Firefox Achieves One Billion Downloads, 31% Marketshare [Browsers]

Firefox, the open-source upstart launched in 2004, is officially now a powerhouse, having been downloaded over one billion times in the last five years. Hell, it's prominent enough to attract the attention of the Secretary of State.

The one billion downloads milestone includes users downloading multiple copies for different computers as well as any manual downloads for upgrading purposes, though not any automatic updates. With so many users, it's now holding about 31% marketshare, second only to that ornery old dinosaur Internet Explorer at around 60% (Opera, Chrome and Safari are all below 5%). Once Firefox Mobile and the oddly Chrome-like Firefox 4.0 come out, we can expect that number to skyrocket even more. Congratulations and mazel tov, Mozilla. [BBC]

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Student Forced to Pay $675,000 to RIAA for Sharing 30 Songs [Riaa]

Joel Tenenbaum admitted to sharing 30 songs with Kazaa back in 2004 (Kazaa! So quaint!) and was originally fined $150,000 per song. He worked that down to "only" $22,500 per song, but that's still $675,000 in total.

This is the second big victory for the RIAA this month, after the even-more-ridiculous decision that filesharer Jammie Thomas should pay $80,000 per song. But unlike Thomas, Tenenbaum hasn't come out and said he will outright refuse to pay the fine, and it looks like this is a more concrete win for the RIAA dirtbags.

The RIAA specified to TorrentFreak that the money won will go to more lawsuits, not to the artists the RIAA supposedly represents. It looks like yet another episode in this long public relations attack in which the organization mercilessly kills any sympathy for their cause that might have existed. [TorrentFreak]

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IBM SNAzzy Knows Your Circle of Friends Better Than You Do [Privacy]

That heavy breathing you hear on the phone sometimes? It's IBM.

Specifically, it's the IBM Social Network Analysis for Telecom Business Intelligence data mining tool, or SNAzzy for short, and it knows all about who called who and for how long on the network of "one of the largest mobile operators in the world."

The purpose of this snazzy snooping, as explained by Big Blue researchers, is to spot "churners" on a cell network who might influence their circle of friends with "profit-threatening behavior." The reasoning goes that when one person ditches a cell network for greener pastures, they can inspire their friends to do the same. Enter SNAzzy, which can apparently recognize this behavior, alert the carrier, and allow them to swoop in with retention materials and keep their remaining customers happy. It does this by mapping out call behavior, time, and a bunch of other heavy metrics that seem to be copy/pasted right out of the NSA.

Better still (I say sarcastically), IBM is already eying larger deployments beyond telecoms into areas like social networks. Personally, I can't wait to see what my Facebook picture stalking looks like when presented to me in graph form. [IBM va Slashdot]

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Rumor: Nikon VP650 Camera/Projector Combo to Be Revealed This Week [Rumor]

CrunchGear was reporting earlier today that a big "groundbreaking" Nikon event was coming our way this week, and now we might know what, exactly, all the fuss is about: It's a camera/projector hybrid called the VP650.

The big rumor/tip comes from someone at the French photo magazine Chausseur D'Image, which has some established Nikon rumor cred thanks to a D300 specs scoop that they ran in their July issue (before anyone else, notes Crunch). Their next issue apparently features the VP650, and this is what the source is saying Nikon will "break ground" with this week.

The combo unit would officially drop in August, to be shipped to consumers by September. The camera would sport an LED projector, would have a compact size/form factor, and is capable of producing 8x12in. pictures in a dark environment. So, a camera with a projector built in. Is that "groundbreaking" to you? It's certainly interesting, to say the least. [Nikon Rumors via CrunchGear]

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Intel discontinuing Z-series Atoms?

It's sourced from Digitimes, so don't get too worked up, but word on the street is that Intel's no longer accepting orders for Z-series Atom chips. If you'll remember Intel's initial distinctions, the Z-series was for MIDs and the familiar N-series was for netbooks, but since the Z-series didn't carry the same max hardware restrictions as the N-series, it became popular in a whole host of devices that didn't fit the traditional mold, like the Sony VAIO P and the ASUS Eee PC T91. Of course, Intel's got the next-gen Pine Trail Atom platform on tap, so killing the Zs might not have a huge impact in general, but it's just one more nail in the MID coffin.

[Via SlashGear]

Filed under: Laptops

Intel discontinuing Z-series Atoms? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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