Category Archives: Software

Category containing all information relating to software.

Firefox 3.1 beta 3 out, soon to be 3.5

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The Firefox 3.1 beta is now out and ready to be downloaded at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html for anyone who wants it. It’s supposedly the last beta before they change the version number to 3.5, as I mentioned in a previous blog post. 

I personally won’t be downloading it any time soon as I’m going to probably wait either for the 3.5 beta or the final 3.5 release. I think the next Firefox release is definitely something to look forward to with lots of new features, so the news will be here on GEEK! as soon as it comes.

iTunes 8.1 released

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Apple released iTunes 8.1 yesterday, with reported updates for performance and stability. Plus, the new iTunes version supports the latest iPod Shuffle.

According to Apple, new features include a new Genius sidebar that supposedly now does TV and move recommendations, speed improvements when importing large libraries, improves speed and handling of iTunes Plus songs and many accessibility improvements.

So it looks like this may be a worthwile updates and I suggest you go ahead and get it. If you already have iTunes on your computer, you can just get the new version over Software Update. If you don’t have it, head over to apple.com/itunes for the free software.

Firefox 3.5 to replace ideas of Firefox 3.1

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Mozilla has decided to rename the idea of Firefox 3.1 so it becomes Firefox 3.5. Mozilla has decided that a fourth beta will be released on the 14th of April and the release will be named Firefox 3.5. 

Mozilla claims on their developer news site  that the reason for the change is because of the “sheer volume of work” which seems to make it more relevant to make it a bigger release. 

Mozilla confirmed the change in this blog post. They have said they will change the upcoming release to Firefox 3.5 before the next beta is released in April.

We shall have to see what happens when the beta arrives in our download folders, but personally I think that Mozilla just want to make the release stand out more as there is evidently large amounts of work going into it. Hopefully it’ll be something to look forward to, as Firefox is (in my opinion) beginning to fall behind a little as competition from Chrome (and possibly Safari) is falling into place.

Freecom Network Drive and Linux (Ubuntu to be specific)

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I get a lot of Google searches relating to the Freecom Network Drive and Linux. They seem to relate to not being able to get it work properly, but I haven’t really posted much about the FND on Linux because… I just don’t use Linux. So for the benefit of my readers, I decided I’d take a leap of faith and download an ISO of Ubuntu just to see whether I could get it going.

And, frankly, I’m not totally sure what all the fuss is about. People seem to claim that they can’t access the drive or the config panel for it. But I didn’t have any problem at all – I just got Ubuntu working and connected to my wifi and it almost worked immediately. I could get to my network drive config panel at 192.168.1.2 (in my case, different users have different IPs) – just logged in as normal and it went easy peasy. Then as for getting to files, the Network window detected my drive most of the time and displayed all the folders and if not I could just do a local FTP and that worked just fine.

I’m not sure if people were/are having problems with other versions of Linux… but I mean it shouldn’t really make much difference. If you want to drop me a line or leave a comment with your Network Drive Ubuntu related problem and I’ll happily investigate for you. At the moment, I just don’t see much of a problem, so I need some more details.

If you are having problems, let me know and I’ll look into it for you.

Safari 4.0 Beta – The good, the bad and the ugly.

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It looks like Apple have been working on their next release of the well known Apple web browser which was released for Windows a couple of years back. Safari 4.0 Beta is their latest release, and I took the courage and downloaded the beta.

The first thing you notice when you download it is that it’s quite a big file – for a web browser anyway. Baring in mind that Google Chrome’s installer is about 3 or 4 MB (including the installer downloads), Safari’s installer size of 25.5 MB is a little bit of a shock. Once it has downloaded and you run the install program, you are presented with the usual terms and optional extra installs (which I proudly unticked – I personally think the Bonjour crap is a waste of time), after which it will spend a couple of minutes installing the program.

Once it’s installed you will find the program immediately fires up, and you are presented with a “Welcome to Safari” video, followed by a very snazzy looking frequently used tabs screen.

 

Safari

Safari

As for generally browsing the web, the experience is relatively good. There are a few bugs, but these can be reported with ease via the bug button at the top right. 

The new interface has definitely made an improvement to the general feel of Safari since version 3. I still prefer Chrome – despite what Apple says, Safari is not the fastest web browser. It has to be Chrome – by miles. Don’t you agree?

I recommend you go and try it. I don’t think I’ll keep Safari as it’s just unbeatable to Chrome, but maybe in the future when the final release comes around, maybe I’ll do a full review. Head over to apple.com/safari to try the new beta.