I found this fascinating quote today:
WordPress Testers and early adopters can now download WordPress 2.8 Beta 1 and test the new features that promise to make WordPress better and more powerful than before.Cindy, Download WordPress 2.8 Beta 1, May 2009
You should read the whole article.
San Francisco - Mozilla Labs on Wednesday afternoon unveiled an open source project intended to explore new ways to extend and personalize the Web via Firefox browser add-ons.
The Mozilla JetPack project features an add-on creation process for the browser that is more accessible technically. Anyone who can build a Web site can participate in making the Web as a place to work, play, and communicate, a Mozilla representative said. Developers can build features that are secure, easy to install, and faster to review, according to Mozilla. The features can be added to a browser without restart or compatibility issues, thus resulting in little or no disruption to an online experience.
Two Chinese bloggers separately detained for writing online about government corruption have had their charges dropped by police in recent weeks.
The cases reflect a possible move by Beijing to allow more free speech, though within clear limits. Corruption has long plagued China's government, especially in rural areas, and allowing victims to express grievances online and elsewhere could help curb the problem.
Police in northern Henan province have dropped defamation charges against a man they detained earlier this year for posting online about a corrupt village election, state media said Wednesday.
The man claimed that the number of votes for his rival in the election exceeded the size of the village, the China Daily said.
The police who detained the man were disciplined after he gained public support by posting again about the poll, the report said.
Last month, a police official from the province apologized for the detainment of another man who blogged about illegal government land seizures, according to the paper.
A provincial police officer in Henan reached by phone confirmed both cases had occurred, but declined to give details.
China's Internet is heavily patrolled. Sensitive political content is often deleted immediately by authorities, or by companies who could be punished if the content stays on their Web sites.
Beijing may believe a higher level of free speech will serve its interests, said Joshua Rosenzweig, a senior researcher at the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights advocacy group.
In recent weeks a number of people detained for criticizing local governments have seen their situations improve after news of their cases spread through the press or online, said Rosenzweig.
But any easing on free speech is unlikely to extend to criticisms of the overall government system, Rosenzweig said.
"It looks like it's limited to criticism of local officials," Rosenzweig said. "Despite the small progress, there will continue to be serious limitations."
Smartphone browsers are good enough to deliver Yahoo Mobile, so the search provider has killed off an on-device software version of the product that it was beta testing.
Yahoo Mobile was introduced earlier this year and came in three versions: an application for the iPhone, a browser version and an application that ran across hundreds of smartphones, said Adam Taggart, head of product marketing for Yahoo's mobile group.
After running a beta test of the smartphone application, Yahoo has decided to discontinue the product.
"Instead of launching an all-in-one app for general smart phones, what we'll do is continue focusing on the browser version and the iPhone app," he said. "We found that most smartphones have great browsers these days, and so we're finding that the experience we're able to provide in the browser is similar to the experience in an app."
Yahoo Mobile is a single page that connects users to services from Yahoo and others, such as e-mail, IM, Facebook and search.
Rather than continue to develop and support the smartphone application, Yahoo will focus on building vertical applications for specific platforms, including BlackBerry and "most likely" Android, he said. "When you have finite resources, you want to say, 'Where can I give the biggest bang for the buck?'" he said.
As an example, a smartphone user might connect to Yahoo Mobile through the browser, but download a specific application for following fantasy sports that offers more than a browser application would, he said.
Reports this week suggested that Yahoo was discontinuing its individual mobile applications for the BlackBerry, which include Yahoo Mail, IM, search and Flickr. In fact, Yahoo plans to continue to support its BlackBerry applications, Taggart said.
One thing that make me nearly not to touch browser other than firefox is a firefox’s AddOns collection. Simple Mail client is an example. Lifehacker.com said as follows. Firefox only: Somewhere between web-based email and a standalone desktop client there's Simple Mail, a Firefox extension that embeds an email client right inside a Firefox tab. Manage all your messages in Simple Mail, which can notify you of new incoming messages at a rate you define for any number of POP or IMAP email accounts. Simple Mail lists your messages in a familiar three-paned view where you can read, compose, and send messages, as well as maintain an address book. I had trouble getting Simple Mail to work with Gmail and IMAP in Firefox 3 on the Mac, but all went well in Firefox 2/Windows, so Mac users, proceed with caution. Simple Mail is missing features you'd expect in a full-blown client—in fact, I couldn't get it to see the folders on Gmail's IMAP server. However, it does give you that desktop feel without having to run or switch to a separate application. Simple Mail is a free download for Firefox only. Thanks, Masa!
Relevant Tags: Firefox,Browser,Email client,Firefox Addons,Addons,Browser Addons,best browser,Internet,browsing,email,read email
It has been a while since we warmed up the old iPhone (it runs on teeny tiny vacuum tubes, you know) and checked out what magazines are trying to do with the cuddliest gadget on the planet. The iphone offers print publishers a remarkable palette. In miniature, it is more like a printed page than any other digital device. It is portable and handheld, mimicking the magazine in those respects better than Web sites. It is lushly colored and sharp as a pin, far superior aesthetically to that Kindle thing Amazon keeps trying to sell us. And it has a newsstand, the app store, that allows for some degree of merchandising – albeit not enough. And yet, few magazine brands really have leveraged the iPhone very effectively. The earliest entry, Conde Nast’s Style.com, probably remains the best. Visually striking, it gives the user a very simple interface that uncovers a trove of multimedia assets that play very well on a small portrait screen. We won’t include Style.com in this review because we have praised it before. Instead, lets look at some good ideas that could be better. 
1. Epicurious: This newly launched foodie app is as stylish and smart as you expect from the Condé design crew. Drilling into the main menu of quick meal suggestions gives you too many recipes to swipe through (5670 “Decadent Desserts?!). But the search engine is magnificent. You refine results by tapping ingredients, meal type, cuisine, etc in a fun interactive way. The interstitial page that comes up while your results load is a snooze and a relentless reminder of the Via sponsorship. No one should see a full page takeover ad after every search query, let alone the same one. Get that credit card out of my fondue. 
2. Spin: It may not be fair to beat up on a brand that isn’t trying that hard to be a breakout iPhone app anyway. Spin takes a pedestrian approach that is not half bad. Three buttons: reviews, news, galleries. Nuff said. In principle the less is more approach is wise. The down side is forgetting to communicate anything about the brand. Could you load the latest cover at start? Something to distinguish this from an illustrated RSS feed? 
3. ELLE Astrology: This is one of the few magazine-branded apps that makes you pay, and even at the low rate of a few dollars, it feels overpriced. It is pretty much a standard feed of astrology info segmented by categories: today, this week, numerology and love matching. A lot of text, a lot of pink. Not a hint of ELLE. The AstroTwins who are doing the readings are associated with the magazine but the brand is just absent here. 
4. Lucky at Your Service: This is the most unusual magazine app so far. It is just a relentless set of images of handbags and shoes that you drill into by brand, style or color. Is it shopping or a weird fetish? Forget we said that. Choose one item and it will link to an online vendor or try to find a store near you. That part is cool, as is the magazine cover that flashes as you first open the app. We understand the point. Lucky = shopping, so just make an app that lets people browse. We also like the full page ads that are judiciously tucked between screens as you swipe through. It feels like the magazine experience and the ads are noteworthy. But how about some more editorial? A little comment on style. Yes we like to shop but we like to think a bit too. Okay, forget we said that, too. 
5. Car and Driver: While Car and Driver has one of the nicer mobile web sites among magazines, it chose to go to the iPhone with a wallpaper dispenser. This is not the worst idea. After all, the magazine is about cars in the same way Vogue is about fashion. You’re not really buying this stuff so much as salivating over it. C&D understands aspirational auto media and piles on the images of glass-like car finishes and dramatic poses. You just save any of the images to your iPhone library and turn it into phone wallpaper. Ok. But again, the app somehow fails to communicate the magazine’s sensibilities or tone or voice or personality. Slapping your magazine brand on something like this is serviceable enough, but it seems like a missed opportunity to connect with new potential readers.
The wonderful thing about the iPhone is that the realtively open App marketplace is a great playground for brands like these to experiment with new ways of representing themselves on mobile. How they miss in these early days is as important as how they hit.
Google is facing a tough scrutiny of the U.S. government as its rapid growth and success made it almost sole player in the market of internet search and online advertising. The company attracts attention of antitrust enforcers concerned with the possible abolition of competitive market that may result from Google’s exorbitant extension.
"In some ways people think of them as potentially becoming the next Microsoft," attorney Beau Buffier, with Shearman and Sterling LLP, said of Google.
Evan Stewart of Zuckerman Spaeder LLP notes that while America is the leading country in the market of hi tech this position should not be backed by the fact it allows one company like Google to become an absolute monopolist. Steward said that measures should be taken to preserve competitiveness of the industry.
IBM has bought the data discovery software assets of Exeros, and will use them to enhance the services offered by its business analytics consulting division, it said Tuesday.
Exeros makes software that can automate the search for relationships between different databases, something the company says is a prerequisite for successful data quality or data integration projects.
IBM plans to integrate the Exeros tools with other elements of its Information Management Software range, it said. That range includes software from Cognos, which IBM acquired for US$5 billion in November 2007.
The Exeros software can cut the cost of data warehousing and master data management, IBM said. Among the software's users will be consultants at IBM's Business Analytics and Optimization Services division, created last month following a reorganization of its Global Business Services consulting activities.
IBM did not disclose the terms of the acquisition.
Exeros, founded in 2002, is a privately held company funded by two venture capital firms, Globespan Capital Partners and Bay Partners, and by investment management company AllianceBernstein. Its CEO and cofounder, Piyush Gupta, is a former employee of IBM, where he helped develop an enterprise information integration tool called DataJoiner.
I was a fan of firefox. One thing that is a feature of firefox.Firefox has a lot of Addson. I can choose which AddOns accordance with my need. At this time I want to try Firefox version 3.1 beta portable. 
Somebody said that the firefox version is not as fast as before. Do things happen on the last version of let's try.
Oracle Corp., which announced plans last month to acquire Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, should benefit from the merger but will face significant marketing challenges in communicating the combined brand, industry analysts say.
In announcing the deal April 20, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison emphasized the strength of the end-to-end solution that Oracle will now be able to offer its customers as a result of the acquisition.
“Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system—applications to disk—where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves,” he said. “Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”
Under the terms of the deal, software company Oracle is acquiring the entire Sun portfolio, which includes hardware, software and services.
Most notably in the software category, Oracle will pick up Sun's Java open source software development platform, its Solaris operating system and MySQL, its open source database software. It will also own Sun's hardware business, which comprises servers, storage devices, desktop workstations and peripherals.
“The first big thing is the cachet, or lack of cachet, that Oracle has had in open source,” said Ray Wong, VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research. “They now have the crown jewels of open source with Java and MySQL.”
Another big advantage of the merger, Wong said, is the end-to-end solution Oracle will be able to deliver. “It used to be just application and database software,” he said. “Now they are trying to make the case that they can deliver hardware, software, middleware and database software all in one-stop shopping, which will help their customers reduce costs.”
Wong added: “The challenge is to figure out the perception of Oracle being in the hardware business. What does it mean, and can they successfully convince people to buy the whole stack from them?”
He noted that Oracle has already been successful in managing and marketing other acquisitions. For example, in 2005 it acquired CRM software company Siebel Systems, and last year it bought enterprise software company BEA Systems.
Jean Bozman, VP-research for IDC's enterprise platforms group, said one of the greatest assets Oracle will get is Sun's installed base of customers and the service contracts and upsell opportunities that go along with that.
“They have at least 1.6 million servers [installed worldwide] and also storage and service contracts,” she said, noting that about 40% of Sun's revenue now comes from services. “From a holistic view, they have a large installed base, the opportunity for new offerings and things like upselling.”
For example, Bozman said that although MySQL is a database product, it does not necessarily compete with Oracle database products. “Oracle has always been about cross platforms and running on as many platforms as possible,” she said. “It may be that the MySQL offering, which is widely used, could bring additional business for other Oracle products.”
Bozman said one of the biggest challenges for Oracle will be integrating Sun into its operations and ensuring that it runs a profitable business.
Bozman also noted that because of the downturn, spending on big IT projects is being cut or deferred but, as conditions improve, IT investment should pick up. That will benefit Oracle in the long run.
Other industry experts, however, were not as bullish on the deal.
Jim Gregory, CEO of brand strategy firm CoreBrand, noted that Sun had a brand score of only 16 on a scale from 1 to 100 in CoreBrand's 2008 Brand Power report, while Oracle had a brand score of 30. “In terms of what they are buying, it is not a heavyweight brand,” Gregory said.
“It seems like it made a lot more sense for IBM [Corp.] to make the acquisition. That seemed like a much better fit,” he said, noting that IBM had a brand score of 76.
In April, IBM made a bid to buy Sun for an estimated $7 billion but was outbid by Oracle, according to people familiar with the talks.
Gregory said one of the immediate challenges for Oracle is to communicate its strategy for the acquisition and what it means to its customers.
“What they will need to do is tell a story very quickly,” he said. “Otherwise, Oracle's image might be hurt. They have to communicate clearly why they made this acquisition, why it fits as a company and what they intend to do with it. They have a short window of opportunity.”
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