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The fourth beta of the Firefox 3.0 browser (download Firefox 3 beta 4 for Windows or Mac, (English-US) from Download.com) was released Monday and includes more than 900 enhancements over the previous beta, Mozilla announced.

The creator of the open-source browser said the new beta includes improvements to performance and memory usage, fixes for stability, and platform-specific enhancements. Some of the enhancements include a new download manager to make locating downloads easier; a full page zoom feature that allows you to zoom in and out of pages more easily; and integration for Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux that features platform-specific icons, buttons, and other user interface elements.

The current beta of Firefox 3.0, which is expected to get its final release later this year, is available for download now at Mozilla.com.

Firefox, which has been slowly chipping away at the lead held by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, recently announced that it had passed the 500 million download milestone.

Firefox accounted for more than 17 percent of all browsers used last month, while IE accounted for nearly 75 percent, according to research conducted by Net Applications, a Web measurement company. However, IE's share stood at more than 79 percent a year ago, and use has been dropping steadily over the past eight months, the company said.

Peace in our time

They're all born with the best of intentions, but only the strong survive.

Formats come and go. Some are barely noticed, and some die a slow, painful death. So now we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD was comparatively brief--unless you're on the losing side, stuck with a slowpoke player and a collection of HD DVD discs. I've already heard from some angry HD DVD supporters. War is tough.

If you're over 35, you probably remember the Betamax vs. VHS wars, which raged from 1975 to the late 1980s, when Sony finally surrendered and started marketing VHS machines.

Like the HD DVD-Blu-ray debacle, manufacturers divided into two camps: Beta had Sony, Toshiba, Sanyo, NEC, Aiwa, and Pioneer. An impressive lineup, but JVC, Matsushita (Panasonic), Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Akai sided with VHS. Even when everyone said Beta was dead as a doornail in the early 1990s (long before the introduction of DVD), the format soldiered on in Japan until 2002.

Pioneer still makes Laserdisc players like this DVL-919

(Credit: Pioneer Electronics)

Some formats wither and die on their own--the Laserdisc wasn't competing against anything but a lack of interest. The LD was a 12-inch optical analog disc alternative to Beta and VHS. It looked like an LP-size CD. Yes, it was a better, higher-quality format than tape, and it still garnered only a small yet fanatical market base among videophiles.

The LD fared better than RCA's crippled-from-the-start CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc) that came out in 1981. Marketed as "SelectaVision," the grooved, LP-like discs were fragile, and they never stood a chance against VHS tape. Still, RCA stuck to its guns for five long years before snuffing the CED in 1986. Ten years later, the Laserdisc was on its last legs when the DVD finally killed it off--the software, that is. Pioneer still sells new DVD-LD players. How's that for customer support?

DVD was unchallenged but for a brief skirmish with Divx (Digital Video Express, not to be confused with DivX). Divx was a DVD rental variant, but cheaper (a disc sold for about $5) and could be viewed only for 48 hours after its first use. Divx players could play DVDs, but standard DVD players couldn't play Divx discs. Disney, Twentieth Century Fox Film, and Paramount Pictures released their movies in the Divx format.

The Audiophiliac poses with an 8-track cartridge.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Audio has had its own share of format wars, but it also had some remarkably stable formats. The LP has been around for 50-plus years, and you can still play the oldest LPs on a brand-new turntable.

It's starting to look like the LP will outlast the CD. But CDs are a long-running success and likewise universally playable, and most surviving cassettes are serviceable.

Analog tape formats like reel-to-reel, 8-track, and 4-track cartridges still have tiny outposts of devout followers, but the Elcaset came and went so fast, I never even heard it. Digital-tape formats like DAT and the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) barely made a dent in the public's awareness.

So how will the HD DVD fare in the format history time line? What do you think: a mere blip or an interesting diversion?

Mozilla fans can now download Firefox 3 beta 2 for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

The new version sports a wide range of improvements over the first test version of the browser upgrade, most notably plugs for memory leaks, security fixes, and a download manager that includes improvements previously available only through plug-ins.

... Read more

David Armano from Critical Mass will moderate a panel on "Always in Beta: How Big Business Can Benefit from 'Little' Innovation" at the Forrester Consumer Forum (October 10 to 13). Here's a quick synopsis: "Innovation isn't limited to R & rooms anymore. The Web 2.0 movement--powered by start-ups such as Twitter, Malhalo and even YouTube, has proven that innovation often happens in iterations. Build, launch, tweak, measure, repeat. Digital experiences seem to be 'always in beta'--learning and evolving along the way."

(Credit: Not Gartner)

The fact that the Forrester Consumer Forum dedicates a panel to this much-blogged about topic is a sign that being in beta has become a broad cultural phenomenon. By nature we are all in beta, as the Boxes and Arrows blog poignantly remarks, and clearly, we now also live in an economy where "planes are built in the air." Many new products never make it beyond trial stage, and the trial and error beta-approach that helps Google and other alpha innovators to out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition, is as much an attribute of successful organizations as it is a sign of our time.

But it's not only analysts and conference organizers who are switching instantly from micro to macro, picking up nascent trends and elevating them to a must-deal-with core competence that transcends the current fad (just see all the Facebook conferences that are mushrooming right now). What I find even more interesting is how the media and blogosphere deal with it. If everything's in beta, the public doesn't have the patience anymore to wait for the alpha. As the media are increasingly forced to immediately widen the scope and view every innovation in a larger context as it occurs, the boundaries between reporters and commentators, bloggers and industry analysts are fading.

Some examples: Not too long ago, Twitter was all the rage, and it was stunning to see that just shortly after the initial coverage during SXSW in March, reporters were already elaborating on the concept of micro-blogging, wondering what the new "radical transparency" meant for business. Nowadays, there is a great chance that you will stumble upon a Facebook story when you open just about any publication: It's Facebook vs. MySpace, the implications of social networking on the borders between work and personal life, reflections on the "Facebook economy," Facebook vs. iTunes, and maybe a philosophical piece on Facebook "as a post-modern book" or the future of social networking, which, for TIME, equals the future of the Internet. It is only a small step from MySpace to the "MySpace generation," and from Facebook to the "Facebook generation" and then to the "Fakebook generation." Similarly, the recent buzz around Radiohead's "pay what you want" online release has instantly led to the coining of a "Radiohead Generation" and praise for the band "as a pioneer of the digital revolution." And there are hundreds of articles discussing if Radiohead's decision ushers in the definite end of the record industry. The stories about the radical distribution model appear to eclipse the actual music on the album--in this case, too, the reviews are in before the story is told.

Evidently, the media need to cope with the current while also putting forward a vision for the up and coming. The time between observation and conclusion, between description and prediction, however, has shrunk to almost zero. There are no more lapses between news, analysis, background story, industry trend story, and intellectual dissection; they have become one and the same, at the same time. Not only is beta the new alpha--beta has gone meta.

If you've been waiting for Windows Vista SP1 to come out before you make the leap to the new operating system, don't, says Microsoft.

Microsoft's Pete McKiernan, a senior product manager for Windows, told CNET News.com that one of the purposes of a service pack is to include all the patches that have been released in one package. Windows Vista SP1 will have that, but little else for the home user.

Unlike the buzz surrounding Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista SP1 won't include a new version of Internet Explorer, and won't include any new features that are considered must haves. Most of the enhancements within Windows Vista SP1 are under the hood and for enterprise customers. In short, Windows Vista SP1 lacks "wow."

Currently, Microsoft is beta-testing the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on about 12,000 machines worldwide. As the beta continues, more users will be invited, but the numbers will not match the estimated 5 million that tried the operating system prior to RTM (release to manufacturing) last summer. CNET obtained an official copy of the Windows Vista SP1 beta for review.

What surprised us is that Microsoft is really downplaying this service pack. Why? Because, unlike Windows XP, Windows Vista includes automatic updates, so for most users the Windows Vista SP1 release won't be dramatic. At CNET, we found it took about two hours to install SP1 on a newly installed Windows Vista machine, in part because we had to bring the operating system up to date with various patches and updates before we could install the upgrade. See our slide show for more on the installation process.

What is included in the "upgrade"? McKiernan called out two features expected to be within Windows Vista SP1, neither is likely to excite consumers already on the fence about Windows Vista. One is an improvement to the BitLocker drive encryption system, available only in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. Under SP1, BitLocker will be able to encrypt multiple drive volumes; all drive volumes, that is, except for USB drives.

A second feature touted by Microsoft is support for emerging hardware and standards. Windows Vista SP1 will support Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), Intel standard for the interface between software, the operating system and firmware, and Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT), a new Microsoft file system that may eliminate the need for defragmentation in the future.

McKiernan categorized other expected changes within Windows Vista SP1 as:

Security enhancements: There is nothing here that the desktop consumer will notice. Under the hood, Microsoft will provide more opportunities for third-party security vendors to communicate their product status with the Windows Security Center. In x64-bit editions, third-party security vendors can work with the kernel patch protection, a source of controversy last summer. Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) files will be signed. The Windows Pseudo-Random Number Generator will have Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) added. And BitLocker will add multifactor authentication combining Trusted Platform Module (TPM) with a Startup key stored on a USB device, meaning that the startup key must match the hardware you are trying to use.

Reliability enhancements: Microsoft has been analyzing crashes of Windows Vista reported by users and will be making improvements. In particular, more compatibility with newer graphics cards and printers; greater reliability with extended displays on a laptop, various networking scenarios, in systems that were upgraded from Windows XP, and when Windows Vista enters sleep or resumes from sleep.

Performance enhancements: Microsoft says SP1 will offer performance boosts including the speed to copy and extract files, time to become active from Hibernate and Resume, CPU utilization within Internet Explorer 7 and CPU utilization in laptops, thereby reducing battery drain, and shortening the time when browsing network shares.

None of these is a compelling reason to wait for Windows Vista SP1. Users who have automatic updates turned on will have a significantly shorter time when upgrading to Windows Vista SP1 than users who don't have it turned on or are planning to upgrade or purchase Windows Vista when SP1 becomes available. That appears to be Microsoft's message with this release: The more you use Windows Vista, the better it gets. So why not get started today?

In short, judging by what we've seen, don't expect SP1 to be the impetus to get you or your corporation to upgrade to Windows Vista.

Qualcomm's handoff of its Eudora e-mail software to the Mozilla Foundation has taken an important step: release of the first beta version of the software, 8.0.0b1.

Mozilla already has an open-source e-mail program, Thunderbird, and the new Eudora will be a branded offshoot with some new features, according to the release site. In addition, a related extension called Penelope will provide some extra features to both Eudora and the regular Thunderbird.

Eudora rose to popularity in the dial-up days of the Internet, but it was mostly supplanted by Microsoft Outlook Express and by Web-based e-mail services. Qualcomm launched its last commercially supported version of its classic Eudora last October. However, six Qualcomm Eudora programmers are now working on the Mozilla version.

The beta version is available for Windows and Mac OS X.

(Via Slashdot)

Bloglines has just launched a new beta version of its site. Bloglines has been an immensely popular Web-based RSS reader since its launch in 2003, so it's great to see that it is stepping up its game with this new release. It went in the obvious, but logical, direction of offering a customized start page, with the feeds you are the most interested in. I've talked before about how the personalized start page market is already very crowded, but Bloglines might have a loyal enough user base and a good enough reputation to make it work here.

First off, this new release allows you to easily create a customized start page by dragging and dropping feeds from your list in Bloglines. It's very smooth and "Ajax-y," and has all the makings of a successful service. It doesn't complicate the matter with various widgets to add to your page, which may be a good thing for some people. It's really easy to use and allows you to quickly reference news, at a glance, that you need to read first.

The addition of the new start page is great, but the real question is: How is Bloglines going to compete with Google Reader? Google Reader surpassed Bloglines as the most used Web-based RSS reader, with ease, when it appeared that Bloglines was not doing much to improve user experience.

Bloglines' latest release brings great new functionality to its core feed-reading experience. In addition to Bloglines' traditional view, which it is now calling "full view," it has two additional feed-reading views called "quick view" and "three-pane view." Quick view is essentially an e-mail-style view of the unread posts in any given feed. Only the titles of the posts and the time that they were posted are presented and you can click on individual posts to read them. The three-pane view is a mix of quick view and full view. The quick view element is on the top half of the page and the full view, on the bottom half, comes into play when you select a post to read.

Bloglines' new 'quick view'

It is great to see that Bloglines is innovating again. I personally switched over to Google Reader when Bloglines started getting a little stale, but this new release is making me rethink that decision. This could be a sign of good things to come for Bloglines in its quest to regain a position of power over Google. We'll have to wait and see, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

You can also get Richard MacManus' take on this release over at Read/Write Web.

Symantec has added Norton Antivirus 2008 and Norton Internet Security 2008 to it's Beta Center. Enhancements to Norton Antivirus 2008 include better performance and updated Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response (SONAR) heuristics. Enhancements to Norton Internet Security 2008 include those in Norton Antivirus 2008 plus Norton Identity Safe (from Norton Confidential), and enhanced network monitoring. Both pieces of software are expected to include new browser vulnerability protection, codenamed "Canary", in their final release.

The Symantec beta program includes no technical support, although customer feedback is welcome. Symantec reminds participants in the beta program not to install these apps on production machines. Beta software is intended for testing only.