

Google has been doing quite a bit of spring cleaning recently, though this particular axing appears to have been delayed and slightly more thought out. The company likely wanted to get some of its alternatives together and give users a lot of time to transition. Both of those are critical when it comes to people’s livelihoods.

See also – Google to shut down Calendar features, Google Sync, Google Calendar Sync, Issue Tracker Data API, and Punchd and Google to axe Google Reader on July 1 as part of larger round of app closures

Top Image Credit: Dimitris Petridis

Over the last few months, Google has been working on porting its Chrome OS app launcher to Chrome for the desktop. The majority of the progress has been on Windows, but now it looks like Google is readying the OS X version, at least in Chromium, meaning Apple’s platform will likely get it next, followed by Linux.

The addition was first noted by developer and Google open-source Chromium evangelist François Beaufort. He points to a Chromium code review that changes how long titles for the Mac are being displayed.

Here’s how the feature looks on the Mac:

To see the feature for yourself, you’ll need to get Chromium for Mac. You can turn it on by using the –show-app-list switch.

Google has previously explained the feature is meant to be “the same experience as the app launcher on Chromebooks, but for other platforms.” If you’ve never used a Chromebook, the app launcher is a little window that lists all your apps in one place.

The app launcher will show up only after you install a Chrome packaged app from the Chrome Web Store. For those who don’t know, Chrome packaged apps are written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but launch outside the browser, work offline by default, and access certain APIs not available to Web apps.

The app launcher first showed up in the Chrome dev channel on Windows back in February, though Google said Mac and Linux versions were coming soon. The feature then made it into Chrome 26 beta, again only on Windows, but didn’t make it into the final version 26 release of the browser in March, presumably because the Mac and Linux ports weren’t yet ready.

Chromium is the open source Web browser project that shares much of the same code as Google Chrome, and new features are often added there first. We expect it to show up on the Mac side soon, either at the same time or followed closely by the Linux flavor. Google is likely planning to push the app launcher for all three platforms with Chrome 28 or Chrome 29, both of which will be out in the next few months.

Top Image Credit: m4tik

Just days after Google’s I/O developer conference ended, the company is rolling out an update to its Google+ app for Android which adds new photo and location features, as well as related hashtags to the stream.

The new photos section now includes automatic back-ups, which will save users’ photos safely and privately as they’re taken. This has been available on iOS for sometime, although users had to keep the app running in order to send the images to the cloud.

Google is also bringing over many of its new photo-editing features from the desktop version of Google+, including Auto Enhance, which makes subtle improvements automatically. There’s also Auto Highlight, which creates a selection of shots for the user to look over and share as a separate album. It’s an intriguing solution; most users will be sceptical about trusting Google’s algorithm, but it drastically speeds up the process of creating a respectable album from hundreds of holiday snaps.

Auto Awesome is the final addition, adding the ability to create new, light-hearted versions of existing images – such as animations or panoramas – based on photos in users’ existing libraries.

Location sharing has also been overhauled in the Google+ app to give users a quicker way of seeing where their friends, family and colleagues are. Until now, users’ current whereabouts were only visible from their profile page, provided they had chosen to share it with other people through specific Google+ circles.

This has now been updated with a new ‘Locations’ section, available from the side-menu, which shows the location of users’ friends on a rather handy map. It might be a small feature, but the idea of monitoring where other people are in order to make plans and arrange meet ups sounds awfully similar to Foursquare’s playbook.

In the stream, the Google+ app has also been tweaked to include the new automated hashtags found on the desktop version. They appear at the top-right hand corner of individual posts and tapping on them will produce new streams of related content. Neat.

Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Product, Google+, said today: “Photos, location and the stream are only some of the things we’ve improved in today’s update. Notifications are nicer to look at and easier to use. You can edit additional profile fields on the go. And there’s one-tap access to the all new Hangouts app — just to name a few.”

The new Google+ app for Android is rolling out today in the Google Play store.

➤ Google+ | Android

Image Credit: KIMIHIRO HOSHINO for AFP / Getty Images

These days there are few things bigger than Facebook on the Internet, but Google-owned YouTube is one of them, and today the world’s top online video service marked its eight year anniversary by revealing that it is now seeing more than 100 hours of video uploaded every minute.

That’s right, every minute. That’s quite astonishing. It works out as more than four days of video uploaded each minute.

YouTube, like Facebook, is used by more than 1 billion people per month, and it has gone from strength to strength in recent times. Back in 2011, YouTube users were adding 48 hours of video per minute, while that figure jumped to 72 hours per week last year.

YouTube paid tribute to its users and incredible milestones in a blog post (via @hunterwalk) that includes the following comment:

Over the years, you’ve continued to surprise and delight us. And the past year was no exception. Who would have guessed that a tux-rocking K-pop star would shatter records left and right or that Sesame Street would go global with 1 billion views? That’s one of our favorite things about our global audience: you’re as unpredictable as you are creative and irreverent.

This year, Google is taking the service into new territory with the recent launch of paid-for channels that are aimed at rivalling streaming services like Hulu and Netflix.

This isn’t YouTube’s first foray into original content. It kicked off its Channels program in 2011, which provides selected content partners with an undisclosed sum of funding to create content for YouTube channels. The money is not a freebie but instead an up-front payment of future advertising earnings over the next year. That encourages them to invest in equipment and talent to produce compelling shows — that’s the aim, at least.

Channels began in the US, but has since been expanded to a range of new markets, including, the UK, France, Germany and Japan, with more expansions planned.

There was controversy this year as a number of partners were reported to have not been offered fresh terms. But, with YouTube’s subscription plans now public, Channels appears to have refocused on upcoming content makers, which might go towards explaining this.

Note: Thanks to those who picked up on the error in the initial headline. The amount is 100 hours of video per minute, not 100 million…just yet.

Cue Doctor Evil…via YouTube, of course.

Headline image via korosirego / Flickr

Google has started to ramp up the selection of apps available for Google Glass after official apps for Facebook, Twitter, CNN, Elle, Evernote and Tumblr were released at Google I/O on Friday, but now there’s an easy way for almost anyone to create a dedicated Glass app.

New York-based developer Chris Maddern, who runs Applaunch and works for video startup Animoto, has released an open-source code that is effectively a template to create basic apps for any Web-based service, and with minimal fuss. In fact, Maddern says 15 minutes is all that it takes.

The code uses the Mirror API and is available from GitHub (here). It requires merely a few database tweaks — each of which Maddern spells out in the description — before an app that connects a Web service and Glass is born. From there, those with a spirit for adventure (and coding experience, of course) can add new features and advance the app as they see fit.

Importantly, all apps created will run Google’s Glassware system. That gives them full access to and interaction with Glass, unlike some other hacker creations, such as this cool app which takes photos using winks, which can only be deployed as APKs.

There will be more and Maddern tells TNW that, with version 1.0 now out, he is working on adding “more complex features”, which will include replying to and updating items, as well as including timelines.

Beyond that, he is aiming to make things even easier for code-averse folk. He has plans for a Web app that lets users create and edit Glass apps “without ever writing a line of code or seeing a Heroku terminal”.

The Glass development community is small (but dedicated) since just 2,000 devices have been sold at this pre-consumer launch point. Maddern is jumping in early, hoping that his efforts will allow people and companies to “kickstart” their focus on the spec-tacular new hardware from Google.

Google ran a number of ‘Glass Foundry’ developer events which have helped get a number of apps out into the world already, while others have sprouted from enthusiasts.

We may not all be in a position to be full-time Glassholes right now, but the barriers  to creating apps are dropping to allow more people and businesses to bring content to the platform. Many will likely wait for Glass to go mainstream before devoting resources, but this code is an interesting and easy way to experiment early on.

The code is fresh out thus there are no apps built from it yet. But those seeking an example can check out this unofficial Facebook app that Maddern developed while working on the code last week.

➤ Google Glass Mirror Ruby Sinatra Scaffold on Github

Related: Google’s Glass fireside chat: Ugly prototypes, privacy and its potential to go mainstream

Headline image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Google is expanding its Google Offers service, which reminds users via a mobile app or email whenever there’s a limited-time deal at a nearby business, so that users can now see, save and share promotions from within their Google+ stream.

Only a select number of brands and companies will be able to share Google Offers through their respective Google+ accounts to begin with. NOOK, Hello Kitty, Art.com and Adafruit Industries have already started sharing exclusive deals through the service, although there could be more waiting in the wings.

Restaurant-rating group Zagat is also on the list of early adopters, which is notable given that Google recently unveiled support for Zagat listings and ratings throughout its refreshed Google Maps service.

“You can save these offers directly from the post,” Dennis Troper, Product Management Director of Google+ said. “Once saved, you can use the Google Offers app or simply follow the email confirmation on how to easily redeem the offer online or in-store.”

Google needs to give potential users as many reasons as possible to log-in and explore the Google+ social network on a regular basis. The company recently unveiled new photo features at its I/O developer conference, including automatic enhancements and album selections, to entice users back to the service.

The company is pitching Google+ today, however, as a counterpoint to Twitter, Foursquare and numerous daily deals sites whereby users can follow brands and discover deals about their latest products or services.

Businesses have been keen to sign-up to Google+, but the perceived engagement with users is much lower than that of Facebook or Twitter. That could be due to the overall userbase of each social network, but regardless, the addition of Google Offers should give companies, brands and users another reason to keep one eye on their stream.

Google Offers was launched in May 2011 and is available as a dedicated app for both Android and iOS devices. It shares many of the same traits being adopted by Foursquare at the moment, whereby users are shown timely offers based on their location, preferences and order history.

Neither company has managed to amass the sheer number of users needed to make the concept a well-known and instinctive part of people’s daily routine, but Google arguably has the infrastructure and track record to get there first. Is this an indicator that Google will be giving Google Offers some renewed focus and attention moving forward? We’ll have to wait and see.

Image Credit: KIMIHIRO HOSHINO for AFP / Getty Images

Career website Glassdoor has released a rather interesting report regarding what employees think about their companies’ prospects for the next two quarters: across 250,000 firms, only 38 percent are positive. Google topped the list with 86 percent of its workforce believing the company’s business will perform better in the next six months.

Google has arguably had a very promising last couple of quarters, most recently seeing its valuation soar past $300 billion. This week the company held its annual Google I/O conference, featuring a slew of announcements, most of which were well received.

Rounding out the top three on the Glassdoor list are Qualcomm (76 percent of employees believe the business outlook will improve) and Yahoo (75 percent of employees were positive). The trio all had 0 percent of their workers projecting their respective businesses would get worse.

Here’s the full top 10 list:

At The Next Web, we’re particularly interested in tech companies, but in this case the results don’t require much picking and choosing. You’ll notice that the top five companies are all tech firms, not hugely surprising but definitely a noteworthy occurrence.

Other tech giants aren’t doing as well, at least if you ask their employees. Here 10 more results for a few worth noting:

• Apple: 59 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• Huawei Technologies: 55 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• Cisco: 49 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• Oracle: 49 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• IBM: 41 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• Microsoft: 35 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• HP: 32 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• Intel: 31 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• Best Buy: 25 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.
• Dell: 22 percent of employees say business outlook getting better.

Most of these finding are in line with what you might expect, although you might expect Microsoft and Intel staff to be more optimistic about their respective company’s progress. We’ll be looking to see how these results change in the next report, as some outlooks are bound to be drastically adjusted in the coming year.

See also – Top 50 places to work in 2013: Facebook first, Google sixth, Apple 34th, Microsoft doesn’t make it

Top Image Credit: toprankblog / Flickr

Today Google sat with a number of its Glass employees to answer a few formal questions, and a number from the audience that packed Room 7 of the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The session was a brief 40 minutes, as have been other moots at the I/O event, excepting that mammoth 215 minute keynote that kicked the event off.

The following text is a rebuilt rendition of the questions asked, and the answers tendered during the session. Do note that responses from Google staff are paraphrased from their answers, while the final section is a summary of the responses given to audience questions.

Google’s Questions

Directed at Isabelle Olsson, lead industrial designer of Glass: You have been on glass “since the prototype was still a phone attached to a scuba mask,” how did we get form there to here? And what is next?

It was very clear from the start that this was not incremental improve on what already existed. Instead, Glass is something new. It’s a new kind of wearable technology.

Building something like Glass is very messy at points. I never forget my first day on the team. I walked into a room full of people with crazy things on their head. How do you go from something like that to what we have today? We have taken a reductionist principle, removing everything that isn’t required.

We focus on three key areas:

• Lightness
• Simplicity
• Scalability

By lightness what we mean is pretty straight forward: we are obsessed with weight. Not like the fashion industry, but we do care about every single gram. If Glass isn’t light, we won’t want to wear it for more than 10 minutes. This implicates balance as well, meaning how heavy is Glass on your nose?

But lightness is also visual, which is part of the reason that we hid components behind the frame of the device itself. Regarding simplicity, we initially thought that it would require dozens of adjustment points. The current version sports just one.

Glass is built to be scalable. In this stage what that means is that you can remove the frame from the main board. The two are separable by a screw. Other companies can therefore create hardware for the guts of Glass to help prop it up on your face.

So, Glass is a hardware project as well as a software project.

Isabelle Olsson discussing Google Glass at Google I/O 2012.

Directed at Charles Mendis, an engineer working on Glass:  The idea that Glass is both a device and a platform, could you expand on that?

We want Glass to have a big footprint. A core principle of Glass is that we build on the same APIs that you do. All Google products that run on Glass are built on top of the same APIs that are open to others. So, Google Now is built on the same API as the Facebook application.

A similar concept will be in effect for the Glass Development Kit, or GDK. However, we are looking for feedback in terms of what to build. We need to know what people are doing with Glass, what the Explorers are up to. We will build an API that suits what is needed. The GDK, however, is not right around the corner in terms of release. Instead, Google wants to incorporate feedback from the community.

Directed at Steve Lee, Glass product director: The Explorer has been an almost unprecedented way to introduce products. Why did Google pick that path?

Why are we here? Because we believe that Glass can transform the way that people use technology. The Explorer program is an important part of how Glass is being taken to the world. Who are the first people to get Glass? Developers!

To fully realize the potential of Glass we needed developers to work on on the platform. I’m happy to say that by earlier this week we had invited all 2,000 Explorers to pick up their device. The next group will be those who signed up using the hashtag #IfIHadGlass.

We picked 8,000 people from more than 100,000 applications. Invites will be rolling out soon to this non-developer group. It’s comprised of educators, dentists, and the like. We’re excited to see what they will do with Glass.

We’re going to update Glass every month. This will include both new features and bug fixes.

Directed at each in turn: If you could ask the developers to build on thing on glass what would it be?

Steve: I am an exercise fanatic, and would love to have a fitness app on Glass, and to have it integrate with my heart rate monitor. With that app, I could have information relevant to my workout fed to me, without breaking my stride. This would also make cycling a much safer activity.

Charles: I would love to be able to pay with Glass. To just say, ok, pay, and then move on.

Isabella: I’m really in to karaoke. If there was a way to sing and have the lyrics located in Glass, so that you could face your drunk friends as you scream, that would be awesome.

Audience Questions 

Question: I’m curious what you think about the privacy questions that Glass raises, and if it is different from a smartphone in terms of etiquette, and how much data will be tapped [stored] by Google?

The social implications and etiquette have been at the top of Google’s mind since the beginning. And not just for people who buy Glass, but for the people around them as well. Google is proud of how seriously the team is taking it.

There are examples of how the technology has been designed with social implications in mind: The display is above the eye, for example. Google learned early on the importance of eye contact among humans. I know if you are paying attention to me, as we have eye contact. And I know if you are looking up and not paying attention to me, but instead to Glass.

Many privacy questions relate specifically to the camera. Google, knowing that it mattered, decided that you had to either push a button, or speak to it, to activate it. This provides a social cue as to what you are doing, akin to holding up a smartphone when you want to take a picture.

A third example: When Glass is active, its display is lit. Observers can see that. The display will be active when Glass is active, period. That will be part of the GDK, and is part of Google policy. Apps will not be allowed to fail this requirement.

Finally, you have to stare at someone to record them. If you stare at someone in the bathroom, they are going to notice.

Follow up question: Facial recognition?

Facial recognition is something that Google has worked on. They can imagine it existing through a third party. The company appeared to decline stating that they would build it themselves, likely to avoid painfully ignorant headlines.

The company is “not scared” of it, but wants to ensure that it has clear user benefit.

Question: Is the side of Glass multitouch?

It is! And Google claims that it intends to improve it. Right now, for example, a two-finger swipe down motion causes a different action than a one-finger swipe down action.

Question: Are you planning on making Glass less noticeable?

Google built five different colors of Glass in order to satisfy different personalities. After wearing them around for almost a year, Google “started seeing  how important colors are. In the company’s view, they are “more important than you would ever imagine.” The company intends to release new colors in the future.

Question: How does the display work? Is it a small projector? An LCD display? And, do you see people using it for short-term interaction, or for longer-term interactions?

Google had no comment on the details of how its technology worked. It did note, however, that the screen is ‘projected’ out around six or seven feet, or that is at least how it feels.

Regarding the duration of interaction with Glass, the company does not intend it to be used to be used watch a full length movie or book. That, Google said, would be uncomfortable. The company instead imagines that interactions with Glass will be on the “micro” level.

Question: How did you pick the first five colors for Glass, and how did you test them?

Google built monthly prototypes of Glass, which gave them the benefit of being able to product a number of color options. They then watched to see which colors were fought over. This, Google said, was a good way to see what was “resonating” with people.

The company wanted “poppy” colors for folks that wanted to be spoken to, and “bland” colors for those who did not

Question: How do you reach the mainstream with the promise of Glass?

Google claims to be surprised at the reaction to Glass, not only on Silicon Valley, but also among normal people. Regular folks, like the rest of us, are still trying to figure out what Glass is, and what it might become.

The company, however, does in fact think that Glass will become part of the mainstream. That was a surprisingly bold statement.

Question: What does Google need in terms of better components for Glass?

Given that Glass shares much with the smartphone industry, its needs are similar: it needs better, higher-capacity batteries. That technology, unlike processors is not “doubling ever year.”

Question: Bluetooth headsets enjoyed a time in the sun, but later became reviled as a negative cultural marker. Does Glass risk the same fate?

This is something that Google has specifically thought about. People, Google stated, never say that they enjoy being around folks wearing a Bluetooth headset. By contrast, they want people who spend time with people who have Glass to have their lives enriched.

Read other stories from Google I/O 2013 here.

Top Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images, second image AFP/Getty Images

Steve Lee, Product Director for Google Glass, Isabelle Olsson, the lead industrial designer on Glass, Senior Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan and Glass engineer Charles Mendis held a chat with developers and press on Thursday at the Google I/O conference.

Jordan announced that Google didn’t have an updated timeline for the release of Glass (it previously said that it would be showing up for consumers next year) but did confirm that it had ‘invited’ all 2,000 Explorers who had pre-ordered at Google I/O last year to pick up their glass.

During the chat, Lee announced that Google would be shipping one software update every month with new features, polish and bug fixes. Many of the updates would incorporate suggestions from developers and Glass Explorers.

As far as what kinds of apps they would individually like to see on Glass, Lee says he’d love to see fitness apps on the device. Mendis says that he’d love to see payment apps integrated with the app, especially when he’s shopping with his kids. Olsson said she loves Karaoke and wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of experience show up on Glass.