Business Tech

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Thunderbird 3, an update to the e-mail software that Mozilla hopes will give it some of the advantages its Firefox browser has enjoyed, is due to arrive in near-final form next week.

Mozilla Messaging plans to issue release candidate 1 of Thunderbird 3 as soon as Monday, with the final version expected later in November, the e-mail-focused subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation said Thursday.

"We're down to the last few bugs," said Chief Executive David Ascher. "Feedback with the last beta was enthusiastic." Thunderbird 3 beta 4 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Thunderbird doesn't get as much attention as Firefox, the chief product of the Mozilla Foundation's other subsidiary. But with Thunderbird 3, Ascher and Mozilla Messaging are trying harder to take advantage of one technology that's helped the browser's fortunes: add-ons. They could be written for Thunderbird 2, but only with what Ascher termed an act of heroism; Thunderbird 3 makes add-ons much easier.

One area where add-ons show up is a new Thunderbird 3 feature, Google and Yahoo calendar functions in the software--using its built-in Firefox engine for handling Web pages, naturally.

"There are a bunch of actions that start in e-mail that really involve the Web," Ascher said. Another example he said Mozilla Messaging will write if some enterprising person doesn't do it first: an add-on to help people assess whether to follow a particular Twitter user who just signed up to follow you.

Another add-on that's already under way is Lightning, which parallels Outlook's calendar functions. A Thunderbird 3-compatible version should arrive about the same time, he said. Ultimately, Thunderbird should be able to integrate with either Lightning or Web-based calendars, including the automation of operations such as accepting event invitations.

Better search
The add-ons also dovetail with a significant new Thunderbird feature, improved search. With Thunderbird 2's folder-based search approach, people often didn't set up searches so they could find what they needed. With Thunderbird 3, it returns all results that match the text, not just what's in a particular folder.

"It's really important to search everywhere," Ascher said. As with Google, "You type a word, and you get results."

Of course that can retrieve a lot of unwanted results. So the search results page offers a variety of ways to winnow that search down--limiting it to particular people, to messages with a specific tag, or to a particular time frame selected from a timeline that presents messages using the search term.

These functions to refine the search, which Mozilla Messaging calls "facets," are another area where add-ons can help, Ascher said.

Also coming in Thunderbird 3 is a simpler start-up process. The software is set up in advance to automatically set up the increasingly complicated server configuration for various accounts. I tried it with Gmail, and it indeed was up and running in moments after I entered only my name, e-mail address, and password. The software comes with several profiles built in, and it makes intelligent guesses if it doesn't know, but people will be able to write their own modules that can be shared, too.

Another feature in the new version is the archive, a feature borrowed from Google's Gmail that's a kind of digital purgatory. E-mails sent to the archive are still available through search, but they don't clutter up the inbox. Folders are still available for those who want to file messages the traditional way.

"The original idea of e-mail, putting messages in folders one by one, was reasonable when we got ten messages a day. Now that we get a couple hundred or more, that's a huge burden," Ascher said. "We made archive really easy and complemented it with (an) easy-to-use search experience.

Streamlined interface
One big interface change is the addition of tabs. Mail accounts, folders, and individual messages can show as new tabs rather than new windows. It's one of a number of efforts to provide a more streamlined interface.

One other is moving some message-specific operations to the message window--reply, reply to a mailing list, forward, archive, and other options. Another: the main toolbar has been cleaned up so only essential actions show, though others can be added through customization. And people can be added to the address book with a single click of a star next to their names--not unlike Firefox 3.5's one-click bookmark operation.

Some routine tasks--labeling a message as junk, for example--are designed to be faster, he added.

"If you look at the number of seconds saved over the population of Thunderbird users, it tends to be several lifetimes per year," Ascher said.

One new feature in Thunderbird 3 is a simplified account setup. You enter three bits of information, and Thunderbird often can take it from there.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Judging by its initial sales, Windows 7 is certainly proving more popular than Vista.

Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft sold 234 percent more boxed editions of Windows 7 than it did Vista in the initial releases of both products, according to research released Thursday by NPD Group.

In actual dollars, Windows 7 has also been more successful than Vista. However, early discounts on pre-sales copies and a lack of a promotional boost behind Windows 7 Ultimate led to revenues only 82 percent greater than those of Vista.

"Ultimate was a much bigger part of what Microsoft did with Vista, whereas this time I think they not only kept the price very high, but really kept the focus on the Premium product and the Premium three-pack," explained the author of the report, NPD's Stephen Baker, to CNET News. "Most of the promotional fire that they've put out there has been focused on those, for example, 'Buy a computer, get a $50 copy of Home Premium.' The pre-sales were all pretty much focused on Home Premium."

The numbers provided by NPD include both the initial sales of Windows 7 following its release on October 22 and pre-sales data from the discount program that Microsoft launched in July.

NPD declined to release actual sales figures for Windows 7, but the percentages help tell the story.

Web statistics firm Net Applications also found early adoption of Windows 7 to be strong.

(Credit: NPD Group)

Sales of PC hardware running the new OS didn't fare quite as well. Though growth in PC sales for the Windows 7 launch was at its highest level for the entire third quarter, it wasn't as strong as during the Vista launch, showing a 6 percent decrease from Vista's initial days.

A mixture of different factors affected the sales of Windows 7 PCs, notes Baker. Vista was launched in January, which traditionally offers a better sales environment than October. Also, the new OS was hurt by sales of PCs with older operating systems, which made up 20 percent of all sales during Windows 7 launch week. In contrast, PCs with older operating systems made up just 6 percent of all sales when Vista hit the market.

Baker doesn't think the current recession had a bearing on the lower PC sales for Windows 7's launch. "We've seen pretty strong sales growth on computers all year regardless of the recession," he said. "People have been buying more units of PCs all year than they had in 2008. At least from a unit perspective, we haven't really seen much impact on the consumer PC market from the recession."

After three quarters of losses, Lenovo has turned a profit again. The computer maker announced Thursday that its fiscal second-quarter earnings more than doubled to $53 million versus $23 million a year ago.

Profit for the quarter ended September blew way past estimates of only $24 million from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Despite a 5.2 percent sales decline to $4.1 billion from $4.3 billion in the year-ago quarter, Lenovo achieved its profits through extensive cost cuts and a record leap in market share.

(Credit: Lenovo)

The company had previously kick-started a major restructuring program designed to trim expenses and streamline business operations. As a result, Lenovo was forced to lay off a sizable number of employees and take a one-time restructuring charge of $3 million in the second quarter. But the company now expects to save around $300 million annually.

During the quarter, Lenovo says it also saw its worldwide PC shipments surge 17 percent over the prior year, dramatically outpacing the industry average of only 2.3 percent.

"In the last quarter, our share in the global market climbed to a historic high and we returned to profit," said Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing in a statement. "At the same time, our expenses-to-revenue ratio improved notably, reaching the best level since the acquisition of IBM's PC division. These achievements bear witness to the clear strategies we set at the beginning of the year and our effective execution of those strategies."

Lenovo's quarterly results were powered by its notebooks, which contributed 63 percent to overall revenue. Though notebook sales dipped 1 percent from the prior year, shipments shot up 37 percent, compared with an industry average of 16 percent.

During the quarter, the company unveiled a few new products, including the IdeaPad U450p, a thin and light consumer laptop, and SimpleTap, an application to help users navigate the touchscreens on Windows 7-enabled machines like the ThinkPad X200 Tablet and ThinkPad T400s.

Desktop sales, however, fell 13 percent from the prior year's quarter, kicking in only 35 percent to Lenovo's overall revenue. Desktop shipments fell 2 percent, but outpaced the industry average of a 12 percent decline. The company said it has reacted to the PC market shift from desktops to laptops by introducing new entry-level low-cost desktops and revamping its product line for small and medium-sized businesses.

Lenovo enjoyed a stellar second quarter in its home base of China where sales jumped 9 percent to $2 billion. Shipments in the country jumped 28 percent compared with the average of only 0.1 percent. Already the leading PC vendor in China, the company boosted its market share there to 29.4 percent.

Earlier this year, Lenovo said that it would refocus its efforts on China and other emerging markets, a strategy that appears to have paid off.

"Our results are moving in the right direction and we are particularly pleased with our performance in China and in the transactional business model," said Lenovo Chairman Liu Chuanzhi in a statement.

The year had been a volatile one for Lenovo. The company was hit a string of quarterly losses, leading to the resignation of President and CEO William Amelio in February. Job cuts and the restructuring also took their toll.

But based on its second quarter, Lenovo is optimistic about the near term.

"In the coming quarters, we will continue to reinforce our leadership in China, improve the sustainability and profitability of mature markets, seize growth opportunities in emerging markets and our transactional business, continue to strengthen cost structure, and innovate with raising efficiency and customers' needs in mind," said Chuanzhi.

Mozilla may have released the first beta of Firefox 3.6 nearly two months late, but the organization believes the final version still will arrive on schedule before the end of the year.

The Mozilla wiki page on version 3.6, code-named Namoroka, listed early September for the scheduled release of the first beta, but it actually arrived October 30. Despite that, Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering, said Mozilla wants to release the browser before the holidays and is sticking by the overall schedule for the open-source Web browser.

"We're still looking at a release candidate in November and (final) release in December at this point," Shaver said in a Tuesday interview.

That means Mozilla has a compressed schedule for producing the final version, but Shaver said coders are working hard. "We're not going to coast into it," he said. "We're going to continue shipping beta updates aggressively."

Those involved in open-source projects, with different motivations and pressures than those in the traditional proprietary software industry, sometimes have an attitude of "we'll ship it when it's done." Mozilla, though, recognizes that time matters even for an open-source project.

"We've always been more quality-driven than time-driven," Shaver said. "But we understand timing in the market matters to our users and our competitiveness."

This view compares output from four raw-processing packages: DxO Optics Pro, Nikon's Capture NX2, Bibble 5 with the Noise Ninja noise-reduction filter, and Adobe Camera Raw that's in Photoshop. The original raw photo was taken with a Nikon D700 at ISO 25,600. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: DxO Labs)

DxO Labs announced a new version of its raw image editing software Tuesday that sports what the company says is a streamlined, more adaptable interface and an ability to extract a better ultimate image from those that begin with lots of noise.

DxO Optics Pro is designed for the sometimes laborious process of converting raw images that come from higher-end digital cameras into more easily viewed and handled formats such as JPEG. Although it takes work, using raw images can provide more flexibility and quality than using JPEGs straight from the camera--and with the new DxO Optics Pro, lower noise at high ISO settings, the company said.

Specifically, the noise reduction technology in DxO Optics Pro version 6 can reduce noise well enough to effectively give a photographer one more usable F-stop out of a camera than the previous version did, said Cyrille de La Chesnais, director of sales and marketing for photography at the Paris-based company. That means a photographer could shoot at a faster shutter speed or in dimmer conditions.

That can be useful especially with modern SLRs; Canon's 5D Mark II and Nikon's D700 can both shoot at an extreme ISO of 25,600, and Canon's new 1D Mark IV and Nikon's new D3S can shoot at a whopping ISO 102,400. The images are extremely noisy in those cases, but noise reduction can help extract a more useful image. However, raw processing software can be slow even on machines with abundant processing power.

By underexposing an image in the camera and then increasing its exposure in the software, DxO Optics Pro can give a photographer a more sensitive camera. This image from a Canon G10 is effectively shot at ISO 3,200 even though the camera's maximum ISO is 1,600.

(Credit: DxO Labs)

Getting a one F-stop improvement means a photographer could use ISO 25,600 instead of holding the line at 12,800. Alternatively, for a camera such as Canon's G10 high-end compact that tops out at ISO 1,600, photographers can effectively shoot at ISO 3,200 by underexposing the image by a full stop then brightening it later in software.

More people will get a chance to try out bookmark synchronization with Monday's release of a beta version of Google Chrome for Windows.

Google introduced the bookmark sync feature for the developer-preview version in August, but now it's also in the better-tested beta version, Chrome 4.0.223.16. However, there's still no Chrome beta for Mac OS X or Linux.

In a video explanation, Google's Anthony LaForge somewhat breathlessly describes how the sync feature can keep bookmarks the same on multiple machines. That's a fair point, but let's be realistic here--bookmark sync in Chrome is more catch-up than paradigm shift. Indeed, with the popular Xmarks extension--in the works for Chrome, people can synchronize bookmarks among multiple browsers, not merely multiple computers.

And Chrome's clever message-based sync technology notwithstanding, Chrome bookmarks would be a lot more magical if they synchronized with the Google bookmarks service, which is linked with iGoogle and the Google Toolbar.

Speaking of extensions, one of the 4.x series' biggest features is the ability to accommodate extensions, but because Google is shifting the extensions interface, the feature isn't enabled in the beta version. Chrome is released in three versions: the roughest, fastest moving developer preview, the more stable beta, and the stable edition for the broadest audience.

The 4.x series has other significant features, too, though it's not clear whether they'll arrive in the beta or stable versions. One is Google's Native Client, which lets JavaScript applications take more direct advantage of a PC processor's horsepower through a careful security mechanism. Another is WebGL, a 3D interface that does the same with hardware-accelerated graphics.

Together, the features have the potential to dramatically improve the power and sophistication of Web-based applications. That's particularly interesting given that Google is building Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system.

The Mac version isn't in beta yet, but it's a priority.

"Our goal for this Friday is to be able to count our Mac P1 M4 release blocker bugs on one hand (we're in the 20s now)," said Chrome programmer Mike Pinkerton in a mailing list announcement on Monday. P1 bugs are priority-one; M4 refers to milestone 4, or version 4.0.

And Google is willing to put more manpower onto the Mac version, he added. "Everyone should have their P1 list practically at zero by the end of this week. If you are not going to be able to reach this, let me (or other triage folk) know ASAP so that we can get you some help.

Chrome edged up to 3.6 percent of browser usage for October, its highest showing so far in Net Applications' statistics since the browser's first public release 14 months ago. That's within striking distance of third-place Safari at 4.2 percent, but still well short of second-place Firefox at 24.1 percent and dominant Internet Explorer at 64.6 percent.

Chrome has helped fan the browser war flames even without becoming dominant, though. In particular, it's helped increase the emphasis on performance such as the speed to load the software, load Web pages, and run Web-based JavaScript applications. Here, more than with bookmark sync, Google's chest-thumping has some merit:

"As with every release, this new beta comes with many speed improvements. In particular, as Web applications we use every day become increasingly dynamic, browsers like Google Chrome need to be able to construct and change elements on web pages as fast as possible," said programmers Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin in a blog post. "We've improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30 percent since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests, and by 400 percent since our first stable release."

There has been some slowdown with the arrival of Chrome extensions, though, so Google will have some more optimization work to do to keep the browser in fighting trim.

Updated 9:57 p.m. PST with further details on the Mac OS X beta priority.

Google's Chrome is still the fourth-place browser in terms of usage, but it gained more than others in October when it comes to stealing usage away from the dominant Internet Explorer.

According to Net Applications' browser usage share statistics, Chrome gained from 3.2 percent to 3.6 percent from September 2009 to October. The company bases its statistics on visits to a global network of 40,000 Web sites, dusted with some statistical processing.

Next was Mozilla's Firefox, which rose from 23.8 percent to 24.1 percent. Apple's Safari rose from 4.2 percent to 4.4 percent. Opera was essentially flat at 2.2 percent.

The big loser was IE, which dropped from 65.7 percent to 64.6 percent, according to the statistics.

Those keen to try out Mozilla's latest browser--and its new process to update the software more frequently--now can try Firefox 3.6 beta 1 for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Among the features in the new version, according to Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, and Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard:

• Personas, which lets people customize the browser appearance. Personas has been available as an add-on, so there are plenty of Personas skins to choose from.

• Faster execution of Web-based JavaScript programs, better browser responsiveness, and faster startup time. Mozilla has been working on JavaScript performance for many months, but the urgency of that and other performance improvements increased with the arrival of Google's Chrome browser.

• The ability to drag and drop files from the computer to the browser. This is useful for uploading files to Web sites, as will a feature not in the beta but planned for the final version, support for the multiple-file input tag so more than one file can be added in Web forms.

• Expanded support for geolocation technology so it can provide a Web site with an approximate physical address of the user, not just latitude-longitude coordinates.

• The ability to detect the computer's orientation for machines that offer accelerometer support.

• Video built into Web pages with the HTML5 "video" tag now can be viewed full-screen.

Mozilla also released a full list of Firefox changes developers should know about with more details.

Firefox is at the vanguard of the second generation of browser wars. Although it competes with Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera, all those browsers are also allied in a way against Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which though dominant is relatively slow at some tasks and only now complying more fully with Web page standards of yesteryear. The rivals, meanwhile, are pushing ahead with new features in HTML5 in development right now.

Mozilla released the alpha version of Firefox 3.6, code-named Namoroka, in August.

The organization plans to release the final version by the end of the year, with Firefox 3.7 in the first half of 2010 and Firefox 4.0 in about a year.

One complication of the upgrade is compatibility of add-ons that extend Firefox's features; the new browser version makes some changes. Mozilla is debating whether to release Firefox 3.6 as a minor update automatically distributed to 3.5 users or as a major update that requires those users to actively retrieve it.

One major element of Firefox 4.0 is a new add-on technology called Jetpack that eases this compatibility problem.

Continuing its string of quarterly losses, Sony suffered a net loss of 26.3 billion yen ($292 million) for its second quarter, reported the company on Friday.

Compared with a profit of 20.8 billion yen a year ago, this marked Sony's fourth straight quarterly downturn.

Sales for the quarter that ended September 30 also took a spill, dropping 19.8 percent to 1.66 trillion yen ($18.26 billion) from 2.07 trillion yen in the year-ago quarter.

Recent cost cuts and hot sales of the PlayStation 3 game console both provided a shot in the arm.

Sony's 2009 second quarter results

(Credit: Sony)

But Sony was hurt by a downturn in sales for the venerable PlayStation 2 despite its recent claim that the PS2 was "showing no signs of slowing down." Weak demand for the Vaio line of PCs also dragged down the quarter.

As a result, revenue in the Networked Product and Services division, which includes Sony Computer Entertainment, fell 24.2 percent to 352.6 billion yen from 465.2 billion yen in the year-ago quarter.

Other segments also upset the bottom line.

The Consumer Products and Devices business, which includes TVs and cameras, watched its sales plummet 36.5 percent to 799.9 billion yen from 1.25 trillion yen a year ago. Sales were down for Sony's Bravia HDTVs due to intense price competition and the higher value of the yen. The company's Cybershot digital cameras also were impacted by a decline in unit sales and the appreciation of the yen.

Lower sales both in the theater and at home hurt Sony's Entertainment division, with revenue down 30.4 percent to 136.4 billion yen from 196.1 billion yen in 2008's second quarter.

Sony Ericsson also affected the quarter with sales of 1.6 million euros ($2.36 million), a 42 percent decline from 2.8 million euros in the year-ago quarter. An ongoing drag on Sony's earnings, the cell phone maker has struggled to turn a profit in recent years.

One bright spot was Sony's music business, which enjoyed a 147 percent boost in revenue to 124.5 billion yen, stemming in part from sales of Michael Jackson's product catalog, following the entertainer's death in June.

Despite the quarterly loss, results narrowly surpassed expectations, prompting Sony to boost its forecast for the full fiscal year. The company now is eyeing a loss of 95 billion yen for fiscal 2009 versus its prior forecast of a 120 billion yen deficit. Sony lost 98.9 billion yen in fiscal 2008.

Sony recently announced that the PlayStation 3 will offer Netflix streaming, a move it hopes will bump sales of the game console even higher.