Desktop software

LONDON--For someone interested in capitalizing on the new era of advanced Web standards, you'd think Google would be a pretty good employer. After all, it's got an up-and coming browser, some of the world's most influential Web applications, and plenty of money to invest in both.

But in the culture of Silicon Valley, sometimes there's a time to strike off on one's own, and that's what Brad Neuberg, a very visible Web programmer at Google, decided to do. He announced his departure on the eve of a speech last week at the Future of Web Apps conference here.

In an interview with CNET afterward, Neuberg said he plans to launch a San Francisco start-up in November focusing on the same suite of Web technology he's been steeped in at Google. He's cagey on details, but he said he plans to focus on Web applications for consumers.

"I drank the HTML5 Kool-Aid," he said, saying it and other Web standards are fueling a new wave of entrepreneurial activity. " I really believe we're starting to see those start-ups. We'll see that accelerate in the next six months to a year and a half."

Plus, he didn't like spending three hours a day commuting from San Francisco to Google's Mountain View, Calif., offices and back for two years and nine months of his life.

"What am I sacrificing? It didn't all fit," he said. "I should be doing what I would do if I won the lottery," so now he's begun trying to gather a group of like-minded folk for the start-up. … Read more

The next versions of Ubuntu Linux for desktops and Netbooks will launch Sunday with new cloud features, an updated interface, and better links with other operating systems, Canonical has announced.

The software, known as Maverick Meerkat, will both be versions 10.10 of the Linux distribution, the company said yesterday. They will be available for free download from October 10, sidestepping the usual Thursday release window to tie the launch in with the 10/10/10 date stamp.

Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Edition and Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition focus on integrating mobile access to other devices via Ubuntu's … Read more

Firefox's direct pipeline to Google search results is Mozilla's dominant revenue source, but the next version of the open-source Web browser will also get Microsoft's Bing as an alternative.

Google will remain the default search option in Firefox, and Yahoo will be second, but Bing will become a third for English-language users when Firefox 4 is released, Mozilla announced Wednesday.

"Bing...offers a user experience that we think users will find valuable, and with its significant rise in popularity over the last year, we will also be including Bing as a general search option for English language users," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of products, in a blog post.

Microsoft has had a search engine for years, so why only add it now? "Until Bing launched last year, we didn't have many users asking us to include a Microsoft search engine in the search bar," Sullivan told CNET. "Since then, we've heard a lot of positive feedback about Bing, and based on our own analysis, we thought it offered a valuable user experience."

Those who delve into a dialog box already can add Bing and other search options to Firefox, so it's not as if Bing fans have been shut out. But the new option will build it in, a notable change given the fierce rivalry over the last decade between Microsoft and Mozilla when it comes to browsers.

The browser landscape is changing, though. After years of relatively sluggish change, Microsoft is back in the game with IE9, now in beta testing. The software includes support for many Web standards that Mozilla and others have been trying to establish for months or years, making IE now also something of an ally as well as a competitor. … Read more

How fast will PCs boot up in the future? I asked industry experts to explain what's involved and what could lead to PCs that boot up in seconds.

One of the key components in getting a PC to start quickly is the BIOS, or basic input/output system. The BIOS, which is present in every Windows PC and Apple computer, is the first piece of code run when the computer starts up, also referred to as firmware. The BIOS serves to initialize and identify system devices such as the hard-disk drive, DVD/CD drive, networking components, USB ports, the video card, keyboard, and mouse.

I chatted with Surendra Arora, vice president of business development at BIOS supplier Phoenix Technologies, and Stephen Jones, the company's chief technical officer, as well as Mark Doran, a senior principal engineer at Intel's Software and Services Group.

And I exchanged e-mail with Fadi Zuhayri, senior manager at the Intel Software & Services Group. Zuhayri said that UEFI, the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, provides the foundation for reaching instant-on one day. But a number of factors, including the operating system, need to come together to achieve fast boot times in under 10 seconds. "So we are getting at near-parity to instant on. The technology foundation is there to make it happen," Zuhayri said. (Note that UEFI is already being used in Windows PCs from a number of PC makers.)

Q: What is UEFI and why is this replacing the traditional BIOS and why is it instrumental in achieving faster boot times? Surendra Arora (Phoenix): The reality is UEFI was started for various reasons. I'm not sure boot speed was one of the reasons that UEFI was started. The real reason was to move away from assembly code. That was what the bring-up process used to be. Hard-coded or machine-level coding. Now C [language] is being used. You can do it at an abstracted layer that's built on APIs [application programming interfaces]. This [UEFI] allows you to standardize things, use multi-threading. We've parallelized initialization so you can boot extremely fast.

Q: So how fast can boot times be now? For example, my Dell Adamo [laptop] that has a solid-state drive can boot to the Windows log-in in roughly 20 seconds. Arora: The OS and the components that you use lead to the complete experience. What we at Phoenix can do is hand off what we do to the OS extremely fast. It used to be 10 to 15 seconds and now… Read more

Browser usage statistics for September provide a look at who's gaining clout on the Web: Google's Chrome, twin mobile powerhouses Apple iOS and Google Android, and Microsoft's IE9.

Google's Chrome browser continued its steady rise in usage on NetApplications' network of thousands of Web sites, which get tens of millions of visits monthly, increasing from 7.5 percent in August to 8 percent in September, the analytics firm said.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains the top-ranked browser, but its share dipped back below 60 percent, sinking from 60.4 percent to 59.7 percent. Second-place Firefox was essentially flat at 23 percent. Apple's Safari rose a tenth of a point to 5.3 percent. Opera kept its 2.4 percent share.

Chrome is a rising force, a fact that's very useful for Google's ambitions. Not only does it help spread the Google brand, but it also serves as a vehicle to disseminate Google technologies. For example, on Thursday, Google said it will add support for its new WebP image format to Chrome in an effort to speed browser graphics. And it's working to improve the browser: Chrome 7 is getting Google Instant search abilities, some hardware acceleration, and WebGL 3D graphics support by default. … Read more

Fulfilling a pledge to hasten the pace of Chrome releases, Google has issued its first beta edition of Chrome 7, but the big new changes in the browser come with a new developer-oriented release.

The new beta, Chrome 7.0.517.24, matches that of Tuesday's developer-channel release. That doesn't include too much directly visible to users--the about:labs feature for experimental options is one item--but it paves the way for major changes.

For a preview of those coming attractions, browser users should check the new developer version that's been cooking for weeks, version 7.0.536.2. … Read more

It turns out there was more to Google's WebM technology than just a plan to revolutionize Web-based video. The company also wants to revolutionize still images on the Web with a new format called WebP.

Google plans to announce the new WebP graphics format today along with its research that indicates its use could cut image file sizes by 40 percent compared to today's dominant JPEG file format. That translates to faster file transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP.

WebP, like JPEG, lets its users trade off image quality for file … Read more

Firefox for Mac OS X hadn't been Mozilla's top priority in the feverish race to give a hardware boost to the task of drawing Web pages on a screen, but it looks as if the technology will arrive in time for Firefox 4.

Windows not only is more widely used than Mac OS X but also is where Microsoft has been touting its hardware-accelerated IE9 work. So it wasn't a great surprise that Mozilla's first work for hardware acceleration arrived there. But yesterday, the organization decided to try to squeeze in some Mac acceleration just before a critical Firefox 4 deadline.

The next Firefox beta, the seventh, is set to be the last for the addition of new features. This feature-freeze stage is essential to give enough debugging time to meet the planned 2010 release of Firefox 4.

It's not certain the acceleration for the Mac will make it. Mozilla programmers decided to build it into the developer versions of Firefox released nightly for more testing then reconvene later this week to decide how to proceed.

Firefox's Windows version includes some hardware acceleration using Microsoft's Direct3D 9 graphics interface, with Direct3D 10 support on the way. The Mac version uses a competing interface, OpenGL, that's not as well-supported on Windows. … Read more

A group of programmers has forked OpenOffice.org, the open-source rival to Microsoft Office that Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems.

The group, called the Document Foundation, published beta versions of its software, called LibreOffice for download on Tuesday. And although the group invited Oracle to offer its OpenOffice trademark, they made it clear they're willing to proceed without the software and now hardware company.

"Developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, … Read more