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Firefox 3 has ousted IE7 as the most popular web browser in europe, according to web analytics firm StatCounter.
“The move is partly explained by a small switch from Internet Explorer 7 usage to Internet Explorer 8, but also by growing market share overall by Firefox 3,” Aodhan Cullen, the chief executive of StatCounter, said in a statement.
Still pretty encouraging news though.
(via Reuters)
Following Google’s Brain Search April Fool, here is a list of stories from the BBC which sound like they should be, but aren’t. Including this gem:
8. Miss Universe says Guantanamo Bay is a “relaxing place, so calm and beautiful”, after a five-day trip there. Dayana Mendoza, a model from Venezuela, visited the US base in Cuba as a morale-booster for troops and blogged about the experience
Good grief.
(Via kottke.org)
Google Brain Search for your mobile phone:
Features
Make memory easier. Brain Search sifts through your memories so you don’t have to.
Increase speed of recall. CADIE’s neural network processes data faster than humans.
Protect your privacy. Because Brain Search acquires search queries through a psycho-neural matrix radiating 3cm beyond your brain, there’s no need to risk revealing anything to passerby by speaking aloud; just place the phone next to your forehead and think your query.
Medical advancement. Brain Search effectively eliminates “tip-of-the-tongue” syndrome, and alleviates memory loss symptoms due to ordinary aging.
Storage (coming soon). Brain Search currently is able to help only with the retrieval of existing memories. However, we expect memory storage to be available in the next release.
Note: Using Brain Search on another person without their permission violates our terms of service, any number of national, international and natural laws, and is just seriously uncool. Please don’t do it.
Maybe one day…
It seems that VOIP app Skype will finally be released for the iPhone tomorrow (Tuesday). Gigaom.com had the original story:
SkypeIn and SkypeOut, along with Skype Chat, are the key features of this new version of the Skype application. This is a native P2P application for the iPhone and the iPod touch. It allows group chats and conference calls and is tightly integrated with Apple’s Address Book.
VOIP will only be available on Wi-Fi, but text chat should be available over cellular networks.
Update: It’s been released.
Font generator has been around for a little while now, but I have just gotten around to uploading my own.
So, without further ado, I am proud to present…
(Click to zoom)
This guy needs hiring, pronto. He even does Twitter backgrounds!
That’s right, I’ll Ajax the crap out of your site. Nothing, and I mean nothing will be static. I’ll pull your data asynchronously from every orifice of your server. Your clients will be SOOOOO impressed.
Website Boy Genius Report is claiming that Apple and AT&T will be launching a $99 netbook in June, citing a source “pretty high up in AT&T’s food chain”.
The $99 3G netbook will start selling this summer, and the first one won’t be a Windows OS.
For clarification, the above is 100% confirmed.
This seems like the exact same rumor that was circulating before the Macworld expo this year (and before that last summer), and is about as likely to be true. Apple have so far kept clear of the netbook market, stating that they did not see it as a viable opportunity. There is no reason why they would want to release a product which would undercut the iPhone in such an obvious way, in fact I would say that the iPhone IS Apple’s netbook offering.
This is quite apart from the point made by a commenter at RoughlyDrafted that a netbook would cost more to produce yet expect to sell for less than the iPhone.
I think that if there is any shred of thruth to this then it will be a device in a completely new format rather than a traditional laptop-type product.
There is a growing movement to open source hardware design in the a similar way to software, for example the “Hexayurt shelter“:
The Hexayurt is a prize-winning shelter you can build yourself for about $200 (backup link). Suitable raw materials include common building materials ( fire safe insulation boards,) hexacomb cardboard and plastic. You cut six 4′ x 8′ panels in half diagonally to make the roof, and use six more whole panels to form the walls. It takes about two hours. The design (backup link) is in the public domain.
This has huge potential as a disaster relief shelter, and could be constructed in a much more timely fashion from locally available materials (the other option is to buy and import large numbers of tents to a disaster area).
Open source is known to foster quick innovation and has produced some of the best software of the last few years ((Firefox and Linux are the obvious examples but also the Webkit rendering engine (used by Safari and Chrome), Mac OS X’s Darwin core and countless others)).
If the same priciples of collaborative design and information sharing can be applied by a group of hardware enthusiasts (say Mechanical, Electrical and Electronic engineers), I think we could see real break-through in all kinds of new, fast growth areas of engineering (Green technology being the obvious example).
Of course we could just stick to proprietry technlogy, closely guarded patents and profits at all costs, but where’s the fun in that?
A pair of twins in Germany have walked free despite there being conclusive DNA evidence that one of them stole millions of euros worth of jewelery from KaDeWe in Berlin. However since their DNA is so similar, it cannot be proven that either committed the crime individually.
German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free.
Both brothers have stolidly refused to comment ever since their arrests on February 11. Since no further evidence has become available, police cannot detain the(m.
(Via kottke.org)
Update: A walkthorugh on enabling free tethering for your 3.0 iPhone is now available here.
It seems that a developer has managed to enable native tethering on his 3.0 firmware iPhone.
Further than this, a walkthrough has been posted, and users are reporting success.
It goes without saying that this is a pretty risky thing to be doing at the moment (you cannot downgrade from 3.0 software because it irreversably changes your radio firmware), but if you’re feeling brave and want that functionality then this could be a solution. I would expect this to be available in an official way once Apple have sorted out the details with carriers (in fact they as good as confirmed this in their announcement event the other day).
