Google released a second beta of its toolbar software for Firefox that gives the browser a prominent feature of Google’s own Chrome.

In Chrome, when you open a new tab, the browser displays a page with up to nine miniature versions of pages you visit often–a selection of what you’ve shown to be your collective home page. The new beta version of Toolbar 5 does the same for Firefox, including not just the miniature pages, but also the list of recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs that Chrome shows.

With Windows Vista, the operating system popped up a warning any time a major change was being made to the system, whether by the OS or by a third-party application. With Windows 7, users can choose how often to be notified, with the current default set to notify only when a third-party application is making a change.

Blogger Long Zheng, however, is drawing attention to an apparent shortcoming in that approach. Because changes to the user account control setting itself are being made within the OS–and not by a third party–malicious code could turn off such alerts entirely with the user getting little notice that such a change had been made. Zheng said he and fellow blogger Rafael Rivera have come up with a simple proof-of-concept code to show the vulnerability.

Microsoft is trying to thread a difficult needle here. The prompts issued by the User Account Control program, though annoying, help alert users to changes to their system. But if the prompts are so annoying that people turn off the setting–or stick with older operating systems–than things aren’t secure either.

Over the past few weeks, numerous reports have surfaced suggesting that the mythical Google GDrive, an online storage service developed by the online giant, might be a reality even though the company has kept its alleged existence under wraps.

Blogger Brian Ussery has uncovered an interesting hint that the GDrive might actually exist. The Google Pack software bundle, which is for Windows users who want to use software from Google and its partners, includes a small piece of code apparently containing the GDrive’s product category and description.

“Online file backup and storage…GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and document,” the description reads. “GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device - be it from your desktop, Web browser or cellular phone.”

The description may be the most reliable indicator thus far that Google will be unveiling a product called the GDrive in the future.

Irish Internet provider Eircom has agreed to disconnect users who download music illegally from the Web in a settlement with four major record companies that Irish media said was the first of its kind in the world.

The record companies — EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner — had wanted Eircom to install software from a U.S. firm to detect the “fingerprint” of copyrighted music files being sent on its network.

Eircom, which feared the software would have interfered with its broadband service and could break privacy laws, instead pledged to disconnect users who continue to download illegally after two warnings.

As part of the settlement reached after proceedings in an Irish court on Wednesday, the companies agreed to supply Eircom with the IP addresses of people they detect illegally uploading or downloading copyrighted works on a “peer-to-peer” basis.

A federal court today spanked two telemarketers with some $1.2 million in civil penalties for violating the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call (DNC) Rule.

According to the FTC, the companies called consumers whose phone numbers were on the Do Not Call Registry without having obtained their express written agreement or having an “established business relationship” with them. One group’s telemarketers also allegedly abandoned many calls, by failing to connect the calls to a sales representative within two seconds after consumers answered, as required by law, the FTC stated. The cases were filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC.

A New Zealand man who bought a second-hand MP3 player that contained U.S. military files on personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq handed it over to U.S. officials on Wednesday, New Zealand media reported.

Chris Ogle, 29, bought the $10 MP3 at a thrift shop in Oklahoma but when he plugged it in discovered it contained 60 U.S. military files, said New Zealand television program One News which broke the story.

The files contained the names and personal details of American soldiers, including ones who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as information about equipment deployed to bases and a mission briefing, said One News.

Some files contained active mobile telephone numbers and social security numbers of military personnel.

U.S. embassy officials in New Zealand spoke to Ogle on Tuesday night and swapped his old MP3 player for a new one on Wednesday, New Zealand Press Association said.

Google Inc on Wednesday unveiled a plan aimed at eventually letting computer users determine whether providers like Comcast Corp are inappropriately blocking or slowing their work online.

The scheme is the latest bid in the debate over network neutrality, which pits content companies like Google against some Internet service providers.

The ISPs say they need to take reasonable steps to manage ever-growing traffic on their networks for the good of all users. Content and applications companies fear the providers have the power to discriminate, favoring some traffic over others.

Google will provide academic researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the United States and Europe to analyze data, said its chief Internet guru, Vint Cerf, known as the “father of the Internet.”

“When an Internet application doesn’t work as expected or your connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP (Internet service provider), the application, your PC (personal computer), or something else?” Cerf wrote in a blog post.

The UK Film Council is launching a search engine that will help British movie goers track down their favorite films, from the mainstream to the obscure.

The website is free to use and contains records of more than 30,000 films, or roughly seven years’ worth of viewing, and they come in 20 genres and over 60 languages.

“Like a Google for films, it is the first time anything like this has been delivered on the Internet that indexes all available films in the UK and is totally free to use,” the council said in a statement.

The site tells visitors how they can watch the movie of their choice, whether at the cinema, on television, DVD, Blu-ray, online or by downloading it from legal websites.

The Mozilla Foundation is putting its weight behind an effort to create an open video format on the Web. It is doing this by giving $100,000 in grant money, to be administered by the Wikimedia Foundation, towards the development and support of Theora, an open-source video codec. More importantly, it is also building support into the Firefox Web browser for both Theora and Vorbis, an open source audio codec.

Many other video codecs and encoders require licensing fees or come with restrictions. Mozilla hopes to change this over time. Although I suspect the Theora video codec is inferior to other technologies, as long as it can improve over time, it could eventually become a serious contender to MPEG-4 or Windows Media Video (WMV).

Google Apps is a suite of online applications like gmail, Google calendar, Google Docs, etc. that are packaged and tailored for business use.

When Google Apps first launched in August 2006 it was free and described as “a service available at no cost to organizations of all shapes and sizes.”

Free for everyone lasted until February 2007, when Google announced a premier edition of the service with more storage and an uptime guarantee. The cost was (and is) $50 per user per year.

When Google Apps first launched up to 200 user accounts could be created for each business under the free version. But that limit was quietly reduced to just 100 user accounts. And then when the reseller program was announced earlier this month, the limit was cut in half again, to just 50 accounts.

The Eclipse Foundation announced a major upgrade to the Eclipse PHP Development Tools project, PDT 2.0.

As a leading contributor to the PDT effort, PHP specialist Zend Technologies is pushing PHP as a key element of the Eclipse platform and as a language used for more mainstream development.

“Release 2.0 demonstrates our continued commitment to the Eclipse community,” said Andi Gutmans, co-founder and senior vice president of R&D and alliances at Zend Technologies. “PDT is not only the premier open-source PHP development tool, but is also the basis for Zend’s commercial IDE [integrated development environment] for PHP, Zend Studio for Eclipse. Additionally, in order to further align with Eclipse, PDT will become part of the Eclipse Galileo simultaneous release.”

Eclipse Foundation officials said the focus of the PDT 2.0 release is to add support for the object-oriented programming features of PHP and to improve the overall user experience of the PDT environment. PDT provides all the basic code editing capabilities developers need to get started developing PHP applications.

If you think the biggest problem with a camera phone is the poor quality of the photos, a member of Congress might make you think again. Earlier this month, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would ban camera phones from having a silent mode when taking a picture.

The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (H.R. 414) would “require any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken.” What’s more, the bill would prohibit such handsets from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone. Enforcement would be through the Consumer Product Safety Commission.