As the title of my post shows, Firefox is out celebrating its fifth birthday today. Being my favorite browser from the very beginning, I have always admired its browsing experience as compared to the Internet Explorer. Firefox now shares almost 24 percent of the market with Safari being on 4.4, Google’s Chrome on 3.6 percent, Opera on 2.2 percent and Internet explorer still leading with 65 percent of the market.

The Firefox team celebrates this occasion with the beautiful cake. Yummy, isn’t it?

Moreover it has been discovered that Firefox users has swelled to over 330 million worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users worldwide choose Firefox. Today, Firefox ships in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience.

Some shining achievements of Firefox are as follow

1- The ubiquitous RSS icon, which was originally created for the Firefox browser and given away by Mozilla, now exists on millions of web sites offering users the ability to get updates on their terms.

2- Led by Firefox’s add-ons system there’s been an explosion in the number of people who are customizing their experiences – both in browsers and on the web. Anywhere from one third to one half of Firefox users have some kind of add-on installed.

3- Firefox’s presence was a large factor in Apple being able to ship a browser to its user base as the Mac came back to the market.

Way to go Firefox….!

Facebook provides four options for content displayed on users pages these are “like, comment and share”. Now there is unofficially a dislike option, thanks to a Frenchman Thomas Moquet. The evil genius worked out a smart way to display this feature for users through a Firefox extension. This obviously means that you will have to use Firefox browser to avail this facility.

To do this he had to use his own server, one which logs a users “disliked” clicks and stores them. So users will be able to see who disliked a particular item or content, till the time the Frenchman’s servers are up. So if you’re not using Firefox or the servers are down you won’t be able to see this nifty mark, which happens to be a thumbs down image, quite similar in proportion to the like but exactly its opposite.

The add-on is available at the Mozilla add-on page. What is Facebook’s response? Well it will simply send out a message to the person who’s post you did not like, informing him/her so, cool isn’t it? See the screenshot below.

Google recently unveiled its free live Sat-Nav for mobiles. This thing will give free real time, directions between different destinations to users on their mobile phones. Motorola’s Droid is the first device that is going to have this service. The Google Maps Navigation combines various services that have a search engine for finding addresses and Google Street View for viewing photos of the locations. This also includes live traffic stats for users to avoid traffic jams.

Other features include searching in plain English, searching by voice commands, search along the route you’re already on, Satellite view and the Street view. All this for free? This is good news but what will happen to Garmin’s live service or even Tom Tom’s paid services that cost dollars to maintain?

There’s news on the music front also, thanks to Google again. Search results in the US include links to audio previews of the artists albums and songs. Also included are the links to purchase music from Lala or MySpace. If you need to trace songs by lyrics alone this can now be done since Google has teamed up with Gracenote to provide such services.  Plans are underway to offer this facility for other regions as well, however, no time lines have been given. In some cases users might be able to listen to clips of tracks or even complete tracks.

On the social networking front Google has introduced Google Social Search (presently in Google labs only). This will enable users to find social content on the web that is relevant to them. Presently is an experimental stage this service uses Google profile contacts, Gmail contacts and feeds from Google Reader to make a “social circle for the users. data from other services like Twitter, Face Book and Picasa will also be logged and put in that circle. Privacy issues aside this is poised to be a good service.

What’s in a mouse? A lot if it’s a new Magic Mouse from Apple, being dubbed as the world’s first multi-touch rodent. This gizmo comes bundled with every new iMac or can be bought for $69 only. The looks alone are killing, smooth outer surface, no protrusions or buttons and a smooth feeling on the hand. That is how it looks and feels and… works even better. The top surface of the mouse is multi-touch and  is actually the button! Run one finger over it for a scrolling action, the thing is sensitive to single and double clicks for  the single and double click actions respectively. They say it can even sense when you are not swiping or scrolling and just resting your hand on it, means it is intelligent. Since when did rodents become intelligent?

The tracking is not optical, its laser this time. Hence the mouse is more sensitive, and it doesn’t need any mouse pads even, just any flat surface will do irrespective of its chemistry! Novel indeed. And this device is wireless thanks to the Bluetooth connectivity built in to it. Works to a maximum distance of 33 feet, no wires or strings attached, and if you want to get the ultimate fun, use a wireless keyboard for a truly cable free experience.

The first multi-touch technologies of the iPhone and the iPod have been replicated in this rodent. If you swipe a page in Safari it will be like doing it in a paper magazine, the feeling is same. The gestures themselves tell the mouse how fast or slow to scroll, which implies that if you wish to scroll slowly make a slow gesture.

Other functions include a 360 degree scroll, screen zooming and a two finger swipe action. This has to be an award winning device like most Apple products of the day.

Their is a loyal following of Cricket the world over. This game is played, watched, applauded and criticized both on field as well as off field (online). There have been countless releases of Cricket for PCs, boasting of a plethora of features, like choosing your desired team, players, stadium venue, time, pitch and almost everything that one can imagine related to Cricket. All this is good for playing on hardware intensive PCs having gigs of RAM and storage space and off course guaranteed supply of electricity. These games cost a lot and need time and effort to play for example the famous EA Sports Cricket. The only thing lacking in this sphere is convenience.

In today’s time time constrained environment there is need to have a small game, rich in functionality, one that does not require installation, needs no specialized hardware, and has advanced features like ability to play online, form within one’s browser, is even social! Well that is something non-existent as of today. Well actually not for long.

Howzat is a new, to be released game that is sure to become a winner in the coming days. This game has all of the features discussed in the preceding paragraph plus some more. For example one can manage his/her own team, customize players, various batting modes are supported, various types of shots are supported, three bowling modes, fielding setting that are customizable, and itcan be played frm Facebook or Orkut! I

This means it can be played with anyone sitting in the remotest corner of the world with Internet connectivity. The game supports full screen mode as well as reduced window for discretion. This has to be the ultimate kind of game which is short, and hence tempting. Besides this the makers say it is social as people do not like to play alone and is sexy! A game and sexy? How is that? Or Howzat you ask? Well scratch your head to figure it out or wait for its release

This has to be something new and different, just imagine a whole concert live on YouTube! What prompted a rock band like U2 to make such a decision is not known but it certainly is welcome and history in the making both for the band and for YouTube. Manager Paul McGuinness in a statement said , “The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time”. Well Paul this is certainly good news for the millions of fans out there and it is coming this weekend. So make you PCs, Notebooks, Net books and whatever that you have ready for the fun to begin.

He further said, “it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 — this time U2 can go to them, globally!” YouTube will stream the concert live across five continents and besides this replays will be available at the U2 website as well as YouTube. The Sunday’s show is scheduled to be held at Rose Bowl California with an expected audience of about a hundred thousand fans. Well if YouTube is thrilled so are we.

This time now Google announced some much awaited improvements to their already smart Google Docs. The official word is that these changes are being made slowly so that everyone can enjoy their benefits. The mention of Shared Docs merits attention, this is exactly what its name says. The feature is tailored to make collaboration easier simply by putting the items in a folder and sharing them. Keep on adding more items to the folder and they are sure to be shared. Similarly add a person to the folder and he/she will get access to its contents.

More improvements, off course, one can upload multiple files now to the folders instead of one document at a time. The working area has also been revamped, more space new colors and some buttons readjusted for a better look and feel. The “Move to” and “Folders” dialogs have also had improvements. For a more detailed discourse please read the information provided by Google on the Google Docs page.

The Folder Share utility

The multiple File upload facility

Since its announcement a few months back the Google Squared a project of Google labs which is still in infancy, the thing has progressed well. The project displays information on a searched term in a tabular form thus making it easier to compile, view or even export it in to csv or Google Spreadsheets format. The various filters that frisk and return data have been improved and now the data can be returned in up to 120 various fields in rows or columns.

A search for the word Cricket returned no results and the engine was confused! However, the words Cricket + game and Cricket World Cup did return various fields with the obvious options for adding still more information in a few clicks. The word UK and England surprisingly did not yield any results whereas Egypt did show some columns related to some travel packages. When Country + Egypt + information was searched this returned a lot of results some of which were quite irrelevant and some like the much needed population or the President’s name blank! Guess the thing is far from complete and major improvements are needed. However, the idea is simply great.

AD105 was the year paper was invented by the Chinese. AD 2009 and beyond it is on its way out, thanks to e-Readers which plan on its ouster. One of the best of its kind is the Amazon Kindle which is now shipping internationally. This device will work in about 100 countries around 19th October 2009. The company has also slashed its price by $30 in the US from $259 to $229 only to increase sales ahead of the holidays. However, elsewhere it is going to cost around $279. Amazon took a head start in this sphere and is now perhaps the leader.

The only downside is that e-books form other vendors do not work with it, you have to buy books from Amazon to read them on the Kindle. The Kindle by the way does not support WLAN and works via 3G technology. This means countries that are devoid of 3G networks will not be able to have this facility. The decision by Amazon is good news for travelers who previously could not access Amazon while being outside the US. The device measures 7.5″ x 5.3″ x 0.7″ in size and weighs just 10.3 ounces (Kindle I and II have slight variations).

Users can shop for books with this device from Amazon.com, it has a search facility for finding words or phrases in the vast library, a keyboard to type in the required information, a built-in dictionary, bookmarks, variable text size viewing and a good battery life. Best of all there are around 350,000 titles to choose from including books, newspapers, magazines etc.

Yahoo has finally decided to give the deadline for closing down GeoCities, October 26th 2009 is the day when GeoCities will no longer exist. Users have been asked by Yahoo to download their files, pictures and any data that they may have on their websites and save it elsewhere or upgrade to Yahoo Web Hosting. This will cost users a crisp $4.99 per month for the first year and thereafter $9.95 per month. And no Yahoo is not archiving these millions of users websites, so don’t expect miracles to happen. Instead this time the Internet Archive is doing this job as a public service. The good news is that it has already been archiving these pages for years and chances are that someone’s pages might already be there.  However, users can go to the Internet Archive for GeoCities to get their websites archived. They can also check if their website has been archived or not and in the latter case get it indexed by giving their URL.  More information is available at the Yahoo Help Pages.