Uptake on IE8 slows to a crawl
If the latest figures from global network analytics firm NetApplications can be trusted as reliable samples -- and they certainly have in the past -- the general Web users' interest in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 may have tapered off appreciably this morning. Over the weekend, the level of Web traffic monitored by NetApplications attributable specifically to the new version of the browser, peaked at 2.52% by 4:00 pm EDT yesterday.
For what is currently a voluntary upgrade, that two-and-a-half percent could certainly be a high number. That's quite a bit higher than Google Chrome, which although flirting with the 2% mark early in its release history, hovers today at closer to the 1% mark. By comparison, as much as 22% of last weekend's traffic was attributable to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 versions.
Senate could move cybersecurity from DHS to a cabinet-level post
One reason the US federal government may feel less and less secure about its technology is that there is no federal standard, maintained by the executive branch and mandated from the highest level, dictating what "security" should actually be. This according to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D - W.V.), who last week joined with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R - Me.) in the first stage of drafting legislation that would separate the whole issue of cybersecurity from the Dept. of Homeland Security, creating a separate office whose leader reports to Pres. Obama.
"At the risk of sounding alarmist, I know the threats we face. Our enemies are real, they are sophisticated, they are determined and they will not rest," stated Sen. Rockefeller in his opening statement, in hearings on the cybersecurity topic last Thursday before the Commerce Committee which he chairs. "I do not believe it is only the job of the Intelligence Committee or our national security and defense agencies to protect us from the threats we face. This committee can and must play a very proactive role in keeping Americans safe. Let me be very clear: I will not wait for a crisis to take action now. Today's economic climate simply does not allow room for error."
Can Mozilla escape a premature endgame for Firefox?
It's an undeniable fact that most businesses that transact with their customers through the Internet are wrestling with how to build a viable business model for themselves. Even the most successful enterprises are frankly struggling to ensure their long-term survival, and Mozilla is certainly among them. Its principal product is given away for free, and Firefox's lifeline stems from a percentage of revenues from searches generated though -- all of a sudden -- its own hottest competitor in the Web browser field today, Google.
Yesterday's release by Microsoft of Internet Explorer 8, with its visibly demonstrable speed and performance boosts, is bringing speed and performance back into the public discussion of what a Web browser can be. And there, Web users are likely to discover that while Firefox still outperforms IE8, it's chasing competition on the forward end of the racetrack. Google Chrome -- a browser created by many of the same individuals who are also working on Firefox -- will probably lead Firefox 3.5 in performance even as performance becomes the main value proposition for the new edition of Mozilla's browser.
Slow, but steady usage share growth in IE8's first day
The early numbers from Web analytics firm NetApplications indicate a slower than expected, but steady uptick in usage share for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, a product which was introduced at noon yesterday on the East Coast. It's not being pushed as an update to the Windows operating system, so trading up for now is still a voluntary affair for users.
Still, if NetApplications' numbers are accurate -- based on the browser traffic it receives from Web sites it analyzes professionally, compared against the Web as a whole -- about as many new users have tried IE8 a day after launch as tried Google Chrome the day after its launch. Worldwide usage share as of 3:00 pm EDT was pegged at 1.90% and climbing. That's just slightly ahead of Google's initial uptick the day after it was launched, according to the firm's numbers.
Skydiving through the cloud: Windows Azure gambles with 'Full Trust'
When Microsoft first unveiled its Windows Azure cloud-based platform last October, the company made clear it was not some kind of virtual hosting service -- in other words, not a place to house virtual implementations of Windows Server, like Amazon EC2. More to the point, Azure was designed to be a staging service for the deployment of server-based distributed applications, for clients without the data center capacity to deploy it themselves or without the cash on hand necessary to acquire that capacity.
But in its initial description, those distributed applications were essentially .NET managed apps, which don't exactly encompass the gamut of enterprise apps throughout the world. By "managed," I mean the use of a real Common Language Runtime -- in this case, within Microsoft's cloud -- to interpret code from a program or script, using a .NET language like C#. The operating system in Microsoft's cloud truly is Windows, and it manages the .NET platform in a similar way to any other version of Windows residing on Earth's surface.
Much ado about undo: A new Gmail feature literally lasts five seconds
In perhaps another sterling demonstration of the effectiveness of Google's own product announcements by way of its blog posts, the world awakened this morning to an experimental capability in Google's Gmail that, if you think about it, you wonder why no one's thought about it before: An independent developer with the handle Yuzo F is distributing a Gmail add-on that gives users five seconds after clicking on the Send button to click on an Undo link that stops distribution from going forward.
"This feature can't pull back an e-mail that's already gone," writes Google UX designer Michael Leggett this morning, "it just holds your message for five seconds so you have a chance to hit the panic button. And don't worry -- if you close Gmail or your browser crashes in those few seconds, we'll still send your message."
Performance test: IE8 easily doubles IE7 speed
Download Internet Explorer 8.0 for Windows Vista from Fileforum now.
During his keynote address today at MIX 09, Internet Explorer 8 product manager Dean Hachamovitch repeatedly used the phrase "real-world" in talking about endowing his team's Web browser with performance that the "everyday" user can see and feel. (That sounds almost like it came from AMD's playbook.) Hachamovitch showed some videos demonstrating IE8's performance gains in loading and rendering, particularly versus Firefox 3.0.5 and the "latest" Google Chrome (no version number, so presumably version 1 and not the beta of version 2). And he conceded that some of these gains can't be seen without a good stopwatch, so they'll only make sense to the end user if they can be felt by him.
From MIX '09: Internet Explorer 8, at last
Download Internet Explorer 8.0 for Windows Vista from Fileforum now.
For too long, Web site developers have found themselves having to "code to IE6" -- a process meaning, making sure their sites' appearances don't look altogether funky in Internet Explorer 6.0, still one of the world's most used Web browsers. Even Microsoft would like to kick the legacy of IE6 out the back door along with MS-DOS 5.0 and Bob, and now IE8's product manager will make the case to developers about how they can help way too many Web users help Microsoft do just that.
Microsoft: The real Silverlight premiere is now
Since the very beginning of Microsoft's venture into distributed video platforms, it's intended to make a system for enabling developers more conventional languages like C++, C#, and Visual Basic to produce truly distributed applications. The code word for this is "n-tier logic," and it refers to the ability for a core application to assume its input/output is being handled by a set of graphical resources, while enabling any number of intermediate layers to connect the core with the graphics. That way, the only technical differences between a local app, a network app, and an Internet app take place in the middle of the chart -- for example, is there IIS or isn't there?
When Microsoft started testing what it had called Silverlight 1.1, it was with the idea to introduce .NET app languages to the mix, and to go beyond JavaScript. Sometimes you still hear a hint of the arbitrary dividing line at Microsoft, between C# "developers, developers, developers" and JavaScript "designers." During the learning process, the company evolved the 1.1 project into Silverlight 2.0, whose stated goal was to provide fluid graphical functionality for rich Internet applications (RIAs) using any .NET language.
Inside EPIC's privacy claim against Google: What's the evidence?
By now, the matter of Google's multiple small disasters with its early round of cloud-based applications -- troubles which led to the unauthorized sharing ability of some files -- is one of public record, and certainly the company has made plenty of public apologies. But was it criminally deceptive in promising to users a safe system, only to then be hit with safety issues? The Electronic Privacy Information Center advocacy group says yes, and it has taken its case to the US Federal Trade Commission.
In a formal complaint issued this morning (PDF available here), EPIC uses citations from Google's online marketing promotions for its cloud-based applications, along with links to news articles about the company's recent headaches, to build the case that the company makes promises to users that it can't keep.
Mozilla's mobile browser experiment finally enters beta
Download Mozilla Fennec Beta 1 for Windows from Fileforum now.
It's looking more and more like Mozilla is ready to really do this: Late last night, the organization posted the first public beta of the browser that could end up being "Firefox Mobile." It still goes by the code name Fennec, and the first beta is testing whether touchscreen mobile users will be willing to have literally all their browser functions be placed off-screen, if it makes room for more elements of the Web page.
From MIX '09: Microsoft embraces PHP, debuts Silverlight 3
If there really is any release news regarding Internet Explorer 8 from Microsoft this morning in Las Vegas -- and we expect there will be -- it will probably come during the opening minutes of Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie's keynote this morning. He'll need IE8 to demonstrate everything else on his plate today, and if IE8's not ready for RTM, that fact may as well be stamped on everything he shows. "5-D" wouldn't save Silverlight 3 if that's the case.
Stay in touch with Betanews for live commentary in sync with Scott Guthrie's two-hour keynote session this morning.
Big Microsoft announcements due today from MIX 09: Silverlight 3, maybe IE8
At a two-hour keynote address to the MIX 09 conference in Las Vegas scheduled for noon EDT / 9:00 PDT today, engineers from Microsoft are expected to make this a very busy day for Web application developers. Attendees have been told to expect the first betas of Silverlight 3, the company's Web video and functionality platform, which in this edition may include support for three-dimensional controls and graphics.
There does appear to be a prominently veiled curtain in front of what will likely be the big news of the day, even if there's nothing behind it. If there is something behind it, it will very likely be the public release of Internet Explorer 8, which will introduce greater standards compliance, a private browsing mode, and a somewhat faster execution engine -- more than doubling the speed of IE7.
The heat is on: Latest Google Chrome closes the gap with Safari 4, Firefox 3.1
Download Google Chrome 2.0.169.1 for Windows from Fileforum now.
For the first time in...forever, speed and efficiency are becoming factors in determining the quality of Windows-based Web browsers, in a race for excellence that has never been this competitive. Last week, when we tested the five leading Windows-based development browsers, what was then the latest version of Google Chrome scored a solid second place in speed and performance tests on the browsers' respective JavaScript interpreters. Apple's Safari 4 for Windows was out front and pulling away, and the new Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 was making it a three-way battle.
The end of the PC pothole, for everyone but Apple
The news from the latest NPD report on PC retail unit sales in the US last month was surprisingly very upbeat, for nearly all manufacturers but one. If you were to place a flat two-by-four stretching across the PC unit sales figures for February 2009 over to February 2008, you'd find the incline tips down...toward the older year. Windows-based PC unit sales rose by a fabulous 22% annual rate, NPD estimates, although the firm is declining to provide exact numbers to the press.
If you walked across that two-by-four, though, you'd want to avoid falling into the deep chasm that was the fourth quarter of last year.
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