October 5, 2010
Does Firefox have what it takes to hold on to the #2 spot?
ZD Net
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes writes about Web browser market share.
“In a year Chrome has managed to more than double its usage share at a time when the other major players are losing ground or barely able to hold onto the share they have.Some of the trends are easy to explain. The migration from Internet Explorer is driven mostly by people dumping older versions of the browser. Safari is mostly tied to Mac OS adoption so is limited in that respect. But what’s going on with Firefox and Chrome? Is Chrome a better browser? Has Firefox become a worse browser? My guess – and it is little more than a guess – is that there has been a subset of Firefox users who have been disgruntled for years about the performance of the browser, especially when it came down to speed and resource consumption. Chrome appealed to these users who craved a clutter-free, unbloated browser.”
Mobile Tech: Smaller, Cheaper, Better (Pick Two)
ZD Net
Scott Raymond reflects on how mobile technology has changed our lifestyles.
“The new generation of slate computers, beginning with the iPad, have completely reorganized the landscape of mobile computing. Millions of iPads have been sold, and have greatly eaten into the market typically taken up by ultraportable laptop/netbook sales. People bought netbooks because they needed to do light computing on the road: email, surfing the web, maybe watch some videos.But now you don’t need a netbook for that anymore. Now you can do these things on a slate computer like an iPad, or wait a bit longer for an Android-based device like the Samsung Galaxy Tab. You can play games on these devices, too. Heck, you can even get a decent smartphone these days to do that as well, although sometimes the small screen makes some of these tasks a bit difficult.”
Sanyo VPC-PD2 pocket camcorder shoots up to 20 hours of video; $169.99
ZD Net
Rachel King shares details about a new handheld camcorder from Sanyo.
Sanyo’s second entry of the day is on the lower-end of the spectrum, but at least the VPC-PD2 HD mini-camcorder has a budget-friendly price to match. The VPC-PD2 does what a pocket-sized camcorder should do. It shoots full HD 1080p video at 30fps and 10-megapixel stills. The zoom range is a bit on the low end with 3x optical zoom, and a wide-angle lens range of 36mm–108mm in video mode and 37mm–111mm for photos. It also sports a 2-inch TFT LCD on the back side, along with a mini-HDMI port, a built-in stereo microphone and speaker, and SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot, and digital image stabilization.”
