Software : FTC chairman resigns after 4 years of online privacy battles

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FTC chairman resigns after 4 years of online privacy battles Posted: An aggressive defender of online privacy, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chief Jon Leibowitz will be leaving his post later this month after vigorously battling everyone from generic drug companies to social networking giant Facebook. The New York Times reported Thursday that FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz has resigned from his position, effective mid-February, ending a four-year battle for consumer online privacy protection. Among them are alleged violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protections Act (COPPA) against social network Path, who reached a settlement Friday after addressing concerns over children under 13 being permitted to sign up for the service. "I felt like this was a good time to leave because we got through a number of things that I wanted the commission to address," Leibowitz explained in an interview. What's next The FTC chairman's most recent high profile case put Google's search results under the microsocope, an effort which ultimately led to voluntary changes that fell short of what consumer advocates had been hoping for. Advertisers claimed Google had been giving higher priority to companies whose interests aligned with theirs, at the same time reducing the presence of competitors. Five FTC commissioners were unanimous in their decision that the company's actions actually benefitted users, even though some were considered less than helpful to the competition. The departure of 54-year-old Leibowitz had been widely expected, and the chairman now plans a move into the private sector, where he'll continue his laser focus on privacy issues and anticompetitive practices.

Chrome notification center hints at future Google Now support Posted: Google Chrome notifications have popped up once again in the latest update to the Chromium project, this time adding full notification center support. Chromium users can access the notification center by toggling the "Enable Rich Notifications" flag through chrome://flags. Doing so opens the doors to adding notifications to any Chrome extension, as well as working in conjunction with regular HTML notifications. Developer François Beaufort placed a post about the notification center update on his Google+ page, creating a sample notification complete with code to show how it can be done. Now isn't soon enough Beaufort further speculated that the Chromium project's notification center could act as a central hub to bring Google Now cards to Chrome. Google Now has proven a popular addition to Android Jelly Bean, dynamically bringing users the most relevant information at any given time, such as traffic and weather reports while driving to work. Back in December, Chromium had already accepted a submission for skeleton code to implement Google Now in Chrome. The notification center could very well lead to the next stage in Google Now integration with Chrome, along with the added benefit of support for any Chrome extension. Perhaps even larger potential lies with what the notification center could mean for the Chrome OS, with Google Now cards bringing closer parity between it and Android OS for users.

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