Browsers War

With more and more Google Chrome apps and extensions coming out it's time to take a look on the war between the browsers. I know the apps are mainly made for the Google Chrome OS, but I can't see ChromeOS taking a  major place in the OS market in the near future, which means most of the apps and extensions will be used on Google's browser , Chrome.
I've looked on W3Schools browser statistics for the past year, according to W3Schools five browser control the market Microsoft's IE, Mozila's Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera. Since Safari and Opera control between 2-4 percent, I won't be taking a look at them. According to W3Schools IE and Firefox have been loosing the battle mainly to Google's Chrome, IE has been dropping in a rate of 0.961 percent a month and Firefox 0.209 percent a month for the last eleven month, mean while Chrome has been climbing in a rate of 0.882 percent a month. In these rates Chrome will over take IE in less then six month and Firefox in less then twenty two month. The battle between IE and Chrome is close, six month is just over the corner, Microsoft is taking about IE 9, but looks like it's all ready too late. On the other hand twenty two month is a long time almost two years in this time Firefox can stop the it's dropping, probably with Firefox 4, but still it's hard to predict
A lot of writers, when writing about browsers, write on things like better support of CSS or how it works with HTML5 (hell, some people don't even know what a browser is). Most users don't care about those things, the two things that matter the most, in this order are speed and safty and in the meanwhile looks like IE is loosing and Chrome is winning, Firefox had developed a lot of speed problems but looks like version 4 had solved part of that.

Browser percentage (January-November 2010)

 Change rates

Change rate crossing (November 2010-November 2012)

You can check the numbers at this Google Docs spread sheet.

The Fast Death of Google Wave

What started in a big noise ends quietly, Google just announced it's ending the developing of “Google Wave”. Less then a year ago Google announced it's newest development “Google Wave” this time the same as in the past, in the begging only people who got invitations could register hoping that it will increase the buzz around “Google Wave”, this time it didn't.

If you look back on Google's history you find not once that if failed to develop or market a new web application or some thing they bought like “Orkut”. The basic fact is that Google's most profitable application is it's search engine, they have some other applications which came out quite good, the first one is “Gmail” - one of the leading mail service almost from the day it became public. They also have their calender , their RSS reader and “Picasa” . It dosn't look like this is going to change in the near future.

The most interesting web application, that is being more and more commonly used is “Google Docs”, the web based office applications, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation tool, lately they added a PDF reader and a drawing application. Until recently you could work off-line using “Google gears”, but since Firefox 3.5 came out it stopped working and Google didn't upgrade it. According to Google they took that option down to make “Google docs” work with HTML 5. I personally had been using it until then, but this days I can't use it any more cause I need to work off line some times. I hope they'll fix this soon.

Two more interesting tool are “Google trends” and “Google Insights for search” tool for discovering, analyzing and comparing trends in the web, I've used “Google Insights” to compare Google's applications to other web based applications, you can see the results.

Other Google applications which failed are there social networks like “Orkut” and “Buzz”, there notebook application “Google notebook”, “Google video” which they stoped working on when they bought “Youtube” and now “Google Wave” . I must say I've been using “Google notebook” all this time, and I hope that one day they will return working on it.

Those are only part of Google's products they have more then I can cover in one or two posts, here's a list of them. 

Is Firefox becoming IE ?

Iv'e been using Firefox for last five Years,for the last two month Iv'e been using Chrome more and more until it became the default browser . Both of those browsers Firefox and Chrome are installed on my machine and don't get me wrong I have allot of respect for Firefox. Five years ago there was no real alternative for IE, at least on Windows Firefox was the only safe browser and Iv'e been using it  since then and of course since I started using Ubuntu Iv'e used Firefox. 

Lately something went bad at Mozilla, Firefox takes allot of time to start, the number of crashes is increasing and installing extensions became a big problem. In the meantime Chrome has started to gain more and more fans, It has almost the same extensions as Firefox and it's faster, so why not ?   

In January 2009 Firefox passed IE and it's peek number of users was in July 2009 but since then the number of users is going down. Firefox is still the most common browser, but one can remember that once was IE. IE is still the fastest looser of users mainly to Chrome but also Firefox (check the numbers here).

Since I had to add something graphic or a picture I add a graph I mad on Google Docs (I like to test it once in a while, It's getting better, but that's not enough for me) . back to the graph, the graph is made to January - June 2010, IE includes IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8. You can see that IE is loosing very fast to Chrome but Firefox is also starting to loose, is starting to loose users, will Firefox end up like IE ?

Browsers Usage (January - June 2010)

If you can't beat them imitate them

About a month ago I rote about a new interesting music web app called Muziic, the web app was developed by a 15 year old teenager, and was based on Youtube music videos. The people at Youtube didn't like the idea thatf someone was using their music videos, so they just decided to imitate him, take a look for your self and decide, they even copied the design.

Muziic

Youtube Music Discovery

Software I couldn't leave with out - Part II

Continuing my last post here are three more software items who make my life easier.

Dropbox - At last some one had did it, some one had fixed one of my biggest problems, I work on three computers two of them have two operating systems, until now if I needed two share a file between two computers or two operating systems I had one of two ways. The first way was to send it to my self threw a web base e-mail application, the second is by using a flash memory disk. Both of those ways are a nightmare, every time I'd work on a file, I had to update every ware else, I'd often made mistakes or forget to update, some time I was sure I had updated a file when I didn't. Finally someone invented Dropbox, the magic folder, when I update a file that's in that folder, the file is automatically update where ever I installed Dropbox, now everything is synchronised and updated. Dropbox comes with 2 GB of storage space, you can get extra space by getting a friend to sign up for For every friend you sign up you get another 250 MB and he also gets a bigger space for storage, so if someone wands two sign up just live your e-mail at the comments and I'll send you an invitation, by doing so you and me will both get extra storage space.

  Miro - Formerly none as Democracy player, with Miro you can download pod casts and videos to you computer and listen or watch them when ever you have time, you don't need a Internet connection while watching the videos it's all on you computer. I mostly like it because I don't always have a wireless Internet connection, but I can still watch video programs that I like or listen to a podcast. There is a giant list of Internet TV stations that you can choose to subscribe. Here are the stations I've  subscribed to:

1. Linux Journal - News about Linux, mainly tips.
2. CommandN - News about the web.
3. Ted Talk - Interesting people with interesting ideas.
4. Cooking Korean food 
5. Tekzilla - Gadgets and geek stuff.
6. Tekzilla Daily Tip - Tips on computers.
7. Happy Tree Friends - Stupid but funny cartoons.
8. Hungry Nation - A nice food and recipe show.
9. The Digg Real - A show about the most viewed videos on the web.

VLC - An amazing video and audio player, it can play any format none to you, from the avi to flv and MP4, every thing. It has tones of options, you can convert formats with it, you can add subtitles, it has extensions and skins, you can play streaming media with it, and all of that is open source. I must admit I actually don't know about most of it's options that's because there is so much you can do with it.

Software I couldn't leave with out - Part I

Here are six software apps I find hard to leave with out, I use them on a daily bases and they are the main reason for me having a computer:

 Ubuntu - Linux - as appose to other items on this list, this is a o.s., I hav'e been using It for the past year. It all started a year and a half ago I purchased a new laptop with Windows Vista installed on it, I immediately encountered problems  ,so I decided to check out Ubuntu Linux after trying it a few year back, and returning to Windows after a while. I first did with the Wubi installation, and after a while I read "The Ubuntu pocket guide"  installed it on my laptop along side Windows Vista. It's been now a year and a half and Ubuntu is my preferred choice for an o.s. It's reliable, It's free, It has plenty of customizing options, It doesn't slow out with time, there is plenty of software for it and the part I liked the most is the support Ubuntu has, It's forums are undeflatable , for every problem you encounter you just post it on the forum and someone will get back to you with a solution, some time more then one person gets back to you and if you need more help, someone will always be happy to help you, and all of that for free. When using Windows I always feared that I will have a problem (and Vista had allot of them) that I couldn't solve and no body could help me, with Ubuntu I never got this filling there is a strong and helpful community behind you. Thanks to Conical for developing Ubuntu, thanks to all the Ubuntu users that dedicate from there own time for helping other users.

Firefox - My preferred  choice of browser for the last 6 years has been Firefox, I still remember when people didn't understand what I was talking about when I told them that I serf the web with Firefox, they didn't even understand the difference between the internet and Internet Explorer, most people thought it's the same thing (people today don't know what a browser is). Firefox gets its power from it's addons, an endless amount of extensions that can be added to it, they change a simple browse in to a great tool not only for serfing the web but also a great tool for working or studing, it has an endless amount of addons, any problem you incounter there's a good chance there is an addon that can help you, you can see my list. This is a great demnstration of opensource's power.

Skype - One of the greats achievements on the web is VOIP and the software that makes it so good is with no doubt Skype it has more then a 170 million users all around the world, the technology it uses combined with the big number of users, had changed the face of telecommunication in the last decade, the price of international phone calls dropped and in the same time it makes people closer. Another thing is video capabilities ,not only I can speak with my friends and family who live far away, I can also see them and all of that for free. For a very cheap price you can call a land line phone or a cellular phone all over the world, you can all so get a voice mail if you want. Their is only one thing I'd be happy to see, they haven't upgraded there Linux version for more then 2 year, it's about time they do it.

To be continued.....

Interesting on the web

Muziic is a new music web app based on YouTube music videos, you can make your own playlists, listen to a whole album, there is even a desk top app for windows, all of those with no kind of any limitations, no copy rights issues involved (At least until now), no big record labels making a fuss.Muziic is the work of a 15 year old teenager  ,David Nelson, which makes it quite impressive. But from my point of view the best feature is not having to access the web from the U.S. or Europe, music or video likeHulu, Pandora and Vevo (a new service, smiler to Muziic, a YouTube and the record labels cooperation) are restricted to the U.S. and BBC iPlayer and Spotify are restricted to the U.K. and Europe. It's nice having a service that works out side the U.S., the U.K. or Europe. You can always use a proxy server, but it doesn't always work and it's a big headache.

Another new web app is Seesmic it's a new twitter client very smiler to TwitDeck but wokrs on a web browser, no installations needed. It has all the basic functions that all Twitter clients posses.

One more site is Give away of the day, every day you can download an application, the download is a full licensed version and not a trial or limited edition.

Google Chrome OS

Finally it came out the Google Chrome OS, I installed it in a virtual machine (virtual box) and gave it a test drive. Here are some of my thoughts:

• It's A browser  and you can't change to any other browser.
• You can't logon or work when you're offline.
• You can only surf the web.
  
• When you look under the hood, you find something familiar.

To make things short until now all I see is Chromium on Ubuntu.

No Internet No OS

Look's like Chrom the browser

The applications tab, all web applications

LazyFeed

Since keeping track of things I like on the web is getting harder and harder, I found some tools that could help me. The most trivial and commen is RSS feeds, there are some desktop apps such as Thunderbird or FeedDemon (on Windows) the can read feeds, I prefer a web app once I used NewsGator this days I use Google Reader.
Another way of following things on the web is following people on Twitter who have the same interests that you have. Two more social media ways are Stumble Upon And Digg.
Last week I found out of a new way of keeping track of thing I like, it's called LazyFeed, I just tell it what am interested at and the service finds things for me, things I liked I can save, share on Twitter, Facebook or mail a friend.