Over the weekend, YouTube introduced a new feature to help make captioned or subtitled videos more accessible to international users. The new system uses machine translation to convert any of these videos into your language of choice in real time.

To access this feature, users simply need to turn it on from the lower-right corner of the player. From there, they can use a simple drop-down menu to pick which language into which they want the video translated. Unfortunately, YouTube won’t remember a user’s translation choices from one video to the next, but this seems like a feature that could be added down the line.

If you were raring to play around with the new send-to-SMS chat feature in Gmail Labs, you’ll have to wait a little longer.

On Friday, one of Gmail’s product managers, Leo Dirac, posted on the official Gmail blog that a last-minute glitch has resulted in the feature being pulled back for further testing. The glitch, which Dirac says should take about two weeks to fix, would keep the two-way communication feature from turning on all the way, keeping replies from making it back to you.

When the process is working properly you’re able to send SMS contacts a message just like you would if they were online. The system would also keep their responses in the same chat window, making it a simple resource for staying in touch even when you or your contacts are not online at the same time.

On Wednesday Google formally announced its support as a provider for the OpenID 2.0 protocol, offering some site owners a way to let users log-in and register for new accounts using existing Google account information. More importantly, Google will be letting these same users manage all their linked account information in one central location.

This new log-in offering is not available to all site owners just yet. Google has set up a sign-up form where developers can apply with their URL and OpenID identification to get access. Plaxo and Zoho are two of the first sites to already have the new system in place, with Zoho having offered a similar option since mid-April.

Today Google introduce Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch. With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain. You can even browse any of 8 million Panoramio photos or read Wikipedia articles.

With Google Earth for iPhone, you can:
• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the ‘Location’ feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

It’s available today in 18 languages and 22 countries in the iTunes App Store.

Just days after the T-Mobile G1 smartphone went on the market, a group of security researchers have found what they call a serious flaw in the Android software from Google that runs it.

One of the researchers, Charles A. Miller, notified Google of the flaw this week and said he was publicizing it now because he believed that cellphone users were not generally aware that increasingly sophisticated smartphones faced the same threats that plague Internet-connected personal computers.

Mr. Miller, a former National Security Agency computer security specialist, said the flaw could be exploited by an attacker who might trick a G1 user into visiting a booby-trapped Web site.

This is probably more useful than GMail’s last experimental new feature: Canned responses. You can now save a reply you’re writing as a “canned response” and then quickly select one of these responses when you’re replying to a future e-mail.

You can also have your GMail filters auto-reply to messages for you with these reponses.

Googles online applications are vulnerable to attack, two security researchers claimed Friday.

Google Gmail, for example, is vulnerable to a frame injection attack that could be used to phish login credentials from Google users.

Adrian pagvac Pastor, a security researcher with GNUCitizen.org, on Friday posted proof-of-concept code that can inject a third-party page — a fake login page in Pastor s example — while the user s browser address bar still displays the Google domain. This could dupe the user into entering login details.

The beauty of frame injection attacks is that the attacker is able to impersonate a trusted entity without needing to bypass XSS/HTML filters or even break into the target server, Pastor explained on the GNUCitizen site.

In a related blog post on Friday, security researcher Aviv Raff explained that Google is vulnerable to a cross-domain Web-application sharing security design flaw.

The vulnerability reportedly affects other applications beyond Gmail. According to Raff, applications in Google s subdomains — maps.google.com, images.google.com, news.google.com, mail.google.com, and google.com — are affected. This means, for example, that Google Maps can be used to hijack Google, Google Mail, or Google Apps accounts.

Raff says he notified Google about the problem shortly after he identified it in April and that Google said the issue was being investigated.

Today, after not getting any further response from the Google security team about this issue, and after Adrian published his proof-of-concept, I ve decided to reveal this information in a hope that this security design flaw will be fixed by Google as soon as possible, said Raff.

In reference to the proof-of-concept, a Google spokesperson said, We re aware of the potential for this kind of behavior when services are hosted across multiple domains, and we take steps to restrict it where we believe it may have security consequences.

Google has put itself in charge of policing Android devices. The search giant is retaining the right to delete applications from Android handsets on a whim.

Unlike Apple, the company has made no attempt to hide its intentions, and includes the details in the Android Market terms and conditions, as spotted by Computer World:

Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement … in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion.

Such a mechanism also implies that Android devices will be regularly reporting back to Google to download the latest list of unapproved applications.

On Tuesday night, Google announced the beta launch of its new AdSense for Games program, the search giant’s first foray into the video games market, and the long-awaited answer to the question of what the company planned to do with AdScape Media, which it bought for $23 million in February 2007.

According to Christian Oestlien, the senior product manager for AdSense for Games, the program’s beta launch will focus on the placement of a variety of forms of ads in Flash-based casual games and some larger titles.

In the beginning at least, Oestlien said, Google will work with partners like PlayFish, Mochi Media, Demand Media and Konami.

The latter, Oestlien said, would use AdSense for Games to place ads in well-known titles like Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution.

YouTube, the world’s most popular video-sharing site, will start to sell music and video games and experiment with new advertising formats to grow revenue, executives said on Tuesday.

The Google-owned business is taking the first steps toward building an e-commerce service through which it will sell music, films, TV shows, video games, books, concert tickets and other media-related products featured on the millions of videos on YouTube.

Visitors to YouTube.com can buy songs from music videos they watch on the site by clicking on buttons that take them either to Amazon.com Inc’s MP3 store or Apple Inc’s iTunes store.

YouTube users will also be able to buy video games, such as Electronic Arts Inc’s sci-fi game “Spore” through the Amazon link.

Amazon and iTunes will share revenue with YouTube when users buy content through the partnership.

Google has brought to Linux the beta version of its new Picasa 3 software for image editing, cataloging, and uploading.

The new release catches the open-source operating system up with Windows, which got the Picasa 3 beta one month earlier. There’s still no word about a Mac OS X version, although Mike Horowitz, Google’s Picasa product manager, told me earlier that “Macs are important to us…We’re always looking for new ways of making sure our users are happy, so it’s something we’re looking at.”

The new version adds a retouching tool, automatic synchronization of photos on the PC with those stored at Google’s Picasa Web site, and a collage mode that lets people combine numerous snapshots into a poster-size collection, Google programmer Lei Zhang said in a blog post announcing the new version. The new version also is faster, he added.

However, it does lack the Windows version’s movie maker feature that can turn photos into a slideshow with a soundtrack that can then be uploaded to YouTube.

The software runs using Wine and an open-source software layer that translates a program’s Windows instructions into commands for Linux instead.

Google Inc and Yahoo Inc have decided to delay implementing a controversial search advertising partnership, Yahoo said on Friday.

“The companies have agreed to a brief delay in implementing this agreement to continue our ongoing discussions with the (U.S.) Department of Justice,” Yahoo said in a statement. “We have had discussions with regulators and look forward to responding to their questions about this agreement.”

Google issued a similar statement.