The Firefox browser continues to rack up incremental market share gains against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but security concerns may be taking their toll as the growth rate continues to slip.

Web site measurement and marketing company WebSideStory on Tuesday said that as of April 29, IE fell a percentage point in domestic share to make up 88.9 percent of browser usage, while the Mozilla Foundation’s open-source Firefox browser rose just over a point to 6.8 percent.

The slackening of Firefox’s growth could mean that the browser has converted a substantial proportion of its natural constituency, thought to be early adopters and the technically savvy. It could also show that the browser’s widely publicized security flaws have begun to undermine the foundation’s argument that people should switch from IE to be safer.

The Mozilla Foundation warned against assigning too much importance to falling growth rates, and said the Firefox security profile still bested the competition’s.

Source: News.com

Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday said it was launching a new online music subscription service, aggressively competing against current providers such as Apple Computer Inc. , RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody and Napster Inc. with lower pricing.

Yahoo said it was offering the service, beginning May 11, in a trial version with an introductory price of $4.99 per month for an annual subscription, or $6.99 on a monthly basis.

The new service, called Yahoo Music Unlimited, lets individuals play tunes from a catalog of more than one million songs, transfer tracks to portable devices and share music with friends through Yahoo! Messenger.

Source: Reuters

Tech giant Cisco Systems said an arrest was made in Sweden in the theft of its source code, or programming instructions, for equipment directing a large share of global Internet traffic.

The company declined to elaborate on the theft, but security experts said the source code, posted last year on the Internet, had been used for a series of attacks on computer systems, including on US military and research institutions.

The New York Times reported earlier that the stolen codes had been used in a “broad and long-lasting” attack on computer systems serving the US military,
NASA and research organizations.

Cisco said it was aware of the arrest in Sweden linked to the May 2004 theft of a portion of Cisco’s Internetworking Operating System (IOS) code that was “illegally copied and subsequently posted on the Internet.”

The company provided no details about the suspect, which The New York Times said was a 16-year-old in Uppsala, Sweden.

Source: AFP (via yahoo)

Pictures and details of Microsoft Corp.’s newest video game console have leaked out–from an official party thrown by the company as part of a planned unveiling later this week on MTV.

Based on pictures and eyewitness accounts that made the rounds of the Internet over the weekend, the console will be known as ”
Xbox 360.”

The console is mostly white and designed to stand on one end, will feature a wireless controller and also a remote control that appears to handle multimedia functions like audio and video playback, according to various online forums that track consumer technologies.

The console’s power button has “skins,” customizable appearances that can apparently be added by the user. Other peripheral devices that appeared in some of the shots include a headset and a kind of Web camera. The pictures first appeared prominently on the tech Web site Engadget.com.

Microsoft would not confirm any of the information circulating on the Web, saying that “everything you are reading about at this point is buzz and speculation.”

Source: Reuters

Microsoft Corp. unveiled Tuesday a new version of its Windows operating system for mobile devices that unifies the platform for cell phones and Pocket PC handheld computers while adding such features as PowerPoint viewing and internal hard drive support.

Windows Mobile 5.0, introduced by Chairman Bill Gates at the company’s annual conference for mobile software developers, also adds support for the miniature typewriter keyboards that are increasingly common on mobile phones and organizers.

Other enhancements include updates to the mobile versions of Microsoft Word and Excel that better maintain the formatting of documents created on a computer and allow the creation of charts from a spreadsheet.

Source: AP

With the recent release of iTunes 4.8 and its ability to manage and play videos, several users are discovering that iTunes is now selling videos through the online store. One example is the ‘Feel Good Inc.’ single used in the recent rollerskating iPod ad. The videos are provided in DRM-less .mp4 format encoded in 3ivx D4 4.5 and are available with purchase of the album.

Source: Slashdot

The first three months of the year showed the usual minor adjustments to the world’s x86-chip makers’ market shares.

AMD came out of Q1 2005 with 16.9 per cent of the x86 CPU market, up less than a third of a percentage point more than Q4 2004. Arch-rival, Intel, lost half a percentage point of market share between the same periods, easing to 81.7 per cent of the market.

The remaining 0.2 percentage points lost by Intel went to VIA and Transmeta, although the latter will soon leave the x86 chip market.

Source: The Register

Digital music service Napster has unveiled a new store aimed at selling ring tones for mobile phones.

Created in partnership with Dwango Wireless, the Napstertones service offers most ring-tone downloads for prices between $1.99 and $2.99. For now, the service is available to Cingular and T-Mobile subscribers, but the companies hope to make it more easily accessible through phone carriers’ networks later this year.

Source: News.com