Tag: Internet

Opera Browser Celebrates 15th Birthday

April 29th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Software No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

opera15

Opera browser  turned 15 years old yesterday and celebrated with a cartoon and a list of reasons to switch to Opera, which now occupies over 40 million computers worldwide.

Way, way back in April 1994, two computer scientists were searching for a better way of browsing the internet than what was currently on offer. Finding no perfect solution, they decided to code the browser themselves. Opera was born.

The browser has grown in popularity over the years, and whilst it hasn’t got the sheer numbers of Firefox or Internet Explorer, it’s got a dedicated browser and engineers who demand innovation.

Yesterday, the browser turned 15 years old, and Opera decided to mark the occasion with a little bit of celebration. They’ve compiled a list of 15 reasons to switch to Opera (all 15 being good reasons), a list of Opera’s top innovations which details how far ahead of their time they were (they invented the use of tabs in browsing way back in 2000), as well as releasing a cartoon describing Opera’s creation seen above.

The Opera browser is currently in its 9th version, and nearing it’s 10th release (The post you are currently reading was typed with Opera 10 Alpha). The browser runs on multiple platforms, such as Mac, Windows and Linux. Opera has also successfully made the jump to mobile devices with Opera Mini, where it sits firmly in the number 1 spot.

Happy Birthday!

World’s Highest Internet Cafe Opens On Everest

April 22nd, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet, World No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

everest

A cybercafe aimed at tourists has set-up shop near the Everest base camp in northeastern Nepal, providing the world’s highest internet access.

The cybercafe is 5,180m above sea-level and has turned into quite the hit for tourists and climbers, who wish to make contact with their families before setting out to conquer Mt. Everest – the highest mountain in the world (8,848m).

The Sherpa International Cafe is just about an hour’s walk from the Everest base camp, situated in Gorakse.

Apparently two more of these cafe’s are on the way, according to Chhetan Sherpa – the owner.

Looks like high-altitude connectivity is quite the lucrative business with every climber wanting to bare the good-luck wishes from friends and family.

Internet Explorer 8 Heading to Windows Update

April 11th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Software No comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

ie8-install

Microsoft is planning to use Windows Automatic Update in order to replace Internet Explorer 6 and 7 with their latest, and safest, offering – Internet Explorer 8.

IE8 has been available for download and installation for a while now, but Microsoft is simply pushing the update to all users who haven’t upgraded yet. Expect the update to be available towards the second half of April on Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server 2003 and 2008.

If you want to install Microsoft’s latest offering without waiting for it to be released to Windows Update, you can do so here. If you don’t want Windows to install Internet Explorer 8, simply grab Microsoft’s own blocker tool.

Thanks to DownloadSquad for the heads-up.

Internet Explorer 8 Released Today

March 19th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Software No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

ie8

Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer 8 is finished and will be released to the masses at noon EST today.

IE8 has been in testing for around a year now, and rather than focus on appearance, Microsoft has gone exclusively under-the-hood to improve performance and to make the browser be more web-standards friendly (improving the task of Webmasters worldwide). Microsoft has even added in a “compatibility-mode” that allows users to render web pages the same way older version of Internet Explorer do, ensuring a pleasurable browsing experience no matter which website you visit.

Although the pre-conceived idea that Internet Explorer is weak security-wise still remains for some users, IE8 is indeed a lot safer than previous versions, and more or less on par with Firefox.

The release of IE8 couldn’t come at a better time, as Firefox is starting to gain on Internet Explorer at a rapid pace, constantly eating away at it’s market share. This release might just put the browser back into the game.

You should be able to get Internet Explorer 8 when it’s released.

Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 All Over Mix 09

March 18th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet No comments - Tags: , , , ,

mix09

CNET has a nice round-up of all the demos and news regarding Microsoft’s Flash competitor, Silverlight as it begins to enter it’s third release.

Mix 09: Silverlight 3 takes center stage

After a touchy-feely start, Microsoft gets geeky as the talk shifts to new versions of its Web tools, most notably Silverlight 3.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
March 18, 2009 10:22 AM PDT

Mix kicks off with Buxton touting design

Microsoft begins its Web design conference in un-Microsoft fashion, with researcher Bill Buxton talking about design.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
March 18, 2009 9:30 AM PDT

Silverlight 3 rears its head at Mix

Pieces of the new software have started to pop up on Microsoft’s developer sites. A beta version of the would-be Flash rival is expected to be shown later Wednesday.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
March 18, 2009 8:33 AM PDT

Microsoft releases Web translating widget

Developers can now tap Microsoft to translate their Web page in such a way that users don’t have to leave the Web site.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
March 18, 2009 11:30 AM PDT

IE 8, Silverlight 3 on tap for Microsoft’s Mix

The software maker’s conference for Web designers kicks off on Wednesday in Las Vegas. A new browser and update to its would-be Flash rival will take center stage.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
March 17, 2009 1:12 PM PDT

Comcast Passwords Leaked Onto the Internet

March 17th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet No comments - Tags: , , , ,

comcast-logo

Comcast customers have reason to be digruntled.

On Scribd (A website dedicated to document sharing) over 8000 usernames and password of Comcast customers was put up for display to the world. That was two months ago. Yesterday, the list was taken down for the first time.

Brad Stone, of the New York Times, contacted Scribd about the list, after which they immediately took down the document. It is suspected that the data was gained from phishing and other unorthodox methods, and hasn’t been posted by an internal employee or Comcast in any way, according to a Comcast spokesperson.

Comcast immediately acted by freezing all exposed accounts. (Luckily?) Only about 4000 customers had their log-ins exposed, as Comcast revealed that about 50% of the list includes duplicate log-ins.

Mobile Internet Usage Doubles in 2009

March 16th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet No comments - Tags: , , ,

Today comCast, a internet market research company, has announced that mobile internet browsing and usage has more than doubled when compared to exactly a year ago (January 2008 vs January 2009). In other words, more people in the US are using their phones for getting news, blogging and interacting with their friends via social networks than ever before.

comCast says this is largely thanks to social networking and blogging trends becoming incredibly popular:

Social networking and blogging have emerged as very popular daily uses of the mobile Web and these activities are growing at a torrid pace

says Mike Donovan (senior vice president of comCast mobile). He also points out that application downloads, like the iPhone’s App Store helped increase mobile internet usage popularity:

“We also note that much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications, such as those offered for the iPhone”

Another interesting fact that came out of the report is that both men and women aged 18-34 are the most common mobile internet users.

comcast-2009

Click to Enlarge

Visualize Twitter in 3D

March 14th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Tips.Tricks.Howto No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

I’m a very big fan of Twitter (@NuclearStr1der), and I’m constantly amazed at the creative uses of the Twitter API, especially Twittervision.

If you’re looking for a cool way to visualize the public timeline, look no farther than Twittervision. Twittervision has been around for quite a while already, displaying millions of tweets on a map of the world in real time. This 2D version is brilliant in itself… but now Twittervision 3D has been introduced. In 3D mode, Twittervision showcases all the public tweets on a 3D (and interactive) globe.

You’re able to rotate, zoom and change the angle at which Earth is viewed. A Day/Night cycle is thrown in for good measure as well. Screenshot below:

twittervision3d

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 Released

March 13th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Software One comment - Tags: , , , ,

ff31b3

Codenamed: Shiretoko.

You can download the Firefox3.1 Beta here.

Noteworthy changes are quoted from the Release Notes below:

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 9 months. Firefox 3.1 is an incremental release on the previous version with significant changes to improve web compatibility, performance, and ease of use:

  • This beta is now available in 64 languages – get your local version.
  • Improved the new Private Browsing Mode.
  • Improvements to web worker thread support.
  • Improved performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
  • New native JSON support.
  • Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
  • Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

The web worker thread improvements speeds up the viewing of web pages (as it enhances the Gecko rendering platform), but what’s particularly good to see is more stability and performance improvements to Mozilla’s TraceMonkey javascript engine.

Many users suspect this Beta will transform into Firefox 3.5.

All I can say is that it seems rather stable, as I’m making this post with it right now!

The Web Turns 20 Years Old

March 13th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Internet No comments - Tags: , ,

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It’s 13 March, 1989. Sir Tim Berners-Lee submits a plan to the management European Organization for Nuclear Research. The plan details how to more effectively monitor research progress at the labs. He titled the document Information Management: A Proposal. And since then, the idea of the World Wide Web was born.

After implementing his idea, researchers were able to quickly and easily share research documents, via the computer network. This took off incredibly quickly, with over 1,574,313,184 [source] Users browsing the web each year.

Happy birthday Internet!