There is a small country called “United Arab Emirates” in the one of the most troubled regions of the world (Middle East). It is rich in Oil and censorship fanatics. In the name of political, religious, moral and cultural values, the state sponsored ISP’s go around blocking and censoring the web content. There is no basis or policy by which this stone age practice is governed.

Last month, Etisalat silently blocked Shelfari (a social book cataloging website). Reason stated was that it was a social networking site. I really don’t understand what this country has against social networking. Orkut and many other similar sites face the same music.

After representation from few netizens this ban seems to have been lifted for now. I have been able to access Shelfari…

So do you think censorship is justifiable in the name of maintaing the community values ?

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For the people who have been using Google Maps or Reader, Google Profiles might be an old news. Today I was trying out the new Google Mapmaker and was surprised to find my Profile page was revamped. There was also a seperate link for my profile page. Looks like Google is going to consolidate all their services to reflect on a single profile.

According to Google,

A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you’re all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you’d like.

For now Profile is visible in Google Reader, Google Maps and Google’s Shared Stuff. Google has already announced these profiles would be searchable.

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Finally the day has arrived and final release of Firefox 3 is out on open and IE is getting its butt kicked left and right.

Mozilla Foundation had conducted its PR greatly but the execution was poor. First the time of release was not officially announced and all the eastern hemisphere netizens had to guess the whole day when Firefox 3 was getting out and finally it dawned that it would be midnight for most. The time came and when I went will all anticipation, all I got was server time outs and after a few reloads and refreshes,  I was met with this sweet outage page.

OK this was not a great surprise since everybody was trying, the Mozilla servers were melting with the load. But the real surprise was when after nearly an hour of reloading the browser, I finally met with a page to download Firefox but alas it was Firefox 2. The page design was for Firefox 3, but the release was 2.0.0.14

So after another disappointment, I got back to reloading, refreshing and after nearly another one hour got the sweet link for a download and installed it finally. Did another download in my other system and finally got it also up and running.

So after doing my duty to the Mozilla’s Community decided to check out how the Download day was going on. The total downloads till 00:45 GST on 18th June 2008 was 1,861,546 downloads. UAE - 1480, Afghanistan - 0, Iraq - 62, Mynammar - 0, Iran - 6422, Sudan - 54, Somalia - 0, Cuba - 414, Oman - 0, Mongolia - 0, North Korea - 0

For who needs to show around that they did their part on the download day, you can flaunt it here. You will get a certificate like this one below.

Update : The time is 10:30 AM on 18th June 2008, nearly 12 hours after the launch of Firefox 3 and the stastics for the downloads are as below

Total Downloads : 4,462,863

UAE - 2400, Afghanistan - 62, Iraq - 101, Mynammar - 211, Iran - 133,500, Sudan - 73, Somalia -  Still 0, Cuba - 557, Oman - 212, Mongolia -281, North Korea - Still 0, Chad - 0,

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There is a lot of news about browsers these days… Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Internet Explorer 8 and now its time for Safari 4. Apple unveiled its next version of the third most popular browser on Earth in WWDC 2008. Presently it is available only to the registered developers at Apple Developer Connection. With the present roadmap it is likely that Safari 4 might be released before Snow Leopard.

I downloaded and tried it out today and I should say I am impressed. It is a potential Firefox beater. No wonder, Safari is termed as “fastest browser”. It is quite lite with all the basic features built-in. Right now I am blogging with Safari 4 and I do have a feeling that I might switch over to Safari 4 only for writing posts. It is quite responsive and even Firefox RC3 didn’t match with this performance. In two words — “Smooth Operator”

According to Apple fans, the javascript implementation of Safari 4 is 53% faster than the previous versions. Thanks to SquirrelFish, a open source javascript rendering engine. It replaces old WebKit 3.1 implementation. That makes this edition of Safari much better than the Firefox 3’s SpiderMonkey engine.

The ability to save webpages as a desktop application is also a notable addition. So if you are a person who constantly saves webpages then Safari 4 is the thing for you.

The spell check along with Grammar check is a must tool for a blogger. One of the major reasons why I would be using Safari for my posting. Other features include more options for new windows and tab, full page zoom and other unexplored features.

You can download your copy of developer preview of Safari 4 from Apple Developer Center if you are a registered developer.

Source : [macnn]

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The entire community living in the eastern hemisphere of the globe have to wait a little longer to taste the final release of Firefox 3. According to the Mozilla blog, the record attempt will start at 10:00AM PDT [05:00PM UTC] [10:30PM IST] [09:00PM GST] on June 17th 2008 CE. But do remember you have entire tomorrow also to download.

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I am yet to download the official release of Gran Paradiso, the Mozilla Foundation’s developers are already discussing about the next update to Firefox. Going with the tradition of naming Firefox projects with place names, the Firefox 3.1 project is named as Shiretoko after the Japenese National Park in the north eastern tip of the island of Hokkaido, Japan. The word  in native tongue means “end of earth”. 

Shiretoko is a minor update to the Gran Paradiso which would be running the Gecko 1.9.1 Engine and most of the features that didn’t make in time to the 3 release.

• One of the major feature would be visual Tab switching. For now Ctrl+Tab extension serves the purpose in Gran Paradiso. This feature would be integrated into the browser along with Tab searching and filtering.
• There are lot of features for Tagging which include bulk tagging, tag autocomplete, lightweight tagging UI, Advanced Search UI.
• In the add-ons divison there would be enhanced compatibility checking during upgrades which means we might have to really wait till the developer makes the extension compatible than we doing it ourselves

The entire feature list of this release can be obtained from the Mozilla’s planning center for Firefox 3.1. The nightly builds of alpha release 1 can be obtained from Mozilla’s FTP servers here. It will be installed under the name of Minefield, the codename for Mozilla’s testing builds.

Source : [Mozilla Wiki]

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Opera Software ASA released their latest version of Opera Desktop Browser 9.5, thereby becoming the first major release in 2008 for the browsers. Although the market share of Opera remains very small compared to Micro$oft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, it is a favorite among many netizens. It was also a one time favorite of mine before Firefox wooed me with its extensions and themes. It’s quite a lite browser and indeed one of the fastest down in the market.Finally I downloaded it and tested it today.

The loading time is awesome, nothing compared to Firefox or Safari. But again there is no plug-ins or widgets added in Opera, whereas my Firefox is loaded with extensions.

The 9.5 version has a great address bar but somehow my honeymoon with Firefox’s address bar is yet to get over and Opera didn’t get anywhere near to take me away from it.

One of the features which really turns your head is the Bookmarks Sync. You can achieve this in Firefox with extensions but Opera has a built-in feature. This feature is a useful one for somebody who has Opera in their Mobile also. It saves you a lot of trouble.

Regarding the Malware protection in Opera 9.5, didn’t get much chance to test it. But the online reviews already place Firefox to be better in this department. Opera has to do a lot in this if it needs to be taken seriously.

Lifehacker’s Browser Tests proves the Opera’s Unbeatable launch time and also Firefox’s low memory consumption. Also complete list of changes in this version can be seen here in Opera’s Website.

Even though this browser is lite, standard compliant, fast it is yet to drag me away from Firefox because of the lack of extensions and it is not Open Source.

Source : [LifeHacker, Opera]

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