With the release of IE8 beta Microsoft has shown that its past track record of horrible software and non-standards compliant browsers may be coming to a close. Or maybe they just took a look at the writing on the wall from the penetration Firefox and decided to steal every good piece of functionality that browser has and added to their own. Either way you win.

Since the market failure of IE7 and the poor standards compliance of the last 3 browsers put out by Microsoft, IE 8 may be the light at the end of the tunnel for users and front end developers alike. See, when designing a website now, all designers essentially have to design two sites or make significant hacks to code to get IE 6 or 7 to display any where near their Firefox or Opera counterparts. This is a problem for all involved. Web standards are there for a reason. They are there so everyone can surf the web on a level playing field. Viewing websites on any browser and any operating system and have them display exactly the same is the goal. For website owners and designers production costs go down, sites look better, and site patrons benefit by not having to miss out on any type of feature or content because of their operating system.

So IE8 seems to make standards compliance a serious feature for this browser. Finally. From what I have seen and tested of IE8 you may not see a ton of new things on the front end of this browser. Many of the great achievements are under the hood. Better CSS support, better AJAX support, better javascript support. Security and safety filters are also included to compay spam and malware which everyone hates. These are all great things. Though the beta currently does crash alot during extended use it is still a beta software release and is not full production ready code.

With that said it does have some coolness factor to it as well. There are some built in collaboration tools with Facebook that allows users of Facebook to get updates and features right through your IE8 browser. There is also a built in Live maps feature that seems to be a pretty cool addition. IE8 when production ready will overwrite IE7 and replace it completely which may pose some problems for people and Microsoft both. Internet Explorer 8 is designed to work in standards mode out of this box. However, Microsoft does provide a way for users to browse the web in a way similar to Internet Explorer 7 by using the emulate Internet Explorer 7 button. That part is not that great and may cause some confusion overall. Mainly though this will be a great step forward for Microsoft in the developer community. Many people have been screaming from every soapbox and mountain top that IE needs to be a compliant browser and it looks like it may have helped Microsoft make its choice.

Other browsers you might want to try.
Firefox, Opera, Flock, Safari for PC

I would recommend trying flock. It just won a webby for being one of the best in social networking. Kind of a buzzword award but a dang good product. It is great.

One of the most heralded games in the history of Rockstar games, Grand Theft Auto IV, launches today with the the fourth extension to the series. The much anticipated game is coming out simultaneously on both the x-box and ps3 for the first time in the developers history. This game has been hyped for a while but the inside reports are it will be the biggest game in history. The games predecessor, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, is still the top selling game of all time at right around 8.5 million copies.

The U.S is not the only country flipping for the series either. In the UK there have been so many presell orders that retailers have stopped taking them for fear of running out of product before it hits shelves.

It looks like some of the features from San Andreas are still there, like the customization of your character and what not. This is cool as many people play games in many different fashions and this is one the greats as far as letting the users choose the adventure path.

Here is a quick video preview of the game but it is a little of a spoiler so be warned. I watched it for what is spoils and it is not that bad. If you haven’t pre-ordered this game or are thinking about standing in-line to get it I would go ahead and do that. It looks to be a serious hot pick for the summer.

I have been using the new Verizon phone the Voyager for a couple weeks now. It has some great features to it no doubt. Just like anything else though, it has a couple things that could be improved upon too. One great thing that really separates the Voyager from products like the iPhone is the fact that it runs on a faster 3G EV-DO network from Verizon. This is pretty cool but to me it seems silly to run on this and not also have the ability to choose an open wi-fi network. That is right, faster 3G EV-DO network but no wi-fi access.

Then there is the GPS system. Sweet it has gps on it and I can get any software I want to run that gps chip and be flying all over the place. Wrong, Verizon locks the chip down to only work with the vzw navigator software. It is $10 a month or $3 a day to activate. I used the software and it is a bit clunky but it does have some great things about it. It has some pre-set destinations like airports that may be used often and that is a real time saver. But people investing in a smart phone or device want flexibility from their device not locked down proprietary software. This is the story with the Voyager really. It lacks all of the things that make it a true smart phone. No true email software, document editor, or the like. It has a contact syc function though that attempt seems quickly implemented and with mediocre execution.

The internal memory on the phone is small in itself but the phone does have an expansion slot for a micro SD card up to 8Gb. This is nice for the phone memory to be expandable but the iPhone comes with 8gb already on it so I guess it seems the internal memory can be a bit larger for the money you spend. The one thing I thought was cool were the game features on the phone. The games are pretty easy and fun and the controls are pretty good for a small device like this. The graphics are what you would expect and the games are a fair price at 4.99. I played Tiger woods golf on it and it was fine. I could see using this on a trip or flight for entertainment. The speakers wold be kinda loud on a plane so you would have to get a bluetooth headset.

The Voyager touch screen is nice though the scrolling feature on it is a bit tricky. You may find yourself opening the hatch to do some things in the beginning. The touch screen does have a nice vibrate response on contact that lets you know the screen has been touched. I like that a lot. I think it helps those who aren’t used to touch screen get the hang of the touch response.

Everyone who has a smart phone or uses a mobile device for internet knows we have a long way to go with this feature. Even the iPhone has some problems rendering sites correctly and in a readable fashion. So the older Openwave browser that is standard on the Voyager is no exception when trying to view your favorite site with any ease or speed. It is a chore. I personally feel that this is just a problem that won’t be fixed unless online properties design a new site for mobile users that better fits their needs and useage. It is a different medium overall. The .mobi domain extension may help in branding these new sites but it hasn’t caught on at all yet. So we are stuck trying to view sites optimized for 17 inch monitors on a 3 inch screen. Pretty rough.

I guess if I had to sum it up, this phone really seems like more of a fun device than a business device overall so keep that in mind when purchasing. If you look a the list of feature there are really quite a few. The camera, video, bluetooth, and internet are all there. But mostly this phone is great at downloading music, playing games and text messaging. If you need a wi-fi mobile work shop keep on looking.

This is just a copy and paste article but I thought it was pretty important since many people use ebay as a second income source around here. If fact there are many people that use ebay as a main income source too. This is from an article found on Australian IT located here.

ONLINE auction website eBay is using Australia as a guinea pig to trial a new policy where all other modes of payment are barred except its own transaction gateway, PayPal.
Direct deposits, personal cheques and money orders will no longer be payment options from June 17. This is the first time these restrictions will be imposed by eBay anywhere in the world and could be enforced in other markets in the future.

Buyers will have to pay for items via PayPal, cash-on-delivery or Visa and MasterCard debit and credit cards but these transactions would be processed by PayPal as well.

PayPal allows buyers to nominate their credit and debit card or bank account for purchases. Sellers are charged between 1.1 per cent and 2.4 per cent per transaction.

In these uncertain financial time many business are trying to railroad people into using only their services. Since ebay now owns paypal this is another one of those attempts. Maybe this will force some people to jump into other auction sites out there or move away from online auctions period. Maybe local auctions will start to be the norm. Who knows. But this will make the cost of doing business on ebay go up for sure.

According to the secunia website the newest version of safari 3.1 for windows has some “highly critical” security flaws that made it into the software release. These flaws are currently not patched.

A guy named Juan Pablo Lopez Yacubian discovered the two vulnerabilities in Safari, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct spoofing attacks or potentially compromise a user’s system. Those vulnerablities are as follows

1) An error when downloading e.g. a .ZIP file with an overly long filename can be exploited to cause a memory corruption.

Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.

2) An error in the handling of windows can be exploited to display arbitrary content while showing the URL of a trusted web site in the address bar.

The vulnerabilities are confirmed in version 3.1 for Windows. Other versions may also be affected.

I guess highly critical is a bit of an overstatement but these obviously aren’t good things. The best way to make sure you don’t have an issue with these holes is to not surf untrusted sites and to not download untrusted files.

For those people who are interested in using a better browser, Firefox beta 3 is available for download. I am testing the Mac version right now. So far so good I have to say. There has been some crashing issues and other things you would expect from a beta. It is not finished software of course. But so far the new skin, and new features are great.

The overall look of the new Firefox is more akin to safari for mac users. It still has the great tab feature and has added more defined ssl security alerts. It also has direct search hints on the address bar which shows top rated sites (from Google?) and it is a nice addition as well. The new Firefox is also dubbed as at least twice as fast as Firefox 2 and 5 times as fast as IE6/7. It has improved javascript rendering and it tries to squeeze out the most milliseconds in Ajax rendering. If all this sounds like jibberish at this point just nod and agree. These are all very good things.

Another great thing I have used in Firefox 3 is the password manager. This little beauty is well designed and very useful if you often forget your passwords to login to your online bank account.

I have yet to test IE8 which is out in beta right now and I will check that out as soon as I get a chance. Hopefully it is a huge improvement in web standards compliance since IE7 fails miserably in its web standards compliance. If there is one thing IE 8 would need to improve on it is the main job it has. Rendering websites. If they can get back to rendering websites and specifically CSS 2.1 like most other browsers out there then I will be the first to commend them. So far, no go.

So when the final release comes available go get Firefox 3. You will definitely love the switch. Or go get the most recent nightly build here and starting using Firefox right now.

Engadget is reporting that some pretty smart folks over at Penn State University have built the first solar cell that harvests hydrogen from water. The process they have come up with more closely mimics photosynthesis that plants use. The process of using solar cells that harvest electricity is pretty good right now but if we can use the same process as plants to gain hydrogen energy we can safely say that we will tap into a resource with limitless possibilities. Many of the cars that are now claiming to be the cars of the future are hydrogen cell based. This may be a huge step forward in easily getting the amount of hydrogen we need to move forward with the fuel cell technology full bore.

There already is a fuel cell partnership starting in California that is comprised of government, automotive, technology and station members, that is outfitting fuel stations around the state with hydrogen fueling to promote sustainable fueling for the future. The main problem being full scale use of hydrogen is not part of our infrastructure. Also, how do we get enough hydrogen gas to fuel all of the vehicles we need to make an impact in the market place?

The Nitanny Lions may have something here.

I was searching around for some good ideas for tech gifts that weren’t a pink iPod nano today. It seems every website has the same ideas for tech gifts for everyone out there. Many of those gift ideas come from Apple computers. I love Apple products. I may be on the verge of being a fanboy. But any self respecting geek already has a mp3 player of some sort, iPod, Zune, whatever. What you girls should be looking for is that sweet gift that says ” I know you are a geek and this will raise the bar for your fellow geek competitors and adversaries”

1. USB Missile Launcher

Well I saw this bad boy and I must say I wouldn’t be mad if I got this for my desk. There is something to be said for a computer station that can defend itself from lurking micro-managers and project toting messengers. Shoot them all down with a click of a mouse. Pretty cool.

2. Red Swingline Stapler

I have one of these and it increases my geek status fo sho. For those who love office space and want to burn down their office if someone takes their stapler, this will send a message to all who dare walk by your cubicle.

3. Geek related t-shirt

There is nothing better than a aptly worn t-shirt to flex your ultimate geekery. They also make geek styled underwear and basically any assortment of clothing imaginable. Pocket protectors are not a substitute. Choose from an array of Linux, PC, Mac humor and you will find your geek ROFL.

4. A sweet GPS system

This is one of those gifts that doesn’t get bought for the man in your life often but I guarantee this is on the top of many geek’s list. The new retail style GPS units are coming down in price and beefing up on the features just like many other areas of tech. I like the selection of Magellan units but there are many other manufacturers so do your homework on price and features.

5. HD LCD TV
All right, nuff said here. All geeks need a top end HD TV so they can max out their PS3 or Xbox. Get a good size 1080p with more HDMI ports than less.

Charter makes a big blunder with its customers on this move. According to this news blog article they deleted about 14,000 of their customers emails with attachments and all.

Officials at Charter believe a glitch in software during routine maintenance caused the e-mail accounts to be deleted. The company is offering $50 credits to customers who were affected.

A company representative told the news service that there was no way to retrieve the messages, photos or other attachments that had been sitting in people’s in-boxes when they were deleted.

Ouch! Well for those of your who had email and countless files deleted by charter you are not a happy camper. Seems like we are all to hooked to having a digital copy of everything we have, especially with email. Some people may have lost years worth of contact information and correspondence. Feel free to leave some choice comments for Charter and their deletion script them here.

Being the next big thing on the technology block brings a lot of attention around for the iPhone. But it appears that this also brings a load of Black Hatters waiting in the wings to drop the next big piece of malware and spyware on the most hyped phone on planet. According to this story This is a first for the iPhone as of yet.

A package called “iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep,” which described itself as “an important system update. Install this before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware” is floating around on the Internet. The fact it does not come from Apple is clue #1 that something is wrong.

“This Trojan claims to be a tool used to prepare the device for an upgrade to firmware version 1.1.3,” the US-CERT advisory said. “When a user installs the Trojan, other application components are altered. If the Trojan is uninstalled, the affected applications may also be removed.”

The iPhone is expected to receive a firmware upgrade to version 1.1.3, probably to coincide with the Macworld Expo next week. There is no official word from Apple on any upgrade, but the company is known for keeping its cards close to the vest.

So be careful, iPhone owners, what software your download and install and make sure it is from a trusted source. Luckily this particular Trojan is more of a prank than full scale warfare but it opens doors for more advanced Trojans to come.