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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Yahoo gets more social with new Messenger 9 beta

You can't take it with you, at least when it comes to your social graph.

But with a new beta version of Yahoo Messenger 9 software released Thursday, users have new options for reconstructing networks of friends and contacts they've built elsewhere.

The new beta of Yahoo Messenger 9 can help user invite contacts on AOL, Google's Gmail and Orkut, Microsoft's Hotmail, MySpace, and other online services to connect through the Yahoo service. Version 9 also includes a special group of all people in your Yahoo address book, helping to connect with contacts users may have stored elsewhere within Yahoo itself.

Also tying more deeply into the rest of Yahoo, the new beta can be used to reflect some other activities within the network--for example, when somebody spotlights a Web site of interest using Yahoo Buzz.

"We'll add more types of updates in the future," said product manager Sarah Bacon in a blog posting about the new beta.

Yahoo Messenger 9 is intended for use on Windows XP, in contrast to the more obviously named Yahoo Messenger for Vista. The final version of the Yahoo Messenger 9 is due in the third quarter, Yahoo said. The Mac equivalent is scheduled to be released by the end of the year.

Also new in the beta is a better interface for setting status messages--even if you're away from your IM software, Yahoo said. And links to games present in Yahoo Messenger 8 has made its way to version 9, so users can play pool, checkers, and others. However, only those with version 8.1 or later can play games with those using the version 9 beta, Yahoo said.

Yahoo Messenger's icon, a frighteningly happy face, reflects the fact that people have a whole section of their brains just for processing facial information. Yahoo is tapping into that visual cortex a little more directly with the new beta, which uses larger emoticons.

For further information, check Yahoo's blog about the new beta or a Messenger 9 beta demo video.

Originally posted at News Blog

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Mozilla: Final Firefox 3 expected in June

Firefox fans looking for a major update to the open-source Web browser probably will get a final version of it next month.

One of the Firefox's strengths is the broad collection of hundreds of add-ons, but that also means things move more slowly when programmers must update their projects to be compatible with Firefox 3. And that's part of what Mozilla is watching closely as it seeks feedback from the 1.5 million people who have installed the Firefox 3 release candidate 1, which Mozilla issued a few days ago.

"We're in a phase where we're letting add-ons get a chance to update," Schroepfer said. "We like to have RCs (release candidates) out for a while to gather feedback."

More release candidates are possible, he said. With Firefox 2, there were three. "We're in better shape this time, but there's no reason to rush this," he said.

The release candidate is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you want to try it out, it's best to read the release notes first, in particular the known issues that could trip you up.

After Mozilla's years-long slow start, Firefox has gained significant market share against its top rival, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Although the latter still dominates the market, Firefox has helped to reignite the browser wars to an extent: Microsoft is investing more resources in IE development, Apple has brought its own Safari to Windows, and Apple and Google are among those devoting attention to the open-source Webkit browser engine project.

Browsers have also become more important as the Internet has begun moving to the more lavish and interactive pages of Web 2.0. For that reason, performance has become a concern: browsers now must execute large amounts of JavaScript code that power-hungry sites such as the office applications of Google Docs and the photo editing of Picnik use.

The Mozilla Foundation has grown significantly over the years. It's set up two subsidiaries, Mozilla Corp. to handle the browser, and the newer Mozilla Messaging group to handle the Thunderbird e-mail software.

"We're looking for final ship sometime in June," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, in an interview Wednesday. Mozilla, which was spun out of AOL more than 10 years ago, oversees the Firefox programming project.

Based on market share statistics and the number of Firefox browsers that check Mozilla servers for updates, Schroepfer estimates there are about 175 million Firefox users today.

Firefox crossed the 500 million download mark in February, and now has been downloaded more than 556 million times.

What are Schroepfer's three favorite things about Firefox 3?

• "No 1. is definitely the awesome bar--the smart location bar. It changed the way I use the browser. With a couple keyboard presses, it figures out what page I want to go to." The smart location bar starts suggesting Web addresses based on the user's browsing history and can sidestep problems with complicated, hard-to-remember URLs.

• Second is "the performance and memory work. It's 2 to 3 times faster than the previous version and nearly 10 times faster than IE 7," he boasted. "We really tuned the heck out of memory use, so it uses a lot less memory, especially with lots of windows and tabs."

• Third: "The antimalware and security features. We used to tell people not to go to the bad part of the Net. Now we're seeing legitimate sites being taken over," so it's good to have better protection by default.

The CNET review of Firefox 3 RC1 generally concurred with Schroepfer's assessment, though we found the memory improvements were "nothing to write home about," and some performance improvements might be related to the fact that incompatible add-ons weren't running.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

The fastest way to open a word processor

Faster is almost always better, at least when it comes to computers. So what's the fastest way to open a word processor?

You can create a keyboard shortcut to open Notepad, WordPad, Word, or any other word processor on your PC by right-clicking the program's shortcut on the Start menu, choosing Properties > Shortcut > Shortcut key, entering your keystroke combination of choice (be sure not to overwrite one that's already in use), and pressing Enter. I described how to get fast access to all your keyboard shortcuts in a post from last week.

Now press the keystroke combination to open the program, and start typing (or navigate to an existing file you want to open). When you're done working in the file, press Ctrl-S, give the file a name (if it doesn't have one already), choose a location to store it (or accept the program's default storage folder), and press Enter. What could be simpler?

Well, skipping the file-naming and storage location-choosing steps, for one thing. And having access to the notes from any Internet-connected computer, for another.

Web word processors auto-save files
You can create a keyboard shortcut that opens Google Docs or any other Web word processor. Start by opening a new document in the service. Select the URL in the Address bar, and type Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard. Now open Windows Explorer to the Desktop or any other folder, right-click anywhere in the folder, choose New > Shortcut, paste the URL of the service into the location field, press Enter, give the shortcut a name, and press Enter again.

Next, right-click the shortcut you just created, click Properties > Shortcut > Shortcut key, type your preferred keystroke combination for opening the service, and press Enter. Now you can open the service ready to create a new file by pressing that keyboard shortcut.

Unfortunately, if you're not already logged in, you'll have to enter your username and password before you can open the blank file. You can avoid the login step by creating the shortcut to the Writer online word processor that mimics the look of old DOS-based text editors running on a green-phosphor display. (The service's bare-bones look is itself modeled after the free Dark Room word processor, which, in turn, is the Windows version of the WriteRoom word processor for Mac OS X.)

Since Writer doesn't require you to log in--or even to create an account--you need not give your files a name. Just stick with the default, and when you want to reopen the file, select it from your list of documents, which appears just below the text window.

Writer remembers your files by leaving a cookie with the identifying information. If you delete the cookie, you lose access to the files, unless you sign up for a free account. The account has the added benefit of providing access to your files from any Internet-connected PC.

Should you find Writer to your liking, be sure to make a donation to its creator to help keep the great services coming.