Google Chrome – An Asian Trojan Horse?

Ed: Despite Google’s position in search, they are unable to hold any significant share of the browser market.

On September 5 we reported on the launch of the Google web browser Chrome, and now just over a month later it’s time for a quick update.

In a highly competitive market it seems the upper hand is being held by the two key incumbents’ Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Explorer…

State of the Mobile Web: Long Tail Sites Increase Their Presence

Ed: Impressive growth for Opera, but not significant when compared to the global view. 

• Mobile phones swamp the number of PC users; yet, the 4 billion views is 0.4% of the total views, possibly less.
• 242 pages per month compares to over 1,000 average per month per user, possibly 2,500 in the USA. 
• In international counties, the mobile phone may be the only Internet access. Thus, these numbers are even less impressive. Still, mobile use is emerging and promising. iPhone and Google Android are likely to make these numbers a substantial portion of the total.

from ReadWriteWeb by Richard MacManus

Browser vendor Opera, which is a stronger player in the mobile browser market than it is on the desktop, has just released more data on of the state of the Mobile Web. The latest report tells us that usage of the mobile Web continues to grow in terms of unique users and page views. What’s more, ‘long tail’ sites are showing up well in the data too, which is a sure sign the Mobile Web is gaining traction in key growth markets like the U.S. and China.

The company states that in August, their mobile browser Opera Mini (our coverage) was used by approximately 17.3 million users, who viewed more than 4.1 billion pages – about 242 pages per user, per month.

Part 1: Growth

Number of Users

In August, Opera Mini was used by approximately 17.3 million users, a 9.1% month-on-month increase from July and more than 357% compared to August 2007.

Pages transcoded by Opera Mini per month

Pages Transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed more than 4.1 billion pages in August. Each person using Opera Mini viewed approximately 242 pages on average. For the third month in a row, the number of pages viewed per user has gone up. Since July, page views have gone up 11.7%. Since August 2007, this number is up 337%.

Total data consumed per month (in MB)

Data Consumed

In August, 17.3 million Opera Mini users generated more than 60.3 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since July, the data consumed went up by 12.1%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed 90% on average. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 603 million MB of data in August.

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Windows Mobile 7 release delayed

Posted by Ina Fried

Microsoft has informed some of its partners that it has had to delay Windows Mobile 7, a much anticipated update to its cell phone operating system.

Although Microsoft has not publicly said when to expect Windows Mobile 7, partners who had expected to have a final release in their hands by early next year have been told now that it won’t be ready until the second half of next year, sources told CNET News.

The delay is a significant blow for the software maker, which has been counting on the next version of Windows Mobile to enable devices that better rival Apple’s iPhone. Among the features widely expected to be part of the release is advanced gesture recognition, perhaps along the lines of the iPhone, but possibly also using the camera as a means for reading gestures. Microsoft’s Tellme unit, which focuses on speech input, has also been working on Windows Mobile 7 features.

Windows Mobile 7 is expected to be a dramatic improvement over 6.1, shown here, but when will it arrive?

(Credit: Microsoft)

The delay also comes amid stepped-up competition. Google is preparing Tuesday to launch the first phone running its Android operating system, while Apple has its updated iPhone 3G, and new models are also debuting from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

Microsoft, for its part, declined to comment on its plans. In an interview, group product manager Scott Rockfeld noted that CEO Steve Ballmer and mobile unit head Andy Lees did meet with 17 of the company’s largest cell phone maker and carrier partners.

“They all expressed their excitement of what we are doing in the short term and the long term,” Rockfeld said.

Microsoft is not expected to have a major update to its core operating system ahead of Windows Mobile 7. However, other improvements are expected to debut sooner, most notably an improved browser that brings the rendering engine of Internet Explorer 6 onto Windows Mobile. That update, still expected this year, should pave the way for Windows Mobile phones to display rich Web pages, including those that are home to Flash content and Ajax applications…

Inside the Wonderful World of Windows 7

Here’s a little info to prepare you for the arrival of Windows 7. Sure, it’s still well over a year away and sure, all this stuff could change at the drop of a hat, but let’s just run with it. Those with heart conditions should stop reading now.

According to Technologizer, an early build of Windows 7 may contain some or all of the following:

- A fancier calculator.

- The Office 2007 Ribbon thing may cross over into WordPad and MS Paint.

- Potentially less annoying User Access Control.

- My Documents will be called Libraries? Come on Microsoft, there’s no need to rename that stuff all the time.

- Control Panel will have System Tray settings.

Read more…

How HTML 5 Is Already Changing the Web

By Scott LoganbillSeptember 12, 2008 Categories: Programming, Software & Tools

HTML 5 represents the biggest leap forward in web standards in almost a decade. Unlike the specifications that came before it, HTML 5 is not merely intended to present content to a web browser. Its goal is to bring the web into maturity as a full-fledged application platform — a level playing field where video, sound, images, animations, and full interactivity with your computer are all standardized. And it may be a long way off still, but elements of HTML 5 are already reshaping the way we use the web.

The last update to the Hypertext Markup Language — the lingua franca of the web — was the 4.01 specification completed in September, 1999.

Quite a bit has happened since. The original browser wars ended, Netscape dissolved. The winner, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, begat IE6, which begat the current IE7. Mozilla Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape to take over second position. Apple and Google have released their own web browsers. The minority shareholder Opera continues to play the gadfly while pushing standards and software design forward. We even have a real web experience on our phones and game consoles, thanks to Opera, the iPhone and Google’s soon-to-be-released Android.

But all that progress threw the web standards movement into disarray. Ideas for HTML 5 and other developing standards were more or less left on the cutting room floor. As a result, HTML 5 has been in draft form ever since.

Several interested parties have banded together to form the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (simply referred to as the WHATWG), an entity charged with picking up HTML 5’s pieces. It operates separately from the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees web standards, and it includes representatives from Mozilla, the KHTML/WebKit project, Google, Apple, Opera and Microsoft. And although the draft may not be ratified for years, work on HTML 5 continues.

So what does HTML 5 offer? Here’s a rundown of the most exciting advancements in the HTML 5 draft specification today:

• A new, sensible tagging strategy. Instead of bundling all multimedia into object or embed tags, video goes in video tags. Audio goes in audio tags, and so on.
• Localized databases. This feature, when implemented, automatically embeds a local SQL database websites can read and write to, speeding up interactive searching, cacheing and indexing functions, or for offline use of web apps that rely on data requests.
• Rich animations without plug-ins. The canvas element gives the browser the ability to draw vector graphics. This means configurable, automatic graphs and illustrations right in the browser without Flash or Silverlight. Some support for canvas is already in all the latest browsers except for IE.
• Real apps in the browser. APIs for in-browser editing, drag and drop, back button “waypoints,” and other graphical user interface abilities.
• Content presentation tags will be phased out, and CSS will rule.

In theory, HTML 5 is a breeding ground for new ideas for web standards shared among interested developers and browser vendors. But it’s all still experimental.

Get Automatic Updates for Google Chrome’s Nightly Builds

Ed: Same experience from tEarn exitmercial network. Chrome has too many bugs. As a collection of sites focused on early adopters, our reported Chrome share is higher than the average, but declining. Chrome is not ready for prime time.

We’ve been tipped off that Google has been releasing nightly builds of their new Google Chrome browser like crazy. It’s been reported that up to 10 nightly builds a day are being released for Chrome. That’s a lot of updates to keep up with and we have to admit we’re surprised at the pace in which Google is releasing these builds. However, the builds do not come with automatic updates or notifications for new build releases. A developer has taken the time to throw together a simple and efficient solution.

Google’s Chrome Market Share Going Nowhere Fast

The success of Google’s (GOOG) Chrome browser will be measured in years, not days. But a week after Google unveiled its new browser, it’s losing market share — not gaining it.

Chrome still has a respectable 0.7% to 1% of the browser market, depending on the time of day, according to tracking service Net Applications. But that’s down from last week, when its share ranged from 1% to 1.7%, depending on the time of day.

Our internal stats show a similar story. While Chrome accounted for 6.6% of our visits last Wednesday, it now has a 4.7% share — down almost a third.

Bad news for Google? No. It’s natural that a lot of people would try a new product — which got massive buzz last week — and then head back to what works for them. Many Firefox users, for example, have said they won’t make the leap to Chrome until it’ll support the extensions they use. There’s also bugs to be squashed, a few features to be added, missing Mac support, etc.

But if Chrome is eventually going to be the basis of some sort of Google-dominated cloud operating system, they’re going to have to attract more users at some point.