31/12/2007 by swordfish.

As of 1 February 2008, AOL will stop supporting Netscape Navigator - the iconic web browser that ruled the internet in the late 1990s.

“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator,” writes Netscape director Tom Drapeau on his blog, “these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. “Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions,” he adds.

Netscape was fighting a losing battle by the time AOL took the company over in 1999. Despite a lot of investment, and the inherent flaws of Internet Explorer at that time, it never made an impact.

The arrival and success of Mozilla Firefox showed it was possible to create a credible alternative to Microsoft’s offering, and many felt AOL should have terminated Netscape at that point.

Source: PCPro

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28/12/2007 by swordfish.

Have just read a great review of the soon to be launched Firefox 3. This is available from Computer World and mentions five key improvements - easier downloads, an enhanced address bar, easier bookmarking, a much improved bookmark organizer and better memory management.

At QBS PC Help we love Firefox and promote it heavily to all our customers and friends, so this new version will be tried and tested once its on general release. Look out for our own review of Firefox 3 in 2008!

Source: Computer World

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27/12/2007 by swordfish.

Shares of on-line US retailer Amazon.com rose more than two percent on Wednesday after it said the 2007 Christmas season was its strongest since it opened in 1994.

On 10 December, its busiest day during the current season, Amazon said shoppers ordered more than 5.4 million items, or 62.5 items per second. By comparison, the busiest day of the festive season in 2006 was 11 December, when customers ordered more than four million items, according to its website.

This year, top sellers included toys such as the Jakks EyeClops Bionic Eye, video games including Nintendo’s Wii video game systems and Super Mario Galaxy, and consumer electronics products such as the Garmin GPS and Samsung LCD high-definition TVs.

Other popular items, based on items ordered between 15 November and 19 December, ranged from Black & Decker’s auto wrench to Kenneth Cole Reaction men’s wool pea coat. The company also said it sold about 17 Nintendo Wii systems per second when they had them in stock.

Source: ZDNet

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21/12/2007 by swordfish.

When firing up Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop and Bridge today, to work on a new website, everything crashed after a few minutes with the message “AMT Subsystem Error -The licensing subsystem has failed catastrophically. You must reinstall or call customer support.”

None of the programs would open so I trawled the Adobe website for an answer and found a useful Tech Note which offers a number of work-a-rounds. This can be found at:

kb.adobe.com/selfservice/

As it turned out I just rebooted our PC’s and all the CS3 suite programs opened up. They have remained stable for the last few hours so the problem seems to be solved.

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19/12/2007 by swordfish.

I’ve been using a great little program called Prevx CSI. This is a powerful new security tool that will quickly and easily tell you if your PC has been infected by one of the ever growing number of new internet threats - spyware, adware and rootkits.

If you like Prevx CSI it is useful to keep on your PC or on a USB memory stick. You can then use it as often as you like to check if your PC has been infected.

This great little program is free to download from www.prevx.com/freescan.asp.

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17/12/2007 by swordfish.

A streaming version of the BBC’s iPlayer online TV on-demand service has been launched for the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

This is the first time a UK broadcaster has provided an on-demand streaming service for all three platforms.

The download version of iPlayer was only available for Windows XP when it was released in beta form during the summer.

In an exclusive interview with ZDNet.co.uk’s sister site silicon.com in October, the BBC’s head of Future Media and Technology, Ashley Highfield, said he couldn’t promise a download version would be developed for other non-Windows platforms.

But Anthony Rose, the BBC’s Head of Digital Media Technology, has now said the corporation is aiming to launch a download version for other platforms “including Macs” in 2008.

He said the streaming service is the first in a number of planned updates during the coming months.

Source: ZDNet

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