Google Maps has added a new view layer to its repertoire today. It’s called terrain view, and as the name suggests, it lets you get a detailed look at geographical features both natural, and human-built like buildings and landmarks. Unlike Google Earth, you can’t zoom around and change eye level to see how high something is, but Google has gone to some degree of rendering the surface of the earth to give it a three dimensional look and feel.

While it lacks the flash and instant usefulness of Street View (Google’s latest maps addition), terrain view is a great way to look at topographical features with a little more understanding than one can garner from the plain map view alone. My one quibble after giving the service a spin around most of the West Coast is that you can’t zoom in as close as you might be used to. While satellite and map view can get you down to 20 feet, with terrain view you’re limited to 1000 feet.

Security researchers are warning that exploit code has been published that can take advantage of an extremely critical security flaw in a protocol supported by Apple QuickTime.

Apple QuickTime versions 7.2 and 7.3 on Windows Vista and Windows XP Pro SP2 are both affected, according to an advisory originally posted on Milw0rm.com.

And because Apple’s iTunes contains a component of QuickTime, installations of iTunes are also at risk, according to a security advisory by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-Cert).

The security flaw is found in the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) supported by Apple’s QuickTime Streaming Server and QuickTime player, US-Cert notes. As a result, users who load a malicious RTSP stream via a QuickTime Media Link file or by visiting a malicious Web page, may find their systems compromised. Malicious attackers, for example, could execute arbitrary code from users’ systems or launch a denial-of-service attack.

Apple is investigating whether or not faulty Seagate hard drives are to blame for data loss on some MacBooks.

Retrodata, a U.K. data recovery firm, reported earlier this year that certain 2.5-inch Seagate drives used in MacBooks had a manufacturing flaw that causes the drive heads to scratch the surface of the drive and cause major problems. InformationWeek contacted Apple about the problem, and a company representative said, “We’ve received a few reports that some MacBook consumer notebooks may have hard drive issues, and we’re looking into it.

Google Inc. wants to offer consumers a new way to store their files on its hard drives, in a strategy that could accelerate a shift to Web-based computing and intensify the Internet company’s competition with Microsoft Corp.

Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives — such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images, say people familiar with the matter. The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password, and share them online with friends. It could be released as early as a few months from now, one of the people said.

The Mountain View, Calif., company plans to provide some free storage, with additional storage allotments available for a fee, say the people familiar with the matter. Planned pricing isn’t known.

Israeli court ordered Google to reveal the identity of a blogger that uses Google’s own blogging platform, Blogger.
The blogger accused a Shaarei Tikva comity member of illegal acts all through his blog posts. Google objected to the request claiming freedom of speech, however the court sided with the plaintiff and said that since the plaintiff is a public figure running for reelection, he is allowed to confront his accuser and clear his name.

Google notified the blogger about the case against him and offered him to reveal himself or to defend his anonymity in court. Since the blogger did not respond, Google left to fight the court and lost the case. Google will reveal the blogger’s IP address. This is the first case in Israel where Google is ordered to reveal a user’s identity. It seems strange to me that a company like Google did not fight harder to protect its users and did not appeal this decision

The plaintiff sued the blogger for defamation.

Mozilla has released an update to its Firefox browser, fixing a widely publicized flaw in the open-source software.

The 2.0.0.10 update fixes a handful of memory corruption flaws that crash Firefox, and a cross-site request forgery flaw that could give attackers a way to get unauthorized access to certain Web sites.

But the most anticipated bug fix in this release addresses a problem in the way Firefox processes files that are compressed using the.jar (Java Archive) format.

Firefox does not properly check.jar files, giving attackers a way to launch Web-based cross-site-scripting attacks against Firefox users. The bug was first reported in February, but it gained widespread attention in early November when security researchers showed how it could be used in cross-site scripting attacks to run unauthorized code on the victim’s PC.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden will address the people of Europe in a message to be posted on the Internet “soon”, an Islamist Web site said on Monday.

“Soon, God willing, (we will post) a new message to the European people from the lion Imam who defeated the Americans and tyrants, Sheikh Osama bin Laden,” said the pro-al Qaeda Web site which regularly posts messages from the militant leader.

“Let this message be posted by various Western Web sites so that we deliver to them the truth of their lost war and (confront) them with the purposely hidden fact,” it said, adding that the message was produced by al Qaeda media arm As-Sahab.

It did not give any further details.

An official announcer for London’s Tube system has been sacked after making spoof messages mocking American tourists, peeping Toms and sweaty commuters.

Voiceover artist Emma Clarke, 36, recorded the announcements in the same smooth tones that have warned millions of passengers to “Mind The Gap” and posted them on her Web site.

The messages include:

* “We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly.”

* “Would the passenger in the red shirt pretending to read the paper but who is actually staring at that woman’s chest please stop. You are not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert.”

* “Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they are just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.”

* “Here we are crammed again into a sweaty Tube carriage … If you’re female smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He’s probably not had sex for months.”

Clarke said it was “just a bit of a laugh”. But Tube operator Transport for London (TfL) failed to see the funny side and dropped her, after eight years.

Walmart.com, hoping U.S. consumers did not get their fill of shopping over the long Thanksgiving weekend, will roll out more holiday deals online every day this week.

The site will offer special prices on 150 items — three times more than a year ago — posting roughly 65 discounts on Monday and then adding new deals to the site daily through Friday.

Walmart.com will also promote one special “featured” item each day, like Monday’s Xbox 360 bundle, which includes Microsoft’s Xbox 360 premium video game console, an extra controller, three games and messenger bag for less than

$400.

The expanded offering of online-only deals comes as Wal-Mart Stores Inc is relying more heavily on its Web site to drive sales and promote low prices this holiday season.

A new software has demonstrated the vulnerability of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone calls that are easy prey for criminals looking to steal confidential data. The “proof-of-concept” software program, called SIPtap, shows how easy it would be for criminals to eavesdrop on the Internet-based phone calls, says its developer, Peter Cox.

“We are in the early days of VoIP, but there is a knowledge gap,” said Cox, pointing out VoIP’s security weaknesses. “Companies using VoIP internally think they are protected… The threat is that an attacker engineers a Trojan and has it sit there passively (on a network), recording calls from anywhere on the Internet.”

A Hotmail co-founder, Sabeer Bhatia, is placing his bets on an online office productivity suite that is positioned to compete with similar offerings from Microsoft and Google.

Instant Collaboration Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd (InstaColl), a Bangalore company co-founded by Bhatia, unveiled its Live Documents last week, an application that allows users to access and work on their documents online using a browser, and collaborate and share documents in real-time with others.

The software supports any browser that supports Flash from Adobe Systems Inc. and runs on any computer operating system, said Sumanth Raghavendra, chief executive officer of InstaColl.

Online documents can also be synchronized and worked with off-line, using a desktop client that wraps around an office suite running on the desktop, Raghavendra said. Live Documents automatically synchronizes all changes, the next time the user goes online. Users can work on the document in Microsoft Office when off-line, for example, and then the document will be updated in Live Documents for online collaboration, he added.

The hosted service, which is currently available for technology preview at www.live-documents.com, is free for individuals but corporate users will have to pay. Corporate users can sign up for the hosted service, or run a license of the software on an internal server within the company, Raghavendra said.

According to a recent article on the Financial Times site, ‘internet users in France who download music and films without paying for them could find their web access shut down by a government body.’

The proposal originated with FNAC, an entertainment retailer. According to the article, the proposal has a good chance of being accepted.

‘In exchange for the clampdown on illegal downloading, the music industry has agreed to make individual downloads of archive French material available on all types of players by dropping digital rights management protection. The French film industry has agreed to release DVDs more quickly after a film’s first cinema screening, reducing the delay from 7½ months to 6 months. However, consumer groups and even some of Mr Sarkozy’s own members of parliament on Thursday attacked the proposal for a new internet policeman as a threat to civil liberties