Mozilla Weighs in on Chrome Frame

It wouldn’t have taken to a genius to realise that Microsoft would come out against Google’s new Chrome Frame browser-in-browser solution to Internet Explorer issues, but it’s interesting to see Mozilla do the same.

Mozilla’s vice president of engineering, Mike Shaver, commented in a blog post that Chrome Frame served only to muddy the issue, which is interesting to hear coming from a man whose company is so wholly dedicated to being rid of Internet Explorer 6, a situation that Chrome Frame could well help come to pass. Shaver appears to disagree entirely though, saying,

New Trojan Steals Money from Bank Accounts

The security world is abuzz today with news of a new Trojan that calculates amounts of money to steal based on a combination of your account balance and what anti-fraud programs will pick up.

Now that's a trojan.

Cnet is carrying word that the new Trojan, called URLzone, lies in wait on a user’s machine until they decide to look up their bank balance on a banking site it recognises, at which point it starts communicating with a home server for details of how to proceed based on your balance and amounts that would likely be picked up as fraudulent transfers. For now though, it seems that only German banks have been effected, but that hasn’t stopped it being highly successful.

App Store Hits 2 Billion Downloads

With competitors trying to set up similar services in droves, it seems that Apple’s App Store is becoming unassailable, hitting 2 billion downloads since its launch this week.

It’s important to keep in mind that the announcement that the App Store has shifted as many apps as it has comes just 14 months after its launch in July of last year. Moreover, the most recent announcement with any hard figures for the App Store came in almost exactly at the App Store’s first birthday, informing the world and sundry that Apple had crossed the 1.5 billion download mark. That means that, in the two months since then, iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded another half a billion apps, which is no small feat.

EU to Limit Media Player Volumes?

It’s looking more and more as though we could see all media players sold in the EU arriving with a volume limitation installed by default to prevent people damaging their hearing by overdoing it with headphones.

Word comes via TGDaily that the proposed new volume limitation acts to combat the fact that users often listen to portably media devices at levels considered to be “damagingly loud.” While this has raised all kinds of interesting questions about the degree to which people will allow their liberties to be infringed, it’s worth pointing out that this proposed limitation would be something users could change later on, if they feel the need to listen to their media at “damagingly loud” levels.

Kindle Hits Universities

Now that students are back in school doing… well, whatever it is that students do, we’re starting to see the first wave of responses from those using Amazon’s Kindle as their source of learning, and the results aren’t all good.

According to the Daily Princetonian, Princeton some of the students involved in its pilot e-reader scheme (which sees students using Amazon’s Kindle DX rather than physical books) have expressed some pretty unfavourable opinions on the device itself. One user said of Amazon’s Kindle DX, “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.” The same user went on to elaborate on reasons why the Kindle was unsuitable for students more generally, saying that,

Google Tweaks Docs for Sudents

With back to school season upon us, Google has updated Google Docs, adding new features in an attempt to make the web-based office suite more useful to students.

Google has long been touting Google Docs as an alternative to more expensive office suites like Microsoft Office, but for many students it just isn’t an option because it can’t offer the kind of functionality they require. Google’s update to Docs today adds an equation editor, which should give maths and engineering students some much needed options.

Vodafone Gets iPhone in Ireland

Vodafone has announced that it is to carry the iPhone in Ireland, breaking the O2 iPhone exclusivity for us in much the same way as Orange did when it announced yesterday that it would be carrying the iPhone in the UK.

For now any news of the whole affair seems to be arriving a little higgledy piggledy, but Vodafone has posted a page to allow potential customers to “register their interest” so that Vodafone can “keep you up to date on all the developments as they happen.” The real news, we imagine, will come when Vodafone announces price plans and billing options.

Special Offers – Week of September 28th

Good afternoon all, hopefully this Monday has given you a good start to the week, even if it is just a little overcast. For those of you who are familiar with our blog and the days we post bits and pieces. Monday is the day we post the details of items we have on special offer, mostly because our offers are weekly, and it’s better to make sure people are aware earlier

Anyway, this week we’ve got some nice items on offer, including a lovely HP notebook, a GPS from Garmin and a Samsung Home Cinema setup. Without further ado, we’ll get straight to them.

HP 615 NX560EA:

HP’s 615 is an elegant 15.6” machine, all black plastic, including a particularly elegant keyboard. In case you’ve not noticed, we’re kind of fanatical about keyboard quality here. All that said, you tend not to get too far with a notebook bought on looks alone, so we should probably go over the specifications too.

Click through to see the product page for the HP Notebook

The 615 boasts an AMD Athlon X2 dual core processor, 2GB of RAM, a six cell battery and an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card, which should get you a lot further than notebooks using the plain old Intel GMA. It’s also got a 320GB hard drive, which means that you don’t need to worry too much about running out of space either.

All that aside, it comes with Windows Vista Home Basic installed by default, which means that if you pick it up you should be good to go with an upgrade to Windows 7 when it launches without too much difficulty (whereas Windows XP users will be forced to do a format and reinstall or upgrade to Windows Vista and then to Windows 7 from there, which is a bit of a headache).

At €459 the HP 615 NX560EA is pretty cheap, especially considering the fact that it’s such a good-looking machine. If you’d like to check it out in more detail, you can head over to our product page for it

No Netbook Restrictions for Windows 7

It’s been revealed that there won’t be limitations placed by Microsoft on what versions of Windows 7 netbooks users can expect to see on their devices.

Word comes via GadgetMix that there won’t be any restrictions placed on netbook users (with regard to Windows 7 at least) by Microsoft, so OEMs can go right ahead and install any version there’s enough demand for from customers. Naturally this could be restricted by the resources available to netbooks, but that’s far better than a hard-line “Only Windows 7 Starter” from Microsoft as had been expected from some quarters.

RIM Flirting with Touchscreen/QWERTY Combo

Despite the news that BlackBerry manufacturer RIM’s profits are down, it seems there are still big things happening at RIM, including the news that it’s working on a device that boasts both a touch-screen and a full qwerty keyboard.

According to the appropriately named BerryReporter, RIM’s upcoming offering has been dubbed “Mr. T” and boasts a touch-sensitive display similar to that of the Storm, but with a slide-out qwerty keyboard for use in landscape mode. For now details are relatively thin, but the combination of the two interfaces is a move that many BlackBerry users will be pleased by.