HowtoForge: “This guide explains how you can install the Google Android SDK 1.0 on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. With this stable release of the Android SDK, you can now develop applications for Android smartphones (like T-Mobile’s G1) and offer them on the Android Market.”
Featured links from the CNET Blog Network
Facebook being used to recruit spies — It has emerged that Britain’s Secret Service has admitted to using Facebook to recruit tomorrow’s James Bonds.
Adding a second router: living with the new setup — What it’s like to use a high value computer after it has been protected with a second router.
Use Web apps offline with Google Gears — Although the offline-browsing technology is currently available only for a small number of sites, Gears can keep you working–sort of–when your Internet connection fails.
Zarafa: Open-source e-mail gets competitive — Zimbra used to rule the roost in the open-source e-mail world. Now Zarafa is giving it a run for its money.
A group of developers has raced to market with Linux and Mac versions of Google’s Chrome web browser. But does it work?
(Credit: T-Mobile)Too busy rushing to get your money out of Washington Mutual this week to keep up with Crave? No worries, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a look back at just a few of the many interesting, strange, and wonderfully silly stories we covered.
• Google Android …
Microsoft’s CEO was guardedly optimistic about a ‘buoyant’ IT economy — and the prospects for improving Windows and taking on Google, VMware and Apple.
German developers had developed a cut-down version of Chrome that doesn’t send usage data back to the Google mothership.…
The flaw affects Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera and could trick a user into clicking on content from another page.
This week, Google and T-Mobile launched the G1 “Dream”, the first of the Android devices to hit the market. The initial reaction by some of my colleagues and industry peers was whether or not it had enough sex appeal, excitement or the coolness factor to be…
Google entered the mobile phone market this week when T-Mobile rolled out the first handset running the search engine's Android mobile operating system. Oracle also ventured into new territory by announcing that it will sell a hardware product — a database server the company developed with Hewlett-Packard. IBM threatened to leave the standards bodies that determine software interoperability regulations over concerns that the standardization process is unfair. And Microsoft is still searching for a search strategy to compete with Google.
Chrome hasn’t been out for even a month and already features are starting to creep into the road maps of other browsers.
I have to admit I installed Chrome (in order to create some Techrepublic content for it) and kicked the tires. And even more so I have to admit I was impressed with the beta offering from Google. It had a lot of issues (primarily that of CPU/Memory consumption), but it also had a lot of really great features. One feature, Incognito, really piqued my interest. This browsing mode basically didn’t leave a trace of your browsing. Naturally the computing world latched onto this, and now Firefox is planning on adding a Privacy Mode to the 3.1 release.
What really surprised me about this was when I discovered that Firefox is the last of all the major browsers to have a privacy mode. This took me off guard because, well, this is a feature that speaks to geeks in their native tongue…privacy. So why did it take so long? For a browser that claims to lead the pack on features, how could they overlook something like this? It turns out the privacy mode was supposed to be included in version 3.0 but it just didn’t make the final cut when all was said and done. Safari has enjoyed a privacy mode since as early as June 2007. Chrome followed suit on its beta release in September 2008. Internet explorer will release IE8 beta 2 with a privacy mode. And then along comes Firefox.
I’ve always bragged about how Firefox is always ahead of the curve when it comes to features. But this time it’s behind. Of course that doesn’t mean that the Firefox privacy mode won’t win a game of “anything you can do, I can do better” with the other browsers. In fact, look at the proposed privacy mode features:
That list pretty much follows in the tracks of the others. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that says, “Firefox one-upped the competition yet again.”
Is privacy mode an important browser feature?
Loading …But I guess we can’t always expect Firefox to stay ahead of the curve. There are going to be moments when our favorite open source browser gets caught with its proverbial pants down. And I supposed we should just be happy that this feature is finally going to arrive. Now Firefox users won’t have to worry so much when browsing on a public machine…so long as those administering the public browsers allow privacy mode to be active.
Ultimately though I am wondering why Firefox was caught lagging behind with this particular feature. As I said, the dev team wanted this feature in 3.0 but during a meeting on January 23, 2008, they realized there were too many major bugs that had to be dealt with before adding a new feature. This was probably smart. Instead of taking the Microsoft route of tossing in new features before the old features were solid, Firefox opted for the high road.
Of course, in the true open source fashion, there are ways. Take for instance the Stealther extension for Firefox. This extension adds some of the privacy features that the privacy mode will add. And this extension came to life September 29th, 2005. So maybe Firefox wasn’t as far behind as I initially thought. Maybe, just maybe, the whole privacy mode browsing was born (from the other browsers) from this one extension that has been bringing a modicum of privacy to Firefox for nearly three years.
It seems there are a lot of features (in various guises) that can be traced back to earlier open source inspirations. But open source really falls short with PR. The open source community develops something great and either Microsoft or Apple (and now Google) steals it and spins it with their great PR and marketing so it seems as if the open source community is playing catch-up once again.
It is my opinion that the open source community needs a much louder voice. And with this louder voice it needs to do a much better job of patting itself on the back so features like stealth browsing can be credited to the right group or person (in this case, Filip Bozic).
So, is Firefox really playing catch up? Or is this yet another shining example of bigger companies playing “stealth mode” with the truth? Will we ever know?
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