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Apple announced the availability of OS X Mavericks on Tuesday, and for the first time, the premium OS is coming completely free. The company has dropped the price on its desktop operating system, making room for cheaper PCs, as the days of spending hundreds of dollars to get the most out of your computer are gone.

And the release OS X Mavericks, also brings Flash Player now protected by an OS X App Sandbox.

Apple Mac suffered many security breaches in the past owing to vulnerabilities associated with Flash plug-in, now with Flash Player sandboxed under Safari in Mac OS X, means better restriction on the ability of attackers to exploit any vulnerabilities in the browser plug-in.

The sandbox also limits Flash Player’s local connections to device resources and inter-process communication (IPC) channels, which in turn limits Flash Player’s networking privileges to prevent unnecessary connection capabilities. And the end point is that Flash Player’s capabilities to read and write files will be limited to only those locations it needs to function properly.

Mac OS X Mavericks is available as a free download from the Mac App Store.

Mac OS X Mavericks arrives, Free with Flash Sandboxed

Google Ideas, which is an initiative of the internet giant to serve as a think/do tank that explores how technology can enable people to confront threats in the face of conflict, instability or repression - now, has scheduled a summit in New York with partners to discuss on the theme "Conflicts in a Connected World".

Google hopes to leverage on the ideas generated to better understand how to protect people confronting online censorship.

The summit brings together “hacktivists,” security experts, entrepreneurs, dissidents and others to explore the changing nature of conflict and how online tools can both harm and protect, according to the official Google blog.

And along with partners, the company intends to launch several new technology products to help with fighting censorship, such products includes: Project Shield (which protects websites against DDoS attacks), Digital Attack Map (live data visualization that maps DDoS attacks) and uProxy (new browser extension that allows contacts share trusted pathway to the web).

Google believes access to the free flow of information is increasingly critical, and have gone ahead in taking necessary steps to help those fighting for free expression around the world.

Google set to Unleash new Tools to fight Censorship

Google is currently pursuing a really ambitious project, Google Fiber aimed to bring the experience of super fast and hybrid internet connectivity comprising digital television to communities, of course within the United States.

Google announced plans to install Google Fiber internet service in Provo, Utah, which was the third city after Kansas City that the company has marked for the initial roll-out plan.

What exactly is Google Fiber and How would it affect Consumers?

Google Fiber is a hybrid internet infrastructure service powered by Google. It's aimed to bolster super fast internet service with plans starting from 5Mbps all the way to a blistering fast 1,000Mbps. The 1,000Mbps service comes with a bevy of perks, including 1TB of Google Drive storage with the television service equipped with a 2TB DVR recorder in addition to the Google Drive storage.

Google Fiber is perhaps inspiring other ISPs to lessen the broadband gap. Or, as put on DSLReports the goal is to “…light a fire under the pampered behinds of incumbent broadband operators.”

Though Google Fiber is not yet available everywhere, nor gigabit internet in general for that matter, it mostly has to do with areas internet infrastructure. Only a handful of cities in the U.S. are wired up for fiber optics, which means only so many places can get Google Fiber or the gigabit internet service. And It’ll be a long time before it reaches every nook and cranny of the U.S. (if it even does).

Google Fiber: The Projected Future

Microsoft has announced a new student advantage program which will allow any academic institution that licenses Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus for staff and faculty to provide Office 365 ProPlus to its students for free. This new campaign allows college students to try office 365 for free for up to six months.

The Student Advantage makes it easy for qualifying institutions to provide students with the latest version of full Office at school and at home. Combined with Office 365 for Education plan A2, which is free for schools, Student Advantage gives students access to the same set of world-class productivity tools and services used by Fortune 500 companies all over the world, according to Microsoft blog.

The cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 Education is currently used by 110 million students, faculty, and staff. At the time of kick off, more than 35,000 educational institutions that are already subscribed to Office 365 will be automatically eligible to participate in the Student Advantage service.

And the actual launch date has been set on Dec. 1, beginning which the free campaign will kick off. For any academic institution that doesn't have Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus, individual students, faculty members, or staff can pay $79.99 for a four-year subscription to Office 365 University.

Microsoft: Free Office 365 for Students

LinkedIn on Wednesday announced the introduction of a mobile app, linkedIn Recruiter to aid job recruitment on the go. Albeit, the company had made available various recruiter tools on the web version of the social network, a mobile app to cover same purpose had been lacking before now.

LinkedIn Recruiter is aimed to enable job seekers pitch for potential employers on the go, via mobile devices, as mostly this top executives with final decision making powers are always on the go following their usual busy schedules.

The company puts it that people are more mobile than ever before, while recruiters and the recruiting process, are still chained to the desktop, which has made it painstakingly difficult for candidates to search for, discover and apply for jobs via mobile. And this has also limited users productivity because they can’t interact with candidates and hiring managers while on the go.

Recruiter Mobile is free to existing LinkedIn Recruiter customers and is available today in the App Store for iPhone users. Not an iPhone user? You can also access it from your mobile device’s web browser at www.linkedIn.com/recruiter.

LinkedIn Recruiter: Mobile App for Recruiting on the Go

Pinterest may have perhaps scored a great point in the collaboration feature announced by Microsoft's Bing in a blog post on Wednesday. According to the post, Pinterest Boards, which brings together curated collections of images from people around the web is now available on Bing image search.

Bing in the post iterated on the fact that computer-generated contents cannot yet match the accuracy and precision of users' generated contents, citing the example of Pinterest to support the notion.

On Pinterest, passionate curators can build up a collection of ideas that shows off their unique style, giving rise to most interesting pictures on the web. Bing, albeit, using cutting-edge computer vision, powerful filtering tools, and lots of computational horsepower to sift through billions of images on the web has come to acknowledge that the most interesting pictures on the web are being collected by people, not computers.

Bing image collections are great for searches like Halloween decorating ideas, bringing together cute and unique pictures from around the web with creative collections by people who are both passionate and ready to share their ideas.

Bing, added that this is only the beginning of exploration of ways to showcase social communities within Bing image search, promising more in the weeks and months ahead. If you wish to get started, go to bing.com and click on the Images tab to take Bing image search for a spin.

Bing brings Pinterest Boards to Image Search

Social marketing is taking a huge chunk out of internet marketing budgets, and the notorious visual bulletin board, Pinterest, in order not to be left out in the windfall, is exploring ways to open up the platform to advertisers as it announced plans to launch "Promoted Pins".

Pinterest's great appeal to users, coupled with beautiful interface and compelling contents are what may perhaps endear the social platform to retailers for marketing purposes.

Promoted Pins is certainly a preview on how the company will go about pursuing a scalable revenue generation system, and see how it appeals to its ever growing user base, according to Ben Silbermann, Pinterest's CEO in a blog post.

And the initial test-run will include promoting a few pins in search results and category feeds, which the company has assured will not be obstructive as the usual banner ads we're accustomed. Silbermann, however, promised pinners that the promoted pins will be relevant, and improved based on users' feedback, and of course, no flashy banners or pop-up ads.

The company also assures on transparency by letting users know when a pin is actually paid for. The testing has not started, but will be rolling-out soon.

Finally, Here comes Promoted Pins

Facebook video ads rumor which has been making round since late July, now substantiating on the hints, the company have gone ahead to announce the test run for the new feature. The TV-styled ads, according to the Facebook Newsroom report, has already commenced with a select group of Facebook mobile users.

The new video feature automatically plays video to users who pause on the box when scrolling through their news feed.

This feature will be limited to videos posted by individuals, musicians and bands with verified pages. And that only videos uploaded to Facebook; not videos posted from YouTube or elsewhere are supported.

The company, however, declined to specify when the video feature will be opened up to advertisers. 

The implementation on desktop is quite different from mobile application, as clicking on video on desktop opens up a new window. While Facebook mobile users who do not wish to watch the video ads can simply scroll through to other items on the news feed.

Facebook: Gearing up for Video Ads?

The growing trend of web technology vendors persistently tracking users activities online for ads targeting purposes have continued to be debated across different fora. And recently, the NSA was reported to be circumventing manufacturers' controls to access users data on mobile devices, all these pointing to the fact that users cannot rely on vendor provisions in guarding their privacy.

Smart mobile devices have made it almost impossible to maintain effective privacy control online, and the debate as reviewed on the prolific mobile lifestyle blog, Mobility,  posits that the National Security Agency (NSA) can go as far as hacking into these devices to get information, according to documents released by the German news magazine, SPIEGEL.

The report maintains that the issue is not about having access through the companies behind these smart devices, but actual hacking of those devices.

Now, what other options do users have, since smart devices cannot be trusted? Encryption is perhaps the only solution, albeit, not 100 per cent foolproof, as even encrypted messages can be decrypted. However, it remains that the act of deciphering a single word in an encrypted message is a task not many such agency can be subjected.

So, smart security approach is the way out - the data itself should be protected. And to ease the process of the encryption on social networking platforms, BlockPRISM can be availed to cover such social privacy issues.

How Encryption can Eliminate Web Tracking

Google's web-based application revolution with its operating system, Chrome as the pivot of the new beginnings, is hitting up the debate over native-application continuum. Albeit, native applications have hitherto shown a better performance rating compared to web apps, innovations coming to the later has demonstrated that equal, if not better feat is possible.

Google had earlier released Chrome Apps Launcher for Windows, allowing users to launch Chrome standalone apps directly from Windows taskbar, even without launching the browser. Now, Chrome Apps have landed on the browser in a near-native experience, capable of working in offline mode, and storing data locally.

The new Chrome Apps can interact with PC hardware as a native app, while still retaining the everywhere availability advantage of web-based applications. Google on Thursday announced the availability of the new Chrome Apps on Chrome Web Store.

Mac users, however, will have to wait till the next version, Chrome 30 to enjoy the new feature, as its currently available for only Windows and Chrome, starting form OS 29.

Native Experience comes to Chrome Apps

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