First, back in late August the Java browser plug-in was found to be vulnerable to an exploit that could make all PCs using browsers with the Java plug-in installed open to malware by visiting a malicious website. Thankfully, Oracle didn’t wait for its October patch to fix the issue, and released a patch just a few days later.

Only that wasn’t the end of it. A security company announced the day after the patch that another vulnerability in the Java software had been found. Meanwhile, the news came that Oracle knew about the exploits but did not fix them until news of them forced their hand.

Today, security company Security Explorations has once again called out Oracle for an exploit found in Java. The new exploit affects all the latest versions of Java SE software, including Java SE 5, 6, and 7. The company’s CEO, Adam Gowdiak stated that their tests were able to bypass Java’s security sandbox. The tests used a fully updated version of 32-bit Windows 7 and modern browsers. Anyone using Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari is vulnerable.

Gowdiak said in an email that the company has notified Oracle of the exploit. He also told ComputerWorld in an interview that, thankfully, there is not yet any evidence of attacks that use the newly revealed exploit.

(via BGR)

They’ve just announced the free public beta stage of McAfee Social Protection, a Facebook app/browser plug-in combo that allows Facebook users to safeguard their photos from being accessed and shared by the wrong people.

With the app, users can select which friends they want to give access to their photos. Photos will look blurry to everyone not on the list. Even when they get access to your photos, friends still won’t be able to share, copy, print, or take screencaps. The screen capture mechanism with record a blank page, according to McAfee.

Also:

The app also disables the save and download feature, displaying a padlock icon over the picture when a user scrolls over it. This unique lock feature is possible because when users upload protected photos through the app, those files go onto McAfee, rather than Facebook servers.

“As consumers continue to share more of their lives online through the photos they post to Facebook, they become increasingly vulnerable to the privacy pitfalls associated with not being able to fully control where their photos end up,” said Brian Foster, senior vice president of consumer product management for McAfee. “McAfee Social Protection helps to further underscore our commitment to safeguarding consumer’s safety, data and identities online.”

McAfee has also built in a clever bit of self-promotion into the app. Users can also make it so that selected friends can only access their photos once they have also downloaded the Social Protection app.

McAfee Social Protection is only available on PCs running IE 8+ or Firefox 8+ (wat?). So if you’re a Mac user, Chrome user, Safari User, etc., you’re out of luck.

It’s called the Recommendations Bar, and it mimics some fo the recommended articles pop-ups that sites have employed on their own – except this one, of course, is heavily integrated with Facebook.

If you install the Recommendations Bar on your site, a little box with a couple of related articles that readers can click on to continue the time they spend on your site. Facebook says that the articles displayed in the Bar will be based on “content that friends have explicitly liked and shared in your app or website.”

Here’s what it’ll look like when it pops up on one of your pages:

And close up:

As you can see, the Recommendation Bar alos includes a “like” button for the article the reader is currently on, and just like with any like button that story will be pushed to the user’s Timeline when clicked.

You can hide the new Recommendation Bar by clicking the top right corner, but a minimized tab remains on the site so you can open it back up if you want.

“In early tests, sites are seeing 3x the click through on the stories it recommends than through the Recommendations Box,” says Facebook.

For site owners:

As with all of our social plugins, integration is easy and takes just a few lines of code. Simply configure the plug-in, copy the code and paste it on your site. The functionality also available as part of the Facebook for WordPress plug-in. We recommend you include Open Graph markup on your articles Facebook can properly display them on the site.

Get started now.

On iOS devices, such as an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, Axis functions as a stand-alone browser. Once users log into Axis using a Yahoo!, Facebook, or Google account, they can browse, bookmark, save links for later, or search from the URL bar. It is these search results that Yahoo! is banking on to make Axis a success.

“Our search strategy is predicated on two core beliefs—one, that people want answers, not links and two, that consumer-facing search is ripe for innovative disruption,” said Shashi Seth, Yahoo!’s senior vice president of Connections. “With Axis, we have re-defined and re-architected the search and browse experience from the ground up.”

When users search using Axis, the search bar expands and displays thumbnail previews of search results. The results can be intuitively swiped through on a mobile device. Axis’ search function includes what Yahoo! is calling “instant answers,” which are answers to common questions or information such as movie times and local weather. In addition, by tapping a panel button users can switch the web search results to image search results, which are displayed in an easy-to-use, swipe-able grid.

Once users are done browsing on their mobile devices, the Axis plug-in for desktop browsers allows them to seamlessly continue where they left off. The plug-in looks similar to a toolbar, and sits in the bottom-left corner of corner of a browser as a small search box. Hovering over or clicking the search box expands Axis across the browser window, and searching provides the same “visual” search results as the mobile version. Signing into the plug-in will allow users to sync their search history, recent sites, saved articles, and bookmarks with the mobile versions. If users do not want to sync their search or browser history, Axis offers a “Local Only” mode in its privacy settings.

Another feature of Yahoo!’s new app is the Axis Home Page, which gathers all of a user’s bookmarks, read later links, and recently visited sites into an easily navigable interface. This is also the page where users can continue browsing with links to where they left off on other devices. The home page is fully customizable, allowing users to create folders and organize content as they desire.

With all of the turmoil it has experienced recently, Yahoo! needs a fresh outlook and new, creative ventures. The company lost many viewers for its video platform in April, causing some speculation that the company should shift its focus away from content and back to search, or even toward social. Though Axis provides many features that are already available in other mobile browsers, Yahoo! is at least taking a step toward a larger mobile presence, which is a step in the right direction.

That’s exactly the purpose of the eponymous Chrome plug-in, OverShareMe. Simply put, you install the plug-in, give yourself a hashtag or username to identify yourself, and then every search you make will be automatically tweeted to the plug-in’s Twitter account at @PlzOverShareMe. Or, if you prefer, you can watch the stream of searches appear on OverShareMe’s website.

Here are some samples of what OverShareMe users have been searching and, therefore, tweeted out to the world.

The good thing about OverShareMe – maybe it’s good for you, I don’t know – is that the auto-shared Tweets keep Googlers anonymous. Well, in theory, you could use your own name if you really want to embody the over-sharing attitude but that’s a decision only you can make. Even then, as of writing this the Twitter account only has 15 followers so you still have a ways to go if you want to smear the contents of your Google searches all over the web.

Given that the entertainment value of the OverShareMe plug-in is contingent on how many people install the app, it’s got some pretty valid potential as an implement for following Google search trends should more people install it. Of course, the value of OverShareMe’s comedy is somewhat diminished when you know that those people using the plug-in are in on the joke of over-sharing their Google search queries. Acknowledging this, OverShareMe’s website suggests one use of the plug-in as a means to secretly broadcast your “frenemy’s” Google searches to the world which.

Which, if you do resort to such nefarious uses, I must say… you are a wicked, wicked person.

If you’re the type that waits with bated breath as your Facebook homepage loads in hopes that you’ll be greeted with some new notifications but sadly are met with a dearth of notices, Dr. Benjamin Grosser has got the cure for your social network malady.

Actually, he’s not really a doctor (as far as I know). He’s just an astute software developer with a mind for how we interact with software and the emotional effect it has on us.

Grosser has developed a plug-in for Facebook called Reload The Love!, a new application that will automatically inflate the amount of notifications you see when you log in to your Facebook account. Tired of seeing zero notifications? Reload The Love! will make sure you see plenty the next time you reload the page or log in. If you should receive any real notifications after Reload The Love! has inflated them, the count will automatically revert to the actual values. If you start feeling the tug of loneliness due to no new notifications after that, you can re-inflate them anytime by reloading the page to Reload The Love!

The project is equal parts social psychology experiment and software development ingenuity as it cleverly explores the value social networks have on a person’s self-esteem and how something as seemingly minuscule as red word bubble notifications can impact a person’s mood.

“Reload The Love! is first and foremost an art project for me,” Grosser told WebProNews, “so I do consider it within that context. As such, one of its purposes is to get people thinking about how Facebook’s notification icons function in their daily lives. How many times do you check those icons, hoping to find a new friend or message? How do those icons make you feel?”

The marketing value of such information, which Facebook is undoubtedly tracking, isn’t lost on Grosser, either, who has worked on other software systems for Facebook and Google. “It’s important to remember that Facebook’s value as a company is in the breadth of its data,” he said. “The source of that data is unwaged free labor contributed by us, their users. How do those icons prod us to keep generating more of that free data? As you mentioned, are we feeling happier when we see everyone else’s activities, or does it make us sad when we inevitably compare them to our own?”

Grosser’s Reload The Love! application turns the value of those notifications on its ear as it “nullifies those icons by turning them into a perpetual positive indicator.” So far, the response has been well received although, although since the application is very new it’s only been installed 366 times (wink, wink, hint). “When I show it or talk about it with people I get a variety of reactions,” Grosser said. “The first is humor – many people find it quite funny. But others find it sad and talk about their own emotional connection and/or reliance on those icons.”

And there’s the rub: people experiencing emotional distress over lack of attention and involvement on Facebook. Has social networking really moved beyond a fun pastime distraction to being a legitimate utility in our everyday lives? That’s one of the complexities that Reload The Love! exposes to ourselves – but not to Grosser. Yes, rest assured, he has zero ways of tracking any of your information through the use of this application and he was delightfully up-front in stating he wouldn’t want to even if that was a possibility. “I wouldn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy with that,” he said. “The source code is freely viewable so that users can verify for themselves that nothing nefarious is going on.”

Take that, Facebook.

But back to the existential question that Reload The Love! points at us: are we really that reliant on being noticed on Facebook? Maybe. Grosser admits that such questions are what drive his interest in software. “I am obsessed with how software functions to force us into certain types of behaviors or to see the world in certain ways.” He adds, “Software is a designed object, and even though we can’t hold it in our hands or pack it in a box, it has a profound effect on our daily life. These are the interests that led me to create Reload The Love!”

Reload The Love! isn’t a Facebook app that works within the Facebook UI itself but rather must be installed as a plug-in on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers (don’t worry, it’s a piece of cake to install). You will need to get an extension for Firefox (Greasemonkey) and Safari (Ninjakit) but Chrome runs the app on a native browser extension. Installation is very user-friendly and you can find instructions on how to integrate Reload The Love! on your Facebook account here. If you’re so inclined to give Reload The Love! a try, let us know what you think in the comment section below.