The Download Blog: Software tips, news, and opinions from Download.com editors

Firefox in Russia dumps Google for Yandex

Stephen Shankland — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:02:00 PST

Russian-language Firefox users will see a new default search provider soon: Google rival Yandex.

Mozilla currently has Google set to be the default search engine in Russian Firefox, but it concluded that Yandex was the better choice, according to a blog post by Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson on Friday.

"Over the past few months, we have listened to feedback, talked with our localizers, studied the trends of our Firefox Yandex builds, and reviewed the Yandex user experience. All this activity led us to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds," Anderson said.

"As a result, we're planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds," he said. Version 3.1 is due in coming weeks, after a third beta version is released and tested.

Mozilla gets the vast majority of its revenue through a partnership under which Google shares revenue from search ads. In 2007, that was $66 million of Mozilla's $75 million total revenue.

Details on the change can be seen in the Mozilla bug tracker, which specifically refers to "the new business arrangement between Mozilla and Yandex in Russia."

Originally posted at Webware

Chrome gets Mac deadline, extensions foundation

Stephen Shankland — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:38:00 PST

Showing signs that it's working to meet requests for new developments to its Chrome browser, Google on Friday said it hopes to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year, and it released a new version Wednesday that paves the way for the most requested feature: extensions.

Google has high hopes for Chrome--in particular, the Internet giant wants better performance, so browsing the Web is faster and Web-based applications are more powerful. Now Google is filling in some missing pieces Chrome needs in order to attain wider usage.

Brian Rakowski, Chrome's product manager, said the company wants to release Chrome for Mac and Linux before the first half of 2009 is up.

"That's what we've been hoping for," he said in an interview Friday. "Those two efforts proceeding in parallel. They're at the same level of progress."

The Mac and Linux versions are up to the level of a basic "test shell" that can show Web pages. But a test shell is pretty raw.

"That team now is able to render most Web pages pretty well. But in terms of the user experience, it's very basic," Rakowski said of the Mac version. "We have not spent any time building out features. We're still iterating on making it stable and getting the architecture right."

In an unscientific CNET News survey from November, a Mac version was the second most common barrier to getting people to switch to Chrome, trailing only faster performance. Eager beavers can monitor Google's Chrome for Mac progress and install the Mac test shell.

Extensions en route
Another major missing piece of Chrome is a framework to handle extensions, optional features that can be downloaded and plugged in to customize the browser. Extensions were one of the early advantages that helped Firefox blossom, it's the top-requested feature for Chrome, and it ranked third in the CNET survey of Chrome barriers.

But a new cutting-edge version of Chrome, 2.0.156.1, gets support for some "Greasemonkey" scripts to customize the browser, a move that lays the groundwork for extensions, Rakowski said.

"We have user script support. That's a baby step," he said. As Chrome develops, Google will "expose more capabilities, then expose containers where can you have your own toolbar-like thing. You'll see it evolve over time."

Google promised an extensions framework when Chrome launched, and more recently, Google outlined its Chrome extensions vision.

Counting Chrome
Google released Chrome 1.0 in December, just three months after the software publicly debuted, and the company is working hard to maintain a fast development pace. Wednesday's version, though not for the general public, is the first to sport the version 2 number.

Also updated with the new version is Google's Chrome release structure.

Before, Google let people subscribe to two Chrome update channels: beta and developer. The first was for relatively well-tested versions; the second for programmers, Web developers, and people with more curiosity and a higher bug threshold.

Now there are three Chrome channels: stable, beta, and developer preview.

Most folks will just use the stable version, which Google expects to update roughly once a quarter, Rakowski said. "The beta channel is now what the developer channel used to be," he added, with newer features but still a reasonable amount of testing. Newest is the developer preview channel, where code will be frequently updated and much more raw, and where Google expects some features to fail and be withdrawn.

Google expects to issue new developer preview versions roughly every couple weeks and new beta releases roughly monthly, Rakowski said.

Major new features
Version 2.0.156.1 includes many new features besides Greasemonkey support. Among them:

• Autocomplete, so Chrome can remember what you've typed into Web forms and enter them again. "A lot of people asked for that. It turns out it's more complicated than it seems on the surface," Rakowski said.

• Full-page zoom, so that using Ctrl+ and Ctrl- to increase or decrease elements on a Web page works better. Before, only text grew or shrank, but now other elements do, too.

• Browser profiles, so you can set up a browser configuration with particular settings such as bookmarks and cookies.

• The ability to import bookmarks from the Google Bookmarks site.

• Autoscroll, so clicking a mouse's middle button, then moving the mouse, lets you slide around larger pages. This is handy for panning around large images without constantly zooming in and out.

• Faster Safe Browsing, a feature to issue warnings about sites that may conduct phishing attacks or other malicious behavior.

• Under the hood, the update gets a new version of the open-source WebKit engine for converting a Web page's descriptive HTML and CSS code into the page displayed on a computer. Chrome's current stable release uses the same WebKit version as is used in Apple's Safari 3.1, but the new Chrome developer preview uses WebKit 528.8, which is faster and supports features such as CSS canvas drawing for 2D shapes such as lines on maps or custom-generated charts.

• An update of Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine from version 0.3.9.3 to 0.4.6.0. JavaScript is used for more elaborate Web pages, and the new version is faster, Rakowski said.

Missing from the new version is support for automatic discovery of Web site subscriptions through RSS and Atom "feed" technology. Google has mapped out feed support; the company plans to add it in the version 2 time frame, Rakowski said.

Originally posted at Webware

Photos: The software of CES 2009

Jessica Dolcourt — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:51:00 PST

The characteristically frenetic Consumer Electronics Show may have slowed its pace in response to tech's economic dip, but there are still a few stunners claiming the spotlight at the Vegas show. And some of them aren't even gadgets.

Meet some of the software on the show floor.

Hoover's lays out mobile apps for business pros

Jessica Dolcourt — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:31:00 PST

(Credit: Hoover's)

If knowledge is power, then salespeople in the field and roving business execs can now wield their share of it thanks to two new mobile apps. Hoover's Mobile and Hoover's MobileSP tap into the Hoover's business directory to bring instant company and employee information to sales, financial, media professionals, and just about anyone else drenched in B2B.

The free Hoover's Mobile for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile phones looks up company information, phone numbers, the building address, executive organization, competitors, and financial overview for any company you enter--like the one whose doors you're about to waltz through.

Pony up $20 per month for Hoover's MobileSP--BlackBerry or Windows Mobile only--and get an interactive GPS reading that can build you lists of prospects near you based on any number of filters, including business size, earnings, and the mile radius of your choice.

Hoover's MobileSP can also fetch in-depth financials, and industry and company details that you can then save on your phone, down to a roster of the company's employees. Extremely useful, and creepy.

Originally posted at CES 2009

Palm's WebOS app strategy needs more details

Tom Krazit — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:20:00 PST

Palm's plan for application development on the new Palm Pre will help determine its fate.

(Credit: Palm)

Palm's new WebOS passed its first test: it looks good. But will the device attract legions of developers?

Just hours after Palm showed off its new operating system running on the Palm Pre, details are still rolling in about the unit and its software. One important factor that will have to be addressed is application development and distribution. Palm has confirmed plans to administer some sort of central store for application downloads. But there still is scarce information about how that will actually work.

Palm's Stephane Maes said that Palm will not attempt to approve every single application developed for WebOS, as Apple does for iPhone applications.

"Certainly, we want to let a thousand flowers bloom," he said. "Every now and then there are a few dandelions we'll want to winnow out."

Unable to let the clichéd misquote of Mao Zedong pass (he actually persecuted many of those who dared let their ideas bloom), let's move on to ask the more important questions that went unanswered this morning.

If Palm is retaining some right to refuse applications, how will those choices be made? Apple has faced its fair share of criticism over nebulous policies for approving or rejecting applications for the App Store, which have frustrated many developers even as they've flocked to the App Store.

Even if Palm takes a laissez-faire approach to the types of applications created for WebOS, will the Palm Store be the exclusive venue for those applications, or will Palm allow competition between the types of online stores that sell current Palm OS applications and its own?

How will the WebOS SDK work? The Mojo SDK is available as a private prerelease, according to a message posted by Palm on its developer home page, and will be a public download later in the year.

Palm's Pre preview

Here's a rundown of the basics of the touch-screen smartphone Palm announced at CES Wednesday. For more details, read our summary here.

New WebOS operating system
iPhone-like gestures, multitasking

Slide-out keyboard
Friendlier for e-mail, text?

Exclusive to Sprint
No GSM, no overseas roaming

Price unknown
Cost crucial for competition

Developers will use Mojo, WebOS's application framework, to develop WebOS applications using standard technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. That means it will likely be much easier for application developers to get up and running on WebOS as compared to the time needed to learn platforms such as Android, the iPhone, or BlackBerry. Palm also says there will be a way to migrate older Palm OS applications to WebOS, but doesn't say how that will work or how it might affect performance.

Palm, a mobile computing pioneer, is well-versed in running a development organization but times have changed since the Palm OS was the PDA world's dominant operating system. It is unclear whether the company will be able to reclaim developers who have moved onto the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or Android.

These are crucial questions to consider in judging how WebOS and the Palm Pre will play in the current market, not the least being that developer support is a key factor in making a smartphone a more attractive product. At least one Palm developer contacted us urging Palm to resolve these issues sooner rather than later.

Bill MacAdam, director of product development at auto industry software developer GigglePop and longtime Palm OS developer, wants very much to known what Palm has in mind regarding application distribution.

"We very much need to maintain the existing distribution model where the installation of software can take place without going through a store," he wrote in an e-mail. "While a store is a convenient place for consumers to purchase applications, it doesn't work well for business / enterprise applications. It is also very important that we have a very specific roadmap to help us with the transition."

Palm's a little late to the Smartphone 2.0 game, but it got off to a good start with the Palm Pre roll out. Obviously, it will take much more than a flashy demo to get Palm back on track. How the company handles application development will loom large in its success or failure.

Originally posted at News - Wireless

Learn how to play guitar in your browser (in 3D)

Josh Lowensohn — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:12:00 PST

Apple's Macworld announcement about professional and celebrity music instruction as part of GarageBand '09 may have been impressive, but what might be a little more eye catching (and ultimately useful) is iPerform3D. This browser-based music learning system shows users how to play guitar in 3D, and works on both Macs and PCs.

iPerform3D eschews A-list music celebrities like Sting and Sarah McLachlan in place of guitar-playing veterans who have undergone motion capture recording of their entire bodies (fingers especially) to teach you various lessons. To learn, you get control of a 3D video player that lets you change vantage points, as well as slow down or speed up the lesson.

The service's claim to fame is that this 3D viewer gets rid of some of the limitations that come from simply watching someone play in a video or over a Web cam. You can zoom around behind the neck of the guitar and see through where your fingers are supposed to go. It's pretty neat, and a lot easier than trying to reverse the image in your head to do what you're seeing. Each video comes with three view presets, although you can simply click and drag around with your mouse to adjust each angle further.

iPerform3D's player lets you zoom around to whatever angle you want, and includes three button presets to let you skip to ones that cover finger placement. Click to enlarge.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The service offers both a beginner course ($40) and three different monthly membership subscriptions ranging from $30 for one month all the way up to $140 for an entire year. These give you access to set of intermediate lessons and "jam tracks" which serve as background loops for you to practice what you've learned.

One thing worth noting is that the service won't work without the installation of the Unity-3D rendering engine (which isn't just a simple browser add-on). The upside of this is that once it's installed on your machine you can run the lessons from almost any of your browsers, although IE, Firefox, and Safari are the only ones "supported."

Here's the video pitch:

Originally posted at Webware

3DVU announces Way2Go 3D mobile mapping

Jessica Dolcourt — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:32:00 PST

(Credit: 3DVU)

For the hopelessly turned around, 3DVU announced Way2Go at CES this week, a mobile app and online mapping service that will let you put personalized 3D routes on your mobile phone.

Subscribers to the new Way2Go service will be able to create up to 30 3D aerial picture routes online, which they'll then be able to access from their cell phones through a downloadable viewer. GPS tracking and verbal and written directions will also be there to keep you on course.

In addition to using routes to get from point A to point B, the service lets you forward routes that your contacts can view and use themselves for free.

Way2Go's service will cost about $5 per month and will be available by the end of March on Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile phones, and to users in the U.S., U.K., and select Western European countries.

It will be interesting to see this service go head-to-head with Google Maps for Mobile, which currently provides driving directions and street view for free to select phones.

Originally posted at CES 2009

LimeWire mixing social networking, P2P

Daniel Terdiman — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:36:00 PST

LimeWire 5.0 allows users to share files with friends on any Jabber-compatible system, as well as to have search results incorporate files from the LimeWire store.

(Credit: Lime Wire)

LAS VEGAS--Get ready for the collision of social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing.

With the beta release of LimeWire 5.0 (download for Windows| Mac), which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show here, the popular P2P service is incorporating a social element that will enable people using Jabber-compatible services like Gmail to share files with friends on their buddy lists. Lime Wire calls this a "personal sharing network."

The idea, said Lime Wire CEO George Searle, is to add trusted context to user searches for content, given that people are more likely to want--and feel comfortable with--content from people they know.

Additionally, Searle explained that the new social features of LimeWire--which has 70 million monthly unique users and more than 5 billion queries a month--will enable people to choose whether to make files available to the public at large, or just to their friends and family.

In many ways, this is much like many other content-sharing systems. But to Searle, adding a social component to LimeWire means making what is already an extremely popular service more personal to many users.

Essentially, the way the new feature works is that users will be able to decide whether to make files--photographs, for example--available to anyone on LimeWire, or just to people on their buddy lists. Similarly, users will be able to search for files from their friends. And this will take advantage of a sharing system that tens of millions of people already use, something that Lime Wire hopes will encourage many on the service to adopt the social elements.

Searle said he hopes that the social feature will allow users to trust the sources of the content they share across the system in a way that's not really possible when sharing with strangers.

Originally posted at Geek Gestalt

Identity Finder's new free privacy application

Jessica Dolcourt — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:01:00 PST

(Credit: CNET)

Identity Finder released a free version of its Windows privacy application that's aimed at in-betweeners who worry enough about identity fraud to seek a privacy application, but not enough to trade vigilance for cash.

Of course, that's only one way to look at Identity Finder Free, introduced Thursday. Another is its role to attract spenders to a product family they may not otherwise be aware of or interested in. And why not? All's fair in business promotions during acute economic decline.

Identity Finder Free, a light version of Identity Finder Home Edition, retains the application's core purposes of searching your PC, and Firefox, or Internet Explorer browser, for passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive information a data thief could easily use to hijack your identity--and then destroying them at your say-so.

The application installs a shared start-up window for both Free and Home editions. From there you'll check a box to use the limited free version a single time, or every time thereafter.

The free version won't scour your e-mail messages and attachments, generate reports, or search in the background--for those features you'll need to upgrade to the $24.95 version. (Compare versions here.)

Skype Lite landing on Android phone, others too

Jessica Dolcourt — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:45:00 PST

Skype Lite on Java

(Credit: Skype)

Skype announced on Thursday the forthcoming release of Skype Lite for Google Android and other Java-enabled phones. Skype Lite marks the communication company's first native VoIP client for Java.

Skype is submitting the app to Google's Android Market on Thursday morning, though it could take Google a few days to offer it for download.

In addition, Skype Lite will also be available on Thursday to about 100 models of Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, LG, and Samsung phones. The app has been available in beta form for a growing number of handsets on Skype.com, and isn't expected to change in this initial release.

Skype Lite is truly that: a back-to-basics build that allows the customary cut-rate international calling to Skype contacts, and also calling credits to non-Skype buddies using the SkypeOut service. You'll be able to IM other Skype friends in addition, an activity best done with a data plan. Users anticipating the fuller features of the newly updated Skype for Windows Mobile beta won't find them in this debut version.

Skype Lite will process calls to the United Kingdom, Poland, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo), Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Australia, and New Zealand, and will also work for calls made in the U.S.

Skype Lite takes the communications company a step deeper into the mobile world with service for the top five phone brands, but it faces fierce competition from Fring, a relative VoIP youngster that already brings more advanced features than Skype Lite to Symbian devices in the Nokia and Sony Ericsson families, including file transferring and instant messaging with contacts on multiple chat networks.

Originally posted at CES 2009