iPad 3 Feature Details: To Offer 3D Display?

It’s never too early to start iPad 3 rumors. The general assumption is that it will not release until next year. Since iPhone 5‘s release date is delayed, who knows if the next iPad will release this year? RCR Wireless (via Macrumors) is reporting it will offer 3D display!

“The fact that the iPad 3 is 3D is a dead cert, one Hollywood insider close to the big movie studios told RCR, adding that the screen would be the real magic. She went on to say that the big film studios were currently running around like blue arsed flies trying to gear up to release plenty of 3D content in time for Apple’s next launch.”

Considering the next iPad would be iPad 3, wouldn’t it timely to offer 3D and call it iPad 3D instead? This is Apple’s response to the fast surging 3D market. And no, this isn’t a response to the 3DS which pretty much bombed.

3D would be really awesome on the iPad since the screen size is a lot bigger than the 3DS. The effects would be much improved. How about you? What do you think of iPad 3D?

Sony's PlayStation hack apology

Below is the full text of Sony's blog posting on the PlayStation Network hack and loss of personal data.

The latest information on the PlayStation Network service outage.

Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the current outage of PlayStation Network & Qriocity services. The following email has been sent to all PSN registrants; please read the help and support FAQ for more information.

Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:

1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;

2) Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and

3) Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity passwords and login and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, to be on the safe side we are advising that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may also have been obtained.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security, tax identification or similar number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant to review your account statements and to monitor your credit or similar types of reports.

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience. Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority. Please contact us at uk.playstation.com/psnoutage should you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,

Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment Teams

Sony Network Entertainment Europe Limited (formerly known as PlayStation Network Europe Limited) is a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited the data controller for PlayStation Network/Qriocity personal data.

Google's New CEO: Back to the Future

However Larry Page decides to lead Google, one thing is for sure: He's not going to be Eric Schmidt 2.0.

Larry PageThat's the word coming from industry analysts just days after Page became the CEO of Google. With Schmidt stepping down to become the online powerhouse's executive chairman, Page, a co-founder, is back in the big chair.

And everyone is expecting some significant changes.

"It's very reasonable that Larry is going to sit down and he's going to reorganize the company," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial, a New York-based investment firm. "Larry is taking over, and he's likely to make some broad changes and he's likely to do it relatively quickly."

Actually, those changes came immediately.

Page officially took over as CEO on Monday -- the very day that Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's product chief, announced that he plans to resign. By all accounts a highly crucial cog in the Google machine, Rosenberg is expected to exit the company in the coming months. At this point, it's unclear who will replace him, or if he will be replaced at all.

Also on Monday, Google announced that it is bidding $900 million in cash for thousands of patents that Nortel is auctioning off as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.

Obviously, the decision to make such a huge bid was in the works for some time, and Page must have had a hand in the move while he was transitioning into the CEO's office. And it's not as if Page had been uninvolved with the company while Schmidt was in charge.

Schmidt, Page and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have been the triumvirate behind the company's rise to the dominant position it holds today.

The difference, however, is that while Page has been focused on innovation, Schmidt was the one making sure that Google was making money and that its stock price stayed up.

Now the weight of both concerns -- innovation and business success -- will fall more solidly on Page.

"[Page] has good vision. He's very much a strong intellectual. He's a challenging type," said Gillis, adding that Google is a much different beast than it was when Page first ran it as a startup.

"Remember: It's a bigger ship to turn. It's 200 people versus [24,000 employees today]. It's private company versus a public company. This is a lot different," he said.

And word is that Page would like Google to again be run like a hungry young startup -- with less bureaucracy and more innovation, and with fewer middle managers and more engineers.

That means there's a potential management shake-up in the offing.

Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said he wouldn't be surprised if some middle managers were let go in the coming months -- a move that he thinks would be a big mistake.

"Google is an engineering company and by nature it would be predominantly engineers," Enderle said. "However, a firm made up predominantly of engineers would lack the skills and depth the company would need."

"Google already is excessively engineering-focused which is part of why they haven't been able to avoid [angering] governments, and why their image is declining," he said.

Others think Page just might be able to inject exactly what Google needs -- a dose of excitement and innovation.

"As a co-founder steeped in engineering and innovation, Page is the perfect type of CEO for a company looking to recapture its startup mojo and compete in a predominantly cloud-driven marketplace where speed in engineering matters more than generating investor buzz," said Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis.

"Page can engender a true sense of unity and leadership where previously there was confusion and even infighting between the founders and their appointed CEO, Eric Schmidt," he said.

However, Shimmin warns that Page should be careful to not pinpoint his focus on innovation.

"Believe it or not, I think Google should slow its rate of innovation, focusing not so much on wild ideas such as self-driving cars and instead focus on improving its existing portfolio," he said. "For example, Google Apps should see enough investment to make it a truly unified, mature and enterprise-centric platform capable of beating rivals IBM and Microsoft feature for feature."

Both Enderle and Gillis said Page needs to deal with the company's trust issues.

"Google is at a crossroads," Enderle said, explaining that it appears to be "unfocused, increasingly difficult to work with for partners, and a problem to correct for governments."

"The company's image has degraded to a point where few would trust them, and trust is critical to much of what they intend to accomplish in the future," Enderle said. "It is well past time the founders looked into the mirror and realized they have become a company they wouldn't choose to work with. Fixing that problem should be their highest priority."

Microsoft offered Windows Phone 7 users download 12 apps a month from Windows Phone Marketplace store

Some 36,000 individuals and studios are members of Windows Phone developer community, with 1,200 more joining every week

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7: there are 11,500 applications available on the Windows Phone Marketplace store.

Microsoft may be keeping its cards close to its chest on sales of Windows Phone 7 handsets, but the company has released some stats on its smartphone operating system, with the aim of persuading app developers to throw their weight behind it.

In a long post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog, Microsoft's Brandon Watson outlines some of the numbers that he says illustrate WP7's momentum. For example, 36,000 individuals and/or studios are now members of the Windows Phone developer community, with 1,200 more joining every week.

Some 40% of these registered developers have already published their first app or game for WP7, meaning 60% have not yet done so. Watson also says that the average time to certification – meaning the time it takes to get an initial pass or fail – is 1.8 days, with 62% of apps passing on their first attempt.

There are now 11,500 applications available on the Windows Phone Marketplace store, with 7,500 of those being paid apps, while 1,100 are using Microsoft's mobile advertising tools to generate revenues from in-app ads.

Watson makes an interesting claim too: "Based on the conversations we are having with some of our developers, many are telling us that they are seeing more revenue on our platform than competing platforms, despite the fact that we cannot yet match the sheer number of handsets being sold."

It is hard to evaluate that claim without knowing which developers are saying this, of course. Microsoft has consistently pitched WP7 as a potentially lucrative platform for developers, where there is less competition (for now) than iPhone, and a greater willingness to pay for apps than Android. The message certainly isn't falling on deaf ears, but more specific examples are required to judge how well Microsoft is delivering on that promise.

Watson adds that Windows Phone 7 users are downloading an average of 12 apps every month, although there is no further information on how many of those are paid versus free, or any stats on the actual revenues being generated on the Marketplace by developers. More information is likely to come at Microsoft's MIX11 conference, which starts on 12 April and is likely to put an emphasis on making developers feel comfortable on WP7.

"We look forward to further increasing the engagement and transparency with our developer community, including more visibility into the update release schedules, roadmaps, access to early builds of the new OS and more time with our team," he writes.

If Microsoft is to prove analysts like IDC and Ovum right – who as we reported yesterday both see Windows Phone growing to the point where it will be hot on the heels of iOS (or even ahead of it) in three or four years' time, developer relations will be a critical element to get right.

Games developers had their say earlier this week, but if you've released an app through Windows Phone 7, now would be the time to pitch in.

Why 3-D Smartphones Are the Best Bet for 3-D Adoption

 At the recent CTIA Wireless conference in Orlando, Fla., two major manufacturers jumped into the 3-D market, a market that has been mostly dominated by TVs until this point. While it may seem counterintuitive to relegate 3-D shows to a small smartphone screen, 3-D smartphones might actually have the best chance of promoting 3-D adoption among consumers.

The display
Portability is one of the most important considerations. While 3-D content would look better on a large screen, people can't carry their 3-D TVs around with them. Passing the time on a boring plane ride with a 3-D movie is one of the perks of a 3-D smartphone.

It also widens the customer base because those who would have said they don't have time at home to watch a 3-D movie might want to stream a 3-D show to their phone while traveling.

But there's an even more important benefit to the 3-D smartphone displays: They don't require 3-D glasses. The glasses for 3-D TVs are expensive (many over $100 each), require batteries and are usually not numerous enough for an entire family. The 3-D smartphone bypasses every one of these problems by negating the need for glasses and making the viewing experience personal.

It's not a perfect solution. The screens on the two major 3-D smartphones – the HTC EVO 3D and the LG Optimus 3D – use parallax technology, which has certain flaws. For instance, the screens must be viewed straight on; turning them even a single degree distorts the image. However, these flaws are a relatively minor concern. It's far easier to turn your wrist a bit to adjust the viewing angle than it is to search the couch cushions to find that second pair of 3-D glasses.

The price
Currently, 3-D TVs are very expensive, costing thousands of dollars — and that's before you buy the 3-D Blu-ray player and the extra glasses. 3-D smartphones, on the other hand, will be subsidized by carriers, just like any other phone, making them much cheaper alternatives. There's also no need for disc players and DVRs because of the next point.

The content
A phone's mobile network provides an automatic content delivery system. Movies and shows can be purchased for download or rented for streaming with relative ease, and users don't have to be sitting in their living room either.

For now, there is still very little content for 3-D mobile devices, though that will likely change. Sprint representatives at CTIA indicated the carrier plans to create a content portal for the HTC EVO 3D, and T-Mobile will likely do the same for the LG Optimus 3D. If there is enough content available soon after launch, consumers will flock to it because of the ease of finding and playing movies and TV shows.

The camera
Both the EVO 3D and the Optimus 3D have dual cameras that allow the user to shoot their own 3-D images and video. And the 3-D display lets them view it instantly. As long as the cameras work well (all indications are positive so far) then 3-D phones offer the full package: the ability to not only view but create 3-D content. 3-D TVs can't do that.

Of course, there are 3-D camcorders reaching the market, but they are inferior to 3-D smartphones because of the next point.

The price/functionality quotient
The biggest benefit of getting 3-D media through a smartphone is that the device does so many other things as well. The screen may be smaller, but you're getting far more functionality for a cheaper price: phone calls, texting, Internet browsing, hundreds of thousands of apps, FM radio and more.

While there are different implementations of these features in some new Internet-connected TVs, the interface is invariably clunkier and less fully featured than what you find in a simple 3-D smartphone. For this reason alone, 3-D content makers have a better chance of selling their products because people will likely have a 3-D-capable smartphone sooner than an everything-capable 3-D TV.

It may still take a while
While the benefits of 3-D smartphones are obvious, they may remain a rarity for a while. It's still unclear if people are truly interested in 3-D content, regardless of whether or not it requires glasses. The available 3-D content will need to multiply exponentially, and the parallax screens could be further refined. But if anything can inspire 3-D adoption among American consumers, the new 3-D smartphones can.

Addiction: Most People Can’t Function Without Their Smartphones

“We expect that Nokia’s smartphone portfolio will make further significant market share losses during 2011 and 2012 until it has completed its adoption of Microsoft’s Windows Phone software as its new primary software platform for smartphones” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst, Matthias Raab.

Listen, I love my smartphone too, and I spend way too much time on it as I’m sure you do as well, but I think it’s important to know the difference between what can be done on your mobile device and what should be handled on a good old-fashioned desktop.

If you want a larger display, go play on your computer, or go buy a tablet. I agree that it’s beneficial to be able to handle tasks on-the-go, or watch TV when you’re waiting in the doctor’s office, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Windows Phone 7 To Overtake iPhone by 2015

According to InformationWeek , by the year 2015, assuming we aren't killed in the 2012 apocalypse, the Windows Phone 7 will overtake Apple's iPhone. Now this doesn't mean that the WP 7 will be in first; Google's Android phones are projected to blow away the competition with a 45% market share, with Windows in second at 20%.

Apple's iPhone andits iOS system will have roughly the same market share they currently own at just over 15%. The presumed increase will come as the IDC surmises that Symbian owners, who represent just over 20% of the market today compared to WP 7's 5%, will happily convert to the Windows platform, leading to Symbian's demise.

Android is poised to take over this year as more and more popular phone's utilize its operating system. It's predicted to ascend to 40% market share this year, so the projected figures aren't that crazy.

It's just Microsoft's market expanding that much seems ridiculous at thispoint. The sales have been underwhelming and updates have been botched so unless they increase the quality and service of their phone, it's going to go the same direction that the iPod killing Zune went. There's a reason it's not taking over at thismoment and besides an assumption that Symbian will fall down, there's no reason to assume Microsoft's phone will takeover.

Most people will probably goto Android as it continues its takeover from the biggest and most user friendly company, Google. Apple and Google specializein service while Microsoft botches updates.

Download new Firefox 4 full version from mozilla

    Firefox 4 is a worthy expression of Mozilla's ideals. The browser is competitively fast, sports a new minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features. Unfortunately, that describes most of Firefox's competition, too.

Review:

Firefox 4 had a rough time in its early development, but those days are over. The browser that you can download now is in the same speed category as its competition; offers many similar features (stronger in many areasand slightly weaker in others); includes broad, cross-platform support for hardware acceleration and other "future-Web" tech and standards; and is amust-have for Android users.

Installation

Installing Firefox 4 was a fine, quick experience. Beta users, whotoiled for 10 months using betas of varying stability and quality, might be disappointed that Firefox 4 doesn't clean up the beta detritus left behind. That's the cost of using a beta, though.

Firefox 4 does not include automatic updating the way that Opera and Chrome do, although checking out the About option under Help in the menu will automatically start updates downloading, and then ask you toapply them. Firefox 4 has gotten significantly faster at restarting, and the process that used to take several minutes this time took less than a minute on our test computers. Note that this is for updates after you've already installed Firefox 4. Updating from version 3.6 to version 4 is likely to take several minutes, because of the significant code changes that have been made.

Careful Firefox observers will notice that the browser no longer ships with a separate icon for Safe Mode. Simply hold down Shift; when you click on the Firefox icon to open a box you willbe allowed to customize which settings carry over to Safe Mode.

Firefox automatically installs a Windows 7 taskbar icon if you choose it as your default browser. Uninstalling the browser does not leave behind any icons or folders if you choose to remove your settings at the same time.

Interface

If you're a big Firefox fan, you'd better hope that you're either not very attached to the version3.6 look or you're extremely taken by the new design. Firefox 4's main interface is completely different from what's come before, retaining only the larger back button that debuted in version 3. Not surprisingly, the new design also brings the browser significantly closer to theminimalist style first adopted by Google Chrome in 2008, although it looks most similar to Opera 11.

The menu bar has been squished into an orange button on the upper left, with menu options spread across two columns. Nearlyall the submenus have been redesigned as well, although the hot keys remain the same, so thelearning curve isn't particularly steep. In fact, the menu redesign makes it much easier to get to bookmarks, add-ons, and history, as they now all live on one menu pane. The menu button is not available to Mac users.

Besides the major changes to themenu, smaller changes have greatly improved usability. For example, there's now a Get Bookmark Add-ons link in the Bookmarks submenu. The History submenu now has Recently ClosedTabs and Recently Closed Windowssections.

Tabs are now on top by default, and while the forward and back navigation buttons haven't moved, the stop and refresh buttons are now attached to theright side of the location bar, next to the bookmark star. Whenyou're typing a URL, the "Go" button appears in green. While resolving a URL, the box changes from the "Go" arrow to an "X" forthe new Stop button, and the green changes to red. The visual cues are minor but help to highlight their new location in the interface. Returning the Stop andRefresh buttons to their Firefox 3.6 locations can be done via the Customize option. What little colorremained in the default interface,mostly the green Back button, has been leeched out for a mutedgray. You can customize the Firefox skin with the restartless Personas add-ons, added in Firefox 3.6.

Right of the location bar lives thetraditional search box, with its drop-down list of search engines. Above that on the tab bar there is a new button that lists all youropen tabs, and you can add a button to access the Tab Groups feature. For some reason, the final version of Firefox 4 doesn't ship with the button by default, although the betas often did. Youcan add the button by right-clicking on the interface and choosing Customize, then draggingand dropping the Tab Groups iconnext to the List All Tabs button. We don't consider many customizations to be essential, but this one is.

The Status bar that lives at the bottom of the interface is now hidden by default, again in keeping with the minimalist philosophy and the competition. There's a new Add-on bar as well,also hidden by default, to which extension icons can be added if you want to keep add-on icons easily available but out of the way of the main interface.

One of Firefox's singular strengthsis its capacity for customization, which remains unparalleled, and is accessible even to novice users. While the competition does offer add-ons and extensions, Firefox remains far ahead of all of them in interface customization.

Features and support

Firefox 4's features are robust and generally competitive. There is some minor functionality missingin a few cases where the browserremains behind the competition, but Firefox is generally one of themost progressive major browsers available, an early adopter if not always an innovator.

The most important new feature in Firefox 4 is Sync. As with many recent Firefox features, it started off as a rough add-on, and often deleted data. If you were scared off by its early bad behavior, you'll be glad to know that Mozilla has worked out the kinks: Sync now smoothly syncs your Bookmarks, Passwords, Preferences, History, and Tabs not only with other computers, but also with your Android version of Firefox . (There's also Firefox 4 for Maemo devices . It doesn't yet support syncing add-ons, which is one of those frustrating missing functions mentioned above.)

To use it, click on the Menu button and choose Set Up Sync from the left column. That will take you to a window where you can connect an existing Firefox Sync account or create a new one. Within Firefox Sync, there are two important security points. One is that Firefox encrypts your data before sending it over an encrypted connection to its servers, where it remains encrypted. Mozilla says that the company would not be able to access it even if somebody there wanted to. The second is that you have the option of setting up your own personal sync server. In an age when private data stored by corporations gets hacked and stolen with shocking regularity, setting up a personal sync serveris one way to ensure that you bear the responsibility for your own data.

Another big feature in Firefox 4 issupport for restartless add-ons . These add-ons are written differently from standardFirefox add-ons, and are expected to become the format for add-ons in the future. As such, not many restartless add-ons exist--only about 115 at the time of writing this review, compared with the thousands of"standard" add-ons. This will continue to pose a big problem for Mozilla, as older add-ons become a bottleneck for Firefox that other browsers, with their newer add-on frameworks, don't have to manage.

Firefox 4's add-on manager has been completely overhauled, and now includes support for the aforementioned restartless add-ons. There's a lot of useful new technology here, as compared with the version 3.6 add-on manager. Not only can yousearch for add-ons from within the add-on window using the search box in the upper right corner, you can add them withouthaving to jump to the external Mozilla Add-on Web site , also known as AMO. The manager calls out the AMO add-oncollections, which you can create more explicitly in the Get Add-onstab. The add-on manager also allows you to browse Personas, the restartless Firefox themes. It's slightly annoying that clicking on an add-on group or collection opens the page in a new browserwindow, whereas clicking on a specific add-on opens that add-on's download page within the add-on manager. That's a very minor criticism, though.

Other changes to the add-on manager include forward and back buttons specific to the manager, in the upper left corner, and left-side navigation tabs for specifically focusing on Extensions, Appearance, and Plug-ins. Meanwhile, two little improvements to the manager willimpress keyboard junkies. There's a new hot key for pulling up the add-on manager, Control-Shift-A, and you can type about:addons directly into the location bar to access the add-ons manager in a tab.

The tab-grouping feature seems to be suffering a bit of an identity crisis, though its functionality is untouched. Originally called Tab Candy, then renamed Panorama, and now known as Tab Groups, it presentsyour tabs as an array of thumbnail images. The thumbnails reside in rectangular boxes that constitute a group. Tabs can be dragged from one group to another, and groups can be named and moved as well. You canadd a tab to an existing group orcreate a new group by right-clicking on the tab and choosing Move to Group. The hot-key combo Control-Shift-E will also jump between the main interface and the Tab Group window.

The overall idea is to make it easier to switch from one tab to another, to group or regroup related tabs, and to get a global view of what's going on with yourtabs. It's potentially a big improvement in browser usage, compared with aiming a mouse at an ever-skinnier tab, cycling through a list with alt-tab keystrokes, or pecking at a drop-down menu to reach the tabs that overflowed off the deep.

The bookmarks and history menushave been redesigned, and now the hot keys open them by default as sidebars. Go through the Menu button to get the full menus. We were actually quite impressed with the layout of the menu button options for bookmarks and history, finding it much more useful with quick access to recently closed tabs and new bookmark tags. This is probably the most useful in-browser bookmark manager around, especially if you enable Sync and use it with your Androidphone or tablet.

Firefox 4 supports App Tabs, which reduces the width of a tab to its favicon and pins the tab permanently on the left. The tab will glow when updated, a useful indicator for things like Web mail. And when you start typing into the location bar, one of the search choices will be related open tabs so that you can quicklyswitch to an existing tab.

Under the hood there are TONS of changes. The biggest is full hardware acceleration across all platforms, which means that Firefox draws on your graphics card to speed up complex rendering. You'll see dramatic HTML5 support, including for high-def WebM video, and broad support for the HTML5 canvas, video, audio, geolocation, drag and drop, and form tags. OpenType fonts are supported, asis CSS3 and newer JavaScript values. WebGL and hardware acceleration give the browser a massive boost, which we'll discuss in the Performance section below.The short version of all this is that Firefox 4 is on the cutting edge of the next generation of Web standards, and that benefitsyou immensely by offering faster rendering times of Web sites thatcan do more.

There's a decent list of other, smaller changes to Firefox that are worth pointing out because they'll enhance your work flow in the browser. One of these is Switch to Tab. Open a new tab, start typing the name of an already-open tab, and the URL willappear in the drop-down with"Switch to Tab" beneath it. Selectthat one, and the new tab closes and you're whisked to the preexisting tab. It's a great trick for cutting down on the amount of time it takes to sift through 45 open tabs, and removes the chance of having the same tab accidentally open twice, or more.

The location bar, or as Mozilla calls it, the Awesome Bar, retains the features introduced in Firefox3.5, such as the options to searchyour history and bookmarks and to tap your default search engineto provide you with quick results. However, the "feeling lucky" instant jump to what it thinks is the Web site you're most likely tobe looking for has been disabled because of internal Mozilla concerns about accidentally sending personal information to the search provider.

Private browsing reflects the browser's faster start-up and shutdown times so that it jumps between standard browsing and Private Browsing mode significantly faster than in version3.6.

The new Do Not Track feature indicates via a header notificationthat you want to opt out of targeted advertisements. However, it requires that the Web site you're viewing, and therefore that site's developers, respect the header itself. While this is great for future-proofing the Web, as implemented at the time of writing, not many Web sites have taken notice of it. While that doesn't mean it won't eventually have a big impact, thattime is not now, and it's better toinstall an add-on like AdBlock Plus to get more complete ad-tracking protection.

There are two smaller yet important changes to the way that Firefox protects you. One is the implementation of the Content Security Policy, which is designed to block one of the mostcommon types of browser threats, cross-site scripting attacks, by allowing sites to tell the browser which content is legitimate. Though CSP also placesthe burden on the site developers, it's backward-compatible and aimed mostly at well-known sites hosting immense volumes of data and content.

Another security improvement is the implementation of HTTP StrictTransport Security (HSTS). This prevents your log-in information from being intercepted by telling Firefox to automatically create a secure connection to a site's servers.

The new feature set alone makesit worth upgrading to the latest version of Firefox. While some older Firefox users may feel that these features add unnecessary bloat to a browser that offers add-ons specifically so that you can customize your browsing experience, Firefox 4 is actually dramatically faster than Firefox 3.6. We address the browser's behavior in the section below.

Performance

As mentioned earlier, Firefox 4's performance has been greatly improved by the addition of graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware acceleration. It allows the browser to shove certain rendering tasks onto the computer's graphics card, freeing up CPU resources while making page rendering and animations load faster. These tasks include composition support, rendering support, and desktop compositing.

JavaScript plays a major role in the Web, and Firefox 4's new JaegerMonkey engine combined with the GPU acceleration gives the browser some serious juice. We'll update this section with CNET's performance benchmarks as they become available, although initial results show Firefox 4 testing competitively against other browsers. Mozilla's own JavaScript benchmarks show the browser running 3.5 times faster than Firefox 3.6.12 on the Mozilla Kraken benchmark, three times faster than Firefox 3.6.12 on the WebKit SunSpider benchmark, and six times faster than Firefox 3.6.12 on Google's V8 benchmark.

One interesting publicly available benchmark is the new JSGameBench from Facebook, which looks to test HTML5 in real-world gaming situations. The Firefox 4 beta was the fastest tested without WebGL , and was the second fastest with it.

Note that to effectively use hardware acceleration, you must make sure that your graphics card drivers are up-to-date.

Browser benchmarks are a notoriously fidgety lot, and often come up against legitimate complaints that they look at too narrow a set of features--such as checking only JavaScript rendering times. In hands-on use, at least, Firefox 4 can more than hold its own. It's not clear that it's enough to counter the past two years of Chrome decisively winning the fastest-browser PR campaign, but that may no longerbe the point. All five major browsers are now similarly fast atJavaScript tests, and you may start looking at other criteria to determine which browser is best for you.

In hands-on experiences, one of the best performance differencesbetween Firefox 3.6 and the current version is that Firefox 4 crashes far, far less. That's due inno small part to improvements made to the plug-in crash protection, which prevents plug-ins like Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft Silverlight from dropping the browser dead. If one of them crashes, simply reload the page.

Conclusion

Definitely a worthy heir to the Firefox name, Firefox 4's one drawback is that, like its competitors, it uses massive amounts of RAM. Don't expect that to change as the browser is relied upon to perform more and more tasks that once occurred inother programs. It will also be lessof a problem as hardware improves.

Firefox 4 faces a much more challenging field of competition than Firefox 3 did. Some people have probably abandoned the browser for the significant speed differences between version 3.6 and Google Chrome. However, the competition has forced Mozilla andothers to put out better browsers in order to thrive. Firefox 4 is arguably the best browser on the market today.

 Download new Firefox 4 full version from mozilla Page