More than 10% of all PCs worldwide now on Windows 7

Microsoft: “Today we reported our third quarter earnings for the period ending March 31st, 2010 with a record $14.5 billion in revenue. You can read our earnings results here. Windows 7 continues to be a growth driver for Microsoft and people continue to be excited about Windows 7. How excited?  Exactly 6 months after the launch on October 22, 2009, we’ve sold well over 100 million licenses of Windows 7. To put that in context, more than 10% of all PCs worldwide are already running Windows 7 today. That’s amazing!”

www.windowsteamblog.com

Vodafone launches snooping service

Vodafone is offering to record every conversation for companies interested in knowing what their employees are saying and to whom, but not if they've got an iPhone.

Financial companies are gearing up for mobile phones to be added to the industry's recording requirement, with Vodafone being quick off the mark in launching a service for those who'll need to start recording everything their employees are saying and to whom.

Financial companies are already required to keep recordings of all "relevant communications" for at least six months, but mobile phones were specifically exempted as the technology wasn't considered up to it. Now the Financial Services Authority is consulting on that exemption (pdf) with a view to making all calls equal. That means someone has to record the calls, and Vodafone's solution rather neatly off-loads that onto the customer.

There are plenty of on-device applications for recording phone calls, but only for the more-advanced smartphone platforms. Then there's the problem of collecting all the various recordings. Recording at the network operator level would seem more logical, even if it means additional complexity.

Vodafone Mobile Recording reroutes calls via the company's existing infrastructure where they can be recorded along with the fixed-line calls. But that means putting an application on the handset to reroute outgoing calls, which limits the market to Blackberry and Symbian handsets for the moment at least.

Vodafone tells us it's working on an iPhone version, but Apple doesn't allow interception of outgoing calls so we can't help thinking it's going to take them a while. The iPhone might not be the bankers' choice, but there are more than a few knocking around the City.

The new rules do allow for personally-owned phones not being recorded, but require companies "to take reasonable steps to prevent employees or contractors from using private communication equipment [for business calls]".

The FSA expects the addition of mobile call recording to cost the industry £11m initially, and £18m annually, but it might also cost a few bankers their company-issued iPhones.

New Firefox 4.0 GUI Facelift Elements Revealed

Mozilla is pushing on with the redesign process of Firefox’s graphical user interface. Early adopters that have followed closely the evolution of Firefox 4.0’s facelift will be able to tell that the New Theme project page now features extended timeline after a recent update. At the same time, Firefox 4.0 developer Stephen Horlander has revealed additional elements that are an integral part of the Firefox 4.0 facelift. Users will be able to access screenshots depicting Mozilla’s plans for the evolution of the UI of the next major version of Firefox via the images included at the bottom of this article.

“The new theme for Firefox will modernize the web browser interface, reflecting the power, simplicity and customizability of the world's most popular browser. Ensuring that the application feels like a natural part of the user's desktop, web life, and task flow are key goals,” Mozilla reveals on the New Theme page for Firefox 4.0.
However, as testers running the early Alpha development milestones of Firefox 3.7/ Mozilla Developer Preview 1.9.3 have been able to notice, changes are already being integrated into Minefield releases. The screenshot illustrating Windows Theme Progress is taken from a Firefox 3.7 Alpha build.

 

But there is additional work that went into the UI overhaul for Firefox 4.0. “Panel Styles - I did some work on styling panels(specifically notifications) on various platforms,” Horlander explained. “Everyone on the UX team liked the Glass Border approach. It is consistent with Windows 7 taskbar panels (with the addition of the half-diamond) and feels lighter. I also did some work on how this could look for panels outside of notifications.”
As users can see from the screenshots, Mozilla is embracing both Windows 7’s Aero Glass and the Ribbon/Fluent GUI specific for the platform’s default apps such as Paint and WordPad. Firefox 4.0 will also feature an “edit tray” that will become visible as users deal with text.

 

www.softpedia.com

YouTube rolls out rental service

YouTube has quietly rolled out a rentals service that offers both movies and tv shows.  Costing between $.99 and $3.99 for 48 hours, the fee is paid with Google Checkout. By entering the 'pay for rental' market, Google is now in competitions with Netflix, Apple (iTunes) and Microsoft (Xbox Marketplace rentals).

 

According to ReadWriteWeb.com, it is expected that YouTube will make this announcement sometime today. This seems logical as why would YouTube open a store but not announce it publically. You can currently access the store at www.youtube.com/store.

With Hulu rumored to be entering the 'pay for market' too, it only makes sense to see YouTube follow a similar business model.  As users become more comfortable paying for digital only content, it's one step closer to the death of physical media.

 

www.neowin.net

Google ‘99.9%’ Sure To Shut China Search Engine

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Talks with China over censorship have reached an apparent impasse and Google, the world’s largest search engine, is now “99.9 percent” certain to shut its Chinese search engine, the Financial Times said on Saturday.

It said in a report on its website Google had drawn up detailed plans for closing its Chinese search engine.

The newspaper cited a person familiar with the company’s thinking as saying that, while a decision could be made very soon, Google was likely to take some time to follow through with its plans.

That would be in order to bring about an orderly closure as the company takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by authorities, it said.

China warned Google on Friday against flouting the country’s laws, as expectations grow for a resolution to a public battle over censorship and cyber-security.

Google shocked business and political circles in January when it threatened to pull out of China if it could not offer an unfiltered Chinese search engine. The threat came after cyber attacks originating from China on it and about 30 other firms.

“If you don’t respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you,” China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Li Yizhong, told reporters on Friday in answer to a question on what China would do if Google.cn simply stopped filtering search results.

That came after the chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, said on Wednesday he hoped to announce soon a result to talks with Chinese authorities on offering an uncensored search engine in China.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shares oversight of the Chinese Internet with a number of other bodies. Still more bureaucracies are involved in matters of foreign investment, complicating the Chinese government’s response to Google’s challenge.

www.reuters.com www.wired.com

Firefox 4.0 GUI Evolution

Firefox 4.0, the next major release of Mozilla’s open source browser, will bring to the table a major overhaul of its graphical user interface, one that would put the UI in line the Windows 7 Ribbon/Fluent style. Mozilla has already made public details on the revamping of the Firefox User interface for version 4.0, and various concepts and sketches have been already published. However, Firefox 4.0 developer Stephen Horlander has now offered two video demonstrations featuring Firefox 4.0’s new GUI available here and here. For the best viewing experience possible users should run Firefox 3.6 (download links available at the bottom of this article).

“In addition to the UI and appearance changes we have been exploring for Firefox, we have also been exploring how to better improve the user experience through animation,” Horlander stated. “One area that animation would be very beneficial is with tab interactions. Specifically moving/arranging tabs on the tab strip, closing/opening tabs and tearing off tabs into new windows. Presently the feedback here isn’t as good or as elegant as it could be.”

Both videos are extremely short and users will have to watch carefully in order to witness the advances in terms of animation and tab functionality that Mozilla is cooking for Firefox 4.0. In the first video, Horlander clicks on the New Tab button. Subsequently, it is the tab button itself that grows and “gives birth” to the new tab. The second video offered is designed to illustrate the changes introduced to standard Firefox tab behavior such as rearranging tabs. At the same time, users will be able to watch how Firefox 4.0 will react when a tab is torn-off.

“Some of the goals for animation are to make browsing feel faster, adding visual affordances that makes tasks more understandable and to make the browser more visually appealing. There is much more detail on the Wiki articles linked above. My goal was to quickly demo how this would actually look and feel because still images and wireframes can only convey so much,” Horlander added.

Most importantly, the videos both feature the new Firefox 4.0 GUI, which just as the Windows 7 Ribbon/Fluent user interface, no longer features the classical menu. Instead, Firefox 4.0 will offer the App Button which will open the way to the Menu items. As you can see, Firefox 4.0 will also feature a reduced Title Bar, and re-arranged tabs, to a new position, above the address bar.

 

www.softpedia.com

Google planning to launch application store for businesses

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal via CNET.com, Google is preparing an online store in which it will sell third-party business software to Google Apps customers.

Google's store could arrive as early as March with the works of third-party developers available as enhancements to Google's office productivity software suite, allowing Gmail and Google Docs users to purchase add-ons for features too specialized for the mainstream Google Apps product.

Google already has a similar solution in the form of the Google Solutions Marketplace (GSM). The difference is that GSM lists third-party software for both Google Apps and Enterprise Search, but it does not let the user buy the applications directly from Google.

Google was only able to issue this statement, "The Google Solutions Marketplace makes it easy for our customers to connect with an ecosystem of products and professional services. We're constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time."

The report also states that developers would share the revenue with Google. While a specific breakdown was not indicative, one can speculate that Google will employ a model similar to the Apple and Google mobile application stores (which would translate to about 70% of the revenue going to the developer).

 

www.neowin.net