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Opera Mini 5 Beta is Available For Android

March 11th, 2010

Opera Mini 5 Beta is now available for Android-based mobile phones.

The new version of Opera offers a big leap in features and functionality, compared to the previous version – Opera Mini 4.

Opera Mini 4 Beta Features

  • Tabbed Browsing – Not exactly new and exciting for veteran internet users, but still a useful feature.
  • “Speed Dial” – This feature enables users to get to their favorite Web page with just one click, with a set of visual bookmarks when they open a new tab.
  • Opera Link – Allows for synchronization of bookmarks and Speed Dial between the phone and the user’s computer.
  • Download Manager – Gives better control over downloads, including the option to pause and resume file downloads.
  • Both Touch and Keypad: The user interface has been designed for both touchscreen- and keypad-style mobile phones.

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Posted in Internet, Mobile Phones, Software and Apps

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Microsoft Sends Flowers to IE6 Funeral

March 7th, 2010

Who said the Redmond fellas didn’t have a sense of humor?

Although it’s their very own baby, Microsoft apparently knows when to quit, so they “participated” in the funeral service performed for Internet Explorer 6. Microsoft has sent flowers and wrote a card, saying “Thanks for the good times IE6,” the card reads. “See you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven.”

Unfortunately, IE6 isn’t really dead yet. Some 12%  of internet users are still utilizing this old and broken browser. Web developers all over the world just yearn the day when no one uses this browser. Hopefully, we’ll soon see the day when all browsers are standards-compatible.

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Internet, Software and Apps

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Microsoft: Thousands of Popular Sites Still Incompatible with IE8

March 3rd, 2010

In a new post, Microsoft informs the web that there are still around 2,000 sites that aren’t compatible with IE8 and require the Compatibility View mode.

Let us just ponder, Microsoft, whose fault is this? Web developers spent days and months, battling with the problems created by your inferior browsers (IE6 and IE7), and now no one is in a hurry to make changes to accommodate IE8.

A very complicated diagram in the post shows how IE8 determines whether to go to “quirks mode,” “IE 8 almost standards mode,” “IE 8 standards mode” or “IE 7 standards mode” when displaying a site.

Microsoft now promises to deliver more standards support with IE9, including Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) standards, and maube SVG and HTML5 standards. That, of course, remains to be seen. The fact remains that developing sites to fit the different IE quirks is STILL a tiresome, annoying job.

Current StatCounter Global Stats concerning web browsers show that about 24% of internet users surf with IE8; IE7 has a market share of about 19%, and dropping; Firefox 3.5 has about 17% market share and IE6 still holds 12% of the market.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

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Posted in Internet, Software and Apps

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The Winter Olympics Run on Windows XP

February 25th, 2010

6,200 computers are used in the Winter Olympics this year, all of them running on Windows XP. Should this make Microsoft happy?

It seems that Windows 7 is a bit too new to gamble on, when it comes to huge systems and networks. Vista is, of course, out of the question – which leaves us with the good old, steady XP.

Only a few of the computers had glitches and problems. The most dramatic incident was when one of the workers in the Olympics jumped up to cheer, and spilled soup on her laptop, which miraculously survived. Acer, the computer company that delivered all those machines to the Winter Olympics, said they offered to replace the laptop, but the worker decided to stick with it.

It looks like XP is going to survive just a little bit longer, even though Microsoft is doing everything they can to kill it. XP is a very compelling operating system -  it’s stable, easy to configure and a lot of people are refusing to part with it until Windows 7 proves itself.

Not a word about Vista. It never really happened, you know. Just a bad dream.

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Posted in Computers, Software and Apps

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Scribd Launched a Mobile Application for Document Sharing

February 25th, 2010

Scribd, the online document sharing site, has launched a mobile application that lets users send content to electronic readers (such as Kindle) and smartphones.

Scribd users can now send non-copyrighted documents from their computers to mobile devices. Scribd has more than 10 million documents on the site, which enables users to turn nearly any file—including PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel—into a Web document and share it.

Scribd users can send documents directly to the Kindle over the e-readers’ wireless connection. Amazon charges a fee of 15 cents per megabyte for the transfers. Other e-readers have to be plugged into the PC. Scribd users can then drag content from the site to the e-readers.

Scribd is planning to follow up with its own app, to be launched in March. The app is designed for iPhone and Android, and will publish a set of application programming interfaces, called SOPED (Scribd Open content Platform for Ereaders and mobile Devices). This will give device manufacturers the ability to integrate Scribd’s search, social and other functionality into their products, and this has already been taken up by e-reader makers Interead and Onyx.

Most of the content on Scribd is free, and the site’s business model revolves around ads. Scribd attracts around 40 million users a month.

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Posted in Mobile Phones, Netbooks, Laptops and Tablets, Software and Apps

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