RUMOR: SILVERLIGHT 5 MAY BE LAST AND ONLY WORK ON INTERNET EXPLORER

Could Microsoft's Silverlight soon be following in the footsteps of Adobe's Flash Player for mobile devices? That's still unconfirmed by Microsoft, but ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley is reporting that she's heard from several sources who say that Silverlight 5 will be the last version of the rich media platform, and that it's not clear how long it will be supported after it's released later this month. What's more, another source tells Foley that the final version of Silverlight 5 itself might only work with Internet Explorer on Windows, as opposed to earlier versions that have also supported Chrome and Safari on both OS X and Windows. As ZDNet notes, however, the end of Silverlight wouldn't necessarily mean an end to all of the work Microsoft has done on Silverlight -- we've already heard about a Silverlight-like app framework that's coming in a future Xbox update, and many of the same principles can also be found in the Metro-style apps for Windows 8.

ADOBE BRINGS FLASH TO iPHONE AND iPAD FOR ONLY $4,500

During the IBC trade show in Amsterdam on Friday, Adobe officially took the wraps off of its new Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 and Adobe Flash Access 3.0 products, which will allow iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users to access Adobe Flash content. Apple, which has long rejected Adobe’s Flash technology, doesn’t need to approve the tech for it to work, either. “With Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, media publishers now have a single, simple workflow for delivering content using the same stream to Flash-enabled devices or to the Apple iPhone and iPad,” Adobe said in a statement.

Flash Media Server 4.5 allows publishers to stream Flash content to iOS devices, which means support within the iOS Safari browser is not required. Instead of relying on a device’s processor to render the stream, which often degrades battery life and slows a device down, Adobe’s Flash Media Server 4.5 does all the legwork. Adobe Flash Media Server is available immediately to publishers for $4,500.

GOOGLE CHROME OVERTAKES FIREFOX AS UK'S #2 BROWSER

Google's Chrome is Britain's second most popular browser, a sign of the internet giant's increasing grip on the UK search market.

Three years after launch, Chrome last month captured 22% of UK users and marginally overtook Mozilla's Firefox browser, according to the web metrics firm Statcounter. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is losing market share to Chrome but remains the most popular browser for UK users with 45% – although it has a head start by being pre-installed on almost all computers sold in Britain. Apple's Safari is UK number four, with a 9% share.

AMAZON CLOUD PLAYER STREAMS TO iOS DEVICES AFTER UPDATE

Amazon Cloud Player has been laying low following its scuffle with Sony Music, but that hasn't kept the company's developers from rolling a crucial new feature out -- support for Apple's iOS devices, which it didn't have on day one. Despite running in the Safari browser window, we've confirmed that songs will indeed play. The interface of the Cloud Player is almost the same as, if not identical to, the page that loads up on your computer browser.

The Cloud Player works flawlessly with the multitasking controls in iOS; the usual forward/pause/volume options are all usable as you play Angry Birds. Sadly, there is just one bump in the road that keeps the process from being perfectly smooth: mobile Safari prohibits you from doing drag-and-drops, which adds a couple extra steps to the process of adding songs to your playlists.

APPLE'S SAFARI BROWSER HACKED IN 5 SECONDS; IE8 NOT FAR BEHIND

At this year’s Pwn2Own conference, security firms and enthusiasts are doing there very best to discover and deploy exploits to some of the world’s most popular browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).

Safari fared the worst of any of the browsers. A French security research firm named Vulpen managed to break into Safari running on a MacBook Air in a cool five seconds. The company noted that the Safari update issued by Apple yesterday — version 5.0.4 — fixes some of the vulnerabilities, but not all. The takedown of Safari 5.0.3 used exploits that are still available in the updated code base.

IE8 didn't fare much better. It was taken down by Stephen Fewer, who used three separate vulnerabilities to get out of Protected Mode and crack that browser's best locks.

Google's Chrome and Firefox are still standing and Google has stated they will pay $20,000 to any team or individual who could successfully hack Chrome. To fair we do have to mention that only two teams signed up for the Chrome challenge and one team didn't show and while the other chose to work on Blackberry exploits instead.

GOOGLE SAYS WEBM PLUG-INS COMING FOR SAFARI AND IE9

Google recently announced it was dropping support for the H.264 video codec from its Chrome HTML5 browser and supporting its own WebM open source codec. Google explained at the time that H.264 was not open source. They have released a further statement on the Chromium blog basically saying H.264 licenses cost money; Firefox and Opera don't support H.264 either; and big companies like Google are helping the little guy by championing this open alternative.

In the place of H.264, Google will be pushing its own video version named WebM, based on the VP8 codec. Google's version will be open source and free. They are currently working on a plug-in for Apple's Safari and Microsoft's IE9 browsers, neither of which include it out of the box.

GOOGLE'S CHROME BROWSER COMES IN FIRST IN BROWSER TESTS FOR WINDOWS

Google's Chrome browser annihilated the competition in a Windows browser test conducted by Ars Technica.  The test was done on a Asus laptop running a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate.  The Ars Technica team compared IE8, Opera 10, Firefox 3, Chrome 6 and Safari 5.  They also tested the betas of these browsers IE9, Firefox 4 beta, Chrome 7 dev, a WebKit nightly (Safari beta) and Opera 10.70.

The tests included the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, the V8 Benchmark Suite and Peacekeeper: The Browser Benchmark, testing JavaScripting performance.  They also used the Nontroppo General Browser Load-Time test, testing page load times.

In 6 out of the 8 tests, Chrome came in first.  In many instances by a wide margin.  In those tests where it did not come in first it was a close second.

Google's Chrome team goal is to release a new version approximately every six weeks, so the competition has its work cut out for it, but the Chrome team can't rest on its laurels since the other developers are also working on newer versions to un-crown the current king. [Ars Technica]

INTERNET EXPLORER CONTINUES SLIDE IN BROWSER WARS 2

Internet Explorer (IE) continues it's slide against an onslaught of browsers.  The perennial favorite has dropped to under 50% of the market, currently at 49.87%.  Compared this to Firefox making up 31.5% and Chrome coming up fast with 11.54%.  A number of other browsers, like Safari and Opera, make up the rest.  Interestingly, Chrome's market share has tripled in the last year.

Two years ago IE had over two-thirds of the market, but with a slew of new browsers that are faster and more configurable, the venerable browser just couldn't continue to compete.  Microsoft must have finally acknowledged the inevitable as it released an upgrade with IE 8 and a ground up redo with IE 9, currently in beta.

TehGayGeek's stats show that IE is the third most popular browser to visit the site at 22.62%.  The number one browser is Firefox at 34.73% followed by Chrome at 29.08%. [Engadget]

LIVESTREAM THE APPLE EVENT TOMORROW

Apple will be livestreaming their media event tomorrow.  Head on over to apple.com tomorrow at 10am PT to watch all the announcements live.  Of course this is limited to those on Macs, running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard, an iPhone, iPod Touch running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad.