Analyst: Twitter traffic pulls even with Digg
One of the smartest Internet analysts in the business, Heather Dougherty of Hitwise, revealed some potentially prophetic data yesterday: Based on the samples of traffic that Hitwise tracks, it would appear US-based traffic associated with social contact service Twitter is at least equivalent to US-based traffic on news sharing service Digg, at about 21 out of every 1,000 hits.
Now, it's worth noting that Digg traffic tracked by Hitwise isn't exactly plunging, though Dougherty's chart does appear to indicate it's trending slightly down.
Here comes the BlackBerry Application Storefront
The BlackBerry Bold and Storm models have already swept southward into the US like some of those classic, cold Canadian currents, but neither model has performed in the market to the potential that analysts have expected. The number one and two reason folks use BlackBerry, it's believed, are for secure e-mail and for practical applications. But it's in that number two category that BlackBerry is perceived to be falling behind the iPhone and even Symbian, and now manufacturer Research in Motion is working to do something about that.
This week, RIM is accepting applications from third-party developers for their software to appear on what's being called the BlackBerry Application Storefront. This will be a tricky concept to pull off, particularly for RIM, since unlike Apple, RIM has maintained relationships with its supporting carriers for exclusive apps distribution. So while there will be one "main" portal, RIM is arranging with its supporting carriers -- like Rogers and Bell in Canada -- to enable their own "flavors" of the Storefront.
Mono 2.2 may overtake .NET in some critical categories
Meeting another milestone for the open source effort to extend Microsoft's .NET platform outside of Windows, the Mono Project -- backed by Novell, but with a little help from Microsoft too now and then -- is celebrating the release of version 2.2 this week.
Perhaps the most important addition to this latest release is full support for SIMD (Single Instruction / Multiple Data) extensions, which should provide orders of magnitude in performance improvements for developers who are building .NET games -- and there are more of these developers in high places than you might think -- to run cross-platform. "When the Mono runtime's SIMD optimization are active the operations on the structures defined in this namespace are mapped to hardware operations which can improve the performance of your graphics, multimedia or 3D operations significantly," reads a recent edition to Mono's online documentation.
Debate: Is SOA dead, or 'just resting?'
Must a programming methodology be a philosophy in order to survive the corporate boardroom? Maybe, but when the philosophy itself doesn't tread water for long, then what happens?
During the late 1980s and early '90s, during what was then my dual career as a software developer, I was something of a contrarian about a major methodology of my business: I believed, and actively advocated, that the design of programs should not tightly associate data with the code that utilizes it. I was told at the time I was not only rebutting a methodology, I was threatening a fundamental tenet of business, and some said I was against a way of life.
For 'the makers of things:' An inaugural moment
There are days when the attitude of a nation is reflected by the one in charge, and this day -- like so many others, even recently -- is one of them.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
Ad-Aware, at 10, rolls out its leaner, meaner Anniversary Editions
Download AdAware Anniversary Edition Free 8.0.0.0 from Fileforum now
What is most likely the first stand-alone anti-adware program in the business is celebrating its tenth anniversary this week with the unveiling of a new set of rollouts this morning. Added to Lavasoft's Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition are new features that the company claims will detect malware not just by its signature but by its behavior.
Tracing the memory leak: Is it Firefox 3?
Yesterday, we mentioned that we've been noticing recent versions of Firefox, including 3.0.5, have exhibited the memory leak problems that used to plague Firefox 2. We are noticing this on both Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1.
We'd also noticed that systems where the add-on Tab Mix Plus was installed, did not appear to exhibit the same memory leak. Today, we uninstalled Tab Mix Plus (reluctantly, because we like it) from one system. On that system, the memory use pattern has changed, perhaps moderated, though we're not sure the leak has gone away. It now appears to be slower than in our tests yesterday, and from time to time, something in Firefox does clean up parts of memory from time to time. In one test, we had two Firefox windows open with seven tabs open in one of them, a dozen in the other -- a pretty full slate. Task Manager is showing us that Firefox grabs memory in one-megabyte chunks per second, for about a minute at a time, and then leveling back out to about 300,000 KB.
Darn that pesky euro! RSS feed problem traced to currency character
Well, as soon as we start publicizing our RSS feeds -- and we have one new one just for Betanews Alpha -- we get reports of problems with them. I'm able to corroborate some of what many Firefox users are reporting: With some Firefox installations, our RSS feeds have been coming up blank. Some, though not all.
One thing we noticed: On systems where Firefox is installed along with a separate RSS news reader, our RSS feed pages do not turn up blank in Firefox. In fact, they look fine. On systems where no separate RSS reader is installed, our feed pages do turn up blank.
Has the Firefox memory leak returned?
In the past few weeks, I've seen evidence that the memory leak that has plagued Firefox in previous versions, appears to have returned. But it's returned only in localized conditions, which leads me to believe that not the browser, but a browser plug-in may be to blame.
Unfortunately, the one I'm suspecting right now is the latest Tab Mix Plus version 0.3.7.3, which we reviewed glowingly last October when it was first re-released for Firefox 3. On browsers where this add-on has not been installed, even when we open a slew of pages (and I am a heavy page consumer), I don't see evidence of the same leak. I'll keep you apprised as to what I find in later tests.
Sun VirtualBox may be the only way to test Windows Server 2008 R2
Here's a situation that's affecting more and more beta testers as the shift in operating system generations continues: You have the latest beta of Windows Server 2008 R2, a product which may ship next year but could conceivably ship sooner if Microsoft keeps it in sync with the Windows 7 roadmap. And you're used to using Virtual Server 2005 R2 (Microsoft's fond of that little add-on phrase, "R2") for testing new builds of Windows Server...but now you can't. You see, Virtual Server only works with 32-bit guest OSes, and there's no such thing as 32-bit Windows Server any more -- not with R2. What's more, you may only be running a 32-bit OS on the physical host platform.
How do you test WS2K8 R2 without installing it on a physical 64-bit platform all to itself? As of just a few weeks ago, Sun endowed its VirtualBox 2.1.0 host environment with a way to host 64-bit guests in a 32-bit system. This weekend, I put that feature to the test, with some surprisingly good results. As the photo shows above, I can run WS2K8 R2 very smoothly, without slowing down the rest of my testbed system.
Intel slashes quad-core CPU prices across the board
This morning, an Intel spokesperson confirmed to Betanews that the company has made drastic cuts in its CPU prices for 1,000-unit shipments, effective immediately. They include a 40% slash on its top-of-the-line processor.
While the company's Extreme series quad-core at the top of the line -- which blends four cores with hyperthreading -- will remain at $1,499 in 1,000-unit quantities, Intel's highest-end business-class quad-core desktop processor, the 3.0 GHz Q9650, is getting its price cropped by 40.6% today, from $530 to $316. Standard-power quad-cores (as opposed to Intel's low-power line) from the 2.83 GHz Q9550 to the 2.33 GHz Q8200 are also all being slashed in price by 16 - 20%, with the Q8200 now selling for $163.
Betanews Alpha is now on RSS
If you've been wondering why you haven't been seeing Betanews Alpha posts on your RSS feed, well today, we've solved that little problem. Now you can subscribe to Alpha. Be sure to set your RSS feed reader of choice to include this address:
https://betanews.com/alpha/rss
The EC's latest objection: Is it time to unbundle IE from Windows?
For many, it's a very tired, old argument; but for politicians in Europe, it remains a rallying cry: Microsoft, says the European Commission, is using its Web browser unfairly.
At the height of the Microsoft / Netscape browser war a decade (or was it a century?) ago, Microsoft argued that so much of Windows' functionality relied upon the HTML rendering capability of Internet Explorer that it would be technically impossible to divorce the two from one another. That argument was raised in response to objections from lawmakers and judges worldwide, including in the US, that bundling IE with Windows gave Microsoft an unfair advantage -- and at the time, many saw that claim as somewhat self-serving and artificial.
Bill to delay DTV transition is itself delayed
In an early sign that there may not be smooth sailing ahead for even some Democrat-backed initiatives of lesser importance than, say, the long-term health of the nation's economy, Senate Republicans late Friday successfully blocked the fast-tracking of a bill introduced yesterday by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D - W.V.) to delay the nation's DTV transition date by 90 more days, to June 12. This according to the Associated Press this morning.
The measure now has the clear backing of the incoming Obama administration, whose transition team leader John Podesta had advocated more time for citizens to redeem government-backed coupons toward the purchase of DTV signal converters for their analog sets. Members of the Obama team, along with current lawmakers, are worried that too few of those coupons have been redeemed, indicating that citizens may not know they've received them. (The possibility that they may not want or need to redeem them has not been discussed.)
Senate considers delaying DTV transition until June
On the theory that some two million eligible customers have yet to receive their $40 coupons toward the purchase of an over-the-air DTV signal converter, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D - W.V.) introduced a bill giving them more time.
If approved, Sen. Rockefeller's bill would extend the transition date by 90 days to June 12. Rockefeller's sentiments appear to be echoed by key members of the President-Elect's transition team, along with Federal Communications Commission members who told a crowd last week at CES 2009 in Las Vegas that they saw a lack of leadership all last year in driving the transition forward.
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