As news of Google’s China situation dominates headlines, the company has also announced that it is turning on https access for Gmail as the default (Gmail accounts were hacked in China, in case you haven’t read about that yet).

Https, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is used to provide encryption and secure ID. Back in 2008 Google started giving users the option to use it.

"We initially left the choice of using it up to you because there’s a downside: https can make your mail slower since encrypted data doesn’t travel across the web as quickly as unencrypted data," says Gmail Engineering Director Sam Schillace. "Over the last few months, we’ve been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning https on for everyone was the right thing to do."

Interesting timing on that decision.

The company is currently rolling out https for all Gmail users, and if you have set your own https preference in Gmail’s settings, nothing will change. Users do still have the option to turn it off. It will just be on by default.

"Gmail will still always encrypt the login page to protect your password," says Schillace. "Google Apps users whose admins have not already defaulted their entire domains to https will have the same option."

Google notes that offline Gmail users using http may experience some hiccups. If this includes you, you may want to read up on this.

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Facebook has just announced some updates to the Open API Stream. Among these are simpler JavaScript methods for publishing, Facebook Pages support, and attribution. A spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews:

- Developers can now build deep experiences for Page admins to allow them to consume and update their Page stream from applications, such as those on the desktop.

- Application names will now appear in the stream for stories published with the Open Stream API. This feature will help users better identify from where stories are published, and more easily discover the applications their friends use.

- Publishing to the stream is now as simple as share – just a couple lines of JavaScript.

Developers can now access the full stream from Faecbook Pages that publish posts to their streams. Facebook has also created a way for apps to publish to the stream on behalf of a page.

"Once a Page admin grants permission to the application for that Page, your application can request the publish_stream permission for the Page by passing a new special parameter when you prompt for the permission," explains Facebook’s Yariv Sadan. "This enables a profile selector in the permission dialog. Your application can now post stories on behalf of the Page using any of the stream.publish calls just like it would for a user. You can do this through any the methods described for extended permissions including JavaScript (showPermissionDialog) or directly targeting the prompt_permissions.php URL; we’ll describe the new parameters in these documents."

More details about the updates to the Open Stream APIs can be found here.