One of my absolute favorite computer periodicals (along with Wired) is Business 2.0. The current issue has a great article on why you will want to switch to Firefox. I have been promoting this alternate browser for the last 18 months but you will see quite a bit of media on it in two weeks as on November 9 Firefox will be out of beta and the official version 1.0 will be released. I actually started with it in version 0.5 when it was called Thunderbird (then switched to Phoenix).
They expect TEN MILLION people to download the new version next month within ten days. This could be a revolution. Firefox is open source which means anyone can update and modify the code. This is the same reason that Microsoft initially won over Apple. They allowed their code to run on all sorts of machines. Apple kept their system proprietary and lost the war even though they had a superior system. This is probably the only way that control of the Net can be wrenched from Microsoft. This is especially likely as Google will likely adopt Firefox and use it as their own customized browser including their awesome desktop. Last week Mozilla News had a story on this.
What do you get when you switch browsers?
- Foxy Tunes that lets you control just about any media player without leaving your browser.
- Googlebar Will automatically zap those nasty pop-ups and will allow you to search the web with Google with one click.
- Sage This one is really cool. Firefox will finally have an RSS feed aggregator so now you can finally use your browser to load this blog and my RSS feed. Once you download the browser there will be a little brown RSS square in the bottom title of the screen. All you need to do is click on it to subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you haven't downloaded the Firefox browser yet, what are you waiting for? It is free at their website. You won't regret it.
Technology Reviw.com October 22, 2004
Business 2.0 October 20, 2004