Mozilla's latest browser version, Firefox 3.5, made its official public debut this week, pleasing users with new, faster features, but in no particular way leaping ahead of its predecessor or its growing host of competitors.
Firefox 3.5, the embodiment of Mozilla's attempt to "upgrade the Web," was released Thursday for Windows, Windows Portable, Mac, and Linux. Some of its key improvements are a new a new JavaScript engine for faster Web applications such as Google Docs; the ability to show video built into Web pages without plug-ins; a private browsing mode; fancy downloadable fonts; and geolocation technology that can let Web sites know where you are.
These features excited users, though they came as little surprise. The release followed a testing process that involved four beta builds, three release candidates, and a version number change.
But the thing is, even though Mozilla's browser broke Microsoft's lock on the market--Internet Explorer's market share is down a dramatic 8 percentage points to 65.5 percent in about the last year--Firefox is no longer the only scrappy, alternative browser in town. Other serious contenders now include Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, and Opera.
And of course, there's also the challenge of getting Web programmers to employ Firefox 3.5's features.
Still, Firefox has come a long way, as we illustrate in this history of its big interface changes, from version 0.8 up to this week's release. And don't miss our list of Firefox extensions we've found to work--or break--in the new Firefox 3.5.
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How I became a walking hot spot
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Yahoo redesigns data center, ditches carbon offsets
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• Yahoo enables twittering via Flickr
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China delays rule for Net-screening software
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Report: Dell working on Android gadget
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Though solid-state drives are in vogue, market forces and technical issues are giving the venerable hard-disk drive new life.
DRAMexchange, a Taipei-based market intelligence firm, said last week that the adoption of solid-state drives by computer vendors has slowed as the price of the NAND chips--the raw material of solid-state drives--has increased. The firm also said that computer makers have been cautious about using solid-state drives because current Windows operating systems are not fully optimized for SSDs.
Numonyx NAND flash chip
(Credit: Numonyx)And the popularity of flash storage is waning in Netbooks. These tiny laptops at one time used solid-state drives almost exclusively. But Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others are moving en masse to configurations with large hard-disk drives in lieu of smaller-capacity solid-state drives.
SSDs typically offer higher performance--often much higher performance--than hard-disk drives and are more durable since they have no moving parts.
While those merits still apply, lingering doubts about the long-term retention of the data in a solid-state drive is making the hard disk look not quite so passé. Ed Doller, the chief technical officer of Numonyx, a flash memory chip maker which was spun off from Intel and STMicroelectronics last year, addressed this issue in a recent phone interview. Numonyx makes two kinds of flash: NOR, used for storing computer programs, and NAND, used widely as a data storage medium in digital cameras, media players, smartphones, and solid-state drives.
"It's if versus when. With a hard drive it's if it's going to fail. With an SSD, it's when is it going to fail," Doller said, who critiques NAND only because his company is looking for a new storage medium--such as phase change memory--that can overcome some of NAND's inherent limitations.
Doller spoke about an epiphany he had after booting up a 20-year-old IBM AT. "I fired that thing up and it actually booted from the hard drive. If that same computer had been built with a solid-state drive, I can almost guarantee you that would not have worked. It would have lost its information over that period of time," Doller said.
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Ever since Microsoft dropped its bombshell on Linux, claiming that the open-source operating system violates 235 of its patents, the Linux community has responded with a cogent counterargument: "If we're, in fact, infringing, point out the infringements and we'll simply code around your patents."
With Microsoft's lawsuit against GPS device manufacturer TomTom, Microsoft gave the community what it wanted, which has now resulted in the Linux community coding around Microsoft's two FAT file-system patent claims against Linux.
Two down, 233 more to go?
In 2008, Microsoft filed suit against TomTom for patent infringement related to GPS technology and its FAT file-system patents, allegedly infringed by TomTom's use of Linux. The two parties eventually settled, but Microsoft gave enough of a clue as to its patent claims that the Red Hat-sponsored Open Invention Network and others set off to sift through the merits of Microsoft's patents and, if possible, code around them.
As Andrew Tridgell recently explained to the Linux kernel mailing list, it would appear that the Linux community has accomplished exactly that, providing a workaround to Microsoft's patent claims.
The reasons are somewhat technical, but the approach seems to pass muster, as Ars Technica reports:
The Linux Foundation arranged for the patch to undergo extensive review by patent lawyers. They are confident that the patch will effectively evade the common namespace method described by Microsoft's patents. It will also function properly in virtually all cases. The only situation in which it will be problematic is when the data on the filesystem is accessed from old versions of DOS or Windows that still require the 8.3 filenames. Tridgell believes that such a scenario is rare enough that it will not impact a significant number of users. Those who require compatibility with those older versions of DOS or Windows can use the Linux "msdos" filesystem, which enforces 8.3 names and doesn't use Microsoft's patented dual-naming convention.
In early 2009, open-source luminary Larry Augustin urged the Linux community to "get the FAT out." While Tridgell's approach doesn't quite do this, it does appear to obviate Microsoft's patent claims.
This should make Linux users happy. Whether it will make Microsoft happy to see how trivial it is to code around its patent claims remains to be seen. That's the problem with launching nuclear marketing attacks against the legal integrity of open-source code: given enough eyeballs, all patent claims are shallow.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Updated at 12:15 p.m. PDT: adding Intel comment and additional discussion about laptop casing.
An analyst said Wednesday that some PC makers are hitting snags as they try to bring out ultra-thin laptops.
"Early production units being built in plastic, with the bottom case being plastic, are cracking," said Broadpoint AmTech analyst Doug Freedman, in a phone interview, referring to discussions he had with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and and original design manufacturers (ODMs). Typically ODMs don't market under their brand name but supply devices to OEMs, which then slap on their own brand.
Freedman wrote about the problem in a research note distributed Wednesday morning.
"So, to get that really thin form factor that they're after, they're probably going to have to go with a metal case," he said.
Pricey ultra-thin laptops like the MacBook Air and Dell Adamo are made of metal. Lower-cost ultra-thin laptops are typically made of plastic.
In the report, Freedman refers to ODMs and OEMs trying to bring out laptops based on Intel's "CULV" technology. CULV, or consumer ultra-low voltage, is a strategy Intel launched at Computex in June to engender a category of low-cost ultra-thin laptops that offer the portability of Netbooks but are more powerful--and more expensive. These laptops use low-power "ULV" (ultra-low-voltage) processors, as dictated by the space-constrained, ultra-thin designs.
"ODMs were advising their customers to switch to full-metal cases," Freedman said of his discussions with ODMs. "Cost-reduction features are going to be hard in that form factor on the industrial design side," he said.
Intel issued a statement Wednesday saying that the case problem that Freedman refers to has nothing to with Intel processors. "Case design issues reported to be found by an ODM, not consumers, in early production units for ultra-thin laptops have nothing to do with Intel processors whatsoever. We want to be clear that this is not a CPU design issue," Intel said in a statement.
Freedman said some PC makers are opting for large, 11- and 12-inch Netbooks with the Atom processor--and Nvidia's Ion chipset in some cases--instead of ultra-thin ULV laptops based on Intel's Pentium, Celeron, or Core 2 architectures.
"Just look at Lenovo. They're the guy that is not falling in line with Intel's aspirations of 'we don't want 12-inch Netbooks.'" he said.
This summer, both Samsung and Lenovo will begin marketing 11- and 12-inch class Netbooks, respectively, based on the newest Atom processor and Nvidia's Ion chipset.
As Cisco Systems adds more functionality to its online WebEx conferencing service, it's ratcheting up the competitive pressure against partner and rival, Microsoft.
Cisco held a press event Tuesday to discuss how it plans to add more to its WebEx service. As the company includes more software into the conferencing service, it is competing more intensively and directly with one of its major partners, Microsoft.
"As Cisco expands this business, the co-opetition between Cisco and Microsoft will only increase," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee Group. "Microsoft is strong on the desktop and Cisco is taking a lot of these software functions into the cloud."
WebEx is a leading Web conferencing service that Cisco bought in 2007. This was Cisco's first foray into offering a service. And the product has been very successful. As a result, the company has used the service as the foundation for its emerging big business collaboration tools. Cisco has also recently bought two other companies that it plans to feed into the service.
Primarily, Cisco is adding more unified communications functionality to the service it calls WebEx Connect. This is an extension of the Web-based video conferencing service that also includes instant messaging and presence. Using technology from Jabber Cisco will add even more presence functionality. And through the acquisition of PostPath, it will add e-mail into the mix.
Cisco already competes with Microsoft in the unified communications market. In fact, the two companies are strong rivals here. But Microsoft has had an advantage over Cisco with its strong presence on the desktop.
Now Cisco is taking these services into the "cloud," where the company can leverage its existing expertise with WebEx to provide a virtual solution for its corporate customers.
But Cisco isn't just stopping with unified communications. The company is also in the early stages of offering document, spread sheet, and presentation creation and sharing as part of WebEx. These are very clearly areas where Microsoft has a strong foothold and a very strong business. The company's Office suite, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, is part of its business productivity portfolio. And Microsoft makes a lot of money from this software, about $60 billion of its sales during last fiscal year came from these products.
But Alex Hadden-Boyd, director of marketing for the collaboration software group at Cisco says that Cisco has no intention of going after Microsoft's core Office business. Instead, she said that Cisco is more interested in providing collaboration tools online that groups can use to create and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
"If you look at WebEx Connect today, we already have the beginnings of this," she said. "We have team spaces with shared files and wikis. So we are already well on our way down that road. But we are not focusing on productivity applications or individuals such as re-creating Excel or PowerPoint."
"We are using our existing resources and we have no intention of creating the next Word application for individuals," she added. "We simply are trying to make it easier for work groups to share documents in a team space."
Yankee Group's Kerravala agrees that it doesn't make much sense for Cisco to try to compete against Microsoft's Office products at the desktop level.
"Cisco is not going to take on Microsoft head-to-head on the desktop," he said. "And the reason is simple. They know they'd lose. But Cisco has invested in the cloud and service technology that allows them to approach it differently."
That said, Hadden-Boyd said she does see competition increasing between Cisco and Microsoft in the overall collaboration market. She said the two companies will continue to compete aggressively in collaboration software such as IM and conferencing. Microsoft already offers IM and conferencing and is working on Web-enabling its Office applications.
But Cisco could some day compete head-to-head with Microsoft's email Exchange platform with its new e-mail service from PostPath.
"We could see that as a possibility," Hadden-Boyd said. "We could see businesses using PostPath for e-mail instead of Exchange."
As for the online collaboration market, Cisco and Microsoft aren't the only ones developing solutions. Google also offers document creation and sharing online. But so far those services haven't gotten much appeal outside of the individual consumer market. And it has yet to take shape in the enterprise market.
"Google is the wild card here," Kerravala said. "People are expecting Google to get into the enterprise market. And I see it possibly taking off with a younger kind of worker. But Google has never monetized anything outside its advertising revenue. So it will be interesting to see."
The bad news: first-quarter spending on computing technology was worse than forecast. The good news: growth could resume earlier, according to a report Forrester Research released Tuesday.
The analyst firm reduced its forecast for 2009 information technology spending from a 3 percent decline to a 10.6 percent decline, but it's the hitting bottom, it said. Spending should return to growth in the fourth quarter in the United States, and in the first half of 2010 in Europe and Asia, Forrester said, basing its forecast on newly collected data.
"The big drops are not precursors to further declines," said Andrew Bartels, a principal analyst at Forrester. "Rather, we think they are evidence of a temporary pause in U.S. tech purchases, which we expect to start recovering in the fourth quarter, as businesses realize that they overreacted in the first quarter."
Forrester isn't alone in seeing signs of recovery.
It's "reasonable to be optimistic for 2010," said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt last week. And Gartner predicts that PC sales will start picking up in the end of 2009.
For 2009, some sectors are expected to be hit worse than others. Computer equipment spending should drop 13.5 percent, communications equipment's decline should be 12.4 percent, consulting and outsourcing should drop 8.6 percent, and software spending should have the smallest decrease, at 8.2 percent, Forrester projected.
Forrester has reduced its forecasts for 2009 IT spending several times.
(Credit: Forrester Research)Nvidia on Monday confirmed that Samsung will bring out a Netbook based on the graphics chipmaker's Ion chipset, another design that breaks the Netbook mold.
"Ion really transforms these small laptops, like the upcoming Samsung and Lenovo Ideapad S12, into fully capable notebooks," Rene Haas, general manager of notebook products at Nvidia said Monday in a statement.
Ion brings mainstream PC graphics to Netbooks, including 1080p high-definition video support and better gaming, according to Nvidia.
The disclosure of the Samsung Netbook follows the Lenovo IdeaPad S12--due in August--the first Netbook announced from a major PC maker to employ the Nvidia chip.
Upcoming Samsung Netbook based on Nvidia's Ion chipset and Intel Atom processor
(Credit: Nvidia)Though Nvidia would not confirm specifications, Netbook Choice is reporting that the Netbook, branded the Samsung N510, is due in July and will sport an 11.6-inch screen--large for the Netbook category, where screens typically top out at about 10 inches.
The Samsung Netbook would be another manifestation, following the Lenovo IdeaPad S12, of Nvidia's efforts to break the Netbook mold as defined by Intel: a low-performance device with a screen under 11 inches in diagonal size. Nvidia claims designs like Samsung's and Lenovo's are more notebook than Netbook.
Samsung's Netbook bears Nvidia badge
(Credit: Nvidia)"The Netbook term was created by Intel to define a segment offering a limited experience, but with Ion you don't have those same limitations," Nvidia's Haas said. "These systems can handle mainstream gaming, HD video, and new GPU-powered applications. You might as well call them notebooks, because that's what they are."
The N510 will also pack an Intel 1.66GHz N280 Atom processor, according to Netbook Choice. The N280 is Intel's latest Atom processor that, ironically, is offered to Netbook makers with supporting Intel silicon that delivers better graphics performance than previous Intel Atom technology. That Intel feature, however, is not available when a PC maker uses Nvidia's higher-performance Ion silicon that integrates Nvidia's 9400M graphics chip--the same chip used in Apple's MacBook line.
Other Samsung Netbook features include a 160GB hard disk drive, 1GB of memory, and Wi-Fi (draft-n), Bluetooth, and a Webcam, according to Netbook Choice.
Nvidia's Ion is also used in tiny desktop PCs such as the Acer AspireRevo and ASUS eeeTop.
The One Laptop Per Child operating system is now available for free downloading for "any" PC or Netbook, according to its maker.
The XO-1 user interface
(Credit: Sugar Labs)Sugar Labs, responsible for building the low-cost device's XO-1 operating system, released it online last week for loading onto any USB flash drive greater than 1GB.
Called "Sugar on a Stick v1," Sugar Labs hopes it will help spread the use of the OS in classrooms, without the need for the OLPC machine.
An IDC analyst said earlier this year that the OS would be one of the OLPC's more attractive aspects that vendors would be interested in copying for the Netbook market.
It is based on the Fedora Linux kernel and can be booted from the USB stick without needing to be installed over the hard drive's existing OS.
According to Sugar Labs, its OS is used by almost a million students ages 5 to 12 in some 40 countries. Its social-oriented interface recognizes other Sugar-based PCs around it and interacts with them without the need for Internet connection.
Sugar Labs was spun off a year ago after Walter Bender, now its executive director, left the OLPC initiative to start the nonprofit spinoff.
Victoria Ho of ZDNet Asia reported from London.
The Department of Justice has decided to extend its investigation into the company's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, according to a brief statement put out late Friday.
The Justice Department's 30-day window for looking into the $7.4 billion deal was set to expire Friday. Instead of approving the acquisition, the Justice Department informed Oracle that it is extending that deadline, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, the move likely just means final details are being ironed out before the Justice department will give the acquisition its stamp of approval. The news did not change Oracle's optimism that the deal will be approved.
"We've had a very good dialogue with the Department of Justice and we were almost able to resolve everything before the Second Request deadline," said Dan Wall, an attorney with Latham & Watkins who counsels Oracle. "All that's left is one narrow issue about the way rights to Java are licensed that is never going to get in the way of the deal. I fully expect that the investigation will end soon and not delay the closing of the deal this summer."
The acquisition was announced on April 20, shortly after Sun rejected a buyout offer from IBM causing Big Blue to withdraw its offer.
Sun investors will vote in a special shareholder meeting scheduled for July 16 on the proposed merger with Oracle. Sun's board, which has already approved the merger, is urging stockholders to approve the deal--a majority vote is needed. It is widely expected to go through, though some Sun shareholders have filed three separate class action lawsuits to block the deal, the company revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in May.
IBM on Friday was denied an injunction that would have kept its former acquisitions chief from taking a job at Dell, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
IBM sued David Johnson out of concern that working at Dell would cause him to divulge IBM trade secrets. Johnson worked for 27 years at IBM, most recently as vice president of corporate development, responsible for overseeing mergers and acquisitions.
IBM plans to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Robinson's ruling, according to the story. In his ruling, Robinson said while "IBM will undoubtedly suffer harm absent an injunctive order" because of Johnson's inside knowledge of IBM's business, the harm wasn't "decidedly greater" than the harm to Johnson if he couldn't pursue work because of a non-compete agreement.
Johnson maintains that he didn't properly sign the most recent agreement. Though he has begun work at Dell, he's not working on mergers and acquisitions. According to a court filing, Johnson signed a statement saying he would "limit work at Dell Inc. to learning about its businesses, including its strategies, products, operations and personnel."
