Chrome's objective: to speed up the Web for Google
Download Google Chrome 0.2.149.27 Beta from FileForum now.
As Google's lead developers for Chrome and its own co-founders made extremely clear in a press conference this afternoon, it's in the Web applications business, and it will do what's necessary to eliminate obstacles.
Google Chrome takes more than just inspiration from Mozilla
Download Google Chrome 0.2.149.27 Beta from FileForum now.
A few of the names appearing in Google's promotional "graphic novel" for the first beta of its own Web browser, may ring bells for anyone who was a beta tester of Firefox 3. So just what kind of browser war does Google plan to wage?
Open source group sues Quebec, Microsoft for no-bid software contracting
A major problem for the development of free software is, ironically, the fact that it isn't worth anything. Not monetarily, that is, but now an open source group says its government must be forced to consider its value anyway.
Is any Quebec government agency that already has Microsoft, Novell, and IBM software installed on its networks compelled by law to consider alternative brands from Quebec-based suppliers? An association of free software publishers based in Quebec is citing a law that forbids provincial officials from entering into no-bid contracts with suppliers outside the province, in a lawsuit filed last July 15 -- but announced just yesterday -- against both Quebec and Microsoft, its key supplier.
Comcast to deploy 250 GB/month usage caps in October
11:43 am EDT August 29, 2008 - In an ongoing discussion with Twitter users, Comcast representative Frank Eliason has said that his company's policy to cap monthly broadband usage (incoming plus outgoing) at 250 GB per month, is actually not new. Rather, he says, the US' largest CATV broadband provider had been warning excessive users before, though it had not explicitly written in its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) just what level of bandwidth consumption triggered that warning.
"This is not a change," Eliason wrote one user. "It just makes the current policy more understandable. Currently policy is top 1/10 of 1% of users." Later, he advised another user to "search the net for bandwidth meter" if that user was concerned about possible excessive usage.
Paid Google ad appears to state McCain picked Lieberman
A Google AdWords ad first spotted by BetaNews contributor Sharon Fisher, along with ads for the McCain campaign that have appeared today on BetaNews and elsewhere through Google, appear on first glance to have spoiled McCain's VP pick.
Groups of politically-minded bloggers, including the DaniWeb IT community, have been noting today a peculiar jump today in the number of online ads, appearing in BetaNews and elsewhere, showing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain alongside former Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Deeper inside IE8 Beta 2
Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 for Windows Vista from FileForum now.
It's increasingly looking like a whole new browser war is forming, as Microsoft is showing evidence of having re-entered the race to add innovative features to the rapidly aging tool.
IE8 Beta 2 adds standards mode, suggestions, 'Web slices'
Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 for Windows Vista from FileForum now.
Validating all indicators since Monday that a revamped beta was ready for public eyes, Microsoft lifted the lid on Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8 this afternoon, offering the first glance at some very competitive new features.
New Windows Genuine authenticator can blank desktop backgrounds
If in the last week or so you've noticed that your desktop background in Windows XP Professional goes completely black exactly every 60 minutes, don't worry, it's not a virus.
A blackened desktop is the latest indication that the Microsoft Genuine Advantage program has determined your copy of the operating system to be non-authentic, as a service of its latest version rolled out to XP Professional users this week.
Time may be running out for a 64-bit Vista-based ZoneAlarm
Download ZoneAlarm Pro Beta 8.0.020.000 for Windows XP and 32-bit Vista from FileForum now.
The difficulty for third-party developers to produce security software for the most feature-rich Vista kernel continues to this day, and a lack of news from ZoneAlarm suggests it could persist well into next year.
Raskin's next Mozilla experiment: an even smarter address bar
Shouldn't a Web browser eventually be capable of responding to natural-language commands -- not the Web site, but the browser? Today, the son of legendary developer Jef Raskin launches a project to explore that question.
One of the most lauded additions to the latest edition of Firefox is how its new "smart" address bar (called the "awesome bar" in early betas) can resolve some incomplete or indirectly descriptive entries into URLs. Sometimes, it even throws the text over to Google when it can't quite resolve the text into a history entry or a URL that Firefox has seen before.
Could Obama's VP pick have triggered millions in SMS traffic?
If you do the math, using the best estimates available to you about text messaging (SMS) usage in the US, the results could be staggering: A single news announcement may mean a small windfall for telcos.
If Sprint's early estimates are accurate and if they're reflective of other carriers' traffic on the day Sen. Barack Obama announced his running mate, the resulting flow of text message traffic on the nation's networks could theoretically have generated more than $118 million in extra revenue for the nation's cell phone carriers.
IE8 will feature privacy envelope, Microsoft confirms
The concept of privatizing the browsing experience has been the impetus for an entire segment of the anti-malware industry. Now, Microsoft has confirmed it will be claiming that segment for itself in the next version of Internet Explorer.
In a post to the Internet Explorer development team's blog yesterday afternoon, Microsoft IE8 program manager Andy Ziegler confirmed news that reporters anticipated after last week's discovery of a series of trademark filings: The new browser will contain a prominent feature enabling users to switch off any kind of permanent or long-term storage of their history or activities.
After a few days, a mixed verdict on Microsoft Photosynth
It's a new tool from Microsoft that enables photographers to upload photos, but then let other users walk through those photos as though they showed 3D scenes. In some ways, it's close to amazing. Close.
At one level, Microsoft Live Labs' public launch of its Photosynth project is an intriguing test of a commercial software producer's ability to perform supercomputer-style computations as a service for the general public. At another level, it's a clever and somewhat effective scheme for getting more users signed onto Microsoft's Windows Live network, as well as using plentiful amounts of its online storage.
Many Obama supporters never received 3am VP wake-up text
"Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee," read the Obama campaign's early morning SMS message to his supporters. Trouble was, even by that time, many already knew it, and some weren't even getting the message.
The original plan was for Barack Obama supporters nationwide to be the first to receive the news of his vice presidential running mate. But well over two hours before many of those supporters received what ended up being, perhaps in an inadvertent tribute to Hillary Clinton, a 3am EDT wake-up call on August 25, CNN correspondent John King was the first to go live with the news that two highly-placed, then anonymous sources within the Democratic Party had confirmed to him that Joseph Biden was Sen. Obama's choice.
Security lab warns of possible Chinese ISP DNS exploit
An apparent case of DNS poisoning in the caches of a major China-based ISP is causing extra concern today, in light of security engineer Dan Kaminsky's recent warnings about just how serious a cache poisoning exploit could become.
Visual evidence posted by security company WebSense earlier this week shows DNS resolution calls placed to the IP address of Chinese ISP Netcom using the command line tool nslookup, redirected to a completely different source whose IP address is linked to China. There, WebSense says, instead of the user's regular home page or Web mail, he'll see instead some links to exploits for RealPlayer, Adobe Flash Player, and Microsoft Snapshot Viewer.
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.