Mozilla CEO: Ties with Google 'complicated' since Chrome

December 21, 2008 (Computerworld) Mozilla Corp. has a "reasonable" relationship with longtime partner Google Inc., but it's gotten complicated since Google launched its own browser, according to Mozilla's chief executive.

"We have a fine and reasonable relationship," John Lilly, Mozilla's CEO, said in an interview last week. "But I'd be lying if I said that things weren't more complicated than they used to be."

Responding to questions about Mozilla's take on the upswing in browser competition, Lilly also knocked another rival, Microsoft Corp., for dismissing attempts to boost browser performance as merely a "drag race."

"It's a pretty good time to be a browser user," said Lilly. "There are more smart people hacking on browsers than in a long time. But when I hear Dean [Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer] say JavaScript performance is for crazy guys to worry about, then that worries me."

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100 top sites for the year ahead

The online world has changed dramatically even since we last drew up a list of 100 useful sites in December 2006. In the interim, there has been a revival of the browser wars - with Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari making surprising inroads into the Windows monopoly, and offering a new vision of what browsing can be like.

Many of the sites listed here were not available when we did our last list; although longevity is a mark of pride online, it is difficult for companies set up in the 1990s to reinvent themselves quickly enough to take advantage of new technologies. Although of course rapid change brings casualties too: it's possible that with all the economic turbulence going on that some of the sites here won't be around in a year from now, or that their now free services will have become paid-for. That doesn't diminish their usefulness, though; it just underlines their determination to survive.

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So here are our 100 revised best sites to see you through the next couple of years. They're organised roughly along those lines.

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Stress Busting Help from Applecore Interactive

It's that time of the year again, when everyone seems to have a little more stress in their lives than usual. Well, we have a remedy for you! Check out the following ten very addictive and interactive online games, including several from Applecore Interactive:

1. Core Pong
   
2. Snapper De-Stresser
3. Drum Kit
4. Air Balls
   
5. Sand Pile
6. Make Simple Music
7. Bubble Wrap
   
8. Three Dimension Stress Release
9. Tom and Jerry
10. Brain Wave
    

Applecore Interactive Celebration

Highlights from the Applecore Interactive celebration - new brand launch, ISO 9001:2000 certification and 10 years in business!

Top 10 Most Overhyped Tech Products

Blogs gush about them. PR campaigns blow millions on them. News anchors announce their arrival like they’re members of state. And the rest of us suffer when they utterly fail to deliver. They’re overhyped tech products, and unfortunately, we’ve run across quite a few of them through the years. Here are a few of our favorites… or at least, the ones we most bitterly remember.

Segway Personal Transporter

SegwayBy the way its inventor Dean Kamen and folks like Steve Jobs (who seems to have a blessing for hyperbole) talked this thing up, you would have believed it was the solution to all the world’s problems. And some people did. But instead of defying gravity, producing limitless energy or any of the other things people had dreamed up for “IT,” the thing basically, well , moved. Like an electric wheelchair. But standing up. Guess we’ll have to wait a few years for Kamen’s fusion reactor.

Palm Foleo

Before the Asus Eee hit the states and shook up the market for ultra-portable, low-cost PCs, Palm was building up the same concept with its Foleo PC. In theory, it had a number of concrete features that push it to the front of the pack, including zero boot time, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a full QWERTY keyboard. We say in theory, because the Foleo went off radar during the summer it was supposed to debut, then finally slipped beneath the waves for good when Palm formally announced its death in September. Thanks for getting our hopes up.

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