Tag: INTERNET,@FEATURES

Good afternoon! Firefox Friday has been decidedly absent from the luridly green pages of Download Squad over the last few weeks, but it returns today with vengeance. A lot has been happening at Mozilla, with developments emerging on all fronts. As always we've covered the most important bits, but there's still a lot more to tell you about. Let's crack on with the first and perhaps most ...

With classic, why-does-the-universe-hate-me irony it seems that Mozilla had a flurry of activity while I was on vacation. Except the Thunderbird Contacts thing that Lee gushed about earlier this week, there's been absolutely nothing since I got back. Incidentally, if you still haven't downloaded the FF4.0 beta 2, you should do that now. The first release candidate should be only a couple of months ...

There's been a lot of buzz lately about Diaspora, with its being called "the new Facebook alternative" and getting treated like some sort of social networking Holy Grail for privacy. It even set a record for start-up fundraising site Kickstarter by raising over $170,000 in pledges. Everyone seems pretty excited about the prospect of some magical new social network that will be private, secure, ...

In theory, the Web is supposed to level the playing field for new musicians; its democratic nature lets them find their own audience, without having to beg for the approval of a record label. Of course, real life turns out to be much more complicated than the theory. It may not be a nice thing to say, but there is a lot of bad music being made. Of course that's very subjective, but by "bad" ...

Hey, do you remember Google Bookmarks? I didn't either, until I heard the news that Google Bookmarks now has the ability to create and share lists of links. After a moment of confusion, I realized that Google Bookmarks wasn't a new product, and I started playing with lists. They're actually quite useful! On top of creating and sharing, you can import all of the bookmarks from a friend's list ...

Microsoft Labs has an insanely-cool tech demo product called Pivot. In a nutshell, it's a completely new browsing paradigm which lets you "swim" in the ocean of data rather than drown in it. You can zoom in and out on complex sets of data, and slice and dice them in all sorts of crazy ways. I saw a TED talk about it (you can watch it too, after the jump) and on the one hand it seemed very ...

I'm back! I had to fend off Jay with my rusty saber -- and when that didn't work, I threatened to drop his iPhone on the ground (a very effective tactic if there's a Mac zealot that you're trying to coerce, incidentally). Anyway, British rules of engagement stipulate that I thank Jay for his help, offer him a cup of tea, and move swiftly along. So: Firefox! It's been another quiet week with no ...

Today is Safer Internet Day, an annual event coordinated by the folks at InSafe -- who are all about promoting responsible Internet use. We've covered a number of great tools in the past that have the same aim, so what better day to take another look at them? Web Of Trust (WOT, Pictured) WOT is a community-powered trust and ratings system. With nearly 26 million sites rated to date, it's one ...

(Can you tell that I'm trying to spice things up around here?) We've actually been discussing how to 'sass-up' Firefox Friday Five. Interviews with Mozilla developers? Add-on creators? Perhaps we could even get a perspective from competitors -- how does Microsoft intend to combat Firefox? With Chrome and Firefox both being open source and effectively having a shared code base, can either one of ...

Phew! What a week for the Firefox! With this flurry of activity things, you'd expect things to calm down for a little... but no! Mozilla will try to capitalize on their new fleet-footed approach to updates and minor revisions. With Chrome now barking at its heels and Microsoft's IE9 likely to arrive this year, it's never been more important for Firefox to keep its lead. Let's start with the ...

A lot of people use the Internet to find porn. A lot of people use Firefox (go download Firefox 3.6!) digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/01/21/ultimate-porn-surfing-firefox-add-ons/'; In fact, I'd go as far to suggest that porn surfers -- or at least the search for naughty, illicit, adult-only material -- account for Firefox's biggest market demographic. The 'young' ...

I originally intended this to be a guide on Facebook gaming. Then I realized that if I inducted you all into the bottomless and eternal pit that is social and casual multiplayer online games, you'd never have time or the willpower to come back to Download Squad. So first I'm going to show you some neat desktop apps that might make your Facebook experience more streamlined, and certainly more ...

Welcome back to Chrome Corner! Due to some craziness we're running a day behind here - so let's get going! Chrome for Mac gets extension support Google pushed out two Chrome updates in the past five days - including one which added some missing features for Mac users. Yes, at long last the developer channel for Mac has gained support for extensions! You're now free to browse around the ...

How better to chime in the new year with some neat Firefox news? 2009 was a great year for Firefox, as I covered in my review last week, but now it's time to look towards 2010! You might've spent the last week being lazy and stuffing your face full of left-over turkey, but it seems the Firefox community has hardly taken a break. Let's get stuck in then, with some news of the Firefox ...

6. Windows 7 Yeah, sue me -- while I'm by no means a Microsoft cheerleader, I am a huge Windows fan. 2009 saw the release of, dare I say, the best operating system ever made. Sales figures of both the bundled-with-new-PCs and boxed standalone versions have been massive, blowing all other competitors out of the water. Software support is great, the Superbar is awesome... I'm hard-pushed to ...