New Version of Firefox is Out… 3.6… and it is FASTER!

I had left the Firefox fold for Chrome… because Firefox had gotten slower and slower… but, one thing I didn’t like about Chrome is that it didn’t handle RSS feeds like I wanted… I preferred the way Firefox did it, but I couldn’t handle the slowness anymore! Well, heewack, it’s back! It is 20% faster than it was… check it out!

Mozilla Firefox

“After months of testing, Mozilla has finally released Firefox 3.6, the newest version of its popular browser. The new edition of Firefox (Firefox) sports an array of features, least of which is an increase in speed — 20% faster than Firefox 3.5, according to Mozilla. It uses Gecko 1.9.2 web-rendering, which improves its load times, startup speed and stability. Javascript execution is faster and smoother as well. We’ve talked about some of the other new features before, but our favorite has to be Personas, which lets you customize your Firefox with a single click and without a restart. There’s also autocomplete form functionality and full HTML5 support. You can check out all of the new features here. The Firefox 3.6 beta has been in testing for several months now, but the release candidates only started coming out this month. It looks like the releases went smoothly, so Mozilla is rolling it out for everyone.”

Mashable Article on Firefox

VMware Buys Zimbra

One of my favorite companies, VMware… has bouight one of my favorite e-mail platforms… the Open Source Web Based e-mail system, Zimbra!

VMware’s Zimbra Buy All About Simplicity

“Continuing on its mission to bring greater simplicity to users of its cloud platform, VMware has announced its agreement to acquire Zimbra, a provider of e-mail and collaboration software, from Yahoo. In a Jan. 12 blog post on the move, Steve Herrod, chief technology officer at VMware, likened the company’s acquisition of Zimbra to its acquisition of SpringSource last August, saying it is all about simplification. SpringSource simplifies enterprise Java application development, and Zimbra simplifies the deployment of IT services. The acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2010. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Herrod mentioned Zimbra’s 55 million users and praised Zimbra’s open-source e-mail, calendaring and collaboration software. He also described how Zimbra can help VMware simplify IT, noting that Zimbra was one of the more popular downloads on VMware’s virtual appliance marketplace. According to Herrod, virtual appliances are virtual machines prepopulated with an operating system and applications that can be downloaded and easily started without installation and with minimal configuration.”

Nexus One Superphone Released

“At an event described by members of Google’s public relations team both as ‘seminal’ and ‘anticlimactic,’ Google on Tuesday introduced its Nexus One mobile phone. The debut of a Google-branded phone is anticlimactic because so many details about the device have been made public, a sharp contrast with the fanatical message management exercised by Apple, Google’s strongest competitor in the mobile space. At the same time, the Nexus One affirms that mobile computing is where the tech industry is headed and where Google will focus its competitive energy. The war with Microsoft is going well enough that Google can open a second front. Apple’s reported plan to buy mobile ad firm Quattro Wireless, after Google snapped AdMob away from it, underscores just how important mobile devices, not to mention advertising revenue, have become. The Nexus One runs Android 2.1 — available as open source in the next few days — on a 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm. It comes with 512MB of ROM, 512MB of RAM, and a 3.7-inch AMOLED 480 x 800 touch screen. It’s 11.5 mm thick — or 11.5 mm thin, as Google senior product manager Eric Tseng put it — and weighs 130 grams, about as much as a Swiss army knife. It includes a 5 MP camera with an LED flash, stereo bluetooth support, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and two microphones — one on the bottom and one on the back — for active noise cancellation. ‘The Nexus One belongs in an emerging category of devices which we call ‘super phones,” said Google VP of product management Mario Queiroz. Software represents the other half of the equation and what Google can do with software is magnified by the power of its cloud infrastructure.”

Google Reveals Nexus One ‘Super Phone’

The difference between phones and computers just keeps blurring!

The iSlate – As Big as the iPod?

What do YOU think? Will the “iSlate” from Mac (a Mac based tablet computer) be as “big” as the iPod? There is a lot of hype about it, but tablets haven’t caught on, and they have been around a loooong time! I know, I know, this one is an Apple… so it be be “cool.” But Will it? Really?

Marketing Hype and the ‘iSlate’

“While a certain amount of speculation is healthy for any industry, I believe there’s a tipping point beyond which it becomes more than a little silly. We spend so much time discussing the minutiae of what this mystery thing may or may not do that we forget the big picture of why we use technology in the first place. As I wonder about the tablet, I can’t help but think about netbooks. These diminutive, inexpensive devices were the hardware story of the year as budget-crushed consumers looked for ways to remain productive without cutting into that week’s grocery order. There was no runup of publicity surrounding netbooks. No lineups around the block. No frenzied speculation about feature sets. The netbook is the anti-tablet, then, a known device with known capabilities that consumers instantly get. The tablet? Not so much. Not that Apple should ever feel the need to make its own netbook, mind you. The company will never play in the low-margin end of the market. It doesn’t need to play the price game to compete, and the tablet will continue that premium strategy. But when the hype machine kicks into overdrive, too many consumers end up buying not because they need it, but because they feel they’ll be missing out if they don’t buy in now. It’s as shallow as the pet rock was, a purchase rationale that revolves around being part of the crowd and not around actually meeting a particular life need.”