Back in June, Google launched Sputnik, a suite of tools that runs over 5,000 tests to check a web browser’s JavaScript conformance. Last week, they made the tool a lot easier for anyone to use, with a version that works in the web browser. The results are interesting.

Notably, both the Opera and Safari web browsers beat Google’s own Chrome browser in the test. As you can see in the picture above, Opera is the clear leader, with only 78 failures (the closer to the center, the less errors). Safari came in second with 159 errors, with Chrome in third with 218 errors. Firefox is close behind with 259 errors, while Internet Explorer is the outlier with 463 errors.

These tests were run on Windows machines, with the latest released version of each browser. Using the web tool on my Mac, though, shows similar results (at least for Opera, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox — there is no IE for Mac anymore).

While much of the focus on JavaScript is about speed (that’s what the SunSpider test measures, for example), Sputnik is interesting because it focuses on conformity, making it more like the Acid3 test, which tests web standards compliance. Chrome, Safari, and Opera have all passed Acid3, with Firefox getting very close (94/100 for Firefox 3.6). IE, meanwhile, again lags behind with just 20/100 for IE8. And even the new IE9 preview only scores 55/100.

Speaking of IE9, I tried to run the Sputnik tool in the preview build of the new browser on Windows 7. Unfortunately, it completely shut down several times after getting up to about 50 failures after only a few hundred of the 5,000+ tests — not a good sign. But again, it’s just a very early preview release of the browser, and early SunSpider results for the browser have been good.

CrunchBase InformationOperaSafariGoogle ChromeFirefoxWindows Internet ExplorerInformation provided by CrunchBase

Nuance is killing the SpinVox service, informing its users, which are located in the UK, via text that their accounts will expire within a week. The move — which prompted an outcry on Twitter — marks the end of a very popular voice-to-text service from a very controversial company.

SpinVox was founded in 2003 as a London-based startup aimed at transcribing voicemails into text. The company landed $200 million in funding — including $100 million at a $500 million valuation two years ago — thanks to a customer base of large carriers, which resold the service to their users. But the wheels started to fall off last year when SpinVox struggled to repay a $48.8 million loan and allegations surfaced that transcriptions were being done by call center staffers — not a speech-to-text algorithm, as the company had claimed. Nuance ended up pocketing SpinVox last December for a mere $102.5 million in an effort to better compete in the voice recognition space against Google and Microsoft.

The acquisition was largely driven by SpinVox’s list of corporate customers, which includes Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Vodafone Spain and Skype. Nuance, in explaining its decision to shut down SpinVox’s service, said its mission is to market offerings “as a standard feature in mobile service plans locally and globally.” Indeed, pulling the plug on the consumer service is logical given SpinVox’s inability to develop a viable business model. But as all those tweets indicate, investors aren’t the only ones hurting from SpinVox’s demise — so are many of its soon-to-be former users.

Related content from GigOM Pro (sub req’d):

How Speech Technologies Will Transform Mobile Use

Image courtesy Flickr user jp.ubiqua.

It now seems all but official that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) will pull its search operations in China; Chinese media says Google will make an announcement Monday and the search engine could shut down as soon as April 10.

The likely big winner in all of this: Baidu, which currently controls more than 50 percent of the Chinese search market to Google’s roughly 30 percent. So, how much value may Google be handing over to Baidu? (NSDQ: BIDU) One measure: In the two months since Google first issued its China manifesto, Baidu has gained nearly $13 billion in market value (Its stock is up a whopping 42 percent, completely reversing a 10 percent drop during the prior two months). By contrast, Google has lost about $7 billion in market value (its stock down nearly 7 percent), while the S&P 500 has been flat.

It now seems all but official that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) will pull its search operations in China; Chinese media says Google will make an announcement Monday and the search engine could shut down as soon as April 10.

The likely big winner in all of this: Baidu, which already controlled more than 50 percent of the Chinese search market to Google’s roughly 30 percent. So, how much value is Google handing over to Baidu? (NSDQ: BIDU) One measure: In the two months since Google first issued its China manifesto, Baidu has gained nearly $13 billion in market value (Its stock is up a whopping 42 percent, completely reversing a 10 percent drop during the prior two months). By contrast, Google has lost about $7 billion in market value (its stock down nearly 7 percent), while the S&P 500 has been flat.

Saint Joseph's Day Bloomberg reports Google may shut down China unit on April 10 Comcast confirms 100Mbps is coming Fudzilla: AMD personnel ramp-up details confirmed C|Net on Palm's future: A vicious cycle ...

Hugh Pickens sends in a Washington Post story about how US military cyber-warriors attacked and shut down a CIA-backed intelligence gathering site. "US military computer specialists, over the objections of the CIA, mounted a cyberattack that dismantled an online 'honey pot' monitored by US and Saudi intelligence agencies to identify extremists before they could strike, after military commanders said that the site was putting Americans at risk. The CIA argued that dismantling the site would lead to a significant loss of intelligence, while the military (in the form of the NSA) countered that taking it down was a legitimate operation in defense of US troops. 'The CIA didn't endorse the idea of crippling Web sites,' said one US counterterrorism official. The agency 'understood that intelligence would be lost, and it was; that relationships with cooperating intelligence services would be damaged, and they were; and that the terrorists would migrate to other sites, and they did.' Four former senior US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the creation and shutting down of the site illustrates the need for clearer policies governing cyberwar."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens sends in a Washington Post story about how US military cyber-warriors attacked and shut down a CIA-backed intelligence gathering site. "US military computer specialists, over the objections of the CIA, mounted a cyberattack that dismantled an online 'honey pot' monitored by US and Saudi intelligence agencies to identify extremists before they could strike, after military commanders said that the site was putting Americans at risk. The CIA argued that dismantling the site would lead to a significant loss of intelligence, while the military (in the form of the NSA) countered that taking it down was a legitimate operation in defense of US troops. 'The CIA didn't endorse the idea of crippling Web sites,' said one US counterterrorism official. The agency 'understood that intelligence would be lost, and it was; that relationships with cooperating intelligence services would be damaged, and they were; and that the terrorists would migrate to other sites, and they did.' Four former senior US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the creation and shutting down of the site illustrates the need for clearer policies governing cyberwar."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration has unveiled a synchronization tool that allows the group administrators on Yahoo Groups to sync with GROU.PS. So Yahoo Groups admins can incorporate functionality such as, location-based services and chat, into their platforms from GROU.PS.

The new tool doesn’t require the Yahoo Group owners to shut down their existing group. They can still continue using their email list. Instead, a GROU.PS group surrounds their old Yahoo Group list and will add additional functionality such as collaboration, deep customization tools and integration with Facebook. GROU.PS will essentially create a whole new social network tailored particularly to that specific list, and augments its functionality with typical social networking features that can be found on any GROU.PS group.

And GROU.PS has amped up its offering for publishers by launching Elastic Modules, which gives publishers the ability to change the way the data is displayed to their visitors. To date, the highest reach of look and feel customization was at the template level; the
publisher could only change the skin of their site. Now publishers can actually modify the backend of the social network they’ve created.

The startup’s networks are attractive to users because it lets you run all of your group’s collaboration tools from one GROU.PS domain using a single login. The system supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups – each of which is available as a plug-and-play module for your community. These modules also allow users to pull in their data from other third party services (flickr, Facebook, Digg, blogs, etc).

The startup, which has over 40,000 networks on its platform and 2.5 million users, also added ActivityRank Pipelines, a point and reward system that lets moderators of a social network measure and rank members’ content contributions and then extend moderation privileges to members based on these rankings. And the social network is launching a subscription model that will allow moderators to charge subscription fees to members (GROU.PS gets a 50% cut on any fees charges).

GROU.PS raised $1 million in funding, bringing the startup’s total funding up to over $2 million. But while the social network is growing, it is still faces major competition form the leader in the space, Ning, which hit 37 million users with 1.6 million social networks in November.

CrunchBase InformationGROU.PSInformation provided by CrunchBase

If the U.S. comes under cyberattack, how much authority should the president have to shut down the Internet? That's at the core of the debate over different versions of the cybersecurity legislation currently in circulation in Washington. Senate Bill 733 limits that authority. A previous version of the Act, introduced about a year ago, gave the president the power to flip the switch on all or some portions of the infrastructure of the Internet in the interests of homeland security.

Current version of Senate legislation eliminates provision that permitted the president to shut down the Internet in the event of a major cyber attack.

Established in 1998, Agava is one of Russia’s top 5 web hosting companies employing around 300 people. Last night, police investigators arrived at a datacenter where Agava has some of its operations.

The investigators had a self-awarded warrant which allowed them to conduct a search in order to retrieve evidence located on servers used by Agava client iFolder.ru, a large file-hosting service and Russia’s 51st most-visited site

The police had been working on an investigation into an individual who used iFolder to upload child pornography a while ago. The person was caught by the police, but investigators wanted to search to see if he had uploaded more material.

Agava employees offered their full co-operation in assisting them to find the data in question. However, the police turned down the offer and insisted they were going to seize all of Agava’s servers, more than 100 in total, and waited for several hours for a vehicle to come and collect them.

In the end the mass seizure did not take place but police did cut the power and seal them all off. Some of those affected are Agava’s primary DNS servers, but fortunately their secondary units were unaffected.

“Agava considers this unprecedented event as putting in jeopardy and dimming the future of every business in RuNet,” said the company in an announcement. “We are determined to challenge and overcome the excessive and destructive actions we encountered, to protect our customer’s interests. We thank our clients in advance for their patience, and for media and other support they provide us with.”

Even though the police have stated they have no problem with iFolder continuing its operations, the investigation has rendered the site completely non-operational. On a normal day, 180,000 people upload or download from the service resulting in 1.5 million pageviews. Total users per month is around 4.3m.

This action against iFolder follows the unilateral decision to seize the domain name of Russia’s biggest torrent site, Torrents.ru.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/17/...e-app-licenses/

"Speaking at a MIX10 session about Windows Phone 7 Series architecture this morning, Microsoft's Istvan Cseri mentioned that the Windows Phone Marketplace -- the one and only clearinghouse for apps in WP7S -- will be able to remotely revoke licenses. Since devices will only run properly-licensed apps, this effectively means the company will be able to shut down apps remotely -- a capability they'd probably invoke if a Marketplace app were to badly misbehave en masse, for example."

The paranoid in me says "Whoa... what if I want that app". The sane person in me says this is actually a good thing - it can be invoked to prevent bad applications from messing up the phone experience. While it sacrifices flexibility, it increases the likelihood that your Windows Phone 7 Series experience will be much better than (certainly) Windows Mobile 6.5. Now lets just hope that this 'bad' applications discipline extends to provider bloatware!