KINDLE FIRE STOPS BLOCKING ANDROID MARKET

Some of you may have noticed, when perusing the interwebs on your Kindle Fire, that a certain Google-branded Market refused to load in the slate's Silk browser. In fact, it automatically redirected you to the Amazon App store in an unsettling bit of URL hijacking. Well, with the latest update to the tablet, that slightly befuddling restriction has been lifted and the questionable behavior rectified. Presumably this was originally intended to save customers confusion and support staff headaches when trying to install an app from the Android Market failed. But, actually intercepting and redirecting a user isn't becoming of a company that expects us to trust it with our data -- especially our browsing and financial info. Thankfully now, you can visit the Market in all its glory on your Fire, just don't expect to install apps from it any time soon

FIREFOX IN TROUBLE NOW THAT GOOGLE DEAL HAS APPARENTLY ENDED

It hasn’t been a good year for Mozilla and its flagship product, the Firefox browser. Firefox continues to lose share to Google Chrome. Statistics from Net Market Share show the decline, with Firefox plunging from 25% to 22% and Chrome rising from under 5% to more than 18% during the last two years.

Now, the deal with Mozilla’s biggest financial backer is in question. A search partnership with Google has historically been Mozilla’s greatest source of income. In a recent financial statement from the Mozilla Foundation back in Augusta "The Corporation has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires November 2011. Approximately 84% and 86% of royalty revenue for 2010 and 2009, respectively, was derived from this contract."

When asked for clarification a Mozilla spokesperson replied with a link to the 2009 financial FAQ, which contained equally vague language: “We believe that search providers will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future” and a PR spokesperson said on December 1 when asked about the Google contract being renegotiated "We currently do not have an update to share."

FIREFOX 6 OFFICIALLY RELEASING ON TUESDAY AUGUST 16, AVAILABLE NOW

In typical Mozilla fashion, a complete build of Firefox 6 is now unofficially available for your downloading pleasure, three days ahead of schedule. If you're looking for a major facelift to the desktop edition, you won't find one here -- most of the new features aren't cosmetic. Perhaps most visibly, you'll find the domain name of the page you're parked on highlighted in the address bar. On the Android side, version 6 makes much bigger promises, like a "fresh visual style in Chrome Gingerbread," enhanced image scaling, and, perhaps most importantly, it's "faster and uses less memory." We've downloaded the desktop version of the browser ourselves, and we've found the release quite snappy. If you're not afraid of a little pre-release downloading, you can catch the (desktop) fox at the source links below.

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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.

ARE INTERNET EXPLORER USERS LESS INTELLIGENT?

A research firm posted an IQ test on its Web site and then compiled the results from more than 100,000 users. It found that there was no substantial difference between users of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. But Internet Explorer users had IQs below average.

That's a switch from five years ago, when IQs were more or less the same across all browsers.
The company, Aptiquant, bills itself as a "psychometric consultant." Its main business is creating tests to help businesses hire well. Now before all you Opera users get too satisfied with yourselves, there are lots of possible reasons why IE users scored so low:

• IE has about twice the installed base of any other browser, so IQs are more likely to tend toward the mean
• IE is the default browser of 95% of people who don't know how to download and install a new browser, which drags down the average. (Mac users in this boat stick with Safari.)
• People who use other browsers include a disproportionate number of computer geeks, which brings their averages up
• Online IQ tests -- or IQ tests in general -- are silly
• IE users really are kind of dumb
  

GOOGLE CHROME 12 AVAILABLE

Google's Chrome browser has been updated to version 12. This stable version brings expanded malware protection. In addition to Chrome’s existing phishing defenses and Google’s Safe Browsing integration, Chrome can now warn users before malicious files are downloaded. Another handy security-related update in Chrome 12 is that its built-in file clean-up tools can now delete Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects) in addition to standard browser cookies.

And since updates are always about adding functionality, it’s worth noting that Google Chrome 12 has finally done away with the Google Gears plug-in.

Chrome 12 has hardware accelerated 3D CSS enabled by default. To check out the capabilities head on over to the Chrome Experiments site and play around with some of the fun demos.

If your using Google Chrome you can wait for it to update automatically or click the wrench and then About Chrome. If you need to download Chrome, click here.

MICROSOFT TO LAUNCH WINDOWS PHONE 7 MARKETPLACE ON WEB

We're not quite sure why Microsoft didn't make mention of it during its big event yesterday, but the company has now confirmed that its forthcoming "Mango" update will also bring with it another significant addition to the Windows Phone scene: a web-based Marketplace. That will of course let you browse and buy apps right from your favorite web browser, and then have them installed on your phone over-the-air. You'll also be able to take advantage of various social networking tie-ins to share apps with your friends, and the Marketplace will hang onto your download history so you can easily reinstall all of your apps if you switch phones -- and, yes, you can count on plenty of Bing integration as well.

WEB-BASED GOOGLE MAPS UPDATED FOR BOTH iOS AND ANDROID

Google, noting that 40% of its Google Maps users are on mobile devices, updated its Google Maps Web app for iOS and Android today. We’ve been pretty satisfied with the native applications on Android and iOS, but the website allows you to access many of the options that are available from a desktop browser, too. That includes the ability to view your location, search nearby areas with suggestions and auto-complete, get directions for driving, transit, biking, or walking, view different lays, view Place pages, and access your starred locations.

You can access the revamped interface by visiting maps.google.com from your iOS or Android device.

MICROSOFT TO UNVEIL NEXT MAJOR RELEASE OF WINDOWS PHONE MAY 24TH

Microsoft has scheduled a Windows Phone event in New York City on May 24th, 2011, during which the company will “lift the curtain on the next major release of Windows Phone.” We know Mango will offer Internet Explorer 9 with an integrated Twitter experience, better multitasking, and new apps such as Angry Birds, Skype, and Spotify. We’ve also heard that Microsoft will add Bing Audio for identifying music, Bing Vision for scanning bar codes, and voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation with Bing Maps, although none of these features have been confirmed by Microsoft just yet.

TOR FORKS FIREFOX

The Tor project has announced that it will launch its own fork of Firefox that will include Tor integration. At present, users who want to use the decentralised Tor network to browse the internet anonymously install the Firefox extension Torbutton and additional Tor software. As developer Mike Perry has written on the project blog, the need to install additional software creates an unnecessary and complicating hurdle for many users. They also often find the toggle system for turning anonymity on and off confusing. Users would also often not remember in which mode certain tabs were opened, thereby putting anonymity and privacy at risk.

It has also proved difficult to maintain Torbutton as new features are introduced and bugs are fixed in Firefox, disrupting the functioning of Torbutton; avoiding this was not usually a high priority for the Firefox developers. For these reasons, the project has decided to maintain its own Firefox fork which will be developed under the name of the Tor Browser. In addition, the project also intends to remove the Torbutton Firefox extension from Mozilla's add-on repository and only offer it for experienced users from the Tor project site; maintenance will be discontinued.

MOZILLA LAUNCHES FIREFOX 4 FOR ANDROID AND MAEMO

On Tuesday, Mozilla released the latest version of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo smartphones. Firefox 4 now includes support for Firefox Sync, which allows you to sync open tabs, history, bookmarks, passwords, and other data, between your computer and your smartphone. The new Firefox allows for tabbed browsing, add-on installation, and features a new, streamlined look.

Mozilla says it will also automatically hide the browser controls when they aren’t in use, which should allow users to view more of the website you’re parked on. There’s also options to save PDFs, share pages, and customize the default search engine. Mozilla says that Firefox 4 is up to 3x faster than the stock Android browser.

FIREFOX 4 DOWNLOADED OVER 6 MILLION TIMES IN 24 HOURS

Mozilla announced on Tuesday that the final release version of its Firefox 4 Web browser was available for download. Within its first 24 hours of availability, the browser was downloaded over 6 million times. Microsoft’s latest browser release, Internet Explorer 9, was downloaded 2.35 million times in its first 24 hours of availability.

Version 4 of the popular Firefox Web browser features a variety of enhancements including a redesigned UI, improved tab management and faster performance. Mozilla’s Firefox browser is the second most popular browser in the world according to market share tracker Net Applications. Firefox held a 21.74% global browser share in February, behind Internet Explorer’s 56.77% and ahead of No. 3 browser Chrome, which has grown to 10.93% in a very short period of time. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox have seen their shares decrease over the past year, while Google’s Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari browser have gained popularity.

RIM RESPONDS TO BLACKBERRY HACKING AT PWN2OWN

It's not just desktop web browsers getting hacked at this year's Pwn2Own challenge -- mobile browsers have also been targeted for vulnerabilities, and a fairly big one has now been found in RIM's browser for BlackBerry OS 6.

Apparently, there's a JavaScript-related bug that could let a "maliciously designed" website gain access to data stored on both the phone's media card and built-in storage, but not data stored in the storage portion for applications (such as email or contact information). For its part, RIM says that it hasn't actually seen any evidence of anyone exploiting the vulnerability, but it's nonetheless urging folks to disable JavaScript on affected devices, and it's now busy providing IT departments everywhere with guidelines on how to do so. If that proves to be complicated, it's suggesting that you simply disable the BlackBerry Browser altogether until it can be patched.

INTERNET EXPLORER OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED LAST NIGHT

Microsoft officially brought Internet Explorer out of beta and RC last night. You can download the browser at Microsoft's website. IE9 will only run on any flavor of Vista or Win7, so you XP'ers are out of luck and stuck with IE8.

Microsoft has put a lot of work into their latest browser. Gone is the cluttered toolbars of IE8 and replaced with a simple layout. Some of the nicest features include Pinned Sites, which allows users to drag the tab out of IE9 and pin it directly to the Windows taskbar. When pinned it pulls the favicon so it looks like it's actually a separate program. Some sites will also support jump lists, which is the list of shortcuts that appears when you right click the icons (pictured above). For instance, when Twitter is pinned, you can could jump straight to Direct Mentions, Mentions, etc.

The address bar has also been improved and is more like the Google address bar. Now called the One Box, it doubles as a search engine, but you can actually view results in line. The default search engine is still Bing, but you can install Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, Facebook and lots of others through the Add-On page.

Beyond those cool tricks and nice UI tweaks, the big change with IE9 is speed. The browser feels faster than IE8 and is very close to Chrome.

JOLI OS 1.2 NOW AVAILABLE

Joli OS, formerly Jolicloud, 1.2 has just been released. You can download the OS or test out the web app in Chrome right this second. the OS has dropped the "cloud" part of its name, but ironically, it's more cloud based than ever. The entire OS has always been centered around web apps, and now the focus is on making those easier to share, discover, and create.

The UI has been polished a bit and Dropbox has been integrated so you can easily access files from any of your Joli OS devices. And that's where the new HTML 5 Chrome app comes in -- you don't have to install Joli OS on all your computers, you can now simply log in on any system that has a Chrome browser, although local apps, like OpenOffice won't work.

If you are interested, you can download the OS here.

MICROSOFT'S INTERNET EXPLORER 9 TO RELEASE MARCH 14TH

The official release of Internet Explorer 9 will drop on March 14th, bringing along with it a massive overhaul that imbues IE with some desperately needed standards support, as well as a healthy speed boost and the benefit of hardware acceleration.

The first Platform Preview of IE9 dropped almost a year ago, and Microsoft has been consistently updating the previews and betas since then, fleshing out its HTML5 and CSS 3 compliance, along with improving its feature set. HTML5 and CSS 3 compliance are particularly nice to get, since IE8 doesn’t support HTML5 at all, and is at least part of the reason why the web has been slow to adopt the latest iteration of the standard.

Whether people will upgrade, though, is a big question. After all, Microsoft’s had a hard enough time killing off IE6, which still has a 12% share of the browser market after ten years. IE9 doesn’t even run on Windows XP, which is still one of the biggest operating systems in the world.

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 CHROME 10 NOW AVAILABLE WITH SPEED BOOST

It was just a month ago that Google released version 9 of its hot browser Chrome. They have now released version 10. The new version has speed increases as well as a new Options layout and sandboxing of integrated Flash, which provides better security from malware. Chrome 10 scored a 66% increase in Javascript performance. Users can now sync passwords across multiple computers as well. Google has some handy videos showing the improvements which you can view here.

OPERA BROWSER GETS AN OVER-17 RATING IN APP STORE; RESPONDS HUMUOROUSLY

You might not yet be aware of this, but Apple's policy towards web browsers is to treat the entire internet as their content. As a result, all browsers on the iOS App Store come with a minimum age requirement of 17 and the same rule will apply to them on the Mac App Store. Opera, the first non-native web explorer to make it in Apple's new desktop app repository is taking a humorous approach to things, with VP Jan Standal saying he's "not sure if, at that age, people are ready to use such an application. It's very fast, you know, and it has a lot of features."

All that said, Opera's willing to be reckless if you are, and will totally let you download its Mac software through its homepage -- no age or credit card checks required, though you might want to ask for your parents' permission first.

GOOGLE CONSIDERING REMOVING ADDRESS BAR IN CHROME BROWSER

When Google first unveiled the Chrome browser back in 2008, they ushered in one of the greatest innovations in consolidation ever: they merged the location bar with the search bar.

It might seem like a subtle tweak, but in actuality, with one fell swoop, Chrome had changed the way advanced users looked at the location bar. We used to view it as distinct from search, but that’s not the way 99% of all users think of it. Instead, for most users, search is the same as the address bar: the vast majority of users who access Facebook, for example, do so by searching for Facebook, not typing Facebook.com into their browser’s address bar. Google was the first company to realize that the delineation of address from search was not only unnecessary, but completely antithetical to the way the vast majority of people use their browser.

To be honest, Google’s merged address and search bar (coupled with user-definable search terms) is such a brilliant feature that I find any browser that doesn’t embrace it to be completely backwards. But I digress. Google’s now announced that they are toying with the idea of redefining the browser address bar in Chrome yet again, which — given Google’s history radically changing the address bar — is enough to catch my interest.

What Google intends on doing, though, is not change the functionality of the address bar. Instead, Google’s thinking about eliminating it entirely, either by replacing it with something less intrusive or by simply hiding it when it’s not being hovered over. [Geek]