Firefox & Explorer Go to War

Its happened, they've launched, fists are being thrown, gauntlets are laid down and as we speak its neck and neck.

Who will win, nobody knows. 

We all have our favourites, mine is Firefox (as is a growing portion of the web community).  But Explorer 7 is hot on its heals.  MS finally introduced tabbed browsing which for so long has been a core strength of Firefox.  But now according to those using it, explorer is faster and more stable.

Personally, i've downloaded Firefox 2.0 and am quite happy.

You can get yours here - Mozilla Firefox

The SlingBox Revolution

Sony's had the mobile rug pulled under it by Slingmedia yet again!

We'd just heard about LocationFree TV finding a new home on Sony Ericsson's phones, when news emerged of a new Slingplayer for phones running the Symbian operating system.

It's a move that pours cold water on Sony's mobile efforts, opening up the Slingbox's streaming software to a massive range of phones, including the P990 Sony's using as its latest LocationFree poster boy.

The new software means those toting Symbian on 3G or Wi-Fi phones are a short step from square-eyed nirvana. What are you waiting for? Grab your blower and go join Slingbox's now not so exclusive club!

Wi-Max Wireless Mobile Phone

Its here, its hitting the market soon and its totally wireless.

Nokia have today announced at the global exhibition WiMAX conference in Bostonthat they are working on WiMAX (802.16e) mobile phones.  Intel this week also introduced their 'system-on-a-chip' (SoC) named WiMAX Connection 2250 readers may know this device as its alias "Rosedale 2. Intel chips will be installed in a mobile radio device that also includes a broadband modem, the SoC will enables high-speed broadband handsets to connect to both fixed WiMAX networks, and mobile digital cellular systems. Meaning wherever you are you can connect, sometimes for free using Skype if you so desire.

Back to Nokia, where their plans are to have super high speed base stations starting at 2.5 GHz band by 2007 and up to 3.5 GHz bandwidth by 2008.

Nokia mobile announced its newhandsets will be on sale in 2008.  However, for those of you with palms and handhelds, you can already use your device as a wireless freephone in areas (like home and office) where there are Wi Fi networks

Google Competes with Microsoft Office

Well it seems they've put the pieces of the Jigsaw into place today.  Google has launched GOOGLE DOCS (not a great name, but hey it works)

Writely : Word
Spreadsheets : Excel
Calendar : Outlook
Gmail : Outlook
+
Picassa : Pictures which also already integrates Blogger

Good one guys....

http://docs.google.com/

You heard it hear first !!

As reported here last week, yesterday Google confirmed its purchase of YouTube for $1.65 Billion !!!

What these means for the rest of the Video Sharing Industry time can onky tell, but this clearly sweeps the board for minor competition and I presume the owners of metacafe at the rest woke up this morning in a cold sweat....

YouTube boys were two years ago working out a garage and today can afford to buy an island.

Latest Rumour: YouTUBE to Buy GOOGLE !!

Okay, I got your attention. This is not only not strictly true, but also one of the most unlikely rumours to be furnished on the web.

What is only slightly more likely is the rumour that Google is about to launch a $1.6bn takeover of YouTube.com.  Rumours have been abound now for a few days and neither Google nor YouTube see fit to comment, which has only fuelled the rumour mill further.

Why would Google buy YouTube when they have the search market covered and their own Google Videos beginning to pick up steam ?

Why would YouTUBE sell to Google when they just signed a deal with EMI Warner ?

I doubt it will happen, but Google do have the spare cash and the guys at YouTube could likely do with some. Should it happen it will finally put paid to the entire web video sharing market.  The dozens of other sharing sites would be limited to hosting porn since thats the only area Google would stay away from.
Interesting times ahead....

STAY TUNED FOR MORE...

Google just wont stop will they !!

Google Code Search

Another Google baby emerges from Google Labs today.  Will they ever stop?  do they have nothing better to do than keep developing ?... it gets better and better, deeper and deeper.

www.google.com/codesearch

The latest offering lets you search for specific code from the usual Google Interface. 
Previously if you wanted to search for code you would need to find the page and view source, this latest search engine is designed to crawl deeper into its indexed pages and return specific results containing the actual snippets of code.

Google: The Literacy Project

I guess we're now seeing insights into the future of how Google will offer its 'package' of services to distinct markets..

http://www.google.com/literacy/

Google has been developing, expanding, buying and merging web based services for 7 years and now are begining to spew them back out as us at an incredible rate.  All the services integrated, converged and interactive.

This site, a website aimed at tackling literacy is a good example at the simplicity at which Google can create something new from nothing.  Simply packaging up services and offering them in an easy to use and coherant interface...

The Literacy Project is a cool new resource from Google for students, teachers, organisations and indeed anyone interested in reading and education.  Google have created this project in collaboration with LitCam and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Bugs in the New Firefox Browser

A known computer hacker who last week claimed he found a vulnerability the new Firefox 2.0 browser has been forced to retracted claims that the hole can be exploited to actually hijack computers running the browser.

We are now led to believe that the demo he released was actually a hoax.

Okay... we can breath again and reconseign IE to the trash bin again. phew. The claim that a Javascript code could expose weaknesses now appear to be false.

Mark Speilmock on his website is quoted:

"I do not have 30 undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, nor did I ever make this claim. I have no undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, the main purpose of our talk was to be humorous. I apologize to everyone involved."

The new update to Firefox 2.0 Release Candidate 2 (RC2). was orginally posponed, but is now available for download at the mozilla website.

Google Re-Launched Improved Reader

Google has launched an upgrade to its online RSS reader, and many of the changes are welcome improvements. For starters the UI which matches Google Calendar and Google Mail is so much better that what was - not ideal, but definitely worth the wait.

The performance of the service seems to have improved, even in Safari. The new version allows use of keyboard short cuts that make navigating information much much easier. More thoughts when I get to play with it more.

Google Reader has launched a major update to its web front-end about a year after its initial launch, redesigning its online feed aggregator to create a feed reading experience that should feel natural to users of Gmail. New features include a shared clippings service, better read/unread tracking, and the ability to share feed items easily over e-mail.