Firefox Download World Record Official

Finally we can bring the curtains down on the whole Firefox download world record thing because it has been announced that they have officially broken the record. When Mozilla announced it was to release the third incarnation of its popular Firefox browser, they clearly decided to go all out in a bid to make it an even greater contender to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Download parties were planned all around the world, and Mozilla announced that it intended to break the world record for the most number of downloads for a single program in a 24 hour period. It’s taken over a week to verify the logs and download data, removing duplicate and failed downloads from the count, but it was announced today that there were officially 8,002,530 downloads in what was almost the first 24 hours.

We say almost because, when the record was supposed to first be attempted, the overwhelming scramble to download Firefox 3.0 caused the servers to pack up. However, service was resumed shortly afterwards and the record attempt began again. It may have seemed like overkill and it was certainly an off the wall idea but to the marketing and PR departments much kudos is due because it definitely worked.

Virgin Media Clamping Down On Illegal File Sharing With… A Letter Campaign

It’s estimated that approximately one fifth of the UK’s population partake in illegal music downloading and the music industry obviously wants to take some form of action. Their latest proposal is to take ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to court if they refuse to take reasonable action.

While these plans are still in the pipeline, Virgin Media has signed up to try and help clamp down on file sharing by educating their customers. The first approach to this has started with the sending of 800 letters to customers whose Internet connections have been logged as being used for illegal download purposes.

This move is said to be a bid to prevent children from downloading music unaware that it was illegal. The letters would obviously be read by parents and, theoretically, the kids “educated” in the ways of spending their parent’s cash on genuine music.

Despite claims in the 800 letters that court action would proceed if the downloading did not stop, Virgin Media has said that this was an error in wording and that this is really just the first step in an educational policy, not a bid to locate and cut off offenders.

Ebay In A World Of Hurt

Ebay (the real Ebay, not a fake one) has now been ordered to pay 38.6 million euros to LVMH, which is the parent company of Louis Vuitton. The damages have been awarded because of Ebay’s inefficiency in preventing fake Vuitton goods from being sold on their auction website. While it isn’t the first action of this type taken against Ebay, it’s highly likely that it will cause yet more court cases of a similar nature.

During the same hearing, Ebay were also forced to pay Christian Dior, Kenzo, Givenchy and Guerlain perfume companies 3.25 million euros for similar offences – although in those cases it was the unauthorised sale of products. Just last month, Hermes won 20,000 euros over similar allegations and it’s possible that now the flood gates have opened there will be no stopping the action from commencing.

LVMH had actually asked for 50 million euros, amid claims that in 2006 more than 90% of the Vuitton products for sale on Ebay were in actual fact replicas.

Ebay is expected to appeal the case, citing that it has numerous anti fake and anti replica measures in place. It’s a bit of a worrying situation, even for a site the size of Ebay, because there are sure to be other companies ready to follow suit and many will have similarly detailed portfolios to that of LVMH.

May Testing Shows O2 Offers Best Broadband But UK Speeds Are Dismal

moneysupermarket.com carried out broadband line tests throughout the month of May in the hope of turning up the best, and indeed worst, Broadband providers in the UK. While it highlighted that O2 offered the best 8MB connection with actual speeds reaching 5.39MBps, the average speed is a rather pathetic 2.97MBps.

O2 was way out in front in the tests, a considerable distance ahead of Sky in second place with speeds of 3.59MBps and TalkTalk in third with 2.99MBps. Even more interesting is the fact that those surfers paying the extra to get improved Broadband speeds are those that are getting the lease value for money – 16MBps being the worst performing speed band. The average speed of a 16Mbps
connection is a pathetic 7.02MBps.

Happily, moneysupermarket is taking the opportunity to yet again champion the cause of consumers. They have already been quite vocal in their belief that broadband providers should advertise an actual speed rather than whats is essentially a meaningless maximum speed because very few, if any, consumers even actually achieve the maximum advertised speed.

We Love Online Spending

Even though we’re all apparently concerned over the cost of fuel and indeed food, we’re spending even more money online as figures continue to increase. On average, we spend £73 each every month online. Perhaps it’s more indicative of the fact that we can typically get products cheaper by shopping around online than by using the usual high street stores.

Electrical goods sales did slip significantly by around 10% month on month, and May’s figures are 30% higher than they were 12 months ago according to IMRG, the research analysts. More and more people are getting online and those that do shop online have become increasingly willing to buy large price items rather than just smaller items or groceries.

The younger generation is not only grocery shopping at major online sites, but rely on the Internet for all of their purchases. To most of us it’s hardly likely to be that surprising, although the £73 per month figure does seem high when you consider that not every consumer in the country uses the Internet for their purchases. The figure is believed to be inflated by the purchase of high cost items including holidays and cars but nevertheless that’s a lot of online spending.

Mozilla Breaks World Download Record But Is Nearly A Victim Of Its Own Success

Mozilla was attempting to break the world record for the largest number of software downloads performed in a 24 hour period when it released the latest version of its free browser, Firefox 3. Unconfirmed figures have shown that the record has been broken, with a staggering 8.3 million downloads in that period. However, it has fallen victim to its own success.

Firefox has long been a popular alternative to the Internet Explorer range of browsers partially because of the increased security that it offers. Fewer hackers and malware authors targeted Firefox because it wasn’t as omnipresent as Microsoft’s software. Because of the success and possibly the planned record attempt, though, security firms have found a potential flaw that hackers can use to gain access to the resident PC.

Another problem occurred almost as soon as the record attempt began, with servers going down under the pressure of so many attempted downloads. The record attempt subsequently began when the problem was fixed.

Download and server logs have now been forwarded to Oregon State University to verify the exact number of downloads and remove duplicate and failed attempts from the list. The process of verification is expected to take several days, perhaps as long as a week, but the record claim will be either confirmed or rebuked at that time.

Win A Zero Gravity Flight

Short of being a co-founder of the most successful search engine in the world and booking a seat on the first commercial flight into space, zero gravity flights are the next best thing so that you can actually experience zero gravity. T3 and Sure for Men have partnered to offer an incredible prize worth over £10k.

Winners get to stay in Vegas for 5 nights accompanied by a pot of £2,000 spending money (granted, that’s about twenty minutes unless you get lucky) and an incredible zero gravity flight. An editor’s choice award is also up for grabs consisting of some fairly awesome home entertainment equipment.

Come up with a design for some type of future technology and upload it to the T3 Sure for Men competition page to be in with a chance of winning. Do ignore the rather tenuous link between the competition and Sure’s products, but remember that the design can be for any item and any technology of any type.

Having A Mozilla Party?

Mozilla is making a fairly big deal out of this so we thought it only polite to join in. In fact, in all honesty, while the release of Mozilla Firefox 3 on June 17 (you can actually get it now if you really want but that would mean missing out on the party and the world record attempt) is excellent news, the suggestion of having Mozilla download parties and attempting to set the world record for the most downloaded software in a 24 hour period smacks a little of going completely overboard.

Perhaps even more worrying, though, is the fact that there are already 444 confirmed Firefox parties with an unashamed (you should be ashamed – very, very ashamed) 2,648 people expressing their intention to attend. By attending a download party you could help set a world record too – still not selling the prospect to you are we?

The third version of the proposed release build can be downloaded here, and as this included only one very slight change it is highly like that this will be the final version that is released in 5 days. You could always download this version and then download the official release version on the big day if you really want to be a part of the action.

Google Moving In With NASA

Google has never been particularly shy in its monumental achievements and certainly isn’t afraid of splashing the cash to ensure that its workers have the most productive environment. Reports last year showed the offices that included bean bag meeting areas, fireman’s poles, and many more initiatives. However, they’ve taken it a step further this time.

Paying just less than $4m lease per year initially, Google has announced that it is leasing 1.2m sq ft of land from Nasa. The land will be used to build research and development labs as well as to house some of the thousands of new employees expected when they further expand the business.

Google currently employs approximately 20,000 people having significantly boosted their staff in recent years. The new site will also include a huge office block and it is likely that it will also incorporate housing, leisure, and possibly retail facilities for employees.

From NASA’s point of view it is seen as a positive move, not only because of the obvious injection of cash but because it will further improve their own credibility within the scientific and technology arena.

While the lease is for an initial period of 40 years, building is not expected to start for five years and will not be complete until some time after 2022. Fortunately, there should be the opportunity to extend the lease by 50 years once the initial period lapses.

You’re A Selfish Bunch Of Surfers

According to a report by the BBC on research by Jakob Nielsen, the leading light in research into online habits, surfers have become selfish, impatient, and increasingly sceptical of advertising and promotions. We have essentially streamlined our surfing and information gathering processes and have learned to ignore the ploys that websites use to persuade us to linger longer on a website.

Approximately 75% of us achieve what we set out to do when we first open our browser, a figure which has increased from 60% in 1999. While this is partially down to better website and software design, it is largely because we are more understanding of the way the Internet in general, and websites work. As such we can quickly find the site we want, complete the desired action, and leave again.

Nielsen also stated that we still regularly fail to find what we are looking for using search engines, even using Google. He hypothesises that any site wanting to be more successful than Google simply has to make the search process a more successful one.

Search engines have become more sophisticated, more intelligent if you like, in the way that they collect and index data but it can still take several searches to find the actual information needed. As we continue to evolve into Internet gurus this is also likely to improve, though, because we will learn how to manipulate the search engine indexes to our own ends when conducting any search.

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