It is such a lovely day here in the Willamette Valley! Pouring down rain, super windy, just a great day to be outside… Let’s see how well the tech world is doing today, shall we?

So a Senator wants websites such as Amazon, Twitter, and so on, to have their websites default to HTTPS instead of HTTP, so those using public Wi-Fi can safely browse the websites securely, without people snooping around. I like the idea, but why is there no Wi-Fi security protocol that can allow anyone to use the public Wi-Fi yet the communication between the router and device (laptop, netbook, phone, etc.) be secure? It must be possible, right? The router and device do some fancy handshake and set up encryption keys and use those to communicate. If HTTPS can prevent eavesdroppers from seeing what they are doing over a public Wi-Fi network, why can’t the wireless connection itself be secured? Not all websites need HTTPS, but security would still be nice.

Google has made Google Cloud Connect available to everyone, allowing you to sync your Microsoft Office documents to Google Docs. This is done right in Microsoft Word, too, so it is very appealing. Well, Microsoft has pointed out a few issues, as noted by Neowin, with this setup, such as Google Cloud Connect could cause data loss, as Google strips Office documents of formatting it cannot understand — something Office Web Apps does not: if it is not supported, it is ignored, but not removed. Whether Microsoft is doing this out of fear (of what?), I think I will stick to Windows Live Mesh, allowing me to keep my Documents folder synced on my desktop, netbook, and then accessible (both readable and editable) online.

Google’s cloud had a bit of a hiccup this morning, causing around 150,000 Gmail accounts to become inaccessible. Google says this has only affected about 0.02% of users, down from around 500,000 that they originally estimated. So far they say they have restored about 1/3 of the users accounts, and the rest should be restored within 12 hours.

Ford SYNC will become available in 19 languages soon, meaning if you speak “US, Australian and UK forms of English, European and US Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Korean, European and Canadian French, European and Brazilian Portugese, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Japanese,” you can expect your Ford to understand what you are saying.

The HTC 7 Trophy running on Verizon has been spotted in the wild, according to WinRumors. Verizon is expected to announce the phone February 28 (hey, that’s today!), which would go for $200 on contract. The phone would include the ‘NoDo’ update, as it includes CDMA support, required for the phone to operate on Verizon and Sprint.

In 2008, Google rolled out an option to always use HTTPS – which prevents third parties from being able to read your email when you view it on gmail.com such as when you are on public wifi networks. While using HTTPS is much more secure, there is – as always – a trade off, as HTTPS is slower than regular HTTP. Google researched the latency and security trade off and then decided it would be best to enable HTTPS by default.

It wasn’t long ago that Microsoft finally rolled out the Windows Live update (Wave 4) for everybody. The new Windows Live update included some welcomed updates to Hotmail, such as viewing YouTube videos inline, filtering out and viewing only social network updates and so forth. There was one thing missing, HTTPS.

No HTTPS at first

For some unknown reason, Microsoft didn’t include the ability to turn HTTPS on in the Windows Live update, though when logging in to your Windows Live account, HTTPS was used during the log in process.

HTTPS at last!

Today Microsoft has announced that full-session HTTPS is now available for your Hotmail inbox, calendar and contacts. You can enable full-session HTTPS by going to https://account.live.com/ManageSSL. Once enabled, all your future connections with Hotmail will be delivered over SSL (which is what HTTPS uses).

Microsoft notes that there are a few things you should put into consideration before enabling HTTPS on your account, as you won’t be able to connect to Hotmail through with the following if you do so:

• Outlook Hotmail Connector
• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Live Mail application for Windows Mobile (version 6.5 and earlier) and Symbian

Which is a bummer if you use such applications, but if you only use Windows Live Hotmail through your browser, you are just fine.

Hotmail wasn’t the only part of Windows Live to get SSL, SkyDrive, Photos, Docs and Devices will now all use SSL by default, but Hotmail is unlikely to follow due to the aforementioned pitfalls of using SSL with Hotmail.