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It’s been almost five months since we introduced Google TV to the world at Google I/O, and today we’re happy to give you an update on our progress. For those who haven’t yet heard of it, Google TV is a new way to think about TV: it’s a platform that combines your current TV programming and the open web into a single, seamless entertainment experience.One of our goals with Google TV is to finally open up the living room and enable new innovation from content creators, programmers, developers and advertisers. By bringing Google Chrome and access to the entire Internet, you can easily navigate to thousands of websites to watch your favorite web videos, play Flash games, view photos, read movie reviews or chat with friends—all on the big screen. Since our announcement, we’ve been overwhelmed by interest from partners on how they can use the Google TV platform to personalize, monetize and distribute their content in new ways. Most of these partner sites already work with Google TV, but many are choosing to further enhance their premium web content for viewing on the television.

You can get a sneak peek of some of these apps in the video below:

Today we also launched a new website that provides more information about these apps and all of the other great features of Google TV.We’re really excited about the enthusiasm surrounding the platform and can’t wait for it to reach your living room. Devices powered by Google TV will launch this month, so look out for more information in the next few weeks from Sony on its Internet TV and Blu-Ray player, and Logitech on its companion box.

W3C is warning against drawing any conclusions based on the early tests, saying thousands of more HTML5 tests are planned. The goal of the tests is not to declare one browser a winner, but rather to help vendors and Web application developers ensure interoperability across all browsers, W3C says.

"We do expect to have tens of thousands of tests," says Philippe Le Hegaret, who oversees HTML activities for the W3C. 

the purpose of the HTML5 test suite is to help vendors and developers ensure that HTML5 applications work across all browsers. For example, a developer might check the test results before enabling a certain feature in an application, just to make sure it will work across IE9, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Developers can build HTML5 applications today, but they have to keep in mind that they are early adopters and act accordingly, Le Hegaret says. "If you think HTML5 is perfectly stable today and you can use it without worrying about interoperability issues, I think you're going to fool yourself," he says. Although the first round of HTML5 tests focused on desktop browsers, Le Hegaret says HTML5 compatibility is advancing more rapidly on mobile devices such as iPhones and Androids.

As part of a series of interviews with W3C Members to learn more about their support for standards and participation in W3C, I'm talking to Paul Cotton from Microsoft and co-Chair of the W3C HTML Working Group.

Total mobile data traffic topped mobile voice traffic in the United States last year, for the first time.In fact, globally, data traffic (that includes SMS text messaging) topped voice traffic on a monthly basis last year and the total traffic across the world exceeded an exabyte for the first time in 2009, according to a report just released by Chetan Sharma Consulting, a leading strategist in the mobile industry (clients include AT&T and China Mobile).

he really does not want cross-platform apps that might divert attention and energy away from his application ecosystem

The team at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford want to see if the sophisticated capabilities in today's phones will function in the most challenging environment known. The phone will run on Google's Android operating system but the exact model has not yet been disclosed.

The intention is that the phone be given the chance to oversee all these subsystems. "The open source nature of the software is very exciting because you can see how further down the line, once we've got the phone working in orbit, we could get people to develop apps for it," Mr Liddle added. Chris Bridges from the Surrey Space Centre commented: "If a smartphone can be proved to work in space, it opens up lots of new technologies to a multitude of people and companies for space who usually can't afford it. It's a real game-changer for the industry."

The Linux Foundation and the LiMo Foundation issued a joint statement on Wednesday morning to announce the launch of Tizen, a new Linux-based open source mobile operating system. The platform's application stack and third-party developer frameworks will be built around standards-based Web technologies. The new Tizen website says that Intel and Samsung are jointly backing the effort. The new platform effort will displace the unsuccessful MeeGo project, an open source mobile operating system that was launched last year when Intel and Nokia sought to unify their respective mobile Linux platforms with the help of the Linux Foundation. MeeGo began to unravel when Nokia abandoned Linux in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Microsoft’s browser-based operating systemGet this: The entire Metro interface — the complete Windows 8 front-end — is powered by Internet Explorer 10. Not the browser with a back button and an address bar, but the IE10 rendering engine Trident. To drive this point home, Metro-style apps in Windows 8 can be written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and they will be just as “low-level” as their C++ and C# cousins. In other words, Windows 8 runs web apps natively.

Maqetta is an open source technology initiative at Dojo Foundation that provides WYSIWYG tooling in the cloud for HTML5 (desktop and mobile). Maqetta allows User Experience Designers (UXD) to perform drag/drop assembly of live UI mockups. One of Maqetta's key design goals is to create developer-ready UI mockups that promote efficient hand-off from designers to developers. The user interfaces created by Maqetta are real-life web applications that can be handed off to developers, who can then transform the application incrementally from UI mockup into final shipping application. While we expect the Maqetta-created mockups often will go through major code changes, Maqetta is designed to promote preservation of visual assets, particularly the CSS style sheets, across the development life cycle. As a result, the careful pixel-level styling efforts by the UI team will carry through into the final shipping application. To help with the designer/developer hand-off, Maqetta includes a "download into ZIP" feature to create a ZIP image that can be imported into a developer tool workspace (e.g., Eclipse IDE). For team development, Maqetta includes a web-based review&commenting features with forum-style comments and on-canvas annotations.

Maqetta includes: a WYSIWYG visual page editor for drawing out user interfaces drag/drop mobile UI authoring within an exact-dimension device silhouette, such as the silhouette of an iPhone simultaneous editing in either design or source views deep support for CSS styling (the application includes a full CSS parser/modeler) a mechanism for organizing a UI prototype into a series of "application states" (aka "screens" or "panels") which allows a UI designer to define interactivity without programming a web-based review and commenting feature where the author can submit a live UI mockup for review by his team members a "wireframing" feature that allows UI designers to create UI proposals that have a hand-drawn look a theme editor for customizing the visual styling of a collection of widgets export options that allow for smooth hand-off of the UI mockups into leading developer tools such as Eclipse Maqetta's code base has a toolkit-independent architecture that allows for plugging in arbitrary widget libraries and CSS themes.

28 March 2011 -- The Web and television convergence story was the focus of W3C's Second Web and TV Workshop, which took place in Berlin in February. Today, W3C publishes a report that summarizes the discussion among the 77 organizations that participated, including broadcasters, telecom companies, cable operators, OTT (over the top) companies, content providers, device vendors, software vendors, Web application providers, researchers, governments, and standardization organizations active in the TV space. Convergence priorities identified in the report include: Adaptive streaming over HTTP Home networking and second-screen scenarios The role of metadata and relation to Semantic Web technology Ensuring that convergent solutions are accessible. Profiling and testing Possible extensions to HTML5 for Television

At decade's end, the trusty landline telephone could be nothing more than a memory. Telecom giants AT&T T +0.31% AT&T Inc. U.S.: NYSE $35.07 +0.11 +0.31% March 28, 2014 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 24.66M AFTER HOURS $35.03 -0.04 -0.11% March 28, 2014 7:31 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 85,446 P/E Ratio 10.28 Market Cap $182.60 Billion Dividend Yield 5.25% Rev. per Employee $529,844 03/29/14 Prepare to Hang Up the Phone, ... 03/21/14 AT&T Criticizes Netflix's 'Arr... 03/21/14 Samsung's Galaxy S5 Smartphone... More quote details and news » T in Your Value Your Change Short position and Verizon Communications VZ -0.57% Verizon Communications Inc. U.S.: NYSE $47.42 -0.27 -0.57% March 28, 2014 4:01 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 24.13M AFTER HOURS $47.47 +0.05 +0.11% March 28, 2014 7:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 1.57M

The two providers want to lay the crumbling POTS to rest and replace it with Internet Protocol-based systems that use the same wired and wireless broadband networks that bring Web access, cable programming and, yes, even your telephone service, into your homes. You may think you have a traditional landline because your home phone plugs into a jack, but if you have bundled your phone with Internet and cable services, you're making calls over an IP network, not twisted copper wires. California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Ohio are among states that agree telecom resources would be better redirected into modern telephone technologies and innovations, and will kill copper-based technologies in the next three years or so. Kentucky and Colorado are weighing similar laws, which force people to go wireless whether they want to or not. In Mantoloking, N.J., Verizon wants to replace the landline system, which Hurricane Sandy wiped out, with its wireless Voice Link. That would make it the first entire town to go landline-less, a move that isn't sitting well with all residents.

Safety is one of them. Call 911 from a landline and the emergency operator pinpoints your exact address, down to the apartment number. Wireless phones lack those specifics, and even with GPS navigation aren't as precise. Matters are worse in rural and even suburban areas that signals don't reach, sometimes because they're blocked by buildings or the landscape. That's of concern to the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees all forms of U.S. communications services. Universal access is a tenet of its mission, and, despite the state-by-state degradation of the mandate, it's unwilling to let telecom companies simply drop geographically undesirable customers. Telecom firms need FCC approval to ax services completely, and can't do so unless there is a viable competitor to pick up the slack. Last year AT&T asked to turn off its legacy network, which could create gaps in universal coverage and will force people off the grid to get a wireless provider.

Verizon users might want to start looking for another provider. In an effort to better serve advertisers, Verizon Wireless has been silently modifying its users' web traffic on its network to inject a cookie-like tracker. This tracker, included in an HTTP header called X-UIDH, is sent to every unencrypted website a Verizon customer visits from a mobile device. It allows third-party advertisers and websites to assemble a deep, permanent profile of visitors' web browsing habits without their consent.Verizon apparently created this mechanism to expand their advertising programs, but it has privacy implications far beyond those programs. Indeed, while we're concerned about Verizon's own use of the header, we're even more worried about what it allows others to find out about Verizon users. The X-UIDH header effectively reinvents the cookie, but does so in a way that is shockingly insecure and dangerous to your privacy. Worse still, Verizon doesn't let users turn off this "feature." In fact, it functions even if you use a private browsing mode or clear your cookies. You can test whether the header is injected in your traffic by visiting lessonslearned.org/sniff or amibeingtracked.com over a cell data connection.How X-UIDH Works, and Why It's a Problem

To compound the problem, the header also affects more than just web browsers. Mobile apps that send HTTP requests will also have the header inserted. This means that users' behavior in apps can be correlated with their behavior on the web, which would be difficult or impossible without the header. Verizon describes this as a key benefit of using their system. But Verizon bypasses the 'Limit Ad Tracking' settings in iOS and Android that are specifically intended to limit abuse of unique identifiers by mobile apps.

Because the header is injected at the network level, Verizon can add it to anyone using their towers, even those who aren't Verizon customers.

About 89,000 foreigners or organizations were targeted for spying under a U.S. surveillance order last year, according to a new transparency report. The report was released for the first time Friday by the Office of the Director of Intelligence, upon order of the president, in the wake of surveillance leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. But the report, which covers only surveillance orders issued in 2013, doesn’t tell the whole story about how many individuals the spying targeted or how many Americans were caught in the surveillance that targeted foreigners. Civil liberties groups say the real number is likely “orders of magnitude” larger than this. “Even if it was an honest definition of ‘target’—that is, an individual instead of a group—that also is not encompassing those who are ancillary to a target and are caught up in the dragnet,” says Kurt Opsahl, deputy general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The report, remarkably, shows that the government obtained just one order last year under Section 702 of FISA—which allows for bulk collection of data on foreigners—and that this one order covered 89,138 targets. But, as the report notes, “target” can refer to “an individual person, a group, an organization composed of multiple individuals or a foreign power that possesses or is likely to communicate foreign intelligence information.” Furthermore, Section 702 orders are actually certificates issued by the FISA Court that can cover surveillance of an entire facility. And since, as the government points out in its report, the government cannot know how many people use a facility, the figure only “reflects an estimate of the number of known users of particular facilities (sometimes referred to as selectors) subject to intelligence collection under those Certifications,” the report notes.

“If you’re actually trying to get a sense of the number of human beings affected or the number of Americans affected, the number of people affected is vastly, vastly larger,” says Julian Sanchez, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “And how many of those are Americans is impossible to say. But [although] you may not think you are routinely communicating with foreign persons, [this] is not any kind of assurance that your communications are not part of the traffic subject to interception.” Sanchez points out that each individual targeted is likely communicating with dozens or hundred of others, whose communications will be picked up in the surveillance. “And probably a lot of these targets are not individuals but entire web sites or companies. While [a company like the Chinese firm] Huawei might be a target, thousands of emails used by thousands of employees will be swept up.” How many of those employees might be American or communicating with Americans is unknown.

Internet service providers from around the world are lodging formal complaints against the UK government's monitoring service, GCHQ, alleging that it uses "malicious software" to break into their networks.The claims from seven organisations based in six countries – the UK, Netherlands, US, South Korea, Germany and Zimbabwe – will add to international pressure on the British government following Edward Snowden's revelations about mass surveillance of the internet by UK and US intelligence agencies.The claims are being filed with the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT), the court in London that assesses complaints about the agencies' activities and misuse of surveillance by government organisations. Most of its hearings are held at least partially in secret.

The IPT is already considering a number of related submissions. Later this month it will investigate complaints by human rights groups about the way social media sites have been targeted by GCHQ.The government has defended the security services, pointing out that online searches are often routed overseas and those deemed "external communications" can be monitored without the need for an individual warrant. Critics say that such a legal interpretation sidesteps the need for traditional intercept safeguards.The latest claim is against both GCHQ, located near Cheltenham, and the Foreign Office. It is based on articles published earlier this year in the German magazine Der Spiegel. That report alleged that GCHQ had carried out an attack, codenamed Operation Socialist, on the Belgian telecoms group, Belgacom, targeting individual employees with "malware (malicious software)".One of the techniques was a "man in the middle" attack, which, according to the documents filed at the IPT, bypasses modern encryption software and "operates by interposing the attacker [GCHQ] between two computers that believe that they are securely communicating with each other. In fact, each is communicating with GCHQ, who collect the communications, as well as relaying them in the hope that the interference will be undetected."The complaint alleges that the attacks were a breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and an interference with the privacy rights of the employees under the European convention of human rights.

The organisations targeted, the submission states, were all "responsible and professional internet service providers". The claimants are: GreenNet Ltd, based in the UK, Riseup Networks in Seattle, Mango Email Service in Zimbabwe, Jinbonet in South Korea, Greenhost in the Netherlands, May First/People Link in New York and the Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg.