TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Google offered a preview of its upcoming Chrome OS during an event today. Stressing its target audience, Google said it is building Chrome OS with web users in mind, and that it probably isn't going to be a replacement for Windows, OS X or Linux desktops. Instead, the search giant is trying to form a new niche.

The unique aspect of Chrome OS is that it will be completely executed inside the Chrome browser. For example, things like applications, configuration, and file management are all contained within tabs on the Chrome interface.

One key characteristic of Chrome is that actual data storage and programs themselves are all stored and run online -- local machine storage is only used to speed up those processes. You can liken Chrome OS to a thin client of sorts, though the application is clearly different.

Chrome OS is also fully open source, and will run on a wider variety of hardware than standard x86-based PCs. However, it is specifically tailored to the hardware Google intends to support, meaning you may have to seek out "Chrome OS approved" hardware. The demo, which you can watch here, was done with an Eee PC. That being the case, I have a feeling Google will push to make Chrome OS available on a very wide variety of mobile devices.

Google hasn't given any timetables or specific release dates, only assuring people that development is underway.

Nvidia has released its first drivers to support the GPU acceleration brought by Adobe's Flash Player 10.1. Adobe introduced a public beta version of Flash 10.1 just yesterday, which delivers hardware-based H.264 video acceleration to Windows PCs. The new functionality should make it easier to view HD videos on sites like YouTube (which recently announced support for 1080p), Vimeo and Hulu.

In addition to Flash Player 10.1 compatibility, Nvidia's GeForce 195.55 WHQL-candidate drivers bring various bug fixes from the v195.39 beta release. Antialiasing modes in Borderlands can now be configured through the NV Control Panel, performance issues along with shadow flickering in Need for Speed: Shift has been addressed, and the Nvidia driver no longer crashes in 3DMark06. The full release notes are made available separately for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Grab your download below:

Windows XP | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista and 7 | Windows Vista and 7 64-bit

Just a week after Mozilla pushed out the Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 release, they have readied the next version for eager testers to try. Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 is now available for download, bringing with it a short list of bug fixes.

Two of the biggest fixes posted included an issue with Firefox crashing due to interaction with certain plugins, along with the ability for the browser to execute scripts asynchronously. The latter, Mozilla claims, will bring a speed boost in loading certain pages.

A comprehensive list of all the fixes since the last beta is available here. Many of the bugs were crashes, a few were related to the user interface and other aesthetics, while others were related to mechanics like window focus. If you're already using a 3.6 beta, now's a good time to upgrade.

Speaking at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference today, Steven Sinofsky, president of the company's Windows and Windows Live division, has officially announced plans for the next version of IE: Internet Explorer 9. The new browser is still very early in the development process, with work beginning just three weeks ago, but early builds are already showing smoother rendering and improved performance.

To accomplish this Internet Explorer 9 will shift text and graphics rendering to the graphics chip. Sinofsky showed a few examples, including one where Bing Maps got around 14 FPS without hardware graphics acceleration, and up to 60 FPS once the feature was switched on. The technology uses DirectX's Direct2D application programming interface to boost CSS, DHTML and JavaScript performance.

A new JavaScript engine will also be built into Internet Explorer 9, as well as improved interoperability and standards support -- including HTML 5 and CSS3. No estimates were given on a launch date, but considering IE8 was released just last March, it could still be a while. In the meantime, Microsoft's Channel 9 team has posted three demo videos which you can check out after the break. (Silverlight required)

A new version of the popular Linux desktop distro originally based off Red Hat is now available. Fedora 12, named Constantine, brings a host of new software and feature enhancements. Among the new additions include Empathy, an alternative to Pidgin and other clients for instant messaging, Bluetooth audio support, updated package management, more tablet support and a host of other additions. You can browse through a short list using the Fedora 12 release notes, or view a slightly more detailed release announcement here.

While not the most popular distro available, Fedora tries to offset itself from others, like Ubuntu, by adhering to "purist" standards. Fedora only includes software released under a free and open source license, which prevents them from including a lot of de-facto features you might find elsewhere.

Proprietary video and audio codecs like mp3 support, Nvidia and AMD drivers, DVD playback, flash and much more do not make a default appearance in Fedora as a result. All of these can be installed, of course, at the user's discretion, but it gives you an idea of just how much software many people take for granted is not supplied truly for "free".

If you are interested in downloading Fedora 12, it is available through their site.

Nearly two years after unveiling the project, Mozilla is finally offering the first beta of its experimental Weave Sync add-on for Firefox. The service is intended to synchronize bookmarks, passwords and web history across browsers on multiple devices, including smartphones when Fennec is released next year. Data is sent up to Mozilla's servers and back down again to any other instances of Firefox you use.


The updated software is reportedly faster, simpler and less obtrusive for the user than previous versions. Specifically, Mozilla has ditched the “about:weave” config option from the tool, and has set an "interestingness" criteria that works like Firefox's Awesome Bar so that the most interesting of frequently accessed items are synchronized first. There's also a new incremental syncing mechanism that helps boost performance by breaking up data into "chunks" and synchronizing in the background.

The idea behind Weave is to allow a seamless jump from one device to another, so users can pick up their browsing experience, including open tabs and recently closed pages, from precisely where they left off. If you’re using Firefox 3.5 or greater on more than one computer, you might want to give it a try -- though you should keep in mind that Weave is still in beta and could conflict with certain add-ons.

Adobe today announced the first public beta of Flash 10.1, which despite the small version bump suggesting it is a minor upgrade, finally delivers support for hardware-based H.264 video acceleration. For now the new functionality is limited to Windows computers, but it's worth getting excited over anyway, as it means you'll get smooth HD Flash video playback while significantly reducing the workload on the CPU.

This couldn't come at a better time with 1080p HD YouTube videos launching this week. At this stage Nvidia chips should work best since the company worked directly with Adobe -- AnandTech has put the new hardware accelerated video playback to the test and reports that Hulu playback on Ion is "nearly perfect." ATI Radeon 3xxx and Radeon/Mobile Radeon 4xxx, Intel 4 series chipsets and Broadcom Crystal HD models are also supported. Unfortunately for most netbook owners, GMA500 and GMA950 integrated graphics are off the list.


Adobe plans to bring its updated Flash Player technology to mobile devices as well, starting with the Palm Pre and then completing versions for other major smartphones by the first half of 2010.

The company also announced an AIR 2 beta which allows developers to build more feature-rich applications, including full support for mass storage, multi-touch gestures and accelerometer support, communication with actual native apps, USB storage device detection and claims of significant performance increases.

Google's much-anticipated operating system, Chrome OS, will be available for download next week. That is at least according to a "reliable source" cited by TechCrunch, who claims we can expect official driver support only for a small set of devices in this early version.

When first announcing the project back in July, Google had pledged to make its source code available before the end of the year. This rumor seems to be in line with those promises. However, without proper driver support the operating system will be useless to the average user. By the sound of it next week's release will most likely be just a collection of code meant for software developers to tinker with.

As earlier reported, Google's operating system is built on a Linux foundation and should be very Web-centric. Chrome OS applications will run right in the browser, and they'll be cross-compatible with other standards-compliant browsers on other platforms. Companies like Acer, Asus and HP are reportedly backing the project and may have netbooks running Chrome OS ready for customers in the second half of 2010.

Even though a public beta build is expected to arrive as soon as next week at the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, those of you who can't wait until then can apparently find the Office 2010 code already on torrent sites. According to Neowin, the Professional Plus version of Microsoft's next-gen productivity suite has been making the rounds online marked as Beta 2 (build 14.0.4514.1009).


The beta is an update to the technology preview of the software that was leaked in May and officially released in July, though the most notable changes here are merely a "refined" interface and new program icons. The leak reportedly requires a product key to install, but Technical Preview keys seem to be working just fine.

In addition to its desktop applications, Microsoft is also readying browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Preview versions of the first three were released back in September. It's unclear if they will also see an update next week, all Microsoft is promising are "some exiting news" at PDC. (Image source: Craving Tech)

Mozilla released a second version of the Firefox 3.6 beta yesterday, and issued an update for the first Firefox 3.6 beta. The new build contains over 190 fixes from the original beta, along with several improvements for web developers, add-on developers, and users.

Among the fixes is a mechanism that prevents incompatible software from crashing Firefox. New features include built-in support for Personas, an alert for out of date plug-ins, the ability to display open, native video at full screen, support for poster frames, the WOFF font format, new CSS DOM and HTML5 web technologies, and improved JavaScript performance as well as overall browser responsiveness and startup time.

Mozilla notes that developers can read more about the new features in Firefox 3.6 on the Mozilla Developer Center. You can download the second Firefox 3.6 beta here: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. Remember that many add-ons may not work with 3.6 yet, but you might have luck with this workaround.

Windows 7 continues to blaze trails, both in new sales and in upgrades of existing machines. As of the second week in November, less than three weeks since the official release, Windows 7 has reportedly snagged over 4% of the global OS market. At that speed, Windows 7 is outpacing its predecessor at an alarming rate. It took Vista roughly six months after release to reach 4% share.

This momentum may continue through the end of the year, when PC sales are traditionally high. If it does, it will be interesting to see where most of the users are coming from -- be it upgrades from XP, Vista, or new machines. Regardless, the message is clear: Windows 7 is growing at an astounding rate.

A report earlier in the month indicated that Windows 7 was selling significantly better than Vista in retail, which was undoubtedly affected by pre-order discounts. It is possible that as pricing returns to normal, retail sales could decline. That point may be moot, however -- it is safe to say that from this point onward, Vista sales will come to a halt.

Looking to put e-book content on more devices, Amazon has released the Kindle for PC beta today, allowing its customers to purchase and read books from the Kindle Store right on their computer screens -- even if you don't own the actual device. On the other hand if you already have a Kindle, iPhone or iPod touch, the free application will let you sync your purchases across all of them.


Kindle for PC offers many of the options you'll find on the hardware reader, plus full-color images in several books. Some are speculating the latter might mean that a color Kindle is on its way. You can also read notes and highlights created on your Kindle device, but you can't create them on your PC for now, nor you will be able to access blogs, newspapers or magazines from within the app -- which is not really a big deal given you'll be sitting at your computer anyway.

Windows 7 users can use multi-touch pinching gestures to zoom in, and in future releases, turn pages with finger swipes. Other upcoming features include a search function and the ability to zoom in or rotate images. Amazon's well-known brand name in the market will probably help it shift a lot of books directly to computers, we only hope they'd loosen the DRM restrictions.

Firefox 3.6 finally hit its first beta milestone during the weekend, so those of you who were holding off until a more mature build of the upcoming browser became available will be glad to know this is it, no more test candidates or nightly builds needed.

We've been closely watching the development of Firefox's next iteration which brings a long list of additions and refinements to the popular Web browser. After a small developmental setback, Beta 1 arrives highlighting the following new features:

• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames
• Support for the WOFF font format
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies

Since the release of Google Chrome, a lot more focus has been put on browser's speed, not only by Mozilla but all major players including Microsoft. While I still consider Firefox the best all-around browser out there (in good part thanks to the numerous useful add-ons available), I've been experimenting severe slowdown problems on JavaScript heavy pages, whereas even Internet Explorer seems to behave just fine.

Other additions should appeal to a variety of users, depending on what you like to do with your browser. Personas support lets you skin your browser instantly, in fact you can preview Firefox's modified looks by merely hovering over the different styles available. Video support continues to be enhanced on the browser, while developers will be keen about Web Open Font Format (WOFF), HTML5 and CSS' new features support.

Last but not least, Firefox 3.6 Beta will likely break a majority of your current add-ons, however, if you are lucky you should still be able to override compatibility and put them to use regardless.

Nvidia has released GeForce 195.39 beta drivers, its first to support the OpenCL 1.0 specification. The version also brings over 200 bug fixes, support for CUDA Toolkit 3.0 (which will be released in the coming weeks), and SLI support for various titles including Borderlands, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, G-Force, FIFA Soccer 2010, League of Legends: Clash of Fates, NHL 2009, Order of War, Pro Evolution Soccer 2010, Race On, and Star Trek: D-A-C, along with a boost in SLI performance for Champions Online and Dragon-Age: Origins.

Fudzilla notes that SLI support for the above titles is already present in Nvidia's SLI Profile Update 3, which was made available on October 15, so the recent beta release doesn't bring anything too new on that front. Among the couple hundred bug fixes is an error which caused GeForce G210 to switch to 4-bit color mode, and another that caused Battlefield Heroes to freeze on the GTX 280. For a complete rundown on the changes, take a look at the release notes (XP, Vista, 7). Grab your download below:

Windows XP | XP/Server 2003 64-bit | Windows Vista/7 | Vista/7 64-bit

Few years ago a little-known feature called Virtual Wi-Fi was crafted by Microsoft's research group as a way to "virtualize" one wireless card as several separate adapters in Windows. The project was discontinued in 2006, but some of the code apparently made its way into Windows 7, and now at least one company is taking advantage of it with a new application that can turn any laptop into a wireless access point.


Developed by military consulting firm Nomadio, Connectify lets a laptop "tether" other wireless devices to a single Internet connection by effectively turning it into a software-based wireless router. Windows 7 is required on the notebook acting as a wireless hotspot, but any wireless-equipped device, including handhelds and other notebooks running whatever operating system can jump online without any additional software. The program even encrypts traffic to and from the software hotspot using WPA2-Personal (AES) encryption.

While the Connectify beta is free to download, Nomadio expects to charge users once the complete version is released in about six weeks. A free, ad-supported version might also be released down the road.

Mozilla has just released a minor but still significant update to its popular Firefox web browser. Version 3.5.4 is essentially focused on security and stability improvements, closing a as much as 11 critical vulnerabilities among a total of 16. These include problems with third-party media libraries, the core and JavaScript engines, web worker calls, the GIF color map parser and the string-to-number converter.

Some of these problems could result in memory corruption under certain circumstances, Mozilla says, leaving room for hackers to create arbitrary code exploits. The company strongly recommends that all Firefox users upgrade to the latest releases. For those still running the 3.0.x branch however, they have correspondingly released Firefox 3.0.15, addressing nine different issues, including four critical ones.

As usual, users who have turned off automatic updates can use the “Check for Updates...” feature under Help or choose the appropriate OS below to download.

Download: Firefox 3.5.4 for Windows | Mac OS X | Other systems and languages

It seems that AMD waited until Windows 7's big day to release the latest round of Catalyst drivers. Catalyst 9.10 is the first WHQL-certified driver for AMD's new Evergreen graphics line, which is currently comprised of the Radeon 5750, 5770, 5850, and 5870.

The latest release also carries various bug fixes for Windows XP, Vista and 7, including issues with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Combat Mission: Shock Force, among other software anomalies. View the release notes in full here (PDF), and grab your copy of Catalyst 9.10 below:

Windows XP | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista | Windows Vista 64-bit | Windows 7 | Windows 7 64-bit

In a press event taking place in Las Vegas this week, Microsoft has unveiled that the public betas for Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 will arrive in November. The updated suites will bring a number of enhancements over their predecessors, including some new cloud-centric features, and will intersect with each other in areas such as social computing and document management.

Among the features included in Microsoft's newest business collaboration platform, SharePoint Server 2010, are a new ribbon interface similar to that found in Microsoft Office as well as enhanced support for video, audio and Silverlight.

The company isn't giving a specific date for the betas or final products, but has previously said Office 2010 will arrive by the first half of next year, and just recently confirmed a Release Candidate version is due before then. The company also recently revealed that it will be offering a free ad-supported version of Office 2010 that will ship with new PCs, and has been running an invite-only technical preview of Office Web Apps since September.

Paragon Software Group is offering up a free copy of its Partition Manager 9.5 Professional until October 18 (this Sunday). The program is considered to be one of the better partition managers out there, and usually retails for $79.95. It features the ability to enlarge NTFS partitions without rebooting Windows, support for Apple BootCamp, a USB recovery environment, a two-tiered (easy/advanced) interface, and just about anything else you'd expect from a commercial partition tool.


The software comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, which will run on Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. While I don’t believe version 9.5 officially supports Windows 7, I have seen positive compatibility reports from users around the Web. Paragon Partition Manager 9.5 Professional has very basic system requirements (300MHz CPU, 256MB of RAM, 100MB storage space), and can be downloaded here.

Microsoft is finally drawing close to an agreement with the European Commission, in a longstanding dispute over alleged anti-competitive practices and abuse of its dominant market position to get people using Internet Explorer. The proposed solution, as you may already know, involves giving users in Europe a ballot screen which would show a choice of browsers on the system’s first boot up.

After several months of back and forth discussions about how this screen should look and operate, Microsoft suggested presenting browsers in alphabetical order without favoring any particular option. While regulators in Europe seemed fond of the plan, they opened the proposal for public comment -- and at least one Mozilla developer is voicing her concerns against it.

In a long blog post yesterday, Jenny Boriss, a Firefox user experience designer, said the current layout gives an unfair advantage to Apple's Safari browser over the competition because it will show up first on the list. Curiously, one of the alternatives she proposes is ordering browsers by market share but excluding Internet Explorer. This deliberate piece of doublethink would obviously give Firefox the privilege of first place instead.

In all fairness she also mentions a couple other alternatives like randomizing the lineup altogether or adjusting the random probability in the browser juggling order, so each browser gets the percentage chance of being first in accordance with its assessed usage share, and users can make a more informed decision.

It should be noted that her personal comments were not made on behalf of the Mozilla Foundation, so it's unclear if they'll submit any of this to European regulators. In the end, the average user probably won't care about how this ballot screen is presented as long as they can get online fast and without complications.

Originally scheduled to go live mid-September, Mozilla has pushed back the release of its Firefox 3.6 Beta by another week while offering an early "test build" for those who just can't wait to tinker with it from today. Codenamed Namoroka, this minor upgrade is expected to bring Windows 7 compatible taskbar thumbnails, visual tab previews, and will be based upon the latest version (1.9.2) of the Gecko engine.

The visual tab previews feature is not enabled by default, according to Lifehacker, but you can enable them by heading to about:config in your address bar, searching for browser.ctrlTab.previews, and setting that value to "true." Furthermore, this early test release should include built-in support for Mozilla's Plugin Check feature.

Other improvements include faster JavaScript handling, bookmark synchronization, better form completion tools, and page load enhancements. You can download the Firefox 3.6 Beta test build here and don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments box below.

If you're a fan of ZoneAlarm or just hunting for a featured software firewall, you may be interested in a promotion Check Point Software is running today. The company is offering a free one-year license for its ZoneAlarm Pro Firewall 2010, which usually costs about $40. If this sounds a bit familiar, it's probably because the same promotion was available this time last year.

ZoneAlarm has been extremely popular over the years, and while it caused Vista users plenty of grief, the latest version claims compatibility with Windows 2000 through Windows 7. If you're at all interested, be sure to hop on the giveaway as soon as possible, because it's a one-day deal. The company notes that the offer is only valid for new customers, and the license can be used on up to three PCs until October 14 2010.

If you miss the cutoff and still want to give ZoneAlarm a shot, you can always grab the free edition from our downloads section.

The next iteration of Firefox, version 3.6, will be able to detect the orientation of laptops and mobile devices that come loaded with accelerometers. Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard announced the new feature on a blog post yesterday and offered a short video of the technology in action.

The feature was originally planned for the mobile version of Firefox only, according to Blizzard, but since a few laptops already have tilt sensors built-in, Mozilla developers decided to include it in the desktop version as well. Some possible uses being tossed around include labyrinth-type games with virtual marbles rolling on boards, and a number of other gaming situations.

While I can't imagine tilting a full-fledged laptop to play labyrinth-type games will ever catch on, orientation-aware gaming makes much more sense on mobile devices. Furthermore the technology could also be of some use on business-oriented web applications when combined with a tablet device. Developers need only add a simple event listener to their JavaScript code to use the orientation information.

You can view more information and demos about the upcoming feature on Fennec developer Doug Turner's blog. A beta release of Firefox 3.6 is expected to arrive soon, assuming the Mozilla team hasn’t hit any last minute snags, followed by the final version later this year.

Virus Bulletin has published the results of its October 2009 test for Windows Server 2008 SP2 32-bit. The outfit tested 26 applications this time around, 11 of which failed, including the popular Avira AntiVir Server and Sophos Anti-Virus.

In order to pass Virus Bulletin's test, the submitted products were required to detect all malware known to be "In the Wild" via both on-demand and on-access, without reporting any false positives. They were bombarded with some 3,000 unique samples of four malware types: WildList viruses, worms and bots, polymorphic viruses, and Trojans.

Although Avira and Sophos' products failed Virus Bulletin's test, they only missed one malware sample out of the thousands faced -- in order to receive a VB100 award, applications must detect 100%. That said, Avira told Ars Technica that the issue was sorted before VB's results were published.

Ars has posted a complete list of results for all products tested, which you can view after the jump.

With Windows 7's debut right around the corner, program developers are working to fine tune their software for Microsoft's latest operating system. In addition to the other interface tweaks and new features, Windows 7's revamped taskbar is probably the first thing that will catch your eye. Icons on the bar now have "jump lists" that offer quick access to things unique to each application. For instance, a Microsoft Word jump list displays all of the recently opened documents.


Many programs have yet to make use of this feature. Google Chrome added jump list support some time back, and an upcoming release of Mozilla Firefox will as well. Firefox build 3.7 utilizes jump lists by maintaining a list of frequently visited websites, and allows you to open a new tab or window. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you can download an incomplete pre-release build here at your own risk -- if it's any consolation, Download Squad reports that the build was pretty stable for them after 24 hours of use.

In an update to its Firefox browser last month, Mozilla introduced a new feature to warn users of outdated and possibly insecure plug-ins, prompting them via the "What's New" landing page to download a new version if available. Although initially this only covered Flash Player installations, the idea was to extend this check to include other popular plug-ins as well, and now the company is doing just that.


Mozilla developers have released a new plug-in check service, which looks at more popular plug-ins and either warns users to upgrade whenever a newer version is available, or displays a green "Learn More" button if things are up to date. Furthermore, if there is a known exploit fixed by a newer version of a particular plug-in, you'll get a red button urging you to "Update NOW" -- or offering to disable it if there is no fix.

Mozilla's plug-in check service is in the testing phase right now but might eventually make its way onto the "What's New" page on future versions of Firefox. Users who want to check it out right now can do so by visiting this link, though. Note that your browser will detect an invalid certificate so you'll have to add an exception.

Nvidia has released a new WHQL-certified driver for GeForce owners, which brings the typical round of bug fixes, game improvements and broadens SLI support. Driver version 191.07 brings up to a 12% performance increase in ARMA 2, 8% in Batman: Arkham Asylum (with PhysX enabled), 50% in Call of Juarez: Blood in Bound (in SLI setups), 14% in Fallout 3 (indoor scenes with AA enabled), 10% in Far Cry 2 (DirectX 9 version with AA enabled), and 34% in Prototype (with AA enabled).

Version 191.07 brings OpenGL 3.2 support and SLI capabilities to a slew of new titles, including Aion, Darkfall, Dawn of Magic 2: Time of Shadows, Dreamkiller, Fuel, Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, and Need for Speed: Shift. Bug fixes are spread across Windows XP, Vista and 7, and can be viewed in full via the official release notes linked on each operating system (PDF).

Download: Windows XP | XP/2003 64-bit | Windows Vista | Vista 64-bit | Windows 7 | 7 64-bit

Hot on the heels of Microsoft's Security Essentials launch last week, AVG Technologies is unveiling a major update to its free and paid internet security products which the company claims brings much faster scan times as well as a number of under-the-hood improvements.

Responding to customer feedback the security firm has reportedly put special focus on improving the user experience and ease of use. As a result, version 9.0 is said to be "up to 50 percent" faster than its predecessor, thanks to more sophisticated caching techniques and memory use. Boot times have also been reduced by around 10 to 15 percent and overall the installation process on the full-fledged suite has been shortened from 22 screens to 11.

In addition to the anti-phishing protection offered through LinkScanner, AVG 9.0 now also includes additional protection against identity theft in the physical world (for US customers only) with the AVG Identity Theft Recovery Unit (ITRU). Meanwhile, firewall enhancements include a complete redesign and a new cloud-based white listing database to reduce the amount of user input required to secure a PC.

Both AVG Internet Security 9 and AVG Anti-Virus are available now for a one-year license of $49.99 and $34.99, respectively. The main difference between the two is that AVG Anti-Virus lacks the firewall, identity protection, anti-spam, and system tools that come in AVG Internet Security. As always, a cut-down free version will also be available but starting from mid-October.

If for a second you thought Flash was ubiquitous enough already, Adobe seems to be taking the appropriate steps to make the most of its technology, not only in the desktop but in a wider range of devices. This week the company is hosting its annual Adobe MAX developer conference where it just announced an upcoming update for its Flash Player, meant to enable video and other rich web applications in mobile devices that are part of the Open Screen Project.

Just recently we had reported on rumors regarding a new Flash Player that would finally add GPU acceleration for video playback. Considering that even today's high-end desktops can come to a crawl on occasion when Flash-heavy web sites are loaded, this sounded like encouraging news. But with the official announcement upon us, now we know the focus is on getting Flash video running smoothly on mobile and otherwise underpowered devices - with one big omission.

As part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe is announcing GPU acceleration in netbooks from HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer, Asus and others sporting GeForce, Ion and Tegra chipsets. In the smartphone realm, the new Flash Player will make it to almost all major platforms: Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, Google Android, Symbian and even RIM's Blackberry. A notable absence is the iPhone OS. More details and additional information related to the Flash platform are available in the full press announcement.

It looks like Nvidia and Adobe's long-promised support for GPU-accelerated Flash videos is finally coming to fruition. Although no official announcement has been made, the graphics firm has reportedly been showing early builds of the GPU-accelerated Flash Player around, with YouTube's HD videos running smoothly on Ion-based netbooks where the same footage stutters on Intel's Atom platform.

The technique works by adapting Ion to recognize and process the H.264 encoded video inside the Flash environment. Adobe's GPU-accelerated Flash Player is also expected to work with other Nvidia chipsets, including Tegra, which should bring high definition streaming to portable devices like Microsoft's Zune HD and several of upcoming smartphones.

It's unclear exactly when users will be getting their hands on the updated Flash Player, or if the GPU-acceleration feature will initially be exclusive to Nvidia hardware, but the company is expected to make an official announcement next month, on October 5th. Adobe has previously said they hope to have accelerated Flash for Ion and other graphics chipsets in the first half of 2010.