rapid

Maybe the biggest piece of Microsoft news this week was about Windows 8 startup times. For good reason. It's one of those nuts-and-bolts issues that affects (plagues?) every Windows user. But Windows 7 startup can be pretty snappy too with the right hardware, and it should improve later this year.

Let me begin by saying I am also a little skeptical of Microsoft's claims of eight-second bootup times for Windows 8 (see: Microsoft promises faster startup for Windows 8). My third-generation MacBook Air with a solid-state drive takes about 16 seconds from power-up to the main OS X … Read more

The Firefox rapid-release program has caused some corporate indigestion, but Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker believes it's worth it.

She acknowledged that companies can have problems with the approach, in which new browser versions arrive every six weeks, but those problems are secondary compared to the alternative of holding up new features for a year, Baker said in a blog post today:

A browser is the delivery vehicle for the Internet. And the Internet moves very, very quickly. Philosophically, I do not believe a product that moves at the speed of traditional desktop software can be effective at enabling an … Read more

Mozilla upgraded its developer's edition of Firefox today to version 8, including changing how forced third-party add-ons are handled and debuting a series of under-the-hood tweaks that continue a renewed assault on performance gains made in Firefox 7 Beta. Firefox 8 Aurora can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it marks the first release of Aurora for Android.

Two add-on changes were revealed last week that represent, for the first time in possibly years, that Mozilla has forced changes on how third-party programs and Firefox interact. Basically, Mozilla is disabling the ability of a third-party program, like … Read more

RapidTyping is a popular typing tutor program. RapidTyping Portable is a fully portable version of the educational freeware, one that runs directly from a portable device such as a USB drive on any Windows machine, but without having to be installed or leaving files, folders, or registry entries behind when you close it. This makes it a great choice for students, who can use the same program at school and at home.

We downloaded and extracted the program's zipped executable and associated files, which we saved to a Portable Apps folder on the desktop that we use specifically to … Read more

Netflix launches a video streaming channel for kids, a Chrome extension called Google Related shows content tied to the currently viewed page, and Sony drops the price of all its PlayStation 3 models by $50.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

We've mentioned earlier that BMW would have a role in updating the Bay Area Rapid Transit (or BART, as it's known locally), the commuter rail system that serves the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, we have a preview video that gives us an idea of what that refresh will look like.

On the outside, the trains don't look radically different from what you'd expect to see from a commuter train. They're all basically metal boxes that hold people. New external LCDs show the train's destination and the doors get yellow illuminated trim that serves … Read more

Mozilla pushed Firefox 6 out the door today, updating the vast majority of its users to the browser's latest stable build.

Firefox 6 is available to download for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. This is the second stable version of the browser to arrive under the new rapid-release cycle, which promises a new stable build of Firefox every 6 weeks. As such, the changes to the browser are smaller in nature, and are more likely to be about stability and security concerns. However, Mozilla has taken the opportunity of this second stable rapid release to also address complaints from … Read more

Google buys Motorola Mobility! Once we figure out that it's not actually a joke, we grabbed News.com senior writer Maggie Reardon to help break it all down for us. Upshot: patents, patents, and more patents, and a war with its hardware partners. And also, a sea change in the entire industry. So, no big deal. Also, Anonymous rides to war with San Francisco's subway system over free speech, and we're with Anonymous. And did Apple's amazing Photoshop skills kill Galaxy Tab sales in Europe? The plot thickens.

Google has canceled its toolbar for the current and future versions of Firefox, and Mozilla is scrambling to help users who might be left in the lurch and postponing their browser upgrades.

The toolbar offers a variety of services, including a search box, a way to use bookmarks stored on a server, and a measurement of a Web site's PageRank--a score Google gives that measures its influence in Google search results. But Google has chosen to do in the Firefox version.

"As we all know, over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation … Read more