Software posts

Meanwhile, in Russia… If Google translate is to be trusted, a Russian publication has claimed that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed an order to transition the technological “power structures and the federal budget to free software” starting in the second quarter of 2012. The 17-page document, “Transition Plan of the Federal Authorities and Federal Budgetary Institutions to Free Software,” covers the period from 2011 to 2015. According to Deputy Head of the Ministry of Communications Ilya Massuh, the document describes a complete transition of the federal government and state…

On launch day Thursday, Opera 11 was downloaded 6.7 million times compared to 1.7 million a year ago with Opera 10.10. While these numbers are strong for the company that has put much of its focus on its mobile browser, one aspect of the numbers may catch many by surprise. 53% of the new downloads admitted to switching from Firefox while 43% were switching from Internet Explorer. Part of the success of the launch can be attributed to Opera’s appeal to the Reddit audience. The social news site is quickly becoming a force that drives tremendous traffic and holds a certain level of “intellectual superiority”…

Adobe Flash has taken its lumps this year with on-again, off-again feuds with Apple, Google, and most of the large tech companies in existence. Websites are pulling away from using it. Video players are switching to HTML5. The future looks gloomy for one of Adobe’s staples over the years. One of the biggest complaints is that it’s considered a CPU hog. A high-quality video with vector overlay can eat up all of the processing power on an average computer. Fortunately, Flash Player 10.2 beta has a video-playback-optimized mode called Stage Video that can leverage complete hardware acceleration…

While the ebook market sometimes seems like the least sexy segment of the digital world, it’s still a huge deal. After all, last time I checked, books were still a pretty big deal, whether in terms of how many people read or how many people many money off that fact. So while the arrival of Google’s new electronic bookstore may seem a little blah, it’s actually pretty important. Because, although it’s true a group of high school students could have arrived at a better name than the Google eBookstore, Google’s new cloud-based approach is not just their challenge to Amazon and Apple – it’s also part of…

Painfully unfunny Russian jokes aside, it’s also true – porn sharing site YouPorn is now under fire for having pulled a minor Google by sniffing users’ browser history. For those of you out of the loop, browser sniffing is not a website’s scanning of your internet activities for scent. A website, as you may have noticed, generally keeps track of links you’ve clicked by assigning them a ‘clicked’ or ‘have not clicked’ colour – typically purple for yes, blue for no. Browser sniffing works, essentially, by a website’s asking your browser which colour link to display. If your browser answers ‘purple’,…

Chrome has been making strides over the past few months to increase its footprint on Windows computers across the world. Adobe Flash has been heading in the opposite direction as increasing pressure from tech giants such as Apple and Google have put them on the losing end of “what not to put on your website if you want it to work well now and in the future.” With security as a primary concern regarding Flash and its vulnerabilities with hidden malicious code, the roll out of a sandbox for Adobe Flash Player on Chrome is something that will benefit them to a small extent and should add fuel to the growing…

I could say it feels like only yesterday I was introducing you guys to Diaspora, but that would very much be a lie. Honestly, it feels more like it’s been 13 years. For those of you just joining us, Diaspora is the ‘privacy-aware’ social network that debuted in concept several months ago, amidst the zenith of Facebook’s privacy woes. And it seemed like perfect timing; with everyone getting their hate on for Facebook and its alleged disregard for user privacy, most people agreed it was time for a change. Diaspora seemed like mana from heaven, offering true privacy and the ability to exact complete…

We were planning on writing about Rockmelt, a new social browser that is the modern-day Flock of Chromium, here on Techi today, but it appears that the browser is having a rocky start. After installing it, giving it access to Facebook, and finally starting the browser, the social magic that should have been has turned into disaster. Where there is originally supposed to be a bar on the left and right sides of the browser to show me my friends and social website connections, there is nothing. In fact, much of the browser, at this point is useless. All I am left with is a little swirly icon on the top-left…

The announcement of the Mac App Store has been greeted with some mixed feelings. Because of the closed nature of the App Store for iOS devices, there has been some worry about whether the Mac App Store will continue that legacy of tight control – with Apple dictating which apps can appear based on seemingly arbitrary criteria, or whether or not they compete with Apple’s own business model. More generally, people are wondering whether the somewhat constrained, simplified version of the operating system was heading to the computer – and the ‘install whatever you want’ approach that stands now would…

Hot on the heels of not releasing a successful mobile version of Flash, Adobe is turning it’s attention back to Flash for desktop computers. A preview release of a 64bit version of Flash Player, codenamed “Square” is now available for Mac, Windows and Linux. Adobe advises caution when installing the app which has several known issues, including video playback problems with Hulu.com, Audi.co.uk and NBC.com. The release also adds support for hardware accelerated rendering in the recently released IE9 beta, improving performance by up to 35%. The release notes state that the features being…