Google has announced that Gmail will now operate using HTTPS , a secure connection between a browser and a server, by default. Previously, users could turn on HTTPS connections as default in their settings, but the situation has now been reversed. Google said that after taking a look at the trade-off between speed and security , the primary concern in this case, they decided that it was worth it to the end-user to automatically use a secure connection. Sponsor A group of 37 security and privacy specialists sent Google a letter (.pdf) last June, urging the company to offer this feature. Gmail became the third largest email provider last August, with more than 37 million unique visitors. For all of you sitting at a coffee shop all day, using its unsecured wireless network, Google may have just saved you some serious headaches. That extra couple of seconds of load-time may just be worth it. Of course, if you don't use Gmail or your service doesn't offer HTTPS, there are always solutions like Pretty Good Privacy to keep your private emails secure. Discuss

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Gmail Goes Secure

We began our Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things series yesterday with a look at barcode scanning . We wrote that smartphones are increasingly being deployed as readers for barcodes - in particular via apps available on iPhone and Android. These applications, such as RedLaser on iPhone and ShopSavvy on Android, allow you to scan a barcode on a product or object and get more information about it. We noted however that RFID tags are more functional and flexible than barcodes. While barcodes are cheaper and getting traction in the U.S. with the QR format, the potential for RFID tags is even greater. Apple knows this and if rumors are to believed, RFID will be integrated into the iPhone 4G later this year. Sponsor RWW's Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things Series: According to a number of believable blog reports , RFID is set to be a part of the as yet unannounced iPhone 4G. Apple holds a patent for a touch screen RFID tag reader and is said to be testing an RFID-enabled iPhone currently. So RFID could be a feature of the iPhone 4G as soon as Spring 2010 . As MacRumors succinctly explained in November, mobile phone usage of RFID technology will come in the form of Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC is a new standard based on RFID and it has three use cases: the phone as an RFID tag; the phone as RFID Reader; and peer to peer communication (P2P) between two NFC-enabled phones. The first two use cases are most interesting. Using the iPhone as an RFID tag means it can be a deployed as a payment device (similar to a credit card), identity card, security device, and more. This type of functionality is already happening in Japan, where the RFID Suica chip is installed in some mobile phones. Using the phone as an RFID Reader allows the iPhone to interact with RFID-enabled objects in the real world. Check out this prototype from a Norwegian research organization called Touch, using the iPhone as a Media Player: Timo Arnall from Touch noted in a follow-up post in November that RFID and NFC peripherals are beginning to be released for the iPhone. 2010 could be a great year for RFID in the consumer market, if it is to be a feature of the next iPhone. Expect to see it in Android devices too. Will mobile phones provide the tipping point for adoption of the Internet of Things? We've seen now that mobile phones are a big driver of consumer adoption of both barcodes and RFID tags, so we wouldn't be surprised. Discuss

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iPhone as RFID Tag & Reader: Coming Soon

As some of our readers know, I was clumsy enough to hack off a chunk of my finger while making dinner a couple nights ago. This incident has severely curtailed my blogging activity, but it's led to a fortunate inspiration, as well! For those of you who are differently-abled - temporarily or otherwise - or for those of you who are simply too lazy to type, here are a handful of resources for hands-free Internet use, from blog posting to Twitter updates to straight-up voice-to-text transcription services. I hope you find these apps as useful as I have. Sponsor Jott Jott is a transcription service that takes your speech and converts it to text. With tiered subscription plans that run a modest gamut of around $4 per month to $13 per month and a pay-as-you-go option that seems perfectly geared toward casual users, Jott is competitively priced for both a satisfied userbase and profitability. The site allows users to set in 15- or 30-second snippets of audio to be converted into text. Jott also offers services for consumers (voicemail transcription) and the enterprise (a Salesforce integration ), as well. The company started in Seattle in 2006. Since then, they've integrated Twitter functions and a suite of mobile apps for various devices. QuickTate A similar service we found is QuickTate. This service allows users to leave audio messages for themselves via phone; the messages are then transcribed to text and delivered to the user via SMS or email, depending on one's account settings. Text messages are also available on the web. QuickTate also allows provides a voicemail transcription service and has a handy iPhone-optimized widget. It too offers tiered subscription plans, with a convenient free option for occasional users and monthly plans ranging from $3.50 to $30 a month for up to 200 transcribed messages. We actually tested this one firsthand and found the vocie-to-text process both quick and extremely accurate - Google Voice transcription this was not. Each word was correctly spelled, and sentences were adequately punctuated. TweetCall TweetCall was another simple, free and accurate service we tested for posting updates to Twitter. There are many similar apps on the market, including TwitterFone (still in private beta after more than a year and a half since inception), but we appreciated the quick and easy nature of TweetCall. Signing up for the service took no more than a minute, after which we were able to dial 1-877-TweetCall, enter an optional PIN and leave a message to be transcribed to a 140-character tweet. The service worked just fine, and the text of the message was transcribed beautifully: We were not too surprised to learn that TweetCall is, in fact, powered by QuickTate. We were curious enough to dig around to find out why each product had such quick and accurate transcriptions; we found both are affiliated with iDictate , a long-standing figure in the space that employs actual human beings to get voice messages into text formats. It might not be the most technologically innovative or scalable solution, but these two apps certainly did everything we needed them to, and with a higher degree of accuracy than similar applications that rely on machine transcription of messages. Audio Blogging on Tumblr Lots of blogging software applications have tools for audio posts, but few are as simple as Tumblr's. Tumblr has the distinct advantage of giving users a completely free offering, as well. Early last year, Tumblr gave users the ability to post audio entries to their blogs. While this function doesn't provide any text transcription, it does do the trick for most casual bloggers who might need to call one in on occasion. We tested it out , and weren't too disappointed. The sound was a little muffled, though, and it's definitely not a feature that would be of any use to professional or enterprise bloggers. Visual Voicemail For an extensive and thorough look at voice-to-text voicemail transcription services, check out this post from Baratunde Thurston . I did not test voicemail transcription services because I, dear reader, make a point of not checking my voicemail, ever. Although Google Voice and similar services' audio message (mis)translations can be humorously wrong, they're often helpful for getting the gist of a communiqué without having to reroute through the labyrinthine depths of one's voicemail inbox. Let me know your favorite voice-to-text apps in the comments - I'll need them while I'm resting up and trying to regenerate my finger down in the basement of the ReadWriteLabs. Discuss

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Voice-Activated Internet: Text-Free Tweeting, Blogging & More

A year ago ReadWriteWeb published an article in defense of embargoes with an outline of how startups can effectively manage embargoes and special releases . Lately, in place of embargoes we've received a few requests to sign non-disclosure agreements. While this may simply be a rookie mistake made by early-stage entrepreneurs, NDAs and embargoes are completely different requests. Sending an NDA is absurd for a number of reasons. Sponsor 1. Confidentiality : You just sent a confidentiality agreement to a news outlet. Why the heck would you want a journalist to keep your secrets? Shouldn't we be revealing the brilliance of your products and services? 2. Legality : An NDA is a legally binding agreement between two parties. As Andrew Warner of Mixergy puts it in his post ,"I'm not signing a legal document without a lawyer." 3. Trust : In Venture Hacks' Pitching Hacks book the author advises against presenting an NDA to VCs saying, "You might think an NDA is a barrier to entry for your competitors. Instead, it's just a barrier to getting funded." You likely have competitors in the space and if you're not first to market then we've already seen them. An NDA is making you more difficult than your competitors. We'd rather write the story about the person who works with us than against us. Photo Credits: Marcin Wichary and See-ming Lee Discuss

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Why No One Will Sign Your NDA

In an unusual display of concern, the president of Google Enterprise has made a public statement saying there should be no cause for alarm about Google Apps and its cloud computing infrastructure following a major data breach by a China-based attack on Google and 20 other large enterprise companies. David Girouard, Google's president of Google Enterprise, said in a personally written blog post that Google suffered a massive cyber attack last month. According to the corporate Google blog , the attackers came away from Google with stolen intellectual property. Sponsor Girouard downplayed the impact of the attack. He said Google "believes" the breach did not affect Google Apps customers. Girouard, obviously concerned about the backlash, said the incident may raise some questions about Google security. He said that Google is introducing additional security measures to help ensure the safety of customer's data. There are consistent questions about cloud computing's potential security flaws. Girouard is well aware of this. He tries to make it clear that this incident was not an assault on cloud computing. "It was an attack on the technology infrastructure of major corporations in sectors as diverse as finance, technology, media, and chemical. The route the attackers used was malicious software used to infect personal computers. Any computer connected to the Internet can fall victim to such attacks. While some intellectual property on our corporate network was compromised, we believe our customer cloud-based data remains secure." Girouard comes close to making a sales pitch in his statement, saying, in fact, that Google customers benefit from the Internet giant's investment in data security. "While any company can be subject to such an attack, those who use our cloud services benefit from our data security capabilities. At Google, we invest massive amounts of time and money in security. Nothing is more important to us. Our response to this attack shows that we are dedicated to protecting the businesses and users who have entrusted us with their sensitive email and document information. We are telling you this because we are committed to transparency, accountability, and maintaining your trust." This is an incredible incident that will lead to some major issues for Google Enterprise over the next several months. As the battle heats up for cloud computing supremacy, competitors will pick at this incident as an example of why a company that's more security conscious should be trusted with customer data, not a search engine giant. Discuss

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Google's Top Enterprise Executive: Do Not Be Alarmed by Chinese Cyber Attack

Presentation company Slideshare recently released its list of "5 Social Media Secrets for 2010". While these secrets certainly sound like great suggestions, we thought we'd connect them to some concrete tactics and resources that you can use to improve your social media strategy. Sponsor 1. Pay Attention to the Metrics: Sloane Berrent's Kiva fellowship and Beth Kanter's work with ChipIn . Neither of these efforts were well funded, but both leveraged leaders' creativity to increase engagement and response. 5. Listen, Listen, Listen : Early last year we wrote an article on how sentiment analysis would heat up in 2009 . To track conversations about your company you can try

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Social Media Secrets and Resources Revealed

According to information just released by Google, its Chinese web portal, Google.cn, may be biting the dust shortly. In the wake of a string of cyber attacks, certain surveillance activities and long-standing censorship policies, Google SVP David Drummond writes, "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn We should review the feasibility of our business operations in China." Sponsor Last month, Google noticed a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on their infrastructure that allowed for the theft of Google IP. The attack came from China and targeted at least 20 other major corporations involved in technology, finance, media and chemicals. Google believes the main reason for the attacks was to access Gmail accounts of advocates of human rights for Chinese people. Dozens of accounts with users based in the U.S., Europe and China have been accessed to varying degrees; Google denies any security breach on their part, stating that malware or phishing might have caused the accounts to be compromised. Although Google would not normally share information of this nature with a global audience, their team has decided to do so now because the attacks and account surveillance that have been uncovered speak to issues of security, human rights and free speech. "We launched Google.cn in January 2006," wrote Drummond, "in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that 'we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.'" Drummond also references China's attempts in 2009 to curtail and censor free expression on the Web, which we have covered in depth and which we listed as one of last year's greatest failures . Google execs, who have decided that serving censored search results is no longer an option, will spend several weeks talking with the Chinese government about whether or not they could run an unfiltered search engine in that country. If the two entities are unable to reach an agreement, it is likely that Google.cn will shut down, as will Google's offices in China. What Took So Long? We've long been critical of major tech companies that, through acts of omission or under the auspices of compliance with foreign governments, do harm to human rights, privacy and free speech. In a post from October 2008 , our own Marshall Kirkpatrick questioned whether Google, Yahoo!, YouTube or any of the larger web companies operating internationally were equipped to handle the moral and ethical responsibilities of their expansion overseas into troubled territories. He reminded us of several affronts to human rights for which these companies were responsible, then noted, "It's hard, because their fundamental drive is to monetize these huge markets." Curt Hopkins, founder of the Commmittee to Protect Bloggers , responded with a similar point of view, saying, "Given that not just Google but every single other American tech company has shat themselves to get at the mythological Chinese market, this is way too long in coming. "What took so long? Did they finally realize that they are never going to make any money as things currently are so they thought they'd get some PR? This is great news, but you still have to ask: Who benefits from this? And how do they benefit? I hate to be cynical, but the best we can hope for is that Google says, 'This isn't going anywhere for us, and it's so unpleasant.'... If I was in Google's shoes, I would never stop talking about how wonderful we were for doing this." Hopkins's cohort Andrew Ford Lyons has posted a statement that Google ought to immediately remove filters from search results on Google.cn and promote uncensored, unmonitored web access "by channeling some of their incredibly smart staff's efforts toward projects that protect privacy in China and help more Web surfers there quickly and safely bypass firewalls." We will continue to update you on the situation as we receive more information. In the meantime, please let us know your thoughts in the comments. Discuss

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Google to Shut Down in China?