Google's search engine in China appeared to have been partially blocked overnight Thursday, but a Google spokeswoman said the service was up and running again by Friday morning local time.

A Google site that monitors the company's services in China indicated that its Web search service had been blocked, along with its image search, ads and mobile services.

Google's services in China are being closely watched for signs of disruption ever since the company stopped censoring its search results there earlier this year.

Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said the company overestimated the latest disruption, however.

"Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it's possible that our machines can overestimate the level of blockage," she said. "That appears to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage."

More: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179882/

MIcrosoft will ship a beta of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in September, a company executive said today.

If the timeline is accurate, the IE9 beta release will come a month later than earlier speculation, which had settled on August, a pick based in large part on PowerPoint slides purportedly from a Microsoft presentation that focused on Windows 8, the next iteration of the company's OS.

Today, Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, said that IE9 would reach beta this fall. "We're really excited about IE9, which will be beta and coming out in September," said Turner during the company's annual day-long presentation to Wall Street analysts.

Turner also boasted of Internet Explorer's recent turnaround, claiming that it had gained usage share the last two months.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179868/

Long-video makers can rejoice, as YouTube has extended the allotted time of user uploads from 10 to 15 minutes.

According to a Thursday post on YouTube's blog, increasing the limit was the most requested feature by YouTube users, though it had to be put on hold while the company worked on other projects and behind-the-scenes infrastructure. In March, for instance, the company announced that 24 hours of video was uploaded every minute. That's up from around six hours just three years ago. Given the new limit, that's a metric that's likely to keep on growing.

When YouTube first launched in 2005, users could actually upload clips that were longer than 10 minutes, though without limits it was easy to upload full-length, copyrighted content.

More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20012090-248.html

Once thought to be unhackable, the Android phone is anything but, according to researchers presenting at Black Hat 2010.

FBI details worst social networking cyber crime problemsNot only has malicious software cloaked in a wallpaper application stolen personal information from infected phones and sent it to a Web site in China, but researchers from Lookout Mobile Security have found a way to take the phones over completely - including top-of-the-line models hawked by major wireless carriers.

In one presentation, Lookout's CEO John Herring said the Jackeey Wallpaper app, which has been downloaded millions of times, can gather passwords, browser history, the subscriber ID and SIM card numbers and text messages.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179863/

Even Microsoft can't move software makers to patch their products.

According to data released Wednesday by the company, third-party developers patched just 45% of the vulnerabilities that Microsoft's security team reported to them during the 12 months from July 2009 to June 2010.

The newest number, however, was more than triple that during the year-long stretch through June 2009, when developers patched a measly 13% of the bugs Microsoft reported.

Yesterday's data came from a progress report issued by the Microsoft Vulnerability Research, or MSVR, a program launched in August 2008 in which the firm's security researchers report bugs they find in third-party software, and coordinate with other firms to make sure that details of the flaws don't go public until patches are ready.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179846/

Rumors are swirling Facebook may be adding an actual "Delete Account" option to its service. Rumors are also swirling this is just a red herring -- that Facebook is trying out different language that makes it seem as if it's offering an easy way out without actually changing anything substantive.

Which is true? Only Facebook knows for sure, and they ain't talking. Well, they're talking, but they're not saying much. Per Facebook product manager David Breger (posting a comment on NextWeb):

"This is one of many tests that we’re always running. The test includes a variation of the account deletion option for a small percentage of users. Testing potential features is an important part of our product development process, and tells us if they benefit users in the way we think they will, what we might do to make them even better, and in some instances, when we need to go back to the drawing board."

More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/202111/

Last week, Facebook announced that it had amassed 500 million users, a formable portion of the global Internet audience. But even as Mark Zuckerberg and company celebrates, others are busy trying to uproot Facebook's popularity by establishing a set of open standards to share Facebook-like features across the Internet.

Just like open standards for e-mail and the Web broke users free from proprietary closed networks of the early 1990s, so too could a new set of standards allow people to share their thoughts, photos and comments across the Internet, regardless of what social networking services they use, argued Evan Prodromou, head of open source microblogging software provider StatusNet, during the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), held in Portland, Oregon last week.

More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/202089/

Adobe and Microsoft are now working together to give security companies a direct line into their bug-fixing efforts.

By year's end, Adobe will start using the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) to share details on its latest patches, according to Brad Arkin, Adobe's director of product security and privacy. "The MAPP program is the gold standard for how the software vendors should be sharing information about product vulnerabilities prior to shipping security updates," he said.

Adobe initially wanted to reproduce MAPP, but soon realized that it would take a lot of work to build a program similar to Microsoft's, which was piloted two years ago. Arkin's team began discussions with Microsoft, at first in hopes of picking up some tips. "Eventually, together, we came to the conclusion that it would be a lot more fun to work together on this rather than Microsoft helping us to reinvent the wheel," he said.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article...

Extensions fans, rejoice! On Wednesday, Apple released Safari 5.0.1, which officially enables Safari Extensions by default, and introduced the Safari Extensions Gallery. The gallery, located on a page on Apple's site, allows users to search for extensions, browse by category, and install them with just one click if the user is running Safari 5.0.1.

Apple began soliciting submissions for the Extensions Gallery earlier this month. Based on Web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, Extensions allow developers to bring new features and functionality to Apple's Web browser. Safari Extensions were introduced in Safari 5, released early last month, but the feature was turned off by default, requiring users to choose to enable Extensions.

More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/202073/

Most gadget owners know that leaving any piece of electronic equipment in the direct sunlight isn't a great idea. Now an iPad owner, who claims their touch-screen tablet overheats and turns off when left in the sunlight, is suing Apple.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the complaint was filed Friday in federal court in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The suit is seeking class-action status and asks for unspecified damages because the device "overheats so quickly under common weather conditions." The suit says Apple's iPad "does not live up to the reasonable consumer's expectations created by Apple.

It's not the first time we've heard the iPad overheating complaint. Not long after the first iPads went on sale in early April some new owners reported the issue.

More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20011873-260.html