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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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FashionYourFirefox: Mozilla's (Partial) Effort to Push Extensions
1 day, 6 hours ago
In an effort to coax more users to take advantage of the many extensions for its Firefox browser, Mozilla has just launched FashionYourFirefox.com. The site is divided up into categories, which cater to individual interests and "online lifestyles," according to Mozilla's announcement. The site looks like a good idea for extension novices, but I don't see some of my favorite extensions, and some of the categories have a pretty sparse number of extensions. -
Mozilla revenues hit $75 million -
1 day, 6 hours ago
Mozilla Chief Wrangler Mitchell Baker today reported Mozilla's financial position which shows 2007 revenues of $75 million up by 12 percent from 2006 revenues of $67 million. Though Mozilla is on the upswing, Baker's report shows some areas of potential future financial concerns. -
Adobe unleashes 64-bit Flash
1 day, 17 hours ago
Adobe released a 64-bit alpha Linux version of its Flash Player 10 media software, and announced a partnership with ARM on an ARM11 version of Flash 10. Other Adobe news includes AIR 1.5 for Linux, upgraded media servers, and a new design tool called Flash Catalyst. -
The Long Fail: Web 2.0's faith meets the facts
3 days, 5 hours ago
The Long Tail has just had another run-in with large amounts of real-world data, and again come out the worse for wear. Tens of millions of music transactions were analyzed by economists and the shape of the sales distribution shows no resemblance to the Pareto (or Power) Curve, 1/x^n of the Long Tail, but a near perfect fit with a log normal, exp(-x^2). So can the Long Tail survive? -
As OpenSocial matures, the cloud becomes a focus
4 days, 2 hours ago
What started out as Google's effort to create a common API for developing gadgets for social-networking services is becoming more of a full-fledged, cloud development platform. -
Flickr uploaders for Linux: secretive, but not endangered beasts
4 days, 4 hours ago
Flickr is almost like Xerox, or Kleenex, in that its name is in some ways inextricably linked to the service it delivers. There are many other photo sharing sites, of course, with similar (or perhaps even superior) features and options. Maybe it's because it is one of the first services that's managed to grow, add features, and consistently stand out from the others, it is often the first service people try, and the one many ultimately choose to continue with. -
Spam declines after hosting company shut-down
1 week, 1 day ago
Internet hosting site McColo disappeared on Tuesday. Along with it went thousands of pieces of spam, thanks, in part, to investigative work by Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs. -
From Firefox to Fennec: Mozilla Has Surprises In Store
1 week, 5 days ago
Yesterday, on WebWorkerDaily, I noted in a post that the first extension has been created for Mozilla's Fennec mobile browser (Fennec means small fox). Mozilla quietly reported this news in a blog post. With this in mind, and for several other reasons, I think many people are underestimating the impact Fennec will have as a mobile browser. Here is why. -
5+ uber-useful Firefox Plugins You Should Use Too
1 week, 5 days ago
Here's a list of extremely useful plugins which can make a power user's life on the Web much easier! -
Firefox 3 Soldiers On As Firefox 2 Prepares Its Exit
2 weeks ago
In October, Mozilla witnessed a surge in Firefox 3's market share as it continued its plan to decommission Firefox 2 -- and the Gecko engine that powered it -- before the end of December. For two weeks in October, Firefox 3 claimed 20% market share, something that web metrics company Net Applications predicted might happen within a month of the new version's June release. Stalled growth, and Chrome's appearance caused some backslide, but Firefox 3's pulse is getting stronger. -
Top 3 Mozilla Firefox 4 Features For Next Generation Browsing Experience
2 weeks, 2 days ago
Mozilla Firefox needs no special mention to anyone who is associated with internet. Perhaps the fastest and most reliable browser in this world is the most popular one too as they achieved the Guiness Book of World Records for most download in a single day. The key to their success has been continuous improvement of the browser and large committed group of high-quality developers, which Mozilla Foundation could cheaply leverage due to the open source nature of the product. Mozilla Foundation surely do not believe in resting on their laurels. Mozilla Firefox 4 suits the idiom perfectly as it is coming up with some features we could have never imagined in a browser. So let us sneak into that world. -
Web freeloaders can breathe easy at Web 2.0 Summit
2 weeks, 3 days ago
With warnings of doom coming from Web investors, and CEOs cutting back on staff in order to focus their companies on revenue, I am not expecting the Web 2.0 Summit, which opens this Wednesday in San Francisco, to be the happy and upbeat affair it's been in years past. People at the conference will be taking a dispassionate look at the business models of the services under discussion this year, as opposed to focusing on user growth amd technology innovation -
Chrome and Firefox Browser Betas Duke it Out in Speed Tests
2 weeks, 3 days ago
Speed tests are starting to come in from several sources for the updated beta versions of the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers. Chrome is out in its third beta revision, and the beta of Firefox 3.1 adds TraceMonkey functionality for improved JavaScript performance. Better Javascript performance promises to be a big attraction going forward in both browsers, and could substantially speed up how applications hosted online perform. Here are some of the latest speed results. -
10 Fun Firefox Add-ons
4 weeks ago
We all know that Firefox has hundreds of great add-ons to enhance our web browsing experience. In fact, there's always an article that lists some of the best Firefox add-ons or extensions. -
Opera 9.60 Review - Awesomeness, Great Features and a Few Annoying Crashes
1 month ago
I must say that I think Opera is doing a great job supporting its browser on Linux. Even though it's closed-source, it's still one of the most powerful web browsers out there, and each release comes with packages for every major distribution out there. - More News
Linux.com : Internet & WWW
Enrich your Joomla! site with image extensions
Several extensions can help you work with photographic images on your Joomla! content management system. Here are some of the best.
Set Mantis to track your bugs
Mantis is that rare bug-tracking program for small projects that is neither too bloated nor too featureless. It's an excellent choice for developers who need a bug tracker that the average computer user can use. Its clean interface and numerous features make bug tracking fast and easy.
Winemaker wears a Joomla! developer hat
Dave Whiting, the principal at Red Newt Cellars winery in upstate New York, was tired of chasing vendors to try to get them to support clunky custom content management systems on his site at RedNewt.com. The independent winemaker decided to branch out and teach himself site development skills, with the help of some popular open source applications. The happy result is a full-featured interactive ecommerce site that Whiting says is flexible, scalable, and secure.
Gollem: A Web-based file manager for back-end data
There are many ways to share files with teams of people, but few require only a Web browser for access and let you choose from tens of different ways of authenticating user access to the files. Such lightweight and universal access is the promise of Gollem, a file manager that runs in your Web browser. With it you can connect to and manage your files on a WebDAV, FTP, or traditional filesystem or SQL database.
Listen to your music anywhere with Subsonic
If your music library is tied to your CD collection or MP3 player, you can still hit the road without losing access to your tunes. Subsonic is a free, Web-based media streamer that lets you -- and your friends -- access your music collection over the Internet.
Dillo 2.0 is fast, but limited
The lightweight Dillo Web browser, in development for eight years, has always been a contender for the fastest browser available on GNU/Linux -- so much so that the Google's Chrome will have to be pretty nimble to outpace it. With last month's release of version 2.0, Dillo is faster than ever. If performance is your main priority, you might find Dillo's minimalistic tools and functional limitations an acceptable tradeoff -- but probably not.
First look: Mozilla's mobile Fennec browser
Mozilla released the first workable alpha version of its new Fennec mobile browser last week, showcasing a new interface optimized for small-screen devices. Despite the slimmed-down look, however, Fennec makes use of the same Mozilla technologies under the hood that are well-known in Firefox. In my testing on my own handheld device, I found Fennec an enticing browser with a well-thought-out interface.
Perspectives extension improves HTTPS security
Ah, cryptographic security: a boon to those who understand the algorithms, but all too often a lost cause to those who don't. The secure HTTPS protocol for Web surfing is widely accepted, but has one fatal flaw: users ignore certificate error warnings. A Firefox extension called Perspectives aims to close that security hole.
Float irregular images on your Web pages with pngslice
Web sites that run text squarely around images even when the images don't have even borders look a little lazy. pngslice slices an image into thin vertical images and generates a small chunk of HTML to align these slices so that the original image can be seen in a Web browser. This lets you place non-rectangular floating images on Web pages and align the surrounding text to the uneven borders of the image for a professional-looking layout.
Mozilla launches video accessibility drive
Video and audio support will soon be built directly into Firefox, by way of the free Vorbis and Theora codecs, and Mozilla is using the opportunity to advance multimedia accessibility for hearing-impaired and seeing-impaired users. Although HTML 5 does not officially include Ogg Vorbis and Theora as baseline codecs for the new VIDEO and AUDIO tags, Mozilla has adopted them for its own implementation. Researcher Silvia Pfeiffer is leading a Mozilla Foundation-funded effort to integrate support for closed captioning and other multimedia accessibility features into the Ogg formats and their implementation in Firefox.
Picasa 3 for Linux: A video tour
Google's Picasa is all about photos -- it helps you instantly find, edit, and share all the pictures on your computer. Although it isn't released as open source it is free to download and use from Google's Web site. The new version 3, which is currently in beta, is available for Windows as well as Linux.
Pidgin instant messaging client: a video tour
Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim, is a popular Instant Messaging (IM) client for Linux. It works with 16 different IM services, including AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Google, and can handle simultaneous connections to as many of them as you like. This 10-minute video is a brief introduction to Pidgin that shows how easy it is to install, in this case on OpenSUSE 11, how easy it is to set Pidgin up to use an existing IM account, and how to find and join an IRC channel with Pidgin.
Adding search to your Web site with Xapian and Omega
With Xapian and Omega you can quickly build a powerful search interface for your Web site. You'll be able to index your HTML, PDF, and PHP content and search for it by metadata or words contained in the documents.
Project management over the Web with Collabtive
Collabtive is a modern Web application that allows teams to collaborate on projects, manage tasks, milestones, and files, and send instant messages to each other.
OpenGoo delivers the best of CRM and project management
Online office suites are attractive for organizations with modest document processing needs, especially due to their low cost (read: free). But if you don't like the idea of storing your documents outside your network, try OpenGoo. It's an online office suite that installs on your local network and allows users to collaborate with others both inside and outside the network. The open source software, still under active development, is an easy to install and use, and if it's not quite ready for real-world large-scale deployment, it's getting there fast.
Setting up your own certificate authority with gnoMint
gnoMint is a desktop application that lets you easily manage your own certificate authority (CA). Many secure communications technologies use digital certificates to ensure that the party or service they are connecting with is not an impostor. For many people, the main exposure to digital certificates comes when they visit an HTTPS Web site and see a certificate to validate that they have contacted the right Web server.
Save a Web page for later with Read It Later extension
At first sight, the Read It Later (RIL) extension looks redundant -- after all, you can use Firefox's own bookmarking functionality to save Web pages for later reading. But dig deeper, and you'll discover that it offers enough nifty features to make it a must-have tool for most users.
Serving and styling maps with Geoserver
Google Maps opened up a whole new world of mapping on the Web, making it easy for companies and individuals to put their data on a map. But if you want more control over how your maps look, or have data that doesn't really work well with Google Maps, there are other options, including serving your own data with Geoserver.
Faster Web page load times for mobile devices with Ziproxy
Ziproxy is Web proxy server, but rather than cache content the way Web proxies like Squid do, it's designed to compress the content that it fetches from the Web before forwarding it to the Web client. It can be useful for serving mobile devices like handheld Internet tablets that cannot take full advantage of high-resolution, high-quality images, or where the browser client is running over a mobile data plan where speed is low and bytes are expensive.
Roll custom social networking sites with Elgg 1.0
Elgg is an open source application for rolling out a social network. It installs like any Web-based software, but instead of a blog or a wiki, it gives you all the components of a social networking site -- your own MySpace! It's popular with educational institutes and used by several universities across the world, in addition to powering social networks of companies such as Swatch. The new Elgg 1.0, released last month, is modular in design, making it easier for developers to build social networks around the platform.
