Personal thoughts on gadgets and tech news.
News
Firefox on the way out?
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Keep on burning.
I was strolling along the web today when I stumbled onto this article from Business Insider. I’ve been hearing for a while now that Google Chrome’s share of the browser market had been going up, while Firefox had been falling. Now it sounds like there’s been an interesting shift in the browser wars.
The little Google search window you see at the top right corner of your Firefox browser is a paid product placement: For the past several years, Google has paid Mozilla something on the order of $1 per copy to have that window there. Last year, that Google search window accounted for 84% of Mozilla’s $123 million of revenue, or about $100 million.
The Google-Mozilla search deal ended in November. There has been no update about whether it has been renegotiated.
This gives me a bit of a sad.
Now, I have to say though, I am using Google Chrome these days. I was a devout Firefox user a few years back, but switched when I was noticing how much system resources Firefox was taking up, and how much lighter Chrome seemed to be.
Still, I always liked Firefox a hell of a lot better than Internet Explorer!
Now it’s starting to look like Firefox may actually go the way of the dodo. I doubt it’ll disappear entirely, but something’s gonna give, that much seems certain.
Farewell, you cuddly looking fox of fire.
Geek Toy of the Week – Galaxy Nexus / Ice Cream Sandwich
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A twofer this time! Samsung and Google finally officially unveiled their Galaxy Nexus handset, which also means they’ve unveiled Ice Cream Sandwich, aka Android 4.0!
This thing looks gorgeous! 4.65 inch, 1280 x 720 screen, 1.2Ghz dual core processor, 7.2mm thin. I am drooling, just drooling.
Netflix cancels Qwikster (Flixster is likely happy)
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Just noticed over at Engadget that Netflix has reversed it’s decision to seperate out it’s DVD rental service into the company Qwikster. Qwikster is dead.
When Qwikster was first announced, I actually thought it was kind of a good idea. The new company looked like it was basically set up to take the declining DVD rentals, tuck them into the corner where they could slowly die, and let Netflix proper focus solely on building it’s streaming service. DVD’s are gonna go away anyways eventually, cut that bit out now and put your energy into the part that will grow and make more money.
Sounds great from a business perspective. Not so great from the user perspective however. My thoughts and such after the break.
The Next Generation of The Next Generation
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Yes, I pulled the title straight out of the trailer, sue me. (No really, please don’t. I was just joking. Not trying to tempt fate here or anything. Crap, I’m screwed.)
So it’s finally official, after months, no, years of rumors, we finally have official confirmation of Star Trek: The Next Generation coming to Blu-Ray. I have to say I am very excited. We’re talking a full restoration from the original film negatives. Because of how tv was edited back then, they are actually scanning that original film and re-editing the entire series. All the visual effects will be recompositioned from the filmed elements available. I’d bet we may also see a few CGI touch ups here or there, but it sounds like this is to be an authentic restoration of the actual footage from the day.
We’ll also be getting a 7.1 DTS Master Audio soundtrack to go with our shiny HD picture. Now how is that for freaking awesome!
More thoughts and the trailer after the break.
Kindle(r) Thoughts
0Yes, I went there with the title. Never pass up a bad pun I say.
So hey, guess what today was. Go on, guess. That’s right, it’s Kindle Day! Or it should be anyways. Amazon made their big announcements about the Kindle line-up, and boy was it an exciting day. So here’s my thoughts on the whole thing.
$79 Kindle
Yes, you read that right, the base model Kindle clocks in at $79. If this doesn’t make you buy, nothing will. Now, there have been some sacrifices to hit this price point. This version is sans touchscreen, and thus has physical buttons for turning pages, menu, home screen and such.
I think it’s awesome that Amazon has not only dropped below the $100 price point, but really blown by it full force with this entry level Kindle. I was seriously considering just going for this cheapest model, but the geek in me objected to a couple things.
One, I really like touchscreens. Two, and sorta related, is that without a physical keyboard or a touchscreen, the keyboard entry is most like what you have with your game console, in that you have to use the arrow keys to select individual letters from the onscreen keyboard. Bleh.
Now really, I’m sure I could have gotten around that, but the extra features on the next level up pulled me in, and so we go to…