Scientechie

The technology world never fails to surprise. The latest surprise comes from the ever more traction-gaining browser wars - the battle to make the most accepted web browser in the world.

The news, of course, is the creation of a new ‘mystery browser’ (as the blogosphere is labeling it) called RockMelt.

Almost nothing is known about it except for two very vital facts:

1. The people involved in the making of this browser from ‘ground up’ are Tim Howe, Eric Vishria and Marc Andreessen. All of them were involved in the making of the once universal, but now dead, Netscape browser. Marc Andreessen, of course, the creator of Netscape.
   • The point to ponder would be: why is he willing to back a complete underdog and startup in this deadly game?
2. The browser is supposed to be different from other browser. How different, we don’t know. But for one, it will be extremely integrated with the social network Facebook.
   • The RockMelt team is leaking nothing. What unique differences can RockMelt bring in, that will set it up over other existing browsers? Remember, one social browser (Flock) already exists.

Personally, I cannot see why a company would be willing to invest so much money (reportedly many millions of dollars) into a new browser. Browsers are free, and there is not much to be gained unless widespread adoption is reached. Chrome, Safari and Opera are already around, and have very little share.

I wonder what’s RockMelt’s top secret weapon?

I do not claim to be an expert at the art of blogging. What I do know is that WordPress is most definitely the easiest and simplest – yet most manageable and configurable – blogging and content management system there is. I have built complete websites using WordPress and this blog itself is a simple WordPress installation on a free hosting service.

Recently, a website of rather interesting organics came to my notice. WPDesigner.com aggressively promotes itself as a site for free WordPress themes and web hosting.

Normally, I would take that with a pinch of salt – there are far too many sites that claim such things are actually nothing such.

This blog, however (because it is technically a blog) is different in that it does list and provide a fairly large list of WordPress themes (some free, some not). At other points, it also provides a large archive of tips and techniques for implementing and maintaining WordPress themes.

The home page lists a set of ranked web hosting services that are known to work well with WordPress. I did notice, however that the page is almost entirely dedicated to this post which comes after a long gap (the last posts being in March 2009). It will be worth checking if this ranking is updated, but for the time being, it is almost surely the best possible list there is.

Disclosure: This is a paid post. That said, the opinions are genuine and honest, and WPDesigner.com is worth a visit, at least in the spam and ad-free state it is right now.

One of the biggest plus points to Linux is that it is free. Truly, $0, nillium free. The only costs involved are those of downloading, and perhaps burning onto a CD or DVD. Compare that to the hundreds of dollars you dish out for a copy of Windows. The premium beef (the Ultimate editions) cost even more.

The world has many people. About 7 billion of them. Europe and America has just 897.2 million of them (Source: Wolfram Alpha). And the rest of the world owns plenty of computers.

But this rest of the world is not too rich. Not rich enough to buy and maintain hundred dollar worth Microsoft Windows operating systems. Seems like a perfect opportunity for Linux to pervade, right?

I’ve written before about what Linux really lacks. It doesn’t lack much really. But why does the world in general not use Linux madly?

The answer to this is, of course, piracy. I can talk about my own country. I can safely estimate that there are many millions of computers in my developing country of over 150,000,000. And over 95% of them use one or another version of Microsoft Windows.

Why would any average user want to bother with Linux when he can obtain a pirated version of the latest Windows Vista Ultimate 2 (with service pack 2, of course) for less than half a dollar?

What Linux really lacks is, after all, not an image or brand. It lacks a Microsoft that can enforce anti-piracy procedures in all parts of the world.

I have been doing plenty of ad experiments - and you know that. Over the last year, I have tried nearly every ad network that cares to accept my submissions. And I am getting close to my final goal of discovering the best-in-class ad network for low traffic sites.

So for this round of changes, I have in place Technorati Engage as my top banner and AdsDaq as the rectangle on the right. The inline link ads have been ditched in favour of the more useful SnapShots.

The only retainee, of course, is the SixApart vertical banner, which has been returning an astounding raw CPM of over $0.60 at some points (this, by the way, is far higher than industry standards)

As always, please notify me of any inappropriate ads. If you don’t like the ads, neither do I!

KDE 4.3.0 is now officially released, and the first looks are amazing.

I was using the stable KDE 4.2, and the differences with in 4.3 are obvious and many. The most noticeable, of course, is the completely new ‘Air’ default theme, which, in my opinion is the best default theme for any OS or desktop.

I have just downloaded the binaries for openSUSE 11.1 from the KDE4 repositories. And my first experience is that it is great, perhaps even better than great. The overall pliability and verve of the whole system has gone up. I loved the highly improved response of the whole desktop and the improvements to Dolphin. Some of them are so finely implemented, I wonder why KDE didn’t release them earlier.

(The picture is not my desktop - it’s on the KDE announcement page. I have to yet to check out the widgets properly)

There is complete announcement and changelist back at the KDE website.