Google announced today that it is releasing a new stable version of Chrome, which the company says is even faster and more streamlined. In fact, Google claims it is three times faster on JavaScript performance than it was two year ago, when Chrome was first launched (it's the two-year anniversary, by the way).
"We've also been working on simplifying the 'chrome' of Chrome," says product manager Brian Rakowski. "As you can see, we took the already minimalist user interface and stripped it down a bit more to make it easier to use. We combined Chrome’s two menus into one, revisited the location of the buttons, cleaned up the treatment of the URL and the Omnibox, and adjusted the color scheme of the browser to be easier on the eyes."
"As always, we’re hard at work on making Chrome even faster, and working on ways to improve graphics performance in the browser through hardware acceleration," adds Rakowski. "With the Chrome Web Store, we hope to make it much easier to find and use great applications on the web. We also ratcheted up the pace of our releases so that we can get new features and improvements to everyone more quickly."
The new stable version can be downloaded here. Google has a list of all stable and beta channel updates here.
If you're more interested in the fact that it is Chrome's 2nd birthday, you can get more reflection on how far the browser has come in those two short years by reading this celebratory post from Google.
PeopleBrowsr shared a rather interesting report with us this week, looking at privacy related tweets during the center of this year's Facebook "privacy storm." The firm studied the public's reaction to Facebook's open graph-related announcements that set off the majority of the Facebook privacy controversy back in April.
Are you concerned for your privacy as a Facebook user? Let us know.
The report specifically compares the general public's (or at least the portion that uses Twitter) thoughts about Facebook privacy with the media sensationalism around the story. The firm studied tweets with references to privacy, along with other keywords like Facebook, Open Graph, Zuckerberg, and Google.
"We are the last generation to know privacy as it was," says Brian Solis, Chief Data Analyst for PeopleBrowsr. "As Facebook moves human connections and society into a more public spotlight, people and the press will push back. But this will move things forward collaboratively. Over time I believe the debate will evolve into a series of productive forums and memes that explore the risks of living in public and the rewards for participation."
Some of PeopleBrowsr's findings from the study:
- Prior to the F8 conference on April 24, privacy tweets hovered between 1,000-3,000 references per day, then spiked to 9,000 on the day of F8
- On April 25 (day after the conference), privacy-related tweets fell to 3,500 – then surged to 7,500 when politicians joined the fray. Around May 25, privacy discussions hit the ceiling in this study with 20,000 unique discussions.
- In terms of context, Facebook dominated the landscape for mentions of #privacy
- Conversations followed media reports
"We see that even on the day when privacy took center stage, the media sensationalized the topic. But the public, at least those on Twitter, did not flood the streets with 140 character picket signs. 9,000 tweets does not seem to account for the millions of Twitter users or the 500 million people who have Facebook accounts," says Solis.
That last statement is true on a couple of different levels. For Solis' purpose it does not appear to indicate that the majority of Facebook users were that concerned. However, it is also worth noting that the majority of Facebook users are not necessarily active Twitter users. Facebook has over 500 million people. It's not a flawless argument, and the findings should be taken with a grain of salt like any such study. That said, Twitter is generally viewed as a good indication of public opinion, as trending topics often reflect pop culture and news at large. If there is something significant happening, you can generally find people talking about it on Twitter.
Besides, Facebook's numbers continued to grow. Diaspora (the "Facebook alternative") will be here soon. I'm willing to bet that will have little impact on Facebook's growth as well.
Do you think the privacy discussion around Facebook was overblown? Share your thoughts.
There are some interesting survey results out from Best Buy today, regarding mobile phone users and their contracts. The findings reveal that about half of users don't know when they're contracts expire.
While the survey is used by the company to promote is new Upgrade Checker campaign, shed some light on the issue nonetheless.
"When it comes to mobile solutions available today, many consumers are not armed with the right information to truly get the most out of their mobile phone," said Shawn Score, president of Best Buy Mobile. "We know that there are customers out there using mobile phones that are four and five years old when they could be using a smart phone."
Here are some findings from the survey:
- 45 percent look for multimedia capabilities including music, video and camera
- 32 percent look for GPS navigation
- 29 percent want to replace landline phone
- 26 percent want to be able to access social networking sites
- 26 percent want to be Wi-Fi enabled
- 15 percent want to make eCommerce purchases from their mobile devices
- 15 percent want to be able to download a movie
- 14 percent want to be able to play games from their smartphone
Do you know when your contract is up? Comment here.
The Associated Press has revealed some new guidelines for its reporters with regards to credit and attribution. The guidelines come in the form of a letter from AP Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes.
The guidelines apply to AP reports in print, broadcast, and online news, and stress the importance of giving proper attribution to other publications that break stories.
"We should provide attribution whether the other organization is a newspaper, website, broadcaster or blog; whether or not it's U.S. based; and whether or not it's an AP member or subscriber," writes Oreskes. "This policy applies to all reports in all media, from short pieces, such as NewsNows and initial broadcast reports, to longer pieces aimed at print publication."
Oreskes says attribution doesn't have to be at the beginning of a story, and that sometimes it can be two or three paragraphs down.
"If some information comes from another organization and some is ours, we should credit ourselves for what's ours and the other organization for what's theirs," he writes, adding that if material from another source turns out to be wrong, that will be cited in corrections later.
While stressing the importance of attribution, he does also make a note of telling reporters not to use other sources so much that it appears they're "free riding" on another organization's work, and stresses matching or further development of the story.
What is not mentioned once in the guidelines is the word "link". There is no mention of linking whatsoever. It is unclear whether linking is included it in the proper attribution described or whether they deem simple credit to be sufficient. While obviously you can't link in print or broadcast (one reason why online content is more valuable to readers), linking has become commonly looked upon as necessary to attribution in online news, so those who deserve credit for breaking a story can in turn get traffic to that story.
The letter does say that it will continue to use "information from" lines with URLs, but that attribution should be in the body of the story as well. However, it is unclear whether or not this attribution will actually include links.
It will be interesting to see how the AP proceeds in this regard. Without links, the organization is setting itself up for a great deal of criticism.
Update 2: It looks like Dell has lost the bidding war for 3PAR after all. The company issued a release saying it has ended discussions and will recieve a $72 million break-up fee from 3PAR. This comes after 3PAR accepted an increased bid from HP of $2.4 billion.
Update: Following the below news, HP and Dell got into a bidding war for 3PAR, but according to TechCrunch, 3PAR has accepted the latest offfer from Dell for $27 per share in cash, or approximately $1.8 billion.
Original Article: Dell announced that it is acquiring virtualized storage solutions provider 3PAR for $1.15 billion. Dell says the acquisition will enable its customers to take advantage of the "virtual era" and cut data management costs by as much as 50%.
"We have aligned our storage offerings over the last several years to provide our customers choice and value," said Brad Anderson, Dell SVP, Enterprise Product Group. "3PAR brings the same values of performance, agility and ease-of-use to higher end, virtualized storage deployments as EqualLogic does for the entry-level and mid-range, rounding out our industry-leading solutions portfolio."
"3PAR has consistently provided customers with the ability to do more with less," said 3PAR President and CEO David Scott. "With Dell we combine a powerful, virtualized storage platform with an outstanding distribution network to deliver this value to an even broader set of customers." The transaction has been approved by both boards of directors. Some analysts are saying Dell overpaid for 3Par, and the Street calls the acquisition a "shrewd move".
After closing, Dell plans to maintain and invest in additional engineering and sales resources for 3PAR. The company has no plans to move the current operations.
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