Software News Daily » internet browsers

Extreme Makeover: Website Edition

Kyle — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:34:56 +0000

...we know where our towels are.

Don’t freak out, but Software News Daily has had a bit of a digital face-lift. After upgrading to the new version of wordpress, we realized that there were alot of things we could do to make your favorite source for software and technology news even better. “Not possible,” you say? Well, just sit back, sip a nice pan-galactic gargle-blaster and remember not to panic as you explore the shiny, new layout of Software News Daily.

Microsoft Testing the Waters Against Google?

Lansia — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:19:42 +0000

Microsoft posted a blog today trying to make a case against Google Chrome, a hot competitor against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. “Watch a demo on how Google Chrome collects every keystroke you make and how Internet Explorer 8 keeps your information private through two address bars and In Private browsing,” notes the Microsoft TechNet post.

As Ars Technica points out, the claims Microsoft make are flimsy. Could this why they took the post down? The video demonstration where the Microsoft blogger illustrates the privacy issues concerned with Google Chrome has been taken offline — showing a blank screen when hitting play from linked articles. When I tried to access the original post at TechNet, it sent me to a default file not found page. Ironically, Google has a cached copy of the article. So, there’s no denying it was up at one time today, at least.

Was Microsoft just testing the waters against Google? Wars may be raged (or raised) in the near future…

Facebook: Bringing ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ to the General Public Level

Lansia — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:30:22 +0000

Last week or so, Financial Times declared Facebook a “bigger hit than Google.” Hitwise, an online intelligence research firm, found Facebook “surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week” ending March 13, 2010.

In just one year, visits to Facebook increased 185% whereas, Google had only increased 9% in the same time period. Director of Media Relations at Hitwise, Matt Tatham, tells us “It shows content sharing has become a huge driving force online.” Unlike the uncertainty of searching blindly, “People want information from friends they trust, versus the anonymity of a search engine.”

The margin may be slight, but it’s a huge accomplishment in socializing the web. According to CNN Money, “Facebook had never before beaten Google over a full weeklong period.” Facebook claimed 7.07% of all US visits, Google held second at 7.03% and Yahoo Mail ranked in third with 3.8% of all US visits. Yahoo came in fourth with 3.67% — not really sure why they separated Yahoo and Yahoo Mail though…

Now, back to the present… Website Monitoring found a few more interesting statistics in regards to Facebook’s overwhelming popularity on the web.

More than 400 million active users
More than 60 million status updates posted each day
More than 3 billion photos uploaded each month
More than 3.5 million events created each month
Average user spends more than 55 minutes on Facebook a day
Average user has 130 friends
Average user writes 25 comments a month

Facebook history, top 10 countries on Facebook, top 10 Facebook pages and more statistics at the Website Monitoring Blog. Yes, I’ll admit it — and also a bit ashamed to say — I am part of the 50 percent of active users logging on to Facebook in any given day. But, by being one of those users, I also feel a couple degrees closer to Kevin Bacon (is he even on Facebook?)…

Bug Confirmed in Newest Mozilla Firefox 3.6

Lansia — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:41:42 +0000

Mozilla confirmed yesterday with sufficient details that a vulnerability in the latest Firefox release could result in remote code execution by an attacker. ComputerWorld tells us the “the bug was disclosed by Russian researcher Evgeny Legerov a month ago in a message posted on a forum hosted by Immunity, the Miami beach, Fla. developer best known for its Canvas penetration testing framework.” The bug has also been reported by Secunia, a Danish vulnerability intelligence company. Secunia says the cause is “due to an unspecified error and can be exploited to execute arbitrary code.

Currently, this only affects the latest Firefox release, version 3.6. This release came out just a couple of months ago in January.

Although developers have already fixed the issue, they are currently undergoing quality assurance testing before releasing the patch. The patch is scheduled to come out with Firefox version 3.6.2 on March 30. In the meantime, Mozilla suggests download the beta build which already contains the fix.

Download and Preview Microsoft Internet Explorer 9

Lansia — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:55:26 +0000

Microsoft gave a “platform preview” for Internet Explorer 9 this morning at the Mix10 conference in Vegas, a tech conference for web designers and developers. There are still many stages to go before IE9 hits beta — the address bar is missing, browsing buttons and security features are not there yet either. Since “this build is simply a first look at the work Microsoft has done so far and is ready to share with its developer community,” Microsoft announced, it still “loads and renders Web pages using the Internet Explorer 9 platform.” Feel free to check it out for yourself at the test drive site or, to get you started, here are the highlights:

Heavy focus on HTML5 support — IE general manager Dean Hachmovitch says, “Done right, HTML5 apps will feel more like real apps than Web pages.”
New Javascript engine, “Chakra” — ZDNet tells us this new engine is “built to take advantage of two cores” due to the demands of heftier HTML5 apps
Accelerated HTML and graphics rendering
Support for Vista and higher — no Windows XP support…

IE9 appears to be promising. Molly Holzschlag, a web standards advocate, says it’s going to “kick butt.” If you are interested in a play by play from this morning’s presentation, Ina Fried at CNET’s Beyond Binary has a live blog of the event.

Dot-Com Celebrates Its 25th Birthday

Lansia — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:31:47 +0000

Symbolics.com was the internet’s first domain name. It’s since been taken over by Aron Meystedt, CEO of XF Investments, and relocated to sy mbolics-dks.com, but Symbolics.com was registered 25-years ago to this day by a Massachusetts computer company of the same name. Makes you feel old, doesn’t it? I don’t remember even using the internet for another ten years, at the least. In 1986 the speed of Internet was 56 kbps — I definitely remember the “slow” connection speeds when I started surfing. Although, I was too much in awe then, whereas a dial-up connection was more so amazing than slow to me at the time. Then, of course, there was a technology boom — everything became outdated the minute after you bought it and other connection options became available…

Only five domains were registered in 1985. Within the first 100 registered, Apple sits at number 64. They registered in February 1987, whereas Microsoft did not bite the bullet until 1991. The majority of the first domains registered are computer companies, including IBM, Sun, Intel, AMD and Cisco — most of them in 1986 according to Wired. It wasn’t until 1997, a year after Clinton passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, that dot-coms hit the 1 million mark. Now, there are over 84 million dot-com domains.

I doubt anyone can say that Internet hasn’t impacted the world. In fact, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) quantified the economic impact of the dot-com boom in a recent study which found it responsible for a revenue of $400 billion in annual economic activity. ITIF also estimates this number will grow to $960 billion in annual revenue by the year 2020.

VeriSign, operator of dot-com, is hosting an exclusive soiree tomorrow in Washington D.C. to celebration the impact of dot-com — President Clinton is the (rightful) keynote speaker at the events. Read more about the celebration at 25yearsof.com.

Google Reader Adds a Bit of Snap, Crackle and Pop

Lansia — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:48:24 +0000

Google Labs just released a snazzed up version of Google Reader, a web-based aggregator for reading Atom and RSS feeds. Appropriately named Google Reader Play, the web-app requires no initial set-up and still “adapts to your tastes.” Keep in mind, this new application does not replace Google Reader — it’s just a fun read.

Items are presented in a full-screen format, one at a time, with easy arrow buttons to move back and forth. There’s a “like” button and the option to choose categories to personalize your feed even more. Algorithms used in Google Reader for Recommended Items are also used in Reader Play to generate a custom feed. “It takes into account your past reading behavior and global signals,” according to the Reader Help section. Although Google Reader Play does not require a Google account for access, signing in will allow you to “star” items and provide better feed customization.

Only playing with Reader Play for a few minutes, it’s definitely more visually appealing than Reader, itself. The viewer presents items via slideshow (or not, you can turn this off) in “magic” mode or in their original layout. “Magic” mode gives the items more pop by filling the screen with the most eye-catching item (graphic or video — if it’s just text, it makes the text bigger, basically). Try it out for yourself and tell us what you think.

Internet Explorer Flaw Causes Malware Vulnerability

Lansia — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:12:38 +0000

Are you using Internet Explorer 7 or 8? Beware, it’s possible that you are at risk for a recently discovered vulnerability revealed by iSEC Security Research.

“Microsoft is investigating new public claims of a vulnerability involving the use of VBScript and Windows Help files within Internet Explorer,” says Jerry Bryant, senior manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center. So far, “the current state of our investigations shows that Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2, are not affected.” In addition, Bryan also notes Microsoft hasn’t seen any attacks yet stemming from this vulnerability.

The Microsoft Security Response Center blog reminds us that “only Windows 2000 and Windows XP are impacted” and “Windows 2003 Server is also impacted, but the issue is mitigated in the default configuration due to the presence of the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration.”

A security advisory issued by Microsoft earlier today tells us, “the main impact of the vulnerability is remote code execution.” Basically, the F1 key (which activates Windows Help) could be used to execute malicious code that may pass along sensitive information of the user. Microsoft is currently working on a security patch to fix this flaw, so in the meantime, don’t hit that F1 key! You could also protect yourself by locking down the Windows Help system. Further instructions can be found on the MSRC blog post.

If you’re ready to drop IE, like Google did yesterday, you could always entertain the idea of switching to FireFox or Chrome…

Google’s Pulling the Trigger, Farewell Internet Explorer 6

Lansia — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:54:27 +0000

Beginning March 1st, Google’s tipping over the dominoes and starting the phase-out of Internet Explorer 6. March 1st begins Google’s drop for IE 6 support in regards to Google Docs and Google Sites. “As a result, you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers,” says Google.

March 13th begins (Google-owned) YouTube’s drop of IE6. “The latest YouTube interstitial (messaging) is part of a campaign to encourage users to update their browsers in order to enhance their overall site experience,” notes the YouTube blog. And, as forewarned, Google will also be dropping IE6 support for Gmail and other Google Apps sometime in 2010.

So, what’s a web surfer to do? I channel Beyonce when I say I’m going to “introduce you to some new things and upgrade you, I can up, can I up, let me upgrade you.” Upgrade to a more modern browser! Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox are all great choices. There’s also Opera and Safari.

Yay? Nay? According to Ars Technica, IE6 held 1/5th of the browser market early this year — not too surprising since Windows XP came packaged with the product. This may be largely due to the fact that many IT departments haven’t made that upgrade decision yet. But lots of people, including a numerous web developers and designers, despise the outdated browser and some have even come together via the “Hey IT” group.

Aten Design Group, a Denver-based design company with a sense of humor, will be bidding farewell to IE6 on March 4th. The funeral services will be held at their offices.

Come mix and mingle with Denver’s top IE6 mourners. We’ll have a special time of remembrance, a round of IE6 darts, and plenty of food & drinks.

Chrome Extensions Finally Stable

Lansia — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:31:10 +0000

Google has finally brought extensions out of beta and stabilized them for the newly released update of Chrome. Bookmark syncing is packaged in there as well — automatically synchronize your Chrome bookmarks on different computers. Keep in mind that this update only applies to the Windows version of the web browser. No word yet on when Mac and Linux versions will release these same (stable channel) updates…

After news of the official release filtered through my Google Reader feeds, I pulled up the Chrome extensions gallery and started browsing through. There are currently just over 1,800 extensions available for Chrome; I probably surfed through half of them, if that… Since I’m not the true techie geek that I should be, I can’t say that I was super excited about too many. Here are the few that appealed to my simple and practical tastes. I’d say most of them contribute to an easier blogging experience or everyday web surfing…

CoolIris
I use this app on Firefox and love it. It’s a great, flashy way of looking for images. It’s fast, efficient -much better than browsing page after page on Google Images or Facebook!

Wikipedia Chromium Edition
Fantastic for those that Wiki often. Just search Wikipedia right within the webpage you are viewing.

Google Voice
Make a phone call from within your browser using Google Voice. Also gives you a quick display of your Google Voice inbox and what not.

Google Dictionary
Look up definitions with a simple double-click.

AniWeather
Animated weather, because I like cartoons. And I need to know upcoming weather to plan for my motorcyclin’.

Lazarus Form Recovery
Recovers what you’ve filled out on a form after one of those “oh $*#@” moment happens. Be forewarned, this extension is still in beta…

Add to Amazon Wish List
Perfect for the online shopaholic who can never keep track of what to buy next (yep, that’s me…)!

Which extensions have you tried out? Which do you recommend? Share your experiences by hitting that comment link!