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!

The domain name is yours for the meagre price of $5,000,000!

Nice work if you can get it, eh?

Apologies to Alex for breaking the chain of SEO-related posts, but…

As one of these irritating people who constantly claims to ‘love words’ (’words’ said in that horribly reverential way, as if somehow… Welsh), stumbling across this site not only gave me an opportunity to learn a few new ones, but also to help out those who are significantly worse off.

FreeRice.com gives you a word and 4 possible synonyms, and simply asks you to pick the one closest to the meaning. The simple way in which it works means that you will find your vocabulary increasing unconsciously; and what’s more, for every word you get right, they’ll donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. New words are constantly being added by ‘a team of professional lexicographers’, which sounds like a wonderful job.

20 grains of rice doesn’t sound that much, but over a few months you can really make a difference. Plus today I learned that a ‘bluestocking’ is another word for a ’scholarly woman’. Incredible.

But then again, I do love words. And we like charities.

So, why not do your bit? Even if it’s just a couple of words a day, you’ll be helping yourself and others, and you don’t even need to get your cheque book out. Win-win!

A large part of any good SEO’s work is keeping up with the latest developments at Google and watching where they are going in the future. All forward thinking SEOs are also working more and more with social media optimisation, as it is becoming known.

In the last couple of weeks, you may have become acquainted with iGoogle, which is the new default start page for your Google browsing experience. The service itself is nothing new, with its (less catchily named) predecessor Google Personalized Homepage having been available since 2005, but the search giant is now really pushing this idea.

Suggested content for your iGoogle is selected according to your browsing habits. This can be hit and miss; for example, if you say that you are interested in sports, Google assumes that this means basketball, baseball and the NFL.

One thing that people of a nerdier disposition (like us) have always enjoyed about iGoogle is that it encourages developers to create applications, rather like Facebook. Very recently, Google has modified the interface to include an “update” sidebar that shows users what their friends are up to. Rather like Facebook.

This second point is important - alongside traditional search, Google is looking more and more at the social aspect of the internet. The marketing implications of this are pretty big. Social newsfeeds like that in Facebook are a fantastic form of viral marketing - seeing that a friend has done something encourages other people to have a go too. This mainly benefits sites that make an effort to include good content that actually adds something to the internet.

Google is stepping into the world of Social Networking again. After the mixed reception to Orkut (which is, oddly, the most popular Social Networking site in Brazil and India), this time they want to do it right… basically, by mixing whats good about Google and Facebook. This is one to watch.

PS. While searching for images to accompany this post, I came across this. Oh dear.

Check out Kinsey’s Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/kinseysprompage

Thousands of people have been keeping up with young Kinsey over the last couple of weeks through her video blog posts. She’s excited about her prom and blah, blah, blah, but she’s a little concerned about the behaviour of her brother Hank.

What is Hank up to?

Could it be a secret invasion?

Great work by Marvel (or their agency).

April Fools Day is upon us once again…

http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/gday/index.html

“Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now”

Great stuff.

Stepping away from internet marketing for a minute (I’m technically on holiday), I’d like to draw attention to a charity that particularly grabbed my attention when we met at a trade fair a couple of weeks ago.

In Kind Direct take goods which are unwanted by big business and distribute them to charities. You should definitely have a look at their website.

Look out for some other Upstream peeps posting on this blog next week… have a great weekend.

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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