Google SMS – A Dream Come True - Enhance your Google Calendar with a simple SMS

If you ever wanted to control your favorite web solutions straight from your mobile devices, now's your chance to do this with the latest function implemented into Google Calendar. First of all, you're able to add a new event using a simple SMS sent to "GVENT" (48368) in which you must specify the time and the location of the schedule. Then, you can view all your meetings for a certain day
by sending the word "day" to the same number. The service will automatically send you a message containing all the information for a certain day.

"Or, send the word "day" to "GVENT" to get a text message response containing all of your scheduled events for today, "next" for your next scheduled event, or "nday" for all your events scheduled for tomorrow," Shirin Oskooi, Google Calendar Associate Product Manager, said today.

According to the Google employee, a lot of Google consumers requested this feature although it was already implemented into the Google Calendar. "Some folks want a similar service for Google Calendar, where they can send text messages to add events to their calendar or find out what events they have coming up. This is by far my favorite request -- not only because I think it's a great feature, but because it already exists," he said.

At this time, the function is available only in the United States while the SMS notifications can be sent for the events with 24 hours in advance. However, the SMS messages are charged depending on your mobile operator but the Google service is free for all users.

Google's mobile efforts are quite impressive because it tends to make most of its solutions accessible from any handheld device. Beside Gmail, Google Search and Google Calendar, the Mountain View company is also developing special functions of its products that make them easy to control from a mobile phone.

IE to Firefox: I Own You! - Firefox affected by new vulnerability

Mozilla's Firefox, the browser that fights for the supremacy of the Internet, is once again affected by a highly critical security flaw that can allow an attacker compromise a
vulnerable system. Security company Secunia rated the flaw as highly critical and sustained that it was discovered on a computer running Windows XP SP2 with the latest updates installed along with Firefox 2.0.0.4. However, other versions of the application might be also vulnerable to attacks but there are not reports available.

"A vulnerability has been discovered in Firefox, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The problem is that Firefox registers the "firefoxurl://" URI handler and allows invoking firefox with arbitrary command line arguments. Using e.g. the "-chrome" parameter it is possible to execute arbitrary Javascript in chrome context. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary commands e.g. when a user visits a malicious web site using Microsoft Internet Explorer," Secunia said in the advisory.

The security company also mentioned the only solution available at this moment: avoid browsing untrusted websites that might exploit the recently discovered vulnerability.

Internet Explorer and Firefox are involved into an important battle with an impressive award: the supremacy of the Internet that means more visitors. Indirectly, a boosted number of consumers bring more money to the parent company, in our case Microsoft or Mozilla. The battle was started a long time ago when Firefox was described as a more secure alternative for Internet Explorer, the default browser of the Windows operating system.

Also, Firefox was the first application that offered the tabbed browsing concept, being copied by Internet Explorer 7 that now allows you to browse several pages with a single instance of the application. Still, the consumers are able to choose from a large variety of programs such as Opera and the recently introduced Safari.

Security Verification for Google Search - Why is this annoying captcha appearing?

Sometimes, searching Google might return some unusual results that require you to enter a visual captcha in order to verify that you're a human person and not a computer program. However, some of the users might find this security verification very unpleasant and might decide to abandon the search technology
and look for a simpler alternative. Still, why is this annoying captcha appearing? According to Niels Provos, Anti-Malware Team from Google, this verification appears every once in a while when the Google technology detects unusual search queries entered by the users.

The message sent by the search engine is actually an error that starts with the "We're sorry" message and informs us that the "query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now." However, you have the chance to continue the search process by entering the code shown in a photo. "We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google. To continue searching, please type the characters you see below," the message says.

"Several things can trigger the sorry message. Often it's due to infected computers or DSL routers that proxy search traffic through your network - this may be at home or even at a workplace where one or more computers might be infected. Overly aggressive SEO ranking tools may trigger this message, too. In other cases, we have seen self-propagating worms that use Google search to identify vulnerable web servers on the Internet and then exploit them," the Google official tried to explain the reasons for the image verification request.

Google struggles to improve the security of the search technology but with a so powerful engine that indexes websites from every corner of the world, it's very difficult to maintain a high level of security. However, the Mountain View company already included two types of malware notifications that inform the users about the presence of dangerous content on certain pages.