Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

At last, a browser toolbar that’s unobtrusive and useful!  Trustpilot has introduced a new toolbar that warns users if an E-tailer is reliable or not.  Search results are given a check mark in green, orange, or red.  Green means the site has a high rating and many positive reviews, orange means the site has an average rating, and red is a sign to stay away—the site has mostly negative reviews and lots of user complaints.

Trustpilot gives its ratings based on reviews and media stories it collects from the web.  At the present time, it claims to have over 1 million reviews and stories. The download is quick and free and is unobtrusive.  Keep reading for more details about this helpful toolbar.

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Sections: Computers, Security, Web, Downloads, Web Apps, Websites

Barack Obama’s election as the 44th president of the United States has spawned a new malware attack.  Scammers wasted no time sending out e-mails with links to a video of the victory speech he gave the night of the election.  The link takes the user to a site called America.gov, and like many malicious spams before it, produces a pop up claiming Adobe Flash must be updated in order for the video to run.  The download is, of course, malware which steals personal info and sends it to a host machine run by the scammers.

Another version of the attack claims to come from a Spanish news site and has a video actually embedded in the e-mail.  Clicking on it prompts a download called “BarackObama.exe” and if run it sets up a direct link between the PC and the scammers.  Experts are particularly worried about this variation as it is not detected by anti-virus software.

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Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-Chief executive and chief executive of mobile devices says we’ll see a Windows Mobile 6.5 device by the 2nd half of 2009.  This is the first mention of 6.5 that I am aware of and points to a half step before WinMo 7 which we’ve been waiting for to at least stay competitive with the likes of Apple and RIM.

“Windows Mobile 6 has not delivered the experience that I think Apple has been able to deliver, but as you look at the plan that is Windows Mobile 7 and even 6.5, I think there are significant new added features which will help the platform,“ Jha said.

Significant new added features in 6.5 huh?  Hmmmm.  Keep reading to find out our best guess at what that means.

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Better start writing to Santa folks because this one doesn’t come cheap.  Introduced on Tuesday, Motorola’s new AURA might even make Hugh proud.

It sports the “world’s first circular display” and certainly doesn’t lack colors, it has 16 million of them with a 300 dpi resolution. That cyclops display is covered with Grade 1, 62-carat sapphire crystal lens.  What does that mean to you?  The lens is made of one of the most scratch resistant materials on the earth.

Find out more details about this phone including the unbelievable price after the break.

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Wow, imagine that…privacy issues once again being raised in regard to Google. Shocker. The latest is in reference to issues with the Chrome browser and is addressed in the company’s blog.

The latest word of the day is “anonymize”. That’s apparently what Google plans to do to get rid of user tracks. The Google blog referenced both their Suggest application as well as their sparkly new (cough cough) browser Chrome. Suggest is featured in Google Search, Toolbar, the iPhone…and obviously Chrome. It works like predictive texting.  You start to type in a word…it suggests what you might mean to say. Like….you start to type in “stre”, and it might suggest “street view” or “utter lack of privacy” or “you only need to sign off 3,793 papers to get your face off our program”, or “made by the ultimate rulers of all”. I’m just suggesting anyway.

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Sections: Computers, Security, Software / Applications, Web, Web Browsers, Google

You have FaceBook and MySpace and YouTube…..and now…A-Space.  Only unless you have top level clearances, you won’t be joining this social networking site. Well, let’s hope that’s how it really goes down. (Kind of scary that the government thinks the internet is secure when you really think about it).

The soon to be launching A-Space program is a site for analysts working within the 16 US intelligence agencies. “It’s every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it’s much, much more,“ said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.  “It’s a place where not only spies can meet but share data they’ve never been able to share before,“ Wertheimer said. “This is going to give them for the first time a chance to think out loud, think in public amongst their peers, under the protection of an A-Space umbrella.“  Ummm….an A-Space umbrella? I sure hope it can weather a decent storm.

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Sections: Computers, Networking, Security, Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Websites

Walt Mossberg is the personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal who has been a very influential reviewer of tech products for some time.  If you release a tech product and you want it to be successful, a good review from Walt Mossberg is a big step in the right direction, while a negative review can often prove to hurt the product in the long run.

So what does Walt think of Google’s new browser, Chrome?

Mossberg generally likes the browser, especially it’s simplistic design and the fact that it gives the most screen real estate to the web page of any browser out there.  However, he does point out that it has some flaws and is missing some features that the competition has.  Some simple features such as a progress bar to see how a web page is a loading and a way to manage bookmarks are missing.  Overall though, Mossberg says that the browser is a good start for Google that is sure to shake up the browser wars.  Since it’s in beta, it’s only going to get better over time. Check out his video review below…

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Sections: Web, Web Browsers, Google

So, we’ve all been seeing the hoopla the past few days surrounding Google’s Chrome browser. First it was how exciting! Google has a new browser! Then that excitement lessened somewhat as time went on. It went from performance benchmarks being less than stellar to the fact that it was discovered that their snazzy new browser was susceptible to a carpet-bombing vulnerability that could expose Windows to malicious hacker attacks.  And now, we’re taking note of Google’s fine print in their end-user license agreement. To put it lightly, it does not look friendly in the least to the user.

Taken from their agreement terms:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.“

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Sections: Computers, Security, Software / Applications, Web, Web Browsers, Google

Bill Gates promised frequent updates way back when they were doing the final testing of IE7. Yet somehow, it’s been almost two years before they finally released the beta mode of Internet Explorer 8 just today. Some will hurrah, some will cringe, some won’t care one way or the other. But…it’s out…and along with actually seeming to be an improvement over the previous version…it’s pretty clear that the folks at Microsoft are also using their latest browser as a clever little way to try to take over some Google ground.

I admit, I’m a diehard Firefox user. And when I checked out IE8 beta, I immediately recognized the same thing others seem to be seeing. The Smart Address Bar is very similar to the Awesome Bar in Firefox 3. When you start to type in the address bar, it tries to guess where you want to go, based on where you’ve been before. Although I have to give it to Microsoft, their Smart Bar seems to do the job even a little better. It shows history items, autocomplete suggestions, and your saved Favorites all in lists that you can collapse or expand with just a click. Also, you can delete an address from the Smart Bar with just a click as well, which is really handy for any addresses you may have in there that were typed incorrectly or if you have bookmarks you just don’t use anymore.

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Sections: Computers, Software / Applications, Web, Web Browsers

Mozilla Labs announced yesterday the release of the Initial Prototype of the latest project meant to connect the web with language - Ubiquity.  From a quote on their blog, the folks over at Mozilla Labs hope to “find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.“

Ok. So, what the heck does that mean? An example of what they are saying their program would be useful for could be this. You just snagged some concert tickets from a radio contest to a show happening tonight. Coolness. Only you haven’t been to this venue before, and neither has the friend that you’re emailing and inviting. Not so cool. Heck…you haven’t even heard of the band. Do you even know if you want to go? Is there anywhere to eat on the way? Now, normally, you’d have to be searching out the address on some mapping site, looking up the band for some info on them, copying all of this into an email (including either links or the map itself as well). Lots of typing, clicking, searching, copying, pasting, right? Well, this is some of what Ubiquity hopes to get rid of.

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Sections: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Websites