For Android Honeycomb users, Google Catalogs could’ve served as an incredibly useful mobile shopping tool this holiday season.

It aggregates catalogs from over a hundred popular retailers, lets you search through and mark favorite products, and gives you links to make purchases directly from retailers’ sites. It even lets you create and share visually stunning collages with friends. Unfortunately (for us and for Google), the app appears to be marred by a few performance issues that can’t be overlooked.

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Google)

The app’s interface is beautiful, with high-resolution graphics and simple navigation. You can flip through pages with a quick swipe, and view prices, pictures, and other product details with a single tap. The app also makes it easy to add items to a Favorites list or share products, pages, or entire catalogs with friends.

Where Google Catalogs shines brightest, though, is its Collages feature, which lets you create, save, and share collages featuring any item from your Favorites list. With the beautifully simple collage editor, you can drag images around, change backgrounds, crop, layer, even add borders and text boxes to your creations with ease. These collages are perfect for keeping track of collections of items you plan to purchase as well as images or pages you might find inspiring.

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Google)

Unfortunately, as great as the Google Cata… [Read more]

HP’s WebOS-based and now-defunct TouchPad

The fate of WebOS will be decided in the next couple weeks.

“We should announce our decision in the next two weeks,” HP CEO Meg Whitman told French newspaper Le Figaro in an interview (translation) published today. “This is not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people which is in limbo.”

Although Whitman didn’t indicate whether she’s leaning either way in her decision, she did say that HP needs “to have another operating system,” seemingly indicating that WebOS could stage a comeback.

HP announced in August that it was making sweeping changes to its business, including considering spinning off its PC business and discontinuing its mobile hardware, like its TouchPad tablet. The move effectively put WebOS in a holding pattern until its fate could be determined.

However, those decisions were made under former HP CEO Leo Apotheker. In September, he was replaced with Whitman. And since … [Read more]

The new beta for Microsoft's latest version of Security Essentials.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Microsoft has launched a public beta for the new version of its Security Essentials software for anyone to download and test drive.

The software is available free through a “download now” link for the beta on the Security Essentials Web site. But getting to the file itself requires a bit of a trek. Clicking on the link brings you to a Microsoft Connect page where you need to log in with a Windows Live ID and password.

You’ll then see a page describing the features in the new beta along with the system requirements and installation instructions. Clicking on the link to the download page (listed in Step 2 of the instructions) displays the title of the file–MSE Public Beta. And then clicking on that title finally takes you to the page where you can actually download the software.

Microsoft is offering two editions of the Security Essentials beta–a 64-bit version called mseinstall-amd64fre-en-us.exe and a 32-bit version called mseinstall-x86fre-en-us.exe. You can download both versions in one shot or separately depending on whether you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit ve… [Read more]

With today’s jump to version 6.0, Google Maps for Android is taking its powers indoors.

Instead of just dropping you off at the front door of your destination, the improved app is now helping you find your way around the inside of the building. Once you’ve stepped into a building with coverage, just zoom in to see a detailed floor plan, and as usual, the “blue dot” icon will indicate where you are. You can swipe around just as you would with an outdoor location, and even check out different floors using the numbered selector on the right. Otherwise, whenever you move to a different floor, the floor plan will update automatically.

Mall of America in Minneapolis before and after

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Google)

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For now, the technology only covers select airports, transit stations, and big-box retailers in the U.S. and Japan, but we’re sure the list will grow rather quickly. Google is even inviting business owners to manually add floor plans to its map database at … [Read more]

Microsoft released its fourth “platform preview” of Internet Explorer 10 today, adding a collection of new features to what’s shaping up to be a surprisingly feisty browser.

The new version supports a number of new features detailed in a blog post by Rob Mauceri, program manager of the IE group. Among the features are support for JavaScript typed arrays, which lets Web apps handle raw data such as files better, and HTML5 video features such as the ability to link to a specific time in a video and to add captions.

“These foundational capabilities are what developers building native applications depend on: working with binary data and files, controlling selection and hit testing in application UI, and providing accessible video content with captioning,” Mauceri said.

But in case there’s any doubt about who’s the boss at Microsoft–the IE team or the Windows team–there’s one telling data point that shows it’s the latter. The fourth IE10 platform preview, like the impressive third, is available only in a developer’s build of Windows 8. That means any developer who wants to test a Web technology with IE10 will, to at least a small degree, become a Windows 8 dev… [Read more]

Apple released Safari 5.1.2 (Mac or Windows) to users today, adding some fixes and stability improvements to its official Web browser.

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Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

A must-download for any Safari user, the update includes various improvements to stability, addresses issues that caused hangs and excessive memory usage, and will now allow PDFs to display within Web content.

The update also addresses an issue that would cause Web sites to flash white while browsing.

The full list of feature enhancements and fixes is not yet available at Apple’s Web site at the time of this writing, but we’ll update the Safari listing at Download.com when we receive more details.

[Read more]

Angle, a Google graphics project for Windows computers, has passed an important certification milestone that could improve some browsers’ graphics.

Google launched Angle in March 2010 as a way to help the fortunes of WebGL, the nascent 3D graphics technology for browsers. And yesterday, Google programmer Vangelis Kokkevis announced Angle has been certified to pass the OpenGL 2.0 certification test suite.

WebGL provides a low-level graphics interface that mirrors the OpenGL standard used on Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android, but that’s still a second-class citizen on many Windows machines. Windows comes with Microsoft’s rival standard called Direct3D, and it’s Angle’s job to translate OpenGL commands into Direct3D.

“Angle is a necessary step in our continued efforts to push the web platform forward. Without Angle, it would be impossible to reliably run WebGL on many Windows computers, so we couldn’t enable great applications like MapsGL,” Kokkevis said. MapsGL is an optional WebGL-based interface to Google Maps that provides 3D buildings and other features not ordinarily present in the online mapping tool.

Angle is used in both Chrome and Firefox to bring WebGL to Windows machi… [Read more]

Sodasynth, a music-looping app, is built using Google's Native Client and available through the Chrome Web Store.

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screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Native Client has taken only baby steps in its first three years of existence, but Google evidently is hoping its browser-boosting technology will take larger strides soon.

The company has sent out invitations to a Native Client event on the evening of December 8 at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., offices, where “we plan to share some news about Native Client,” show some demos, and share some wine.

Native Client, aka NaCl, lets Web-based software run natively on x86 processors–and therefore run more quickly than traditional Web apps. That’s what Office and Photoshop do, too, of course, but NaCl comes with security protections designed to let people safely run software they just downloaded over the Web, not just trusted software they install themselves.

NaCl now is built into Google’s Chrome browser. But because other browser makers range from uninterested to disapproving, NaCl doesn’t show many signs of extending any farther at present. Its future therefore hinges on how well Google can generate programmer interest and excitement that will bring others on board… [Read more]

Smartphone-app makers have a new way to classify age-specific ratings for their software using an already-popular program, but some of the biggest players in the mobile-app business are not on board with its launch.

Wireless-industry trade group CTIA and the Entertainment Software Rating Board today formally announced a system that lets developers assign a rating to their game, letting users and parents get an idea of its content before download or purchase.

Under the free program, developers designate what types of content are in the software. That information is turned into an age-specific rating assigned by the ESRB, which the developer can then note when sending its software to a participating storefront. The ratings then show up to let buyers know what’s in a title before hitting the buy button.

Among participants in the new program are carriers such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon Wireless. The only noncarrier in on the launch is Microsoft, which is already using ESRB ratings for games on its Windows Phone 7 Marketplace that were ported over from other platforms.

Notably missing are Google and Apple, whose mobile operating systems collectively are used by the majority of U.S. smartphones by market share, … [Read more]

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DroidHen)

DroidHen’s Defender for Android puts you at the gates of a medieval castle under attack.

With your trusty bow, a bottomless quiver of arrows, and a few magic spells, you’re the kingdom’s only hope of fending off what seems likes endless waves of monster assailants.

To start, you are equipped with a basic bow, fixed in position on the left side of the screen. As enemies bull-rush your castle walls, tap and hold anywhere to send a continuous stream of arrows to that point. If you drag your finger across the screen, you can also get a machine-gun-spray effect that not only looks awesome, but also works like a charm against particularly large waves of enemies.

But Defender isn’t just about shooting arrows. As we all know, medieval storylines often involve magic, and this one is no different. If you find yourself being overrun by monsters, tap and drag a spell to any point on the screen to unleash a magical attack. You can choose from fire, ice, and lightning, all of which are visually stunning.

The best part about Defender is its huge menu of weapons upgrades. As you beat each level, you collect more coins and jewels, which can be used to purchase more magical energy (Mana), strengthen your castle walls, learn new spells, improve your strength and shooting speed, and of course, unlock new, more powerful bows. It’s these upgrades that are sure to keep you nose-down for hours at a time.[Read more]