Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 1 is available

Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 1 is now available for download. 70% of the existing addons and plugins available are supposed to working with this release candidate already and it even might be that this release will be the final version of the official Firefox 3.6 which is be to be expected to be published sometimes in February. Here are the most important new changes made by the Mozilla community:

• Made some changes to how we allow third party software to integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.
• This release candidate is available in more than 70 languages – get your local version.
• More than 70 fixes from the last beta to improve performance, stability, security and features.
• The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.
• Developers can find out about all the changes and new features at the Mozilla Developer Center.

For further details you may want to visit the Mozilla Firefox release notes.

Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 1 can be downloaded here.

10 Useful Extensions For Chrome

Finally Chrome, Google’s own browser, has the ability of letting you install extensions and has therefore become a serious alternative to Firefox. Although the number of Google Chrome extensions available are not anywhere near  to the huge collection of extensions for Firefox yet – the most important ones are to be found. For the last 3 weeks I used Chrome as my default browser, testing all sorts of extensions. Some of them turned out to be really worthy to use them constantly. Here are my Top 10:

1. One Number:
   One Number lets you check Gmail, Google Wave, Google Reader and Google Voice at one glance. Very handy, if you use Google Services
   

   One Number

   … Continue Reading

Twitter. Twitter what???

Twitter. Twittering. Tweets. The simple and yet mystical universe of www.twitter.com

I know what it is – Twitter. I’m doing it quite often – twittering. I find them useful, funny, informative and sometimes sensless – tweets.

So much was written about Twitter the last couple of month, be it on websites specialised on such topics or newspapers (online and printed version). It was broadcasted on TV in the news and talkshows – actually there is no way of NOT knowing about twitter.

But still I have a lot of friends who really claim not to have heard about it. If they did the standard question is: “What is it actually”?

Well this question is quite simple to answer. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service founded in 2006 that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates. These updates are called “tweets” and they are restricted to 140 characters. These tweets are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (followers). Either the user allows his tweets to get accessed by everyone who looks up his profile or he restricts them so that his friends only can read them. You can send and receive tweets from wherever you want: using the twitter-website, SMS with a cell phone and external applications specially built for either computers or mobile devices.

My shortest answer to people not having a clue what twitter actually means is: “It’s like SMS using the internet.”

This was the easy part because the second question people ask is: “Ok, but what the hell is good for???” Silence on my side. You can literally hear the crickets chirr. For a simple reason: there is no way of a simple explanation for that. … Continue Reading

World Environment Day: documentary “Home” released

Today is World Environment Day, a day designated by the United Nations in 1972. Director Yann Arthus-Bertrand and producer Luc Besson chose this day to release their new documentary “Home“. This one and a half hour movie broaches the issue of the critical condition the enviroment of our planet earth is in. From the bird’s eyes view the audience is taken to a trip around the globe, covering over 50 countries, to see beautiful landscapes and complex enviromental problems in breathtaking pictures. “Home” wants to communicate the beauty and vulnerability of our planet and call the viewers attention to it.

This documentary is simultaneously released today on YouTube (available in English, French, Spanish, and German translations in HD), several TV stations and cinemas across the globe.

Update: The movie can be seen on YouTube for free until the 14th of June

Watch the Trailer inside…