We’ve seen some pretty wacky and creative clocks in our day. We’ve seen clocks made strictly out of live-human body parts. We’ve seen clocks only solvable by mathematicians. But this clock strikes a chord with us geeks, utilizing one of the most prolific parts of the web browser, the scrollbar.
The coolest part is that you can actually move the scrollbar as the time ticks away.
I don’t know about you, but as a full-fledged Mac user, I get very sick of using the de facto browser, Firefox. It’s big, bloated and uses up all my resources on my iMac G5. Loading up JavaScript-heavy websites? Go get a drink, because it’s going to take a good hour for Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Digg to finish loading. Luckily, help has arrived in the form of Safari 4.
Apple says the new Safari beta handles JavaScript 4.2x faster than Safari 3, which is a decent and much-welcome speed boost. It’s also apparently 30x faster than IE 7 and three times faster than Firefox. In fact, there’s over 150 awesome features in Safari 4. Read the list on Apple’s website and then download the beta to experience it for yourself.
Finally, Mozilla is coming in to its own with a browser feature that is perfect for porn. For Firefox 3.1, the team at Mozilla have included a feature called “private browsing.” Upon exiting the browser, any trace of past sites you visited located in the browser’s history, cookies or temporary files are erased.
That means: no dirty clues as to where you’ve been digging around the Internet late at night. After all, you wouldn’t want your friends knowing you put Gearfuse in your nightly spank bank.
I’m not talking about Phantom here, I’m talking about the web browser, Opera. Apple has beef with the competition and in turn has decided to keep Opera off the App Store. Says ZDNet:
Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Apple is trying to gain market share with it’s web browser Safari. Hopefully we’ll see some alternatives in the future, but for now, you’re shit out of luck.
Tomorrow, Google will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome in more than 100 countries. Chrome is it’s new browser and while it may seem like it’s aimed at Internet Explorer or Firefox, Google is really targeting Windows. Google wants Chrome to be nothing short of a full on desktop operating system that could give Windows a run for its money. But, what about Midori?
Google is releasing the beta for Windows to kick start a broader discussion and hear from users as soon as possible. It is also hard at work whipping up versions for Mac OS X and Linux, too. When the final project is all set and ready, Google will be making Chrome’s source code publicly available rendering endless expansive possibilities. Look for its release first thing tomorrow.
Is there anything Mozilla doesn’t create that facilitates your web surfing experience? Firefox 3 came out back in June, yet Mozilla is still working hard to provide its users with top end interactivity for its interweb softwares. Now, Mozilla wants to take its browser to the next level with instant messaging integrated into your web browsing. It’s called Snowl, that’s Snow and Owl combined for the less observant. Mozilla Labs lists a few key ideas behind their design phase:
- It doesn’t matter where messages originate. Whether they come from traditional email servers, RSS/Atom feeds, web discussion forums, social networks, or other sources, they are all the same.
- Some messages are more important than others, and the best interface for actively reading important messages is different from the best one for casually browsing unimportant ones.
- A search-based interface for message retrieval is more powerful and easier to use than one that makes you organize your messages first to find them later.
- Browser functionality for navigating web content, like tabs, bookmarks, and history, also works well for navigating messages.
As of now, Snowl is still in its prototype phase but is free to download at the link provided below. It supports two sources of messages: RSS/Atom feeds and Twitter. No word on whether or not Ogio will make a Snowl backpack. If they did, I’d rock it. Hit the jump for more information:
We would have been a little more excited if somebody else had leaked their software by mistake and allowed everybody to download for free, nonetheless we are slightly excited to learn that Microsoft Japan mistakenly put Internet Explorer 7 (Japanese version) on Windows Update this afternoon. The above screen cap was taken at 2:57 pm Tokyo time today. Some Japanese users have even managed to install the new browser successfully, keeping in mind that the public release should be in 2008.
The company took the program down and issued an apology afterwards, but we think there’s not much to be sorry about. They even taught people how to uninstall it. Yeah, like we want those extra bugs on your super stable OS. –Sam Chan
If you keep track of Gearfuse, you would have an impression of the Mitsubishi D800iDS double internal screen phone we premiered the spypic and reported. One of the benefits of having 2 screens is actually for browsing webpages. The D800iDS, just like most other 3G phones from NTT DoCoMo, can install this JAVA full HTML Jig browser, and it works exceptionally well. First, you would have a map of the whole webpage on the upper screen, showing you where you are at, and you can zoom in and pan around using the subdisplay below. Then, when you need to type anything, simply call up the keyboard and the on screen T9 buttons will be activated (Photo after the jump), no stupid stylus needed. Not too shabby eh.
The networking capabilities of the Wii are slowly falling into place. The Opera browser specially designed for the Nintendo Wii has been released in public beta. You can now download the browser for free (because it’s beta), and later it will cost you some Wii points. Opera seems to be making some excellent business decisions lately, with removing the cost of the browser and the adaptation of the mobile version of the browser. Firefox is still taking market share away from Internet Explorer, but Opera users seem to be different than Firefox users. Opera has focuses more on the social networking aspect of the browser rather than the way that Mozilla has gone with Firefox: extensions. Opera is doing better, but more will be needed to remove Firefox from millions of users desktops.
First it’s (M)opera on your cellphone, then it’s Opera on your DS, now it’s Opera on your Wii, and the beta version just made it before Christmas. The browser will be downloadable on the Wii Shop Channel from Dec 22 for free. We can’t wait to see how well this thing renders “street html”, and how much work out it is to type with your Wii-mote next to the fire place. — Sam Chan
Opera Press Release
