Mozilla have released Firefox 10 – the newest version of Firefox- available for download on PC , Mac and Android. Its newest features include a Forward button that remains hidden until you actually need it, support for full-screen APIs, and better extensions management.

As a tweeter noted with sarcasm, perhaps the best feature of Firefox 10 will be that “Most add-ons are now compatible with new versions of Firefox by default”

Changes  in Firefox 10

• Forward button now only shows when there is something to ‘forward’ to
• Anti-Aliasing for WebGL
• Support for CSS3 3D-Transforms
• UI Tweaks

For a full list of changes, see the Firefox 10 release notes.

Now that Mozilla has fully embraced its rapid-release cycle, an update from version 9 to 10 of its popular Firefox browser isn’t really an event anymore. It was less than a year back when I blogged about the release of Firefox 4. Thats a long road we have traveled quickly!

Download Firefox 10

• Firefox 10 for PC
• Firefox 10 for Mac
• Firefox 10 for Android

Let us know in the comments section your views about the latest version of Firefox, including any feedback after using it.

WhatsApp allows communication between different devices

For those still unfamiliar with WhatsApp, its a mobile messenger that automatically scans your phonebook for people who are already on it and lists them when you open it. I was surprised to see at least 20% of my contacts already using WhatsApp when I installed and ran it for the first time. WhatsApp requires you to be on the internet for it to work…you can not only sent messages on WhatsApp but also send files attachments. I have shared quite a few pictures seamlessly through it.

The best part of WhatsApp is that its available for every mobile platform – Android, iPhone, Symbian, Windows mobile etc. The downside? Its free only for the first year.

In comes Facebook Messenger

In a blog post yesterday, Facebook announced new features and improvements to its mobile application Facebook Messenger. The new update allows users to see who is online, who’s on mobile and when the other person is typing.

New support has been added for 22 new languages on Android, and 12 new languages on iOS. Facebook Messenger is already available on iPhone (including iOS5) and Android, and now it’s available on BlackBerry. Beluga, the system behind Facebook Messenger, was supposed to be the BlackBerry Messenger for non-BlackBerries. In an ironic twist of fate, that system has made its way to BlackBerry through Facebook.

We might be in for a kick and a shake as the world’s largest social network, aka Facebook is set to make waves with what could be its very own Music Service.

Facebook has told media executives in recent days that it will begin letting online music services such as Spotify AB and Rdio Inc. publish user activity on Facebook pages, much like actions such as adding friends or “liking” websites. The move is part of a larger effort at Facebook to improve the discovery of all types of media content on the site. If finalized, the changes could be announced at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in late September.

Facebook spokesman Larry Yu would not comment directly on those reports or what’s coming for f8, but said in a statement that “many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations.”

The Facebook initiative is designed to integrate the social-media giant more closely with services that let users stream free music or an unlimited amount of music for a monthly fee. By contrast, Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. recently started “cloud” music services that let users upload their personal music collections to remote servers and listen to them remotely, and Apple Inc. is preparing to start a similar offering.

In some cases, music services could create a player that would sit within Facebook, letting users hear music without leaving the site. However, the music itself would still be delivered through the third-party service, which users would be required to log in to before listening. Such players wouldn’t be mandatory, these people said, so that if a user wanted to listen to a Facebook friend’s Spotify playlist, that person might need to switch applications to hear it.

Thankfully, there are some specialized websites that help us narrow down our search to find relevant and good content, using expert reviews and votes from the general public. For example, if you want to look for the best web hosting service, you would normally have to wade through thousands of search results on Google – both normal and sponsored. In such a scenario its easy to get confused.

Some creative webmasters have found a niche here, and have developed the specialized sites I mentioned above. One of these sites is Consumer Rankings. As you can gather from the name, the website publishes expert reviews of products and services in various categories and allows people to give their own ranking as well through their experience of the said product. This combination of reviews from the experts and the general public allows for a real and in-depth analysis and helps consumers make informed choices.

So if you are looking to buy something, you know where to look for the best  reviews!

This is perhaps the fastest ever next version release scenario coming from the Firefox stable, coming just about a month after Firefox 4 was launched.  It is apparent that Mozilla has taken some lessons from Google’s Chrome. Mozilla has embarked on a rapid release development cycle like Google uses for Chrome.

Firefox 5 is due on June 21 and you can download beta 2 here:

www.mozilla.com/firefox/channel/

The new release promises performance, security and stability improvements as well as:

• silent updates
• CSS animations
• improved support for HTML5 and related technologies
• better JavaScript and canvas performance
• taskbar web app support
• a few interface tweaks with better Mac OS and Linux integration
• an easier to access “do not track” option — apparently, fewer than 2% of people use it in Firefox 4.a
• improved spell checking for some locales
• improved desktop environment integration for Linux users

It is obvious Mozilla has realized the serious competition being posed to it by Google Chrome, which has seen a rapid expansion in user base since its initial buggy days got over. Mozilla said there are currently 250,000 people using Firefox 5 Beta. In comparison, Firefox 4  has been downloaded about 182.8 million times since March 22.

In other news, Opera also appears to be adopting a rapid release schedule. It seems we’re just waiting for Apple and Microsoft to join the party.

I was spammed with this by at least four different people today on my Facebook wall. Note that in this particular instance the compromised friend’s account was not only posting this on everyone’s wall but was also writing their name. So your spam just got personal! Now as soon as you click the link, it sets off a chain reaction..compromising your own account and spamming the Facebook wall of all your friends.

A blog post on this was therefore highly required. Please read below:

5 Steps to avoid Facebook Spam

1. Recognise the language: If you notice closely all Facebook spam links have something in common – all of them use sensational language to make us click the stuff. You know, like Fox news…So if you’re one of those gullible people who love clicking, please put this filter in your head. Sensational language may equal SPAM.
2. Check your Facebook news feed: In 90% of the cases of Facebook spam. your friend’s compromised account will automatically be posting the spam post or link on the wall of everyone in their friend list. You will be able to see that your friend posted the same link to your mutual friends. Mark that activity as suspicious…another spam filter for your head.
3. Hover the mouse: In many cases, you will apply the filter in step 1 and 2 and delete that spammy post from your wall or mark it as spam. If  you are still tempted to check that link and think that its genuine, just hover the mouse pointer on that link. In most cases, you will be able to see the exact URL where the link will take you in the browser’s status bar. For example, if it’s a shared from Lughole.net, you will be able to see the full URL of the story e.g. lughole.net/internet/5-steps-to-avoid-facebook-spam. If the link looks shady, do not click! Just go to the next step…Also, if you don’t see the URL in your browser’s status bar on hovering the link, it means its been hidden by a JavaScript and it’s definitely spam!
4. Mark as SPAM: Yes. Whether it’s after Step 1, 2 or 3 when you come to the conclusion that its a spam which has been posted on your wall, you should click the hidden cross button which will come towards the top right corner of that post/link when you hover your mouse pointer there, and then hit “mark as spam.”  It will be automatically deleted from your wall. Its better than simply deleting it because you’re notifying the Facebook team of the latest spam. The sooner they filter it out the lesser the number of accounts that will be compromised.
5. Let them know: If you notice that a friend’s account is sending out spam to everyone’s wall (as in step 3), there’s a chance they are not online at the moment and they don’t know. In such a case call up him or her and tell them that their account has been compromised and they better put up a status asking friends not to click on the link…because its spam.

There you have it. So if you are pissed from all the spam on your Facebook wall just because your friends are gullible enough to click anything and everything, share this post on their wall. They will love you for it.

Blogger is attributing the issue to a problem that occurred during regular maintenance on Wednesday. A post on the Blogger Help Forum explains:

We have rolled back the maintenance release from last night and as a result, posts and comments from all users made after 7:37 am PDT on May 11, 2011 have been removed. Again, we apologize that this happened and our engineers are working hard to return Blogger to normal and restore your posts and comments. We will post a report once this work is complete.

However most bloggers will be annoyed that all posts made on Wednesday after the scheduled update will be removed. Considering that blogger hosts millions of blogs, this is going to be one embarrassing time for the popular blogging service.

It feels good that I did not host lughole.net on the blogger platform. Self hosted wordpress rocks as usual.

Random quote: The effect hides any country reject into my economics.

Firefox 4 is a major upgrade for Mozilla. It will feature a revamped plug-in architecture called JetPack, a redesigned minimalist interface, faster JavaScript performance, and greater support for HTML5, including Google’s WebM HTML5 video format.

Whats new in Firefox 4

• A new, streamlined user interface.
• Enhanced performance courtesy of the new JägerMonkey JavaScript engine and graphics hardware acceleration.
• Application tabs and tab grouping.
• Built-in bookmark, open tabs, history, preferences and password synchronization.
• Improved privacy controls and security.
• Improved HTML5 capabilities such as new form elements, high-definition hardware-accelerated WebM video and 3D WebGL.
• CSS3 transitions and transformations.
• A revamped add-ons manager.
• Multi-touch for some touchscreen devices.
• A new web console.
• Crash protection.

What’s more, it’s available in 76 languages and can be installed on most operating systems, including Windows XP. It has also been released for Mac OS and Linux platforms.

Firefox 4 Vs IE9 Vs Chrome

But Firefox 4 has been a little late in coming, particularly since its been in beta since June and was trumped by Microsoft who released Internet Explorer 9 more than a few days back. As for Google Chrome, its already become the fastest growing browser and churning out updates on steroids! In fact, although I have been loyal to Mozilla for many years now, 2011 saw me downloading and installing Google Chrome.

I am writing this post in Chrome itself, which I find light (unlike the memory hog that firefox tends to become) and fast. Also, some of the Chrome apps  and extensions are simply brilliant. However, I did not intend to write this post as an obituary for firefox!

The positive side of Google Chrome also becomes a downside for it – the fact that it brings out updates so often, and some of the changes are so drastic that extension developers have to race against time to bring their products up to date with Google’s browser. That’s the reason many plugin and extension developers prefer Firefox, because it tends to be stable for long periods of time. In fact, Mozilla claims that 70% of extensions developed by third parties will work with Firefox 4.

IE 9 had 2.3 million downloads in in the first 24 hours, while Firefox 4 had 1 million downloads in the first three hours of its release. Shows the difference in popularity! Of course, Internet Explorer as a whole is still the leader of the pack, benefitting from the fact that it comes bundled with the most popular OS on the planet. Yet, IE 9 seems to be a marked improvement and may well give stiff competition to the latest entry from Mozilla’s stable.

The battle is wide open, and so is the jury.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

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For most people and businesses looking to sell online, an e-commerce hosting solution like Yahoo! Merchant Solutions provides advanced e-commerce functionality without substantial investment and contracts.  It is truly the best of both worlds.

The upside is that Facebook has launched it, but the downside is that this service is currently open by invitation. However, I’m going to tell you exactly how you can an invite for the new Facebook messaging service integrating email, messaging and chat all at once.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company founder, unveiled what he called a “convergent” modern messaging system on Monday that “handles messages seamlessly across all the ways you want to communicate.”

“It is true that people will be able to have facebook.com email addresses, but this is not email,”

“It handles email.”

Zuckenberg was speaking at the event held in the US city of San Francisco.

The intensifying rivalry between Facebook and search engine Google is expected to play a crucial role in shaping the future of the Internet.

Now here’s how you can get an invite for facebook’s next generation messaging service:

1. Simply go to http://www.facebook.com/about/messages
2. Log in if you aren’t already logged in
3. Click the green button that says “send me an invite”

You will shortly receive an invitation to try out the new system before everyone else does.

If you want to thank me for this bit of information, please share it on Facebook ;)