We’re all Mozilla Firefox users in the Upstream office. Let’s not get into why.

A month ago Mozilla released the 5th beta of the latest version of Firefox (v3), rumoured to be the last beta before the first RC appears. Having tested it for a couple of weeks now, I have to say, it’s superb. Not only is it a huge upgrade from the latest v2 build, but Mozilla claim to have made over 750 improvements since beta 4, so you can tell they’re working hard on delivering one hell of a browser.

The buzzwords for the v3 beta are the same old ones you’ll hear with every release of pretty much every browser, be it Internet Explorer, FF, Opera, Safari or any other: “more secure” - citing the Site Identification button as its most visually obvious upgrade - “easier to use”, “more personal”, and “improved performance”.

The thing is, for the first time since I had a go on the IE5 beta all those years ago, the upgrades are actually noticeable. Even with all my extensions still installed, Firefox 3 beta 5 flies along at an almost scary rate - it really is noticeably quicker; both in startup and in rendering web pages. The download manager has inline search - something woefully lacking in previous versions (though those who enjoy that kind of thing would probably have grabbed the pretty-much-must-have Download Statusbar extension by now). Smart Bookmarks tracks your most-visited pages and does all the work for you, a functionality only achievable in earlier versions with extensions.

One of the most popular complaints with Firefox is its memory leak issue - but right now, with 20 tabs open and numerous downloads, firefox.exe is using a mere 97,000Kb of RAM. Not bad considering if I load the exact same tabs into my current 2.0.0.14 build, I get RAM usage of over 250Mb.

And what’s more, unlike most other betas I’ve been happy to play around with, Firefox 3 has not crashed on me. In 2 weeks. Not once.

Bravo, Mozilla. Download your copy of the beta right here; but if you’re happy with 2.0.0.14 for your casual browsing and fear the upgrade may disable some of your favourite extensions, probably best to wait for the finished article to be released - according to the Mozilla wiki, we can probably expect a mid-summer release!

If you want an idea of where Google is going in the coming months and years, Google Labs is generally a good place to start.

We all know that Google is an organisation that likes to put time and effort into development. While Microsoft made a song and dance (of sorts) about the “release” of Internet Explorer 8 while still in a very early Beta, Google’s fantastic Gmail is still in beta after over four years.

What’s great about Labs is that you can watch a new idea grow from seed to fruition.

One great program to come out of Labs is Google Desktop. This is a free, downloadable program that adds a little bit of search magic to your desktop. Click the CTRL button twice and a box pops up from which you can search your computer and the internet for any particular keywords. One or two other features are a little more annoying - feeds with Facebook status updates and images can pull up some embarrassments when they are least welcome. Still, you can always switch these off.

Another great “graduate” from the labs is Google Maps, which is well on its way to squashing the opposition. It’s rather like Multimap but somehow “Googlier”.

Rather like an emperor with hundreds of children by various concubines, not all of the labs’ spawn are fit to rule. Google Video was dwarfed by YouTube. Froogle died in its sleep one night. Google Reader… meh.

Of the current tools in development, my two favourites are:

Trends, which is very useful for SEO companies like Upstream Connections. This allows you to compare the search volume for up to four keywords over a period of months and years. Results are presented as line graphs and are shown alongside related news stories.

Google Mars. Which is rather like Google Earth but with maps of the Red Planet. Sadly, after hours of searching, I have been unable to locate any of the familiar landmarks from Total Recall, but that Cohaagan always was a sneaky one.

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Upstream Connections - SEO Brighton

Microsoft has made Internet Explorer 8 available for download here.

At present, the download is in Beta form and is aimed mainly at programmers and developers, although there is nothing stopping regular browsers downloading and having a play.

Initial impressions: IE8 is quite a handsome beast but it won’t be replacing Firefox or Opera in our hearts (or on our desktops) anytime soon. Basically, this offering appears to be Microsoft playing catch up, trying to offer extensions a la Firefox but not quite “getting it”. The lines are clean, usability is improved from IE7

Some of the more interesting features include

• Facebook integration, whereby you can get your friends’ status updates in the IE toolbar. While the latest figures suggest that Facebook use has peaked and that it’s all downhill from here, this is undeniably a cool feature.
• Ebay integration. Rather like the Facebook updates, you get updates in the toolbar for specific pages. In theory this should mean alerts when something you are waiting for becomes available, and updates on the cost of items you are watching, bidding on, etc.
• Look up on Encarta (remember that?)
• Stumbleupon toolbar.
• Live Maps integration.

One key development in the browser is called Webslices, which allows information from sites (like Ebay, Stumbleupon and Facebook) to be included in the browser. This works a bit like an RSS feed and offers you “highlights” of sites that you are interested in.

Microsoft, being Microsoft, will never release software which can be adapted like Firefox. In reality this means that people with very specific demands for browsers (SEO companies, for example) will continue to use, modify and love Firefox for the foreseeable future.

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Upstream Connections - a Brighton SEO

Today (at the fourth time of asking) Vodafone delivered my shiny new Nokia N95 8GB. I am just coming to terms with the universe of features on the phone, more details of which can be found here. Three of us in the office now have N95s and we are well and truly smitten.

Now I can see why my N95 owning flatmate shakes his fist at the television every time one of those insufferably smug iPhone adverts comes on - Nokia’s flagship phone was out before the Apple and has higher spec, more user options and a lovely two way slider. And it’s 3G.

Which leads nicely on to the topic of this post: a great new website called Qik, which allows you to stream direct footage from your 3G mobile phone to the internet.

We have been spending a frankly upsetting amount of time in the Upstream office playing with this site. You register your mobile phone on the site, receive an sms to confirm and later receive a link from which you download the necessary software.

It is still very much in its infancy, but looks to be a revolutionary development (please correct me if this has been done before). At the moment, the majority of videos being streamed are people sitting in their offices checking if the site really works. A number of them have come from Upstream’s Brighton SEO office. One cool thing is that you can comment on people’s videos as they are streaming… these comments appear on their screens as they are filming. This hasn’t been fully integrated yet, but does have tremendous potential (for both honest interaction and juvenile entertainment).

The potential for streaming from mobile phones is great… lets just hope it doesn’t end up the great big fleshfest that sadly seems on the cards!!