AFP - China's online population, already the world's largest, has swelled to 253 million, an official report said, driven by news events such as natural disasters and the Beijing Olympics.
The much-anticipated Sony Playstation 3 Firmware 2.40 is now available, as promised, just as July 2nd rolled around. The update includes:
For details on how to update, please visit this page.
The latest version of the very popular Mozilla Firefox browser was downloaded 8,349,074 times between 2:16 p.m. ET Tuesday and 2:16 p.m. ET Wednesday. By comparison Firefox 2 was downloaded only 1.6 million times in the first 24 hours of its release. As part of the initial release, Mozilla hoped to break the Guinness World record for the most software download in 24 hours. However, since as of yet this type of record does not exist, the decision is really whether Guinness believes the event is worthy of being included. Because of interest in the browser Mozilla’s servers were crippled on Tuesday postponing the US release by roughly two hours, while the European release was delayed an hour.
Mozilla’s second public release candidate of Firefox 3 is now up for download as promised. Coming in over 45 languages, it’s waiting for you to dowload it here. You can find out what’s new in Firefox 3 RC2 in the release notes.
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Microsoft plans a completely new GUI for versions of Windows 7 running on the kind of high-powered computers that now run Vista. The same team that designed Office 2007 is in charge of this interface, and it’s likely we’ll see something like the Office 2007 Ribbon in place of Windows’ traditional menus and toolbars. Unlike the Office Ribbon, however, the new UI—whatever it finally looks like—will be something you can turn on or off, so corporate users can maintain the same interface they’ve been using for years, without expensive retraining.
Many clues to what the Windows 7 development team is thinking about can be found in the Windows Feedback Button found in the early builds. This Feedback tool invites developers to comment on the five “pillars” on which Windows 7 will be built. Each is divided into a number of scenarios that have only brief and vague descriptions. Here’s a quick description of the pillars, with some guesses at what the associated scenarios might portend for Windows 7. The fullest analysis we’ve seen of these pillars is a long posting by “Bryant” at AeroXperience (www.aeroxp.org).
The first pillar is “Specialized for Laptops.” Scenarios associated with it include data security, speed, wireless improvements, synchronization, and power management. One scenario is called “Touch and Tablet Usability,” which may have something to do with the rumors that Microsoft, having been stung by the touch-screen keyboard in Apple’s iPhone, is planning something even better for Windows. Indeed, Microsoft recently announced plans to integrate multi-touch technology in Windows 7, making user input possible by touching and gesturing your fingertip around the screen—a way of one-upping the iPhone interface while covering your monitor with greasy fingerprints.
India and Brazil have filed appeals against the adoption of the Microsoft-sponsored Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard.
Their appeals join one from South Africa, filed last Friday with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the two standardization bodies responsible for the technical committee which approved the OOXML standard.
“By the deadline last night, we had received three appeals, from Brazil, India and South Africa,” said Jonathan Buck, spokesman for IEC.
“The Indian appeal was not lodged in the correct procedure it was not send to the CEOs of the two organizations but nonetheless it has been received,” Buck said, adding that it will be treated in the same way as the Brazilian and South African appeals.
Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 is on track for release in 2010. During its internal “MGX” global sales meeting this week, Microsoft witnessed that the code name for Vista’s successor is “Windows 7″ and the project is due to see light in approximately three years.
Mozilla has released the 4th public beta version of Firefox 3. Here are a few of the updates packed into Firefox 3 beta 4:
Firefox 3 beta 4 also includes a ton of other tweaks and bug fixes described in the release notes. You can try it here
It turns out that stability isn’t the only problem Vista SP1 has with the world. There are plenty of products that simply won’t work with Service Pack 1. Now wait a minute, you might ask. This has been going on since every operating system update from the beginning of computers, what makes this one so special? When the products are from big shots like Trend Micro, Zonelabs, BitDefender, and Novell, Microsoft is more than willing to consider delaying Vista SP1 to make sure that everything will work properly. While some products are fortunate, and merely have a couple glitches, the majority of the programs listed on Microsoft’s great list of incompatibility won’t even start properly. The main cause of this could be anything from coding differences in the kernel to being flat out blocked. Hopefully, Microsoft will fix this by the time SP1 is released.
Face it, the Windows XP code is reliable, practical, useful, secure and cost-effective. Most people, especially those in the business sector, simply don’t see the need to upgrade to Windows Vista. It’s no news that Windows XP Service Pack 3 is coming out soon. However, Microsoft may not have considered the effect XP SP3 may have on Vista sales. If a lot of users adopt XP SP3, they may be even less tempted to move on to Windows Vista, which is ultimately what Microsoft would like their customers to do. However, Microsoft may find that XP SP3 doesn’t have any effect on Vista sales at all. After all, those who want Windows Vista will upgrade to Windows Vista, no matter what XP offers. Those who want to stick with XP will stick with XP, and may not even upgrade to the latest service pack.
