In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft’ Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.

The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator.

Netscape was created by Marc Andreessen who as a student had co-authored Mosaic, the first popular web browser.His company Netscape Communications Corporation released the first version in 1994.

Although this lead to legal wrangles over anti-competitive behaviour, IE now dominates the browser landscape with an 80% market share.

For the past week Netscape users have been shown a message alerting them to the end of support for the browser.

“Given AOL’s current business focus, support for Netscape browsers will be discontinued as of March 1st, 2008,” the message reads.

The open source browser’s development is coordinated by the Mozilla foundation, set up by Netscape staff made redundant in 2003.

It has had more than 500 million downloads worldwide and in countries such as Finland it is the most popular browser.

One of the most popular ideas online — though one that doesn’t appear to be widely supported in the analyst community — is that Apple hopes to use its age-old rival, Microsoft Corp., to boost its revenues.

Offering Safari to Windows users could significantly increase the number of Safari users, and that larger user base could translate into revenue for Apple because some browser makers have revenue sharing deals with search engines, says John Gruber, writer of the popular Daring Fireball blog. Search providers like Google Inc. reportedly split with browser makers the advertising revenue generated when browser users type search terms in the bar embedded in the browser.

Google declined to comment on any such arrangements that it might have with browser partners. Mozilla Corp., however, has said that it earns a significant portion of its revenue from the search bar in its browser. In its official company blog, Mozilla’s CEO Mitchell Baker wrote last year: “We are very fortunate in that the search feature in Firefox is both appreciated by our users and generates revenue in the tens of millions of dollars.” Firefox comes with Google as the default in the search bar and users can change that to five other options including Yahoo and Answers.com.

Mozilla didn’t respond to additional questions about how exactly it earns revenue from the search bar. Apple did not reply to questions about a potential revenue share with search providers. Safari users can choose Yahoo or Google to run the search bar.

Microsoft Corp. doesn’t have any kind of compensation deals with search engine providers or other browser makers based on users who set Windows Live Search as the default search engine or based on users who set other search engines as the default in Internet Explorer, a company spokesperson said.

Google could very well have a similar deal with Apple as it may have with Mozilla, said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research.

Still, he doubts that revenue from the search bar is the primary reason Apple developed Safari for Windows. “Whatever incremental revenue they’d get is almost irrelevant for a company of Apple’s size,” he said.

Instead, Apple has a stake in making sure that Safari has strong support in the market from users and developers because it is a critical piece of the Mac OS and will serve as the primary application development environment for the iPhone, he said.

Revenue from the search bar could play a role in the reason behind making Safari for Windows but it’s probably not the primary one, said Danielle Levitas, an analyst at IDC. “I think the revenue is not insignificant,” she said. “Maybe it’s the tactical reason but the strategic initiative is more about the connected device vision and using the browser to deliver Web-based applications.” Apple appears to be trying to position itself so that it can control Web access in a variety of devices, including phones, televisions and computers, she noted.

The move to Windows could encourage the development of more attractive applications built on Safari because developers will be able to create applications on Safari that can reach Mac and Windows users as well as the iPhone, Van Baker, a research vice president at Gartner wrote in a blog posting on Friday. He doesn’t mention the potential revenue gain as a reason.

Whatever the reason, Apple has already learned that Windows users are interested in Safari. On Thursday, Apple said that 1 million copies of the Safari for Windows beta were downloaded in the first 48 hours after it became available.

Safari has around 5 percent of the browser market share, compared to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s 78 percent and 15 percent for Mozilla’s Firefox.

The attacker used a web page designed to deal with IT help desk queries to access the information.

Names and Social Security numbers of 22,396 individuals who were employees and students at the university during 2004 were accessed during the attack.

IT staff at the university discovered the breach on 4 May, following unusual activity the previous day. The attack was traced to two IP addresses in China and Australia.

“University of Missouri technicians identified a large series of errors caused by faulty queries to an application and an associated database,” said a university statement.

“These errors were first assumed to be caused by a problem with a system used to track computer help desk repair calls using the same database.”

Technicians disabled the account being used to access the database and the vulnerable web application is no longer available online.

University officials said that they are working closely with law enforcement officials and the FBI to investigate the event.

“The University of Missouri takes this breach very seriously and is working to alert the individuals whose information was improperly accessed, including instructions about how they may monitor their credit reports for suspicious activity,” said the statement.

“The university will continue to work diligently to secure confidential data held in its computer systems.” ]]> http://www.imtushar.com/tech/university-of-missouri-hacked/feed/ http://www.imtushar.com/tech/hotmail-successor-takes-to-the-web http://www.imtushar.com/tech/hotmail-successor-takes-to-the-web#comments Wed, 09 May 2007 13:06:15 +0000 Tushar Tech News internet http://www.imtushar.com/tech/hotmail-successor-takes-to-the-web Microsoft has acknowledged that its new Windows Live Hotmail service – which was launched yesterday in 36 languages – will be a critical cornerstone in the company’s online advertising strategy in the years ahead. The company is touting Windows Live Hotmail as the most significant upgrade to its MSN Hotmail service launched in 1996.

The company says that Window Live Hotmail – the result of input from over 20 million beta testers – will deliver a safer, more powerful and productive email experience than previous versions with flexible access via the web, on a mobile phone or with an email client.

Later this month Windows Live Hotmail users will be able to access their Windows Live Hotmail email and contacts for free using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Office Outlook 2007 via the new Microsoft Office Outlook Connector beta.

“We’re thrilled to deliver Windows Live Hotmail to the more than 280 million active MSN Hotmail accounts around the world,” said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice-president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft.

“Windows Live Hotmail represents an extremely compelling end-to-end email experience that makes it easy for customers to get best-of-breed email access across PCs, mobile devices and the web.

“Windows Live Hotmail is a cornerstone online service for Microsoft and a critical part of our online advertising business because email is a key point of influence for consumer purchases,” Berkowitz said.

Microsoft said the new version of MSN Hotmail will be more akin to the Outlook experience and users will be have click and drag capabilities and auto-complete capabilities.

Users who want to bring their MSN to their mobile phones or PDAs by going to http://mobile.live.com. The company also said that the new upgraded Windows Live Hotmail will ship with Windows Mobile 6.0, the forthcoming version of its software for smart phones.

The company added that in coming weeks it will release Windows Live Mail beta, a free consumer email client available via download that will be a successor to Outlook Express and Windows Mail on Windows Vista.

The thorny issue of spam email – estimated to be impacting 60pc of business inboxes of Irish email users – is also being tackled through a number of new features.

For example, when an email message arrives in the Windows Live Hotmail inbox after multiple safety checks, the safety bar at the top of each email message will give a visual cue of the status of the email. White indicates the email is from a known sender, yellow indicates the email is from an unknown sender and red indicates the email is potentially fraudulent.

By clicking on the “mark as unsafe” link, users can automatically delete junk email messages, block any future email messages from that junk e-mail sender, and report the junk email sender to Microsoft’s spam filters to help protect others.

In terms of personalisation capabilities, users have two choices: a classic Hotmail view or the latest Outloook-oriented view. Users will also be able change the view through adding different colour schemes or skins.

From a business perspective, the numbers make sense - Yahoo Photos has seen a steady decline in usage while Flickr has grown its share over the past year. Likewise, Yahoo had been offering unlimited photo uploads and storage while Flickr sells the unlimited package in the form of a premium membership for $24.95 a year. (There is a free version of Flickr but it has limitations.)

Yahoo Photos is more of a traditional site where families share photos and visitors can download and print photos. Flickr is more of a social site where amateurs showcase their photography for a larger Web audience that largely just look at pics online and don’t print.

Yahoo is expected to offer its users a one-click option of transferring their photos to Flickr or competing sites, such as the popular PhotoBucket site. It will also offer options to transfer photos to other traditional store-and-print sites such as Shutterfly and Snapfish.

Sources said Microsoft will also release a beta of Silverlight, a recently unveiled browser plug-in that allows Web content providers to offer a rich video and interactive media experience from directly within Web sites. The technology leverages Vista’s new graphics framework, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Microsoft is promoting it as a direct competitor to Adobe Systems’ Flash tool and delivery mechanism for rich multimedia content on the Web.

Specifics on which aspect of Silverlight will be open-sourced were not available, and Microsoft’s public relations firm declined to comment Friday.

Aiming for Adobe

The final version of Microsoft’s Expression toolset for building rich Internet applications (RIAs) also may make an appearance at MIX 07, according to sources, though Microsoft has two more months to work on the tool according to its schedule. The company has said Expression, another product it hopes will woo RIA designers away from Adobe, will be available before the end of June.

Microsoft is pitting Expression as an alternative to Adobe’s recently released Creative Suite 3 and the toolset is also key to Silverlight because the company hopes designers will use it to create applications to be delivered through Silverlight.

Microsoft’s rather unconventional move to embrace the open-source community could be a response to Adobe Systems’ announcement earlier this week that it will open-source the SDK for its Flex RIA development environment by the end of the year.

Adobe has a multiyear headstart on Microsoft in luring developers to its RIA tools, and open-sourcing components of Flex should grow that base, users have said. Microsoft likely sees a need to lure developers to Silverlight as quickly as it can if it wants to catch up to Adobe.

Microsoft hosted its first MIX show last year as an appeal to Web designers and developers of RIAs, an audience whose respect the company has yet to win. Microsoft has made several stops and starts in offering Web authoring and design tools over the years, but the company has had far more success among developers building desktop applications because of its Windows and Office products.

Strategically, Microsoft is trying to make the necessary leap to the Web as a platform for developing applications to compete not only with companies such as Adobe, but also Web services companies like Google and Yahoo. It’s important for the vendor to make inroads with developers using the most cutting-edge Web and multimedia design technologies.

Adobe isn’t the only competitor Microsoft had to contend with on the RIA front. A small company in Silicon Valley called Laszlo Systems also has a sophisticated tool for building RIAs, and already has made available an open-source version of it, OpenLaszlo, which lets developers build both Flash- and Ajax-based applications.

David Temkin, founder and CTO, of Laszlo Systems, said Microsoft’s interest and entry into the RIA space is good for competitors, because it should stir up interest in related products.