Apps – Page 2

Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

Firefox’s official roadmap has been updated, and boy are there some interesting changes afoot. Most notably, Firefox 7 will ship in 2011. The second biggy, and the main focus of Firefox development in 2011, is to make sure there is no more than 50ms between any user interaction and feedback from the browser.

As far as feature sets go, this is what the roadmap looks like: Firefox 5 will absorb the Account Manager and F1 Simple Sharing add-ons to become built-in features. It looks like Windows 7 64-bit will be officially supported with FF5, too.

Firefox 6 will have a focus on the Web applications framework, JavaScript optimizations, and support for OS X 10.7. For Web applications, some missing pieces of CSS3 and HTML5 will be added to Gecko, the rendering engine.

Firefox 7’s feature list is less clear. Electrolysis (splitting everything into separate processes) and changes to XBL support are mentioned, but nothing certain.

Overall, there’s a big emphasis on responsiveness and “shining the primary UI until it gleams.”

It’ll definitely be interesting to see how Mozilla transitions to a new release cycle — and it’ll definitely mean a lot more Firefox-related news, too!

Update: some conscientious eyes have noticed that the roadmap says ‘Draft’ at the top, so this could all change…

webOS is coming to PCs later this year

HP’s decided to end its fireworks-rich presentation on a gorgeous bombshell: webOS is coming to PCs! The company says it’s thinking beyond today and intends to take webOS to “other connected devices, including printers, and some form factors you haven’t seen before.” Aside from the groundbreaking discovery that our next LaserJet might run the same code as the dashing new TouchPad, there are few specifics to be learned, but HP promises to share further details as the year goes on.

Generate a Résumé from Your Github Account

A few months ago, Nodejitsu co-founder Marak Squires wrote “The day’s of resumes and references for developers are slowly dying.” Squires sends his Github account to potential employers before he sends a résumé.

With that in mind, check out My Github Résumé, a web application that will generate a résumé from a Github account.

Here’s one for our resident hacker Tyler Gillies:

Microsoft’s Kinect Selling Twice As Fast As The iPad

The adoption rate of the iPad was celebrated as the fastest ever in electronics history. Now, less than a year after the tablet’s launch, Microsoft has usurped that distinction with Kinect.

Kinect, Microsoft’s new controller-free gaming peripheral for the Xbox 360, has been selling at a breakneck pace, with 2.5 million sensors sold within its first 25 days on the market (Read reviews of the Kinect).

As ReadWriteWeb notes, this means consumers have been purchasing Kinect twice as quickly as the iPad, which hit the 2 million mark two months after its release. Based on Kinect’s sales thus far, ReadWriteWeb estimates that Microsoft is selling 100,000 Kinects per day. With approximately 4.5 million iPads sold every 90 days, Apple is moving an average of 50,000 iPads per day.

There are some caveats to these calculations–although they aren’t likely to stop the Redmond giant from toasting its victory against Apple.

The Kinect figures include sales over Black Friday, typically the busiest shopping day of the year. And Microsoft’s gaming gadget ($150-$400 each) is around half as expensive as Apple’s iPad, which starts at $500. The two are also very different devices, one a gaming accessory to be used in the home, the other a portable tablet computer.

Still, the numbers suggest Microsoft has a hit on its hands, good news for a company looking for an “in” with consumers and high hopes of enticing non-gamers to fire up their Xboxes.

Microsoft hopes to sell a total of 5 million units by the end of the holiday season. Do you think they can meet that goal?

Microsoft Is Said to Seek More Management Changes

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer plans to extend a management shake-up aimed at adding senior product executives with an engineering background, two people with knowledge of the decision said.

Changes may be announced this month, said one of the people, who declined to be named because the plans are private. Last month, Ballmer pushed out server division president and 23- year company veteran Bob Muglia, saying the company needed new leadership that could focus on areas such as cloud software.

The move would expand on an effort to promote managers who have engineering skills and experience executing product plans — a bid to catch up with rivals such as Apple Inc. and Google Inc. in Web services, smartphones and tablet computers. The overhaul also may quell criticism from the board and investors that Microsoft is falling behind in some markets. Four top executives have left the company since May.

“You see the engineering team ascending because Steve is realizing that there is a need to execute on a vision and in order to do that you have to actually understand how software is built,” said Wes Miller, an analyst at the Kirkland, Washington-based research firm Directions on Microsoft. “It’s a whole other thing to be able to say, ‘I’ve been at Microsoft, I understand software, and what you are saying will or will not work.’”

Microsoft accuses Mexican drug cartel La Familia of selling bootleg Office software

Microsoft claims La Familia is selling bootleg copies of Office, and the company is using this to show how counterfeiting and piracy is a more serious problem than many people believe.

It’s been a strange week for Microsoft. It began with Google revealing it had set a honey-trap in order to catch Bing copying its search results. And it’s ending with the revelation that the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia, is selling counterfeit copies of its Office software throughout the country.

The claim came during the Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy in Paris, where David Finn, associate general counsel of Microsoft’s anti-piracy unit, said, “This is the real side, the scary side of counterfeiting and it plagues the world.” Finn suggests a lot of counterfeiting and piracy is linked to organized crime, not just in Mexico but in Asia and right around the world.