Firefox’s four release channels explained
By now, it should be easy to pick a browser. Most of you probably settled on a favorite ages ago, and it’s going to take some seriously cool new features — or a whole lot of crashing — to make you switch at this point. But even if you’re in love with your default you might be wondering if you’re running the right channel.
Opera offers up Opera Next to its users. Google Chrome and Firefox both have four versions being worked on at any given time. Fortunately for Firefox users, Mozilla’s got a handy new graphic that clearly shows what you can expect from each build — Stable, Beta, Aurora, and Nightly. To seasoned veterans of the web it’s a no brainer, but the image and a little explanation is handy for more casual users who want to know if the grass is greener on the other side. Read more...
Why Are People Resigning Before The Copyright Industries’ Will?
Defeat in a single battle in the war over net liberty doesn’t concern me too much. I know that the net freedom forces have the strategic and intellectual upper hand in this war over our freedom, but there is something else that concerns me gravely. Why are people seriously thinking that the copyright industries have the final say in shaping society?
In a discussion thread concerning a recent book from myself and Christian Engström, Member of European Parliament, people were concerned. The book is titled “The Case For Copyright Reform”, and is a collection of the most relevant essays over the past year, as well as reproducing contributions from Mike Masnick, Ernesto and Michael Geist. (Did I mention it’s available for free download? Copy and seed.) Read more...
Minecraft Hunger Games exists, and it’s just as amazing as you’re imagining
What happens when you combine one of the hottest movies of the year with a giant virtual sandbox? You get perhaps the coolest custom Minecraft experience ever — not to mention plenty of chaos. Hunger Games-style Minecraft servers are popping up all over, and — short of an officially-licensed Hunger Games title — they are one of the best ways to live out your Mockingjay-fueled fantasies.
Most of the serious Hunger Games servers are called "Survival Games," but don't let that fool you: The experience will definitely feel like you're living in the fictional nation of Panem. Players — called "tributes" to add to the authenticity — start off each session by mimicking the opening action scene, with tributes standing a large circle around a cache of supplies. When the timer hits zero, all bets are off. Read more...
Revolving door: Yahoo ushers out another CEO
Yahoo still has credibility issues, even after casting aside CEO Scott Thompson because his official biography included a college degree that he never received.
The troubled Internet company's next challenge will be convincing its restless shareholders and demoralized employees that the turnaround work started during Thompson's tumultuous four-month stint as CEO won't be wasted.
It won't be an easy task, given that Yahoo Inc. has now gone through four full-time CEOs in a five-year stretch marked by broken promises of better times ahead. Instead, Yahoo's revenue and stock price have sagged during a time when rivals such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. as advertisers spend more money online. Read more...
Facebook Takes A Cue From Instagram, Redesigns Mobile To Make News Feed Photos 3X Larger
If you’re sick of interrupting your news feed reading to open and load photos, you’ll like a new Facebook mobile site, iOS, and Android app redesign rolling out today that makes photos three times larger. Shares of single photos now look a lot like Instagrams, as they appear full width so there’s less need to stop and open them. Meanwhile the bigger previews of photo albums will help you instantly assess whether to dive in or breeze past.
As Facebook’s user base shifts to mobile where it can’t show as many ads as easily, it will need to keep mobile session length and return visit frequency high. Making the news feed less tiring to browse should keep us scrolling for longer as we ravenously peer into the lives of our friends our friends. Here’s the before and after photos…of photos. Read more...
Apple Said To Debut iCloud’s New Photo Sharing Features At WWDC
With Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference just weeks away, expect plenty of reports of new features to come crawling out of the woodwork. In fact, here’s one from the Wall Street Journal — they claim that Apple has been doing some major tinkering with their iCloud storage service, the fruits of which will be unveiled on June 11.
First up is the ability for users to share and comment on each other’s photos, a pretty dramatic shift away from iCloud’s current approach to photo storage. As it stands, each user has a single Photo Stream meant mostly to make sure images are on the devices they need to be on. This shift in sharing actually sounds a little reminiscent of Apple’s recently-killed MobileMe service, though how exactly the sharing process would play out within iCloud is still up in the air. Read more...
Senate to look at Mozilla’s browser competition allegations
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will look into accusations by Mozilla that Microsoft is restricting access to important programming tools for browsers that will run in Windows RT, a political blog reported Friday.
The Hill cited unnamed aides to Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, as the source for its report.
Last week, Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, said Microsoft was withholding access to APIs -- application programming interfaces -- that Mozilla considers crucial for building a browser that can compete with Microsoft's own Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) on ARM devices. Read more...
MacBook Pro refreshes may be imminent, say reports
Hints that Apple will soon refresh its iMac desktop and MacBook Pro laptop lines accumulated today as several Mac-centric blogs revealed new details gleaned from the Web and unnamed sources.
Analysts who cover Apple agreed, saying that the new notebook models could appear at any time.
"I don't see them waiting for WWDC," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "As soon as they have enough supply built up, they'll release them." Read more...
Upcoming Microsoft deal: Buy a Windows 7 PC, upgrade to Windows 8 for a mere $15
Microsoft, in a bid to keep Windows 7 PC sales strong through to the end of the operating system’s lifecycle, has a plan: offer people a dead cheap Windows 8 upgrade , thus making the option of waiting for the upcoming operating system to drop a poor decision.
How cheap will the deal be? According to Paul Thurrott, the bump to Windows 8 will cost a mere $15. Of course, this sort of promotion is hardly new – Microsoft does something similar every time it releases a new operating system. It helps people get onto the new code quickly, and ensures that Windows revenue doesn’t take a massive dive in the quarter preceding the new operating system’s release. Read more...
Louis C.K. says that sites like Facebook and Reddit are “hurting folks”
Comedian Louis C.K. has been a bit of an Internet darling, of late. His irreverent style is a hand-carved fit for Internet culture, and his in-your-face attitude has carried over to how he markets his work as well. Today the comedian is back on Reddit, doing an “Ask Me Anything” thread, and he has some interesting points to make.
It’s first worth noting that the comedian did a unique thing at the end of last year, putting up one of his specials online for a $5 price tag. The result? Over $1 million earned, and 1/4th of the proceeds donated to charity. It spawned TNW’s Alex Wilhelm to say that, perhaps, the new pricing model for the Internet was a simple “$5 and a PayPal account“. Read more...