On Tuesday we shot a “first look” video of Google’s new Chrome browser for CNET TV. In case you’re on a Mac, running Linux, or if you’re avoiding going through Google’s entire list of feature videos, we’ve broken out some of the ones that set it apart from the competition.

What’s demoed:

• Tab dragging off the browser and back in
• The omnibar search box/address bar
• Customized start page
• Incognito/”porn” mode

If you want to see the widescreen, high-resolution version, click here to be taken to the CNET TV viewer. You can also catch up on all of our coverage of Chrome on this page.

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Privacy advocates are starting to sound the alarm over a feature in Google’s Chrome that sends anything typed in the browser’s Omnibox back to Google.

Google told CNET News earlier Wednesday that it plans to store about 2 percent of the data it gets back, along with the IP address of the computer that sent it. Google said it won’t receive or store data if users turn off the auto-suggest feature or if they select a default search provider other than Google or if they are using the product’s “Incognito” mode.

Still, EFF staff technologist Peter Eckersley said in an interview that he is concerned about Google having yet another window into what the world is browsing.

“We’re worried that Chrome will be another giant conveyer belt moving private information about our use of the Web into Google’s data vaults,” Eckersley said. “Google already knows far too much about what everybody is thinking at any given moment.

Eckersley did point out that there are several ways to keep the data from being sent to Google, but noted that there is still a lot of data that will head Google’s way.

Because Chrome is open source, Eckersley suggested that one option would be for privacy-minded outsiders to create their own suggestion engine that sits on surfers’ own PCs, offering some of the utility that Google provides, without having to send the data to its servers. He noted that Chrome, itself, already does this when a surfer uses Chrome in its more stealthy Incognito mode. In that case, all suggestions are based on a surfer’s locally stored history.

“The addition of Incognito is great,” he said, adding that Google is making some strides with Chrome, clearly recognizing that people want to be able to surf the Web without having a record of it stored in various places.

“They are making some initial moves in the directions of that,” Eckersley said, but reiterated his concerns over how the Omnibox works.

“We are genuinely really worried about the Omnibox thing,” he said. “It’s just one more piece of the complete puzzle of Google seeing everything that everyone is doing.”

Simon Davies, Founder of Privacy International and a senior fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) also expressed concern over the Omnibox feature.

“I’m astonished that these terms are sent to Google even without the return being hit,” Davies said. “That is beyond anything that Google has ever contemplated before.”

Davies said the lack of attention to privacy and less-than-clear disclosure of its information use is typical Google behavior.

“This is why Google is running into trouble with regulators in Europe,” Davies said. “They will trip themselves up at some point very badly. The patience of regulators is growing thin.”

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

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Updated 2 p.m., with change in license terms.

Google said on Wednesday that it plans to alter contract terms that gave the search provider broad rights to use anything entered into its new Chrome browser.

“In order to keep things simple for our users, we try to use the same set of legal terms (our Universal Terms of Service) for many of our products,” Google said in a statement provided to CNET News. “Sometimes, as in the case of Google Chrome, this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don’t apply well to the use of that product. We are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service.”

As first noted by CNET News on Tuesday, Chrome’s End User License agreement appeared to give Google a perpetual right to use anything one entered into the browser. Section 11 stated that although users retain copyright to their works, “by submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

Google said the change, once it is made, will apply retroactively to anyone who has downloaded the browser.

All this is separate from the issue of what information Google plans to store on its servers. Provided that users leave on the auto-suggest feature in Chrome and have Google as their default search provider, Google has the right to store any information typed into Chrome’s Ominibox, which serves as both search bar and address bar. The software maker told CNET News it plans to store about 2 percent of all such data, along with the IP address of the computer that entered the information.

Update: As of 2 p.m. PT, it looks like the terms have changed. Section 11 now reads simply: “11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

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(Credit: Sony)

I’m fairly certain the world didn’t need another photo-sharing site, but Sony disagrees. Its newish Digital Darkroom Web site is, however, a little more than just another Flickr with marketing for Sony’s cameras.

Digital Darkroom (not to be confused with the other site by the same name and no relation to 1988’s Beyond Photography: The Digital Darkroom book or 2007’s The Creative Digital Darkroom book) is part of Sony’s Backstage 101 online learning center and features online photography tutorials along with a way to share and view pictures.

There are public galleries and “assignment” galleries, the latter displaying examples of photography concepts such as depth of field, contrast, and rule of thirds, and members can vote on their favorite shots.

Becoming a member–which doesn’t require much more than an e-mail–also enters you into a sweepstakes to win a $500, $300, or $200 Sony Style gift card. And every time you post to either gallery gets you another entry to the random drawings that will happen in October and November. There’s also a photo contest on the site with a chance to win a grand prize of $1,000 gift card.

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LetsCall.Me is a smart new service for giving out your contact information to others without actually revealing it. At sign-up you get a special vanity URL and the option to have it direct callers to whatever number you provide. People who have your URL and want to call you can simply enter in their phone number and it will call that number to connect them to yours.

Unlike some other services that offer de-centralized calling (see GrandCentral, Jaxtr, JaJah, and iNumbr), LetsCall.Me preserves the caller’s number so you can see it before picking up. I had my brother help me test this and he was a little confused to be calling Palm Springs, Calif., whereas I knew it was him because he was in my phone book.

Users who want to use the service as a virtual business card can simply make various bits of their contact information publicly available, although the phone number will always remains hidden. In future versions, I’d like to be able to display a wider array of profile information, as well as have a simpler way to manage multiple URLs with the same account. As it stands you’ve got to remember which ones you’ve set up even though they’re on the same account.

[via MakeUseOf and Lifehacker]

Just enter in whatever vanity URL you want, and if it's available, anyone who clicks on it will be able to see what contact information you've made public, as well as being able to plug in their phone number and have it connect you.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

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Like Slinkies and Silly Putty originating from flubbed technology, some of the cooler Web services have originated from tech originally intended for government agencies.

BigStage is definitely one of those services. It uses three photos of your face to map your features onto a virtual head using technology developed for the CIA. Your magic head is rendered into various scenes from popular movies, television shows, and digital shorts–including clips from The A-Team. You can then send those clips to your friends, parents, and relatives to be thoroughly confused and/or entertained by your shenanigans.

The service was originally demoed at both CES and the Under the Radar conference back in June, and made its formal public launch earlier Wednesday. I gave it a spin this afternoon and it managed to transfer shots of my face into what the service calls an “@ctor” in about a minute. After it’s done mapping you can tweak various appearance elements from a rather simplistic Flash-based editing tool. I found it to be maddening in that it makes you scroll through each set of sunglasses, hairdos, and accessories page by page. After using something like Spore’s Creature Creator, it feels decidedly old-school.

You can save each set of customizations as its own @ctor, each of which can be inserted into video clips with a single click. You can make changes to your character on the fly and see them updated live. To share a video it has to first render you in, which takes about three minutes, although the link to send it to someone else is immediately available.

Another company that’s doing this is Gizmoz with its “be a star” feature. The big difference is that BigStage has a much wider range of clips from popular TV content whereas Gizmoz has a small selection of original content and music videos. That said, there is a downside; you must first install a small piece of software to use BigStage, and it only works with PCs running Windows XP or Vista.

I’ve embedded a sample clip using my face below. If you’re having trouble seeing it you can also check it out on this page.

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Start-ups that sell T-shirts are a dime a dozen, but a tool to let you search across all of the stores has been nonexistent. Enter PleaseDressMe, a simple search engine that lets you hunt for specialty T-shirts from several vendors at once using some simple filters.

Included are big-name online T-shirt stores like Threadless, BustedTees and TShirtHell. More will continue to be added, but for the time being the selection is far greater than any of those stores alone.

You can find the shirt you’re looking for by keyword, tag, the color or price. You can also see shirts that the engine thinks are related. In my testing of this it tended to do a pretty good job, mostly basing the decision on color, although in one case it managed to pull together several shirts featuring boats or water from a T-shirt of Noah’s Ark. That was impressive.

All links on the site lead to the online store where you can buy the shirt. Missing from the engine is some of the local color you’ll find on those sites, like their user ratings, reviews, and photos of the shirt on actual people. Presumably the site plans to make its money off of affiliate linkage and sponsored results which are not yet a part of the picture.

PleaseDressMe is the creation of Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk and his younger brother AJ, as well as Joe Stump, Digg.com’s lead architect.

Related:Web Shirts: 20 rad T-shirt sites

PleaseDressMe lets you search for T-shirts by tags, colors, price tag and keyword. It also shows you shirts that are related to the results.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

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