Mozilla retains Google as default search engine in Firefox

20 December 2011 8:02 PM

Summary: Mozilla and Google have renewed their friendship with a new search deal for Firefox.

Mozilla and Google are renewing their partnership with a new agreement regarding the default search engine in Firefox.

That would be Google, obviously, and it will stay that way for at least the next three years, according to the new deal.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs explained in a prepared statement, “Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world.”

Other search engines that sit below Google within the Firefox browser are Yahoo, Bing, Amazon.com, eBay and Wikipedia.

Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed except that it will provide “a significant and mutually beneficial revenue” stream for both parties.

To put the value of this relationship into at least one perspective, Mozilla relied heavily (perhaps too heavily) on Google search revenue in 2010. The Firefox search box has generated anywhere from 85 percent to 90 percent of Mozilla revenue in recent years.

AllThingsD reports that Google contributed approximately 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue last year.

Mozilla Posted the following:

We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.

The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.

Flipboard Introduces an iPhone App

7 December 2011 11:54 PM

Today the popular iPad app called Flipboard has now made its way to the iPhone. Flipboard, if you aren’t familiar, is an app for browsing news in a beautiful layout.

You can browse through their news source, your own rss feeds, as well as your Twitter and Facebook streams. Since Filpboard for iPhone was such a high demand their servers have been taking a hit and they are currently not allow you to create an account or for me, use the app at all. I would expect it to be fully working by tomorrow. If you want to download it, the link inside the post!

Flip has always been one of the best reader apps, a great app to fire up in a waiting room (or, with the iPhone version, the Starbucks line) to catch up on news and articles. The iPhone version is fast, too, so you won’t finish your whole coffee waiting for it to load up (I’m looking at you, New York Times app).

The iPad version is still more attractive, which is not surprising since its extra real estate makes it a much better platform for reading.

Thanks to the Flipboard account feature, your subscriptions on one iDevice are synced to another. I loaded the app up on the iPhone and logged in, and all the sources I had subscribed to on my iPad appeared right away. There’s still no Web-based management for Flipboard accounts, though, which I see as an inconvenience. There’s also no Android version.

That said, get this app on your iPhone. Especially if you already use it on the iPad. It really makes short work of powering through your main content feeds, and it looks good and works well enough to vanish into the background as you use it.

I’m A Celebrity 2011: Dougie Poynter is King Of The Jungle‎

3 December 2011 10:45 PM

I’m A Celebrity 2011: McFly bassist Dougie Poynter crowned King Of The Jungle after beating Mark Wright

All hail King Dougie: McFly bassist Dougie Poynter has been crowned King Of The Jungle.

Dougie Poynter has been crowned King Of The Jungle after winning this year’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!

McFly bassist, 24, was stunned after beating former bookies favourite Mark Wright: ‘I’m lost for words. My mouth is so dry. It’s been the best couple of week in my life.’

The Essex-native was presented with his crown by hosts of the ITV2 spin-off show, Laura Whitmore and Joe Swash.

After strutting down the walkway, he was greeted by his jubilant McFly bandmate Tom Fletcher.

Despite being runner-up, The Only Way Is Essex star and club promoter Mark, 24, was a gracious loser.

He said: There couldn’t be a bit winner. He’s the nicest, kindest person in the whole wide world. He serverss every minute of it.’

During their joint interview before finding out the winner, Dougie admitted he was surprised to have ended up in the final.

Bromance: The pair spoke about their surprisingly close friendship on the show.

He said: ‘I didn’t do anything, I felt like I just chilled in my hammock the whole time.’

Mark enthused: ‘It’s the most amazing experience of my whole life.’

Dougie admitted they had been sick repeated times following their Bushtucker Trial the previous night.

Before finding out he hadn’t won, Mark insisted ‘I’ve won being here… I can’t be a loser today. It’s not a competition. It’s an experience of a lifetime and I’ve loved every minute.’

find out more & source: dailymail.co.uk.

Another one bites the dust! Sinitta becomes second casualty of I’m A Celebrity as she takes the walk of shame

25 November 2011 10:59 PM

Sinitta has become the second victim of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!

Fortunately she avoided the embarrassment of being eliminated first; with that blow dealt to Stefanie Powers last night, despite her melodramatic squealing during three trials and the cockroach filled cave, viewers opted to send her home.

As Ant and Dec went into the camp, Pat Sharp was the first to be saved before Jessica-Jane Clement’s name was called second.

Sinitta was then told it might be her, before Dougie Poynter, Lorraine Chase, Willie Carson, Emily Scott, Mark Wright, Fatima Whitbread and Antony Cotton were all told they’d be staying.

As Crissy Rock was the final name left, she battled the former popstar in the bottom two – but the 43-year-old was sent home as the Benidorm actress, 53, was saved.

Talking to the Geordie presenters, Sinitta said: “Amazing, I sort of knew. To leave when I actually started to love it is a great feeling. I wanted to face my fears and not be afraid of everything.”

Speaking of her now infamous night in the cockroach filled cave, in which she stood vertical for three hours to avoid the creepy crawlies, she said: “It did feel like a long time.”

She even praised Pat, who had to sleep next to her, saying: “He was so sweet, whenever I screamed, he’d say, “It’s nothing“. It was the longest night of his life.

“He wants to win, he’s not afraid of anything. He doesn’t really understand people’s deep-rooted fears.”

When she was quizzed about faking her hysterics, especially during The Department Store task, she denied she was faking.

Simon Cowell’s former flame said: “I’d be a brilliant actress (if I was faking). It’s real, they (my family) find it irritating at home too.”

Sinitta added that she would like to see Mark or Crissy go on to be crowned king or queen of the jungle.

Meanwhile, love is still blossoming between Mark and Emily.

The Australian model successfully completed the latest Bushtucker Trial, Coral Grief, in which she scored a maximum of 11 meals for her campmates after retrieving stars buried in a giant tank.

When she returned to the camp, the former TOWIE star offered her a congratulatory back rub.

find out more & source: metro.co.uk

Leveson Inquiry: after Harry Potter I felt like a hostage, says JK Rowling

24 November 2011 10:05 PM

Author JK Rowling appears before the Leveson Inquiry Photo: SKY


JK Rowling has described feeling like “a hostage” in her own home as it came “under siege” from the paparazzi following the success of her Harry Potter books.

The author told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that she had fought a running battle with the media to protect her privacy and particularly that of her three children, taking legal action more than 50 times in 14 years.

Despite her best efforts, she had been unable to prevent “private” pictures of her daughter going around the world “like a virus” on the internet.
After taking an oath under her full name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling, the 46-year-old writer said she was a passionate believer in the freedom of the press and saluted “truly heroic” journalists who risked their lives to expose the truth about war and famine.

She did not, however, mince her words when it came to the “illegal and unjustifiably intrusive” behaviour of some tabloid journalists, adding: “I wonder sometimes why they’re called the same thing.”
With her husband, Neil Murray, sitting in the public gallery of the hearing at the High Court in London, she said she had been guided by her strong belief that “children do best when they are kept out of the public eye“.

She quickly discovered how difficult it would be to ensure that when she experienced “the first burst of publicity” after the first book, published in 1997, became a bestseller.

Her eldest daughter came home from primary school and, she said: “I unzipped her bag and among the usual notes from school and debris, I found a letter from a journalist. “It said he intended to ask a mother at the school to put this in my daughter’s bag.

I don’t know whether that’s how it got there but I felt such a sense of invasion. It’s very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old daughter’s school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists.”

After buying a house with the advance for the first book, Miss Rowling was horrified to see pictures of it, including the street name and house number, appear in the press, and moved as a result, but had been forced to take legal action when pictures of three subsequent homes were published.

As a result, photographers would camp outside her house and “it really was like being under siege or being a hostage … I felt completely trapped in the house and of course that had a massive effect on the children”.

When the seventh and final Potter book was about to be published in 2007, a journalist contacted the head of her daughter’s school, and suggested that she had “distressed fellow pupils by revealing that Harry Potter dies in the final Harry Potter book”.

Miss Rowling went on: “My daughter was being characterised as some sort of bully, but there was not a word of truth in it. There had been no complaint.

“My daughter could not have possibly known what was in book seven, because by her own request she did not want to know. To approach my daughter’s school was outrageous.”

In 2004 the Daily Express alleged that Miss Rowling had based the character of the self-obsessed teacher Gilderoy Lockhart on her former husband, after she told a group of children that she had based him on “someone I lived with briefly”.

In fact, she was referring to a former flatmate, but she “had to sit my eldest daughter down and explain it”.

She was not, however, asked whether anyone in particular had inspired one of her most vile characters, the manipulative journalist Rita Skeeter, who appears to embody all that she loathes about the tabloid press.

The hearing continues on Monday.