Banned Commercials - Cannabis
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Saturday, June 13, 2009
Safari numbers still dwarfed by Firefox downloads
Apple has been desperately trying to turn Safari into a mainstream browser player. Unfortunately, its numbers simply don't compare to Firefox.
Safari 4.0 notched 11 million downloads in just three days. While significant, this number is almost a rounding error compared with Firefox 3.0.11, which pulled down 150 million downloads in just 24 hours,as Mozilla's Asa Dotzler reports.
With more than 300 million active users of Firefox, Mozilla is miles ahead of Safari in terms of users. Firefox also dwarfs Safari (and Internet Explorer) in community; indeed, it is Firefox's rich ecosystem of add-ons and extensions that arguably render irrelevant any performance advantages Safari claims.
Perhaps for this reason, despite the apparent rise of Safari, Firefox is actually gaining at its expense, as Dotzler calls out:
Safari, just like IE, gets virtually all of its usage by shipping as the bundled and default browser with its operating system...
Safari usage is growing...the explanation, though, is not more people choosing Safari; it's more people choosing Mac. That's a very different thing. Having chosen Mac, Safari users, about 27% of them, have opted out of the bundled and default browser and instead chosen Firefox.
That's an even higher conversion to Firefox rate than we're seeing on Windows.
I'm an example of this. I was one of those 11 million Safari downloads, but I did so because the Apple update system pushed the update to me, not because I actually wanted it. (Nor am I alone in this.) I use Safari roughly twice per month: once when I check my bill on Comcast.com (which doesn't seem to work with Firefox), and once when I review Net Applications for browser market share (which, again, doesn't seem to work properly with Firefox).
Other than that, it's all Firefox, all the time.
I'm a Mac fanatic, but that doesn't mean I swallow Safari along with it. Safari lacks the add-ons that make my Firefox experience so rich. Safari may be fast, but it's like having a fast car without enough room to seat my family or accommodate a stereo and cup holder. I'm sure there's an audience for that, but I'm not it.
So, while Microsoft resorts to charitable donations to goose its IE8 downloads, and Apple claims misleading Safari numbers, Firefox wins because it's simply better.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Apple's Safari 4 tops 11 million downloads in 3 days
Apple's Safari 4 Web browser was downloaded more than 11 million times in the first three days of release, the company said Friday.
And more than 6 million of the downloads came from Windows users.
Safari's Top Sites feature.
(Credit: Apple)Since Safari 4's public beta release in February, Apple has touted the browser as the fastest in the world, when compared with other popular browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer 8.
According to Apple, Safari 4 tops IE 8 and Firefox by three times or more when loading HTML Web pages. With its Nitro JavaScript engine, the company claims, Safari executes JavaScript almost eight times as fast as IE 8 and more than four times as fast as Firefox.
Based on the open-source Webkit browser engine, Safari includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test.
Safari includes several enhancements, such as Top Sites, the ability to search history, Google Suggest, and Full Page Zoom, to make browsing the Web a bit easier.
'Spam king' could face criminal charges in Facebook case
Sanford Wallace in 1997, around the time he dubbed himself the king of spam.
(Credit: CNET News)In a move that could land Sanford Wallace in jail if convicted, a federal judge on Friday referred a lawsuit Facebook filed against the "spam king" to the U.S. Attorney's office for possible criminal proceedings.
A written ruling from Judge Jeremy Fogel in U.S. District in San Jose, Calif., is expected early next week, a court clerk said. The action came at a hearing on a Facebook motion that Wallace be found in criminal contempt for allegedly continuing to send spam on Facebook.
Facebook sued Sanford and two others in February alleging they used phishing sites or other means to fraudulently gain access to Facebook accounts and used them to distribute phishing spam throughout the network.
The judge had earlier entered a preliminary injunction against Wallace for failing to appear in court for the original proceedings, said Sam O'Rourke, Facebook's lead counsel for litigation and intellectual property. Wallace appeared in court on Friday in what is believed to be his first court appearance in any of the cases filed against him, according to O'Rourke.
Facebook also had asked for a default judgment in the case, but the judge was prevented from taking action on that since Wallace filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday and civil actions seeking monetary sanctions are automatically stayed when a defendant files for bankruptcy, O'Rourke said. Facebook believes Wallace filed for bankruptcy to avoid a default judgment and criminal contempt order, he said.
Facebook plans to ask the bankruptcy court to lift the stay so a ruling can be made on the default judgment to become a creditor, O'Rourke said.
"We're very pleased Judge Jeremy Fogel agreed that there were grounds for criminal contempt and that the U.S. Attorney's office should investigate Wallace," Facebook said in an e-mail statement. "Wallace filed for bankruptcy, which is not unexpected and only delays our judgment temporarily. We will continue to pursue the judgment and will be reviewing his filing very closely."
The order should serve as a strong deterrent against spammers, Facebook said. "Fogel's ruling demonstrates that judges will enforce restraining orders and spammers who violate them face criminal prosecution" the statement said.
A year ago, Wallace and another defendant were ordered to pay MySpace.com $234 million following a trial at which Wallace repeatedly failed to turn over documents or even show up in court.
In the largest judgment in history for a case brought under the Can-Spam Act, the federal court in San Joseawarded Facebook $873 million in damages late last year against a Canadian man accused of spamming users of the site.
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