The Technophilez

Mozilla  is creeping ever closer to dropping the final version of the much-anticipated Firefox 3 Web browser. The latest build is the first Release Candidate for Firefox 3 (RC1), which means it's gone beyond the beta stage and is picking up a couple of last-minute polishes before it's offered up live to the whole world as a completed browser.

Most anyone can download this latest version, but it's still only intended for testing purposes. The biggest potential problem, Mozilla says, is that users shouldn't expect all of their add-ons to work properly with this preview release. Still, there are lots of new features in Firefox 3 RC1 that make it a compelling new version.

In this latest milestone, Mozilla has tweaked the user interface in Linux , Windows Vista, Windows XP and Mac OS X versions, as well as added changes and fixes to the location bar autocomplete feature, bookmark backup and restore, and full page zoom. Plus, Firefox 3 is more secure, compatible and stable, Mozilla said.

Reports indicate that iPhone users are no longer able to access the AT&T WiFi HotSpot for free through their iPhone. It's not clear if AT&T mistakenly launched the service before it was ready for prime-time (which is possible, given the lack of an official announcement from AT&T), or if the "user-agent spoofing" method to get free WiFi HotSpot access on your laptop caused AT&T to freak-out and pull the plug. The service was clearly intentional, so it's not like AT&T just messed up by allowing iPhone users to get free WiFi for a day.

Here's to hoping that AT&T irons out the bugs (if any) or closes the "user-agent spoofing" loophole and launches the free service soon.

Microsoft said Saturday that it was abandoning its blockbuster bid to acquire Yahoo after it raised its offer by $5 billion but Yahoo rejected it as still too low.

The about-face followed a meeting on Saturday morning in Seattle between Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, and Yahoo’s chief and co-founder, Jerry Yang, according to a person familiar with the talks.

At the meeting, which also included Yahoo’s other founder, David Filo, and a Microsoft president who oversees its online unit, Kevin Johnson, Mr. Ballmer increased Microsoft’s offer to $33 a share, or a total of about $47.5 billion, from $29.40 a share. Mr. Yang told Mr. Ballmer that Yahoo would not accept an offer below $37 a share, this person said.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer,” Mr. Ballmer said in a statement. “After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal.”

A person close to Yahoo said the price was not the only stumbling block. The person said Yahoo was also concerned that the deal could be blocked by regulators and wanted a higher offer, in part, as a hedge against that risk.

Microsoft’s decision to walk away casts a cloud of uncertainty over Yahoo and its shareholders. The breakdown in the talks is likely to send Yahoo’s shares plunging, and Mr. Yang and his team will have to decide how to placate investors.

The company has been exploring alternatives to a marriage with Microsoft, including a partnership in search advertising with its arch rival, Google, which could lift Yahoo’s profit and perhaps its stock price. Yahoo has also discussed possible mergers with the AOL unit of Time Warner and the MySpace unit of the News Corporation. The MySpace talks have not been active of late.

But both remaining options pose challenges. A Google partnership would be likely to attract scrutiny from regulators because of Google’s dominance over online search and advertising, while AOL and Yahoo have many overlapping businesses and technologies, making a merger difficult.

In a statement issued late Saturday, Mr. Yang said, “With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history.”

The latest version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution was officially released to the public on April 24th after the customary beta-test period. This version is designated "LTS," for "long-term support," which should make it attractive to business customers who prefer a longer upgrade cycle for their operating systems.

Ubuntu 8.04 is available in a version tailored for server systems, but in the past it has been the desktop version that has garnered the most attention. The new release should be no different, as it includes a number of improvements for desktop users -- most notably, a new installer that allows the OS to coexist on a Windows computer without partitioning or re-formatting the hard drive.

As is customary for Linux distributions, Ubuntu 8.04 includes incremental updates to many of the software packages that make up the system, from low-level details like the window manager and graphics subsystem, all the way up to the bundled OpenOffice.org productivity suite. The new release is also the first to ship with the Firefox 3.0 browser, which is currently still in late-stage beta testing. Despite some bleeding-edge additions to the package, my early testing of Ubuntu 8.04 showed it to be a remarkably stable and well-polished Linux desktop.

Developers have questioned the commitment to openness in Microsoft's Live Mesh service, which is designed to bridge the offline and online worlds.

The company's new service, that will synch all of a user's devices and applications to produce a seamless framework, was unveiled at Web 2.0.

Microsoft has said the service will use open standards and be rolled out to Windows machines, Macs and mobiles.

But developers at the conference said they needed more detail about openness.

Web 2.0 is one of the leading web development conferences

"As long as they innovate and it is an open platform that is compatible with other devices and other companies like Apple then I think it's great. I think they realise this and that they have to add value to people or they won't be able to keep up the strength of their brand."

Sam Pullara from Yahoo was not impressed by what he saw in the 15-minute demonstration, and he said that did not have anything to do with Microsoft's bid to buy the company he works for.

"I am a Mac man and frankly I have completely given up on Windows. To me it looks a lot like dotMac for the Apple and I think it will be a lot harder to execute well because Windows machines are just so different from one another." 

Microsoft's Live Mesh general manager Amit Mital told BBC News that the firm was committed to openness and said there was a need for developers to get on board.

"We hope people will look at the platform and the capabilities and think about new imaginative ways of building applications that will benefit our customers."

At an earlier demonstration of the product to an audience of developers, he said: "Today we live in the world of the web and the web is at the centre of everything we do.

" It is how we connect with the people we care about, access the data that matters to us and also accesses many of the applications we use on a daily basis. And the way we connect with the web is via a number of devices."

Live Mesh is being privately tested by a core group of about several thousand with a public test expected later in the year. Over the next couple of days those attending Web 2.0 will be able to give Live Mesh a run for its money.

Windows Vista customers can now receive the first service pack for the operating system via the Microsoft Automatic Update service, Microsoft said Wednesday.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will download automatically to PCs that have the automatic update feature of the OS turned on, the company said. Previously, Vista was available to customers via Windows Update, but people had to specifically download it.

Not all customers will receive SP1 immediately via Automatic Update, however. The company is distributing it in phases to "ensure a seamless download experience," Microsoft said. A timeline for when all customers would receive Vista SP1 via Automatic Update was not immediately available.

SP1 is a rollout of software updates that fix bugs and glitches in Vista and is seen as a milestone that will inspire many customers -- especially those in the business market -- to adopt the OS. In fact, in a recent report, "Building the Business Case for Windows Vista," Forrester Research said more business customers plan to upgrade to Vista now that SP1 is available. This comes as no surprise, considering companies often wait for the first service pack after a major Windows release to update corporate desktops.

However, even SP1 will not guarantee that enterprises and business customers currently running XP or an earlier version of Windows will upgrade, as some have said they would skip the OS altogether. The same Forrester report said as much, although the research firm is recommending that companies don't skip Vista because they would not be well-positioned for future versions of Windows if they do.

With less than a week until release, a pirated copy of Grand Theft Auto IV for Xbox 360 has hit the internet, according to Kotaku. Currently, this is only the PAL version of the title for the 360.

A group called "iCON" supplied the pirated files, which have popped up on a variety of torrent sites. There hasn't been verification that the 6.32 GB download is the full retail build at this point, but word is that the NTSC version may hit within the next couple days. This isn't the first time a GTA title has been leaked early, as it happened to San Andreas also a week before release.

We find the message from iCON regarding the torrent upload ironic, especially coming from a group whose strange motto is "Passion for Videogames." ICON urges downloaders to buy the game, because "R* deserves it..." despite providing a means for people to circumvent that very thing. If it's just about playing the game early, grow some patience, people. There's only a week left to wait, and it will be worth it.

General Motors Corp showed off its progress in developing the highly anticipated Chevrolet Volt and detailed its road map for bringing the rechargeable car to the market by 2010, an ambitious timeline challenged by some rivals.

"We are moving with incredible speed," Frank Weber, GM's vehicle line executive in charge of the Volt, told reporters. "This project is not concept work. This program is not theory. It is reality."

Weber said GM's senior executives remain committed to launching the Volt by November 2010, calling the plug-in hybrid the "No. 1 priority project that we have now within GM."

GM, which is counting on the high-mileage Volt to leapfrog Toyota's market-leading hybrid Prius, on Thursday opened its battery research labs and design studio to dozens of journalists and analysts.

The automaker's unusual open-door policy is part of an effort to show a commitment to the electric car technology many environmental advocates see as the best hope to cut oil use and greenhouse gas emissions. GM also wants to win back consumers it lost because of its reputation as the home of the Hummer.

The Volt is being designed to run 40 miles powered by a 400-pound, T-shaped lithium-ion battery pack that will be cooled by a liquid system to keep it from overheating.

Much lighter battery pack
That battery pack is shorter and only weighs a third as much as the nickel metal-hydride battery featured in GM's now-scrapped EV1 electric car, subject of the 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

The Volt marks the first attempt to adapt lithium-ion batteries, widely used in electronics, for a car, although Toyota is racing ahead with its own work on the same technology.

In its labs, GM is testing dueling battery packs, one supplied by a subsidiary of Korea's LG Chem  and the other built by a division of German auto parts supplier Continental AG using technology developed by Massachusetts-based A123 Systems.

The goal, GM said, is to ensure that it has a battery that can run at least 150,000 miles, last 10 years and allow drivers to accelerate to 60-miles-per-hour in less than 9 seconds.

Roland Matthe, a manager in GM's battery group, said the competing packs were neck-and-neck in tests meant to simulate driving in conditions ranging from Alaska cold to Arizona heat. "If you look at the data they look very similar," Matthe said.

GM has been quietly testing Volt-like technology in a maroon 2005 Chevrolet Malibu sedan at its Milford, Michigan proving track since last year and will began bolting the new batteries into vehicles for track testing this month.

"We've already learned a lot about how this battery behaves," said Michael Bly, GM's director of hybrid vehicle integration.

Gas-tank issue
Among the challenges GM is still grappling with is how to treat an unusual problem: the risk that gas in the Volt's specially pressurized, low-emission tank goes unused.

A gas engine will kick in to recharge the Volt battery as necessary, but with short trips and frequent recharging at a standard outlet some drivers may seldom need fuel.

GM, which has tweaked its global small-car platform for the Volt, could tune its proprietary drive-train software to kick in and burn off gas if needed to prevent engine damage.

Another problem: the first design GM showed off for the Volt at the 2007 Detroit auto show was too boxy and aggressively styled up front to cut through the wind and boost the vehicle's battery-only range.

After extensive wind-tunnel testing, GM designers rounded the front corners on the Volt and gave it a higher and bigger spoiler. Relatively small aerodynamic improvements have boosted the electric range by more than half a mile, Volt design director Bob Boniface said.

Meanwhile, GM engineers are counting on braking to capture energy that will deliver some 20 percent of the power needed for the Volt's 40-mile battery range. Without any braking — in perfectly traffic-free highway driving — the range would be closer to 32 miles, GM engineers said.