De Web Times - Blogs

During an otherwise uneventful podcast on the S60, Nokia revealed this shot of an unnamed concept device. It features a big touchscreen interface like the HTC Touch or the iPhone, but a QWERTY keypad can fold out while the touchscreen swivels, transforming the candy bar device into a premium clamshell. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not anything comes of the concept, but if Nokia knows what’s good for them, we’ll hopefully see the real product soon enough.

Source: Gizmodo

 Asher Moses
September 10, 2008 - 3:10PM

Apple has admitted it did not invent the iPod, which was in fact the brainchild of a British man who patented his prototype 30 years ago.

Kane Kramer, now 52, took out a worldwide patent in 1979 for a media player that looked similar to the iPod but could store only 3.5 minutes of music. He dubbed it the IXI and planned to expand its capacity as technology advanced.

more..

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/articles/core-ipod-invented-by-furniture-salesman/2008/09/10/1220857618764.html

Google plans to launch the beta version of its open source web browser called Google Chrome. “So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web,” reads Google blog.

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we’ve now made the comic publicly available — you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web. more…

“Google Chrome” joins IE, Firefox, and Safari. (And Opera, if you’re into that sort of thing.) It’s a super-competitive field, partly because browser-makers get paid every time you use the built-in search box.

Google chrome uses the Webkit rendering engine, but has a new, superfast javascript engine (I’d love to see a comparison with the new firefox thing — tracemonkey?) and some novel stability/security measures. It also hooks into google’s cloud supercomputer in a few ways.

The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you’re not on the Digg site itself. With a notification window built into the toolbar, you’ll never miss a popular story or when friends Digg, submit, or comment on stories.

Install the Toolbar

Using the Toolbar

When you’re browsing the web, the toolbar will let you know if a story has already been submitted to Digg and, if it has, how many Diggs and comments it got. If the page you’re viewing isn’t already on Digg, the toolbar will display a submit button, which will help you easily submit the story to Digg and share it with the entire Digg community. It’s even easy to hide the toolbar; if you don’t want to see it, simply click on the Digg guy in the navigation bar, and it will be hidden.
Latest Popular Content

The toolbar will alert you when new stories become popular on Digg by showing the story details in a small notification window at the bottom of the browser. And don’t worry, you can control whether to see all recently popular stories or just those from the topics and media types you care about.
Follow Your Friends

A great way to discover the best content is to see what your friends are doing on Digg. Enter your Digg username in the settings window to receive notifications when you friends Digg, submit, or comment on stories. To go back and look at earlier notifications, click the Digg icon at the status bar at the bottom of the browser. All notifications can also be snoozed if you want to temporarily turn them off.
Customize

In addition to setting topics for notifications of popular stories and your Digg username for notifications of friends’ activity, you can customize the placement of the notification window, how long it displays, and how links should be opened.
Future Features

Stay tuned for some great additions, including Digging directly from the toolbar and notifications about your latest Recommendations from our Recommendation Engine.

Source: http://digg.com/tools/firefox

Mozilla’s chairman explains why mobile devices need an open-source browser.

Technology Review