Google building Spark, a Web-based development tool

The online programming tool, still in its early stages, is for writing Web apps within a Web browser. The open-source tool itself is built with Google's new Dart language.

                               Spark is a Google developer tool for writing Web apps from within a Web browser.

                               (Credit: Francois Beaufort)

Google likes Web apps, but one area where native software remains dominant is programming tools. A Google project called Spark that came to light Thursday could change that.
Spark is a Web-based IDE (integrated development environment) that runs in a browser for developers writing Chrome apps, according to Google's Francois Beaufort, who tracks Chrome developments closely. That means, among other things, that Chromebook coders would have a way to be productive without having to move to a Windows, Mac, or Linux box.
"This is still the very beginning," Beaufort said on Google+. "There's not much we can do for now." 

Intriguingly, Spark is built using Dart, Google's Web programming language that the company hopes will improve upon JavaScript. Google just released Dart 1.0 and now faces the challenge of persuading other browser makers to support it, but Dart programmers can use a utility called dart2js to convert their software into JavaScript. That means Spark should run on any modern browser.
What's a Chrome app? In short, it's a Web app that runs on Chrome. That means it can take advantage of Chrome abilities, such as Native Client, and be distributed through the Chrome Web Store. It's a concept that's somewhat antithetical to the cross-platform philosophy of the open Web, but it brings some order to a chaotic, fast-changing world.
Spark isn't the first such effort. Mozilla toyed with a project called Bespin; other online IDEs include Shiftedit and Cloud9.

Chrome beta disses plug-ins, speeds tapping on Android

Google released a beta of Chrome 32 on Thursday, fulfilling a promise to block many plug-ins and speeding up some tap operations on Android.
And Imgur fans will be eager to know that the new release also brings support for animated WebP images, a feature already added to Google's image format but that had to overcome hurdles before finding a place in Chrome, too. Some advocated for a shift to plain old video, but animated GIFs have attained newfound popularity. Google promises smaller file sizes with animated WebP as an alternative, said Urvang Joshi, the Google programmer who championed animated WebP support for Chrome, in a blog post Thursday.
In September, Google announced that it will ban plug-ins that use the NPAPI technology for interfacing with the browser and giving it extra abilities. The ban doesn't affect Adobe Systems' Flash Player, by far the most widely used plug-in, and will only affect several other widely used plug-ins after a more graceful phase-out period.

On Android, the Chrome 32 beta ditches a 0.3-second delay that bogged down the process of tapping on a link. The delay was necessary to make sure people weren't double-tapping to reformat a Web page for a mobile device. The delay is disabled for Web pages that Chrome judges to be designed specifically for mobile screens -- another incentive for Web developers to adjust to the mobile market.
The new browser also supports the Vibration interface, which lets Web apps buzz your phone the way native apps already can. That's one small step of the laborious process of trying to bring Web apps up to parity with those written directly for Android and iOS apps. 

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Google finishes 2,048-bit security upgrade for Web privacy

 

 

Never again are you going to get a Google Web site whose security certificate is protected with comparatively weak 1,024-bit encryption.
The Net giant has secured all its certificates with 2,048-bit RSA encryption keys or better, Google security engineer Dan Dulay said in a blog post Monday. Certificates are used to set up encrypted communications between a Web server and Web browser.
That means two things. First, traffic will be harder to decrypt since 1,024-bit keys aren't in use at Google anymore. Second, retiring the 1,024-bit keys means the computing industry can retire the technology altogether by declaring such keys untrustworthy. 

Google has been aggressively moving to stronger encryption because of U.S. government surveillance by the National Security Agency. According to documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the agency gathered bulk data off Internet taps, including unencrypted data sent between company data centers on its own network, and actively worked to undermine encryption.
Google said it beat its internal end-of-year deadline for the 2,048-bit move. It's also moved to encrypt its internal data transfer between data centers, a move that Yahoo also is making.
In other words, the Net's technology giants are working actively to make surveillance, authorized or not, significantly harder. 

"Worry in Silicon Valley/Puget Sound: furor over NSA will cost billions cuz foreign customers fear US companies can't guarantee security," tweeted Strobe Talbott, president of analyst firm Brookings Institution, referring to the geographic regions where tech powers such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, LinkedIn, and Amazon are located.
There's a lot of work to be done yet, though. Google also supports a standard called "forward secrecy," which uses different keys for different sessions so that decrypting a single message doesn't mean previous messages can likewise be decrypted using the same key. But many other Net giants don't support forward secrecy -- though that's changing, too.

Google pays those who find Android security glitches

 

 

 Those who pinpoint vulnerabilities in Google's mobile operating system can earn cash rewards, similar to those paid out for identifying bugs in Chrome.

 

Google has expanded its bug-bounty program to cover vulnerabilities uncovered in Android.
The program began with Chrome and expanded to Google Web sites and other open-source software projects. Under the program, people who find security holes get paid bounties. That often equates to a few hundred dollars, but particularly skilled attacks can mean big money -- $50,000 last week for one expert who goes by the name Pinkie Pie, for example.
The broader expansion, called the Patch Reward Program, now includes Android, Google security team member Michal Zalewski said in a blog post Monday.
The program also includes three widely used Web server packages: Apache's http, Nginx, and Lighttpd, Zalewski said.