Ooops!

It must be said that most mass software deployments never run without a hitch. It seems that Firefox is no exception.

Within five hours of release, a critical flaw was found in Firefox 3 according to Tipping Point’s Zero Day Initiative. Tipping Point’s DVLabs identified an issue which was immediately report to Mozilla.

The flaw is believed to allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code although no specifi have been announce.

Mozilla is believed to be working on a patch to plug the hole, which, interestingly, also applies to Firefox 2.

Popularity: 6% [?]

But Mozilla’s bandwidth took a battering.

It’s here at last. Firefox 3 was made available for download at 10 a.m Pacific time yesterday (that’s 6 p.m to us in the UK). Mozilla had urged users to download enmasse in order to set a world record for software download but this didn’t go without a hitch.

At peak, Mozilla was server around 14,000 downloads per minute which chewed up 13 Gb of bandwidth every second. HTTP traffic accounted for another 2Gb per second. Obviously, there were knock on effects. Downloads slowed to as little as 5Kb per second - hmm, dialup modem speeds!  Paul Kim, vice president of product marketing, said “Our systems were quite busy earlier this morning…” - really?

Estimates suggest that Firefox 3 was downloaded about 5 to 7 million times at the end of the first day.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Next version in the pipeline.

There’s no stopping Mozilla. Only recently we announced the launch of Firefox 3 but it would appear that the next release is being prepared.

A report from arstechnica suggests that version 3.1 of the Open Source browser could be in the wild by July.

Significant feature enhancements to version 3.1 include: tab previews, tag auto-completion and the addition of several new features to Firefox’s Gecko rendering engine such as the HTML 5 video element and CSS text shadows.

I wonder how many of these features we’ll see in future versions of Internet Explorer.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Worried?

According to a report by the University of Washington the number of bloggers arrested since 2003 has been growing. Figures show that that 10 bloggers were arrested in 2006 rising to 36 in 2007.

Should you be worried? Not unless you’re doing writing subversive comments (or the government just doesn’t like you!)

Admittedly, the bloggers most likely to face imprisonment come from countries such as the Middle East, Far East, Egypt, China and Iran with the most arrests coming during election periods and times of civil unrest.

Figures show detention periods ranging from a few days to 8 years!

All together now “We love our government!”

Popularity: 4% [?]

…Security.

Hmm, does the word security make any particular subject jump to mind? Government security, maybe? Anyway, enough swipes. It looks like security in the IT  is still a major concern with 97% of companies ranking this area as ‘high’ and ‘very high’.

The rapid growth of mission critical applications and data  reliance has pushed security to the front of the queue.

Other factors of significant concern for industry are environmental issues, compliance and global standardisation.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Free internet access for O2 iPhone owners.

We certainly do like the word ‘free’. Especially when it comes to internet access. So, users of the O2 iPhone should be particularly happy with the latest news.

A deal with BT will let O2 iPhone owners access Openzone premier WiFi hotspots from 11th July. This service was announced in conjunction with the launch of the iPhone 3G but will be available to both current and future O2 subscribers.

Openzone currently has around 3,000 in the UK including city centres, coffee shops, railway stations and airport lounges.

This is good news for O2 iPhone users. The 3G service has a fair usage policy which limits data transfer but WiFi will allow users umlimited access to the internet.

This isn’t the first deal that O2 have announced. WiFi service provider The Cloud has also signed a deal with O2 which allows free WiFi access.

Now I have yet another compelling reason to grab an iPhone, looks like I may just take up the offer.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Go to prison, retrain, come out and thrive.

I’m all for rehabilitation of offenders. It makes sense to give them a skill that can be of use to society and help to prevent them reoffending. HMP Wandsworth seems to hit the mark by offering inmates the chance to train for a career in technology. The prison already offers courses in industrial cleaning, bricklaying, carpentry, tailoring, electrical, painting and decorating, and plumbing plus educational services.

The latest offerings will see convicts being offered the chance to train in data cabling and network installation. Interestingly, the courses are provided under a PPP scheme which involves companies such Cisco and Panduit - who specialise in…network cabling!

A shortfall of 61,000 trained workers exists in the data cabling market which means the potential for employees and employers alike is huge

Popularity: 7% [?]

Blackberry faces more competition.

Did you ever think that a startup would try to take on Blackberry AND Microsoft at the same time? Nor me. But  a US start-up is planning to do just that.

Blue Whale Systems, founded in 2007 by a team of engineers from companies including Microsoft, Nokia, Research In Motion, Symbian, Vodafone and T-Mobile, has created BlueWhaleMail. The service initially be made available for the current range of Sony Ericsson feature phones. The application is currently being developed for other devices such as Samsung and Windows Mobile devices, but has not announced details of availability.

The application is installed on a users mobile phone and needs to be configured with their specific email addresses. According to BlueWhale, this is a simple process.

The service is free to use as BlueWhale will generate revenue froms ads at the top of the message viewer.

In addition, BlueWhaleMail allows you to connect to your Facebook account, check news updates and respond to/post responses.The BlueWhaleMail service also allows users to access their Yahoo Mail and GMail accounts. Unfortunately, Hotmail is not yet supported.

Future enhancements planned include extending into other social networks support for protocols such as instant messaging and RSS feeds.

A pretty interesting piece of news. I wonder how Blackberry will counter this.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Final version ready soon

At last, RC2 has been released. Mozilla, the parent organisation, is hoping to have the final release ready within a couple of weeks. I have to admit that I like Firefox 3. I’ve been running RC1 for a while now. There are still some bugs; one that really annoys me is the browser closing for no apparent reason. Hopefully all the bugs will be ironed out.

Mozilla is hoping to set a new world record for downloads when the final version is ready for release. The company is actively urging users to download the updated version in order to break the record for software download figures over a 24 hour period.

Firefox usage is growing, albeit slowly. Figures for March suggest that the installation base accounted for about 28.8% of internet browsers although this figure jumped to 30.1% over the weekend.

Browser wars II - who will win? I know where I’m putting my money.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tip of the iceberg?

I have to admit that shopping online is a pretty good way of saving money. Just think of all the discounts you can pick, free delivery and the ability to browse just about every known product from the comfort of you arsechair.  It looks like many of you out there feel the same if a recent report is anything to go by.

A report by Verdict Research shows UK shoppers spent about £14.7 billion in 2007 - a growth rate roughly 10 times that of the UK retail market. The figure is predicted to hit £44.9 billion by 2012.

But we still need physical stores. Most of like to get out and sample the goods even if we then go home and order online.

Interestingly, it would appear men make up the larger percentage of net shoppers, often buying higher value products. Hmm, don’t let your woman find this out or you’ll never again have cause to complain about the 50 pairs of shoes she owns.

Popularity: 3% [?]