Mozilla Shooting for Record Books With Firefox 3 Release

The company started a campaign asking users to pledge to download the next full release of its browser on the day it is available so the release can set a Guinness World Record

Mozilla Shooting for Record Books With Firefox 3 Release

Mozilla is aiming to create what may be the geekiest world record ever with its upcoming Firefox 3 browser release.

The company on Wednesday started a campaign asking users to pledge to download the next full release of its browser on the day it is available so the release can set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.

Mozilla has not yet unveiled exactly when Firefox 3 will be available, but expects it could be as soon as mid-June. A test release of Firefox 3 is currently available online.

The company is deeming the day of its release "Download Day" and is asking fans to not only pledge to download Firefox 3, but to host parties to encourage friends to download with them, and place "Download Day" buttons on their Web sites as reminders of the big day.

Currently there is no world record for software downloads; Mozilla is trying to create one with Firefox 3 and its Download Day festivities.

According to the campaign's Web site, once Download Day is over, Mozilla plans to provide the Guinness Book of World Records a signed statement of authentication from its judges showing that it followed rules for breaking records; the company also will confirm download numbers.

Mozilla also plans to send video footage and photographs of Mozilla users hosting download parties as well as download logs for a sample size of Firefox 3 downloads to prove it has set a world record.

While the fanfare may seem a bit geeky, Firefox -- released in November 2004 -- has inspired a significant and rather fervent fan base. This is in part because it was the first browser in years to give Microsoft's Internet Explorer viable competition. The browser even has its own fan page (sign-in required) on the Facebook social-networking site, with 79,174 fans signed up and counting.

According to Mozilla, there are more than 175 million users of Firefox, which is available in more than 45 languages and used in more than 230 countries.

More information about how users can participate in Download Day is available on the campaign's Web site.

Windows 7 to Include Multitouch

Microsoft is finally opening up about when Windows 7 will ship, but the company continues to share just a few, yet tantalizing details of what the eagerly anticipated OS update will be all about.



Microsoft Windows 7 to Include Multitouch Features

The latest tidbit to drop is multitouch interface support. At the Wall St. Journal's D Conference Tuesday evening in Carlsbad, Calif., company founder and chief software architect Bill Gates and chief executive Steve Ballmer are scheduled to unveil a laptop with a touchscreen that accepts multiple, simultaneous touches. The effect is quite reminiscent of what's possible with the world's most popular, commercially available gesture-based interface device: the iPhone.

Officially, Windows 7 is scheduled to ship three years after the general availability of Windows Vista, according to Microsoft. Vista's business editions launched on Nov. 30, 2006, which would mean the software could ship as early as that date in 2009, with a beta release in advance. Vista's editions for the home market launched Jan. 29, 2007.

To be fair, this is not Microsoft's first foray into the multitouch arena. The company's innovative "Surface" computing platform, which combines cameras to sense the gestures and touches of either a single user or multiple users, allowing them to interact with a table-top full of digital objects. Surface then uses a projector to project the image onto a screen. Windows 7 would use touchscreen technology to achieve similar effects.

Microsoft would not say specifically whether the OS will support gestures as well as multitouch support, like Surface does. Given the gesture support in Apple's products, however, something similar is likely.

A video posted on Microsoft Windows Client Communications Team Director Chris Flores' blog shows the interface on a laptop and table-mounted LCD screen. During that demonstration a user edits and manipulates photos with his fingertips, navigates a map and plays a virtual piano.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company is "working closely with OEMs, IHVs and ISVs to bring the best touch experiences to Windows PCs. The Windows and Surface teams are also working together closely to deliver the best and most innovative touch experiences to customers."

"Touch is quickly becoming a common way of directly interacting with software and devices," Flores wrote on his blog, in something of a validation of the touch and gesture based platform introduced on Apple's iPhone. "Touch-enabled surfaces are popping up everywhere including laptop touch pads, cell phones, remote controls, GPS devices, and more."

LaCie Doubles Blu-ray Burner Speed

The d2 Blu-ray Drive features dual FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and is compatible with the Mac and Windows


LaCie Doubles Blu-ray Burner Speed

LaCie has introduced a faster version of its d2 Blu-ray Drive, available now for US$649.99.

The d2 Blu-ray Drive features dual FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and is compatible with the Mac and Windows. It ships with Roxio's Toast Titanium software for Mac OS X and Easy Media Creator for Windows, and it lets you burn Blu-ray, DVD and CD media.

In addition to the faster drive mechanism -- which now operates at 4x Blu-ray burning speed -- LaCie has also augmented the drive with an updated aluminum alloy case and better software.

Blu-ray Disc is the high-capacity optical medium used by the Sony PlayStation 3 and other high definition drives. It's the successor to DVD and the heir apparent to the HD throne following Toshiba's withdrawal of HD DVD from the market earlier this year. Double-layer Blu-ray Discs can store up to 50GB, more than 10 times the capacity of a single-layer DVD disc.

Future Apple Devices May Be Solar-Powered

Employees at Apple have filed a patent for integrating solar cells into portable devices


Future Apple Devices May Be Solar-Powered

Employees at Apple have filed a patent for integrating solar cells into portable devices by placing them underneath the layers of a touch-sensitive display, according to the filing.

Solar power could help make devices truly portable, freeing from the need for wires to connect them to a power supply.

When generating electricity from solar panels, the larger the panel the better -- but as the patent "Solar cells on portable devices" warns, after allowing space for buttons, screens and a way to hold the device, only a small area is left on most devices for solar cells.

One of the ways around that suggested in the patent is to stack a touch-sensitive layer, a display and solar panel on top of one another. That could make Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch good candidates for such a power supply, as the display occupies almost the entire face of those devices.

The use of solar powered charging in portable devices is starting to get more attention, for more immediate consumer use as well.

When Vodafone announced its plan in April to reduce its emissions of the greenhouse gase CO2 by 50 percent by 2020, it also announced plans for solar-powered phone chargers and universal phone chargers for Vodafone-branded handsets.

At the recent ITU Telecom Africa 2008 conference, Ugandan Minister for Communications and Information and Communication Technologies Ham-Mukasa Mulira talked about trials of solar-powered charging conducted there, which had showed promise.

Newest Firefox Beta has Critical Flaws

Mozilla has identified 10 high-priority bugs in Firefox 3.0 but won't decide until next week whether to release the browser or issuing a second release candidate (RC2).


Newest Firefox Beta has Critical Flaws, Mozilla Admits

Mozilla has identified 10 high-priority bugs in Firefox 3.0, three of them pegged "critical," but won't decide until next week whether to release the browser anyway or restart the final stretch by issuing a second release candidate (RC2).

"We are making a go/no go decision early next week, as we are still collecting feedback [on Release Candidate 1]," Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, said in an e-mail Thursday.

Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) launched a week ago, but Mozilla has not yet committed to RC2. Previously, the company has only said it is targeting June as the release window for the final code.

On the "mozilla.dev.planning" newsgroup, Schroepfer also said that on May 27 Mozilla will either call Firefox 3.0 finished with RC1, or build RC2 with fixes for the 10 bugs that have been collected.

In the meantime, testing will begin on the 10 bugs. "If we need to do an RC2, they'll be ready to go," he said. "If we ship RC1, we can get them in the 3.0.1."

The bug list includes three marked "critical" on Bugzilla, Mozilla's bug-tracking database and management system. Eight of the bugs affect Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, while two afflict only Linux.

One of Linux bugs has caught the eye of some Firefox users, in part, because of a short blog post that garnered attention on Digg.com . The blogger, Jason Clinton, who works for Advanced Clustering Technologies Inc., a Kansas City company that specializes in cluster-based systems and Linux servers, took Mozilla to task.

On Tuesday, Clinton called Mozilla's support for Linux "second-class" and blasted the open-source developer over a bug. "Release managers just made the call that Firefox 3.0 will release with a known bug which brings Linux systems to their knees."

The bug Clinton referenced, tagged as "421482" in Bugzilla, is one of the 10 on the list that Mozilla's using to decide whether to release Firefox 3.0 as is or craft RC2 for another go towards final code.

In Bugzilla, developers argued over the extent of the problem -- which some Linux users said seriously affected Firefox's performance, as well as their systems overall -- and where the fault lay -- in the browser or in SQLite, the database Firefox uses for its revamped bookmark and history feature, dubbed "Places."

On Wednesday, in a separate e-mail, Schroepfer said that Mozilla developers were looking into the bug and were confident a solution had been found. "You can see that a couple different issues have been accidently confused," he said. "Overall, I think we have some good options to make this work well."

Firefox 3.0 will be the first major upgrade to the browser since October 2006. But Mozilla may ship another version before the end of the year, Schroepfer has said, in order to add features that weren't ready in time for Firefox 3.0.

Firefox 3 RC1 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 41 languages from Mozilla's site.

Google Steals Search Share From Rivals

Extending its dominance in the search market, Google grew its share of queries in April at the expense of rivals Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Ask.com.


Google Steals Search Share From Rivals

Google's U.S. search query share in April grew to 61.6 percent, up from 59.8 percent in March, comScore announced Thursday. Google accomplished this although the number of search queries dropped 2 percent overall in April to 10.58 billion, compared with March, comScore said.
So even with the overall monthly decline, Google managed to increase its search queries by 1 percent, from 6.44 billion to 6.51 billion.

Meanwhile, the other four major search-engine players saw their queries and their market share drop in April, compared with March, not a great situation for them to be in, considering that search advertising accounts for about 41 percent of U.S. online advertising, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Yahoo's market share of queries dropped to 20.4 percent, and its number of queries fell 6 percent. Microsoft's market share shrunk to 9.1 percent, while its queries fell 5 percent. AOL, down to a 4.6 percent share, saw its queries drop by 6 percent. Ask.com, whose share slid to 4.3 percent, had the biggest fall in queries percentage-wise with 9 percent.

A desire to improve its position in search was a primary driver for Microsoft's now-abandoned acquisition bid for Yahoo. However, Microsoft is reportedly trying to strike a search deal with Yahoo, which is also in similar negotiations with Google. It's not clear whether Yahoo would be open to selling its search-advertising business outright or instead seek a deal to outsource part of it to Microsoft or Google.

Whatever happens, comScore's figures for April leave no doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo have resoundingly failed to slow down Google in search, and that Google remains well-positioned to use its search dominance to continue boosting its revenue and profits.

In a research note commenting on the comScore report, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney wrote: "As Google continues to take share, we continue to believe a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft would be necessary -- though not sufficient -- to compete effectively with Google."

Yahoo Postpones Board Meeting, Director Resigns

Facing a battle for its board, Yahoo on Thursday pushed back its annual meeting until the end of July and announced the resignation of a board member.


Yahoo Postpones Board Meeting, Director Resigns

The annual meeting, during which the entire board is up for re-election, had been scheduled for July 3. Yahoo did not yet set a particular date for the annual meeting but said that it will be around the end of July.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been scooping up Yahoo shares and has told the company he is nominating 10 candidates to replace the entire board. He has said that in doing so he hopes to reignite talks with Microsoft, which recently pulled its acquisition bid for Yahoo.

In addition to the change in the annual meeting, Yahoo said Edward Kozel resigned from the board. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said Kozel had planned to leave the board in February but decided to stay on following the acquisition proposal from Microsoft.

As a result of his resignation, Yahoo has reduced the size of its board to nine directors, it said.

ODF Wins the Office Document Format War?

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will bring improved XML support to the office suite -- but it will be ODF, and not Microsoft's own format.


ODF Wins the Office Document Format War?

Good news for those of you who have been following the XML office document standards battle. Microsoft today announced that Office 2007 will support ODF (Open Document Format), the document standard used by OpenOffice.org and other open source productivity suites, with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due sometime in early 2009.

Even more surprising, however, was the corollary to the announcement. While the Office programmer bees are busy buzzing away at ODF, OOXML (Office Open XML) is being put on the back burner. Don't expect Office to support a fully ISO-compliant version of OOXML until the next major release of the suite, currently codenamed Office 14, release date unknown.

Exactly why Microsoft is backpedaling its support for OOXML is not known. But open standards maven Andy Updegrove blogs that it may have something to do with Microsoft's current regulatory troubles in Europe and with the standards bodies that now govern OOXML. It appears likely that Microsoft actually can't implement a fully-compliant version of the standard just yet.

Instead, according to reports, users of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will have the option to make ODF the default file format for word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents, the same way they can choose Office 2003 or several other formats. Office users can already import and export ODF files using third-party filters, but it doesn't make sense when only a small number of users have installed the filters or even know that they exist. Having support for ODF "baked in" to the Office suite will mean that everyone will be able to save and access these files with no extra effort.

Any way you slice it, this is a big step toward shaking off Microsoft's dominance of the office software market and ensuring that we can all preserve our files for years to come.

Phishers Point Scam at Apple's iTunes

Phishers have targeted users of Apple's music store with sophisticated identity theft attacks for the first time


Phishers Point Scam at Apple's iTunes

Phishers have targeted users of Apple Inc.'s iTunes music store with sophisticated identity theft attacks for the first time, a security company said Tuesday.

People began receiving spammed messages Monday telling them that they must correct a problem with their iTunes account, said Andrew Lochart, an executive with e-mail security vendor Proofpoint Inc.

A link in the spam leads to a site posing as an iTunes billing update page; that phony page asks for information including credit card number and security code, Social Security number and mother's maiden name.

The theft attempt is a new twist on the usual phishing attack, said Lochart. "We've gotten used to seeing the usual companies and brands attacked," he said, "like PayPal, eBay and Citibank. But we've never seen Apple as the target."

In a way, said Lochart, the phishing campaign is almost a compliment. "It's probably indicative that the bad guys see Apple's online presence as large enough to be a target. It's part and parcel of the success that Apple has enjoyed lately."

Lochart also speculated that the identity thieves aimed the new attack at iTunes users because of the service's perceived demographics. "I wonder if the bad guys are thinking that [iTunes users] are younger than those for some of the other phished sites, like banks and eBay," said Lochart. "The way that teenagers and young adults use the Internet, they show a certain level of trust or openness when they post their name and age and school on MySpace."

On one hand, Lochart added, young people who grew up with the Internet are considered technologically savvier than their elders. "But then you see the way they use something like MySpace in a way that's considered risky behavior."

Although the phoniness of the link to the bogus iTunes account page might be overlooked in the spam e-mail, the URL is clearly not part of the official iTunes domain. "They've actually done a pretty poor job," Lochart, said of the phishers.

Google Holds Meeting on Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

Executives of Google Inc. held an emergency meeting last night to discuss the implications of revived talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.



Google Holds Meeting on Revived Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

Executives of Google Inc. held an emergency meeting last night to discuss the implications of revived talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., according to a report in The Times in the U.K.

Over the weekend, Microsoft said it might be interested in buying part of Yahoo, but not all of it.

For the past month or so, Google has been in talks with Yahoo to extend a two-week test whereby Yahoo would deliver Web advertising from Google alongside its own search results. According to various reports, that deal could be solidified this week.

Google and Yahoo could not be reached for comment at deadline. Microsoft declined comment

Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire, which was hosted by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company CEO Eric Schmidt said, "After this press conference, the three of us will meet and decide what our response is," according to The Times.

The renewed talks between Microsoft and Yahoo come as billionaire investor Carl Icahn gears up to launch a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board of directors. Icahn and other investors are angry that Yahoo snubbed Microsoft's initial offer to purchase the company for US$44.6 billion.

In addition, according to The Times, Brin said Monday that he would give Yahoo's CEO, Jerry Yang, "refuge within Google" if he were forced out of the company. Brin also said Google had not yet ruled out a deal with Yahoo, The Times said.

source:
For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld.

GTA IV Sales Set Guinness Record

A week after Take-Two announced that GTA IV had broken launch day records, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed.


GTA IV Sales Set Guinness Record

According to Guinness, Grand Theft Auto IV sold an impressive 3.6 million units in its first 24 hours, totaling a record-setting US$310 million in gross sales.

The figures easily push the Rockstar game above all other entertainment record holders, including Halo 3 with $170 million in day one sales, Spiderman 3 with $60 million, and Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows at $220 million.

"The record establishes GTA IV as the most profitable entertainment release of all-time, far surpassing other video game, film and book releases," said Guinness.

Last week, GTA publisher Take-Two purported, "we believe [GTA IV] retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date."

Microsoft Puts New Yahoo Deal on the Table

Microsoft said on Sunday that it has raised the possibility of a new deal with Yahoo, one that may involve buying a part of the company but not all of it.



Microsoft Puts New Yahoo Deal on the Table

"Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo," Microsoft said in a brief statement.
The company did not elaborate on the proposal. It said it did not plan at this time to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo, but that it was continuing to explore its options to expand its online services and advertising businesses.

Microsoft withdrew its offer to buy Yahoo on May 3 after the two sides failed to agree on a price. Since then, the activist investor Carl Icahn has said he will launch a proxy battle to replace Yahoo's board and force it back to the negotiating table with Microsoft.

Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment, although published reports said the company is not discussing its plan further in public.

"There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions," Microsoft said in its statement. It said it reserved the right to reconsider its decision not to buy Yahoo outright, depending on any future talks with Yahoo, third parties or the shareholders of either company.

Meanwhile, Yahoo issued a statement later on Sunday confirming that Microsoft isn't at this time interested in acquiring the entire company.

"Yahoo and its Board of Directors continue to consider a number of value maximizing strategic alternatives for Yahoo, and we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders," the statement said. "Yahoo's Board of Directors will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value."

That Microsoft is discussing a new deal could be a sign that Yahoo's leadership wants to avoid the spectacle of a proxy battle ahead of its annual meeting on July 3, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Yahoo responded to Icahn's threats on Friday, arguing that its own board has gave Microsoft's offer fair consideration, and that the current board, led by Chairman Roy Bostock, can best manage Yahoo's future.

It was unclear Sunday what type of alternative deal Microsoft has in mind. It said it issued its statement "in light of developments" that have taken place since it withdrew its offer.

Microsoft indicated earlier that it had moved on from the deal and that it was looking for other ways to grow its online business, internally or through smaller acquisitions.

Wii Expected to Beat Xbox 360 U.S. Sales in May

With Nintendo's 714,200 units sold in April it would need to sell only 500,000 consoles this month to surpass Microsoft's self-imposed milestone


Wii Expected to Beat Xbox 360 U.S. Sales in May

It appears as though the Wii will surpass the Xbox 360 in North America a bit earlier than expected, as Nintendo announced last week that 9.5 million units have sold in the U.S. alone since launch.

The announcement puts a new light on Microsoft's peculiar chest-thumping press release from earlier in the week, when that company said it had reached an arbitrary 10 million unit sold boundary and would therefore "win" the console war. With Nintendo's 714,200 units sold in April, according to NPD, it would need to sell only 500,000 consoles this month to surpass Microsoft's self-imposed milestone, in less time. The Xbox 360 launched a year before the Wii or Sony's PlayStation 3 console.

A total of 188,000 Xbox 360s were sold in April, meaning that Nintendo would need only sell approximately 688,000 units in May to equal its rival's numbers. WiiFit also launches this month, and many analysts believe the balance board peripheral it is bundled with will inflate Nintendo's sales number even more. The console outsold all non-Nintendo systems in April, combined, according to NPD.

Overall, hardware sales were healthy at US$426 million, which was up 26% from $339 million in April 2007.

source: www.pcworld.com

Flash Player 10 Available for Public Testing

For those of you who love your cutting-edge Flash content, Adobe made a prerelease test version of the Flash 10 Player


Flash Player 10 Available for Public Testing

For those of you who really, really love your cutting-edge Flash content, Adobe made a prerelease test version of the Flash 10 Player available today. You can download an installer for Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux from the Adobe Labs Web site.

Because this is a testing version, you're not likely to see any content that requires the new player in the wild just yet. But if you design or maintain Web pages yourself, it might be a good idea to give them a whirl with the beta player, just to make sure that all your old content still renders the way it should with the new version.

Among the new features in this edition of Flash Player are support for new 3D rendering effects, Adobe Pixel Blender filters, new drawing APIs, and an advanced text rendering engine. What's more, Flash Player 10 has expanded use of hardware graphics acceleration, so Flash content should be a little snappier.

Don't expect it to be completely without bugs, though. In fact, it's safe to assume that not everything will work exactly as expected -- this is a public beta release, after all. When you do encounter abnormal behavior, be sure to submit feedback to Adobe and/or discuss your issues in the public forums.

As for when we can start authoring content for use with Flash Player 10, expect an announcement from Adobe regarding the next version of Creative Suite on May 27.