Internet Archive

As you all undoubtedly know, the European Union and Microsoft are trying to work out some sort of a settlement regarding the Internet Explorer case. Microsoft made a very detailed proposal for a browser ballot screen earlier this year, and the EU was relatively satisfied. Now, various browser makers have told Reuters that they are not satisfied with Microsoft's proposal.

"With just over a week left before the expiration of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Department of Commerce, the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) urges the US government to closely re-examine ICANN's structure, governance, and oversight mechanisms before committing to any further long-term cooperation. Significant adjustments must be made to the JPA in order to remedy the egregious problems CADNA has found with ICANN." CADNA not only proposes that an audit be made of ICANN, but they also have released a "top-ten list" detailing the most prevalent problems they find in the non-profit organization.

The draft of the HTML5 specification has been under discussion for a while now, but despite the fact that it's not yet finished, all major browsers have implemented at least the most important aspects of it - except Microsoft. The company did provide substantive criticism of the specification in early August, but now the company has also endorsed the video and audio tags.

While browsing the ever-wider world web today, I came across a story about IBM's patent of a sort of "Facebook Remote Control." It was appalling. Do we seriously need more single-purpose devices that will enable us to sit around more wasting more time than we already do? Does anyone really need to seclude themselves from the world even more to publish their lives on yet another teen-infested network? Must we really always be connected to the net? Read on for my ramble concerning a dark side of technology.

Another instalment of Ask OSNews. A reader sent us in a question about browser security and privacy. "Could you please advise me and your readers on what you consider to be the safest web browser? I am considering the term 'safe' from both a privacy and security stand point."

Microsoft's Bing search engine is getting a little help from a very smart friend. Wolfram Alpha and Bing have reached a licensing deal that allows Bing to present some of the specialized scientific and computational content that Wolfram Alpha generates, according to a source familiar with the deal. Representatives from Microsoft and Wolfram Research declined to comment on the deal.

The browser wars have really been heating up again lately. Thanks to Mozila's Firefox, Internet Explorer is no longer the undisputed king, and browsers are popping up all over the place trying grab a piece of the pie. A new browser project called RockMelt is in development - and it's backed by Mosaic developer and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen.

"Linux: If a lack of third-party plug-in support (i.e. Flash) kept you from trying out Chrome on your Linux system, then avoid no longer. The 'early developer version' now supports many plug-ins, and they seem to work pretty well. You'll need to add --enable-plugins to your Chrome shortcut's command line operation to get the 'buggy' plug-in support, but it seems worth the hassle, as YouTube videos are playing relatively stable and smooth. Google's updated their alpha-level Chrome builds to include the newest start page tweaks as well, and it's generally a browser worth checking out, even if a few standard settings and convenience items are still missing."

We've been talking about the browser ballot screen for a while now, which led to some obvious questions we couldn't answer. As it turns out (and I completely missed this), Microsoft actually posted a fairly detailed description of its proposal on its website last Friday. It details everything from what it means not to have Internet Explorer installed to what the ballot screen will look like.

We've been buying Wireless N draft devices for two years now, and some of us were holding our breaths to see if we'd have to replace that N hardware sooner than expected. Your uber-fast wireless hardware, if you even utilize its speed, is safe. The Wi-Fi Alliance said that the final standard of 802.11n will essentially remain the same with only a few minor additions; most if not all Draft 2.0 hardware will still function properly with final-version hardware. What's more is that the Wi-Fi Alliance also said that the final version of 802.11n will be effective in September and products will start testing the complete version later in the month.

"Apple has touted new HTTP Live Streaming features of the iPhone OS 3.0 and the upcoming Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X - and it has submitted the spec to the IETF. Will it be enough to supplant Flash as the de facto standard for delivering live or on-demand streaming online?"

A day earlier than expected, Microsoft has released version 3 of its Flash alternative Silverlight, including a number of related tools to aid in Silverlight development. It comes with a whole lot of new features.

"CompuServe, the first commercially successful online and email provider in America, has been shut down by AOL after 30 years of service. The original CompuServe — later renamed CompuServe Classic — was laid to rest July 1, 2009. In a message sent to its remaining subscribers, AOL urged customers sticking with cheap dial-up to move on to the company's surviving sub-brand ISP, CompuServe 2000."

Chances are that you've already heard of and even visited Bing, Microsoft's new search offering launched earlier in June, replacing the Live search of yesterday. It's new, shiny, and has pretty pictures, but does it really have much effect on the market? There have been those headlines claiming it's "taken a bite out of Google," but, looking at the statistics, it hasn't really affected the search industry at all.