Barely one month after an update that brought Latitude and Hotpot closer than ever, Google's updated Maps for Android again to further sweeten the deal. This time around, Latitude seems to have gotten the most attention, but Places a.k.a. Hotpot hasn't been left entirely out of the mix. For Latitude, Google's added a feature for setting a "home" location, as well as the ability to check into ... Read more »

For what seems like an eternity, Download Squad readers have reacted to news of security exploits targeting Adobe Reader with a common sentiment: why doesn't Microsoft build its own secure PDF reader into Windows? Apparently the Windows 8 team agrees, and they're working away at an application called Modern Reader which is exactly that. From the handful of screenshots Paul Thurrott has ... Read more »

Sand Trap is one of those games that at first seem too hard to bother with, but when you try to stop playing it you discover you're hooked. The goal is to get as much sand as you possibly can out of the maze and into the bucket at the bottom of the screen. You need to rotate your maze every which way to get the sand rolling around it. You then try to direct the sand to one of the exits of ... Read more »

When it comes to car-sharing service Zipcar, iPhone users get to have all the fun. But Android users -- who have thus far been relegated to using the mobile website for car reservations -- are about to get in on the app action. Zipcar has confirmed via Twitter that Android users can expect an app, and more details will be released soon. There's no expected released date for the app, yet. ... Read more »

Google's Blogger service has launched a new extension for Google's Chrome browser today, called Blogger Dynamic Views. As its name implies, this is related to last week's unveiling of five new HTML5-based Dynamic Views for Blogger. The extension adds an orange Blogger icon in your address bar when you're visiting a Blogger blog. If you click on the orange icon, you'll get a list of the five ... Read more »

Nortel, once one of the biggest telecoms company in the world but now in the death throes of bankruptcy, has selected Google's $900 million bid for its patent portfolio as the stalking horse bid. This doesn't mean that Google will automatically win Nortel's massive array of telecoms patents, but it does mean that Google is the preferred buyer. Google, which has a history of lobbying for patent ... Read more »

If you used Windows XP for a long time (who didn't?), one of the biggest changes when moving to Windows 7 or Vista was the massively-altered Explorer. While the new Explorer introduces some useful new features, it also removed just as many -- which is where Classic Shell comes in! We've covered Classic Shell before, but here's the crib note: Classic Shell restores almost every Windows ... Read more »

When Firefox 4's tab grouping tool, Panorama, had its keyboard shortcut changed to the finger-breaking combo of Ctrl+Shift+E, we thought Panorama would get dropped before FF4's final release -- but, thankfully, it made the cut! If you've used Firefox 4 and Panorama, you might have noticed that Mozilla's new browser doesn't always save your tab groupings when you close the browser -- a bit of ... Read more »

Some of you who own Windows Phone 7 devices are still waiting for your pre-NoDo preparation update -- never mind NoDo itself. A few workarounds have been posted, but unfortunately they didn't work unless your carrier had completed testing and was ready to schedule the update. Now, however, the Chevron WP7 team's Chris Walshie has delivered a handy little utility that will allow you to update ... Read more »

Amazon's recently-introduced Cloud Drive is a great place to store your files online. It offers 5 gigs of totally free space, and U.S. users also get access to the handy Cloud Player app (for Web and Android!) which streams music you upload to your Cloud Drive. The service could be a little easier to use, however. Until Amazon releases a desktop client, Windows users might want to take ... Read more »

If you're a baseball fanatic, the MLB At Bat app is a must-have. It's packed with live updates, scores, stats, news, and videos -- and right now there's another great reason to pick up At Bat. Pony up for At Bat and you'll get to enjoy MLB.tv free for the entire month of April. The service streams games in HD to just about any connected device you can imagine, from iPhone to PS3, and even ... Read more »

Have you ever wondered what the Web was like before the Mosaic Web browser? If you were born in the last 20-odd years, or you only discovered your inner geek recently, did you miss out on monochrome monitors and the dial-up BBS era? Well, here's your chance to get a sneak peek at history: grab the ChromeLite extension and marvel as the entire Web is transformed into ASCII characters. Now, ... Read more »

Mozilla, continuing its year-long crusade to speed up Firefox startup and shutdown times, has published a name and shame list of the Firefox's slowest add-ons. The list is just one part of Mozilla's new efforts to highlight slow add-ons, and to help developers make their add-ons more efficient. Over the next two weeks, 'slow performance warnings' will be introduced in the add-on gallery so ... Read more »

Jailbreakers, your iOS 4.3.1 time has come -- the iPhone Dev-Team has updated their redsn0w and PwnageTool utilities to enable an untethered jailbreak of the latest and greatest iOS version. Redsn0w 0.9.6rc6 and PwnageTool 4.3 both use an exploit discovered by Stefan Esser, a German security researcher, best know to the jailbreak community as the man behind the antid0te framework, which ... Read more »

Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott have posted a second look at some of the early changes which have surface in Windows 8 milestone 3. First there was the restyled Welcome Screen, and now it appears that Microsoft is toying with bringing the Ribbon UI to Explorer. The Ribbon, like in Microsoft Word and Excel, is context-aware, adding tabs for specific tasks which apply to the folder you're ... Read more »