Archive for Open Source

AOL Kills Netscape’s Future, Leaves Firefox To Battle IE — Browser Wars — InformationWeek

“Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape-branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla, and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox,” Drapeau said.

As of November 2007, IE accounted for 77.35% of the market, and Firefox 16.01%, according to Internet metrics firm Net Applications. Netscape had 0.6%.

AOL Kills Netscape’s Future, Leaves Firefox To Battle IE — Browser Wars — InformationWeek

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OLPC a hit in Peruvian village

art.onelaptop.kids.eat.ap.jpg OLPC off to a slow, but positive start.

At breakfast, they’re already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits.

At night, they’re dozing off in front of them — if they’ve managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.

Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed. Uruguay was the No. 2 buyers of the laptops, inking a contract for 100,000.

FYI, the give one, get one promotion is still going on until December 31, 2007.

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Firefox celebrates 200 million downloads

The spreadfirefox website is reporting that the number of downloads of Firefox has surpassed 200 million.

Today the Firefox download counter crossed the 200 million mark.

We know that this number doesn’t represent actual users because this number includes both Firefox 1.0 and Firefox 1.5 (soon Firefox 2,) because not every one completes every download, and because not every download results in a new Firefox user.

That being said, 200 million people seeking Firefox is a huge accomplishment and we’re right to celebrate our role in driving that number.

Firefox reportedly holds a 15% market share, while Internet Explorer is down to 80%.

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Mozilla issues Security Advisory for Firefox 1.5

Mozilla has issued a security advisory to the users of its newest browser, Firefox 1.5 about this bug, which is related to how the software handles extremely long names. This bug can at worse reportedly crash the targeted computer. However, the organization has claimed that contrary to earlier reports by researchers, the bug does not expose users to attack.

The extremely long name in this case is 2.5 million characters. If the user clicks on a link containing an extremely long file name Firefox will appear to hang. Additionally Firefox will act sluggish until the history is cleared.

Clearing the history is the current “fix” as Mozilla has not released an update. Mozilla says this is not a security problem as it won’t expose the user to attack.

Read more…

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2 million downloads for Firefox 1.5

There have been 2 million downloads of the new Firefox 1.5 since it was released late Tuesday.

Mozilla’s servers weathered the release of Firefox 1.5 much better than last year’s roll-out of 1.0, a Web performance company said Thursday, with the systems showing no evidence of downtime.

Mozilla’s distributed network of mirror sites in 30 countries, said U.K.-based Netcraft, “appears to be handling current download demand with few difficulties.”

Read a review of Firefox 1.5

The developers focused a lot of their efforts on “under the hood” improvements — beyond making the browser super fast, it features much stronger security, a tweaked built-in pop-up blocker to recognize even more sites and controls and several new search sites including Creative Commons, eBay, Amazon.com and Answer.com built into the search bar, and it now supports DHTML.

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Mozilla releases Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 has been released from beta. Mozilla has given both Firefox and Thunderbird a new home. You can now download both at Mozilla.com, which is now where GetFirefox.com points to.

What’s New in Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 is the next version of our award-winning Web browser.

Here’s what’s new in Firefox 1.5:

  • Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
  • Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
  • Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
  • Improvements to popup blocking.
  • Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
  • Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
  • Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and “Safe Mode” experience.
  • Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
  • Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
  • Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
  • New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
  • Many security enhancements.

Read a more comprehensive list on what’s new.

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Flock reviewed

Flock

Web browsing used to be mostly about just that: Surfing site after site for information and goods. But lately, more people are using the Internet as much to produce and share things as to consume them. A new browser called Flock seeks to address the new reality of enhanced online creativity and community.

Read the entire review @ SeattlePI.com

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Wikipedia to become offline reference

Wikipedia Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, is mulling taking it’s content to CD, DVD, and even print. The idea would be to give developing countries, and other offline users, access to the Wikipedia content.

“I have always liked the idea of going to print because a big part of what we are about is to disseminate knowledge throughout the world and not just to people who have broadband,” Wales said by telephone from St. Petersburg, Florida.

Wikipedia is part of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit group that relies on donations to operate.

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iPod roundup, from Academic podcasts to iPods in medicine

iPod This week in iPod or TWII for short.

1) Academic institutions begin podcasting lectures. And not just to students. Now everyone can be bored by “Introductory Agricultural Business and Economics”.

2) Doctors can carry around medical images and more with an open source medical imaging program for the iPod. So get yourself and MRI and download the OsiriX Medical Imaging Software.

3) Research firm Intelliseek, also located in Cincinnati - as is one-half of YL, says that iPod owners are more likely to “create and spread consumer generated media” and to blog about the iPod. Stating that 1% of all blog posts are directly or indirectly about the iPod. So the bottom line is, if you want people to talk about it, make it iPod compatible.

The study finds that iPod users also are product innovators, significantly more likely to own digital video recorders, personal digital assistants, digital cameras, laptop computers and cell phones than non-iPod owners. They tend to link to the Internet via broadband and wireless connections, and are more likely than others to skip past or filter advertisements, especially online, a behavior that may be linked as much to high usability/interface expectations as it is to a dislike of advertising.

4) How about building the world’s largest iPod dock? For $1,015 you can build a iPod dock that will let you rip LPs to your iPod.

5) Get cartoons on your iPod directly from iTunes.

We’re packaging together some of the world’s coolest and funniest cartoons and sending them straight to your iPod each week.
Subscribe to Channel Frederator now. It’s free and easy, and each week you’ll get a fresh new 10- to 15-minute episode featuring some of the hippest animation on Earth.

That’s all for now.

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OpenOffice 2.0 goes gold

OpenOffice OpenOffice, the open source productivity suite, has finally released version 2.0. With grumblings about Microsoft Office in government and a plethora of new features, OO 2.0 could be ready for corporate desktop.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source.

With new features, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

OpenOffice 2.0 sports a new database front end. Whether it can challenge MS Access in usability is a wait and see, but it does sound interesting.

OpenOffice.org always had database front end tools, but in past versions they were very hidden. OpenOffice.org 2.0 starts to handle databases like any other application, i.e. a new database can be created via the “File - New” menu. For novice users OpenOffice.org provides a new Table Wizard that allows creating database tables without any knowledge of databases or SQL. The new embedded HSQLDB database engine, based on Java technology, allows creating “database documents”. These simple database files don’t require a back end database server like MySQL or Adabas D. All information (table definitions, data, queries, forms, reports) is stored in one XML file.

You can download OpenOffice from their site using bittorrent

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