Since its launch three years ago, Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser has shown the world that open-source software can challenge the establishment.

According to data from Net Applications, an online market analysis house, Firefox now holds about 15 percent of the browser market, second to Microsoft Internet Explorer’s 79 percent…

Source: ZDNet

~LC

CONFERENCE:

Noun, meaning: A special meeting in which the boss gathers subordinates to hear
what they have to say, so long as it doesn’t conflict with what
he’s already decided to do.

Source:

~LC

Google has renamed its Personalized Home Page Service as iGoogle, and added new features.

Themes that have been previously available to US users are now in all international versions of iGoogle, and the service has been localised for an additional 22 locales.

(It might be more convenient if www.igoogle.com redirected to iGoogle rather than the standard search page at www.google.com.)

While Google Gadgets – such as the clock and calendar that appear on the default iGoogle page – have been available for some time, creating them required a certain amount of skill. Google has now created a form-driven tool to build simple gadgets to display photos, YouTube videos, countdown timers, greetings and other items for display on the user’s own iGoogle page or to share with others.

Source: Itwire

~LC

The Consumer Electronics Association has released a study showing that US adults are seemingly happy to whip out the credit card to own the latest technologies, spending around $1200 per year on the goodness of gadgetry.

In what must be bringing joy to the hearts of US, European, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese technology companies, the US CEA (Consumer Electronics Association – the company behind the massively popular and successful ‘Consumer Electronics Show’ in Las Vegas each year) says that US adults spend around $1200 per year on the latest technologies.

This information comes from the “9th Annual Household and Teen CE Ownership and Market Potential Study”, which also reveals the “most owned CE products and tracks the growth rates of popular product categories”, a report that is free to CEA member companies, and available to anyone else from www.ebrain.org for a cost of US $999.

Somewhat predictably, given their enormously popularity worldwide, the report tells us that the top five growth sectors are “digital video recorders (DVRs), network routers or hubs, MP3 players, cable modems and digital cameras”.

Digital cameras and mp3 players are enormously popular items globally, cable modems are essentially for broadband access through cable networks which are everywhere in the US, network routers and hubs allow consumers to network multiple computers together to share a broadband Internet connection, and digital video recorders, such as ‘TiVo’ and other devices, have long been mega-popular in the US where hundreds of channels are the norm for most cable TV viewers over there.

hmm… gadgets and gizmos? Who wants that stuff anyway!?

Source: Itwire

~LC

A beta release of Firefox 3 has been pencilled in for release on July 31 following the release of Alpha 4 last weekend.

Further alpha releases – which are code named Gran Paradiso “in an effort to discourage regular end users from downloading them” – will appear on a monthly schedule. Alpha releases are best left alone unless you are involved in the project or a web developer who needs to start investigating Firefox 3 compatibility well in advance.

Changes in Alpha 4 – which is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux – include Mac user interface improvements and bug fixes, inclusion of the FUEL JavaScript library for developers of Firefox extensions, and improvements to offline web application support.

Work scheduled for Alpha 5 includes search engine keyword support, an Extension Manager, and integration with the Growl notification system for Mac OS X. Growl support was removed from Alpha 4 shortly before release following the discovery of a significant bug.

The further development of Places (the integrated bookmarks and history manager that will be a major feature of Firefox 3) should also be seen in Alpha 5.

Source: Itwire

~LC

Vulnerability in graphics-file format plug-in discovered in Adobe Systems’ Photoshop Creative Suite.

(Yuppers even a photo editing is not safe these days folks,Baldy)

 

Technorati tags: Security, Software

Source: Critical flaw found in Photoshop plug-in

Many people have embraced Google’s Gmail service due to its slick interface and ample storage — but like any application, Gmail leaves a few things to be desired. To trick Gmail out to your specifications, take a look at Lifehacker’s Better Gmail, a Firefox extension that brings all sorts of extra goodness to Gmail.

Source: Make Gmail better

What do you do if you forget the password to your OpenOffice.org files? The simplest solution is to download OOo Password Cracker, a macro for opening protected documents in any OpenOffice.org application. Using a brute force dictionary attack, OOo Password Cracker provides a slow but reliable method of document recovery. However, the macro requires some preparation if you want to use it effectively.

Source: OpenOffice.org Password Cracker is what you make of it