Author Archives: Christopher Finke

Netscape Blog

Propeller.com Social News Browser Extensions

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

A few weeks ago, we announced that the social news functionality was being removed from the Netscape Navigator Web browser in parallel with Netscape.com’s transition to Propeller.com; at that same time, we promised that we’d release these features as standalone browser extensions.

We’re making true on that commitment; the following social news features that had been standard components of early betas of Netscape Navigator 9 have now been reborn as browser extensions. These extensions are compatible with both Firefox 2 and Navigator 9:

 

sitemail fas

The News and Tracker extensions are still available only in the Mozilla Addons sandbox; read this for more information about the sandbox.

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Netscape Blog

Netscape Navigator 9.0 Available

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

Netscape is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the official release of Netscape Navigator 9. The release is available for download from browser.netscape.com.

The following changes have been made since Release Candidate 1:

  • Added security measures when installing extensions from the sidebar browser
  • Fixed error that was displayed after updating (with auto-update) from 9.0b3 to 9.0RC1

For a complete list of the new features in Netscape 9, see What’s New in Netscape Navigator 9? at browser.netscape.com; you may want to also check out the Netscape Navigator FAQ for information on running Navigator 9 alongside previous Netscape browsers.

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Programming, Project X, Web Applications

Looking for some alpha testers

Is anyone interesting in helping alpha test and/or do some QA on a side project I’m working on? It’s a fairly simple Web application that should be relevant to pretty much everyone, but it will obviously be more useful to some people than to others. (How’s that for specifics?)

If you want to take a look and give some feedback, either leave a comment below or e-mail me at chris@efinke.com, and I’ll send you the URL.

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Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble

Dave Winer falls for it

Dave Winer writes that Techmeme is “officially” a cesspool, now that bloggers will write linkbait just to get on the Techmeme leaderboard. (Little-known fact: all search engines are also cesspools by the same reasoning.) Specifically, he singles out Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble for writing attention-getting linkbait pieces (much like he himself is doing):

“I’m thinking of this idiotic post by an idiot [Jason] who’s known for saying idiotic things just to get attention.” #

“Scoble […] is rapidly rising. How’s he doing it? By saying extreme things that people will react to. Scoble ain’t no idiot. If he wants to rise on the list, he rises.” #

So Jason’s an idiot, Scoble “ain’t no idiot,” and the verdict on Dave Winer, who fell for both bloggers’ linkbait, is still out.

P.S. Dave – what’s up with the tinyurl links? If you need more disk space on your server to handle all of the extra bytes needed by full-length URLs, I’ll take up a collection to buy you some more storage.

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Netscape Blog

Netscape Navigator 9 Release Candidate 1 Available

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

Netscape is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate of Netscape Navigator 9. The release is available for download from browser.netscape.com.

Due to Netscape.com’s transition from a social news site to a traditional news portal (and the resulting re-launch of the social news site at Propeller.com), we made the decision to remove the built-in social news functionality from the Netscape Navigator Web browser. We will be releasing those features as stand-alone Propeller-branded browser extensions shortly, and our browser development efforts will be refocused on providing new features and browsing enhancements not specifically tied to a single Web service.

The following changes have been made since Beta 3:

  • Added splash screen
  • Fixed formatting bug in Mac license
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing custom background colors
  • Mini-browser enhancements
  • Removed social news integration
  • Exposed more preferences in the Preference Dialog for tabs and the mini-browser
  • Fixed reversed preference for opening searches in new tab
  • Fixed Mac bundle signature
  • Fixed default icon and file assocations
  • Moved custom FTP style out of userContent.css
  • Added URL correction preferences to Advanced Preferences page
  • Added drop-down menu to print button
  • Added drop-down menu to home button
  • Added Firefox profile importing
  • Added support for importing Netscape 8 bookmarks after the initial install
  • Fixed theme issues on Linux
  • Fixed truncation of Reload button label
  • Fixed bugs with URL correction and country codes
  • Added “Save to Linkpad” option to History context menu

For a complete list of the new features in Netscape 9, see What’s New in Netscape Navigator 9? at browser.netscape.com; you may want to also check out the Netscape Navigator FAQ for information on running Navigator 9 alongside previous Netscape browsers.

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Digg, Digg Statistical Data, Social Media

Kevin Rose removed from Top Diggers Lists

Some of you may have noticed that Kevin Rose (Digg user kevinrose) no longer appears in both the Digg’s Top 100 and Top 1,000 Users lists. It was recently brought to my attention that Kevin’s profile page shows that he has submitted 295 stories to Digg, but somehow, 298 of his submissions have reached the front page.

Kevin Rose is more powerful than math

Gaming the system like this will not be tolerated, and any Digg users caught breaking the laws of mathematics will immediately be banned from both Top Users lists.

 

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Digg, Digg Statistical Data, Social Media

Top 1000 Diggers as of 2007/09/26

This CSV files contains the username, number of frontpage stories, number of submitted stories, number of stories dugg, and number of profile views for the top 1,000 users on Digg.

Top 1000 Diggers as of 2007/09/26

If you’d like to be notified whenever I release a new dataset, you can subscribe to the Digg Statisical Data RSS feed, which will include only the dataset posts, or my main RSS feed, which is updated with all of my blog posts.

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Netscape Blog

And the winner is…

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

…Mario Herbert, who designed entry #11 from yesterday’s post. Congratulations Mario!

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Mario’s design will be the default splash screen for Netscape Navigator 9. We especially liked the clean look and the throwback feel of the ship’s wheel.

Many thanks to all of the other participants in the contest; the choice was difficult to make due to the high quality and aesthetic appeal of all of the entries.

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Netscape Blog

Splash Screen Design Contest: 3 days left to enter

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

We’ve gotten some great entries in the splash screen design contest for Navigator 9; we’ll be accepting entries until 11:59PM Central Time on Friday, September 21, so you only have two and a half days left to enter. After the entry period ends, we’ll post all of the submissions and announce a winner.

It looks like “Money” is winning the poll as to what the designer of the first-place entry should receive, with the other three options in a tie for second place. We’ll have to see if we can’t put together a prize package that satisfies everyone, but remember that you can’t win anything if you don’t enter; send your designs in PNG format to browser@newnetscape.com by midnight on Friday to have a shot at the prize, the fame, and the glory.

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