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Firefox 3 is coming today! And, they are attempting a Guiness World Record for most downloads in a day.

New Features
- One Click Bookmarking
- Smart Location Bar
- Lightning Fast Performance

Productivity
- Spell Checking
- Session Restore
- Full Zoom

Match these new features with security upgrades taht include phishing and malware protection with over 5,000 ad-ons to help you customize.

Firefox 3 is a refreshing update to those of us who have been getting impatient with Firefox 2 performance and stability issues.

Technorati Tags: firefox 3, world record

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So I finally buckled down today to try Safari on Windows. After a discussion with a colleague about how Apple does everything better I thought I’d see if that was true in the browser world. Safari, although residing on my Vista machine, is till very Apple-like. It has the iTunes brushed metal look. The first thing I noticed was that it was FAST and that it renders differently than its rivals. It’s much faster than IE and Firefox, although it is a fresh install and I have a dozen extensions and plugins running on Firefox. It also has the familiar tabbed browsing interface. All in all it’s worth checking out.

Download

Tags: Apple, Safari, Windows, Browser, Web

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Today I was doing research for a client’s project. One of the tasks is integrating a 3rd party data component into a website. The developers of that component, while not having the most informative site, had a link to ‘live support’.

Intrigued and unfullfilled, I decided to click the link. Within seconds I was in a chat room talking live to one of the developers of the component. I asked my specific questions, got answers, thanked him, and signed out. Even if they had had that information on their website I found it faster by connecting to a live person.

If you are looking for a customer support solution for your company I’d definitely recommend ProvideSupport - especially if you don’t have the resources for a call center or full-time support persons.

Oh, and it’s cheap (inexpensive cheap not crappy cheap).

Tags: Customer Service, Support, ProvideSupport

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Adobe decided to jump into the Feed Reader space with its new ‘Labs’ project called myFeedz. The differentiation factor here is that you can view other people’s feeds that are tagged similar. They coin it as a ’social newspaper’.

So for instance I imported my OPML file from Google Reader and I have several posts tagged ‘Marketing’. In myFeedz I can view posts from blogs that other users have tagged ‘Marketing’. You can also filter by just the blogs of which you are a subscriber.

To be short and sweet - it’s confusing and not near as useful as Google Reader. It’s a great idear but creates too much noise - not only with the abundance of disorganized data but the UI is inherently confusing because of that.

Tags: Adobe Labs, myFeedz, RSS, Feed Reader

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Everybody from bloggers to major publications like PC World are writing about Vista - what it does, why it’s great, why it sucks, how it copies Apple’s OSX, etc, etc, etc. I shared my first impressions on Vista - “Loving it!” - shortly after my first week of using Vista Ultimate. Zane says he will be waiting a few months to roll out Vista for CCU.

I couldn’t agree more. At this point it simply is not a feasible upgrade. So why do I love it but not recommend it for businesses? It’s simple - XP will be just fine for the forseeable future. Of the major benefits of Vista - Security, Usability, Efficiency - none provide benefits to warrant such an expensive upgrade. The opportunity cost of Vista adoption does not stack up to the ROI at the bottom line, at least it won’t for some time. By the time your business needs Vista the TCO for the adoption of the new platform will be much less as hardware prices and licensing costs fall.

So why am I ‘Lovin it’? Well it’s the most complete operating system I have had my hands on. And then there are the little things. It’s significantly faster with the same hardware I used on XP Pro. The filesystem changes create a far more organized environment. The ease of media use and Media Center integration is amazing. Oh, and it connects to my XBOX 360 allowing me to stream all my digital media to my living room. Vista will be the backbone of my fully connected and digital home.

Around every corner there are niceties that create a great overall experience. That’s why I’m loving it.

I also wanted to note the IDC research study that pointed out the Vista release would produce more than 100,000 new jobs and $70 billion in revenue for businesses in 2007 (not-Microsoft).

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista

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