October, 2006 Archives | Homepage
2 Million Firefox 2 Downloads in 24 Hours
Asa Dotzler at Mozillazine is reporting there over 2 million downloads of Firefox 2 in the first 24 hours.
For those that don't remember, here's what we looked like compared to our earlier releases:If you don't already have the new browswer you can get it here.
Firefox 1.0: 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours.
Firefox 1.5: 1.5 million downloads in the first 24 hours
Firefox 2: 2 million (actually slightly more) people using Firefox 2 in the first 24 hours.
Maybe we should jump straight to Firefox 10 and see if we get 10 million users in the first 24 hours ;-)
Posted on October 30, 2006
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President Bush Uses "The Google"
President Bush said he uses "the Google" in a recent interview on CNBC. Think Progress has a video and a transcript of the President's exact words.
HOST: I'm curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?This Bushism is going to be as popular as his comment during the 2004 debates about "The Internets."
BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps. It's very interesting to see - I've forgot the name of the program - but you get the satellite, and you can - like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.
Posted on October 27, 2006
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Firefox 2.0 Final Release Available
BetaNews reports that Mozilla has posted the final release of Firefox 2.0.
BetaNews says some of the improvements with Firefox 2 include security enhancements, spell checking and improved RSS feed subscription tools.
New features in Firefox 2.0 include enhancements in security, tabbed browsing, performance, and extensions. The browser update also includes a built-in spell checking and an anti-phishing feature, much like Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, which launched last week.Firefox 2 can currently be found here. The release comes with the following warning:
JavaScript 1.7 and improved subscribing of RSS feeds are also among the additions. The update to Firefox's JavaScript interpreter is an important change, especially as more Web sites take advantage of the new benefits of Asynchronous JavaScript -- especially as they embed objects or functionality from Google and Microsoft Windows Live.
As Mozilla vice president for engineering Mike Schroepfer told BetaNews in an interview, JavaScript 1.7 is an interim build - a "check point" on the way to finally implementing JavaScript 2.0, which is based on (actually a superset of) the ECMAscript 4.0 proposal that Netscape made to the ECMA standards body in 2003, and which incorporates Macromedia's (now Adobe's) ActionScript 2.0.
Firefox 2 Release Candidate 3 (RC 3) is a preview release of our next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for download to Web application developers, our testing community and users who want to get a sneak peek at the next version of Firefox. Please note that at this time, users should not expect all of their extensions, plugins and themes from previous versions of Firefox to work properly.The version listed on the Firefox homepage is still version 1.5.
Posted on October 23, 2006
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IE7 Browser Now Available
The launch of the new IE7 browser has been announced on the IEBlog.
We listened carefully to feedback from many sources (including this blog) and worked hard to deliver a safer browser that makes everyday tasks easier. When I first posted publicly about IE7, I wrote that we would go further to defend users from phishing and malicious software. The Phishing Filter and the architectural work in IE7 around networking and ActiveX opt-in will help keep users more secure. IE7 also delivers a much easier browsing experience with features like tabbed browsing (especially with QuickTabs), shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, and a new design that leaves more screen real estate for the web site you’re viewing. IE7’s CSS improvements are incredibly important for developers as many of you have made quite clear. I also think IE7’s RSS experience and platform are important, powerful, and innovative.The IEBlog also says companies like Yahoo and Weather.com are releasing customized versions of the browser.
In addition to our release of IE7, Yahoo! has a customized version of the browser available today and over the next few days partners such as Weather.com and USA TODAY will offer their own customized versions. These versions will tailor the user experience with specific toolbars, additional search engines, favorites, and RSS feeds.Yahoo customized version is already up and can be found here. Search Engine Watch says the most visible change is the built-in search box. You can find a list of search engines to add to IE7 here. More discussion of IE7 can be found here on Slashdot.org.
Posted on October 19, 2006
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Writers Write, Inc. Launches VideoNacho.com
Writers Write, Inc., the parent company of SurfersSurf.com, announces the launch of VideoNacho.com. VideoNacho.com features the Web's hottest short videos and film clips. Video Nacho's editors find the best videos on the Web so you don't have to: music, comedy, pets antics, social commentary: it just has to be entertaining. Enjoy a delicious short new video snack every afternoon. Calorie-free, it's sure to give you a lift!
VideoNacho.com is the twentieth blog to join the Writers Write Lifestyle Network. It follows the launch in May, 2006 of WatchersWatch.com, a blog covering what's hot in movies and television.
Posted on October 18, 2006
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Searchbots Return
Searchbots has returned after a three year absence. When the site was active 30,000 search bots were created.
Searchbots was originally launched in 1999 by Morse Media as a way of showcasing Macromedia's Flash Generator and over 30,000 personalised Searchbots were built. The project proved to be unsustainable and has been under redevelopment for the last three years as a research project.The website says that in May that the "new Searchbots prototype was launched today at the Webstock Conference in Wellington, New Zealand. The website is still under development but you can build your own Searchbot and do a colour or tag search." It is cool that the personal searchbots have returned.
Posted on October 13, 2006
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Find Costumes at Costumzee
Costumzee is a new costume shopping site that lets you find costumes and costume ideas by using search tools and tags.
The purpose of costumzee is to help you find great costume ideas. You’ll find thousands of costumes on our site, organized by "tags". A tag is a descriptive name that represents a concept or idea. A tag may have zero, one, or many costume ideas in it.Costumzee pulls in data from online costume stores as well as eBay to help customers find a costume. You can see the Top 100 Costume Ideas. The site's blog also has some costume ideas for couples. (via Search Engine Watch)
Posted on October 11, 2006
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Microsoft Licenses Blinkx.tv Video Search
TechWeb reports that Microsoft has licensed Blinkx.tv's video-search engine for use on its Live.com search engine.
Blinkx.tv on Monday said it has licensed its video-search engine to Microsoft Corp. for use in some MSN Web properties and Live.com sites. Financial details were not disclosed.Blinkx.tv's website says it has 6 million hours of video that web surfers can search through. The homepage displays 25 active videos at one time. You can click on a particular video to enlarge it.
San Francisco-based Blinkx.tv uses voice recognition software to search online audio and video. The privately held San Francisco company was founded in early 2004.
The Microsoft agreement was a straight licensing deal, and did not include any sharing of ad revenue, a spokeswoman said.
Blinkx claims its technology for searching multimedia files delivers more accurate results than major Web portals, such as Yahoo Inc., MSN and Google Inc.
Posted on October 10, 2006
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PureVideo To Offer Video Search
Gavilan's WeBlog reports that a new video search tool has launched called PureVideo. The video search tool is currently in beta mode.
New meta search engine for online video content, PureVideo.com (Pure Video Search) has launched in beta as a one stop location for the searching of online video across the major Internet video providers. PureVideo.com aggregates crawled data from YouTube, MySpace Video, Comedy Central, Fox Sports, ESPN, CNN, DailyMotion.com and GoFish among others.The video search site is not fully functional yet. The homepage of PureVideo contains lists of top videos from several popular video sharing websites. PureVideo Networks Inc. also owns and operates StupidVideos.com and GrindTV.com.
Posted on October 9, 2006
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AOL Launches Open Ride Software
AOL has launched new software for using the Internet called Open Ride.
One cool feature is the multi-tasking Dynasizer tool. The Dynasizer is a display that keeps four windows open on the screen at one time for email, IMs, browsing, etc. The windows automatically resize to your current activity. GigaOM has an explanation of the new software.
OpenRide is essentially a browser that is split into four panes - one each for e-mail (including accounts that are from non-AOL domains,) instant messaging, video and general Web browsing. The software also has a search box, which is tied to AOL search engine. You can playback entertainment content such as videos as well. These panes resize depending on what you are doing - if you are browsing, the browser dominates, and when checking mail, well mail pane takes up a big portion of the screen.More discussion of Open Ride can be found at Toasted Bread, Newsfactor and The Last Podcast.
You can take a tour of the new Open Ride software here. There is also a useful FAQ here that explains the service and answers questions for people that have other AOL software already installed on their PC.
Posted on October 6, 2006
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Secretive Search Engine to Take on Google
VentureBeat has a article about Powerset, a search company currently operating in stealth mode. Powerset is working on what it calls "natural language" search.
Powerset is trying to solve the natural language problem, by making its core engine understand concepts of time, place, sentiment and other intent. But Pell and Newcomb stop short of going into the details of their computational linguistics approach, saying it is sensitive. They are also giving no dates about when it will be released.Cofounder Barney Pell has a logn post about Powerset and natural language search. He says 5 to 10 years from now we will look back and say, "remember when we used to search using keywords?"
They insist, however, that it is a radical improvement. So when Craig Silverstein, first employee of Google said it will take many years to get a computer to a point to understand exactly what people are searching for, Powerset thinks differently: "It is not a long way away," says Pell. "This is not a change of some technology out on the periphery," adds Newcomb, "we're changing the core of the engine."
He says such a transformation hasn't happened in eight years, since Google invented "page rank," a concept that ranks a page higher in relevance depending on how many people are linking to it. So while Google has bought companies like Applied Semantics to help find "themes" on web pages, Newcomb shakes his head, and says Powerset wants to do much more. "We're switching the core out," he says, adding that when you do that, you’re also going to fundamentally change the image, video, blog and all other searches that Google is doing. Google may be caught in an "innovators dilemma," co-founder Steve Newcomb says, because it can't turn on dime.
Posted on October 5, 2006
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Surf the Web With Your Feet
Ars Technica reports that a patent has been filed for a wireless strap-on foot input device.Unlike existing foot "mice," the wireless device is to be worn on the foot, not operated as an external device by the foot. This would allow a freer range of motion and presumably more natural use. It is intended to be strapped to the foot or shoe of the user and, using an accelerometer and magnetic sensor, a reference unit can calculate relative positioning of the foot to translate it on the user interface. Various foot movements could be programmed to mean specific actions, such as twisting the foot for a left or right click. Although this sounds like a sport only to be practiced while on the comfort of your own couch, the patent claims that the device could also be used while standing.It sounds like it would be a complex device to master. We would prefer the virtual reality hand surfing technology from Minority Report to be developed.
Posted on October 4, 2006
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Amazon Drop Features From A9.com
The Associated Press reports that Amazon has dropped features from A9.com including its street-level yellow pages feature.
Amazon.com Inc.'s A9 search engine has dropped some of its most widely touted features, including the ability to remember everything a user has ever searched for and a service that showed detailed, street-level images of major cities.Amazon.com has switched the main provider of its A9.com search results from Google to Microsoft's Live.com search engine. Amazon is also using IceRocket.com for blog search as well as other third party searches like Flickr and Wikipedia.
The Internet retailer removed the functions, along with several others, late Friday. Amazon.com spokesman Drew Herdener said the company is "shifting its priorities to areas where it can provide the greatest benefit for customers."
A9 had put considerable effort into taking detailed, street-level photos of 20 U.S. cities, which people could use to map directions and find businesses. Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. also have invested heavily in such photographic search technologies.
Posted on October 3, 2006
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Yahoo to Allow Yahoo Email Mashups
Reuters is reporting that Yahoo is going to be allowing software developers to develop new applications using Yahoo Email.Officials of the world's largest Internet media company said on Friday it planned to give away the underlying code to Yahoo Mail, one of the crown jewels of its business, in a bid to encourage software developers to build new applications based on e-mail.The announcement was made at Yahoo Hack Day. You can read the Hack Day blog for more informatoin. Reuters reported that developer Dan Lindquist is already working on a mashup using Yahoo Mail and Flickr.
The move to open up the underlying code of Yahoo Mail -- used by 257 million people -- is designed to spark development of thousands of new e-mail applications built not only by Yahoo engineers but by outside companies and individuals.
Chad Dickerson, head of the Sunnyvale company's software developer relations program, said he believed that the open approach to programming represented the biggest single Web software ever to be opened up for public development.
Posted on October 2, 2006
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