Extensions were initially added with the June release of Safari 5, but primarily for developer testing. This latest release brings extensions to the forefront, with the introduction of theextensions gallery.

The new version of Safari debuts with extensions by Twitter, The New York Times, Amazon andBing, among others. The extensions bring real-time functionality and integration to the Web browsing experience. The Twitter extension, for example, will notify you of mentions of the website your currently looking at and allow you to tweet about that site with an automatically created short link. The Bing extension adds search, translation and other functionality directly to any page – simply highlight text and the extension goes from there.

According to the release, extensions are built with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript and are “sandboxed”, or kept segregated from other parts of the user’s filesystem to ensure that “they can’t access information on a user’s system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer”.

Last month, Chrome surpassed Safari in the U.S. to take over the number three spot in the browser market, putting Safari behind Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Safari had long held onto the number three spot in the U.S. but had already been relegated to the number four position worldwide. Will the introduction of extensibility, something the other top browsers already offered, bring Safari back into the race?

The latest version of Safari is available for both Mac and PC.

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But this new feature isn’t a copycat of competing browser Google Chrome’s forthcoming Web App support and accompanying Web App Store, sadly. It’s a copycat of Chrome’s simple “pin tab” option instead.

App Tabs are Just “Pinned Tabs” – No “Web Apps” Here

In Firefox, the ability to “pin tabs” – that is, make them into smaller tabs represented only by a favicon – has long been possible through the addition of a Firefox add-on. In Firefox 4 Beta 2, it’s now a native feature. And while, yes, this is progress, it’s also a somewhat disappointing reminder of how far Firefox has fallen behind Google Chrome, which has always had the “pin tab” feature in place, but shrank it down to favicon size back in October of 2009.

Google has long since moved on from basic pinned tabs and plans now for a built-in Web Application Store which will feature apps like those from Google itself (Gmail, Calendar, Docs) as well as choice selections from across the Web (Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, etc.). The store is open to all developers and will feature both free and paid applications.

Where’s the Firefox Web App Store?

In writing about Google Chrome’s Web App Store, some have suggested, by way of the commentsthat the store is just another “rework of speed dial and pin tabs.” Another commenter pondered,“For the life of me, I cannot tell what the difference is between the ‘web app’ and the regular Gmail I’ve been using since before time.”

What? You didn’t see the cute floating icon?

OK, we jest…but we have to agree. Google Chrome Web Apps are very much a new-fangled combination of pinned tabs and “speed dial” favorites. The genius is in the Store itself and the business model behind it.

As Chrome is positioned as an iPad-alternative on netbooks and tablets,  Google is betting on the Web for its “App Store.” It’s enticing developers to make “Web Apps” instead of iTunes Apps, since Chrome HTML5-enabled Web Apps work anywhere Web standards are supported…including the iPad. While precise details on the cut Google plans on skimming off the top are still scarce (the latest news is that it will be “similar to existing app stores”), it wouldn’t be surprising if that cut was considerably less than the one Apple takes now.

Meanwhile, the folks at Mozilla are still pondering what an “open” Web app store should look like, the implication being, of course, that Chrome’s isn’t as open as it could be. But while Mozilla drags its feet, Chrome’s Web App Store is nearly a go for launch. And it’s open enough for most developers, considering how many have already embraced it.

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“We added implicit triggering, which means you can simply search for [flummox] and find the definition, you don’t have to search for [define flummox] or [what is flummox]. We’ve also improved the definition result snippet to show more details such as parts of speech and pronunciation,” explains Google.

Unfortunately, Google’s new OneBox is redundant and inconsistent. If you type [salient] in Google’s search box, Google Suggest already shows a definition of the word from Princeton’s WordNet.

Search for [define salient] and Google shows a definition from WordNet, not from Google Dictionary.

Tip: to trigger the new OneBox when it’s not displayed by default, add en:en to your query. For example, search for [en:en emulsion]

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The Canary build is only available for Windows, it’s “installed to a different path, gets updated separately, and runs side by side with an existing stable/beta/dev installation”. Google says that the Canary build will usually be the same as the dev build. “Sometimes if necessary, we may push additional updates on Canary build so its version is higher than dev.”

“The canary usually updates more frequently than the Dev channel (higher risk
of bustage), and we’re working on making it update as often as we have
successful nightly builds. When something doesn’t work on the canary, I can
just fall back to my Beta Google Chrome,” says Mark Larson, from the Chrome team.

Now that Google Chrome synchronizes bookmarks, settings and it will also synchronize extensions, passwords, browser history, it doesn’t even matter that the two builds use separate profiles. Unfortunately, you can’t make Chrome Canary your default browser. Google’s explanation that it’s “a secondary installation of Google Chrome” doesn’t make any sense.

Lee Mathews from DownloadSquad thinks that having four flavors of Chrome is “Vista-esque”. Google probably noticed that there are many people who install random Chromium builds and decided to offer a channel that updates even faster than once a week, while allowing users to install a stable version of Chrome, just in case the “bleeding edge” builds have major bugs or they’re unstable.

Google Chrome Canary builds – Windows-only, for now.

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Customers would not be levied any charges by the bank for opening a mobile wallet and for mobile-to-mobile transactions. High-end mobile users can use the service through anapplication provided by the bank, while low-end mobile users can use SMS, reportsmoneylife.

In mobile banking, the consumer sends a payment request via a short messaging service (SMS) text message or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) to a short code and a charge is applied to the customer’s phone bill or, in the proposed SBI scheme, a mobile wallet. The vendor is informed of the payment success and can then release the goods or service.

The SBI application being used by high-end mobile users will allow customers to withdraw cash up to Rs 5,000. The whole transaction process will be secure as the data will go through end-to-end encryption. However, an SMS-based transaction will not allow any withdrawals, but will allow the consumer to use a mobile only for small payments.

It is expected that the charges for withdrawals would be 1% of the cash withdrawn from an account. Currently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allows only Rs 5,000 to be withdrawn through such mobile transactions. it is reported that SBI has already reached an agreement with various service providers like Vodafone Essar, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Tata Docomo and Idea, for providing mobile wallet services.

Recently, SBI allowed its customers who had mobiles not equipped with Java or GPRS to access its application State Bank freedoM – making it available from all application bases, over Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), and over USSD. State Bank freedoM service offers transfer of funds, viewing of the balance and mini-statements of the customers’ accounts, payment of bills, request for cheque book, recharge of prepaid mobile connections, viewing of demat account details, top-up of direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV services, and m-commerce transactions.

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Facebook, which has over 400 million users worldwide, has tied up with Indian wireless operators — Reliance Communications and Videocon — to make the site available for cell phone users with zero data charges.

For this purpose, the entity has launched a new site ’0.facebook.com’ that includes all key features of Facebook but is optimised for speed.

“Today, we are launching … ‘0.facebook.com’. “It, initially, is available through more than 50 mobile operators in 45 countries and territories with zero data charges,” a programme manager for Facebook Mobile, Sid Murlidhar, wrote in a blog on Wednesday.

In India, the new site would be available on the networks of Reliance and Videocon, the blog said.

Noting that the new site is fast and free, Murlidhar said it has key features of standard mobile site ‘m.facebook.com’ such as updating user status, send and reply to messages, among others.

”… people can access 0.facebook.com without any data charges. Using 0.facebook.com is completely free. People will only pay for data charges when they view photos or when they leave 0.facebook.com to browse other mobile sites,” he added.

According to the blog, over 100 million people are actively using Facebook from their mobile device.

Other countries where the new site would be available include Brazil, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Hungary and Indonesia.

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This case illustrates some issues at hand. For one thing, it shows how software of a single engineer at Google can have quite far reaching privacy consequences. Google likes to build things that are scalable and which will have enormous impact; an erronous piece of code in such a system may have similarly big impact. Furthermore, the case shows that sometimes it needs authorities pressuring Google to actually make Google reexamine their approaches. Last not least, from what we can see, Google tries to make the case really transparent and public once it found out about their error. Looking at the blog post, I could imagine that Google upon finding out really wanted to make sure that there was no hiding of this, and this may be the important line between corrupt (intentionally bad) or merely flawed (unintentially bad) handling of data.

Google adds, “This incident highlights just how publicly accessible open, non-password-protected WiFi networks are today.”

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“Traveling to another country can be an amazing experience. The opportunity to immerse yourself in a different culture can give you a new perspective. However, it can be hard to fully enjoy the experience if you do not understand the local language. For example, ordering food from a menu you can not read can be an adventure,” explainsGoogle’s mobile blog.

Google says that it’s a good idea to point your phone at the phrase you want to translate and select the region that includes the text to improve detection.

I tested the feature by trying to translate phrases from a French magazine (Science & Vie Junior), but the results weren’t great all the time. Here’s one of the best results:

To install Google Goggles, you need a phone that runs Android 1.6+. Search forGoggles in the Android Market or open the barcode scanner and scan this QR code.

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Last time we used “Nokia” and “Communicator” in the same sentence, we were talking about a giant QWERTY clamshell with roots dating back to the mid ’90s — but yeah, that’s most definitely not what looking at here. Instead, we’re seeing the first results of Nokia’s newfound friendship with Microsoft, a build of Communicator Mobile that’s all set up to run on the S60-based E52 and E72. Granted, an enterprise instant messaging utility isn’t something we can all use, but that’s just as well since it’s limited to just two devices in Nokia’s range at the moment; eventually, it’ll be preinstalled on “select” devices and be available to a broader selection of phones already in the lineup.

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~TECH-BYTES~ says:- well guys when i started using office communicator in my office i thought it would be great to have it on my brand new E-72 , searched the internet and finally after a few failed installations manged to get a decent java based communicator mobile version working, but it had some problems with notifications and some other bugs as well!

Yesterday night when i downloaded the communicator update i never imagined that it’ll be such an awesome change and that its in itself an all together separate app and is no where related to my previous installation!! and it just integrates so beautifully that i stay online 24*7 but you can be online on either your system or mobile!!

The only problem – it adds ‘mobile’ to your status message , so your boss gets to know that you are online through mobile LOL!!!