Apr 5th, 2009 - Andrew Lippman, who is the Founding Associate Director at the MIT Media Lab suggested at a talk last week that we were on the edge of a new third cloud where assistance becomes as important as access. The first cloud was the internet itself. The second cloud provided the services layer for the... (Read More)

Aug 30th, 2009 - Years ago Marshall McLuhan uttered the famous phrase, "The medium is the message." He said this long before the World Wide Web. If he were alive today, he might have said something else: "He who controls the distribution method, controls the money." When you look at the Web's influence on media... (Read More)

Jul 7th, 2009 - My colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols waxed nostalgically on Monday in his Computerworld Cyber Cynic blog about CompuServe, the long-time service that shut down recently, and which Vaughan-Nichols says he's going to miss. As much as I like SJVN, I have to say good riddance to old technology. It... (Read More)

Sep 3rd, 2008 - Wasting little time coming out of the long US Labor Day weekend, Google released a shiny new browser aptly called Chrome. Why on earth would the world need another browser at this point in the history of the internet is unclear, especially another open source entry, but one thing is crystal clear,... (Read More)

Sep 1st, 2008 - To no one's surprise, except perhaps the New York Times, internet traffic is going global, and more so with each passing year. The result is that more traffic is flowing through servers outside the United States. The chief concern about this development, according to the NYT article, was the fact... (Read More)

24 Days Ago - Some Twitter postings just demand you read them two or three times to take in what is being said in 140 characters. One such posting was made today by Mozilla CEO John Lilly which simply said: "Firefox user growth has been amazing last 8 weeks or so. +30M or so unique monthlies" That's worth... (Read More)

33 Days Ago - Odd isn't it, how Microsoft kicked up a fuss when Google announced the Chrome plugin for Internet Explorer on the grounds that it could make the browser more insecure. Indeed, it went as far as to suggest that it doubled the potential surface area for malware and scripted attacks. Yet, amazingly,... (Read More)

Oct 12th, 2009 - Remember when a web browser was so much more than just a web browser? It seems that the days of the all-you-can-eat Internet suite are back as the SeaMonkey 2.0 release code is made available to download. There was a time when Netscape ruled the online world, but you have to be something of an... (Read More)

Jul 7th, 2009 - OK, so Firefox 3.5 is out and looking good but why should Opera care? After all, the alternative web browser from years back has long since lost that title to Firefox, at least as far as the desktop is concerned. But what about in the mobile market? Opera has been making real progress in... (Read More)

Jun 10th, 2008 - Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General, has been fighting one of those fights that you sadly cannot win: to rid the Internet of child pornography. Believe me, as a father of four I would love to say that it was possible but as a technology journalist with some 20 years experience of writing about... (Read More)

Dec 12th, 2008 - You cannot have missed the story this week about how a picture of a naked girl on an album cover led to Wikipedia being blacklisted by the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK. That blacklisting, which in turn prevented people from being able to edit Wikipedia posts depending upon their ISP, was... (Read More)

Nov 25th, 2008 - Hands up if you remember Opera Software, you know the Norway-based developer of alternative web browser clients. In the days before Firefox, Opera was the client most likely to shake up Microsoft and for a while seemed to be doing pretty well in that regard. Then Firefox came along and rained on... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - An alpha version of Opera 10, the latest in a long line of web browser clients from the Norwegian-based developers, has been made available to download. Anyone remember Opera? It used to be the next big thing, until the next big thing came along in the shape of Firefox that is. Opera did turn its... (Read More)

Nov 6th, 2008 - A Firefox developer has revealed that pre-release versions of Firefox 3.1 have been updated with a new feature. Officially called 'Private Browsing' it will be more familiar to many as the much talked about Porn Mode that caused such controversy when Microsoft announced it was being included within... (Read More)

Jul 28th, 2007 - Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker has admitted that Thunderbird is to be booted out of the Mozilla camp in order to allow “the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny” apparently. Put through my patented BS translator this produced “Thunderbird brings us no revenue, gets a bad press whether... (Read More)

Jun 13th, 2008 - Following announcements at the Microsoft Tech Ed IT Professionals 2008 conference in Orlando this week, it would appear that Internet Explorer 8 will concentrate on getting things right for the business user. This means a focus on deployment issues, a focus on improving compatibility and updates to... (Read More)

May 29th, 2008 - Set a Firefox world record on Download Day is the message being trumpeted loud and clear from Mozilla HQ as the launch of the Firefox 3.0 web browser gets ever closer. It seems that the Mozilla people are serious as well, with talk of an official Guinness World Record ratification for the most... (Read More)

Aug 19th, 2008 - Ever wondered how the U.S. diplomatic corps keeps track of all of its quickly changing information? Turns out, the same way all the rest of us do -- through Wikipedia. The diplomatic wikipedia, Diplopedia, is not available to the public, though examples of pages are included in a publicly... (Read More)

Aug 29th, 2009 - If you've used Facebook for more than, oh, five minutes, you've seen a Facebook quiz. "What Greek dance are you?" "Which NFL coach are you?" "Which Diplomacy country should you play?" and so on. (I forget every quiz I see, and I'm up to more than 250 by now.) But there's one quiz you might want... (Read More)

Jul 31st, 2009 - How transparent is too transparent? In an attempt to make it easier for ordinary people to see what their governments are spending their money on, more entities -- from city to federal -- are putting this information online, noting that it's a public record. But some government workers are... (Read More)

Mar 31st, 2009 - Remember the teenagers getting charged with child pornography for taking revealing pictures of themselves with cell phones? They're fighting back. According to an article in the New York Times by Sean Hamill, 17 students -- 13 girls and 4 boys -- accepted a plea bargain requiring them to... (Read More)

Jan 19th, 2009 - Teens who take revealing pictures of themselves to send to other teens are getting more than embarrassment: They're getting a criminal record as a sex offender. The problem of revealing teen pictures has been getting a great deal of attention lately, with a recent survey finding that 36 percent... (Read More)

Jun 11th, 2009 - FireFox 3.5 is due out by the end of June and includes some pretty interesting new features--and not a moment too soon. Some of these new features include the ability to play videos in the browser without the need to download and install a third-party plugin. It also includes TraceMonkey, which is... (Read More)

Jun 19th, 2008 - Yes, I'm afraid it's true; Firefox is the most popular browser out there. Standing at this moment at over 11.5 millions downloads since its production release Tuesday, June 17. How can I make such a sweeping statement? It is the most popular browser ever because of the number of voluntary... (Read More)

Jun 13th, 2008 - A few months ago, I did an "On the Desktop" article for Linux Magazine on Getting to Know Konqueror, the default Linux web browser, file manager, and remote protocol client. Until I saw FireFox version 3, I had never really been very impressed with it. I actually submitted a little poem about... (Read More)

Jun 16th, 2009 - Now here's a thing. The web browser Opera is coming out in a new version, Opera Unite, and it's going to let you host all the music, photos and social media you want. On your own computer. Here's the Reuters report. Initially I can see this will look like a good idea. In the right (as in... (Read More)

Apr 22nd, 2009 - For American readers this is probably a bit of an ordinary day - you go about your business and there's every chance that when you wake up tomorrow things will be much the same as they were when you woke up today. In the UK that's not the case. In the UK the chancellor of the exchequer (the head of... (Read More)

Sep 2nd, 2008 - Google's new venture will go public as most of you are reading this (assuming 'most of you' means our American readers, who I assume are a substantial majority). Google is going to release a browser. It's called Chrome and it's going to be geared towards the things we all want to do with our... (Read More)

Aug 1st, 2008 - For once someone has done the right thing. You might remember my last post was a disappointed rant against China for restricting access to the Internet for journalists covering the Olympics. I can't speak for the US but in the UK it got as far as our National news bulletins. Well, the move... (Read More)

Jun 18th, 2008 - It's up there now and according to the BBC its makers want it to be the most downloaded software in its first 24 hours ever. Firefox 3 is now available for public download, although the final release candidate has been so close to commercial standard you wouldn't be able to see much difference. ... (Read More)

Jun 5th, 2009 - "Opera Retakes Leadership from iPhone in Mobile Browser Market" reads the press release that arrived in my email this week. "Opera is the world's number one mobile browser, overtaking iPhone in May according to data from StatCounter Global Stats" it continues, which certainly peaked my interest.... (Read More)

May 27th, 2009 - The latest State of the Mobile Web report, published by mobile web browser client developers Opera, reveals that mobile web usage in the UK has grown by nearly 50 percent over the last year. The report also tries to make sense of other global trends as they impact upon mobile web usage,... (Read More)

May 14th, 2009 - While The Telegraph has been enjoying all the media attention this last week, at least here in the UK, thanks to exposing the scandal of British MP expense claims and breaking new details first online every day, it is not the most popular online UK newspaper according to newly published research.... (Read More)

Sep 26th, 2008 - Hot off the press comes the news that Mozilla is pushing out yet another Firefox update real soon now, Firefox 3.0.3 will be released as soon as possible to fix a rather serious bug in Firefox 3.0.2 which has not long been released itself. In fact, my 3.0.2 update was only pushed to me a couple of... (Read More)

Jul 2nd, 2008 - According to the official Microsoft Developer Network IEBlog Internet Explorer 8 will come packed with a whole host of new security features. These will include the SmartScreen Filter which replaces the Phishing Filter in current versions of the browser. Eric Lawrence, Program Manager for Internet... (Read More)

Jun 16th, 2008 - Not my sentiment but that of Johnathan Nightingale, the Firefox security interface designer no less who has gone on record as saying that "we didn't want to put in something that was half baked" when talking about how the privacy button might interact with websites and mashups alike. Which might... (Read More)

Jun 6th, 2008 - There is a really very interesting article in the online edition of Vanity Fair called 'How the Web Was Won' and subtitled 'An Oral History of the Internet' which recounts through the comments of those involved the first fifty years of Internet history. Sure, you are probably thinking that the... (Read More)

Nov 3rd, 2008 - Who couldn't use some extra cash these days? Thousands of dollars in prize money is up for grabs as testers face off in Battle of the Browsers, a seven-day contest that starts today. Applications in the contest's arena are Google's Chrome, Firefox 3.1 alpha 2 and IE 8. To qualify, bugs must be... (Read More)

May 18th, 2008 - The Mozilla team says its latest browser is stable, and has posted Firefox 3 RC 1 on Saturday. Apart from more than 900 enhancements the team claimed were delivered in beta 4, Firefox 3 RC1 also includes the so-called AwesomeBar, a beefed-up location bar that anticipates destinations as you type... (Read More)

Jul 25th, 2008 - Stocks are up this morning - up 56 points a half-hour after the open - thanks to a higher-than-expected durable goods report. In real-speak, that means that heavy equipment and bulk manufacturing buyers broke open their checkbooks last month and bought more bulldozers and crates of metal than Wall... (Read More)