There used to be a time when a new Firefox release was an exciting day for early adopters. We'd delve into the new features, rejoice in the speed improvements, and moan about our lost extensions. Today should be another action packed upgrade day - it's reported that Mozilla will release Firefox 3.5 later today (update: it's here now) - but, this time, something is missing.
Firefox just isn't dazzling us the way it used to. In fact, in some cases, it's as if the browser is playing a game of catch-up instead. With new features like Private Browsing and TraceMonkey, an engine that speeds up web applications, Firefox isn't exactly blowing us away - they're simply introducing features that put them on par with Google Chrome and even, gasp, IE.
According to their blog and a recent BusinessWire release, controversial Swedish bit torrent tracker the Pirate Bay, is being acquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB for roughly $7.8 million in cash and shares (or $60 million SEK).
On the blog, the group hopes to alleviate concerns by saying:
"If the new owners screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want it to. And - you can now not only share files, but shares, with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat off us."
In the quest to open government processes to citizens, collaboration and participation were identified as explicit goals in a presidential memo issued earlier this year.
Upon the appearance of a tenuously connected web of blogs, sites, wikis, and forums, many were excited about the refreshing availability of public channels for dialogue between ordinary Americans and policy makers when it comes to deciding what the 21st century American government will look like. On the other hand, the participation in these initiatives has been dwarfed by what one might see on ICanHasCheezburger. In spite of what could be seen as lackluster citizen response, The Open Government initiative's final drafting phase, which was to have closed already, has been extended until July 3.
The days of moms covertly stalking their children on MySpace or freaking out over Facebook party pics are not-so-slowly shifting to headier days of proactive moms using the Internet to meet their own needs.
A new study from BabyCenter shows that mothers' social media use has increased 462 percent over the past three years. The same group's mobile web usage is up 348 percent over the same period of time. And these moms aren't just keeping tabs on secretive teenagers. They're networking for themselves, finding answers online, and sharing stories about their offspring. The two-part study was conducted between 2006 and 2009 in conjunction with NovaQuant. BabyCenter also conducted a series of 18 in-depth surveys between January and June of 2009
Chances are you wouldn't tell grandma about the wild party you went to last Saturday night. Likewise, you might have spent Sunday evening at home knittin' a mitten and only feel secure enough in your manhood to share pictures of your fiber craft with family. While real life communication lets us share different things with different people, online social networking has tended to have two modes: public or private.
Last week, Facebook announced a move to support a much more sophisticated understanding of privacy that's more like what real people have in real life. It's a major shift in how Facebook works. We think the initial reporting on the news missed the point (ours certainly did) and the new privacy features are poorly implemented so far - but the changes being made on Facebook are important.
Aviary, which is known for its fully featured, browser-based image creation and manipulation tools, just released a new tool that makes it extremely easy to capture a copy of any web page by just adding 'aviary.com/' in front of a URL. Unlike most screen capture tools, Aviary is able to capture a complete web site, even if it extends beyond the borders of your screen. Aviary already offered a Firefox plugin, Talon, which allows users to create screenshots, but this new method is available from any browser, as long as it supports Flash for the image editing portion of Aviary.
This morning, Google's YouTube opened up its Reporters' Center - a new hub for teaching citizen journalists to become better reporters by teaching them about how to prepare for interviews, be better investigative reporters, and how to help media organizations in the news-gathering process. Interestingly, at the same time as YouTube is trying to help citizen journalists, Google is also encouraging professional media organizations to join the YouTube Partner Program and upload more videos to YouTube that can then be featured on Google News.
Google today announced a number of SMS-based services for the African market. Google SMS provides access to information by SMS (news, local weather, sports, agriculture tips, etc.), while Google Trader is an SMS-based marketplace where buyers and sellers can connect. Google SMS Tips is a query-and-answer service that can take any free-form text query, find the keywords, and then identify and return a relevant answer from a large database.
Last month, we posed the question "are trolls ruining social media?" - a topic that seems to have reared its ugly head once again over the weekend, this time with a specific focus on FriendFeed and the supposed angry mobs that form there. But let's get real for a minute. Although it's shocking that some FriendFeed users post terrible, hurtful things while using their real names, posting angry and mean comments is nothing new to the internet. Other social communities, including Digg and YouTube, also deal with this issue - heck, they're even known for it!
But instead of continually pointing out the problem, maybe it's time for the innovators in our community to start thinking up solutions. Here's one we just thought up...let us know what you think.
Last week, Google announced a change in how software can run on Android, the company's mobile operating system which powers such devices as T-Mobile's G1 and the upcoming MyTouch 3G. Instead of just allowing Java applications that run on Google's Dalvik virtual machine, Android will now allow software that runs natively in on the Linux operating system itself. This will be made possible through a new toolset for developers, the Android Native Development Kit. The change may allow Mozilla to bring their young mobile browser, Fennec (aka "Firefox Mobile") to the Android platform.
