Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 1: How private is private browsing?
This is the week that the Mozilla organization is expected to unveil what may very well be the most significant half-point release in its history: the 3.5 edition of the Firefox browser. While Betanews tests confirm the new version literally blows away its own predecessor in terms of speed, operating two-and-one-half times faster in page rendering and functionality on average, your own eyes will tell you it's a much faster browser.
And those same eyes will tell you that Google Chrome is already a much faster browser, by virtue of a supremely fast V8 JavaScript engine that its developers have been refining since version 1 made its debut last year. In recent Betanews tests, the Chrome 3 beta has overtaken the stable release of Apple Safari 4 as the fastest Web browser publicly available, posting a performance index score that's 83% faster than Firefox 3.5 RC3 on Windows XP SP3. So while Firefox has made extremely significant gains, it may take open source developers until version 4.0 for it to catch up with Chrome in the speed department.
Cable DVRs are legal: Supreme Court denies appeal of Cablevision decision
The last possible effort by movie studios such as 20th Century Fox and cable television producers, including CNN and Cartoon Network, to forestall cable service providers such as Cablevision from providing their customers with DVRs with full commercial-skipping control, was silently shot down this morning in the final session of this year's US Supreme Court term. As a result, last year's ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals stating that Cablevision's DVR service did not violate copyright law, stands.
That August 2008 ruling had overturned an earlier District Court ruling in March that had been a victory for the studios. Their argument was that when a cable service provider lets its customers record and play back shows at the headend -- using the provider's own storage rather than a local DVR -- that constituted a retransmission, which was contrary to the terms of service.
PSP Phone: A logical next step for Sony?
The two-year old "PSP Phone" rumor has been resurrected yet again, this time because of a weekend article in respected Japanese business journal Nikkei Shimbun. The article says Sony now has plans to set up a PSP Phone development team in July which will be comprised of Sony Ericsson and SCE workers.
Rumors of a PlayStation Portable-branded Sony Ericsson device began when a 2007 patent application for a gaming phone was filed by the joint venture. The device in the patent is designed with a 90-degree pivoting screen not unlike the LG VX9400, and d-pad style buttons rather than the traditional numeric keypad. Earlier this year, a Christmas 2009 launch date for the device was rumored as well.
Myth-busted, or, Would AT&T have forgiven Savage's bill if he wasn't a TV star?
You've got to feel some serious empathy for Adam Savage.
The co-star of the popular Discovery Channel television show Mythbusters found himself on the receiving end of a huge bill after a recent vacation to Montreal, Canada. He had tethered a cellular modem to his laptop, and ended up racking up $11,000 in charges before returning to the US. Upon his return, AT&T, claiming he had used over 9 gigabytes of data during his foreign surfing adventure, helpfully shut his account down. Only when he called them to complain about the outage did he learn he had been hosed.
What's Next: Microsoft looks to throw back Razorfish
Microsoft's advertising over the past three years has focused on this "human element" thing (although that's also Dow Chemical's campaign at the moment), where technology is supposed to empower people to do what people can do best, rather than simply make technology better or more complex or cooler. Well, with the May 2007 purchase of ad agency aQuantive, Microsoft had the opportunity to practice what it preached, since an ad agency is full of people -- not just ordinary laborers, either, but creative folks whose factories are their brains. Just the kind of folks you'd think Microsoft would be eager to employ, right? Nope. For two years, it's been looking to unload the creative baggage from the $6 billion technology package it bought, and this morning it may be closer to dumping its load. That's coming up in What's Next, but first, let's see if the Mythbusters can blow up AT&T all the way from Canada.
MythBuster 1, AT&T 0 in bad-bill battle
With Clear's airport security dissolving, what happens to all that personal data?
After days of uncertainty following Verified Identity Pass's abrupt shutdown last week, representatives of the defunct company are coming forward with at least some data on what will happen to the large collection of personally identifiable information (PII) it acquired from its customers.
In a letter to former members that's also posted to its Web site, Clear Customer Service attempted to address at least a few of the questions that have come up. The company (the letter was unsigned) reiterated that the data "is secured in accordance with the Transportation Security Administration's Security, Privacy, and Compliance Standards." The company revealed that Lockheed, which has been the firm's lead systems integrator, is working with parent company Verified Identity Pass, Inc. and the US Transportation Safety Administration "to ensure an orderly shutdown as the program closes."
Afloat on the endless news tide
This episode of Recovery is brought to you by second bananas. Ed McMahon knew he was one, but I'll bet Farrah Fawcett would have been surprised how things worked out. (What, too soon?)
There's an application just launching into beta called thisMoment, and I've had a tab open for it all week in hope that I'll catch some quiet time to try it out. Harry McCracken at Technologizer got there first, and he describes it as "part social network, part media sharing site, and part Facebook application."
Firefox 3.5 gears up for a possible Tuesday public release
A Mozilla spokesperson confirmed to Betanews early this evening that, if all pans out as planned, the organization will officially release the Firefox 3.5 Web browser to the general public as soon as Tuesday, June 30. No longer a beta, users will get the first opportunity to see a completely stable version of Firefox's new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, whose latest new features were demonstrated to us today by two of its engineers.
We're seeing demos that simply are not possible with what officially passes today as the stable Firefox browser -- version 3.0.11 isn't nearly as powerful or as swift. One demo, which testers of Firefox 3.5 RC can see for themselves here, demonstrates the browser's new support for HTML5 with not only embedded video, but JavaScript that can embed graphics or video in the embedded video, in real-time, several frames per second.
Android Apps can now tap ARM processor directly
Until yesterday, Android developers had to build their applications to run inside Dalvik, the Java virtual machine upon which Google's mobile OS is built. While it is beneficial in embedded systems with limited processor power and RAM, it is limiting for developers who, for example, want to create CPU-intensive, but not RAM-intensive, applications such as more in-depth computations, simulations, or signal processing.
Now that has become possible with the Android Native Developers Kit, a companion to the SDK which gives developers a way to use the ARMv5TE machine instruction set, such as libc, the standard C library, libm, the standard math library, libz, the common ZLib compression library, the Java Native Interface (JNI), and liblog, which can send logCat messages to the kernel.
Microsoft: Europe customers must wait to upgrade Vista to Windows 7
Microsoft spokespersons have confirmed to Betanews, contrary to press reports earlier today, that at some point it does plan to provide European customers with a Windows 7E upgrade package -- a way to upgrade Vista installations to Windows 7, while enabling customers to leave out Internet Explorer 8. In all cases, that means uninstalling IE from Vista, which current builds of the Win7 upgrade are not capable of doing.
"As part of Microsoft's decision to offer Windows 7 without a browser in the [European Economic Area], we also had another hard decision to make: Offer both Full and Upgrade retail packaged product and delay the entry of Windows 7 into market, or not offer the Upgrade packaged product at launch," the spokesperson told Betanews. "At this time, we will not offer an Upgrade packaged product in Europe, but in a way that does not penalize our customers."
New TV's PVR can save video to SD chips
British LCD TV maker Cello Electronics has populated the European budget TV market with devices sporting some atypical features, such as the TV with an iPod Dock, which are designed in China and manufactured by North England subcontractors.
Like Vizio in the United States, Cello has grown rapidly in the last four years because of its affordable, but feature-rich products.
HP intros SimpleSave external drive for 'hands-free' PC backup
Offered in capacities up to 2 TB, HP's new SimpleSave External Hard Drive spares users from installing backup software. The four gadgets in the line-up each come with software that runs right off the drive, stated Mark Ostendorf, HP's business development manager for PC accessories, in a meeting with Betanews at Pepcom's Digital Experience press event in New York City.
When you plug the drive into a PC's USB port, SimpleSave starts to back up your data automatically. Following the first back-up, the gizmo automatically checks for file changes each time the PC is idle for five minutes, also performing incremental backups.
First US peek at HTC Hero phone with Sense interface
HTC's Hero, finally formally introduced in London on Wednesday after months of rumors, was shown at Pepcom's Digital Experience event in New York City earlier this week, and Betanews got a peek.
Reps in the HTC booth focused on the phone's widget-based interface, known as HTC Sense. Up to now, HTC's G1 has been the only Android phone in commercial use. But HTC is also working on differentiating its Android devices from others that will spring up in the future, according to a rep.
HP, Lenovo lead off with the first free Windows 7 upgrades
Yesterday, Microsoft announced it was giving PC manufacturers the option to offer buyers of new PCs with Windows Vista pre-installed, starting today, free upgrades to Windows 7 on October 22. Betanews asked the big five PC manufacturers directly, will you be offering free upgrades? This morning, global #1 manufacturer Hewlett-Packard is the first to respond with an emphatic "yes."
"The program will enable customers who purchase qualifying HP PCs to enjoy the benefits of a new Windows-based PC immediately, and receive a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it becomes available in October," reads HP's statement to Betanews. "Following general availability of Windows 7 on October 22, qualifying customers will receive the Windows 7 upgrade and an upgrade utility disk with a step-by-step guide for installation at their convenience."
What's Next: Britain rises up against cyber-terrorism, slowly
On a difficult day for many of us to be talking about high technology and protocols and gadgets, when we'd rather be singing and remembering how lucky we are to be alive and to have friends and people we love, Betanews would like to take a moment -- just one moment -- to ask for blessings for the memory of a lady who used her public platform to make one of the first true public demonstrations that domestic abuse is wrong, and that anyone being abused has the right to fight back, and fight hard. And for giving us the honor of helping her fight her last battle in spirit. Thank you, Farrah. We appreciate you.
The UK's new cyber-terrorism crackdown heads up What's Next this morning, but first, a look at the last 24 hours...
Most Commented Stories
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.