Software is supposed to be a mature industry, characterized by some sort of mono- or duopoly. How to explain, then, the activity around Web browsers: Three of the tech industry's biggest names--Microsoft, Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people )--each has a significant in-house browser development effort, with periodic fresh releases. Then, of course, there is the Mozilla Foundation, the folks behind the popular open-source browser Firefox.

Competition is always good, but especially these days with browsers. Features are being added to them that may, in a year or two, make a browser-based application look and feel no different from a desktop one. Imagine having the equivalent of Photoshop or PowerPoint in your browser--and thus available on whatever machine you happen to be using, desktop or smart phone or laptop.

The coming evolution in browsers is akin to the Ajax phenomenon of recent years. Ajax is a name given to a quartet of programming technologies that collectively made possible the likes of Google Maps and Gmail.

Before Ajax the typical Web site was a collection of static pages. With Ajax, programmers were able to change only part of the screen, displaying, for example, different information as you move a cursor around on a map. Ajax also allowed Web pages to be more dynamic in other ways, letting users, say, right-click and see a menu tailored to their needs.

The components of this new browser programming paradigm are esoteric. One is a new, extra-speedy Javascript interpreter, found in the latest browsers from Google and Apple, that allows programs in the browser's standard language to zip along faster than ever thought possible. Another is an Apple-created graphics technology known as Canvas, which gives programmers much more freedom using text and drawings.

Other under-the-cover changes include giving browsers the sort of sophisticated software-control features usually found only in operating systems. Web Workers, for instance, is an emerging system for isolating a browser's individual tasks into separate "threads," making it easier for a browser-based program to perform a computationally intensive task such as photo-editing in a background tab while the user is attending to something else, like e-mail, in the foreground.

This new approach to programming doesn't yet have a handy name like Ajax, though some refer to it as HTML 5. No browser yet has all of these new elements. Apple, Google and Mozilla have pieces. All are competing to add more.

So far there are no Google Maps-style killer apps for this new programming approach; indeed, programmers are just beginning to wake up to the possibilities. But one modest example is an early version of the sort of text editor used by engineers for writing computer programs. It's at bespin.mozilla.com and works with the Mozilla browser, Firefox.

Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, the Mozilla engineers who developed the site, said it will be expanding into a full-blown "programming environment" for the new software approach, but one that itself uses the same technologies that programmers will be making use of to build other applications. In a year or two, they say, software will be available that is indistinguishable from traditional desktop programs. The two men helped chronicle the Ajax movement; Galbraith said the new tools "have us more excited than we were for Ajax."

Many people assume that browser-based programs would run "in the cloud," that is, on servers situated remotely at companies like Google or Amazon. But Almaer said there's no reason software has to be written that way. A photo-editing program based in a browser, for instance, could run entirely on your desktop. PCs have power to spare.

Who wins and who loses with this new approach? Adobe (nasdaq: ADBE - news - people ) might not look too kindly upon it. The maker of Flash software would prefer that programmers stick with its software. Microsoft usually doesn't warm to standards it can't control; it is also pushing its new Silverlight multimedia program, which performs some of the functions of HTML 5 software.

Apple, Google and Mozilla, by contrast, favor anything that curbs Microsoft's market position. The three cooperate in browser development even as they compete for market share. If the day arrives when a browser is the only program anyone needs, those three would be among the ones cheering loudest.

Senior editor Lee Gomes covers technology from our Silicon

Google has turned the advertising industry upside down. Here's something else the Internet giant is changing: Web sites--both how they are used and how Web designers ought to go about putting them together. Chalk it up to another triumph of less being more.

The traditional advice about building a Web site was to spend a lot of time in advance planning its organization, ensuring that all the inside pages fit together in a logical hierarchy. Next, navigation aids were placed on the home page, so that the routes to all that inside content were intuitive and readily apparent. And since first impressions are as important online as off, lots of time and effort should be spent designing the home page, as it would be the first thing your visitors would see.

No one is now saying that Web layouts should be complicated, or Web site design shouldn't be attractive. But because of search engines, users end up never encountering that home page or availing themselves of the careful arrangement of the site's material.

Instead, they're taken directly to the inside page that has the specific material they are looking for. And once they find what they're looking for, they're off somewhere else.

What that means, says Jerry Sheehan of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, is that Web developers shouldn't sweat the details of how a site is pieced together, since Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) will only end up hiding a lot of that work from many, if not most, Web users.

"We are stuck designing for the total user experience," Sheehan says. "But in fact, the actual user experience is to simply come and get something, and then go. The natural predilection is to spend lots of time working on the right design. But we might be better off taking 20% of that effort and using it to come up with 20% more content for the site."

Sheehan's institute helps state agencies get help from academia to undertake technology projects more complex than they could by themselves. He said he developed his new approach to Web design by looking at the traffic on his group's own Web site, and noticing that many visitors came directly from Google to an inside page, without ever bothering to check out the other parts of the site.

A new Amazon Kindle is coming out in a few days.

Due to high internet usage, people don't have enough time to read books. To read books is pretty important cause it's very hard to get every different kind of knowledge within finite time and place.

For me, it's a little bit sad for me to make a lot of excuse for having no time to read books.


I used to be kinda bookworms until I was 24 years old.
However, after getting a job, I thought I was kinda tied up to other things.

Anyway, I admitted that we should get indirect experience as much as we can.



Also, this is one way to give publishing company better circumstances to survive and help us to make our lives better.


Second Amazon Kindle has a better shaped, keyboard layout and a little bit wide and longer screen.

:) Enjoy!!!

There Are Too Many Car Companies Anyway

Michael E. Marks, 12.17.08, 07:05 PM EST

Even without Big Three bankruptcies, the industry badly needs consolidation.

They stand in line outside stores waiting for midnight launches of new video games. When they get home after a long day, they plop down in front of the TV not to sit back and watch, but to play.

They're known as "core gamers." They are people like Greg Wilcox, who writes about video games and has bought roughly 100 this year, and people like Mark Hengst, who's in law enforcement and says daily gaming gives him an "interactive form of escapism." And there's Wyatt Du Frane, a geology graduate student who's been playing since he was a little boy.

"I like their scope," said Du Frane, 28, a student at Arizona State University. "A movie is only a couple of hours. A video game is more like a book or a TV series, where you can kind of continue the story."

For the video game industry, core gamers are proving crucial. Their willingness to regularly, loyally buy new titles - no matter what - gives the industry a better chance of success than other businesses that rely on discretionary spending vulnerable to the recession.

"As long as hard-core gamers have a job, they will continue to buy games," said IDC video games analyst Billy Pidgeon.

The industry's ability to lean on core gamers is a bit of a twist, because video game makers have been working hard to grow by expanding their mainstream appeal.

Families and people who haven't picked up a game controller in ages, or ever, have flocked to the easy-to-master Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) Wii since its 2006 launch. Taking note, Sony Corp. (nyse: SNE - news - people ) and Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) have been expanding what their game consoles offer, adding movies and TV shows, to attract people whose idea of the perfect Sunday afternoon doesn't involve shooting aliens. Software publishers like Ubisoft Entertainment, Activision Blizzard (nasdaq: ATVI - news - people ) Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. (nasdaq: ERTS - news - people ) have boosted their titles aimed at young girls, families and women over 35, who have helped push game sales higher.

A few years ago, if someone asked what sort of cell phone you had, your response would probably be to name a network, like Sprint (S) or Cingular (T). Wireless carriers so completely controlled the business, especially in the U.S., that many manufacturers weren't even allowed to put their brand names on handsets. Now this relationship is changing in ways that will reduce the power of carriers and, with luck, increase consumers' choices.

The relationship started to shift when people began using phones for more than voice calls and text messages. As browsers and e-mail systems became important, it mattered more whether you had a Palm (PALM) Treo or a BlackBerry (RIMM) than whether your phone ran on the Verizon Wireless or AT&T (T) network. Then along came Apple's (AAPL) iPhone to rewrite the rules completely.

The conventional wisdom holds that AT&T scored a coup when it signed on as the exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier, and on one level this is true. The company reported that it activated 2.4 million of the new 3G iPhones in the third quarter, that 40% of those customers came to AT&T from rival operators, and that their average monthly bill was 1.6 times that of other subscribers. But the impact on AT&T's bottom line is another story. Mostly because of the fat subsidy it pays Apple for each iPhone, AT&T's third-quarter earnings of $3.2 billion were $900 million less than they would otherwise have been.

AT&T should eventually recoup the subsidy from monthly fees, especially if subscribers don't come in for a new subsidized phone the minute their two-year contract is up. But what the carrier has probably lost forever is ownership of the customer, a process economists call "disintermediation."

Before the iPhone, relatively few owners of any phones—smart or dumb—downloaded applications. The carriers had a nice business selling ringtones and the odd game. But with iTunes and the App Store, Apple became the exclusive supplier of applications as well as music and videos. The content suppliers got about two-thirds of the revenue, Apple kept about a third, and the carriers were frozen out.

"It's remarkable the impact [Apple] has had," says Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM). "They exposed a lot of disintermediation risk in the industry." Balsillie says when RIM proposed application stores a couple of years ago, the carriers were hostile. But Apple's success is forcing the carriers to play. "Now everyone wants [an app store]," Balsillie says, and RIM will oblige next year, offering terms that will give carriers some of the action. Google (GOOG) has the Android Market, and Microsoft (MSFT) is considering an app store for Windows Mobile.

A key test of the new relationship between handset makers and smartphone software publishers, carriers, and customers will arrive when turn-by-turn driving instructions come to the iPhone. Apple seems to have created the phone with navigation in mind, yet the App Store prohibits programs that offer real-time driving instructions. Such services are available for other smartphones, typically for $10 a month, with revenues split between the carrier and a service provider such as TeleNav or Networks in Motion. Apple is mum about its intentions, but rumors are flying that it plans a navigation offering that leaves carriers in the cold.

I wish Apple were less controlling and less opaque about what may be sold at the App Store, but on the whole, I think the development of a robust market for third-party smartphone applications is a great thing for consumers. It's a huge improvement from the days when stodgy, innovation-averse carriers ran the show.

This shift in power is a bad thing for wireless carriers, whose nightmares of being turned into commodity sellers of bandwidth are coming true. But it's a win for everyone else.

The House may have passed a rescue package for the auto industry, but Senate Republicans could stop it cold.

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill on Wednesday to lend up to $14 billion to the three struggling U.S. automakers, General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC.

Introduced by Democrats, the bill is nearly identical to one pending in the Senate, where Republican opposition was making its chances for passage look uncertain.

The bailout proposal would extend taxpayer-funded loans or lines of credit to the Detroit Three and create a federal government post of 'car czar' to oversee the industry.

(Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Tim Dobbyn) Keywords: AUTOS/BAILOUT VOTE

Boeing and Airbus can give up any hope that Chinese demand might help offset their global sales slump. The country's aviation industry regulator has advised mainland airlines to cancel or postpone aircraft deliveries in 2009, as carriers struggle with a decline in air travel demand. Clamoring for government handouts, the airlines will listen, though they may have a hard time extracting concessions from suppliers.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China released guidelines Wednesday advising airlines to cancel or delay delivery of purchased aircraft in 2009. It also asked airlines to retire old aircraft and said it will not consider any new airline applications until 2010, according to a statement. The regulator encouraged further alliances and consolidation.

The once booming Chinese airline sector is suffering from overcapacity amid a slump in travel that started in the second half of 2008 as the economy began to cool. The airlines also have suffered from a wave of steep fuel-hedging losses, as oil plunged below $50 a barrel from over $140 a barrel during the summer.

Despite the government's encouragement, it is unclear how many aircraft orders can be canceled or postponed. "I don't think too much flexibility will be given to the airlines because Boeing and Airbus are also facing declining orders" in the U.S. and Europe, said Kelvin Lau, Hong Kong-based airline analyst for Daiwa Securities. "If they allow one airline to defer delivery, many more will want to do the same."

But Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ) might allow more leeway than its archrival Airbus, a unit of EADS (other-otc: EADSY - news - people ), as the U.S. giant is facing difficulty meeting delivery schedules due to a labor strike that ended in November, he added.

Guotai Junan Securities analyst Martin Wang said the regulator's announcement may not have much impact without incentives, and noted that the commercial decisions remain in the airlines' hands. Delivery cancellations can also be expensive, as airlines typically put up in advance up to 30% of the purchase price, Lau said. Wang estimated penalties for contract changes may run 5% to 10% of the contract price.

Chinese airlines are on course to lose big this year. Beijing injected 3 billion yuan ($437.0 million) in November into China Southern Airlines (nyse: ZNH - news - people ), which Wang expects to post a loss of nearly 1 billion yuan ($145.7 million) for 2008. Wang and Lau expect China Eastern Airlines (nyse: CEA - news - people ) to get a similar government aid package--Wang estimates it is on track to post a loss of over 3 billion yuan ($437.0 million) for the year. Air China (other-otc: AIRYY - news - people ) is in the best shape of the three big Chinese airlines and may get by without aid.

Ford Motor Co. says it is considering selling Volvo Car Corp. as the struggling U.S. automaker seeks to raise cash and weather the industry crisis.

Ford said Monday it expects its strategic review of the Swedish luxury automaker will take several months.

The Swedish government has said it has been in talks with Volvo and with General Motors Corp. (nyse: GM - news - people )'s Saab unit following reports that the U.S. parent companies were seeking aid for their Swedish carmakers.

Ford, GM and Chrysler LLC will go before Congress on Tuesday to present a proposal for $25 billion in loans to keep them afloat as sales sag.

Ford shares are up 18 cents at $2.87 in morning trading.