competition

Microsoft's Internet Explorer's market share is absolutely falling. The question is, by how much?

I've reported before that Internet Explorer (IE) drops 5 percent market share points each year, while Mozilla Firefox gains 5 percentage points per year. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that IE's market share may be dropping more precipitously than previously reported, falling to 60 percent share in June 2009 instead of the 68 percent share expected.

Or is it?

The answer may depend on the source of the information, and the reliability of its data. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler uses StatCounter data … Read more

Since we're not having a show tomorrow for Independence Day, there's a lot to cover today, including a new segment with Beck's Beer and Last.fm, a chat with the winner of our logo design contest, and a hilarious voicemail from everyone's favorite Tina Schwartz.

Our annual GetMcDonaldsBreakfastOnJulyThird Day leaves us with upset stomachs and wandering minds, so it's a good thing we have Blake Stevenson on for a quick segment in the beginning of today's show to talk about his winning submission for our logo contest.

We get to pick his brain a bit about how he came up with the design, and we're also curious about his work history and how he got so good! In turn, Blake also surprises us with the amazing poster illustration you see to the left. Click on it to see the larger version, and check out the impressively accurate caricatures of Wilson, Jeff, and me! From Wilson's highlights to Jeff's pursed lips and my ridiculous everything, Blake really did an excellent job of capturing the feel of the show, both with the poster and the logo itself. Attention Tom Green: critics agree, your logo sucks.

The good news is that Blake Stevenson is more than willing to redo it, so head over to JetPacksandRollerSkates.com and put him to work!

We're also very excited to debut the very first of our bi-weekly (that's twice a week) segment called The Weekly Audio Draft, sponsored by Beck's Beer in conjunction with Last.fm. Every Monday and Friday we'll introduce you guys to some fresh bands with varying genres that we hope will be music to your ears.

Jeff is first up with a band called The Twilight and the Sound, which features Jeremiah Rangel and Matt Lovato, former members of pop-punk band Mest. Their new band draws influences from The Cure, Deftones, Weezer, and Interpol, and you can buy their new album "100 Sundays..." on their profile page on Last.fm. On today's edition of the Weekly Audio Draft, we rock out to their new song "There's No Basement at the Alamo," a driving, upbeat track that combines male and female vocals in a call-and-response format that makes the perfect accompaniment to a weekend BBQ or road trip. Leave a comment on this post and let us know what you think! Check out more info for the band at their MySpace page as well.

The second half of the show is filled with hilarious voice mails including some bike shopping advice as well as a really funny voice mail from our favorite listener, Tina Schwartz. We have to reiterate that her views and opinions DO NOT reflect those of The 404 or our parent company, CBS Interactive. We even get into a few stories at the end of the show, including some back and forth about the Microsoft and Nickelback collabo, Facebook flirting and Universal grabbing the rights to the Asteroids full-length movie.

Have a great Independence Day weekend everybody, stay safe, and don't forget to check back tomorrow for our weekend throwback episode!

Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET.

As Cisco Systems adds more functionality to its online WebEx conferencing service, it's ratcheting up the competitive pressure against partner and rival, Microsoft.

Cisco held a press event Tuesday to discuss how it plans to add more to its WebEx service. As the company includes more software into the conferencing service, it is competing more intensively and directly with one of its major partners, Microsoft.

"As Cisco expands this business, the co-opetition between Cisco and Microsoft will only increase," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee Group. "Microsoft is strong on the desktop and Cisco is … Read more

Steve Ballmer needs to brush up on Roman history. Otherwise he seems doomed to repeat it, as two recent Microsoft campaigns suggest.

Microsoft has been dominant for so long that it has grown soft. As Edward Gibbon wrote in his exceptional "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," it is not outside enemies that crushed Rome so much as its own effete greatness:

The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time … Read more

I had dinner Monday night in London with David Wood, futurist at Symbian, and came away feeling strangely calm. Perhaps it was the exceptional food at Veeraswamy, capped off by a bitter chocolate ice cream....

Or perhaps it was the fact that Wood has spent 21 years with Symbian (and Psion before it was acquired by Nokia), long enough to live through several mobile revolutions and not get too ruffled by any particular one.

In fact, over the course of our dinner Wood pulled out his back-to-the-future Psion Series 5mx on several occasions, a device released a decade ago yet … Read more

The dirty little secret at Microsoft (and at Red Hat, for that matter) has been the rise of the iPhone within employee ranks.

It's one thing to try to impose one's technology on an unsuspecting market, but Microsoft employees know that the iPhone makes their Windows Mobile devices look like Tinkertoys, which is why it's so easy to find iPhones at Microsoft's Redmond campus.

Or has been. In a relatively recent move, as The Business Insider reports, Microsoft has cut off reimbursements for data plans other than those linked to Windows Mobile devices. The move was … Read more

Apple has been desperately trying to turn Safari into a mainstream browser player. Unfortunately, its numbers simply don't compare to Firefox.

Safari 4.0 notched 11 million downloads in just three days. While significant, this number is almost a rounding error compared with Firefox 3.0.11, which pulled down 150 million downloads in just 24 hours, as Mozilla's Asa Dotzler reports.

With more than 300 million active users of Firefox, Mozilla is miles ahead of Safari in terms of users. Firefox also dwarfs Safari (and Internet Explorer) in community; indeed, it is Firefox's rich ecosystem of add-ons and extensions that arguably render irrelevant any performance advantages Safari claims.… Read more

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

That's the message coming out of the European Commission as it grumbles about Microsoft's decision to strip Internet Explorer from OEM and retail versions of Windows 7 in Europe, as CNET reports.

The EU wants Microsoft to bundle a range of competing browsers with Windows 7. Microsoft, apparently in an act of defiance, said "Let them eat cake!" and is offering no browser at all.

Before you join the EU's protest, however, consider that this could well be Mozilla's best chance to increase its 31.… Read more

Red Hat appears to be held to a different standard than its peers, one that keeps it safe on a pedestal where it can do comparatively little damage to its competitors.

The reason seems to be that it's an open-source company, and open-source companies are apparently supposed to live lives of virginal purity and restraint. So, in response to my suggestion that Dell consider buying Red Hat, a friend countered, "But this would destroy Red Hat's hardware independence."

It's a good point, and one that is similarly raised whenever it is suggested that Oracle, IBM, … Read more