Safari 4 downloads top 11 million in three days
Apple announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows.
Safari 4 is the world’s fastest, most innovative browser and is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.*
“Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow.”
Starting with the development of the open source WebKit browser engine, Apple has been leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, enabling an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.
Safari 4 includes Top Sites, for an incredible visual preview of frequently visited and favorite pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; and Cover Flow(R), to easily flip through web history or bookmarks. Other innovative features include Smart Address Fields for automatically completing web addresses from an easy to read list of suggestions; Search Fields, to fine tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches; and Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text.
In Mac OS(R) X Snow Leopard(TM), available later this year, Safari runs as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent.** Snow Leopard makes Safari more resistant to crashes by running plug-ins in a separate process, so even if a plug-in crashes, Safari continues to run and the user simply has to reload the affected page. Safari running on Snow Leopard also delivers HTTP streaming, making it easy to deliver high-quality audio and video in industry standard formats from any web server without the need for browser plug-ins.
Pricing & Availability
Safari 4 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/safari. Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard(R) v10.5.7 or Mac OS X Tiger(R) v10.4.11 and Security Update 2009-002, a minimum 256MB of memory and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac(R) or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire(R). Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 4 can be found at www.apple.com/safari.
*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac(R) 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows Vista, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test. HTML benchmark based on VeriTest’s iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.
**Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Testing conducted by Apple in May 2009 comparing prerelease Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6 with shipping Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Testing was conducted on a shipping MacBook(R) 2.0 GHz system and a shipping iMac 2.66 GHz system, both configured with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmarks based on the SunSpider Performance test comparing Safari running in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes.
Source: Apple
GFI Software Launches FREE Full-Featured Backup and Recovery Software for Home Users
To assist home PC users during these troubled economic times and to help them understand the importance of data backups, GFI Software announced the release of a free version of its newly-developed backup and recovery software called GFI Backup 2009 – Home Edition. Perfect for home users, GFI Backup 2009 allows PC users to safeguard precious memories – pictures, video, Office documents – and any files stored on their computer.
The FREE software can be downloaded from http://www.gfi.com/backup-hm/free-backup-software/ and allows home users to keep regular and updated copies of all important files and safeguard data in case something goes wrong. This is GFI’s first release of a recovery product designed specifically for home users.
“Security threats do not only affect businesses but home users as well. In many cases, loss of data for individuals is heartbreaking because memories, personal documents and important files are lost due to hard disk failure or virus attacks,” said Walter Scott, CEO, GFI Software. “We firmly believe in helping people be better prepared and we are doing this by giving home users a full-featured backup software product for free.”
GFI Backup 2009 is an easy-to-use backup and recovery software solution that allows users to backup all their important files and, when needed, recover data within minutes using the product’s wizard-driven interface. GFI Backup 2009 does not use a proprietary format – all data is saved to common ZIP files making it easy to restore data to a computer that may not have GFI Backup installed on it.
Data can be stored on nearly every storage device available such as internal or external hard disks, local area network (LAN) locations, CD/DVD media, removable media devices (USB sticks, memory sticks, flash memory, floppy disks, etc.) and remote locations using FTP with upload auto-resume. Data can also be protected with military-strength 256-bit AES strong encryption.
GFI Backup 2009 is currently available for home users. The company will release a small business/corporate version later this year.
“At GFI Software, we believe that we should do what we can to help our customers protect their data – whether it be important business information or personal memories. We view ourselves not only as a vendor but also as a partner that understands our customers’ needs and is actively doing something through our “We Care” initiative to help them through these tough economic times,” added Scott.
For more information and to download a FREE copy of GFI Backup 2009 – Home Edition, visit http://www.gfi.com/backup-hm/free-backup-software/.
Keith Curtis Authors a Case for Free Software that Could Change the World
How would you like to have your own high-tech chauffeur?
Keith Cary Curtis, author of After the Software Wars, says it could happen right now.
“All we need is a video camera on the roof, plugged into a PC,” says Curtis. “We have all the necessary hardware, and have had it for years, but don’t yet have robot-driven cars because we don’t have the software.”
“The key to faster technological progress is the more widespread use of free software,” says Curtis.
He says we still live in the dark ages of computing because proprietary software is still the dominant model. And he takes off in a very gutsy way about Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others. He touts open source solutions like Linux and claims they are the future, and are right now reaching critical mass.
Curtis was a programmer at Microsoft for 11 years, working on Windows, Office, and in Microsoft research, when he left the company to write his book.
Curtis, born in Birmingham, Michigan, attended the University of Michigan and studied Computer Science. He was recruited by Microsoft and moved to Seattle, Washington where he lives.
What does he predict for the future? Will Microsoft survive? Will free software prevail? Well, you have to read the book.
After the Software Wars is available at Amazon.com and other online book retailers. The book has also been reviewed by the New York Times and is the topic of discussion on many blogs.
John Markoff of the New York Times:
“Keith Curtis takes a programmer’s approach in Software Wars, attempting to systematically build a case that software can help pave the way for a 21st-century renaissance in many fields ranging from artificial intelligence (cars that drive themselves) to the human journey into space (space elevators). For Keith, free software is all about leveraging our collective intelligence.”
Lorenz Gude of www.newmediatheory.net:
After the Software Wars is hard to put down because it makes a passionate and compelling case for free software and upsets our industrial age assumptions with new understanding. Curtis’ argument is based in experience and like a good lawyer he forces us to consider the merit of his argument.
FREE: Download the book at www.lulu.com/content/4964815
Source: Keith Curtis
Javacool Software Releases Free SpywareBlaster 4.2
Enhanced “Layered Defense” Spyware, Malware Prevention Software Now Supports More Browsers & With Faster Updating
Fans of Javacool Software LLC, take note: an upgraded version of the company’s popular SpywareBlaster(R) is now available for free downloads from the software company’s Web site (www.javacoolsoftware.com).
With over 50 million free downloads since the company’s launch in 2002, Javacool Software offers a range of free privacy and security software products used by home and small business computer owners worldwide, along with other services for enterprises and networks.
Unlike other subscription or free anti-spyware and anti-malware software, SpywareBlaster focuses on prevention. It protects against stealth downloading of spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers and other potentially unwanted software. And unlike other programs, the performance-friendly SpywareBlaster does not remain running in the background, avoiding drags on a PC’s operation.
SpywareBlaster coexists with other security software to provide a “layered defense” against multiple threats. It prevents the installation of ActiveX-based spyware and other dangerous programs, blocks spying and tracking via cookies, and restricts the actions of potentially threatening Web sites.
The new version 4.2 of SpywareBlaster features improved Windows 7 support, faster updating worldwide, support for the Internet Explorer 8 and K-Meleon browsers, interface improvements and numerous other enhancements.
PC World magazine recently named SpywareBlaster as one of its ’8 Great Free Security Tools.’ Noted the report: “With this downloadable antispyware utility, you can make sure you don’t get infected in the first place rather than scanning for and killing spyware after it hits your machine. It works differently from most competitors by restricting the actions that potentially dangerous Web sites can perform when you visit them. It also protects against dangerous ActiveX controls, and keeps tracking cookies off your PC.”
Javacool Software offers a SpywareBlaster AutoUpdate service to download new versions when they become available, with automatic database updates, easy multi-user coverage and technical support.
Source: Javacool Software LLC
PandaLabs Predictions of Conficker’s Minimal Impact on April Fools Day Ring True
The Much-Feared Re-activation of Conficker on April 1st Goes Off Without a Bang
PandaLabs, Panda Security’s malware detection and analysis laboratory, predicted in a recent blog post that the malicious Conficker worm won’t cause major upheaval on April 1st and advised consumers not to “get taken in by the Conficker panic“. As predicted by PandaLabs, the much-feared reactivation of the Conficker virus, forecasted for Midnight on April 1, has yet to cause massive infections.
According to Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs, “The ultimate aim of the virus is to obtain money. With the alarm generated by the media attention, security vendors have been working to avoid a potentially widespread epidemic. Evidently though, if someone is going to steal money, they are not interested in being headline news. That’s why we believe that its creator is trying to find a new zero-day vulnerability to exploit in order to spread the infection. But it will happen at a moment when our guard is down, not when everyone is on the alert.”
At Midnight on April 1, Conficker started to generate 50,000 new URLs from which, supposedly, the malware would be able to update itself to a new version, starting a massive series of infections. However, until now, no new versions or additional infections have been detected other than those already associated to the previously active variants.
“It is still possible that at any moment one of these URLs could be activated and the worm could download an update to its code or new malware. In any event, this would only affect users who are unprotected against Conficker, although there are still many of them,” says Corrons.
Although there has been much speculation as to why the creators are trying to draw attention to Conficker, Corrons adds, “The reality of today’s malware is that it is created with a financial motive. At PandaLabs we believe that the cyber-criminals behind this worm are still aiming to infect as many unprotected computers as possible. This way, with a critical mass of infected computers, they can then start to profit by renting out the network for sending spam, downloading Trojans to steal data and other fraudulent activities.”
Ironically, one of the main dangers associated with Conficker, as described on the PandaLabs blog is not the worm itself, but the fact that cyber-crooks are exploiting the notoriety of this malware to distribute other malicious code from domains ranked highly in Internet searches for the word ‘Conficker.’
To avoid falling victim to Conficker and other malicious code, PandaLabs advises:
- Having an up-to-date anti-malware solution installed
- Installing the patch that fixes the vulnerability exploited by Conficker
- Having a solution to prevent malicious code spreading through USB devices (pen drives, MP3 players), etc. With this in mind, Panda has developed the free Panda USB Vaccine, which can be downloaded from here
- Not opening emails from unknown sources and never clicking links or running files attached to such emails
Source: Panda Security