While it’s significant that the Mac has risen to nearly 8 percent market share in operating systems (with Windows dropping from its lofty heights to a still-lofty 90.66 percent), according to Net Applications, I find the iPhone’s rapid increase even more impressive:

iPhone Browser Market Share Climbs …

Source:The Open Road

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Keeping Warm with The North Face

(Credit: Matt Asay)

I’ve noted before that when it comes to my hands, I’m a wuss. Last year I found the first pair of gloves that actually kept my hands warm: The North Face Patrol glove.

While I still consider that glove the gold standard (among Mountain Hardwear and other brands I’ve evaluated), I really liked the North Face Vortex II and North Face S.T.H. gloves that I evaluated this year, as well, though for entirely different reasons.

Skiing last month in Las Lenas, Argentina, the weather was perfectly suited to The North Face S.T.H. glove for the first day: relatively warm, spring-skiing conditions. The North Face S.T.H. glove is the glove you’ll want to have when shoveling snow, but also the one for spring skiing or simply when loading up the car at the end of the day.

North Face Vortex II Glove

The North Face S.T.H. glove is water-resistant with a highly breathable Apex ClimateBlock stretch shell. This means it will keep you warm and dry in milder conditions, but not for much of the rest of the season.

The S.T.H. is also a super-supple, contoured glove, which means you can actually do things like dial a number on your mobile while wearing it.

The North Face Vortex II glove, on the other hand, will keep you warm on much harsher conditions, like my second day at Las Lenas where the resort received roughly nine feet of new powder (plus a fair amount of wind to keep things cool). I found that the HyVent two-layer shell kept my hands dry despite swimming through a heck of a lot of powder, and I never felt cold.

Given how wimpy my hands are in the cold, this states a lot.

… Source:The Open Road

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Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker somewhat nonchalantly noted on Tuesday that Google and Mozilla have renewed their vows for another three years. She should have ordered serious fireworks.

Why? Because Google’s beneficence has allowed Mozilla a tremendous amount of leeway in figuring out a way to sell Mozilla’s open-source …

Source:The Open Road

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Filed under: World wide web Tools

Google is developing a new web browser built from the ground up and based on WebKit, the same rendering engine that Safari uses.

The browser, called Chrome, is open-source software built with security, compatibility and speed in mind. Each tab in the browser will be its own separate running process. For example, if JavaScript hangs in one tab, the other tabs will remain unaffected. The approach is similar to the way Mac OS X isolates applications in their own private areas to prevent one crash from taking down the whole system.

Google picked an interesting way of announcing the project: They commissioned illustrator Scott McCloud to draw a 38-page comic book about the project, and distribute it under a Creative Commons license. The result is a very readable, fascinating way to learn about the new browser.

For web developers, Chrome will include strong Gears integration, and a JavaScript virtual machine that generates super-fast machine code out of JavaScript instructions. For end users, it will include a new start page that lists the last several pages and search terms you’ve used. It also includes a private browsing mode.

Google is planning on formally launching the project on Wednesday, but the Chrome website isn’t visible to the public yet. Update: Google is releasing a version for Windows tomorrow, with Mac and Linux versions coming soon, once Chrome is “faster and more robust.” (Thanks, Bryan!)

[Via Macworld]

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The open-source dilemma

(Credit: Matt Asay)

At the Utah Open Source Conference yesterday I presented a dilemma. Briefly, the idea is that as open-source buyers grow comfortable with open source they’ll stop spending money on open source. This leads to tragedy of the commons-type problems and a difficulty in encouraging the creation of more open source.

I therefore asked the question, “Who will pay for open source in the future?” I (and the audience) recommended that the problem might resolve itself over time as enterprises come to recognize that their failure to replenish open-source communities with either cash or code may come to harm the code commons from which they derive increasing amounts of value. I also recommended that Eclipse, Mozilla, and other non-profit foundations provide an answer.

Lastly, I recommended that governments might get involved to shore up funding for open-source software development. As I noted, governments derive huge benefit from open source (and from IT spending, generally). Why not fund more of it?

Europe cares about open source. Why not fund it?

(Credit: Matt Asay)

I did not, however, have a clear idea as to the right way for this to be done. France, as noted in InfoWorld recently, suggests a way, as does TechDirt, which suggests that military spending could create the next Silicon Valley (so why not an open-source Silicon Valley, given how much the US military is buying into open source?).

France, the second largest market for open source outside the United Says, does a range of things to promote open source, but its focus on open source for the rising generation is perhaps most important:

… Source:The Open Road

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