Firefox survives first round of surgery
After years of tough competition from dominance-seeking Google Chrome and Internet Explorer, Mozilla faces a second year in a row of forced adaptations. Its aggressive Firefox 2012 development plan calls for surgeries both minor and radical to integrate many new pieces into the browser, but it may not survive post-op. At least, not as you know it.
So far, the changes have resulted in a Firefox which, simply put, runs better. Two of the most tangible new tools have changed add-on behavior. The addition of add-ons to Firefox Sync let you mirror the same add-ons at work and at home, and you won't have to reinstall them manually if your computer crashes.
A second add-on change marks around 80 percent of add-ons as compatible by default with each new version of Firefox. This prevents the browser from worrying about the "maximum version compatibility" issue that was relevant back in Firefox 3, when updates were annual, but is much less of a problem when updates come every six weeks.
Other early 2012 victories for Firefox include Chrome migration; a new design for HTML5 media controls; better developer and Web platform tools; and a Firefox "hotfix" system for pushing out minor updates that don't require a browser restart. Granted, these are the equivalent of medicating a patient to lower a fever while the virus still infects the body, but they're good starts. They're just more about keeping up with the competition than they are about forging ahead.
The second quarter of 2012 doesn't look particularly life-saving, either. Some of the highlights of what Mozilla wants to achieve before the end of June include an improved Home Tab and New Tab experience; in-location bar search that ensures user privacy; automatic browsing session restore with tabs-on-demand; a panel-based download manager; and silent updates. These are achievements that Firefox is not boldly leading on. Some of them, such as the Home Tab and New Tab, and silent updates, are already in the Firefox Aurora development build, which means that they're well on their way to reaching most people.
Of course, there are basic feature improvements planned for the second half of 2012, too, such as preventing default search engine hijacks by add-ons. This will kill off one of the browser's biggest remaining annoyances. The Options menu will be changed from a pop-up to a menu in the main browser window, not unlike how Chrome presents its Preferences. Also following the footsteps of others will be a click-to-play option for plug-ins, and integrated language translation.
But the second half of 2012 is also when Mozilla anticipates that many of its loftier goals will mature. These include integrating a social sharing tool called Firefox Share; an interface update code-named Australis; its next-generation JavaScript engine called IonMonkey; a feature-ready beta version of Firefox for Windows 8; and an e-mail-based identification system that would allow people to log in to Firefox and pull down all their settings, bookmarks, add-ons, and passwords from a secure server.
This could be a Holy Grail for Mozilla's independent, open-Web initiatives, if it's able to successfully tie the browser login with its broader, site-based Mozilla Persona login plans to compete with Facebook and Google. Think about it: Mozilla competing with Facebook on logins. That's as big a David-and-Goliath scenario as Firefox 1.0 versus Internet Explorer 6.
It's not an idea I disagree with; on the contrary, I think Mozilla is one of the few organizations that has the public's trust and the technical background to pull something like this off. But I'm equally skeptical of its ability to make it happen this year, even on the browser level, because of the enormous resources it will take. Remember, the add-on sync that just debuted earlier this month came a year after sync shipped in-browser. These are not easy technical victories to win.
Further ahead lie other next-gen projects like a new kind of RSS called Push have yet to be added to the public calendar.
At a core level, Mozilla says, the plans call for reminding people that Mozilla is a nonprofit that takes seriously its mission statement of pursuing an open, accessible Web, and it's those core values that are dictating Firefox's direction. Of that, there is little doubt.
Just last year, though, we saw Firefox finally follow Chrome with a less-obtrusive interface, faster JavaScript engine, restartless add-ons, synchronization, more accessible development channels, and a rapid release cycle which barely caused a blip when Google debuted it, but became a source of much sturm und dang among a vocal but definite minority of Firefox users. Browser development is uneven, with the five major browsers often leapfrogging past each other, but the larger point of Firefox appearing to lag behind when it used to aggressively lead was not lost on the people using it.
A big part of the problem is that Firefox is not the only patient that Mozilla is working on. It's also attempting to give birth to a new mobile operating system called Boot to Gecko and marketplace that will host Web apps which can work across multiple platforms including Boot to Gecko. To top it all off, the company faces a brain drain of many of its high-profile, long-time employees.
Assuming Chrome stays on schedule, its high-end graphics and security tech called Native Client will debut in a few months. The powerful Internet Explorer 10 will come with deep integration into Windows 8 around October, and it looks like it will be harder than it is now to switch browsers. Plans for Safari and Opera aren't as open, but it's hard to imagine they're passively observing all these changes.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Lawmakers Ask Apple App Makers About Privacy
Two members of Congress are pushing ahead with an investigation into privacy issues in Apple’s App Store. After contacting Apple earlier this month with questions about app privacy, the lawmakers have now sent letters to 34 app developers requesting information about their data-collection techniques.
Representatives Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and G.K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina, sent joint letters on Thursday to makers of social networking apps, including Foodspotting, Twitter, Turntable.fm and Path, among others.
They said they chose the list of apps from the “Social Networking” subcategory within the iPhone Essentials area of Apple’s iTunes App Store.
On the Energy and Commerce Committee Web site, the two representatives wrote: “Following recent reports that apps could collect address book information and photos without notice and consent from users of Apple’s mobile devices, the members are seeking to better understand what, if any, information these particular apps gather, what they do with it, and what notice they provide to app users.”
The letters also state that the information will be used to “to begin building a fact-based understanding of the privacy and security practices in the app marketplace.”
Apple did not respond to a request for comment about the letters.
In the letters, the representatives cite reports from The New York Times revealing that apps can access users’ photographs and address books.
Mr. Waxman and Mr. Butterfield ask the app makers whether they have privacy policies in place, and if they have ever collected a user’s address book, photo gallery or phone number, among other questions.
The letters request written responses from the app makers by April 12.
Google, too, is facing some scrutiny about app privacy. After a report in The Times earlier this month that Android apps can also secretly access photo libraries, Senator Charles E. Schumer called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate both Apple and Google regarding app privacy issues.
Two members of Congress are pushing ahead with an investigation into privacy issues in Apple’s App Store. After contacting Apple earlier this month with questions about app privacy, the lawmakers have now sent letters to 34 app developers requesting information about their data-collection techniques.
Representatives Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and G.K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina, sent joint letters on Thursday to makers of social networking apps, including Foodspotting, Twitter, Turntable.fm and Path, among others.
They said they chose the list of apps from the “Social Networking” subcategory within the iPhone Essentials area of Apple’s iTunes App Store.
On the Energy and Commerce Committee Web site, the two representatives wrote: “Following recent reports that apps could collect address book information and photos without notice and consent from users of Apple’s mobile devices, the members are seeking to better understand what, if any, information these particular apps gather, what they do with it, and what notice they provide to app users.”
The letters also state that the information will be used to “to begin building a fact-based understanding of the privacy and security practices in the app marketplace.”
Apple did not respond to a request for comment about the letters.
In the letters, the representatives cite reports from The New York Times revealing that apps can access users’ photographs and address books.
Mr. Waxman and Mr. Butterfield ask the app makers whether they have privacy policies in place, and if they have ever collected a user’s address book, photo gallery or phone number, among other questions.
The letters request written responses from the app makers by April 12.
Google, too, is facing some scrutiny about app privacy. After a report in The Times earlier this month that Android apps can also secretly access photo libraries, Senator Charles E. Schumer called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate both Apple and Google regarding app privacy issues.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Facebook is the world’s largest social network
with more than 800 million active users around the world, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population.
Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room at Harvard, Facebook grew from being a quirky site for college students into a popular platform that is used to sell cars and movies, win over voters in presidential elections and organize protest movements. It offers advertisers a global platform, with the exception of China, where Facebook does not operate.
Facebook took its first step toward becoming a publicly traded company on Feb. 1, 2012, when it filed to sell shares on the stock market. The service is on track to be the largest Internet initial public offering ever — trumping Google’s in 2004 or Netscape’s nearly a decade before that. In its filing, Facebook said it was seeking to raise $5 billion. The company will seek to have the ticker “FB” for its shares, but did not list an exchange.
Many close to the company say that Facebook is aiming for a far greater offering that would value it near $100 billion. At that lofty valuation, Facebook would be much bigger than many longer-established American companies, including Abbott Labs, Caterpillar, Kraft Foods, Goldman Sachs and Ford Motor.
Trading of the stock is expected to begin by late May 2012.
The filing sheds some light on how its meteoric run has turned the upstart into a formidable money-maker. The company, which makes the bulk of its money from advertising and the sale of virtual goods, recorded revenue of $3.7 billion in 2011, a 88 percent increase from the prior year. During that period, Facebook posted a profit of $1 billion. It is still a fraction of the size of rival Google, which recorded revenue of $37.9 billion in 2011, but many analysts believe Facebook’s fortunes will rapidly multiply as advertisers direct more and more capital to the Web’s social hive.
Facebook, unlike any other site, has come to define the social era of the Web. More than a portal, its value lies in its dynamic network of social connections and the massive amount of information shared by its users. Facebook, in many ways, is a data processor, archiving and analyzing every shred of information, from our interests, to our locations, to every article and link that we “like.” The collection of data is a potential goldmine for advertisers, keen to better understand and target consumers.
The social network has become something like an economy onto itself, fostering businesses like the music service Spotify. Game-maker Zynga, which went public late in 2011, generates more than 90 percent of its sales from Facebook.
with more than 800 million active users around the world, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population.
Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room at Harvard, Facebook grew from being a quirky site for college students into a popular platform that is used to sell cars and movies, win over voters in presidential elections and organize protest movements. It offers advertisers a global platform, with the exception of China, where Facebook does not operate.
Facebook took its first step toward becoming a publicly traded company on Feb. 1, 2012, when it filed to sell shares on the stock market. The service is on track to be the largest Internet initial public offering ever — trumping Google’s in 2004 or Netscape’s nearly a decade before that. In its filing, Facebook said it was seeking to raise $5 billion. The company will seek to have the ticker “FB” for its shares, but did not list an exchange.
Many close to the company say that Facebook is aiming for a far greater offering that would value it near $100 billion. At that lofty valuation, Facebook would be much bigger than many longer-established American companies, including Abbott Labs, Caterpillar, Kraft Foods, Goldman Sachs and Ford Motor.
Trading of the stock is expected to begin by late May 2012.
The filing sheds some light on how its meteoric run has turned the upstart into a formidable money-maker. The company, which makes the bulk of its money from advertising and the sale of virtual goods, recorded revenue of $3.7 billion in 2011, a 88 percent increase from the prior year. During that period, Facebook posted a profit of $1 billion. It is still a fraction of the size of rival Google, which recorded revenue of $37.9 billion in 2011, but many analysts believe Facebook’s fortunes will rapidly multiply as advertisers direct more and more capital to the Web’s social hive.
Facebook, unlike any other site, has come to define the social era of the Web. More than a portal, its value lies in its dynamic network of social connections and the massive amount of information shared by its users. Facebook, in many ways, is a data processor, archiving and analyzing every shred of information, from our interests, to our locations, to every article and link that we “like.” The collection of data is a potential goldmine for advertisers, keen to better understand and target consumers.
The social network has become something like an economy onto itself, fostering businesses like the music service Spotify. Game-maker Zynga, which went public late in 2011, generates more than 90 percent of its sales from Facebook.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Watch YouTube Videos Without Flash in HTML5
Running on Mac or Linux and tired of Adobe Flash eating up all your CPU cycles while you’re watching YouTube? Buggy plugins that crash your browser and freeze your PC? Proprietary formats that get in the way? Want to embrace HTML5 and the future? Well, now you can… one YouTube video at a time.
We’ve written an HTML 5 Video Viewer for YouTube, and you can use it to browse YouTube in true 21st Century HTML5 quality. And it’s super-simple to use.
Flash has been the bane of online websurfers ever since the 90s, especially on platforms where Adobe doesn’t bother to go the extra mile to ensure that their proprietary, binary implementations are stable and efficient. On Linux and Mac OS X, the flash implementation takes up over half the available CPU and at high-resolutions stuttering occurs. HTML5 poses the answer providing a way for browsers to use the native implementations to render videos directly in the browser without resorting to ActiveX and 3rd-party browser plugins… it just has yet to be embraced.
But now you can uninstall Flash and enjoy your online videos in peace. Just go to http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/ and enter the URL of a video to watch it in the embedded HTML5 viewer. Yes, you can skip, skim, pause, resume away to your heart’s content.
Even better, we’ve written a GreaseMonkey/UserScript to add a link to all YouTube video pages that points to the HTML5 version, leaving you with no excuse to still use the Flash interface!
All modern browsers that support basic HTML5 are supported. You’ll need to have an MP4 decoder installed on your PC. Happy viewing!
Running on Mac or Linux and tired of Adobe Flash eating up all your CPU cycles while you’re watching YouTube? Buggy plugins that crash your browser and freeze your PC? Proprietary formats that get in the way? Want to embrace HTML5 and the future? Well, now you can… one YouTube video at a time.
We’ve written an HTML 5 Video Viewer for YouTube, and you can use it to browse YouTube in true 21st Century HTML5 quality. And it’s super-simple to use.
Flash has been the bane of online websurfers ever since the 90s, especially on platforms where Adobe doesn’t bother to go the extra mile to ensure that their proprietary, binary implementations are stable and efficient. On Linux and Mac OS X, the flash implementation takes up over half the available CPU and at high-resolutions stuttering occurs. HTML5 poses the answer providing a way for browsers to use the native implementations to render videos directly in the browser without resorting to ActiveX and 3rd-party browser plugins… it just has yet to be embraced.
But now you can uninstall Flash and enjoy your online videos in peace. Just go to http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/ and enter the URL of a video to watch it in the embedded HTML5 viewer. Yes, you can skip, skim, pause, resume away to your heart’s content.
Even better, we’ve written a GreaseMonkey/UserScript to add a link to all YouTube video pages that points to the HTML5 version, leaving you with no excuse to still use the Flash interface!
All modern browsers that support basic HTML5 are supported. You’ll need to have an MP4 decoder installed on your PC. Happy viewing!
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Mobile Social Cloud CRM for smaill business
allows any business to interact with customers on any major social network , via a mobile device. The company said in a statement that the service is "so simple that any company, even one without an IT staff, can get up and running over a weekend."
With nearly a quarter of all time spent online being spent on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, has become a leader in integrating social networks into its customer service offerings.
The company envisions a scenario such as a customer posting a critical comment on Facebook about its newly purchased widget. While a desktop-based customer service worker for the widget maker might be the first stop for responding to the comment, the actual resolution might be better handled by a technical service person, who could be out in the field.
With Desk.com, that ticket can then be picked up by the technical service employee, and resolved via a mobile device. The ticket can be reassigned, have its status or priority changed, or have its customer information modified.
Hes said that, according to its data , nearly three-quarters of small businesses use mobile applications in their daily operations. With Desk.com, SMBs can use a help desk that integrates social networks, e-mail, phone and other Web components, making social networks into what the company described as "first-class citizens along with traditional support channels."
Hourly for 'Casual' Reps
He runs on any smartphone that supports HTML 5, such as Android -based devices and Apple's iPhone. Reporting includes information on how many cases customer service agents have opened, resolved, replied to, reassigned, or reopened, and a dozen pre-built reports offer such data as handling time, time to first response, and first contact resolution rate.
CRM has priced the offering to appeal to SMBs. The first seat is free, and then it's $49 per agent per month. There's also an hourly model for what the company calls "casual" customer support reps, at $1 per hour.
He is based on the technology that yours obtained when it purchased social customer service startup Assistly last fall. Assistly's product allowed companies to organize customer conversations on social networks into a to-do list, and provided tools for support staff to respond, see customer histories, automate procedures and produce analytical reports.
Social, Mobile, Simple
In our interview with Alex Bard, vice president and general manager, Bard explained this service Cloud, a key part of its "social enterprise " efforts, had previously been optimized for the mid-market and large enterprises, but his extending the cloud toward the lower end of the market.
Bard said that, in researching smaller companies' needs, Sales "kept hearing three things -- it has to be social at its core, it needs to be mobile, and it needs to be simple." He added that thousands of Assistly customers have been moved to sale, and the response has been "overwhelmingly positive."
Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said Desk.com represents "the ultimate in the consumerization of IT, and a recognition of how we're no longer tethered to an office with a traditional PC ."
She noted that Salesforce made "a pretty quick turnaround" in readying Assistly for the new product launch, adding that the model of customer support from virtually any mobile device "will absolutely become a standard."
allows any business to interact with customers on any major social network , via a mobile device. The company said in a statement that the service is "so simple that any company, even one without an IT staff, can get up and running over a weekend."
With nearly a quarter of all time spent online being spent on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, has become a leader in integrating social networks into its customer service offerings.
The company envisions a scenario such as a customer posting a critical comment on Facebook about its newly purchased widget. While a desktop-based customer service worker for the widget maker might be the first stop for responding to the comment, the actual resolution might be better handled by a technical service person, who could be out in the field.
With Desk.com, that ticket can then be picked up by the technical service employee, and resolved via a mobile device. The ticket can be reassigned, have its status or priority changed, or have its customer information modified.
Hes said that, according to its data , nearly three-quarters of small businesses use mobile applications in their daily operations. With Desk.com, SMBs can use a help desk that integrates social networks, e-mail, phone and other Web components, making social networks into what the company described as "first-class citizens along with traditional support channels."
Hourly for 'Casual' Reps
He runs on any smartphone that supports HTML 5, such as Android -based devices and Apple's iPhone. Reporting includes information on how many cases customer service agents have opened, resolved, replied to, reassigned, or reopened, and a dozen pre-built reports offer such data as handling time, time to first response, and first contact resolution rate.
CRM has priced the offering to appeal to SMBs. The first seat is free, and then it's $49 per agent per month. There's also an hourly model for what the company calls "casual" customer support reps, at $1 per hour.
He is based on the technology that yours obtained when it purchased social customer service startup Assistly last fall. Assistly's product allowed companies to organize customer conversations on social networks into a to-do list, and provided tools for support staff to respond, see customer histories, automate procedures and produce analytical reports.
Social, Mobile, Simple
In our interview with Alex Bard, vice president and general manager, Bard explained this service Cloud, a key part of its "social enterprise " efforts, had previously been optimized for the mid-market and large enterprises, but his extending the cloud toward the lower end of the market.
Bard said that, in researching smaller companies' needs, Sales "kept hearing three things -- it has to be social at its core, it needs to be mobile, and it needs to be simple." He added that thousands of Assistly customers have been moved to sale, and the response has been "overwhelmingly positive."
Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said Desk.com represents "the ultimate in the consumerization of IT, and a recognition of how we're no longer tethered to an office with a traditional PC ."
She noted that Salesforce made "a pretty quick turnaround" in readying Assistly for the new product launch, adding that the model of customer support from virtually any mobile device "will absolutely become a standard."
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