TinyPic now does great-looking HD video

A few weeks ago TinyPic.com quietly launched support for HD video uploads. I gave it a spin earlier Thursday and the results look great. It supports files up to 200MB in size, which I'm told will get bumped up to 500MB starting next week.

The service's main appeal is that you can quickly upload and share these videos with friends, all without having to register. You can also upload an unlimited number of videos, however each one can only be up to five minutes long in length if it's in HD. SD videos, like most taken on point-and-shoot digital cameras, can be up to 15 minutes, which is five longer than YouTube allows.

Something worth mentioning is that TinyPic (which is owned by Photobucket) often serves as a test bed for upcoming Photobucket features, meaning Photobucket's video player may soon be getting an upgrade. It currently accepts HD video files, but the quality is just a hair below what's offered on TinyPic.

I've embedded my test video below. Here's the same clip on Photobucket for comparison's sake.

The Web TV wars go on, and on, and on

And the Web TV wars go on, and on, and on

Wow. With all the drama and in-fighting among cable companies, TV content creators, and Web video companies this week, you'd think the whole industry was one big junior-high cafeteria. Oh, wait, it kind of is.

First, Hulu--a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.--pulled its content from TV.com (which is owned by CBS, publisher of CNET News). Then it did the same with Boxee, a company that makes software designed for watching online video on TVs via set-top boxes. The reason for these measures appears to be either mounting pressure from the TV content owners that have licensed their video to Hulu, or mounting pressure from the cable companies, or both, or something like that.

Now, we've got a report in The Wall Street Journal indicating that cable giants Time Warner Cable and Comcast are in talks with some of the companies that operate pay-cable channels, for a plan to make some of the networks' content available online to subscribers. It'd probably be on a streaming, ad-supported basis, and probably available for free to existing subscribers.

I've been watching all this with quite a bit of curiosity and amusement. You see, I canceled my cable subscription and ditched my TV a few months ago, and have since been relying on a combination of Netflix (which may offer a streaming-only option as early as next year), iTunes, Hulu, and randomly dropping in on friends' apartments if I really, really want to watch something live. If I show up with a pizza and a nice friendly smile, most of them are OK with it.

In this Digital Age, cable subscriptions just seem a bit convoluted to me; no offense to the people who run the Game Show Channel or Boomerang, but those aren't my cup of tea and I'd prefer to not have to pay for them.

If this shadowy, in-the-works cable deal involves any kind of Web-only cable subscription where, say, you can pay by the stream or by the channel, I'd be all for it. And if the content providers finally work things out with the set-top box makers and Web video hubs, it could be terrific for me and other people who've gotten totally fed up with Stone Age TV offerings. For now, however, it's just a dramatic mess and recent signs are indicating that it's taking steps backward as opposed to forward.

Consequently, I'm riding out the storm for now. I'm holding off on purchasing any kind of set-top box--or a television, for that matter--until the future-of-television compass stops wildly spinning. In a few years, I'm sure, the solution to it all will seem like it should've been obvious the whole time.

Isn't that always how these things are?

New exploit targets IE 7 hole patched last week

Cybercriminals are exploiting a critical hole in Internet Explorer 7 that was patched a week ago by Microsoft, security firm Trend Micro warned on Tuesday.

The malicious code, which Trend Micro named "XML_DLOADR.A," is hidden in a Word document. On unpatched systems, when the file is opened an ActiveX object automatically accesses a Web site to open a backdoor that installs a .DLL (dynamic link library) file that can steal information, according to a Trend Micro blog entry. The code sends stolen data to another Web address via port 443, Trend Micro said.

As a result of the back door, "anybody can run commands on the affected system," said Jamz Yaneza, a senior threat analyst and researcher at Trend Micro.

Microsoft released a security patch for the vulnerability, and others, a week ago. The vulnerability arises from the browser's improper handling of errors when attempting to access deleted objects.

"It looks like a proof of concept or targeted attack," Yaneza said. The exploit is similar to politically motivated attacks that were seen before the Olympics last year in which PDF files and Word documents contained exploit code and automatically connected computers to malicious Web sites, he said.

It appears that the site directed to is in China and there is Chinese terminology in the code, according to Yaneza. That and the fact that the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising is approaching, on March 10, suggests that this attack could be politically motivated as well, he said.

"People need to speed up how they patch their OSes, or turn on auto update in Windows," Yaneza said.

This graphic shows how the new IE7 exploit code works to install a backdoor on an unpatched computer.

(Credit: Trend Micro)

Google wins Street View privacy suit

A couple in Pittsburgh whose lawsuit claimed that Street View on Google Maps is a reckless invasion of their privacy lost their case.

Aaron and Christine Boring sued the Internet search giant last April, alleging that Google "significantly disregarded (their) privacy interests" when Street View cameras captured images of their house beyond signs marked "private road." The couple claimed in their five-count lawsuit that finding their home clearly visible on Google's Street View caused them "mental suffering" and diluted their home value. They sought more than $25,000 in damages and asked that the images of their home be taken off the site and destroyed.

Publish Post

However, the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania wasn't impressed by the suit and dismissed it (PDF) Tuesday, saying the Borings "failed to state a claim under any count."

Ironically, the Borings subjected themselves to even more public exposure by filing the lawsuit, which included their home address. In addition, the Allegheny County's Office of Property Assessments included a photo of the home on its Web site.

The Borings are not alone in their ire toward the Google Maps feature. As reported earlier, residents in California's Humboldt County complained that the drivers who are hired to collect the images are disregarding private property signs and driving up private roads. In January, a private Minnesota community near St. Paul, unhappy that images of its streets and homes appeared on the site, demanded Google remove the images, which the company did.

However, Google claims to be legally allowed to photograph on private roads, arguing that privacy no longer exists in this age of satellite and aerial imagery.

"Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist," Google said in its response to the Borings' complaint

Not long after the feature launched in May 2007, privacy advocates criticized Google for displaying photographs that included people's faces and car license plates. And last May, the company announced that it had begun testing face-blurring technology for the service.

Google Docs now gives you validation

Google Docs has a new validation option that spreadsheet jockeys are going to appreciate. You can now give cells prerequisites, so that you or other users must fill them in with a certain type of data. It can also be set up to provide instructions that pop up as soon as someone starts entering data--similar to what's available in Google Docs' form tool and in Microsoft Excel. Both options can be set inside of the data validator that shows up once you've selected a cell or range of cells.

The Google Docs blog has suggested this as a great way to make sure people who are collaborating on a spreadsheet don't start inputting data the wrong way. The example given is e-mail addresses, where you can set it to validate an e-mail to make sure it's got the .com and the @ in the correct places, keeping you or someone else from having to go in and re-enter it later.

Another good use is the date checker, which will keep everyone who is working on a spreadsheet from entering different time and date formats. This is immensely helpful if you're working on something with people from different countries who may use various formatting localizations.

There are unfortunately a few shortcomings with the new feature. For instance, you can only apply one validation rule per cell, and the editor does not allow you to add multiple validation elements at the same time. Likewise, if you've entered data that does not meet the cell's validation rules, Docs will simply erase your entry unless whoever set up the validation ticked the option to allow users to enter data that does not meet the requirements--something that's not the default.

Google spreadsheets now lets you add validation to any bits of data, letting you keep those who are collaborating on a spreadsheet from entering data they shouldn't be.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Google's Mobile App comes to Windows phones

Google's Mobile App comes to Windows phones

Windows Mobile owners tired of opening their browsers every time they want to start a Google search can now put that habit to rest. On Wednesday, Google released a version of Google Mobile App for Windows Mobile phones.

On Microsoft's mobile platform, the free, native application installs a home screen plug-in from which you can launch a handful of Google's mobile services. About two thirds of Google Mobile App is dedicated to its search field. The other portion is populated with thumbnail icons that open your Gmail, Picasa Web albums, Google Docs, and so on, in your default browser, except the Google Maps icon, which will open or install Google's downloadable map and directions application on your phone.

While Google Mobile App for Windows Mobile surfaces your history and search suggestions just like the BlackBerry and iPhone versions, the Windows Mobile version is the first not be a full-screen application. Even when you open Google Mobile App for Windows Mobile from the program menu, you'll see it as a strip floating at the top of the screen.

Treating the mobile app as a horizontal swatch is actually an asset, thanks to some time-saving tweaks Google added to this version--like mapping the app to a hot key so you can start a search without having to first open an app from the program list, and searching within a specific domain. These make Google's mobile application a quick-acting reference resource for anyone with a Windows Mobile phone.

Google Mobile App will work on Windows Mobile smartphones and Pocket PCs in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.

Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL search up; Google down | Digital Media - CNET News

Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL search up; Google down | Digital Media - CNET News: "Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL each carved out a little more U.S. search market share in January, but Google still had the biggest piece of the pie, according to a report Wednesday by ComScore.

Yahoo Web sites accounted for 21 percent of the market (up half a percent) compared to the month before, while Microsoft grabbed an 8.5 percent slice (up 0.2 percent), and AOL nabbed 3.9 percent of the market (a 0.1 percent increase).

Google, while still holding the largest slice of the market by far, accounted for 63 percent of the search industry in January, down half a percent.

One interesting observation from Silicon Alley Insider is Yahoo's consecutive five-month run in posting modest monthly gains in U.S. search market share.

In August, for example, Yahoo's market share stood at 19.7 percent, according to SIA. But in the past five months, it has steadily grown, garnering more than a 1 point increase during that time."