Browser Comparision with Acid Test 3

Windows 7, 64 bit

Updated! Pidgin 2.7.4 for Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS (Lucid Lynx) and for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)

If you are in a hurry, and don't want to wait for the latest version (2.7.4) to be built, download the file, that matches your Ubuntu version. The update contains important security fixes and several bug fixes (ex: fix for the file transfer issue for yahoo). Be sure to uninstall any pidgin related stuff before installing my package (libpurple, pidgin, etc.), and don't update (downgrade) it until the latest version is built!

Update: both i386 and amd64 versions!

Downloads:
lucid x64
lucid x86
maverick x64
maverick x86

Related link: https://launchpad.net/~pidgin-developers/+archive/ppa/

Internet Explorer 9

The guys at Microsoft have released a beta version of the new Internet Explorer 9, which will include a lot of performance related issue upgrades, and native support for HTML5, and beside this a lot of new features. They have realeased first a platform preview, and now the beta has arrived. The only dissapointing thing is that Windows XP users will have to forget about the new Internet Explorer. The minimum system requirements are Windows Vista or Windows 7. The platform preview gives you a preview version, without any other functionalities, but the beta version is a fully functional browser. The only thing to mention here is if you install it, it will uninstall IE8 first, so the two versions does not run beside eachother, but you can uninstall it any time you want to, and you will get back your old IE8. The Acid3 test looks promising too (according to my testings), 95% of 100%, it is one percent ahead of Firefox, but still Opera, and Google Chrome does better scores (100 out of 100)

More info and downloads here

Xmarks: dead or alive?

Seems that the famous bookmark synchronizing service, "has risen from it's early ashes". Formerly known FoxMarks, is an addon/plugin or whatever you would like to call it, with the capability of synchronizing not only your bookmarks, but your passwords and open tabs too, between different browsers, and different platforms. So it's a great little thing, but sadly they (the developers) have decided that they shut down their service till the end of the year, because the service has growned way too large, to handle such number of users, and to deal with the daily costs of maintaining, developing and keeping it running. But the power is in our (the users) hands, so we kept this service alive with spreading the word, and Xmarks got offers from companies who would like to buy this service. So thankfully there is hope

For more info go to Xmarks blog

Utorrent for linux

Finally, linux users can enjoy all the stuff that is good in utorrent. An alpha version has been released (just a server version with a WebUI), which runs native on linux without wine.
You can download it here: http://www.utorrent.com/downloads/linux

A little help with the WebUI: after starting the utorrent binary in a terminal, just go to http://localhost:8080/gui and you will see the utorrent WebUI with all it's glory

Hurry up NVidia, we are waiting for you!

OpenSuSE 11.3 has just been released, and after about a half an hour testing i would say it works quite well. I've experienced some icon artifact bugs, in KDE 4, and adding repositories under GNOME was kinda slow (maybe my connection was the problem, or maybe the servers have had some serious loads). All is fine, except... NVidia... i read that the nvidia binary package installation is a pain in the ass, and there are no drivers in the repositories yet, so i won't bother with that for now. So i have to be patient :)

About "www." ...

I have saw so many people typing www. in front of an internet address, and i wondered why they do it. And I realized that they are used to do this, because they don't know how the internet works. www is an abbreviation for World Wide Web, and every site that you are interested in, is ON the world wide web, so why separate these sites by adding a www to it? The www part is a subdomain, and it's kinda useless in my opinion