Yes, 13 months after the initial release of Firefox 3.7 alpha 1 and four more alpha builds, a renumbering to 4.0 and 12 beta releases, and finally a release candidate (or two), Firefox 4 has been released into the wild.
Just like every other Firefox release, initial reception for the new browser has been nothing short of insane. 7.1 million downloads were registered in the first 24 hours and the download rate continued to accelerate, clocking in more than 15 million downloads after two days. At the time of writing, three days in, Firefox 4 has been downloaded over 25 million times. In case you're wondering, the United States accounts for 7 million of those downloads, just beating out Germany's Firefox-downloads-per-capita.
But now that you've installed Firefox 4 (you have, right?), what do you do now? Well, obviously, in true Download Squad fashion, it's time to tweak Firefox 4 using add-ons and about:config hacks!
First up is an add-on called Stratiform that lets you change every aspect of the Firefox 4 browser chrome -- including the color of that orange button!
Firefox 4 Friday: 25 million downloads, anti-aliasing, and how to make it look like Firefox 3 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Aereo, the streaming TV startup based out of NYC, has just scored a significant win in its ongoing court battles thanks to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit today. The Court rejected an appeal from a group of TV networks against an earlier decision claiming that Aereo did not in fact infringe upon broadcaster copyrights.
Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories: Razer?s Tiamat Headset Uses 10 Drivers To Produce 7.1 Sound Stephen Colbert?s Head Goes Into Space Griffin Releases iPhone-Controlled Toy Helicopter Ooma VOIP Service Is Down Nationwide Redesigned Wii To Launch Before Christmas, Loses Gamecube Backwards Compatibility
AllThingsD reported last week that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was working on a new mobile startup called “Jelly.” Today, a company blog post has emerged that gives us a few more details as to what Jelly might focus on, but it’s still hazy on details. In the post, Biz Stone, who is co-founder and CEO of Jelly Industries, Inc., says it will be for “everybody,” and will be mobile focused. Yes, it doesn’t sound like much, but Stone also said that the company is named after the jellyfish, which sheds light on the type of application he might be working on: We are inspired by this particular animal because neurologically, its brain is more ?we? than ?me.? Also, for the past 700 million years, this decentralized structure has been wildly successful. To us, it sounds like Jellyfish might have something to do with social good, or helping others out. By calling out the “we” vs. “me” aspect, it’s clear that Stone won’t be working on another social network that lets you express yourself in 140 characters, set up a bio or otherwise peacock about how amazing you are and why you’re interesting, all over the Internet. Doing “good” is another ballgame, though. You might be a generous person trying to change the world for the better, but can you prove it? Jelly sounds to us like a way to connect you to social causes and show off your contributions. The Twitter co-founder explained that “People are basically good?when provided a tool that helps them do good in the world, they prove it.” The service will be free, but won’t be available for “a while.” Additionally, Stone says that Jelly will be taking up a good part of his time, save for some of his advisory roles at companies like Branch and Fluther. Jelly is self-funded and based in San Francisco. Much like Ev Williams’ publishing service Medium, Stone is in no hurry to become a big company he says. There aren’t many central homes for philanthropy and volunteering on the web other than a site like Causes, which piggybacked Facebook’s success and open graph. The site never took off as a standalone service, lacking helpful discovery tools to connect you with causes that you might care about. For the most part, you donate here, sign a petition there, but there’s no scorecard. If you had a public-facing profile highlighting your
Back in 2010, our own John Biggs rightly described Parrot’s AR.Drone as ” the coolest thing [he had] seen in a long, long time.” Since then, Parrot has launched the AR.Drone 2.0 and while it’s still a very cool gadget, quadcopters have come a very long way since 2010. Last month, the folks at DJI, who mostly specialize in developing unmanned aerial systems for commercial use, sent me one of their consumer-oriented and GPS-enabled DJI Phantoms�to review. Most quadcopters are aimed at hobbyists and take a good amount of assembly and at least some experience with flying remote-controlled aircraft. The Phantom, which has a list price of $849 but currently retails for about $680, comes mostly pre-assembled and is extremely easy to fly, thanks to its built-in compass and GPS module. Thanks to having GPS built-in, the drone always knows where it is in relation to you. So depending on the mode you are flying in, every input you give will always be interpreted in relation to you and not in relation to where the front of the aircraft is (here’s a video that explains how this works). The other cool thing about the GPS mode is that the drone can hover in position even if it’s windy. It’ll just auto-correct for the wind, thanks to its built-in autopilot (you probably want to turn this mode off when you are trying to take a video, however, as the constant corrections will show up in your videos). This autopilot also kicks in if the Phantom loses its connection with you remote control if it flies out of reach or your remote runs out of battery, the drone itself is very low on battery, or because you turn it off to see if the autopilot actually works. Once the failsafe mode kicks in, the drone will simply fly up to 60 feet, fly back to where it first took off and land. I actually tried this and it worked surprisingly well. The drone touched down just about 3 feet from where I launched it. When you spent $700 on the drone and another $300 or so on a GoPro 3 Silver, that’s a nice feature to have. The Phantom is a clear step up from something like the AR.Drone. Its communication distance is just under 1,000 feet and a maximum horizontal speed of about 32 feet per second and a descent speed
We've all thought it, but never dared think it could be true: what if Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL actively monitor our instant messenger chats? What if mentions of 'bomb' and 'underage' are tracked and sent to law enforcement agencies? What if chat providers don't agree with the things we say, or the links we share, and filter or censor the content of our transmitted messages?
