Google Update Now a Scheduled Task, But Still Evil

Google has released a slight revision of its Google Update software for Windows. The latest version eliminates the need for Update to run constantly in the background — one of several reasons we’ve previously labeled the software “evil” — but stops short of conforming to the best practices of software updating. Instead of running constantly in [...]

EveryBlock Source Code Release Offers Glimpse of the Magic Behind the Curtain

EveryBlock, the local news aggregator that touts itself as a “news feed for your block,” has followed through on its much-anticipated source code release. The local news site was founded two years ago by Adrian Holovaty, who is also one of the creators of the Django web development framework, which powers EveryBlock. Over the past two [...]

W3C Drops Audio and Video Codec Requirements From HTML 5

The stewards of the web have removed the sections of the HTML 5 draft specification that would recommend web browsers support audio and video playback using a specific codec. Ian Hickson, one of the primary authors of the HTML 5 draft at the Worldwide Web Consortium, made the announcement on the WHATWG mailing list Tuesday after [...]

Mozilla Pushes the Web Forward With Firefox 3.5

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is the culmination of nearly a year-long quest to build a browser for the next version of the web. And while it’s not perfect, it comes very, very close. The open-source browser is now available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux. Originally envisioned as a quick follow-up to 2008’s release of Firefox 3.0, [...]

Weave Update for Firefox Syncs Your Web Identity

If you’re a Firefox user, you now have the ability to synchronize not only your bookmarks, browsing history and user preferences across multiple PCs — you can also sync your identity. Mozilla has updated Weave, its free add-on for Firefox that lets you synchronize all your personal data across the various Firefox installations you have running [...]

Firefox 3.5 Will Arrive June 30

Mozilla will release the next major version of Firefox on Tuesday, June 30, Webmonkey has learned. Mozilla confirmed the news Friday afternoon. The company previously made a promise that it would make the browser available for download “by the end of June” this year. Since next Tuesday falls on the last day of the month, Mozilla [...]

Movable Type Sings a New Song With ‘Melody’

Movable Type, the publishing platform that has helped many a blogger move from a cookie-cutter hosted blog to a professional looking website, has a new addition to its family. A group of Movable Type coders have launched Melody, a new version of Movable Type based on the publishing system’s open-source code base. Of course there is already [...]

Facebook Opens Up Publisher - Now Go Tell Everyone

Facebook users will soon gain the ability to publish content so that everyone on the web can view it. This will lead a big change for Facebook users, many of whom have been limited to sharing content only with others on Facebook. The social network has invited its beta testers to experiment with a new version [...]

FriendFeed Adds File Sharing, Including Support for MP3s

The lifestreaming site FriendFeed has rolled out a new feature that lets users post almost any file to the site, including MP3s. Users can now post PDFs, text files or MP3s to their accounts, sharing them with specific individuals, private groups within FriendFeed or with the internet at large. Any uploaded file, including the MP3s, can [...]

Ubiquity, Firefox’s Command Line Web Interface, Gets More Natural

Firefox’s unique tool for interacting with web services has gotten easier to use thanks to a new update. Ubiquity 0.5, a project from Mozilla Labs, is a major improvement to one of the browser’s most useful add-ons. It now uses a more natural language engine that’s closer to human speech, and there’s a helpful tutorial for [...]